July 2024: Vive la France!

As Bastille Day nears, there's loads of opportunities to take on a work of French literature, anything from The Song of Roland through the 21st Century. As for myself, I'll be doing some reading on the 19th Century novel, most likely – I've got the entire Comédie humaine on a TBR bookshelf, having made a valiant beginning but with still a lot to go, and I've also got Graham Robb's biography of Balzac as well as a volume of Balzac's plays. And I can do some more of Hugo or of Flaubert than I've already done, or go on to Zola or Stendhal or Maupassant or George Sand or Prosper Mérimée. Or I could go back a few years to a complete read of Montaigne's Essays or even a little further back to Rabelais. And I certainly don't want to forget the classic theatre, with that two-volume Library of America edition of Richard Wilbur's translations of Molière.

Others may prefer history, or the visual arts, or geography and travel. Or you might want to brush up on your high school analytic geometry in honor of Descartes! Or, if you have access to the Great Courses, there's The Great Tours: France Through the Ages.

You don't necessarily have to confine yourself to metropolitan France. There's the Francophone nations of the Caribbean, and here The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James comes immediately to mind. And turning to the novel, there's Hugo's Bug-Jargal on the Haitian revolution as well as Harriet Martineau's The Hour and the Man on Toussaint Louverture. Plenty of stuff out there too on colonial wars, and I'm thinking in particular of Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, which is available in an NYRB edition.

There's also that German novelist, Heinrich Mann, older brother of Thomas and author of Young Henry of Navarre and Henry, King of France, biographical novels of France's greatest king, Henri IV – the youthful leader of the Huguenots who, with the opportunity to become king, converted to Rome with the words "Paris is worth a mass," issued the Edict of Nantes on religious toleration, and was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic.

And for anyone interested in a Russian look at things, there's Mikhail Bulgakov's The Cabal of Hypocrites (in which Bulgakov likens himself to Molière and Stalin to Louis XIV in a play that obviously didn't last too long on the Moscow stage of the 1930s) as well as Bulgakov's biographical novel The Life of Monsieur de Molière. Molière happened to be Bulgakov's favorite writer, and his friends nicknamed him "Molière Bulgakov."

What a great topic for July! Vive la révolution! The French Revolution is the first unit I present when teaching Modern World History at the university. It is one of my fav units. The oldest book that would fit this topic on my shelf is The Suitor of Yvonne by Rafael Sabatini. I read Scaramouche last year and enjoyed it (4 stars). I think some swashbuckling is in my future!

I definitely want to use this prompt to finally finish 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne!

I will probably continue with my reading of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, or the Comédie humaine. Unless something else turns up, of course.

I am planning on reading the first volume in a short series of 4 books. The Cavalier of the Apocalypse by Susanne Alleyn is a murder mystery set against the backdrop of the French Revolution.

some of us have been talking place of greater safety Ive read it already but am sure I missed a lot. Considering a group read of it

One of my fav books about France is by one of my favorite popular historian the greater journey: americans in paris Highly recommended

also "little"cant get right touchstone edward carey about Madame Trusseau

I can recommend:
The Accursed Kings Series by Maurice Druon, probably one of the best historical fiction I have read about the Middle Ages in France

The Red Rooster (Le Cock Rouge) by Michael Wallace--one of my fav historical fiction writers. The story takes place in occupied France.

Isabella, Braveheart of France by Colin Falconer 14th century France/Edward II

The Eight by Katharine Neville Dual timeline--1790's France and modern day U.S. Story centers around the Montglen Service, the Chess Pieces and Board of Charlemagne. (Didn't really exist). If all assembled again, it was to provide some supernatural power. Loved the characters: Tallyrand, Marat, Robespierre, Jacques Louis-David, and Napoleon.

I've decided that my priority for Vive la France! is going to be the LoA Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations. I just got done reading Wilbur's translation of Phaedra 2½** and didn't at all care for it. Now understand, I consider Racine the greatest French playwright (sorry, Molière fans) and Phèdre and Britannicus his two greatest plays, but I didn't at all care for Wilbur's use of heroic couplets, which tend to be too sing-song notwithstanding some add-on enjambment and make Racine sound too much like John Dryden – blank verse, I think, would have been preferable.

I'm curious to see, though, how Wilbur's translations of Molière succeed. I'm not at all hostile to Dryden – I'm very fond of Absalom and Achitophel, for example, but A&A is satire and a certain sing-song quality isn't necessarily out of place in that genre. It might work better with a comic/satiric playwright like Molière.

>8 CurrerBell: oh what a great idea! we did a couple of his plays in HS and since have wanted to read more, Ill have to look at Wilburs translations