The Great Marl Pit

Georges OhnetProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
651K words
Chapters
66

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Fate and FortuneFamily FeudLove EntanglementsPopular NarrativeFrench Society

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.La Grande Marnière by Georges OhnetAuthor: Ohnet, Georges, 1848-1918,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 31, 2007

Editor's review

La Grande Marnière is a work by Georges Ohnet, a late nineteenth-century French writer of popular fiction, and belongs to the vein of social melodrama he excelled in. The novel revolves around family, property, and emotional entanglements; its plot is driven by dramatic turns, and its main tensions arise from personal relationships and class differences, reflecting the narrative interests and readerly tastes of French popular literature at the time. Ohnet's works found a wide readership in their day, and this book can serve as a sample of popular reading in France around the Third Republic. As a French-language original e-book from Project Gutenberg, it is suitable for literary-history enthusiasts to read broadly or as French reading material. While reading, pay attention to its plotting and its mode of moral judgment, and consider how popular fiction responded to the social anxieties of its era.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First learn about late nineteenth-century French social background; the family and property conflicts in the novel will then be easier to understand.
  2. Treat the book as French extensive reading material: prioritize plot continuity, and mark unfamiliar words first and look them up later.
  3. While reading, note the moral evaluations of characters and the depiction of class, and reflect on the values of popular fiction.
  4. Read it alongside contemporary French realist works to compare popular plotting with serious literature.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
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  8. 8
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  31. 31
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  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66

FAQ

How difficult is the French in this novel? It is a nineteenth-century French novel: the narrative language is fairly standard, but sentence patterns and vocabulary carry period features. Readers with intermediate French reading ability who are used to long sentences can get through it with a dictionary; beginners may find it rather demanding.
What is Georges Ohnet's place in literary history? Ohnet was a late nineteenth-century French writer of popular fiction whose works reached a broad readership in his day; he belongs to the realm of mass literature. This book can serve as a sample of the narrative modes of bestselling fiction at the time, but one should not expect classic-literary depth.
Is this book suitable as French learning material? It suits learners who already have some foundation and want to increase their reading volume. It is advisable to focus on understanding the plot rather than looking up every word; after finishing a chapter, deal with recurring key words together so as not to interrupt the reading rhythm.

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About the author

Georges Ohnet Author · French · 1848–1918

Georges Ohnet (1848–1918) was a French novelist and playwright, born in Paris in 1848 and died there in 1918. He studied law and worked in journalism, and in literary terms he opposed realist fiction, preferring plots full of twists and strong emotion. His best-known work is the series Les Batailles de la Vie, whose volumes such as La Grande Marnière and Serge Panine were highly popular in their day. Several of his works were later adapted for the stage, which further extended his influence. The library holds 11 of his works, including the multiple volumes of Serge Panine and Marchand de Poison. Beyond these facts about his life and writing, public information about him is limited.