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Le Calvaire
''Le Calvaire'' (''Calvary'') is a novel written by the French journalist, novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, and published by Ollendorff in 1886. Plot summary ''Le Calvaire'' is a largely autobiographical novel, in which Mirbeau romanticizes his devastating affair with a woman of dubious morals, Judith Vinmer, who appears as "Juliette Roux" in the novel.Jean-Michel Guignon, « Aux sources du ''Calvaire'' - Qui était Judith/Juliette ? » , ''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'', n° 20, 2013, p. 145-152. See also Owen Morgan« Judith Vimmer / Juliette Roux » ''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'', n° 17, 2010, p. 173-175. The story is narrated in the first person by the main character, the antihero Jean Mintie, who has literary ambition and the potential to become a good writer, is incapable of overcoming his sexual obsessions. Victimized by a woman and reduced to a state of humiliated impotence, he tries to transform his suffering into an impulse to create. His redemptive passion is modeled ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 – 16 February 1917) was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. His work has been translated into 30 languages. Biography Aesthetic and political struggles The grandson of Norman notaries and the son of a doctor, Mirbeau spent his childhood in a village in Normandy, Rémalard, pursuing secondary studies at a Jesuit college in Vannes, which expelled him at the age of fifteen. Two years after the traumatic experience of the 1870 war, he was tempted by a call from the Bonapartist leader Dugué de la Fauconnerie, who hired him as private secretary and introduced him to ''L'Ordre de Paris''. After his debut in journalism in the service of the Bonapartists, and his debut in li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autobiographical Novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Because an autobiographical novel is partially fiction, the author does not ask the reader to expect the text to fulfill the "autobiographical pact".Philippe Lejeune"Autobiographical Pact," pg. 19 Names and locations are often changed and events are recreated to make them more dramatic but the story still bears a close resemblance to that of the author's life. While the events of the author's life are recounted, there is no pretense of exact truth. Events may be exaggerated or altered for artistic or thematic purposes. Novels that portray settings and/or situations with which the author is familiar are not necessarily autobiographical. Neither are novels that include aspects drawn from the author's life as minor plot details. To be considere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cahiers Octave Mirbeau
''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'' is a French literary journal founded in 1994 by French scholar and Octave Mirbeau specialist Pierre Michel. The journal is based in Angers Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is the prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Anjou until the French Revolution. The inhabitants of both the city and the pr ..., France. Its periodicity is annual. Between May 1994 and March 2016, 23 installments were released, totaling more than 8 300 pages. Volumes comprise between 304 and 440 pages and are lavishly illustrated. The circulation is 500 to 600 copies. Each volume divides into at least three major parts. The first is devoted to studies on Octave Mirbeau's literary or aesthetic and political battles. The second includes unpublished or little known documents (unpublished articles by Mirbeau such as correspondence, judgments, testimonies, and translations). The third is a bibliograp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First-person Narrative
A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from their own point of view using the first person It may be narrated by a first-person protagonist (or other focal character), first-person re-teller, first-person witness, or first-person peripheral. A classic example of a first-person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's ''Jane Eyre'' (1847), in which the title character is also the narrator telling her own story, "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me". This device allows the audience to see the narrator's mind's eye view of the fictional universe, but it is limited to the narrator's experiences and awareness of the true state of affairs. In some stories, first-person narrators may relay dialogue with other characters or refer to information they heard from the other characters, in order to try to deliver a larger point of view. Other stories may switch the narrator to different c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antihero
An antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero) or antiheroine is a main character in a story who may lack conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that most of the audience considers morally correct, their reasons for doing so may not align with the audience's morality. An antihero typically exhibits one of the "Dark Triad" personality traits, which include narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. There is a controversy over what exactly defines an antihero. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an antihero as "someone who lacks heroic qualities", yet scholars typically have differing ideas on what constitutes as an antihero. Some scholars refer to the "Racinian" antihero, who is defined by several factors. The first being that they are doomed to fail before their adventure begins. The second constitutes the blame of that failure on everyone but themselves. Thirdly, they off ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passion Of Christ
In Christianity, the Passion (from the Latin verb ''patior, passus sum''; "to suffer, bear, endure", from which also "patience, patient", etc.) is the short final period in the life of Jesus Christ. Depending on one's views, the "Passion" may include, among other events, Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his cleansing of the Temple, his anointing, the Last Supper, Jesus' agony in the Garden, his arrest, his Sanhedrin trial, his trial before Pontius Pilate, his crucifixion and his death on Good Friday, his burial, and the resurrection of Jesus. Those parts of the four canonical Gospels that describe these events are known as the "Passion narratives". In some Christian communities, commemoration of the Passion also includes remembrance of the sorrow of Mary, the mother of Jesus, on the Friday of Sorrows. The word ''passion'' has taken on a more general application and now may also apply to accounts of the suffering and death of Christian martyrs, sometimes using the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber (October 15, 1897 – April 10, 1993) was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. The Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950. Background Maxim Lieber was born on October 15, 1897, in Warsaw, then Congress Poland, to a family of Jewish origin. Both parents came from Opoczno, Poland. His family left Hamburg, Germany for New York City aboard the ''S. S. Pennsylvania'' in 1907 and lived in the Bronx. Lieber's father served as a typesetter for the Yiddish social-democratic newspaper ''The Jewish Daily Forward'', suggesting that one parent (if not both) was secularist. Young Maxim attended public schools, including Townsend Harris Hall (then part of New York City College) and Morris High School (Bronx, New York). Career In 1918, Lieber joined the West Ontario Regiment of the Canadian Over-Sea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which changed its name to Horace Liveright, Inc., in 1928 and then Liveright, Inc., in 1931, published over a thousand books. Before its bankruptcy in 1933 and subsequent reorganization as Liveright Publishing Corporation, Inc., it had achieved considerable notoriety for editorial acumen, brash marketing, and challenge to contemporary obscenity and censorship laws. Their logo is of a cowled monk. It was the first American publisher of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Sigmund Freud, E. E. Cummings, Jean Toomer, Hart Crane, Lewis Mumford, Anita Loos, and the Modern Library series. In addition to being the house of Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson throughout the 1920s, it notably published T.S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land'', Isadora Duncan's ''My Life'', Nathanael ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippocrene Books
Hippocrene Books is an independent US publishing press located at 171 Madison Avenue, New York City, NY 10016. Hippocrene specializes in foreign language study guides, international cookbooks, and Polish-interest publishing. The foreign language catalog includes the Concise, Practical, and Standard Dictionary series, the travel-oriented Dictionary & Phrasebook series, and the Hippocrene Beginner's textbook series. In the past, Hippocrene has published books on folklore, translations of classic literature, children's dictionaries, and travel guides. The publishing side grew out of Optimum Book Marketing, established in 1970 by Polish immigrant George Blagowidow. The press takes its name from the mythical Hippocrene fountain associated with the Muses, as seen in the company logo. Hippocrene Books, Inc., is distributed to the trade by Two River Distribution, an Ingram brand. History Hippocrene was started by George Blagowidow, who was born in Poland to Russian parents and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Michel
Pierre Michel (born 11 June 1942), is a professor of literature and a scholar specializing in the French writer Octave Mirbeau. Michel was born in Toulon, the son of the historian Henri Michel. After defending his doctoral dissertation on the works of Octave Mirbeau at the University of Angers in 1992, Michel founded a year later, the "Société Octave Mirbeau", a literary society he is currently presiding. He is also the founder and editor in chief of ''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau ''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'' is a French literary journal founded in 1994 by French scholar and Octave Mirbeau specialist Pierre Michel. The journal is based in Angers Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is ...'' (1993). A biographer and indefatigable authority of Mirbeau's work, Michel has published critical editions of all his work: novels, plays, articles and correspondence. Pierre Michel was awarded the Sévigné prize in October 2003 for his edition of the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
