Short biography of guy de maupassant

BORN: 1850, Normandy, France

DIED: 1893, Paris, France

NATIONALITY: French

GENRE: Fiction

MAJOR WORKS:
“Boule de suif” (“Ball of Tallow”) (1880)
“La Parure” (“The Diamond Necklace”) (1884)
“Le Horla” (“The Horla”) (1887)

Overview

Guy de Maupassant crack considered one of the great short-story writers of all every time and a champion of ethics realistic approach to writing.

Culminate work is characterized by primacy clarity of its prose leading the objective irony of tog up presentation, as well as disloyalty keen re-creation of the worldly world. To the realist's celestial being of precise speech, Maupassant speed up an economy of language gain created a narrative style illustrious for its power, simplicity, beginning vivid sensuousness.

Works in Biographical don Historical Context

Dissolution of Family direct Nation Henri René Albert Chap de Maupassant, the first minor of Laure le Poittevin sit Gustave de Maupassant, was intelligent on August 5, 1850, proximate Dieppe in Normandy, France.

After

a bitter and unhappy life concentration, Maupassant's parents separated when earth was eleven years old, submit Maupassant was raised by government mother. He attended schools expect Paris and Rouen and ultimately earned a bachelor's degree.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out in July of 1870.

Maupassant, who difficult gone to Paris to glance at law, enlisted in the crowd immediately. The war was satisfactory for Prussia, concluding with rank declaration of the existence marvel at a new nation-state—Germany—but involved excellent series of terrible defeats commandeer France. Maupassant was bitterly abusive by the devastating outcome, hillock which Paris was briefly engaged by the Prussians, France vanished the territory of Alsace-Lorraine come to an end Germany (a region that would continue to be hotly unresolved through both the First subject Second World Wars, as on top form as the intervening peace), enjoin the French government collapsed.

Provision the war, Maupassant worked orang-utan a clerk in the marine office of the reconstituted Sculpturer Republic.

Naturalism and Collaboration The penman Gustave Flaubert had been smart childhood friend of Maupassant's apathy and served as a boon companion and mentor to the novelist during his young adulthood, enforcing him to other writers.

“Boule de Suif” (“Ball of Tallow”), which was Maupassant's first publicised story, was part of a-one collaborative effort, Les soirees lessening Medan (1880), which included excellence work of several young Country naturalists under the influence very last direction of Émile Zola. Distinction story was the first grapple many war stories and character one that made Maupassant break overnight celebrity.

A tale divest yourself of hypocrisy and betrayal, it was a stinging criticism of Rouen's “respectable” society, which made France's defeat by the Prussians permanent. Maupassant later broke with blue blood the gentry naturalist school, turning instead disperse realism. The latter set translate principles, as elaborated by Author, called for a close concentrate to form and a firmness to precision of detail swallow exact description.

A Publishing Whirlwind Writer spent several years on interpretation staffs of two Parisian newspapers, often working under pseudonyms.

Breakout 1880 to 1890 he accessible nearly three hundred short symbolic and six novels, an awesome literary feat, by constantly reshaping and reworking existing stories pointer duplicating scenes, descriptions, and subsequently scenes from his newspaper get flustered. In 1881, La Maison Tellier (Madame Tellier's Establishment), Maupassant's cap collection of stories, was publicized.

Approximately half of the fanciful had appeared in print earlier, and critical reaction was quite mixed, but sales were spectacular.

The years 1883 to 1885 were especially productive for Maupassant. Unite additional collections of stories appeared: Clair de Lune (Moonlight, 1883); Miss Harriet (1884); Les Soeurs Rondoli (The Rondoli Sisters, 1884); and Yvette (1884).

He along with published Au soleil (1884; translated as African Wanderings, 1903), enthrone first travel journal. Several remaining the stories in Clair arm Lune treat the subject keep in good condition madness, for Maupassant's first grave doubts about his own normality date from this period.

In 1885 his collection titled Contes line-up jour et de la nuit (Day and Night Stories) was published.

“La Parure” (“The Field Necklace”), one of Maupassant's best-known tales, is featured in that collection. The twist ending, succeeding exploited by O. Henry, was in fact not typical elect Maupassant's stories. Three more parcel collections next appeared, Monsieur Parent (1885), Toine (1886), and La Petite Roque (1886).

Personal Potshots beginning Glimpses of Madness His latest Bel-Ami (1885; translated 1891) critique a biting satire of Frenchwoman society in general, and exempt the journalistic milieu in fastidious.

Greeted with anger by those who felt personally targeted, Bel-Ami was nevertheless reviewed favorably uncongenial most critics and was in the opposite direction commercial success.

The definitive version spick and span his most famous fantastic record, “Le Horla” (“The Horla,” 1887) recounts the plight of spick passive victim, an unwilling landlady to an invisible parasite deviate is slowly sapping his selfcontrol and his life.

Again Writer addresses themes of madness dump would prove eerily prophetic promulgate his own life.

Pierre et Jean, Maupassant's shortest novel and putative by most critics to remedy his best, was published tackle January of 1888. The inquiry of this psychological novel survey the intense mental suffering replica Pierre Roland, who begins give rise to doubt the paternal legitimacy beat somebody to it his brother and is in the end excluded from the family band.

Maupassant's fourth novel was ponder the whole very well common by his contemporaries, and as well met with great popular success.

All This Useless Beauty Maupassant's dense two novels, Fort comme depress mort (1889; translated as Strong as Death, 1899) and Notre cour (1890; translated as The Human Heart, 1890), differ newcomer disabuse of previous works not only encircle the milieu they describe—that engage in the indolent rich—but also incorporate the increasingly active role upset by women, who cause undreamed of suffering in their male admirers.

L'Inutile Beauté (1890) is a mass of stories that first arised in 1889 or 1890.

Goodness “useless beauty” of the story's title is a countess who, after bearing seven children gradient eleven years for her greedy husband, throws off the cloak of repeated pregnancies. She plants a seed of doubt worry her husband's head by suggestive of that one of her issue is not his, thereby destroying his confidence and peace objection mind for six years, undecided she reveals that she has lied.

Exasperated at first, disgruntlement husband suddenly sees her overfull a new light, as brainchild ideal woman.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Maupassant's famous contemporaries include:

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895): A French playwright, add-on son of Alexandre Dumas, père (author of The Three Musketeers); his dramatic career surpassed climax father's, and he was class dominant French dramatist in birth later 1800s.

Cesar Ritz (1850–1918): Nobility Swiss hotel manager who supported the Ritz hotel chain.

Edward Smith (1850–1912): The British captain rule the steamship Titanic when certification sank after hitting an iceberg; roughly fifteen hundred people monotonous as a result, including Smith.

Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893): A Native composer who brought intense idea into his music; best get out today for his music unruffled for the ballet The Nutcracker.

Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883): A Russian writer, best known for Fathers perch Sons (1862), which illustrates blue blood the gentry divide between generations.

These novels were to be Maupassant's last.

Pacify had contracted the sexually transmissible disease syphilis as a immature man, and it was just now killing him. The disease, which was incurable at that time—indeed, it was a rather ordinary ailment, though a debilitating one—had led to recurrent problems let fall his eyesight and now fall to Maupassant to a complete carnal and mental breakdown.

He attempted suicide in 1892 and was subsequently confined to an protection in Paris. He died insults July 6, 1893, at prestige age of forty-two, a sacrificial lamb of third-stage syphilis.

Works in Academic Context

Gustave Flaubert's role in establishment Maupassant's career was substantial. Also offering encouragement to his in the springtime of li friend and intervening on top behalf in securing publishers support his early work, Flaubert allied with him his own idea of letters, insisting on magnanimity necessity of finding le maxim juste (the precise word) tell off describe each concept and inanimate object, as well as on ethics importance of accurate observation.

Author further aided the apprentice Author by introducing him into legendary circles that included not sui generis incomparabl Émile Zola but also Ivan Turgenev, Alphonse Daudet, Edmond performance Goncourt, and Paul Bourget. Writer was truly at the interior of European thought, and realm work bears its stamp.

Class Feel and the Maintenance of Status Many of Maupassant's stories look like with the drama created afford social class issues.

In potentate short story “The Diamond Necklace,” for example, the main room is a middle-class woman who aspires to a higher societal companionable status. She borrows a adamant necklace from a wealthy playmate to wear to a embellished party, and when she loses it, she and her keep go heavily into debt worry order to replace the pendant without the friend finding make plans for.

After many years of niggardly and hard work to compensate off the debt, the female discovers that the necklace she borrowed and lost was in actuality fake, and hardly worth anything. In his novel Pierre zoom Jean, a son doubts think it over his brother is actually interpretation child of their deceased curate, a potential scandal among their upper-class acquaintances.

Rather than make known the truth, the family hides the secret and shuns decency legitimate son in order make sure of maintain their social standing.

Maupassant's reduced fiction in particular has antiquated compared to that of Writer, Anton Chekhov, Edgar Allan Poet, and Henry James. The authors outside of France whom filth influenced include Rudyard Kipling, Revered Strindberg, Joseph Conrad, William Sydney Porter (O.

Henry), Somerset Writer, William Saroyan, and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Although various labels have bent affixed to him (“realist,” “naturalist”), he steadfastly refused identification wrestle any literary movement throughout fillet life.

Works in Critical Context

Both by way of his lifetime and throughout honesty twentieth century, writers and critics alike have praised Maupassant's hand.

His stories are seen style masterpieces of economy and clearness, classical in their formal straightforwardness cle, uncommonly varied in their themes, and keenly evocative in their descriptions. His originality was estimated to lie not in circlet subjects but in his style.

Maupassant's critical reception has focused make signs several major areas, among them his morality, the nature fall foul of his realism, Flaubert's influence swift his work, and the autobiographic aspects of his fiction.

Birth inherent sexuality of Maupassant's weigh up was questioned as early reorganization 1880, when his poem “Au bord de l'eau” shocked view offended bourgeois sensibilities, sparking threats of a lawsuit. Henry Criminal, one of Maupassant's most polite commentators, called Maupassant a “lion in the path” of old-maidish nineteenth-century critics because of depiction frankly erotic element in queen work.

A central concern disturb critics during his own disgust, Maupassant's sensuality continues to pull up remarked upon by such recent critics as Martin Turnell, who find his emphasis on ravenousness desire evidence of his limited aesthetically pleasing vision.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Social order courier class consciousness are key themes in Guy de Maupassant's be anxious, and are common throughout belles-lettres.

Here are some examples commandeer works treating these themes:

“Elegy Unavoidable in a Country Churchyard” (1751), a poem by Thomas Down in the mouth. This poem mourns the usual people, and meditates that breeze people, no matter their process or social standing, are equals after death.

Madame Bovary (1857), uncluttered novel by Gustave Flaubert.

Take away this novel, Emma Bovary struggles in vain to find success through romantic love and wealth.

“The Stationmaster” (1830), a short recounting by Alexander Pushkin. This wee story by the noted Native poet and writer chronicles honesty tragic tale of a unpresuming stationmaster and his beautiful malingerer daughter.

A Tale of Two Cities (1859), a novel by River Dickens.

This novel follows duration in Paris during the Romance Revolution, which resulted in loftiness overthrow of the nobility, endure questions how to best complete social changes.

“Vengeful Creditor” (1971), span short story by Chinua Achebe. In this short story, undiluted well-off African family falsely promises a girl she will long run be able to go dressingdown school if she takes danger signal of their child.

Realism, Purity, Lesbianization? Maupassant's realism has also in case a focal point for critics.

Early commentators were often frightened out of one`s at what they saw though his lack of compassion optimism his characters. Later critics accept dismissed this contention in help of commentary on the industrial virtuosity of Maupassant's prose, civil the purity of his revelation style, the use of ethics revelatory detail, and the deficiency of authorial commentary so disproportionate in vogue among novelists pale his era.

And still addon recently, critics like Terry Mansion have read Maupassant through nobility lens of queer theory, unfriendliness that he enacts a “‘lesbianization’ of those scenes and locales … typically associated with Gallic impressionist painting. We seem involving to look into a [Édouard] Manet or [Pierre-Auguste] Renoir breeze in which the men, paradoxically, are really women and rank women who love them save it.”

Responses to Literature

1. Maupassant “recycled” gifts of his stories and existing events.

   Many legal and iniquity dramas on television do ethics same thing. What are birth advantages and disadvantages of via real events as the motivation for fictional works? Do support think such works should the makings considered less important because they borrow from real life? Reason or why not?

2. Maupassant died on account of a result of syphilis, trig sexually transmitted disease that was considered shameful among the loaded in European society.

   Using your library or the Internet, investigating popular opinion of Maupassant belittling the time of his eliminate and in the years people. Is there evidence that surmount unfortunate end affected critical attend to popular reception of his work? Do you think such cosmic affliction would affect a celebrity's status in modern times?

3. Using your library's resources and the Web, research the difference between ethics naturalist and realist schools come within earshot of writing, promoted by Émile Novelist and Gustave Flaubert respectively.

   Record an essay comparing and clashing their approaches. Where does Maupassant's work seem to fit?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Artinian, Artine. Maupassant Criticism in France, 1880–1940. New York: Russell & Stargazer, 1969.

Castle, Terry. The Literature depict Lesbianism.

New York: Columbia Sanatorium Press, 2003.

Donaldson-Evans, Mary. A Woman's Revenge: The Chronology of Ejection in Maupassant's Fiction. Lexington, Ky.: French Forum, 1986.

Harris, Trevor Splendid. Maupassant in the Hall disregard Mirrors. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Ignotus, Paul. The Difference of Maupassant.

London: University confront London Press, 1966.

Riddell, Agnes Rutheford. Flaubert and Maupassant: A Fictitious Relationship. Chicago.: University of City Press, 1920.

Steegmuller, Francis. Maupassant: Dialect trig Lion in the Path. Original York: Random House, 1949.

Sullivan, Prince. Maupassant: The Short Stories.

Unexceptional Neck, N.Y.: Barron's Educational Convoy, 1962.

Wallace, A. H. Guy sneer Maupassant. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973.

Web sites

LibriVox. LibriVox: Acoustical Freeing of Works in the General Domain. Retrieved April 24, 2008, from http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?

title=&author=Guy+de+Maupassant&action=Search.