Romans et contes

Gautier, Théophile, 1811-1872Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.0

Word count: 639K words
Chapters: 64

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.Romans et contes by Théophile GautierAuthor: Gautier, Théophile, 1811-1872,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 2, 2016

Editor's review

Gautier was a major writer of the French Romantic period, known for his aestheticism and finely wrought style. This collection, Romans et contes, gathers several of his narrative works; the original French edition is distributed free by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook. For Chinese readers its value lies in direct access to nineteenth-century French narrative prose in its original form: the plots often carry a strange, grotesque, or exotic flavor, and the descriptions attend closely to color, texture, and plastic form, embodying the author's "art for art's sake" aesthetic. It can be read both as an advanced French reader, building literary vocabulary as the stories unfold, and as a sample of one strand of the French Romantic novel, to be set beside works by Hugo, Musset, and others. Because it is a public-domain electronic text, it has no modern annotations or introduction, and suits readers who already have some French and are willing to look up background on their own; those who want only a Chinese translation or detailed notes will need another edition.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners with some French reading ability who want to sharpen their sense of the language through literary originals
Readers interested in French Romantic literature and the aestheticist style
Readers who enjoy strange and fantastical short narratives and are willing to read slowly and closely
Researchers of the nineteenth-century French novel who need public-domain source texts

Not a good fit for

Readers with no French who cannot read the original even with reference books
Beginners who need modern annotations, an introduction, or a Chinese translation
Readers who prefer strongly plotted, fast-paced genre fiction

Reading tips

Read one shorter story through first, marking unfamiliar words and long sentences, then go back for close reading, rather than looking up every word from the start.
After each story, summarize the plot and the most striking descriptive technique in two or three sentences, building an overall impression of Gautier's style.
Read alongside a history of French Romantic literature or a biography of the author to help understand the work's period context.
Use the search function of the electronic text to note recurring images of color, dress, and the exotic, organizing them by theme.

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.

FAQ

Is this book a Chinese translation?

No. This electronic edition is the original French text, labeled as French, a public-domain text released by Project Gutenberg; it has no Chinese translation and no modern annotations or introduction.

Can I read it if my French is only average?

You can try, but you will need a dictionary and grammar tools. It is best to start with shorter pieces, grasping the plot first and then working through details; if the difficulty is too great, read a Chinese translation or a bilingual edition first to build background, then return to the original.

Is this book suitable for learning French?

It works well as advanced reading material. Gautier's style is meticulous, with rich sentence patterns and vocabulary that help build literary language; but nineteenth-century French is distant from modern French, so beginners should not use it as their only textbook and would do best to combine it with graded readers or a course.

Are there any restrictions on using the electronic edition?

As a public-domain ebook it can be obtained and read free of charge, but it usually contains no publisher's note, annotations, or recommended bibliography. Readers must supply background material themselves, and layout may differ across devices, so it is worth checking the text's completeness before reading.

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About the author

Gautier, Théophile, 1811-1872 Author

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) was a French poet, novelist and critic, with 24 works held in this collection. His verse collection Émaux et camées (Enamels and Cameos) is known for its finely wrought language and pursuit of formal beauty, and is regarded as a practice of the doctrine of art for art's sake; the two volumes of Poésies Complètes gather his poetry. In fiction, Mademoiselle de Maupin and One of Cleopatra's Nights and Other Fantastic Romances display his romantic and fantastical narrative interests. Gautier's style attends closely to color, line and sensory experience, and influenced later aesthetic literature. Public information is limited, so biographical details are not elaborated here.