Word: novels
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Dates: during 1900-1909
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After expressing his appreciation of the work done for the French language in America by Harvard men, M. Le Roux said that no true insight into French life could be had through what is termed the "French novel." What the average foreigner knows of Paris, for instance, is solely the boulevards, the theatres, and the museums, while the home life, the "bourgeois" life, remains a closed book...
During the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries the French novel portrayed a society with a common ideal. The Revolution, however, broke the frame of this social life, and after the storm was past, each class withdrew to its own circle. The first half of the nineteenth century is well shown by Balzac, with its ideal of commercial honor. But the "bourgeois" class has not been able to receive the rich foreigner as it would like, and only today are they beginning to study and appreciate the energetic, laborious and commercial society of the New World...
...Roux will deliver a series of eight lectures on "Le Roman Contemporain." The first lecture, on February 22, will be a discussion of the question whether or not the contemporary French novel presents a truthful picture of French society. The next six lectures, coming on February 14, 17, 19, 21, 24 and 26, will deal with the French novelists, Flaubert, Daudet. Maupassant, Bourget, Zola and Anatole France. The final lecture on February 28 will treat of the young French novelists. There will also be delivered eight additional lectures on subjects of present interest...
Whether or not Mr. Mitchell's success might have greater in a very difficult question, Mr. Paul Bourget goes far towards proving that the novel form is so intrinsically different from that of drama that a work once supremely well cast in one cannot be translated into the other. Undoubtedly Mr. Mitchell failed to produce a final literary masterpiece because his task was impossible. Technically the structure of his play is admirable and his selection and co-ordination of incidents is in the main wise and effective. Artistically he has made a number of good stage figures, who speak some...
...this criticism is sound, it must hold also for the two works in their totality. The play ends conventionally, dropping spectators back into the sunny, sleepy commonplace of average existence. The novel, on the other hand, leaves one with a profound realization of its tragedy, --"played out." Its lesson is that human beings must ultimately go somewhere beyond Vanity Fair for lasting happiness. Without changing the motley for the gown, Thackeray has preached the world a great moral truth. But Mr. Mitchell leaves Becky so well off that one rather sympathizes with her misdemeanors...