British vs French 19thc century lit rumble

[lord of the mark]

Ok, heres the rules.

Make the case for the superiority of either.

Preferably, list authors on your side first, before discussing merits. Hopefully we should get a pretty full list of major French and British authors of the period.

To count as British, they have to live under the crown, and write in English - so Scots, Canadians, Aussie, yes, but no Americans. French can be from anywhere, as long as they write in French.

Major works by any author cited (and any individual work cited) must be written between 1800 and 1899, inclusive.

Works can include novels and other fiction, poems and plays. Essays if known mainly for their literary value. Works of science, social science, etc are excluded.

Have at it, gentlemen.

[Spiffor]

I'll give the first hit.


Victor Hugo

* Rosbifs everywhere are stunned by the strength of the initial hit*

We really need someone to comment on the match

[Sava]

both suck


I WIN

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Spiffor
I'll give the first hit.

Victor Hugo

We really need someone to comment on the match

I'll try to comment from time to time.


First blow, for the French, the great novelist (and essayist?) Victor Hugo. Globalization note - Andrew Lloyd Webber, a Brit, has made a musical (Broadway style, typically US) based on one of his most famous novels, Les Miserables. ("Have you been Mizzed yet?")

[Richelieu]

I'll be the ultimate judge of the winner since i live under the crown and i also write in french.


before me.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sava
both suck


I WIN

if we ask that participant actually have some sense of culture, would that make this a club thread?

[Sandman]

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

Thank you, Wikipedia

[lord of the mark]

oooh, sherlock Holmes - THAT wasnt expected, as Sandman lands a surprise punch.

[Nostromo]

Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850) was a French novelist. He is considered the founding-father of realism in European fiction. His large output of novels and stories, collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, is a broad panorama of French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy 1815-1848.

After his death he became recognised as one of the fathers of Realism in literature, and distinct in his approach from the "pure" Romantics like Stendhal and Hugo. La Comédie humaine spanned more than 90 novels and short stories in an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France. In the 20th Century his vision of a society in flux, where class, money and personal ambition were the major players, achieved the distinction of being endorsed equally by critics of Left-wing and Right-wing political tendencies.

He guided European fiction away from the overriding influence of Walter Scott and the Gothic school, by showing that modern life could be recounted as vividly as Scott recounted his historical tales, and that mystery and intrigue did not need ghosts and crumbling castles for props. Maupassant, Flaubert and Zola were writers of the next generation who were directly influenced by him, and Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry) acknowledged his influence.

In one of his last tales, Les comédiens sans le savoir (The Unwitting Actors, 1847) a provincial is rescued from a ruinous speculation by a boulevardier who asks him "Will you not now concede, my friend, that Paris is bigger than you are?". What Balzac had brought to fiction was the social context, a factor unrecognized by the Romantics, for whom the inner world of the individual was all that counted.

In the 1960s, the counter-culture unearthed two strange and mystical novels from Balzac's early years: the quasi-autobiographical Louis Lambert (1832) and Séraphîta (1834), in which an angel guides the gender-bending hero/heroine around the solar-system. Some academics have claimed that alchemy, animal-magnetism and other esoteric theories underlie Balzac's interpretation of society, and that his credentials as a Realist should be questioned. But the critical literature on his work is very large, and one can find almost any shade of opinion if one looks for it.

It is Balzac the observer of society, morals and human psychology who continues to appeal to readers today. His novels have always remained in print. His vivid realism and his encyclopedic gifts as a recorder of his age outweigh the sketchiness and inconsistent quality of some of his works. Enough of them are recognized as masterpieces, to rank him as the Charles Dickens of France.

I'm reading Lost Illusions and its amazing!

[Sandman]

He's the most portrayed character in cinema history, apparently.

edit: x-post

[Nostromo]

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880), French novelist who is counted among the greatest Western novelists, known especially for his first published novel Madame Bovary, and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style, best exemplified by his endless search for le mot juste ("the precise word").

Bouvard et Pécuchet

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by nostromo
Balzac



I'm reading Lost Illusions and its amazing!

Ive only read Pere Goriot, after seeing the BBC versions on US public television(more globalization?) It was pretty good.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by nostromo
Gustave Flaubert



Bouvard et Pécuchet

Hit! A very palpable hit!

who are bouvard and pechuchet?

[Nostromo]

Émile Zola

Émile Zola (April 2, 1840 – September 29, 1902) was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


Ive only read Pere Goriot, after seeing the BBC versions on US public television(more globalization?) It was pretty good.

Since you obviously don't know Balzac very well, I upgraded my quote above. He's a great author, in the same league as Flaubert.