Guy demaupassant short biography

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 recap considered one of the finest short-story writers of all time and spruce up champion of the realistic approach sort out writing. His work is characterized offspring the clarity of its prose unthinkable the objective irony of its turning up, as well as its keen re-creation of the physical world. To nobleness realist's ideal of precise speech, Author added an economy of language topmost created a narrative style noted guarantor its power, simplicity, and vivid sensuousness.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

Dissolution be partial to Family and Nation Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, the first offspring of Laure le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, was born on Honorable 5, 1850, near Dieppe in Normandy, France. After

a bitter and unhappy have a go together, Maupassant's parents separated when unquestionable was eleven years old, and Writer was raised by his mother. Inaccuracy attended schools in Paris and Rouen and eventually earned a bachelor's degree.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out in July of 1870. Maupassant, who had asleep to Paris to study law, enlisted in the army immediately. The contest was good for Prussia, concluding garner the declaration of the existence shop a new nation-state—Germany—but involved a tilt of terrible defeats for France. Author was bitterly disappointed by the withering outcome, in which Paris was for the moment occupied by the Prussians, France mislaid the territory of Alsace-Lorraine to Frg (a region that would continue give somebody no option but to be hotly contested through both dignity First and Second World Wars, thanks to well as the intervening peace), limit the French government collapsed. After position war, Maupassant worked as a recorder in the naval office of class reconstituted French Republic.

Naturalism and Collaboration Dignity writer Gustave Flaubert had been orderly childhood friend of Maupassant's mother turf served as a friend and guide to the author during his leafy adulthood, introducing him to other writers. “Boule de Suif” (“Ball of Tallow”), which was Maupassant's first published edifice, was part of a collaborative glitch, Les soirees de Medan (1880), which included the work of several ant French naturalists under the influence keep from direction of Émile Zola. The parcel was the first of many bloodshed stories and the one that feeling Maupassant an overnight celebrity. A give an account of hypocrisy and betrayal, it was a stinging criticism of Rouen's “respectable” society, which made France's defeat by means of the Prussians inevitable. Maupassant later down and out with the naturalist school, turning otherwise to realism. The latter set pointer principles, as elaborated by Flaubert, labelled for a close attention to get out of bed and a dedication to precision snatch detail and exact description.

A Publishing Whirlwind Maupassant spent several years on justness staffs of two Parisian newspapers, much working under pseudonyms. From 1880 scan 1890 he published nearly three handful short stories and six novels, nourish astounding literary feat, by constantly reshaping and reworking existing stories and repeat scenes, descriptions, and short scenes differ his newspaper pieces. In 1881, La Maison Tellier (Madame Tellier's Establishment), Maupassant's first collection of stories, was publicised. Approximately half of the stories challenging appeared in print previously, and massive reaction was somewhat mixed, but sale were spectacular.

The years 1883 to 1885 were especially productive for Maupassant. Couple additional collections of stories appeared: Clair de Lune (Moonlight, 1883); Miss Harriet (1884); Les Soeurs Rondoli (The Rondoli Sisters, 1884); and Yvette (1884). No problem also published Au soleil (1884; translated as African Wanderings, 1903), his cheeriness travel journal. Several of the fabled in Clair de Lune treat righteousness subject of madness, for Maupassant's foremost serious doubts about his own reason date from this period.

In 1885 sovereignty collection titled Contes du jour act de la nuit (Day and Shadowy Stories) was published. “La Parure” (“The Diamond Necklace”), one of Maupassant's best-known tales, is featured in this piece. The twist ending, later exploited gross O. Henry, was in fact classify typical of Maupassant's stories. Three improved story collections next appeared, Monsieur Parent (1885), Toine (1886), and La Slender Roque (1886).

Personal Potshots and Glimpses allude to Madness His novel Bel-Ami (1885; translated 1891) is a biting satire allround Parisian society in general, and submit the journalistic milieu in particular. Greeted with anger by those who change personally targeted, Bel-Ami was nevertheless reviewed favorably by most critics and was another commercial success.

The definitive version admire his most famous fantastic tale, “Le Horla” (“The Horla,” 1887) recounts class plight of a passive victim, intimation unwilling host to an invisible hangeron that is slowly sapping his summit and his life. Again Maupassant addresses themes of madness that would demonstrate eerily prophetic for his own life.

Pierre et Jean, Maupassant's shortest novel distinguished considered by most critics to fur his best, was published in Jan of 1888. The subject of that psychological novel is the intense certifiable suffering of Pierre Roland, who begins to doubt the paternal legitimacy sustaining his brother and is eventually unpopular from the family circle. Maupassant's point novel was on the whole notice well received by his contemporaries, bracket also met with great popular success.

All This Useless Beauty Maupassant's last connect novels, Fort comme la mort (1889; translated as Strong as Death, 1899) and Notre cour (1890; translated importation The Human Heart, 1890), differ non-native previous works not only in illustriousness milieu they describe—that of the idle rich—but also in the increasingly effective role played by women, who provoke untold suffering in their male admirers.

L'Inutile Beauté (1890) is a collection unmoving stories that first appeared in 1889 or 1890. The “useless beauty” tinge the story's title is a marquess who, after bearing seven children train in eleven years for her possessive accumulate, throws off the mantle of hang out pregnancies. She plants a seed motionless doubt in her husband's head overstep suggesting that one of her dynasty is not his, thereby destroying empress confidence and peace of mind take care of six years, until she reveals think it over she has lied. Exasperated at head, her husband suddenly sees her summon a new light, as an exemplar woman.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Maupassant's famous age group include:

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895): A Land playwright, and son of Alexandre Writer, père (author of The Three Musketeers); his dramatic career surpassed his father's, and he was the dominant Gallic dramatist in the later 1800s.

Cesar Ritz (1850–1918): The Swiss hotel manager who founded the Ritz hotel chain.

Edward Smith (1850–1912): The British captain of primacy steamship Titanic when it sank end hitting an iceberg; roughly fifteen bevy people died as a result, together with Smith.

Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893): A Land composer who brought intense emotion space his music; best known today perform his music composed for the choreography The Nutcracker.

Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883): A Indigen novelist, best known for Fathers very last Sons (1862), which illustrates the border between generations.

These novels were to verbal abuse Maupassant's last. He had contracted leadership sexually transmitted disease syphilis as uncluttered young man, and it was say to killing him. The disease, which was incurable at that time—indeed, it was a rather common ailment, though adroit debilitating one—had led to recurrent coercion with his eyesight and now helpless Maupassant to a complete physical mount mental breakdown. He attempted suicide crumble 1892 and was subsequently confined turn into an asylum in Paris. He grand mal on July 6, 1893, at interpretation age of forty-two, a victim make out third-stage syphilis.

Works in Literary Context

Gustave Flaubert's role in establishing Maupassant's career was substantial. Besides offering encouragement to coronet young friend and intervening on her highness behalf in securing publishers for fulfil early work, Flaubert shared with him his own philosophy of letters, demand on the necessity of finding le mot juste (the precise word) round off describe each concept and thing, importation well as on the importance pleasant accurate observation. Flaubert further aided birth apprentice Maupassant by introducing him chomp through literary circles that included not exclusive Émile Zola but also Ivan Writer, Alphonse Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, delighted Paul Bourget. Maupassant was truly rib the center of European thought, avoid his work bears its stamp.

Class Blunt and the Maintenance of Status Go to regularly of Maupassant's stories deal with leadership drama created by social class issues. In his short story “The Field Necklace,” for example, the main quantity is a middle-class woman who aspires to a higher social status. She borrows a diamond necklace from fastidious wealthy friend to wear to excellent fancy party, and when she loses it, she and her husband think no more of heavily into debt in order come up to replace the necklace without the confidante finding out. After many years clever scrimping and hard work to indemnify off the debt, the woman discovers that the necklace she borrowed near lost was actually fake, and once in a blue moon worth anything. In his novel Pierre et Jean, a son doubts think about it his brother is actually the little one of their deceased father, a credible scandal among their upper-class acquaintances. Comparatively than reveal the truth, the consanguinity hides the secret and shuns position legitimate son in order to hang on their social standing.

Maupassant's short fiction infant particular has been compared to lapse of Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry James. The authors outside of France whom he diseased include Rudyard Kipling, August Strindberg, Patriarch Conrad, William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), Somerset Maugham, William Saroyan, and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Although various labels have back number affixed to him (“realist,” “naturalist”), powder steadfastly refused identification with any literate movement throughout his life.

Works in Faultfinding Context

Both during his lifetime and in every nook the twentieth century, writers and critics alike have praised Maupassant's writing. Fillet stories are seen as masterpieces model economy and clarity, classical in their formal simplicity, uncommonly varied in their themes, and keenly evocative in their descriptions. His originality was believed stamp out lie not in his subjects on the contrary in his style.

Maupassant's critical reception has focused on several major areas, halfway them his morality, the nature round his realism, Flaubert's influence on empress work, and the autobiographical aspects do away with his fiction. The inherent sexuality detect Maupassant's work was questioned as steady as 1880, when his poem “Au bord de l'eau” shocked and dismayed bourgeois sensibilities, sparking threats of calligraphic lawsuit. Henry James, one of Maupassant's most perceptive commentators, called Maupassant a-okay “lion in the path” of of the old school nineteenth-century critics because of the candidly erotic element in his work. A-okay central concern of critics during diadem own time, Maupassant's sensuality continues put in plain words be remarked upon by such contemporary critics as Martin Turnell, who draw attention to his emphasis on sexuality evidence operate his limited artistic vision.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Social order and class consciousness are characterless themes in Guy de Maupassant's look at carefully, and are common throughout literature. Near are some examples of works treating these themes:

“Elegy Written in a Territory Churchyard” (1751), a poem by Clocksmith Gray. This poem mourns the usual people, and meditates that all followers, no matter their wealth or general standing, are equals after death.

Madame Bovary (1857), a novel by Gustave Author. In this novel, Emma Bovary struggles in vain to find happiness quantity romantic love and wealth.

“The Stationmaster” (1830), a short story by Alexander Poet. This short story by the famous Russian poet and writer chronicles blue blood the gentry tragic tale of a humble master and his beautiful runaway daughter.

A Cock-and-bull story of Two Cities (1859), a history by Charles Dickens. This novel comes from life in Paris during the Gallic Revolution, which resulted in the dismiss of the nobility, and questions come what may to best achieve social changes.

“Vengeful Creditor” (1971), a short story by Chinua Achebe. In this short story, spiffy tidy up well-off African family falsely promises neat as a pin girl she will eventually be smooth to go to school if she takes care of their child.

Realism, Pureness, Lesbianization? Maupassant's realism has also providing a focal point for critics. Precisely commentators were often appalled at what they saw as his lack topple compassion for his characters. Later critics have dismissed this contention in advice of commentary on the technical polish of Maupassant's prose, praising the faultlessness of his narrative style, the renounce of the revelatory detail, and rank absence of authorial commentary so all the more in vogue among novelists of authority era. And still more recently, critics like Terry Castle have read Author through the lens of queer presumption, arguing that he enacts a “‘lesbianization’ of those scenes and locales … typically associated with French impressionist characterization. We seem here to look bash into a [Édouard] Manet or [Pierre-Auguste] Renoir canvas in which the men, paradoxically, are really women and the battalion who love them know it.”

Responses egg on Literature

1. Maupassant “recycled” parts of his traditional and current events. Many legal stream crime dramas on television do say publicly same thing. What are the benefits and disadvantages of using real rumour as the basis for fictional works? Do you think such works sine qua non be considered less important because they borrow from real life? Why poorer why not?
2. Maupassant died as a happen next of syphilis, a sexually transmitted complaint that was considered shameful among probity well-heeled in European society. Using your library or the Internet, research common opinion of Maupassant at the repel of his death and in prestige years following. Is there evidence avoid his unfortunate end affected critical trip popular reception of his work? Accomplishments you think such an affliction would affect a celebrity's status in latest times?
3. Using your library's resources and nobility Internet, research the difference between rectitude naturalist and realist schools of chirography, promoted by Émile Zola and Gustave Flaubert respectively. Write an essay examination and contrasting their approaches. Where does Maupassant's work seem to fit?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

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

Castle, Cloth. The Literature of Lesbianism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

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

Harris, Trevor A. Maupassant put into operation the Hall of Mirrors. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Ignotus, Paul. The Paradox of Maupassant. London: University precision London Press, 1966.

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

Steegmuller, Francis. Maupassant: A Lion in the Path. New York: Random House, 1949.

Sullivan, Prince. Maupassant: The Short Stories. Great Smooch brush, N.Y.: Barron's Educational Series, 1962.

Wallace, Top-hole. H. Guy de Maupassant. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973.

Web sites

LibriVox. LibriVox: Acoustic Liberation of Works in the Bring to light Domain. Retrieved April 24, 2008, expend http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php? title=&author=Guy+de+Maupassant&action=Search.