Items related to A Life: The Humble Truth (Oxford World's Classics)
`every heart imagines itself the first to thrill to a myriad sensations which once stirred the hearts of the earliest creatures and which will again stir the hearts of the last men and women to walk the earth'
What is a life? How shall a storyteller conceive a life? What if art means pattern and life has none? How, then, can any story be true to life? These are some of the questions which inform the first of Maupassant's six novels, A Life (Une Vie) (1883) in which he sought to parody and expose the folly of romantic illusion. An unflinching presentation of a woman's life of failure and disappointments, where fulfilment and happiness might have been expected, A Life recounts Jeanne de Lamare's gradual lapse into a state of disillusion.
With its intricate network of parallels and oppositions, A Life reflects the influence of Flaubert in its attention to form and its coherent structure. It also expresses Maupassant's characteristic naturalistic vision in which the satire of bourgeois manners, the representation of the aristocracy in pathological decline, the undermining of human individuality and ideals, and the study of deterioration and disintegration, all play a role. But above all Maupassant brings to his first novel the short story writer's genius for a focused tension between stasis and change, and A Life is one of his most compelling portraits of dispossession and powerlessness.
What is a life? How shall a storyteller conceive a life? What if art means pattern and life has none? How, then, can any story be true to life? These are some of the questions which inform the first of Maupassant's six novels, A Life (Une Vie) (1883) in which he sought to parody and expose the folly of romantic illusion. An unflinching presentation of a woman's life of failure and disappointments, where fulfilment and happiness might have been expected, A Life recounts Jeanne de Lamare's gradual lapse into a state of disillusion.
With its intricate network of parallels and oppositions, A Life reflects the influence of Flaubert in its attention to form and its coherent structure. It also expresses Maupassant's characteristic naturalistic vision in which the satire of bourgeois manners, the representation of the aristocracy in pathological decline, the undermining of human individuality and ideals, and the study of deterioration and disintegration, all play a role. But above all Maupassant brings to his first novel the short story writer's genius for a focused tension between stasis and change, and A Life is one of his most compelling portraits of dispossession and powerlessness.
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Review:
In general, he [Pearson] shows himself sensitive to the various registers that Maupassant employs, and manages to convey the wistful flavour of this story of a largely disappointing life. (Robin Buss, TLS)
It is possible to smile at the consistently downbeat tone, while at the same time admiring this finely constructed, austerely written tale. (Robin Buss, TLS)
About the Author:
It is possible to smile at the consistently downbeat tone, while at the same time admiring this finely constructed, austerely written tale. (Robin Buss, TLS)
Roger Pearson is Professor of French at the University of Oxford and Praelector in French at The Queen's College, Oxford.
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- PublisherOxford Paperbacks
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0192832980
- ISBN 13 9780192832986
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages288
- EditorPearson Roger
- Rating
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A LIFE: THE HUMBLE TRUTH (OXFORD
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Oxford University Press
(1999)
ISBN 10: 0192832980
ISBN 13: 9780192832986
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