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Essays on Paul Bourget

Original price was: $29.99.Current price is: $19.00.

SKU: 9781775426745 Category:

Description

Essays on Paul Bourget shows Mark Twain’s humor and wit at their very best, even though his criticism is directed towards a French writer that many of us don’t know too much about.

Paul Bourget was a renowned French critic and novelist. He wrote and published a number of very appreciated realist psychological novels and he was an acclaimed poet in his home country, but what made him really successful and his name known abroad – and what brought about the conflict with Mark Twain and prompted Twain to write his essays about Bourget – was his travel writing, notably the accounts of his travels to the U.S.

Twains book includes two essays, What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us and A Little Note on M. Paul Bourget and both express Twain’s witty and poignant criticism of Bourget’s writings about his journey in Twain’s United States. The criticism in Twain’s book is directed against Bourget, but in fact it criticizes the general attitude of superiority of the French towards Americans. One of his objections is that no foreigner is able to understand the nation and the country he is paying just a short visit to, only natives are sufficiently knowledgeable to express criticism of their own nation.

Twains criticism is expressed in the light and entertaining style we all love so much, but at times the writing turns bitter, even vengeful, according to some. He criticizes Bourget for his condescending manner of telling about his experiences, for his ignorance as well as for failing to present American society in its complexity.

However, Bourget wrote his travel accounts in French and,as Twain did not speak French,he only read the English translations of Bourget’s original texts – fact that he was frequently criticized himself.Even so,Mark Twain’s Essays on Paul Bourget make an excellent read for those who love Twainian humor as well as for those who want to find out more about what American society was like in the second half of the 19th century.

Product ID: 9781775426745
Sku: OC-FSPT-26MY