Questions tagged [french-language]
Questions about works of literature which were originally written in the French language, regardless whether they were written or published in France or elsewhere.
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Reference to Novalis in Ghérasim Luca's poem "La Poésie Pratique"
Ghérasim Luca's poem "La Poésie Pratique" / "Practical Poetry" contains the following lines:
En pratiquant le bouche à bouche de mot à mot
de « feu » le mort à « feu » vif
d' « ...
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1
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Contrasting depictions of Asians in Tintin
In The Blue Lotus, Tintin talks to Chang about various 'silly' stereotypes held by Westerners.
The story is pretty thoughtful in its representation of Asians.
But in earlier adventures, Herge drew ...
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0
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What's the significance of the scene where Christine loses Erik's gold ring?
In Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, the ring that Erik had given Christine goes missing:
Suddenly Christine changed color. A mortal pallor overspread her features.
"Oh heavens!" ...
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2
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Why the smiling devils in Hergé's 'The Broken Ear'?
At the end of The Broken Ear (one of the Tintin adventures), the villains Alonso and Ramón are chased, presumably to hell, by a gaggle of winged, horned, merry devils.
It, as far as I can tell, is ...
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2
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0
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Meaning of Proust's "Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated ... is literature"
Marcel Proust writes in The Past Recaptured (English translation by Andreas Mayor, 1970):
Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really ...
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1
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Censorship of African-American characters in "Tintin in America"
From the Wikipedia page on Tintin in America:
For the 1973 edition published in the U.S., the publishers made Hergé remove African-American characters from the book, and redraw them as Whites or ...
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3
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If Phileas Fogg had a clock that showed the exact date and time, why didn't he realize that he had arrived a day early?
How can it happen that, with
a complicated clock which indicated the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the days, the months, and the years
in Fogg's room, as we are told in the first chapter of the &...
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2
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Why is Esmeralda still sentenced to death?
In the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by French author Victor Hugo, Esmeralda is sentenced to death for killing Captain Phoebus.
But when you continue reading the novel you'll find out Phoebus is ...
- 311
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2
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A song in Pierre Martin's "Madame le Commissaire"
In the book "Madame le Commissaire" by Pierre Martin, Isabelle has dinner with her friends.
A song by Edith Piaf plays in the background and Isabelle thinks about the meaning of the lyrics.
...
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Is there some kind of blossoming towards the existentialist vision in French pre-Romantic poetry?
I remember to have read somewhere, but, unfortunately, I don't remember where, that in certain pre-Romantic French poet one can find some kind of blossoming towards the existentialist vision.
Does ...
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6
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2
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What figure of speech is "trèfles de braise" in "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame"?
This is an extract of Book X, chapter IV of Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, emphasis mine):
Tous les yeux s'étaient levés vers le haut de l'église. Ce qu'ils ...
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13
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1
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Is this a typo in my copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Nevertheless, as be harangued them, the satisfaction and admiration unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by his words;
Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (AmazonClassics Edition) ...
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0
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Reason of scare quotes in a text from Via Mala by John Knittel
Via Mala, John Knittel
Il fonda une société. L'évêque de Coire, l'abbé d'Andruss, les barons de Thusis, et quelques paysans qui avaient de l'argent constituèrent un capital, et le capitaine Lauretz ...
- 121
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Difference between "conte" and "nouvelle" at the time of La Fontaine
One of the works of the French poet Jean de La Fontaine is a collection of stories that's usually known as Contes et nouvelles en vers. It seems to me that this title implies that there was a ...
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2
votes
1
answer
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Science Fiction version of Queneau's "Exercices de Style"?
I somewhere read there is an "extended" version (I only know the "standard" one which has a German translation) of Queneau's "Exercices de Style". Including an SF version ...
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French children's book with a cat turned into a deer
I'm trying to remember the title of a children's book that I read when I was a kid in the late 90s, in French.
The year must have been about 97 or 98, not later than 99-2000.
The only thing I can ...
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1
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1
answer
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Where/what is "C" in Annie Ernaux's short story "Returns"
A girl is going to visit her mother by train. She mentions Motteville and then she talks about her destination that points to as "C":
"I travelled there by train. At Motteville, we sat ...
12
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2
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What does "men of straw" refer to in this passage from an Arsène Lupin story?
The story in question is "Le coffre-fort de madame Imbert" or in English "Madame Imbert's Safe". The passage reads, in the translation I've got:
For six months, I have worked on ...
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1
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Choice of title in Nausea (Sartre)?
Long ago a reader of this book told me that Sartre wanted a word that described something worse than pain (I see in the wikipedia article that the original title was Melancholia) or perhaps some ...
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2
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Why does de Villefort ask for a letter from Salvieux and not Saint-Méran?
In Le Comte de Monte-Cristo as Villefort begins to enact his plot, he asks the Marquis de Saint-Méran to ask the Comte de Salvieux for a "laissez-passer" to get him in to see the king ...
- 203
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1
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How does this fencing game work in the Three Musketeers?
I quote here a paragraph from the Three Musketeers (chapter II, Penguin). I am confused about how the game really works. I checked other translations but found they are not clear as well at least to ...
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1
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What does 'levee' mean in the Three Musketeers?
What does "levees" mean in this paragraph quoted from The Three Musketeers (chapeter II, Penguin, translated by Richard Pevear)? Checked dictionaries and googled but I am still confused.
...
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5
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0
answers
88
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How much of “À la recherche du temps perdu” is autobiographical?
To what extent is it an account of Proust's own life? How much is made up?
With so much detail (it's thousands of pages long), and knowing a little bit about the life of the author itself, it'd be ...
- 151
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2
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What did Lem find in his game-theoretical analysis of the writings of Marquis de Sade?
According to Peter Swirski in Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future (Liverpool University Press, 2015; on Google Books; emphasis mine),
The author [Lem] himself eloquently argued on behalf of ...
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2
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340
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What is "epic caesura" in French "chansons de geste"?
I'm reading the book La chanson de geste by Jean Rychner. In a certain passage, the expression "epic caesura" ("césure épique" in the French original) appears, which I don't ...
- 2,084
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votes
2
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Maupassant, "j'ai en effet pour amie Mme Rosset", is this a typo?
One of Maupassant's stories in the Gallimard edition contains the following sentence.
Ma chère petite, j'ai en effet pour amie Mme Rosset, que je connais depuis six ans et que j'aime beaucoup; j'...
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Have the lyrics of the Song of Father Dûchene (Chanson du Père Dûchene) been translated into English?
The Song of Father Dûchene (Chanson du Père Dûchene) is an anarchist song written anonymously in France, probably in 1892, and which was famously sung by Ravachol on his way to the guillotine in July ...
user8097
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0
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What was Victor Hugo's attitude towards religion, especially referring to a chapter in "Les Miserables"?
I'm reading "Les Miserables", knowing almost nothing about his author, and I'm now approaching Volume II - Book VII - Chapter VI (The absolute goodness of prayer).
Here, Hugo is criticizing ...
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3
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1
answer
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What distinguishes Maupassant's style from Flaubert's?
Suppose you were given a passage in French that you had not seen before, written either by Flaubert or Maupassant. Suppose that nothing about the subject matter or vocabulary gives a hint as to its ...
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1
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What did Camus mean by "the odd vegetation of those distant regions" in "The Myth of Sisyphus"?
In his essay 'The Myth of Sisyphus', Albert Camus considers suicide, the "one truly serious philosophical problem", and asks, "is there a logic to the point of death?" Then he ...
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Why is "warm" removed in the translated English title of Eberhardt's "In the Shadow of Islam"?
Isabelle Eberhardt's book Dans l'Ombre Chaude de l'Islam has a title whose direct English translation would be "In the Warm Shadow of Islam". My guess is that the word "chaude", ...
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1
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What is the origin of the third-person descriptive interludes in the Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt?
I've started reading The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt (English translation by Nina de Voogd, edited and annotated by Elizabeth Kershaw). The original was written largely in French, with a few ...
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1
answer
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Why did Urquhart choose "neck of a goose" in his English translation of Gargantua?
In Rabelais' Gargantua, in Chapter 13, we find a discussion on the best means to wipe one's bum.
You can find Urquhart's translation here. I am specifically interested in the conclusion:
But, to ...
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0
answers
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Why does the Phantom repeatedly mention Carlotta's throat in "The Phantom of the Opera"?
When Erik is monologuing to Christine in his room underneath the Opera, and Raoul and the Persian are trapped in the torture chamber, Erik says this:
Meantime, the other had already begun to play the ...
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2
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0
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What does Erik gain by lying to the Persian about the chandelier?
When the Persion meets Erik on the underground lake, and confronts him about the chandelier, Erik denies any involvement:
"Well, the chandelier... the chandelier, Erik?..."
"What about ...
- 23.3k
3
votes
2
answers
143
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What does "Oaths are made to catch gulls with" mean?
In The Phantom of the Opera, Erik uses a strange phrase when speaking to the Persian, saying that oaths are useless:
"Erik," I asked, "Erik, swear that..."
"What?" he ...
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3
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0
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Was Molière’s “Misanthrope” inspired by Menander’s “Dyskolos”?
The 4th century BCE comedy Dyskolos (“Old Cantankerous”) by Menander was rediscovered in Egypt in the mid-20th century. The Wikipedia article on the play tells us:
The Dyskolos inspired Molière, who ...
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Why was Hugues de Groot also called "Grotius"?
I am currently reading Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis (On the law of war and peace, 1625) in the French translation by Paul-Louis-Ernest Pradier-Fodéré (Le droit de la guerre et de la paix, 1865).
At ...
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Who translated the 1995 Penguin Popular Classics version of "The Phantom of the Opera"?
I recently started reading the 1995 Penguin Popular Classics version of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. While reading it, however, I noticed that there is no attribution printed in the book ...
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Satire of old lady laying flowers at the tomb of the unknown soldier, Paris - what is this french short story?
In a german textbook in high school we had a short story the name and author of which I am looking for.
I think the story was written between WWI and WWII or right after WWII. It is about an old lady ...
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1
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Is the grail in Chrétien de Troyes "Perceval" called "holy"?
According to Wikipedia article devoted to the tale Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes,
Perceval is the earliest recorded account of what was to become the Quest for the Holy Grail ...
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1
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Why did Samuel Beckett include Hamm’s inability to hear Clov say “gray” in “Endgame”?
In the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Hamm asks Clov what color the sky is outside, and doesn’t hear him repeating the word “gray” until he whispers it:
HAMM:
Then what is it?
CLOV (looking):
...
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2 Related Poems by Rimbaud and Verlaine
I'm looking for two poems by Rimbaud and Verlaine. They escape to Belgium together, went to a town party, and both wrote a poem about the event. Verlaine was really straightforward, and classical. ...
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votes
1
answer
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Why didn't Mercédès marry Edmond Dantès at the end in Count of Monte Cristo?
After Fernand is dead, Mercédès was single and she loved Edmond Dantès.
Then why didn't she marry him afterward?
Is it because Monte Cristo is a changed person and she did not love the changed man? It ...
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4
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1
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What are the discrepancies between Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and The Mysterious Island?
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, first published in 1871, is one of Jules Verne's best-known novels. In 1875, Verne published a sequel, The Mysterious Island.
The Wikipedia article about the ...
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1
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What do the saint, the angel, the musician and the sandalwood refer to in Mallarmé's poem Sainte?
Stéphane Mallarmé was a major symbolist poet. One of his poems is Sainte (available on Wikisource). On the surface, it talks about musical instruments, a sandalwood tree, religious ceremonies, an ...
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2
votes
1
answer
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Which French author or critic claimed that Racine and La Fontaine could not be understood by foreigners?
Jean Racine (1639–1699) is considered "one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille". The Wikipedia article about the playwright contains a ...
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0
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Did Alphonse Daudet exchange anti-Semitic correspondence with Richard Wagner?
The French novelist Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) is best known for works such as Lettres de mon moulin ("Letters from My Windmill"), the Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon and his ...
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0
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What was bernanosian about Camus's call to sacrifice in the resistance newspaper Combat?
For several years, Albert Camus was editor-in-chief of Combat, a clandestine newspaper of the French Resistance. In his biography Albert Camus, fils d'Alger ("Albert Camus, son of Algiers", ...
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0
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What is the view on climate by Mme de Staël that Vircondelet is referring to?
In his biography Albert Camus, fils d'Alger ("Albert Camus, son of Algiers", Fayard 2010, Pluriel 2013) Alain Vircondelet describes the strong connection between Camus and Algeria, ...
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