Maupassant: The Influence Of Form At The Turn Of The Century

JAMES HURST Adapted from: Elements of Literature: Third Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 2003.

Foeller, E et al. Innovative Fiction Between the Two World Wars. American Literature. Zbigniew Lewicki (ed). Cultural Section, US Embassy, Warsaw, pp. 60.

Bausch, Richard and Cassill, Ronald Verlin. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. Print.

American Novelists, 1910-1915. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Ed. James J. Martine. Saint Bonaventure University. Gale Research 1981. 413-68

New York: Harper&Row. 1973). A group of intellectually eager journalists intended (and succeeded) to create a new trend that would merge objectivity but, at the same time, gaining authorial, creative freedom. The result of this new journalism, liberated of the rigid constrain of objectivity, would be called “Literary nonfiction”. Didion, for instance, would report facts that actually occurred but in a more literary manner, that is to say, more deliberately created.

“A & P.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 10th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 16-20.

In Guy De Mauspassant's `The Necklace," the author examines the theme of how learning a difficult lesson about honesty can impact someone for the rest of their life. The author also examines the theme through the use of his title, the characters who act out the events, and the plot.

Mathilde Loisel lived the life of a painfully distressed woman, who always believed herself worthy of living in the upper class. Although Mathilde was born into the average middle class family, she spent her time daydreaming of her destiny for more in life... especially when it came to her financial status. Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, tells a tale of a vain, narcissistic housewife who longed for the aristocratic lifestyle that she believed she was creditable for. In describing Mathilde’s self-serving, unappreciative, broken and fake human behaviors, de Maupassant incorporates the tragic irony that ultimately concludes in ruining her.

Howells Use of Criticism and Fiction Within Editha To summarize Criticism and Fiction and Editha by William Dean Howells. His work Criticism and Fiction comprises some insight on how the author perceived past and current authors of his era. Howells observation identified that conventional novelist conform their thoughts and constructed their views from other novelist works; they do not show their own opinions. Editha is a typical illustration of heroic romance with the main characters Editha and her husband George struggles with different opinions of the War.

Guy De Maupassant is recognized as one of the finest writers of the modern short story. Maupassant’s literary career began in 1880 in France. He was a marvelous writer of short stories which were based upon the aspects of the French Society, frequently touching sensitive subjects such as social and moral principles. The beauty of Maupassant’s stories is the unpredictability of them, quite identical to life, where things do not always turn up the way one may expect. The short story, Jewelry by Guy De Maupassant is an insightful piece, with a compelling theme of appearance versus reality and that the life is full of irony.

Kennedy, X.J. and Dana Gioia. Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. New York: Pearson Longman, 2010.

In this assignment I am going to focus on the origin of American fiction and specifically, I am going to talk about two famous authors who are characteristic of this type of literature. The purpose of this essay is comparing these two writers through their works: Rip Van Winkle and The last of the Mohicans. These writers are Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper.

In his Dictionary of Literary Terms, Harry Shaw defines the novel: “In effective narrative literature, fictional persons, through characterization, become so credible that they exist for the reader as real people,” he says (1). Many eighteenth century British novelists neglected to earn this credibility. Looking specifically at Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Shaw’s definition becomes especially difficult to apply to Moll and Oroonoko’s narrator. While the novels should not be declared unsuccessful in their entireties, perhaps the sincerity claimed in both introductions only lessens their overall believability.

The classic American short story I have decided to delve into and discuss in these

“The Necklace”, by Guy de Maupassant, is an interesting tale of a beautiful but spoiled woman called Madame Loisel, who borrows a diamond necklace from a friend for a ball. However, Madame Loisel loses the necklace and, consequently, buys her friend a new one as a replacement. This purchase sends her into debt for ten years, which causes her to become hard-working and less beautiful. At the end of the story, it turns out that the original necklace was a fake, worth a fraction of the one she bought. In “The Necklace”, the author uses friendship and marriage to support the idea that, in any relationship, the flaws and strengths of each individual shape the flaws and strengths of the other.