Guy De Maupassant Essay Research Paper Guy

Guy De Maupassant Essay, Research Paper

Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant is acknowledged through the world as one of the masters of the short story; Guy de Maupassant was also the author of a collection of poetry, a volume of plays, three travel journals, six novels, and many chronicles. He produced some three hundred short stories in the single decade from 1880 to 1890; a period during which he produced most of his other works. Five of his six novels were published during the second half of the decade. “His short fiction has been compared to that of Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry James.” (Encyclopedia Britanica 1012)

Maupassant took as his primary goal the realistic portrayal of everyday life. He wrote about what he knew best, and that is as a peasant of his native home of Normandy, the war of 1870, the lives of government employees and Parisian high society, and his own fears and hallucinations. “His short stories were seen as masterpieces of economy, clarity, and classical in their formal simplicity, uncommonly varied in their theme was and keenly evocative in their descriptions.” (Marx 303)

Guy de Maupassant is otherwise known as Henri Rene Albert, Joseph Prunier, Guy de Valmont, or even Maufrigneuese. He was born on August 5, 1850, in Chateau de Miromesnil, near tourville-sur Argues, Normandy, France. Maupassant, the first child of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant. Records show a discrepancy as to his birthplace, some scholars maintain it was Decamp, but the official view, supported by his birth certificate, is that he first saw the light of day at the Chateau de Miromesnil.

Maupassant died on July 6, 1893, of complications resulting from syphilis, in a sanitarium in Paris. He attended Lycee de Roven, where he earned a bachelors letter in 1869, prot.g. of French novelist Gustave Flaubert. Maupassant by nationality was French, he was a storywriter, novelist, journalist, poet, dramatist, and a traveler.

His hobbies ranged from boating, swimming, to traveling all over. Maupassant is considered one of the finest short story writers of all time and a champion of the realistic approach to writing. “To the realists ideal of scrupulous diction Maupassant added an economy of language and created a narrative style noted for its austere power, simplicity, and vivid sensuousness.” (Gale Group)

Maupassant was born in Normandy from wealthy parents, and both the setting and character of his childhood are clearly reflected in his fiction. The household in which the young Maupassant was raised was not a pleasant one. When he was six years old, his mother gave birth to a second son, Herve, who was somewhat, dull-witted, and who shared his mother’s nervous constitution. Maupassant haunting memories was his brother’s mental collapse and subsequent internment. Herve died in 1889. Frequent disputes, both verbal and physical, between his parents. After a bitter and unhappy life together, Maupassant parents separated when he was twelve years old, and he was placed in his mother’s custody. He remained in frequent constant with his father.

Maupassant’s mother became the basis for his characterization of slighted and overbearing women, who appeared in many of his stories. He attended the Lycee Napoleon in Paris and the Lycee de Rouen and eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in letters. “Boule de suif,” which was his first published story, was part of a collaborative effort, Les Soirees de Medan, which included the work of several young French naturalists under the influence and direction of Zola. “Maupassant shared with his mentor a severe pessimism toward life and disdain for bourgeois values, both of which are reflected throughout his work.” (Donaldson-Evans 123)

Maupassant who had gone to Paris to study law, enlisted in the army immediately. The monotony of his work was relieved by outdoor pursuits, particularly excursions in the country and canoe trips down the Seine, and by women, most often prostitutes and one night stands picked up at his favorite dive, La Grenouillere, made famous by Pierre Augueste Renoir’s celebrating painting. The symptoms of first stage syphilis appeared in 1877, and since it was that time there was no cure for the disease. “It followed its relentless course throughout the rest of his life, causing him migraine, headaches, paralysis of the ocular muscle, hallucinations, and other factors ending when the infection progressed to the central nervous system and the brain, with madness.” (Wallace 200)

Maupassant was devoting a great deal of his time to writing, and he had turned to the theater, which allowed him to indulge his taste for farce. His first play, an obscene comedy entitled A La Feuifle de Rose.

Maupassant spent several years on the staffs of two Parisian newspapers, the Gil- Blas and the Gaulois, often working under pseudonyms. From 1880 to 1890 he published nearly 300 short stories and six novels, a prodigious literary feat, by constantly reshaping and reworking existing stories and duplicating scenes, descriptions, and vignettes from his newspaper pieces. By the end of May 1880, just weeks after Flaubert’s death, Maupassant had become a regular contributor to a respected Paris newspaper, the Gaulois. His first publications were stories written in the 1870s and reworked for the occasion under the global title of Les Dimanches d’u