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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BOS-BRI |
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BOURGET, PAUL CHARLES JOSEPH (1852 ) , French novelist and critic, was born at Amiens on the 2nd of September 1852. His father, a professor of mathematics, was afterwards appointed to a post in the college at Clermont-Ferrand. Here Bourget received his early education. He afterwards studied at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. In 18721873 he produced a volume of verse, Au bord de la mer, which was followed by others, the last, Les Aveux, appearing in 1882. Meanwhile he was making a name in literary journalism, and in 1883 he published Essais de psychologie contemporaine, studies of eminent writers first printed in the Nouvelle Revue, and now brought together. In 1884 Bourget paid a long visit to England, and there wrote his first published story (L'Irreparable). Cruelle Enigme followed in 1885; and Andre Cornelis (1886) and Mensonges (1887) were received with much favour. Le Disciple (1889) showed the novelist in a graver attitude; while in 1891 Sensations d'Italie, notes of a tour in that country, revealed a fresh phase of his powers. In the same year appearedthe novel Caur de femme, and Nouveaux Pastels, types of the characters of men, the sequel to a similar gallery of female types (Pastels, 1890). His later novels include La Terre promise (1892); Cosmopolis (1892), a psychological novel, with Rome as a back-ground; Une Idylle tragique (1896); La Duchesse bleue (1897); Le Fanteme (1901); Les Deux Sceurs (1905); and some volumes of shorter storiesComplications sentimentales (1896), the powerful Drames de famille (1898), Un Homme fort (1900), L'Etape (1902), a study of the inability of a family raised too rapidly from the peasant class to adapt itself to new conditions. This powerful study of contemporary manners was followed by Un Divorce (1904), a defence of the Roman Catholic position that divorce is a violation of natural laws, any breach of which inevitably entails disaster. Etudes et portraits, first published in 1888, contains impressions of Bourget's stay in England and Ireland, especially reminiscences of the months which he spent at Oxford; and Outre-Mer (1895), a book in two volumes, is his critical journal of a visit to the United States in 1893. He was admitted to the Academy
As a writer of verse Bourget was merely trying his wings, and his poems, which were collected in t*o volumes (18851887), are chiefly interesting for the light which they throw upon his mature method and the later products of his art. It was in criticism that his genius first found its true bent. The habit of close scientific analysis which he derived from his father, the sense of style produced by a fine ear and moulded by a classical education, the innate appreciation of art in all its forms, the taste for seeing men and cities, the keen interest
Henry
secret springs of human character. At first his purpose seemed to be purely artistic, but when Le Disciple appeared, in 1889, the preface to that remarkable story revealed in him an unsuspected fund of moral enthusiasm. Since then he has varied between_ his earlier and his later manner, 'alit his work
young
special
Bourget has been charged with pessimism, and with undue delineation of one social class. The first charge can hardly be sustained. The lights in his books are usually low; there is a certain lack of gaiety, and the characters move in a world of disenchantment. But there is no despair in his own outlook upon human destiny as a whole. As regards the other indictment, the early stories sometimes dwell to excess on the mere framework of opulence; but the pathology
revels
almost unmixed merit in the critical essays. As a critic, indeed, either of art or letters, Bourget leaves little to be desired. If he is not in the very first rank of novelists, if his books display more ease of finished craftsmanship than joy in spontaneous creation, it must be remembered that the supreme writers of fiction have rarely succeeded as he has in a different field.See also C. Lecigne, L'Evolution morale et religieuse de M. Paul Bourget (1903); Sargeret, Les Grands Convertis (1906). His Euvres completes began to appear in a uniform edition in 1899. End of Article: BOURGET, PAUL CHARLES JOSEPH (1852 ) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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