43
votes
Accepted
Could you actually go around the world in 80 days?
Circumnavigation was nothing new. Speedy circumnavigation was new, but not unheard of, and Around the World wasn't positing anything outlandish or even vaguely sci-fi. It's a story celebrating what ...
- 4,884
39
votes
Accepted
Was there a reason Victor Hugo chose 24601 as the number for Jean Valjean?
Yes: it corresponds to the date of Hugo's conception.
This is part of a pattern of similarities between the character of Jean Valjean and the author himself: both are of similar age, have similar ...
- 69.1k
35
votes
Accepted
Can the Count of Monte Cristo's calculation of poison dosage be explained?
It's a mistranslation.
I checked the original French text (emphasis mine):
—Eh bien, reprit Monte-Cristo, supposez que ce poison soit de la brucine, par exemple, et que vous en preniez un ...
- 69.1k
33
votes
Could you actually go around the world in 80 days?
It was possible, but not easy. The difficulty of the task accounts for the substantial amount of the bet: £20,000 in 1873 is worth about £2,000,000 or more than US $2.5 million today.
William ...
- 20k
32
votes
Is Babar an African or Asian elephant?
In the original story L'histoire de Babar: le petit éléphant (translated and published as The Story of Babar), his companion's absence is communicated by a 'vieux marabout' (an old marabous [bird]).
...
- 4,567
30
votes
Accepted
Is Babar an African or Asian elephant?
Inasmuch as Babar is from a specific continent, he's either from Europe or from Africa-as-perceived-by-Europeans-in-the-1920s. Which is not exactly Africa, but definitely not Asia.
Babar's adventures ...
23
votes
Why does Valentine refer to her father's second wife as her "mother-in-law"?
This is a translation error! The original French is as follows:
— Oh! monsieur, dit-elle, pourquoi donc êtes vous venu si tard aujourd’hui? Savez-vous que l’on va dîner bientôt, et qu’il m’a fallu ...
- 49.8k
18
votes
Why did the alexandrine become the "natural" metre for French verse drama, whereas English renaissance drama adopted the iambic pentameter?
There are two parts to this question: why does English use iambic meter while French doesn't, and why does English have 10 syllables in each line of iambic pentameter, while French has 12 syllables ...
- 10.5k
17
votes
Accepted
How long was the Little Prince on Earth?
One Year.
Near the end, the Little Prince journeys to the wall and has an encounter with a snake - the same snake, I believe, that he met when he first arrived on Earth. He wants to meet death by its ...
- 5,854
17
votes
What does 'levee' mean in the Three Musketeers?
The definition (from the OED) is:
A reception of visitors on rising from bed; a morning assembly held by a prince or person of distinction.
The French is:
Outre le lever du roi et celui du cardinal,...
- 10.5k
17
votes
Is this a typo in my copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Yes, it is an obvious typo, be for he. The original has:
Cependant, tandis qu’il haranguait, la satisfaction, l’admiration unanimement excitées par son costume, se dissipaient à ses paroles;
il ...
- 20k
16
votes
Accepted
Why don't these lines rhyme in Les Miserables?
That wouldn't follow the rhyme scheme of the other verses, which follow the scheme ABCC. The next verse is:
There is a lady all in white,
Holds me and sings a lullaby,
She's nice to see and she'...
- 5,018
16
votes
Accepted
What does Victor Hugo mean by "the red ant heaps of Toulon"?
By “the red ant heaps of Toulon”, Hugo means the Bagne de Toulon, a notorious prison where the convicts wore red jackets and red caps. This is the prison where Jean Valjean serves nineteen years for ...
- 49.8k
16
votes
Is Jules Verne making fun of the English in Around the World?
The interaction between Fogg and Passepartout is based on their contrasting personalities: one is rigid, the other carefree and careless. This contrasts exists regardless of any national stereotype.
...
15
votes
Accepted
Why all those tangents in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables?
Norman Denny has this to say in the introduction to his translation of Les Misérables:
Hugo [...] had little or no regard for the discipline of
novel-writing. He was wholly unrestrained and ...
- 6,792
15
votes
Is Babar an African or Asian elephant?
I submit that Babar is an Asian elephant on the basis of the artwork.
Asian elephants differ from African elephants in a few ways, most prominently in the sizes of their ears: Asian elephants have ...
- 909
15
votes
What does "men of straw" refer to in this passage from an Arsène Lupin story?
Googling, it looked to me like the current usage in French of homme de paille is essentially the same as the English straw men. So I used Google books to search for 19th century uses. It turns out ...
- 10.5k
13
votes
Accepted
Why is the tense wrong in the beginning of The Stranger?
I'm not sure if whole books have been written on the topic, but at least whole book chapters have been. I haven't read this book, but I'll share my first impression.
One thing to note is that the ...
13
votes
Accepted
Identification of a short story about a short irrefutable self-evident proof that God exists that is kept secret
This would seem to fit the bill:
A Corner of the Veil
by Laurence Cossé
Paris. May 24 1999, 8.32pm: Father Bertrand Beaulieu of the venerable Society of Casuists, holds in his trembling hands six ...
- 17.5k
12
votes
Accepted
"The Dearest Charms in France" - French story about soldiers, a lottery, and a famous prostitute
This is "Entrance Fee" by Alexander Woollcott.
That was how the Cosette Sweepstakes were started. There followed then
all the anxious distraction of ways and means, with such Spartan ...
- 2,186
12
votes
Why does Meursault kill "the Arab" in The Stranger?
Initially, there isn't much. The final words of Part I read this:
I wanted to hear the murmur of its water again, to escape from the sum and the effort and the women's tears, and to relax in the ...
- 476
11
votes
Why did the alexandrine become the "natural" metre for French verse drama, whereas English renaissance drama adopted the iambic pentameter?
I'm adding my own answer to complement Peter Shor's.
In an interview, the Shakespeare scholar Kenneth Muir talks, among other things, about his translations of Racine and Corneille. When asked how he ...
- 43.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Why was Hugues de Groot also called "Grotius"?
Because he was a Renaissance scholar and Latinising names was a thing they did....
The Latinisation of names in the vernacular was a procedure deemed necessary for the sake of conformity by scribes ...
- 17.5k
10
votes
What is "the sin which ruined our first parents" in The Count of Monte Cristo?
The sin of Adam and Eve could be stated as a desire for knowledge that did not belong to them - the tree that they ate from was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the snake tempted Eve ...
- 340
10
votes
Accepted
Can the apparent age discrepancies in The Count of Monte Cristo be reconciled?
TL;DR: The discrepancies can be reconciled if we allow the painter to flatter Mercédès, and Monte Cristo to lie about his age.
Chronology
24 February 1815 — Edmond arrives at Marseilles:
On the ...
- 49.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Is this François de La Rochefoucauld's quote authentic?
The version you found on the internet was translated from English back to French. The real quote, which is due either to La Rochefoucault or to the Abbé de Saint-Réal, is:
Nous nous tourmentons moins ...
- 10.5k
10
votes
Accepted
Standard text for "Tristan and Isolde"
The versions of the story of Tristan and Isolde that we know today date from the Middle Ages, a period in history when copyright did not yet exist, when originality was not the highest goal in ...
- 43.6k
10
votes
Accepted
Why does de Villefort ask for a letter from Salvieux and not Saint-Méran?
Although theoretically of lower rank than the Marquis, the Comte de Salvieux was chamberlain to the king's brother, the Comte d'Artois. As such this gave him a closer, more personal link to the king, ...
- 6,015
10
votes
Accepted
What does "men of straw" refer to in this passage from an Arsène Lupin story?
It is worth looking at the context: Arsène Lupin's accomplice has just mentioned the rumours about Imbert's fortune, which Lupin countered by saying that that fortune is very real ("Que la ...
- 43.6k
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