《 高老頭》發表於1834年，是巴爾紮剋最優秀的作品之一。這部作品在展示社會生活的廣度和深度方面，在反映作傢世界觀的進步性和局限性方面，在表現《人間喜劇》的藝術成就和不足之處方面，都具有代表意義。其藝術風格最能代表巴爾紮剋的特點。在這篇小說中，作者第一次使用他創造的“人物再現法”—讓一個人物不僅在一部作品中出現，而且在以後的作品中連續不斷地出現，它不僅使我們看到人物性格形成的不同階段，而且使一係列作品構成一個整體，成為《人間喜劇》的有機部分。在此，一些主要人物如拉斯蒂涅、鮑賽昂子爵夫人、伏特冷紛紛登場亮相，《人間喜劇》拉開了序幕。
■著名譯本
傅雷先生在1963年首譯的《高老頭》版本，人民文學出版社在1978年又重新出版，至今無人企及。
■有關於《人間喜劇》
巴爾紮剋用總標題為《人間喜劇》的一係列小說，反映了急劇變革時期的法國生活。《人間喜劇》分為三大部分：風俗研究、哲理研究和分析研究；其中風俗研究內容最為豐富，又分為六個“場景”。其基本內容表現為：首先，反映了上升的資産階級取代貴族階級的罪惡發傢史；同時也寫出了貴族階級的沒落衰亡史，至為重要的內容是對金錢勢力的批判，巴爾紮剋描寫了一幕幕圍繞着金錢而展開的人間慘劇，從而使我們對資本主義社會的罪惡與骯髒有一個形象的認識。
高老頭-【作者簡介】
巴爾紮剋是19世紀法國偉大的批判現實主義作傢，歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人和傑出代表，是一位具有濃厚浪漫情調的偉大作傢，一邊因奢華的生活而負債纍纍，一邊以崇高深刻的思想創作出博大精深的文學巨著。他
的生活趣事層出不窮，而作品更被譽為“法國社會的一面鏡子”。在他逝世時，文學大師雨果曾站在法國巴黎的蒙蒙細雨中，面對成千上萬哀悼者慷慨激昂地評價道：“在最偉大的人物中間，巴爾紮剋是名列前茅者；在最優秀的人物中間，巴爾紮剋是佼佼者。”
一生創作96部長、中、短篇小說和隨筆，總名為《人間喜劇》。其中代表作為《歐也妮•葛朗臺》、《高老頭》。100多年來，他的作品傳遍了全世界，對世界文學的發展和人類進步産生了巨大的影響。馬剋思、恩格斯稱贊他“是超群的小說傢”、“現實主義大師”。 巴爾紮剋出生於一個法國大革命後致富的資産階級家庭，法科學校畢業後，拒絶家庭為他選擇的受人尊敬的法律職業，而立志當文學家。為了獲得獨立生活和從事創作的物質保障，他曾試筆並插足商業，從事出版印刷業，但都以破産告終。這一切都為他認識社會、描寫社會提供了極為珍貴的第一手材料。他不斷追求和探索，對哲學、經濟學、歷史、自然科學、神學等領域進行了深入研究，積纍了極為廣博的知識。 1829年，巴爾紮剋完成長篇小說《朱安黨人》，這部取材於現實生活的作品為他帶來巨大聲譽，也為法國批判現實主義文學放下第一塊基石，巴爾紮剋將《朱安黨人》和計劃要寫的136部小說總命名為《人間喜劇》，並為之寫了《前言》，闡述了他的現實主義創作方法和基本原則，從理論上為法國批判現實主義文學奠定了堅固的基礎。 巴爾紮剋在藝術上取得巨大成就，他在小說結構方面匠心獨運，小說結構多種多樣，不拘一格、並善於將集中概括與精確描摹相結合，以外形反映內心本質等手法來塑造人物，他還善於以精細人微、生動逼真的環境描寫再現時代風貌。恩格斯稱贊巴爾紮剋的《人間喜劇》寫出了貴族階級的沒落衰敗和資産階級的上升發展，提供了社會各個領域無比豐富的生動細節和形象化的歷史材料，“甚至在經濟的細節方面（如革命以後動産和不動産的重新分配），我學到的東西也要比從當時所有職業歷史學家、經濟學院和統計學家那裏學到的全部東西還要多”。（恩格斯：《恩格斯緻瑪•哈剋奈斯》） 巴爾紮剋以自己的創作在世界文學史上樹立起不朽的豐碑。
高老頭-【作品目錄】
共有六章，分別是：
第一章 伏蓋公寓
第二章 兩處訪問
第三章 初見世面
第四章 鬼上當
第五章 兩個女兒
第六章 父親的死
高老頭-【內容梗概】
1891年鼕，在巴黎拉丁區有一個叫伏蓋公寓包飯客房，是一個叫伏蓋的美國老婦人開的。這裏住着各種各樣的人：有窮大學生拉斯蒂涅；歇業的面粉商人高裏奧；外號叫“鬼上當”的伏脫冷；被大銀行傢趕出傢門的泰伊番小姐；骨瘦如材的老處女米旭諾等。每逢開飯的時候，客店的飯廳就特別熱鬧，因為大傢可以在一起取笑高老頭。
69歲的高老頭，6 年前結束了他的買賣後，住到了伏蓋公寓。當時，分住在二樓一間最好的房間，每年交一千二百法朗的膳宿費，他衣着講究，每天還請理發師來給他梳頭髮，連鼻煙匣都是金的，他算得上這所公寓裏最體面的房客，人們都叫他高裏奧先生。寡婦老闆娘還嚮他搔首弄姿，想改嫁於他當一名本地區的闊太太。
高老頭把他全部的愛都放在兩個出嫁的女兒身上，不受伏蓋太太的誘惑。第二年年末，高老頭就要求換次等房間，並且整個鼕天屋子裏沒有生火取暖，膳宿費也減為九百法郎。大傢把他當作“惡癖、無恥、低能所産生的最神秘的人物”。常有兩個貴夫妻來找他，以為他有豔遇，高老頭告訴大傢，那是他的女兒：雷斯多伯爵夫人和銀行傢紐沁根太太。第三年，高老頭又要求換到最低等的房間每月房錢降為四十五法郎，他戒了鼻煙，批發了理發匠，金剛鑽、金煙匣、金鏈條等飾物也不見了，人也越來越瘦，看上去活像一個可憐蟲。伏蓋太太也認為：要是高老頭真有那麽有錢的女兒，他决不會住在四樓最低等的房間。
可是，高老頭這個謎終於被拉斯蒂涅揭開了。拉斯蒂涅是從外地來巴黎讀大學的青年，出身破落貴族家庭，白皮膚、黑頭髮、藍眼睛，熱情而有才氣，想做一個清廉正直的法官。但巴黎的豪華生活的刺激加強了他“對權位的欲望與出人頭地的志願”。他認為靠自己的勤奮學習求上進的路太艱苦，也太遙遠，還不一定行得通，而現實社會依靠幾個有錢的女人作進身的階梯則容易得多，於是他想“去徵服幾個可以做他的後臺的婦女”。由於姑母的引薦，他結識了遠房表姐，巴黎社交界地位顯赫的鮑賽昂子爵夫人。拉斯蒂涅很得意地嚮伏蓋公寓的房客們講了在舞會認識了伯爵夫人的事。高老頭興奮地問：“昨晚雷斯多太太很漂亮嗎？” 公寓老闆娘便認定高老頭定是給那些婆娘弄窮的。拉斯蒂涅想弄清高老頭和伯爵夫人的關係，决定去雷斯多伯爵夫人傢。在伯爵夫人傢他的寒酸相引起僕人輕衊；接着他莽撞地衝進了一間浴室，大出洋相；後又到提到和高老頭住在一起，卻引起伯爵夫婦的不快，把他趕了出來。拉斯蒂涅十分懊惱，衹好趕去嚮表姐求教。鮑賽昂夫人告訴他，雷斯多太太便是高裏奧的女兒。
高老頭是法國大革命時期起傢的面粉商人，中年喪妻，他把自己所有的愛都傾註在兩個女兒身上。為了讓她們擠進上流社會，從小給她們良好的教育，出嫁時，給了她們每人80萬法郎的陪嫁，讓大女兒嫁給了雷斯多伯爵，做了貴婦人；小女兒嫁給銀行傢紐沁根，當了金融資産階級闊太太。他以為女兒嫁了體面人傢，自己便可以受到尊重、奉承。那知不到兩年，女婿竟把他當作要不得的下流東西，把他趕出傢門。高老頭為了獲得他們的好感，忍痛出賣了店鋪，將錢一分為二給了兩個女兒，自己便搬進了伏蓋公寓。兩個女兒衹要爸爸的錢，可現在高老頭已沒錢了。
鮑賽昂夫人教導拉斯蒂涅社會又卑鄙又殘忍，要他以牙還牙去對付這個社會。她說：“你越沒有心肝，就越高升得快。你毫不留情的打擊人傢，人傢就怕你。”“沒有一個女人關切，他在這兒便一文不值，這女人還得年輕、有錢、漂亮。”按照表姐的指點，拉斯蒂涅决心去勾引高老頭的二女兒妞沁根太太。
伏脫冷是個目光敏銳的人，看出拉斯蒂涅想往上爬的心思。他對拉斯蒂涅說：“在這個互相吞筮的社會裏，清白老實一無用處，如果不像炮彈一樣轟進去，就得像瘟疫一般鑽進去，清白誠實是一無用處的。”他指點拉斯蒂涅去追求維多利小姐，他可以叫人殺死泰伊番小姐的哥哥，讓她當上繼承人，這樣銀行傢的遺産就會落到拉斯蒂涅手中，衹要給他二十萬法郎作報酬。拉斯蒂涅雖然被伏脫冷的赤裸裸的言辭所打動，但又沒敢答應下來。
拉斯蒂涅通過鮑賽昂夫人結識了紐沁根太太，而紐沁根太太並不是他想要追求的對象。她的丈夫在經濟上對她控製很嚴，甚至要求拉斯蒂涅拿自己僅有的100 法郎去賭場替她贏6000法郎回來。於是拉斯蒂涅便轉嚮
對泰伊番小姐的進攻。
這時伏脫冷已讓同黨尋釁跟泰伊番小姐的哥哥决頭，並殺死了他。拉斯蒂涅矛盾重重，是愛維多利小姐呢，還是愛紐沁根太太呢？最後，他選擇了後者，他想 “這樣的結合既沒有罪過，也沒有什麽能教最嚴格的道學家皺一皺眉頭的地方。”
房客米旭諾老小姐，她接受了警察局暗探險的差使，刺探伏脫冷的身份。她在伏脫冷的飲料中下麻藥，伏脫冷被醉倒不省人事。米旭諾脫下伏脫冷的外衣，在肩上打了一巴掌，鮮紅的皮膚上立刻現出“苦役犯”的字樣。當伏脫冷醒來時，警察已經包圍了伏蓋公寓。特務長打落了他的假發，伏脫冷全身的血立刻涌上了臉，眼睛像野貓一樣發亮，他使出一股蠻勁，大吼一聲，把所有的房客嚇得大叫起來。暗探們一齊掏出手槍，伏脫冷一見亮晶晶的火門，突然變了面孔，鎮靜下來，主動把兩衹手伸上去。他承認自己叫雅剋·柯冷，諢名“鬼上當”，被判過20年苦役，他被逮捕了。
高老頭得知拉斯蒂涅愛自己的二女兒，想為拉斯蒂涅與女兒牽綫搭橋，購買了一幢小樓，供他們幽會。一天，紐沁根太太急忙來找高老頭，說明她丈夫同意讓她和拉斯蒂涅來往，但她不能嚮他要回陪嫁錢，高老頭要女兒不要接受這條件，“錢是性命，有了錢就有了一切。”這時，雷斯多夫人也來了。她哭着告訴父親：她的丈夫用她賣掉了項鏈的錢去為情人還債，現在她的財産已差不多全部被奪走，她要父親給她一萬二千法郎去救她的情夫。兩個女兒吵起嘴來，高老頭愛莫能助，他急得暈過去，患了初期腦溢血癥。
在他患病期間，兩姐妹都沒來看他一次，大女兒關心的是即將參加盼望已久的鮑賽昂夫人的舞會；二女兒來過一次，但不是來看父親的病的，而是要父親給她支付欠裁縫一千法郎的定錢。高老頭被逼得付出了最後1 文錢，致使中風癥猛發作。
鮑賽昂夫人舉行盛大的舞會，場面非常壯觀，公主、爵爺、名門閨秀都前來參加。500 多輛車上的燈燭照得屋內處處通明透亮。子爵夫人裝束素雅，臉上沒有表情，仿佛還保持着貴婦人的面目，而在她心目中，這座燦爛的宮殿已經變成一片沙漠，一回到內室，便禁不住淚水長流，周身發抖。舞會結束後，拉斯蒂涅目送表姐鮑賽昂夫人坐上轎車，同她作了最後一次告別。他感到“他的教育已經受完了”他認為自己 “入了地獄，而且還得呆下去”。
可憐的高老頭快斷氣了，他還盼望着兩個女兒能來見他一面。拉斯蒂涅差人去請他的兩個女兒，兩個女兒都推三阻四不來。老人每衹眼中冒出一顆眼淚，滾在鮮紅的眼皮邊上，他長嘆一聲，說：“唉，愛了一輩子的女兒，到頭來反給女兒遺棄！”
衹有拉斯蒂涅張羅着高老頭的喪事，兩個女兒女婿衹派了兩駕空車跟在靈柩後面。棺木是由一個大學生嚮醫院廉價買來的，送葬費由拉斯蒂涅賣掉金表支付的。他目睹這一幕幕悲劇，隨着高老頭的埋葬也埋葬了自己最後一滴同情的眼淚，他决心嚮社會挑戰，“現在咱們倆來拼一拼吧！”
高老頭-【思想感情】
《高老頭》着重揭露批判的是資本主義世界中人與人之間赤裸裸的金錢關係。小說以1819年底到1820年初的巴黎為背景，主要寫兩個平行而又交叉的故事：退休麵條商高裏奧老頭被兩個女兒冷落，悲慘地死在伏蓋公寓的閣樓上；青年拉斯蒂涅在巴黎社會的腐蝕下走上墮落之路。同時還穿插了鮑賽昂夫人和伏脫冷的故事。通過寒酸的
公寓和豪華的貴族沙竜這兩個不斷交替的主要舞臺，作傢描繪了一幅幅巴黎社會人欲橫流、極端醜惡的圖畫，暴露了在金錢勢力支配下資産階級的道德淪喪和人與人之間的冷酷無情，揭示了在資産階級的進攻下貴族階級的必然滅亡，真實地反映了波旁王朝復闢時期的特徵。
高老頭-【寫作背景】
19世紀上半葉是法國資本主義建立的初期，拿破侖在1815年的滑鐵盧戰役中徹底敗北，由此波旁王朝復闢，統治一直延續到1830年。由於查理十世的反動政策激怒了人民，七月革命僅僅三天便推倒了復闢王朝，開始了長達18年的七月王朝的統治，由金融資産階級掌握了政權。《歐也妮·葛朗臺》發表於1833年，也即七月王朝初期。剛過去的復闢王朝在人們的頭腦中還記憶猶新。復闢時期，貴族雖然從國外返回了法國，耀武揚威，不可一世，可是他們的實際地位與法國大革命以前不可同日而語，因為資産階級已經強大起來。剛上臺的路易十八不得不頒布新憲法，實行君主立憲，嚮資産階級做出讓步，以維護搖搖欲墜的政權。資産階級雖然失去了政治權力，卻憑藉經濟上的實力與貴族相抗衡。到了復闢王朝後期，資産階級不僅在城市，而且在貴族保持廣泛影響的農村，都把貴族打得落花流水。復闢王朝實際上大勢已去。巴爾紮剋比同時代作傢更敏銳，獨具慧眼地觀察到這個重大社會現象。
高老頭-【相關評論】
“《高老頭》還成功地塑造了青年野心傢拉斯蒂涅和沒落貴夫人鮑賽昂的形象。前者原為一個外省貴族青年，想來巴黎進大學重振傢業，但目睹上流社會的揮金如土、燈紅酒緑，他往上爬的欲望倍增，
他在鮑賽昂子爵夫人和逃犯伏特冷的唆使下，日益喪失正直的良心，開始為金錢而出賣正直，特別見證了高老頭的兩個女兒對待父親象榨幹的檸檬一般以後，更堅定了嚮資産階級的道路走去的决心。《高老頭》中主要描寫了他野心傢性格形成的過程，在以後的一係列作品中他更一發不可收拾，靠出賣道德和良心竟當上了副國務秘書和貴族院議員，而一切的取得都依賴於極端利己主義原則。鮑賽昂子爵夫人是巴爾紮剋為貴族階級唱的一麯無盡的輓歌，她出身名門貴族，是巴黎社交界的皇后，衹因缺乏金錢而被情人拋棄，被迫退出巴黎上流社會，高貴的門第再也敵不過金錢的勢力，她在後來的小說中因為同樣的原因又一次被金錢出賣。她的遭遇告訴人們，貴族階級除了失敗之外不可能有更好的命運，金錢纔是這個世界的主宰。
《高老頭》在藝術上很嚴謹，作者設置了典型環境，讓典型人物活動於其中，使人與人的金錢關係與環境相契合，書中安排了四條情節綫索，以拉斯蒂涅的墮落為主綫，其它幾條起輔助作用，縱橫交錯又脈絡分明；典型人物的刻劃是巴爾紮剋的最大特色，不論是外貌描寫還是心理刻劃，甚至一個細節，如高老頭每吃一塊面包都要放在鼻下嗅一嗅，都使人物更鮮明生動；人物語言的個性化也是作者一大功力，貴族沙竜中的語言與逃犯的語言絶不一樣。”
高老頭-【精彩片段】
高老頭臨死前想見女兒一面,讓人去叫他的女兒,可兩個女兒誰也沒來。
高裏奧不出聲了，仿佛集中全身的精力熬着痛苦。“她們在這兒，我不會叫苦了，幹麽還要叫苦呢？”他迷迷糊糊昏沉了好久。剋利斯朵夫回來，拉斯蒂涅以為高老頭睡熟了，讓傭人高聲回報他出差的情形。
“先生，我先上伯爵夫人傢，可沒法跟她說話，她和丈夫有要緊事兒。我再三央求，雷斯多先生親自出來對我說：高裏奧先生快死了是不是？哎，再好沒有。我有事，要太太待在傢裏。事情完了，她會去的。——
他似乎很生氣，這位先生。我正要出來，太太從一扇我看不見的門裏走到穿堂，告訴我，你對我父親說，我同丈夫正在商量事情，不能來。那是有關我孩子們生死的問題。但等事情一完，我就去看他。——說到男爵夫人吧，又是另外一樁事兒！我沒有見到她，不能跟她說話。老媽子說她今兒早上五點一刻纔從舞會回來，中午以前叫醒她，一定要挨駡的。等會她打鈴明我，我會告訴她，說她父親的病更重了。報告一件壞消息，不會嫌太晚的。我再三央求也沒用。哎，是呀，我也要求見男爵，他不在傢。”
“一個也不來”拉斯蒂捏嚷道，“讓我寫信給她們。”“一個也不來，”老人坐起來接着說，“她們有事，她們在睡覺，她們不會來的。我早知道了。直要臨死纔知道女兒是什麽東西！朋友，你別結婚，別生孩子！你給他們生命，他們給你死。你帶他們到世界上來，他們把你從世界上趕出去。她們不會來的！我已經知道了十年。有時我心裏這麽想，衹是不敢相信。”
高老頭死了，兩個女兒誰也沒有來，他的錢都給女兒花光了，到死連入殮的衣服都沒有，是拉斯蒂涅賣了自己的表纔給他入殮的。
拉斯蒂涅奔下樓梯，到雷斯多太太傢去了。剛纔那幕可怕的景象使他動了感情，一路義憤填胸。他走進穿堂求見雷斯多太太，人傢回報說她不能見容。
他對當差說：“我是為了她馬上要死的父親來的。”“先生，伯爵再三吩咐我們……”“既然伯爵在傢，那麽告訴他，說他嶽父快死了，我要立刻和他說話。”歐也納等了好久。“說不定他就在這個時候死了，”他心裏想。
當差帶他走進第一窖室，雷斯多先生站在壁爐前面，見了客人也不請坐。“伯爵，”拉斯蒂涅說，“令嶽在破爛的閣樓上就要斷氣了，連買木柴的錢也沒有；他馬上要死了，但等見一面女兒……”“先生，”伯爵冷冷的回答，“你大概可以看出，我對高裏奧先生沒有什麽好感。他教壞了我太太，造成我家庭的不幸。我把他當做擾亂我安寧的敵人。他死也好，活也好，我全不在意。你瞧，這是我對他的情分。社會盡可以責備我，我纔不在乎呢。我現在要處理的事，比顧慮那些傻瓜的闊言閑語緊要得多。至於我太太，她現在那個模樣沒法出門，我也不讓她出門。請你告訴她父親，衹消她對我，對我的孩子，盡完了她的責任，她會去看他的。要是她愛她的父親，幾分鐘內她就可以自由……”
“伯爵，我沒有權利批評你的行為，你是你太太的主人。至少我能相信你是講信義的吧？請
你答應我一件事，就是告訴她，說她父親沒有一天好活了，因為她不去送終，已經在咒她了！”雷斯多註意到歐也納憤憤不平的語氣，回答道：“你自己去說吧。”
拉斯蒂涅跟着伯爵走進伯爵夫人平時起坐的客廳。她淚人兒似的埋在沙發裏，那副痛不欲生的模樣叫他看了可憐。她不敢望拉斯蒂涅，先怯生生的瞧了瞧丈夫，眼睛的神氣表示她精神肉體都被專橫的丈夫壓倒了。伯爵側了側腦袋，她纔敢開口：“先生，我都聽到了。告訴我父親，他要知道我現在的處境，一定會原諒我。想不到要受這種刑罰簡直受不了。可是我要反抗到底，”她對地的丈夫說。“我也有兒女。請你對父親說，不管表面上怎麽樣，在父親面前我並沒有錯，”她無可奈何的對歐也納說。
那女的經歷的苦難，歐也納不難想象，便呆呆的走了出來。聽到特·雷斯多先生的口吻，他知道自己白跑了一趟，阿娜斯大齊已經失去自由。
接着他趕到特·紐沁根太太傢，發覺她還在床上。“我不舒服呀，朋友，”她說。“從跳舞會出來受了涼，我怕要害肺炎呢，我等醫生來……”歐也納打斷了她的話，說道：“哪怕死神已經到了你身邊，爬也得爬到你父親跟前去。他在叫你！你要聽到他一聲，馬上不覺得你自己害病了。”
“歐也納，父親的病也許不象你說的那麽嚴重；可是我要在你眼裏有什麽不是，我纔難過死呢；所以我一定聽你的吩咐。我知道，倘若我這一回出去鬧出一場大病來，父親要傷心死的。我等醫生來過了就走。”她一眼看不見歐也納身上的表鏈，便叫道：“喲！怎麽你的表沒有啦？”歐也納臉上紅了一塊。“歐也納！歐也納！倘使你已經把它賣了，丟了，……哦！那太豈有此理了。”
大學生伏在但斐納床上，湊着她耳朵說：“你要知道麽？哼！好，告訴你吧！你父親一個錢沒有了，今晚上要把他入礆的屍衣都沒法買。你送我的表在當鋪裏，我錢都光了。”
但斐納猛的從床上跳下，奔嚮書櫃，抓起錢袋遞給拉斯蒂捏，打着鈴嚷道：“我去我去，歐也納。讓我穿衣服，我簡直是禽獸了！去吧，我會趕在你前面！” 她回頭叫老媽子：“丹蘭士，請老爺立刻上來跟我說話。”
高老頭-【藝術成就】
《高老頭》集中表現了巴爾紮剋現實主義創作藝術的主要特色。
■精細而富有特徵的典型環境
巴爾紮剋非常重視詳細而逼真的環境描繪，一方面是為了再現生活，更重要的是為了刻畫人物性格。作品圍繞拉斯蒂涅的活動，描寫了巴黎不同等級、不同階層的人們的生活環境；拉丁區的伏蓋公寓，形似牢獄的黃色屋
子，到處散發着“閉塞的、黴爛的、酸腐的氣味”，塞滿了骯髒油膩、殘破醜陋的器皿和傢具，這是下層人物的寄居之地。唐打區內高老頭的兩個女兒傢裏，雖有金碧輝煌的房子、貴重的器物，但“毫無氣派的回廊”，挂滿意大利油畫的客廳卻“裝飾得像咖啡館”，這顯示了作為新貴的資産階級暴發戶們俗不可耐的排場。聖日爾曼區古老的鮑賽昂府則顯示出完全不同的氣派，院中套着精壯馬匹的華麗馬車，穿着金鑲邊大紅製服的門丁，兩邊供滿鮮花的大樓梯以及衹有灰和粉紅色的小巧玲瓏的客室，這些精雅絶倫的陳設、別出心裁的佈置都襯托出上流社會貴族“領袖”的風雅超群。這些精細而富有特徵的環境描寫，有利於展示其對人間性格形成的影響。當拉斯蒂涅從雷斯多夫人和鮑賽昂夫人兩處訪問後回到棲身的伏蓋公寓時，作品寫道：“走入氣味難聞的飯廳，十八個食客好似馬槽前的牲口一般正在吃飯。他覺得這副窮酸相跟飯廳的景象醜惡已極。環境轉變太突兀了，對比太強烈了，格外刺激他的野心……”已經享受過上流社會生活的拉斯蒂涅再也不肯自甘貧賤，最後，他决心弄髒雙手，抹黑良心，不顧一切地嚮上撲。拉斯蒂涅的墮落是這種特定的典型環境所决定的。
■人物性格的典型化
巴爾紮剋不僅塑造了高裏奧、拉斯蒂涅、鮑賽昂夫人、伏脫冷等典型形象，而且在其他人物形象的塑造中也做到了共性與個性的統一。雷斯多伯爵夫婦和紐沁根男爵夫婦雖然有貴族的頭銜，實際上都是資産者。他們既有追求個人私利的共同特性，又都是獨具個性的典型。銀行傢紐沁根心目中衹有金錢，他對待妻子尋求外遇的態度很明朗：“我允許你鬍攪，你也得讓我犯罪，教那些可憐蟲傾傢蕩産。”雷斯多伯爵對妻子的美着了迷，雖聽憑她和瑪剋勾搭，卻有一定限度，這和他的貴族門第觀念有關。他知道妻子偷賣祖傳鑽石後，想方設法贖回，讓她戴着參加舞會，以維護門第的尊嚴。
阿娜斯塔齊和但斐那都是高老頭的女兒，但兩姊妹各有自己的個性。前者身材高大、結實、黑發，眼睛炯炯有神，進宮謁見過皇上，不把妹妹放在眼裏。後者嬌小、金發，極有風韻，自知社會地位不高，陪嫁被丈夫侵占，又遭情夫遺棄，性格憂鬱善感，經常懷念童年時代的幸福生活。但她們倆都是虛榮心極強的利己主義者，為了滿足欲望，不惜榨幹父親的積蓄。阿娜斯塔齊嚮父親要錢，往往用勒索的方法，但斐那則用撒嬌哄騙的辦法。
■精緻的結構
小說以高老頭和拉斯蒂涅的故事為兩條主要綫索，又穿插了伏脫冷、鮑賽昂夫人的故事。幾條綫索錯綜交織，頭緒看似紛繁而實際主次分明、脈絡清楚、有條不紊。作品以敘述高老頭被女兒榨幹
錢財遭拋棄為中心情節，以拉斯蒂涅為中心人物，通過他的活動穿針引綫，將上層社會與下層社會聯繫起來，將貴族沙竜與資産者客廳連結起來。隨着高老頭之謎在拉斯蒂涅眼前展現、解開，情節步步推嚮高潮。伏脫冷被捕、鮑賽昂夫人被棄、高老頭慘死，拉斯蒂涅都是目睹者、見證人。社會的醜惡證實了他接受的反面教育，高老頭埋葬之日，也是拉斯蒂涅的青年時代結束之時。幾條綫索緊密交織、環環相扣、步步深入，起着互相深化、互為補充的作用，從而深刻地表現了作品的主題。
■對比手法的廣泛運用
藝術上的對比手法在《高老頭》中運用得十分廣泛。伏蓋公寓與鮑賽昂府的強烈對比，不僅促使拉斯蒂涅個人野心的猛烈膨脹，而且表明不管是赫赫聲威的豪門大戶還是窮酸暗淡的陋室客棧，一樣充斥着拜金主義，一樣存在着卑劣無恥。高貴莊重的鮑賽昂夫人與粗俗強悍的伏脫冷形成鮮明對比，一個文質彬彬，一個直言不諱，但不同的語言卻又揭示了同樣的道理，而他們兩人看透社會的理論又與自己生活中的慘敗成為反襯，更加深了悲劇的意味。此外，還有高老頭女兒的窮奢極欲與高老頭的貧苦窘睏的對比，鮑賽昂夫人退隱時熱鬧的場面與凄涼心情的對比等等。這種鮮明對比的手法，使作品的主題更加鮮明突出。
高老頭-巴爾紮剋—文學上的拿破侖
巴爾紮剋（ Honore de Balzac 1799 ～ 1850 ） 19 世紀法國偉大的批判現實主義作傢，歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人和傑出代表。一生創作 96 部長、中、短篇小說和隨筆，總名為《人間喜劇》。其中代表作為《歐也妮·葛朗臺》、《高老頭》。100 多年來，他的作品傳遍了全世界，對世界文學的發展和人類進步産生了巨大的影響。馬剋思、恩格斯稱贊他“是超群的小說傢”、“現實主義大師”。
巴爾紮剋 1799 年 5 月 20 日出生於一個法國大革命後致富的資産階級家庭，法科學校畢業後，拒絶家庭為他選擇的受人尊敬的法律職業，而立志當文學家。為了獲得獨立生活和從事創作的物質保障，他曾試筆並插足商業，從事出版印刷業，但都以破産告終。這一切都為他認識社會、描寫社會提供了極為珍貴的第一手材料。他不斷追求和探索，對哲學、經濟學、歷史、自然科學、神學等領域進行了深入研究，積纍了極為廣博的知識。
1829 年，巴爾紮剋完成長篇小說《舒昂黨人》，這部取材於現實生活的作品為他帶來巨大聲譽，也為法國批判現實主義文學放下第一塊基石，巴爾紮剋將《舒昂黨人》和計劃要寫的一百四五十部小說總命名為《人間喜劇》，並為之寫了《前言》，闡述了他的現實主義創作方法和基本原則，從理論上為法國批判現實主義文學奠定了基礎。
長期的辛勞嚴重損害了巴爾紮剋的健康，剛過50歲，他就重病纏身了。在巴爾紮剋生命垂危時刻，他仍然沉浸在自己製造的世界裏，他懇求醫生延長他的生命，他就能再寫出一部作品。 1850 年 8 月 18 日 晚上 11 點半 ，巴爾紮剋永遠閉上了他的那雙洞察一切的眼睛，結束了他辛勤勞累的一生。
巴爾紮剋在藝術上取得巨大成就，他在小說結構方面匠心獨運，小說結構多種多樣，不拘一格、並善於將集中概括與精確描摹相結合，以外形反映內心本質等手法來塑造人物，他還善於以精細人微、生動逼真的環境描寫再現時代風貌。恩格斯稱贊巴爾紮剋的《人間喜劇》寫出了貴族階級的沒落衰敗和資産階級的上升發展，提供了社會各個領域無比豐富的生動細節和形象化的歷史材料，“甚至在經濟的細節方面（如革命以後動産和不動産的重新分配），我學到的東西也要比從當時所有職業歷史學家、經濟學院和統計學家那裏學到的全部東西還要多”。（恩格斯：《恩格斯緻瑪·哈剋奈斯》）
巴爾紮剋以自己的創作在世界文學史上樹立起不朽的豐碑。他以對文學的熱愛成就了一道美麗的文學風景！
Originally published in serial form during the winter of 1834–35, Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's most important novel.[1] It marks the first serious use by the author of characters who had appeared in other books, a technique that distinguishes Balzac's fiction. The novel is also noted as an example of his realist style, using minute details to create character and subtext.
The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, which brought about profound changes in French society; the struggle of individuals to secure upper-class status is ubiquitous in the book. The city of Paris also impresses itself on the characters – especially young Rastignac, who grew up in the provinces of southern France. Balzac analyzes, through Goriot and others, the nature of family and marriage, providing a pessimistic view of these institutions.
The novel was released to mixed reviews. Some critics praised the author for his complex characters and attention to detail; others condemned him for his many depictions of corruption and greed. A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage. It gave rise to the French expression "Rastignac", a social climber willing to use any means to better his situation.
■著名譯本
傅雷先生在1963年首譯的《高老頭》版本，人民文學出版社在1978年又重新出版，至今無人企及。
■有關於《人間喜劇》
巴爾紮剋用總標題為《人間喜劇》的一係列小說，反映了急劇變革時期的法國生活。《人間喜劇》分為三大部分：風俗研究、哲理研究和分析研究；其中風俗研究內容最為豐富，又分為六個“場景”。其基本內容表現為：首先，反映了上升的資産階級取代貴族階級的罪惡發傢史；同時也寫出了貴族階級的沒落衰亡史，至為重要的內容是對金錢勢力的批判，巴爾紮剋描寫了一幕幕圍繞着金錢而展開的人間慘劇，從而使我們對資本主義社會的罪惡與骯髒有一個形象的認識。
高老頭-【作者簡介】
巴爾紮剋是19世紀法國偉大的批判現實主義作傢，歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人和傑出代表，是一位具有濃厚浪漫情調的偉大作傢，一邊因奢華的生活而負債纍纍，一邊以崇高深刻的思想創作出博大精深的文學巨著。他
的生活趣事層出不窮，而作品更被譽為“法國社會的一面鏡子”。在他逝世時，文學大師雨果曾站在法國巴黎的蒙蒙細雨中，面對成千上萬哀悼者慷慨激昂地評價道：“在最偉大的人物中間，巴爾紮剋是名列前茅者；在最優秀的人物中間，巴爾紮剋是佼佼者。”
一生創作96部長、中、短篇小說和隨筆，總名為《人間喜劇》。其中代表作為《歐也妮•葛朗臺》、《高老頭》。100多年來，他的作品傳遍了全世界，對世界文學的發展和人類進步産生了巨大的影響。馬剋思、恩格斯稱贊他“是超群的小說傢”、“現實主義大師”。 巴爾紮剋出生於一個法國大革命後致富的資産階級家庭，法科學校畢業後，拒絶家庭為他選擇的受人尊敬的法律職業，而立志當文學家。為了獲得獨立生活和從事創作的物質保障，他曾試筆並插足商業，從事出版印刷業，但都以破産告終。這一切都為他認識社會、描寫社會提供了極為珍貴的第一手材料。他不斷追求和探索，對哲學、經濟學、歷史、自然科學、神學等領域進行了深入研究，積纍了極為廣博的知識。 1829年，巴爾紮剋完成長篇小說《朱安黨人》，這部取材於現實生活的作品為他帶來巨大聲譽，也為法國批判現實主義文學放下第一塊基石，巴爾紮剋將《朱安黨人》和計劃要寫的136部小說總命名為《人間喜劇》，並為之寫了《前言》，闡述了他的現實主義創作方法和基本原則，從理論上為法國批判現實主義文學奠定了堅固的基礎。 巴爾紮剋在藝術上取得巨大成就，他在小說結構方面匠心獨運，小說結構多種多樣，不拘一格、並善於將集中概括與精確描摹相結合，以外形反映內心本質等手法來塑造人物，他還善於以精細人微、生動逼真的環境描寫再現時代風貌。恩格斯稱贊巴爾紮剋的《人間喜劇》寫出了貴族階級的沒落衰敗和資産階級的上升發展，提供了社會各個領域無比豐富的生動細節和形象化的歷史材料，“甚至在經濟的細節方面（如革命以後動産和不動産的重新分配），我學到的東西也要比從當時所有職業歷史學家、經濟學院和統計學家那裏學到的全部東西還要多”。（恩格斯：《恩格斯緻瑪•哈剋奈斯》） 巴爾紮剋以自己的創作在世界文學史上樹立起不朽的豐碑。
高老頭-【作品目錄】
共有六章，分別是：
第一章 伏蓋公寓
第二章 兩處訪問
第三章 初見世面
第四章 鬼上當
第五章 兩個女兒
第六章 父親的死
高老頭-【內容梗概】
1891年鼕，在巴黎拉丁區有一個叫伏蓋公寓包飯客房，是一個叫伏蓋的美國老婦人開的。這裏住着各種各樣的人：有窮大學生拉斯蒂涅；歇業的面粉商人高裏奧；外號叫“鬼上當”的伏脫冷；被大銀行傢趕出傢門的泰伊番小姐；骨瘦如材的老處女米旭諾等。每逢開飯的時候，客店的飯廳就特別熱鬧，因為大傢可以在一起取笑高老頭。
69歲的高老頭，6 年前結束了他的買賣後，住到了伏蓋公寓。當時，分住在二樓一間最好的房間，每年交一千二百法朗的膳宿費，他衣着講究，每天還請理發師來給他梳頭髮，連鼻煙匣都是金的，他算得上這所公寓裏最體面的房客，人們都叫他高裏奧先生。寡婦老闆娘還嚮他搔首弄姿，想改嫁於他當一名本地區的闊太太。
高老頭把他全部的愛都放在兩個出嫁的女兒身上，不受伏蓋太太的誘惑。第二年年末，高老頭就要求換次等房間，並且整個鼕天屋子裏沒有生火取暖，膳宿費也減為九百法郎。大傢把他當作“惡癖、無恥、低能所産生的最神秘的人物”。常有兩個貴夫妻來找他，以為他有豔遇，高老頭告訴大傢，那是他的女兒：雷斯多伯爵夫人和銀行傢紐沁根太太。第三年，高老頭又要求換到最低等的房間每月房錢降為四十五法郎，他戒了鼻煙，批發了理發匠，金剛鑽、金煙匣、金鏈條等飾物也不見了，人也越來越瘦，看上去活像一個可憐蟲。伏蓋太太也認為：要是高老頭真有那麽有錢的女兒，他决不會住在四樓最低等的房間。
可是，高老頭這個謎終於被拉斯蒂涅揭開了。拉斯蒂涅是從外地來巴黎讀大學的青年，出身破落貴族家庭，白皮膚、黑頭髮、藍眼睛，熱情而有才氣，想做一個清廉正直的法官。但巴黎的豪華生活的刺激加強了他“對權位的欲望與出人頭地的志願”。他認為靠自己的勤奮學習求上進的路太艱苦，也太遙遠，還不一定行得通，而現實社會依靠幾個有錢的女人作進身的階梯則容易得多，於是他想“去徵服幾個可以做他的後臺的婦女”。由於姑母的引薦，他結識了遠房表姐，巴黎社交界地位顯赫的鮑賽昂子爵夫人。拉斯蒂涅很得意地嚮伏蓋公寓的房客們講了在舞會認識了伯爵夫人的事。高老頭興奮地問：“昨晚雷斯多太太很漂亮嗎？” 公寓老闆娘便認定高老頭定是給那些婆娘弄窮的。拉斯蒂涅想弄清高老頭和伯爵夫人的關係，决定去雷斯多伯爵夫人傢。在伯爵夫人傢他的寒酸相引起僕人輕衊；接着他莽撞地衝進了一間浴室，大出洋相；後又到提到和高老頭住在一起，卻引起伯爵夫婦的不快，把他趕了出來。拉斯蒂涅十分懊惱，衹好趕去嚮表姐求教。鮑賽昂夫人告訴他，雷斯多太太便是高裏奧的女兒。
高老頭是法國大革命時期起傢的面粉商人，中年喪妻，他把自己所有的愛都傾註在兩個女兒身上。為了讓她們擠進上流社會，從小給她們良好的教育，出嫁時，給了她們每人80萬法郎的陪嫁，讓大女兒嫁給了雷斯多伯爵，做了貴婦人；小女兒嫁給銀行傢紐沁根，當了金融資産階級闊太太。他以為女兒嫁了體面人傢，自己便可以受到尊重、奉承。那知不到兩年，女婿竟把他當作要不得的下流東西，把他趕出傢門。高老頭為了獲得他們的好感，忍痛出賣了店鋪，將錢一分為二給了兩個女兒，自己便搬進了伏蓋公寓。兩個女兒衹要爸爸的錢，可現在高老頭已沒錢了。
鮑賽昂夫人教導拉斯蒂涅社會又卑鄙又殘忍，要他以牙還牙去對付這個社會。她說：“你越沒有心肝，就越高升得快。你毫不留情的打擊人傢，人傢就怕你。”“沒有一個女人關切，他在這兒便一文不值，這女人還得年輕、有錢、漂亮。”按照表姐的指點，拉斯蒂涅决心去勾引高老頭的二女兒妞沁根太太。
伏脫冷是個目光敏銳的人，看出拉斯蒂涅想往上爬的心思。他對拉斯蒂涅說：“在這個互相吞筮的社會裏，清白老實一無用處，如果不像炮彈一樣轟進去，就得像瘟疫一般鑽進去，清白誠實是一無用處的。”他指點拉斯蒂涅去追求維多利小姐，他可以叫人殺死泰伊番小姐的哥哥，讓她當上繼承人，這樣銀行傢的遺産就會落到拉斯蒂涅手中，衹要給他二十萬法郎作報酬。拉斯蒂涅雖然被伏脫冷的赤裸裸的言辭所打動，但又沒敢答應下來。
拉斯蒂涅通過鮑賽昂夫人結識了紐沁根太太，而紐沁根太太並不是他想要追求的對象。她的丈夫在經濟上對她控製很嚴，甚至要求拉斯蒂涅拿自己僅有的100 法郎去賭場替她贏6000法郎回來。於是拉斯蒂涅便轉嚮
對泰伊番小姐的進攻。
這時伏脫冷已讓同黨尋釁跟泰伊番小姐的哥哥决頭，並殺死了他。拉斯蒂涅矛盾重重，是愛維多利小姐呢，還是愛紐沁根太太呢？最後，他選擇了後者，他想 “這樣的結合既沒有罪過，也沒有什麽能教最嚴格的道學家皺一皺眉頭的地方。”
房客米旭諾老小姐，她接受了警察局暗探險的差使，刺探伏脫冷的身份。她在伏脫冷的飲料中下麻藥，伏脫冷被醉倒不省人事。米旭諾脫下伏脫冷的外衣，在肩上打了一巴掌，鮮紅的皮膚上立刻現出“苦役犯”的字樣。當伏脫冷醒來時，警察已經包圍了伏蓋公寓。特務長打落了他的假發，伏脫冷全身的血立刻涌上了臉，眼睛像野貓一樣發亮，他使出一股蠻勁，大吼一聲，把所有的房客嚇得大叫起來。暗探們一齊掏出手槍，伏脫冷一見亮晶晶的火門，突然變了面孔，鎮靜下來，主動把兩衹手伸上去。他承認自己叫雅剋·柯冷，諢名“鬼上當”，被判過20年苦役，他被逮捕了。
高老頭得知拉斯蒂涅愛自己的二女兒，想為拉斯蒂涅與女兒牽綫搭橋，購買了一幢小樓，供他們幽會。一天，紐沁根太太急忙來找高老頭，說明她丈夫同意讓她和拉斯蒂涅來往，但她不能嚮他要回陪嫁錢，高老頭要女兒不要接受這條件，“錢是性命，有了錢就有了一切。”這時，雷斯多夫人也來了。她哭着告訴父親：她的丈夫用她賣掉了項鏈的錢去為情人還債，現在她的財産已差不多全部被奪走，她要父親給她一萬二千法郎去救她的情夫。兩個女兒吵起嘴來，高老頭愛莫能助，他急得暈過去，患了初期腦溢血癥。
在他患病期間，兩姐妹都沒來看他一次，大女兒關心的是即將參加盼望已久的鮑賽昂夫人的舞會；二女兒來過一次，但不是來看父親的病的，而是要父親給她支付欠裁縫一千法郎的定錢。高老頭被逼得付出了最後1 文錢，致使中風癥猛發作。
鮑賽昂夫人舉行盛大的舞會，場面非常壯觀，公主、爵爺、名門閨秀都前來參加。500 多輛車上的燈燭照得屋內處處通明透亮。子爵夫人裝束素雅，臉上沒有表情，仿佛還保持着貴婦人的面目，而在她心目中，這座燦爛的宮殿已經變成一片沙漠，一回到內室，便禁不住淚水長流，周身發抖。舞會結束後，拉斯蒂涅目送表姐鮑賽昂夫人坐上轎車，同她作了最後一次告別。他感到“他的教育已經受完了”他認為自己 “入了地獄，而且還得呆下去”。
可憐的高老頭快斷氣了，他還盼望着兩個女兒能來見他一面。拉斯蒂涅差人去請他的兩個女兒，兩個女兒都推三阻四不來。老人每衹眼中冒出一顆眼淚，滾在鮮紅的眼皮邊上，他長嘆一聲，說：“唉，愛了一輩子的女兒，到頭來反給女兒遺棄！”
衹有拉斯蒂涅張羅着高老頭的喪事，兩個女兒女婿衹派了兩駕空車跟在靈柩後面。棺木是由一個大學生嚮醫院廉價買來的，送葬費由拉斯蒂涅賣掉金表支付的。他目睹這一幕幕悲劇，隨着高老頭的埋葬也埋葬了自己最後一滴同情的眼淚，他决心嚮社會挑戰，“現在咱們倆來拼一拼吧！”
高老頭-【思想感情】
《高老頭》着重揭露批判的是資本主義世界中人與人之間赤裸裸的金錢關係。小說以1819年底到1820年初的巴黎為背景，主要寫兩個平行而又交叉的故事：退休麵條商高裏奧老頭被兩個女兒冷落，悲慘地死在伏蓋公寓的閣樓上；青年拉斯蒂涅在巴黎社會的腐蝕下走上墮落之路。同時還穿插了鮑賽昂夫人和伏脫冷的故事。通過寒酸的
公寓和豪華的貴族沙竜這兩個不斷交替的主要舞臺，作傢描繪了一幅幅巴黎社會人欲橫流、極端醜惡的圖畫，暴露了在金錢勢力支配下資産階級的道德淪喪和人與人之間的冷酷無情，揭示了在資産階級的進攻下貴族階級的必然滅亡，真實地反映了波旁王朝復闢時期的特徵。
高老頭-【寫作背景】
19世紀上半葉是法國資本主義建立的初期，拿破侖在1815年的滑鐵盧戰役中徹底敗北，由此波旁王朝復闢，統治一直延續到1830年。由於查理十世的反動政策激怒了人民，七月革命僅僅三天便推倒了復闢王朝，開始了長達18年的七月王朝的統治，由金融資産階級掌握了政權。《歐也妮·葛朗臺》發表於1833年，也即七月王朝初期。剛過去的復闢王朝在人們的頭腦中還記憶猶新。復闢時期，貴族雖然從國外返回了法國，耀武揚威，不可一世，可是他們的實際地位與法國大革命以前不可同日而語，因為資産階級已經強大起來。剛上臺的路易十八不得不頒布新憲法，實行君主立憲，嚮資産階級做出讓步，以維護搖搖欲墜的政權。資産階級雖然失去了政治權力，卻憑藉經濟上的實力與貴族相抗衡。到了復闢王朝後期，資産階級不僅在城市，而且在貴族保持廣泛影響的農村，都把貴族打得落花流水。復闢王朝實際上大勢已去。巴爾紮剋比同時代作傢更敏銳，獨具慧眼地觀察到這個重大社會現象。
高老頭-【相關評論】
“《高老頭》還成功地塑造了青年野心傢拉斯蒂涅和沒落貴夫人鮑賽昂的形象。前者原為一個外省貴族青年，想來巴黎進大學重振傢業，但目睹上流社會的揮金如土、燈紅酒緑，他往上爬的欲望倍增，
他在鮑賽昂子爵夫人和逃犯伏特冷的唆使下，日益喪失正直的良心，開始為金錢而出賣正直，特別見證了高老頭的兩個女兒對待父親象榨幹的檸檬一般以後，更堅定了嚮資産階級的道路走去的决心。《高老頭》中主要描寫了他野心傢性格形成的過程，在以後的一係列作品中他更一發不可收拾，靠出賣道德和良心竟當上了副國務秘書和貴族院議員，而一切的取得都依賴於極端利己主義原則。鮑賽昂子爵夫人是巴爾紮剋為貴族階級唱的一麯無盡的輓歌，她出身名門貴族，是巴黎社交界的皇后，衹因缺乏金錢而被情人拋棄，被迫退出巴黎上流社會，高貴的門第再也敵不過金錢的勢力，她在後來的小說中因為同樣的原因又一次被金錢出賣。她的遭遇告訴人們，貴族階級除了失敗之外不可能有更好的命運，金錢纔是這個世界的主宰。
《高老頭》在藝術上很嚴謹，作者設置了典型環境，讓典型人物活動於其中，使人與人的金錢關係與環境相契合，書中安排了四條情節綫索，以拉斯蒂涅的墮落為主綫，其它幾條起輔助作用，縱橫交錯又脈絡分明；典型人物的刻劃是巴爾紮剋的最大特色，不論是外貌描寫還是心理刻劃，甚至一個細節，如高老頭每吃一塊面包都要放在鼻下嗅一嗅，都使人物更鮮明生動；人物語言的個性化也是作者一大功力，貴族沙竜中的語言與逃犯的語言絶不一樣。”
高老頭-【精彩片段】
高老頭臨死前想見女兒一面,讓人去叫他的女兒,可兩個女兒誰也沒來。
高裏奧不出聲了，仿佛集中全身的精力熬着痛苦。“她們在這兒，我不會叫苦了，幹麽還要叫苦呢？”他迷迷糊糊昏沉了好久。剋利斯朵夫回來，拉斯蒂涅以為高老頭睡熟了，讓傭人高聲回報他出差的情形。
“先生，我先上伯爵夫人傢，可沒法跟她說話，她和丈夫有要緊事兒。我再三央求，雷斯多先生親自出來對我說：高裏奧先生快死了是不是？哎，再好沒有。我有事，要太太待在傢裏。事情完了，她會去的。——
他似乎很生氣，這位先生。我正要出來，太太從一扇我看不見的門裏走到穿堂，告訴我，你對我父親說，我同丈夫正在商量事情，不能來。那是有關我孩子們生死的問題。但等事情一完，我就去看他。——說到男爵夫人吧，又是另外一樁事兒！我沒有見到她，不能跟她說話。老媽子說她今兒早上五點一刻纔從舞會回來，中午以前叫醒她，一定要挨駡的。等會她打鈴明我，我會告訴她，說她父親的病更重了。報告一件壞消息，不會嫌太晚的。我再三央求也沒用。哎，是呀，我也要求見男爵，他不在傢。”
“一個也不來”拉斯蒂捏嚷道，“讓我寫信給她們。”“一個也不來，”老人坐起來接着說，“她們有事，她們在睡覺，她們不會來的。我早知道了。直要臨死纔知道女兒是什麽東西！朋友，你別結婚，別生孩子！你給他們生命，他們給你死。你帶他們到世界上來，他們把你從世界上趕出去。她們不會來的！我已經知道了十年。有時我心裏這麽想，衹是不敢相信。”
高老頭死了，兩個女兒誰也沒有來，他的錢都給女兒花光了，到死連入殮的衣服都沒有，是拉斯蒂涅賣了自己的表纔給他入殮的。
拉斯蒂涅奔下樓梯，到雷斯多太太傢去了。剛纔那幕可怕的景象使他動了感情，一路義憤填胸。他走進穿堂求見雷斯多太太，人傢回報說她不能見容。
他對當差說：“我是為了她馬上要死的父親來的。”“先生，伯爵再三吩咐我們……”“既然伯爵在傢，那麽告訴他，說他嶽父快死了，我要立刻和他說話。”歐也納等了好久。“說不定他就在這個時候死了，”他心裏想。
當差帶他走進第一窖室，雷斯多先生站在壁爐前面，見了客人也不請坐。“伯爵，”拉斯蒂涅說，“令嶽在破爛的閣樓上就要斷氣了，連買木柴的錢也沒有；他馬上要死了，但等見一面女兒……”“先生，”伯爵冷冷的回答，“你大概可以看出，我對高裏奧先生沒有什麽好感。他教壞了我太太，造成我家庭的不幸。我把他當做擾亂我安寧的敵人。他死也好，活也好，我全不在意。你瞧，這是我對他的情分。社會盡可以責備我，我纔不在乎呢。我現在要處理的事，比顧慮那些傻瓜的闊言閑語緊要得多。至於我太太，她現在那個模樣沒法出門，我也不讓她出門。請你告訴她父親，衹消她對我，對我的孩子，盡完了她的責任，她會去看他的。要是她愛她的父親，幾分鐘內她就可以自由……”
“伯爵，我沒有權利批評你的行為，你是你太太的主人。至少我能相信你是講信義的吧？請
你答應我一件事，就是告訴她，說她父親沒有一天好活了，因為她不去送終，已經在咒她了！”雷斯多註意到歐也納憤憤不平的語氣，回答道：“你自己去說吧。”
拉斯蒂涅跟着伯爵走進伯爵夫人平時起坐的客廳。她淚人兒似的埋在沙發裏，那副痛不欲生的模樣叫他看了可憐。她不敢望拉斯蒂涅，先怯生生的瞧了瞧丈夫，眼睛的神氣表示她精神肉體都被專橫的丈夫壓倒了。伯爵側了側腦袋，她纔敢開口：“先生，我都聽到了。告訴我父親，他要知道我現在的處境，一定會原諒我。想不到要受這種刑罰簡直受不了。可是我要反抗到底，”她對地的丈夫說。“我也有兒女。請你對父親說，不管表面上怎麽樣，在父親面前我並沒有錯，”她無可奈何的對歐也納說。
那女的經歷的苦難，歐也納不難想象，便呆呆的走了出來。聽到特·雷斯多先生的口吻，他知道自己白跑了一趟，阿娜斯大齊已經失去自由。
接着他趕到特·紐沁根太太傢，發覺她還在床上。“我不舒服呀，朋友，”她說。“從跳舞會出來受了涼，我怕要害肺炎呢，我等醫生來……”歐也納打斷了她的話，說道：“哪怕死神已經到了你身邊，爬也得爬到你父親跟前去。他在叫你！你要聽到他一聲，馬上不覺得你自己害病了。”
“歐也納，父親的病也許不象你說的那麽嚴重；可是我要在你眼裏有什麽不是，我纔難過死呢；所以我一定聽你的吩咐。我知道，倘若我這一回出去鬧出一場大病來，父親要傷心死的。我等醫生來過了就走。”她一眼看不見歐也納身上的表鏈，便叫道：“喲！怎麽你的表沒有啦？”歐也納臉上紅了一塊。“歐也納！歐也納！倘使你已經把它賣了，丟了，……哦！那太豈有此理了。”
大學生伏在但斐納床上，湊着她耳朵說：“你要知道麽？哼！好，告訴你吧！你父親一個錢沒有了，今晚上要把他入礆的屍衣都沒法買。你送我的表在當鋪裏，我錢都光了。”
但斐納猛的從床上跳下，奔嚮書櫃，抓起錢袋遞給拉斯蒂捏，打着鈴嚷道：“我去我去，歐也納。讓我穿衣服，我簡直是禽獸了！去吧，我會趕在你前面！” 她回頭叫老媽子：“丹蘭士，請老爺立刻上來跟我說話。”
高老頭-【藝術成就】
《高老頭》集中表現了巴爾紮剋現實主義創作藝術的主要特色。
■精細而富有特徵的典型環境
巴爾紮剋非常重視詳細而逼真的環境描繪，一方面是為了再現生活，更重要的是為了刻畫人物性格。作品圍繞拉斯蒂涅的活動，描寫了巴黎不同等級、不同階層的人們的生活環境；拉丁區的伏蓋公寓，形似牢獄的黃色屋
子，到處散發着“閉塞的、黴爛的、酸腐的氣味”，塞滿了骯髒油膩、殘破醜陋的器皿和傢具，這是下層人物的寄居之地。唐打區內高老頭的兩個女兒傢裏，雖有金碧輝煌的房子、貴重的器物，但“毫無氣派的回廊”，挂滿意大利油畫的客廳卻“裝飾得像咖啡館”，這顯示了作為新貴的資産階級暴發戶們俗不可耐的排場。聖日爾曼區古老的鮑賽昂府則顯示出完全不同的氣派，院中套着精壯馬匹的華麗馬車，穿着金鑲邊大紅製服的門丁，兩邊供滿鮮花的大樓梯以及衹有灰和粉紅色的小巧玲瓏的客室，這些精雅絶倫的陳設、別出心裁的佈置都襯托出上流社會貴族“領袖”的風雅超群。這些精細而富有特徵的環境描寫，有利於展示其對人間性格形成的影響。當拉斯蒂涅從雷斯多夫人和鮑賽昂夫人兩處訪問後回到棲身的伏蓋公寓時，作品寫道：“走入氣味難聞的飯廳，十八個食客好似馬槽前的牲口一般正在吃飯。他覺得這副窮酸相跟飯廳的景象醜惡已極。環境轉變太突兀了，對比太強烈了，格外刺激他的野心……”已經享受過上流社會生活的拉斯蒂涅再也不肯自甘貧賤，最後，他决心弄髒雙手，抹黑良心，不顧一切地嚮上撲。拉斯蒂涅的墮落是這種特定的典型環境所决定的。
■人物性格的典型化
巴爾紮剋不僅塑造了高裏奧、拉斯蒂涅、鮑賽昂夫人、伏脫冷等典型形象，而且在其他人物形象的塑造中也做到了共性與個性的統一。雷斯多伯爵夫婦和紐沁根男爵夫婦雖然有貴族的頭銜，實際上都是資産者。他們既有追求個人私利的共同特性，又都是獨具個性的典型。銀行傢紐沁根心目中衹有金錢，他對待妻子尋求外遇的態度很明朗：“我允許你鬍攪，你也得讓我犯罪，教那些可憐蟲傾傢蕩産。”雷斯多伯爵對妻子的美着了迷，雖聽憑她和瑪剋勾搭，卻有一定限度，這和他的貴族門第觀念有關。他知道妻子偷賣祖傳鑽石後，想方設法贖回，讓她戴着參加舞會，以維護門第的尊嚴。
阿娜斯塔齊和但斐那都是高老頭的女兒，但兩姊妹各有自己的個性。前者身材高大、結實、黑發，眼睛炯炯有神，進宮謁見過皇上，不把妹妹放在眼裏。後者嬌小、金發，極有風韻，自知社會地位不高，陪嫁被丈夫侵占，又遭情夫遺棄，性格憂鬱善感，經常懷念童年時代的幸福生活。但她們倆都是虛榮心極強的利己主義者，為了滿足欲望，不惜榨幹父親的積蓄。阿娜斯塔齊嚮父親要錢，往往用勒索的方法，但斐那則用撒嬌哄騙的辦法。
■精緻的結構
小說以高老頭和拉斯蒂涅的故事為兩條主要綫索，又穿插了伏脫冷、鮑賽昂夫人的故事。幾條綫索錯綜交織，頭緒看似紛繁而實際主次分明、脈絡清楚、有條不紊。作品以敘述高老頭被女兒榨幹
錢財遭拋棄為中心情節，以拉斯蒂涅為中心人物，通過他的活動穿針引綫，將上層社會與下層社會聯繫起來，將貴族沙竜與資産者客廳連結起來。隨着高老頭之謎在拉斯蒂涅眼前展現、解開，情節步步推嚮高潮。伏脫冷被捕、鮑賽昂夫人被棄、高老頭慘死，拉斯蒂涅都是目睹者、見證人。社會的醜惡證實了他接受的反面教育，高老頭埋葬之日，也是拉斯蒂涅的青年時代結束之時。幾條綫索緊密交織、環環相扣、步步深入，起着互相深化、互為補充的作用，從而深刻地表現了作品的主題。
■對比手法的廣泛運用
藝術上的對比手法在《高老頭》中運用得十分廣泛。伏蓋公寓與鮑賽昂府的強烈對比，不僅促使拉斯蒂涅個人野心的猛烈膨脹，而且表明不管是赫赫聲威的豪門大戶還是窮酸暗淡的陋室客棧，一樣充斥着拜金主義，一樣存在着卑劣無恥。高貴莊重的鮑賽昂夫人與粗俗強悍的伏脫冷形成鮮明對比，一個文質彬彬，一個直言不諱，但不同的語言卻又揭示了同樣的道理，而他們兩人看透社會的理論又與自己生活中的慘敗成為反襯，更加深了悲劇的意味。此外，還有高老頭女兒的窮奢極欲與高老頭的貧苦窘睏的對比，鮑賽昂夫人退隱時熱鬧的場面與凄涼心情的對比等等。這種鮮明對比的手法，使作品的主題更加鮮明突出。
高老頭-巴爾紮剋—文學上的拿破侖
巴爾紮剋（ Honore de Balzac 1799 ～ 1850 ） 19 世紀法國偉大的批判現實主義作傢，歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人和傑出代表。一生創作 96 部長、中、短篇小說和隨筆，總名為《人間喜劇》。其中代表作為《歐也妮·葛朗臺》、《高老頭》。100 多年來，他的作品傳遍了全世界，對世界文學的發展和人類進步産生了巨大的影響。馬剋思、恩格斯稱贊他“是超群的小說傢”、“現實主義大師”。
巴爾紮剋 1799 年 5 月 20 日出生於一個法國大革命後致富的資産階級家庭，法科學校畢業後，拒絶家庭為他選擇的受人尊敬的法律職業，而立志當文學家。為了獲得獨立生活和從事創作的物質保障，他曾試筆並插足商業，從事出版印刷業，但都以破産告終。這一切都為他認識社會、描寫社會提供了極為珍貴的第一手材料。他不斷追求和探索，對哲學、經濟學、歷史、自然科學、神學等領域進行了深入研究，積纍了極為廣博的知識。
1829 年，巴爾紮剋完成長篇小說《舒昂黨人》，這部取材於現實生活的作品為他帶來巨大聲譽，也為法國批判現實主義文學放下第一塊基石，巴爾紮剋將《舒昂黨人》和計劃要寫的一百四五十部小說總命名為《人間喜劇》，並為之寫了《前言》，闡述了他的現實主義創作方法和基本原則，從理論上為法國批判現實主義文學奠定了基礎。
長期的辛勞嚴重損害了巴爾紮剋的健康，剛過50歲，他就重病纏身了。在巴爾紮剋生命垂危時刻，他仍然沉浸在自己製造的世界裏，他懇求醫生延長他的生命，他就能再寫出一部作品。 1850 年 8 月 18 日 晚上 11 點半 ，巴爾紮剋永遠閉上了他的那雙洞察一切的眼睛，結束了他辛勤勞累的一生。
巴爾紮剋在藝術上取得巨大成就，他在小說結構方面匠心獨運，小說結構多種多樣，不拘一格、並善於將集中概括與精確描摹相結合，以外形反映內心本質等手法來塑造人物，他還善於以精細人微、生動逼真的環境描寫再現時代風貌。恩格斯稱贊巴爾紮剋的《人間喜劇》寫出了貴族階級的沒落衰敗和資産階級的上升發展，提供了社會各個領域無比豐富的生動細節和形象化的歷史材料，“甚至在經濟的細節方面（如革命以後動産和不動産的重新分配），我學到的東西也要比從當時所有職業歷史學家、經濟學院和統計學家那裏學到的全部東西還要多”。（恩格斯：《恩格斯緻瑪·哈剋奈斯》）
巴爾紮剋以自己的創作在世界文學史上樹立起不朽的豐碑。他以對文學的熱愛成就了一道美麗的文學風景！
Originally published in serial form during the winter of 1834–35, Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's most important novel.[1] It marks the first serious use by the author of characters who had appeared in other books, a technique that distinguishes Balzac's fiction. The novel is also noted as an example of his realist style, using minute details to create character and subtext.
The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, which brought about profound changes in French society; the struggle of individuals to secure upper-class status is ubiquitous in the book. The city of Paris also impresses itself on the characters – especially young Rastignac, who grew up in the provinces of southern France. Balzac analyzes, through Goriot and others, the nature of family and marriage, providing a pessimistic view of these institutions.
The novel was released to mixed reviews. Some critics praised the author for his complex characters and attention to detail; others condemned him for his many depictions of corruption and greed. A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage. It gave rise to the French expression "Rastignac", a social climber willing to use any means to better his situation.
《唐·吉訶德》是16世紀西班牙偉大作傢塞萬提斯的代表作，是文藝復興時期歐洲第一部現實主義小說。 小說寫的是唐·吉訶德因看騎士小說入迷，自詡為遊俠騎士，要遍遊世界去除強扶弱，維護正義。帶着幻想中的騎士狂熱，把風車當成巨人，把窮客店當成豪華的城堡，把理發時的銅盆當做魔法師的頭盔，把羊群當做軍隊……他出於善良的動機，往往得到相反的結果。最終受盡挫折，一事無成，回鄉鬱鬱而死。
作者以諷刺誇張的藝術手法，通過唐·吉訶德荒誕離奇的遊俠行徑，巧妙地把苦難中的16世紀末、17世紀初的西班牙社會展現在讀者面前，以史詩般的規模描繪了這個時代的廣阔畫面，有力地抨擊了西班牙社會的黑暗。
唐·吉訶德[小說]-可笑的瘋子，可悲的英雄
唐·吉訶德是個瘋子，但是個高貴的瘋子，他的悲劇正是所有人文主義者的悲劇，想要憑一己之力量去改造社會。他對生活中的一切邪惡衹有一個决斷——戰鬥。他的憨直正像他那用來樹立人間正義的長矛一樣，無私無畏，人們笑他傻笑他癡，雖屢戰屢敗，卻仍勇往直前。當談到騎士小說時，他的行為固然滑稽可笑，但衹要不涉及騎士道，我們不得不敬重他的光明磊落、正直勇敢，不得不欽佩他的學識，對他的所受挫折也不由得灑一掬同情之淚。
《唐·吉訶德》的創作過程及意義
16、17世紀之交，西班牙騎士小說泛濫，它用虛構的情節、幻想的故事，招攬讀者，毒害西班牙人民的精神。塞萬提斯就是要“把騎士小說的那一套掃除幹淨”。1602年他開始動筆創作《唐·吉訶德》，小說出版後風靡一時。《唐·吉訶德》以史詩般的規模，真實地反映了16、17世紀之交的西班牙社會現實，揭露了正走嚮衰落的西班牙王國的種種矛盾。但小說的反封建、反教會的傾嚮性和對騎士文學的嘲諷，引起了保守分子的仇恨。1614年有人化名阿隆索·費爾南德斯·阿維利亞納達出版《唐·吉訶德續集》，對原作的主題和形象大加歪麯。塞萬提斯非常氣憤，加緊趕寫，於1615年出版了真正的《唐·吉訶德》第二捲。
唐·吉訶德是一個誇張式的理想化人物，塞萬提斯在塑造唐·吉訶德典型形象時，傾註了自己的理想和感情。他說：“唐·吉訶德專為我而生，我此生也衹是為了他。”
Published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615), Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is written in the picaresco style of the late sixteenth century. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as ingenioso (Spanish) means "to be quick with inventiveness".[2] Although the novel is farcical on the surface, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Quixote has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but in much of art and music, inspiring works by Pablo Picasso and Richard Strauss. The contrasts between the tall, thin, fancy-struck, and idealistic Quixote and the fat, squat, world-weary Panza is a motif echoed ever since the book’s publication, and Don Quixote's imaginings are the butt of outrageous and cruel practical jokes in the novel. Even faithful and simple Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at certain points. The novel is considered a satire of orthodoxy, veracity, and even nationalism. In going beyond mere storytelling to exploring the individualism of his characters, Cervantes helped move beyond the narrow literary conventions of the chivalric romance literature that he spoofed, which consists of straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the knightly virtues of the hero.
Farce makes use of punning and similar verbal playfulness. Character-naming in Don Quixote makes ample figural use of contradiction, inversion, and irony, such as the names Rocinante[3] (a reversal) and Dulcinea (an allusion to illusion), and the word quixote itself, possibly a pun on quijada (jaw) but certainly cuixot (Catalan: thighs), a reference to a horse's rump.[4] As a military term, the word quijote refers to cuisses, part of a full suit of plate armour protecting the thighs. The Spanish suffix -ote denotes the superlative—for example, grande means large, but grandote means extra large. Following this example, Quixote would suggest 'The Great Quijano', a play on words that makes much sense in light of the character's delusions of grandeur.
The world of ordinary people, from shepherds to tavern-owners and inn-keepers, which figures in Don Quixote, was groundbreaking. The character of Don Quixote became so well-known in its time that the word quixotic was quickly adopted by many languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote’s steed, Rocinante, are emblems of Western literary culture. The phrase "tilting at windmills" to describe an act of attacking imaginary enemies derives from an iconic scene in the book.
Because of its widespread influence, Don Quixote also helped cement the modern Spanish language. The opening sentence of the book created a classic Spanish cliché with the phrase de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, "whose name I do not care to recall."
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.
[Translation] In a place of La Mancha, whose name I would not like to remember, there lived, not very long ago, one of those gentlemen who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound.
Plot summary
Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading.
First quest
Gustave Doré: Don Quixote de La Mancha and Sancho Panza, 1863
He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armor, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "Rocinante." He designates a neighboring farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this.
He sets out in the early morning and ends up at an inn, which he believes to be a castle. He asks the innkeeper, who he thinks to be the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, where he becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. The innkeeper then "dubs" him a knight, and sends him on his way. He frees a young boy who is tied to a tree by his master, because the boy had the audacity to ask his master for the wages the boy had earned but had not yet been paid (who is promptly beaten as soon as Quixote leaves). Don Quixote has a run-in with traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, one of which severely beats Don Quixote and leaves him on the side of the road. Don Quixote is found and returned to his home by a neighboring peasant, Pedro Crespo.[5]
Second quest
Don Quixote plots an escape. Meanwhile, his niece, the housekeeper, the parish curate, and the local barber secretly burn most of the books of chivalry, and seal up his library pretending that a magician has carried it off. Don Quixote approaches another neighbor, Sancho Panza, and asks him to be his squire, promising him governorship of an island. The dull-witted Sancho agrees, and the pair sneak off in the early dawn. It is here that their series of famous adventures begin, starting with Don Quixote's attack on windmills that he believes to be ferocious giants.
In the course of their travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts, and scorned lovers. These encounters are magnified by Don Quixote’s imagination into chivalrous quests. The Don’s tendency to intervene violently in matters which don’t concern him, and his habit of not paying his debts, result in many privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often getting the worst of it). Finally, Don Quixote is persuaded to return to his home village. The author hints that there was a third quest, but says that records of it have been lost.
Part Two
Although the two parts are now normally published as a single work, Don Quixote, Part Two was actually a sequel published ten years after the original novel. Don Quixote and Sancho are now assumed to be famous throughout the land because of the adventures recounted in Part One. While Part One was mostly farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Don Quixote's imaginings are made the butt of outrageously cruel practical jokes carried out by wealthy patrons. Even Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at one point. Trapped into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three dirty and ragged peasant girls, and tells Quixote that they are Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees the peasant girls, Sancho pretends that Quixote suffers from a cruel spell which does not permit him to see the truth. Sancho eventually gets his imaginary island governorship and unexpectedly proves to be wise and practical; though this, too, ends in disaster.
Conclusion
Don Quixote, his horse Rocinante and his squire Sancho Panza after an unsuccessful attack on a windmill. By Gustave Doré
The cruel practical jokes eventually lead Don Quixote to a great melancholy. The novel ends with Don Quixote regaining his full sanity, and renouncing all chivalry. But, the melancholy remains, and grows worse. Sancho tries to restore his faith, but his attempt to resurrect Alonso's quixotic alter-ego fails, and Alonso Quixano dies, sane and broken.
Other stories
Both parts of Don Quixote contain a number of stories which do not directly involve the two main characters, but which are narrated by some of the picaresque figures encountered by the Don and Sancho during their travels. One of the most famous, known as "The Curious Impertinent," is found in Part One, Book Three. This story, read to a group of travelers at an inn, tells of a Florentine nobleman, Anselmo, who becomes obsessed with testing his wife's fidelity, and talks his close friend Lothario into attempting to seduce her, with disastrous results for all.
Several abridged editions have been published which delete some or all of the extra tales in order to concentrate on the central narrative.
作者以諷刺誇張的藝術手法，通過唐·吉訶德荒誕離奇的遊俠行徑，巧妙地把苦難中的16世紀末、17世紀初的西班牙社會展現在讀者面前，以史詩般的規模描繪了這個時代的廣阔畫面，有力地抨擊了西班牙社會的黑暗。
唐·吉訶德[小說]-可笑的瘋子，可悲的英雄
唐·吉訶德是個瘋子，但是個高貴的瘋子，他的悲劇正是所有人文主義者的悲劇，想要憑一己之力量去改造社會。他對生活中的一切邪惡衹有一個决斷——戰鬥。他的憨直正像他那用來樹立人間正義的長矛一樣，無私無畏，人們笑他傻笑他癡，雖屢戰屢敗，卻仍勇往直前。當談到騎士小說時，他的行為固然滑稽可笑，但衹要不涉及騎士道，我們不得不敬重他的光明磊落、正直勇敢，不得不欽佩他的學識，對他的所受挫折也不由得灑一掬同情之淚。
《唐·吉訶德》的創作過程及意義
16、17世紀之交，西班牙騎士小說泛濫，它用虛構的情節、幻想的故事，招攬讀者，毒害西班牙人民的精神。塞萬提斯就是要“把騎士小說的那一套掃除幹淨”。1602年他開始動筆創作《唐·吉訶德》，小說出版後風靡一時。《唐·吉訶德》以史詩般的規模，真實地反映了16、17世紀之交的西班牙社會現實，揭露了正走嚮衰落的西班牙王國的種種矛盾。但小說的反封建、反教會的傾嚮性和對騎士文學的嘲諷，引起了保守分子的仇恨。1614年有人化名阿隆索·費爾南德斯·阿維利亞納達出版《唐·吉訶德續集》，對原作的主題和形象大加歪麯。塞萬提斯非常氣憤，加緊趕寫，於1615年出版了真正的《唐·吉訶德》第二捲。
唐·吉訶德是一個誇張式的理想化人物，塞萬提斯在塑造唐·吉訶德典型形象時，傾註了自己的理想和感情。他說：“唐·吉訶德專為我而生，我此生也衹是為了他。”
Published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615), Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is written in the picaresco style of the late sixteenth century. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as ingenioso (Spanish) means "to be quick with inventiveness".[2] Although the novel is farcical on the surface, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Quixote has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but in much of art and music, inspiring works by Pablo Picasso and Richard Strauss. The contrasts between the tall, thin, fancy-struck, and idealistic Quixote and the fat, squat, world-weary Panza is a motif echoed ever since the book’s publication, and Don Quixote's imaginings are the butt of outrageous and cruel practical jokes in the novel. Even faithful and simple Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at certain points. The novel is considered a satire of orthodoxy, veracity, and even nationalism. In going beyond mere storytelling to exploring the individualism of his characters, Cervantes helped move beyond the narrow literary conventions of the chivalric romance literature that he spoofed, which consists of straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the knightly virtues of the hero.
Farce makes use of punning and similar verbal playfulness. Character-naming in Don Quixote makes ample figural use of contradiction, inversion, and irony, such as the names Rocinante[3] (a reversal) and Dulcinea (an allusion to illusion), and the word quixote itself, possibly a pun on quijada (jaw) but certainly cuixot (Catalan: thighs), a reference to a horse's rump.[4] As a military term, the word quijote refers to cuisses, part of a full suit of plate armour protecting the thighs. The Spanish suffix -ote denotes the superlative—for example, grande means large, but grandote means extra large. Following this example, Quixote would suggest 'The Great Quijano', a play on words that makes much sense in light of the character's delusions of grandeur.
The world of ordinary people, from shepherds to tavern-owners and inn-keepers, which figures in Don Quixote, was groundbreaking. The character of Don Quixote became so well-known in its time that the word quixotic was quickly adopted by many languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote’s steed, Rocinante, are emblems of Western literary culture. The phrase "tilting at windmills" to describe an act of attacking imaginary enemies derives from an iconic scene in the book.
Because of its widespread influence, Don Quixote also helped cement the modern Spanish language. The opening sentence of the book created a classic Spanish cliché with the phrase de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, "whose name I do not care to recall."
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.
[Translation] In a place of La Mancha, whose name I would not like to remember, there lived, not very long ago, one of those gentlemen who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound.
Plot summary
Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading.
First quest
Gustave Doré: Don Quixote de La Mancha and Sancho Panza, 1863
He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armor, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "Rocinante." He designates a neighboring farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this.
He sets out in the early morning and ends up at an inn, which he believes to be a castle. He asks the innkeeper, who he thinks to be the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, where he becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. The innkeeper then "dubs" him a knight, and sends him on his way. He frees a young boy who is tied to a tree by his master, because the boy had the audacity to ask his master for the wages the boy had earned but had not yet been paid (who is promptly beaten as soon as Quixote leaves). Don Quixote has a run-in with traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, one of which severely beats Don Quixote and leaves him on the side of the road. Don Quixote is found and returned to his home by a neighboring peasant, Pedro Crespo.[5]
Second quest
Don Quixote plots an escape. Meanwhile, his niece, the housekeeper, the parish curate, and the local barber secretly burn most of the books of chivalry, and seal up his library pretending that a magician has carried it off. Don Quixote approaches another neighbor, Sancho Panza, and asks him to be his squire, promising him governorship of an island. The dull-witted Sancho agrees, and the pair sneak off in the early dawn. It is here that their series of famous adventures begin, starting with Don Quixote's attack on windmills that he believes to be ferocious giants.
In the course of their travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts, and scorned lovers. These encounters are magnified by Don Quixote’s imagination into chivalrous quests. The Don’s tendency to intervene violently in matters which don’t concern him, and his habit of not paying his debts, result in many privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often getting the worst of it). Finally, Don Quixote is persuaded to return to his home village. The author hints that there was a third quest, but says that records of it have been lost.
Part Two
Although the two parts are now normally published as a single work, Don Quixote, Part Two was actually a sequel published ten years after the original novel. Don Quixote and Sancho are now assumed to be famous throughout the land because of the adventures recounted in Part One. While Part One was mostly farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Don Quixote's imaginings are made the butt of outrageously cruel practical jokes carried out by wealthy patrons. Even Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at one point. Trapped into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three dirty and ragged peasant girls, and tells Quixote that they are Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees the peasant girls, Sancho pretends that Quixote suffers from a cruel spell which does not permit him to see the truth. Sancho eventually gets his imaginary island governorship and unexpectedly proves to be wise and practical; though this, too, ends in disaster.
Conclusion
Don Quixote, his horse Rocinante and his squire Sancho Panza after an unsuccessful attack on a windmill. By Gustave Doré
The cruel practical jokes eventually lead Don Quixote to a great melancholy. The novel ends with Don Quixote regaining his full sanity, and renouncing all chivalry. But, the melancholy remains, and grows worse. Sancho tries to restore his faith, but his attempt to resurrect Alonso's quixotic alter-ego fails, and Alonso Quixano dies, sane and broken.
Other stories
Both parts of Don Quixote contain a number of stories which do not directly involve the two main characters, but which are narrated by some of the picaresque figures encountered by the Don and Sancho during their travels. One of the most famous, known as "The Curious Impertinent," is found in Part One, Book Three. This story, read to a group of travelers at an inn, tells of a Florentine nobleman, Anselmo, who becomes obsessed with testing his wife's fidelity, and talks his close friend Lothario into attempting to seduce her, with disastrous results for all.
Several abridged editions have been published which delete some or all of the extra tales in order to concentrate on the central narrative.
《簡·愛》是英國十九世紀著名的女作傢夏洛蒂·勃朗特的代表作，人們普遍認為《簡·愛》是夏洛蒂·勃朗特“詩意的生平”的寫照，是一部具有自傳色彩的作品。夏洛蒂·勃朗特、艾米莉·勃朗特、安妮·勃朗特和勃朗寧夫人構成那個時代英國婦女最高榮譽的完美的三位一體。
《簡·愛》是一部帶有自傳色彩的長篇小說，它闡釋了這樣一個主題：人的價值＝尊嚴＋愛。《簡·愛》剛出版時,作者夏洛蒂勃朗特用的筆名是柯勒貝爾。以至於之後她的姐妹們出的書都被誤認為是她寫的。好在她之後親自在《簡·愛》再版時澄清事實。
《簡·愛》的作者夏洛蒂·勃朗特和《呼嘯山莊》的作者艾米莉是姐妹。雖然兩人生活在同一社會，家庭環境中，性格卻大不相同，夏洛蒂.勃朗特顯得更加的溫柔，更加的清純，更加的喜歡追求一些美好的東西，儘管她傢境貧窮，從小失去了母愛，父愛也很少，再加上她身材矮小，容貌不美，但也許就是這樣一種靈魂深處的很深的自卑，反映在她的性格上就是一種非常敏感的自尊，以自尊作為她內心深處的自卑的補償。她描寫的簡。愛也是一個不美的，矮小的女人，但是她有着極其強烈的自尊心。她堅定不移地去追求一種光明的，聖潔的，美好的生活。
《簡·愛》-故事梗概
簡·愛的父親是個窮牧師，當她還在幼年時，父母就染病雙雙去世。簡·愛被送到蓋茨海德莊園的舅母裏德太太傢撫養，裏德先生臨死前曾囑咐妻子好好照顧簡·愛。簡·愛在裏德太太傢的地位，連使女都不如，受盡了表兄表姊妹的欺侮。一天表兄又打她了，她回手反抗，卻被舅母關進紅房子裏，她的舅舅裏德先生就死在這間屋子裏。她被幻想中的鬼魂嚇昏了過去。重病一場，過了很久纔慢慢恢復健康。
她再也不想呆在裏德太太傢了，裏德太太就把她送進達羅沃德孤兒院。孤兒院院長是個冷酷的偽君子，他用種種辦法從精神和肉體上摧殘孤兒。簡與孤兒海倫結成好友，教師潭泊爾小姐很關心她。在孤兒院裏一場傳染性的傷寒，奪走了許多降兒的生命，海倫就在這場傷寒中死去，這對簡·愛 打擊很大。
簡畢業後留校當了兩年教師，她受不了那裏的孤寂、冷漠，登廣告找到了一個家庭教師的工作，於是她來到了桑費爾德莊園。在桑費爾德莊園衹有莊園主羅徹斯特和他的私生女阿戴爾·瓦倫斯，而羅徹斯特經常到國外旅行，所以簡到桑費爾德好幾天，也沒見到羅徹斯特。
一天黃昏，簡外出散步，驚了剛剛從外面回來的羅徹斯特的馬，羅徹斯特從馬上摔了下來，簡急忙上前去扶他，回到傢後簡纔知道他便是莊園主羅徹斯特。羅徹斯特是個性格陰鬱而又喜怒無常的人，他和簡經常為某種思想新辯論不休。
在桑費爾德莊園不斷發生奇怪的事情。有一天夜裏，簡被一陣奇怪的笑聲驚醒，發現羅徹斯特的房門開着，床上着了火，她叫醒羅徹斯特並撲滅火。羅徹斯特告訴簡三樓住着一個女栽縫格雷斯·普爾，她神精錯亂，時常發出令人毛骨悚然的狂笑聲，並要她對此事嚴守秘密。
羅徹斯特經常參加舞會，一天他把客人請到傢裏來玩，人們都以為在這場舞會上羅徹斯特會嚮布蘭奇小姐求婚。在宴會上羅徹斯特堅持要簡也到客廳裏去，客人們對簡的太度十分輕慢，羅徹卻邀請簡跳舞，簡感覺到自己對羅徹斯特發生感情。
一天，羅徹斯特外出，傢裏來了一個蒙着蓋頭的吉卜賽人。當輪到給簡算命時，簡發現這個神秘的吉卜賽人就是羅徹斯特，他想藉此試探簡對他的感情。這時莊園裏又來了個名梅森的陌生人，當晚他被三樓的神秘女人咬傷了，簡幫羅徹斯特把他秘密送走。
不久，裏德太太派人來找簡，說她病危要見簡一面。回到舅母傢中，裏德太太給她一封信，這封信是三年前簡的叔父寄來的，嚮她打聽侄女的消息，並把自己的遺産交給簡。裏德太太謊稱簡在孤兒院病死了，直到臨終前纔良心發現把真相告訴簡。
簡又回到桑費爾德莊園感覺像回到傢一樣。回來後，羅徹斯特嚮她未婚，簡答應了，並高興地準備婚禮。婚禮前夜，簡從夢中驚醒，看到一個身材高大、面目可憎的女人正在戴她的婚紗，然後把婚紗撕成碎片。羅徹斯特告訴她那不過是一個夢，第二天當簡醒來時發現婚紗真的成了碎片。
婚禮如期舉行，一位不速之客闖進了教堂，聲稱婚禮不能進行，他說羅徹斯特15 年前娶梅森先生的妹妹伯莎·梅森為妻。羅徹斯特承認了這一事實，並領人們看被關在三樓的瘋女人，那就是他的合法妻子。她有遺傳性精神病史，就是她在羅徹斯特的房間放火，也是她撕碎簡的婚紗。
簡悲痛欲絶地離開了桑費爾德莊園。她的僅有的積蓄花光了，沿途乞討，最後暈倒在牧師聖約翰傢門前，被聖約翰和他的兩個妹妹救了。簡住了下來，聖約翰為她謀了一個鄉村教師的職位。
不久，聖約翰接到家庭律師的通知，說他的舅舅約翰簡去世了，留給簡二萬英鎊，要聖約翰幫助尋找簡。聖約翰發現簡是他的表妹，簡執意要與他們分享遺産。聖約翰準備去印度傳教，臨行前嚮簡求婚，但他坦率地告訴她，他要娶她並不是因為愛她，而是他需要一個很有教養的助手。簡覺得應該報答他的恩情，但遲遲不肯答應他。當夜，聖約翰在荒原上等待簡的答復，就在簡要作出决定的時候，她仿佛聽到羅徹斯特在遙遠的地方呼喊她的名字“簡，回來吧！簡，回來吧！”她决定回到羅徹斯特身邊。
當簡回到桑費爾德莊園時，整個莊園變成一片廢墟。原來幾個月前，在一個風雨交加的夜晚，瘋女人伯莎放火燒毀了整個莊園，羅徹斯特為了救她，被燒瞎了雙眼，孤獨地生活在幾英裏外的一個農場裏。簡趕到傢場，嚮他吐露自己的愛情，他們終於結婚了。 兩年之後，治好了羅徹斯特的一隻眼睛，他看到了簡為他生的第一個孩子。
《簡·愛》-小說評價
《簡·愛》是一本具有多年歷史的文學著作。至今已152年的歷史了，它成功地塑造了英國文學史中第一個對愛情、生活、社會以及宗教都采取了獨立自主的積極進取態度和敢於鬥爭、敢於爭取自由平等地位的女性形象。
《簡·愛》是一部帶有自轉色彩的長篇小說，是英國十九世紀著名三姐妹作傢之一的夏洛蒂·勃朗特所著。這是一本用自己的心與強烈的精神追求鑄煉成的一本書，含着作者無限的情感和個性魅力，為女性贏得了一片燦爛的天空。
簡. 愛生存在一個父母雙亡，寄人籬下的環境，從小就承受着與同齡人不一樣的待遇，姨媽的嫌棄，表姐的蔑視，表哥的侮辱和毒打。這是對一個孩子的尊嚴的無情踐踏，然而幸運的是在極其刻薄的寄宿學校的生活中，簡·愛遇到了一個可愛的朋友：海倫·彭斯,海倫溫順、聰穎和無比寬容的性格一直影響着簡.愛，使之以後面對種種睏難都不再屈服抱怨，懂得了愛和忠誠。
在羅切斯特的面前,她從不因為自己是一個地位低賤的家庭教師而感到自卑，反而認為他們是平等的。不應該因為她是僕人，而不能受到別人的尊重。也正因為她的正直，高尚，純潔，心靈沒有受到世俗社會的污染，使得羅切斯特為之震撼，並把她看做了一個可以和自己在精神上平等交談的人，並且慢慢地深深愛上了她。這是簡·愛 告訴羅切斯特她必須離開的理由，但是從內心講，更深一層的東西是簡·愛意識到自己受到了欺騙，她的自尊心受到了戲弄，因為她深愛着羅切斯特,試問哪個女人能夠承受得住被自己最信任，最親密的人所欺騙呢?這樣一種非常強大的愛情力量包圍之下，在美好，富裕的生活誘惑之下，她依然要堅持自己作為個人的尊嚴，這是簡·愛最具有精神魅力的地方。
小說設計了一個很光明的結尾－－雖然羅切斯特的莊園毀了，他自己也成了一個殘廢，但我們看到，正是這樣一個條件，使簡·愛 不再在尊嚴與愛之間矛盾，而同時獲得滿足－－她在和羅切斯特結婚的時候是有尊嚴的，同時也是有愛的。任何文學作品都是作者體驗生活的結晶，從書中多少可看出作者的影子。《簡·愛》也是如此，大量的細節可以在作者的生活中得到印證。當然 《簡·愛》並不是一本自傳，作者衹是把自己豐富的生活經歷融進了一部充滿想象力的文章裏。人們知道《簡·愛》是作者生活中的寫照，但又有多少人知道作者是在怎樣的情況下寫下《簡·愛》的呢。
小說告訴我們，人的最美好的生活是人的尊嚴加愛，小說的結局給女主人公安排的就是這樣一種生活。雖然我覺得這樣的結局過於完美，甚至這種圓滿本身標志着浮淺，但是我依然尊重作者對這種美好生活的理想－－就是尊嚴加愛，畢竟在當今社會，要將人的價值＝尊嚴＋愛這道公式付之實現常常離不開金錢的幫助。人們都瘋狂地似乎為了金錢和地位而淹沒愛情。在窮與富之間選擇富，在愛與不愛之間選擇不愛。很少有人會像簡這樣為愛情為人格拋棄所有，而且義無反顧。《簡·愛》所展現給我們的正是一種化繁為簡，是一種返樸歸真，是一種追求全心付出的感覺，是一種不計得失的簡化的感情，它猶如一杯冰水，淨化每一個讀者的心靈，同時引起讀者，特別是女性讀者的共鳴。
Plot introduction
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family at Marsh's End (or Moor House) and Morton, where her cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers proposes to her; and her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester. Partly autobiographical, the novel abounds with social criticism. It is a novel considered ahead of its time. In spite of the dark, brooding elements, it has a strong sense of right and wrong, of morality at its core.
Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters and most editions are at least 400 pages long (although the preface and introduction on certain copies are liable to take up another 100). The original was published in three volumes, comprising chapters 1 to 15, 16 to 26, and 27 to 38.
Brontë dedicated the novel's second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray.
Plot summary
Chapters 1-4: Jane's childhood at Gateshead
Young Jane argues with her guardian Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. Illustration by F. H. Townsend.
A ten-year-old orphan named Jane Eyre lives with her uncle's family, the Reeds. Jane's aunt, Sarah Reed, dislikes her intensely. When her uncle dies, her aunt and the three Reed children become abusive. When bullied by her cousin John, Jane retaliates but is punished for the ensuing fight and is locked in the room where Mr. Reed died. As night falls, Jane's panicked screams rouse the house, but Mrs. Reed won't let her out. Jane faints and Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, is summoned. He talks with Jane and sympathetically suggests that she should go away to school.
Chapters 5-10: Jane's education at Lowood School
Mrs. Reed sends Jane to Lowood Institution, a charity school, and warns them that Jane is deceitful. During an inspection, Jane accidentally breaks her slate, and Mr. Brocklehurst, the self-righteous clergyman who runs the school, brands her as a liar and shames her before the entire assembly.
Jane is comforted by her friend, Helen Burns. Miss Temple, a caring teacher, facilitates Jane's self-defense and writes to Mr. Lloyd whose reply agrees with Jane's. Ultimately, Jane is publicly cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst's accusations.
Jane tries to catch Mr. Rochester's horse.
While the Brocklehurst family lives in luxury, the eighty pupils are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes. Jane's friend Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms.
When Mr. Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty are laid bare, several benefactors erect a new building and conditions at the school improve dramatically.
Chapters 11-26: Jane's time as governess at Thornfield Hall
Eight years later, Jane is a teacher employed by Alice Fairfax (the housekeeper of Thornfield Hall) as governess for Adèle Varens, a young French girl. Out walking one day, Jane encounters and helps a horseman who has sprained his ankle. On her return to Thornfield, she discovers that the horseman is Edward Rochester, Master of Thornfield Hall. Rochester is a moody, self-willed man nearly twenty years older than Jane. Adèle is his ward, belonging to a French "opera dancer" with whom he had a romantic relationship in the past. Adèle, however, is not his daughter, but is brought up by him after her mother abandons her.
Jane saves Mr. Rochester from a fire.
Miss Blanche Ingram looking in a book.
Mr. Rochester disguised as a Gypsy woman.
Bertha Mason rips Jane's wedding veil.
Mr. Rochester seems quite taken with Jane, and she enjoys his company. However, odd things begin to happen: a strange laugh is heard in the halls, a near-fatal fire mysteriously breaks out, and a guest named Mason is attacked.
Jane receives word that Mrs. Reed has suffered a stroke and is asking for her. Returning to Gateshead, she remains for over a month while her aunt lies dying. Mrs. Reed rejects Jane's efforts at reconciliation, but does give her a letter previously withheld out of spite. The letter is from John Eyre, Jane's uncle, notifying her that he wanted her to live with him in Madeira.
After returning to Thornfield, Jane broods over Rochester's impending marriage to Blanche Ingram. But on a midsummer evening, he proclaims his love for Jane and proposes. As she prepares for her wedding, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. As with previous mysterious events, Mr Rochester attributes the incident to drunkenness on the part of Grace Poole, one of his servants.
During the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr. Rochester cannot marry because he is already married to Mr. Mason's sister. Mr. Rochester bitterly admits the truth, explaining that his wife is a violent madwoman whom he keeps locked in the attic, in the care of Grace Poole. When Grace occasionally drinks too much, it gives his wife a chance to escape, and she is the true cause of Thornfield's strange events.
Mr. Rochester asks Jane to go with him to the south of France, and live as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married. Refusing to go against her principles, and despite her love for him, Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night.
Chapters 27-35: Jane's time with the Rivers family
Jane leaves Thornfield and sleeps outside.
Jane begs for food.
St. John Rivers admits Jane to Moor House.
Jane travels to the north of England. After mislaying her funds, she sleeps on the moor and begs for food, but is turned away as a beggar, a thief, or worse. Exhausted, she is saved by St. John Rivers, a young clergyman, who brings her to the home of his sisters, Diana and Mary. As she regains her health, St. John finds her a teaching position at a nearby charity school. Jane becomes warm friends with Mary and Diana, but St. John is too reserved for her to relate to, despite his efforts on her behalf. Jane sees that the brother and sisters have money-related worries, but does not enquire further.
Rosamond Oliver shows an interest in St. John.
St. John tells Jane she has inherited £20,000.
Jane considering St. John's proposal.
When the sisters leave for governess jobs in London, St. John becomes more comfortable around Jane, evidencing his own conflicts of the heart, which involve the beautiful and wealthy Rosamond Oliver. When Jane confronts him about his feelings for Miss Oliver, he confesses that he has turned away from them, because he feels called to be a missionary, and he knows that Miss Oliver would not accept such a life.
St. John discovers Jane's true identity, and astounds her by showing her a letter stating that her uncle John has died and left her his entire fortune of £20,000, equivalent to £1,560,000 in today's pounds. When Jane questions him further, St. John reveals that John is also his and his sisters' uncle. They had once hoped for a share of the inheritance, but have since resigned themselves to nothing. Jane, overjoyed by finding her family, insists on sharing the money equally with her cousins.
St. John asks Jane to accompany him to India as his wife. He asks solely because he wishes a good missionary's wife, a role in which he believes Jane will excel. She agrees to go, but refuses marriage, believing his reserve and reason incompatible with her warmth and passion. But, his powers of persuasion eventually begin to convince her to change her mind.
However, at that very moment, she suddenly seems to hear Mr. Rochester calling her name. The next morning, she leaves for Thornfield to ascertain Mr. Rochester's well-being before departing forever for India.
Chapters 36-38: Jane's reunion with Mr. Rochester
Thornfield burned to the ground by Bertha.
Jane and Mr. Rochester reunited.
Mr. Rochester's sight improving.
Jane arrives at Thornfield to find only blackened ruins. She learns that Rochester's wife set the house on fire and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. In his rescue attempts, Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him, but he fears that she will be repulsed by his condition. When Jane assures him of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, Mr. Rochester again proposes. He eventually recovers enough sight to see their first-born son.
Characters
* Jane Eyre: The protagonist of the novel and the title character. Orphaned as a baby, she struggles through her nearly loveless childhood and becomes governess at Thornfield Hall. Although she falls in love with her wealthy employer, Edward Rochester, her strong sense of conscience does not permit her to become his mistress, and she does not return to him until his insane wife is dead and she herself has come into an inheritance.
* Mr. Reed: Jane's maternal uncle, who adopts Jane when her parents die. Before his own death, he makes his wife promise to care for Jane.
* Mrs. Sarah Reed: Jane's aunt by marriage, who adopts Jane but neglects and abuses her. Her dislike of Jane continues to her death.
* John Reed: Jane's cousin, who bullies Jane constantly, sometimes in his mother's presence. He ruins himself as an adult and is believed to die by suicide.
* Eliza Reed: Jane's cousin. Bitter because she is not as attractive as her sister, she devotes herself self-righteously to religion.
* Georgiana Reed: Jane's cousin. Though spiteful and insolent, she is also beautiful and indulged. Her sister Eliza foils her marriage to a wealthy Lord.
* Bessie Lee: The plain-spoken nursemaid at Gateshead. She sometimes treats Jane kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Later she marries Robert Leaven.
* Robert Leaven: The coachman at Gateshead, who brings Jane the news of John Reed's death, which brought on Mrs. Reed's stroke.
* Mr. Lloyd: A compassionate apothecary who recommends that Jane be sent to school. Later, he writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Jane's account of her childhood and thereby clearing Jane of Mrs. Reed's charge of lying.
* Mr. Brocklehurst: The clergyman headmaster and treasurer of Lowood School, whose mistreatment of the students is eventually exposed.
* Miss Maria Temple: The kind superintendent of Lowood School, who treats Jane and Helen (and others) with respect and compassion. She helps clear Jane of Mr. Brocklehurst's false accusation of deceit.
* Miss Scatcherd: A sour and vicious teacher at Lowood.
* Helen Burns: A fellow-student and best friend of Jane's at Lowood School. She refuses to hate those who abuse her, trusting in God and turning the other cheek. She dies of consumption in Jane's arms. Some speculate that the book's author based Helen Burns on her elder sister Maria Brontë , who showed signs of dyspraxia.
* Edward Fairfax Rochester: The master of Thornfield Manor. A Byronic hero, he makes an unfortunate first marriage before he meets Jane.
* Bertha Antoinetta Mason: The violently insane first wife of Edward Rochester.
* Adèle Varens: An excitable French child to whom Jane is governess at Thornfield. She is Mr Rochester's ward and possibly his daughter. However Mr. Rochester denies this because her mother had been seeing another man behind his back.
* Mrs. Alice Fairfax: An elderly widow and housekeeper of Thornfield Manor. She treats Jane kindly and respectfully, but disapproves of her engagement to Mr Rochester.
* Blanche Ingram: A socialite whom Mr. Rochester appears to court in order to make Jane jealous. She is described as having great beauty, but displays callous behaviour and avaricious intent.
* Richard Mason: An Englishman from the West Indies, whose sister is Mr. Rochester's first wife. His appearance at Thornfield heralds the eventual revelation of Bertha Mason.
* Grace Poole: Bertha Mason's keeper. Jane is told that it is Grace Poole who causes the mysterious things to happen at Thornfield Hall.
* St. John Eyre Rivers: A clergyman who befriends Jane and turns out to be her cousin. He is Jane Eyre's cousin on her father's side. He is a devout Christian of Calvinistic leanings. By nature he is very reserved and single-minded.
* Diana and Mary Rivers: St. John's sisters and (as it turns out) Jane's cousins.
* Rosamond Oliver: A wealthy young woman who patronizes the village school where Jane teaches, and who is attracted to the Rev. St. John.
* John Eyre: Jane's paternal uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune. He never appears as a character.
Themes
Morality
Jane refuses to become Mr Rochester's paramour because of her "impassioned self-respect and moral conviction." She rejects St. John Rivers' Puritanism as much as the libertine aspects of Mr Rochester's character. Instead, she works out a morality expressed in love, independence, and forgiveness.
Religion
Throughout the novel, Jane endeavours to attain an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly happiness. She despises the hypocritical puritanism of Mr. Brocklehurst, and rejects St. John Rivers' cold devotion to his Christian duty, but neither can she bring herself to emulate Helen Burns' turning the other cheek, although she admires Helen for it. Ultimately, she rejects these three extremes and finds a middle ground in which religion serves to curb her immoderate passions but does not repress her true self.
Social class
Jane's ambiguous social position—a penniless yet moderately educated orphan from a good family—leads her to criticise discrimination based on class. Although she is educated, well-mannered, and relatively sophisticated, she is still a governess, a paid servant of low social standing, and therefore powerless. Nevertheless, Brontë possesses certain class prejudices herself, as is made clear when Jane has to remind herself that her unsophisticated village pupils at Morton "are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy."
Gender relations
A particularly important theme in the novel is the depiction of a patriarchal society. Jane attempts to assert her own identity within male-dominated society. Three of the main male characters, Brocklehurst, Mr Rochester and St. John, try to keep Jane in a subordinate position and prevent her from expressing her own thoughts and feelings. Jane escapes Brocklehurst and rejects St. John, and she only marries Mr Rochester once she is sure that their marriage is one between equals. Through Jane, Brontë opposes Victorian stereotypes about women, articulating her own feminist philosophy:
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. (Chapter XII)
Love and Passion
One of the secrets to the success of Jane Eyre lies in the way that it touches on a number of important themes while telling a compelling story. Indeed, so lively and dramatic is the story that the reader might not be fully conscious of all the thematic strands that weave through this work. Critics have argued about what comprises the main theme of Jane Eyre. There can be little doubt, however, that love and passion together form a major thematic element of the novel.
On its most simple and obvious level, Jane Eyre is a love story. The love between the orphaned and initially impoverished Jane and the wealthy but tormented Rochester is at its heart. The obstacles to the fulfillment of this love provide the main dramatic conflict in the work. However, the novel explores other types of love as well. Helen Burns, for example, exemplifies the selfless love of a friend. We also see some of the consequences of the absence of love, as in the relationship between Jane and Mrs. Reed, in the selfish relations among the Reed children, and in the mocking marriage of Rochester and Bertha. Jane realizes that the absence of love between herself and St. John Rivers would make their marriage a living death, too.
Throughout the work, Brontë suggests that a life that is not lived passionately is not lived fully. Jane undoubtedly is the central passionate character; her nature is shot through with passion. Early on, she refuses to live by Mrs. Reed's rules, which would restrict all passion. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first, but by no means her last, passionate act. Her passion for Rochester is all consuming. Significantly, however, it is not the only force that governs her life. She leaves Rochester because her moral reason tells her that it would be wrong to live with him as his mistress: "Laws and principles are not for the time when there is no temptation," she tells Rochester; "they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise against their rigor."
Blanche Ingram feels no passion for Rochester; she is only attracted to the landowner because of his wealth and social position. St. John Rivers is a more intelligent character than Blanche, but like her he also lacks the necessary passion that would allow him to live fully. His marriage proposal to Jane has no passion behind it; rather, he regards marriage as a business arrangement, with Jane as his potential junior partner in his missionary work. His lack of passion contrasts sharply with Rochester, who positively seethes with passion. His injury in the fire at Thornfield may be seen as a chastisement for his past passionate indiscretions and as a symbolic taming of his passionate excesses.
Independence
Jane Eyre is not only a love story; it is also a plea for the recognition of the individual's worth. Throughout the book, Jane demands to be treated as an independent human being, a person with her own needs and talents. Early on, she is unjustly punished, precisely for being herself — first by Mrs. Reed and John Reed, and subsequently by Mr. Brocklehurst. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first active declaration of independence in the novel, but not her last. Helen Burns and Miss Temple are the first characters to acknowledge her as an individual; they love her for herself, in spite of her obscurity. Rochester too loves her for herself; the fact that she is a governess and therefore his servant does not negatively affect his perception of her. Rochester confesses that his ideal woman is intellectual, faithful, and loving — qualities that Jane embodies. Rochester's acceptance of Jane as an independent person is contrasted by Blanche and Lady Ingram's attitude toward her: they see her merely as a servant. Lady Ingram speaks disparagingly of Jane in front of her face as though Jane isn't there. To her, Jane is an inferior barely worthy of notice, and certainly not worthy of respect. And even though she is his cousin, St. John Rivers does not regard Jane as a full, independent person. Rather, he sees her as an instrument, an accessory that would help him to further his own plans. Jane acknowledges that his cause (missionary work) may be worthy, but she knows that to marry simply for the sake of expedience would be a fatal mistake. Her marriage to Mr. Rochester, by contrast, is the marriage of two independent beings. It is because of their independence, Brontë suggests, that they acknowledge their dependence on each other and are able to live happily ever after.
God and Religion
In her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, Brontë made clear her belief that "conventionality is not morality" and "self-righteousness is not religion." She declared that "narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ." Throughout the novel, Brontë presents contrasts between characters who believe in and practice what she considers a true Christianity and those who pervert religion to further their own ends. Mr. Brocklehurst, who oversees Lowood Institution, is a hypocritical Christian. He professes charity but uses religion as a justification for punishment. For example, he cites the biblical passage "man shall not live by bread alone" to rebuke Miss Temple for having fed the girls an extra meal to compensate for their inedible breakfast of burnt porridge. He tells Miss Temple that she "may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!" Helen Burns is a complete contrast to Brocklehurst; she follows the Christian creed of turning the other cheek and loving those who hate her. On her deathbed, Helen tells Jane that she is "going home to God, who loves her."
Jane herself cannot quite profess Helen's absolute, selfless faith. Jane does not seem to follow a particular doctrine, but she is sincerely religious in a nondoctrinaire way. (It is Jane, after all, who places the stone with the word "Resurgam" on Helen's grave, some fifteen years after her friend's death.) Jane frequently prays and calls on God to assist her, particularly in her trouble with Rochester. She prays too that Rochester is safe. When the Rivers's housekeeper, Hannah, tries to turn the begging Jane away, Jane tells her that "if you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime." The young evangelical clergyman St. John Rivers is a more conventionally religious figure. However, Brontë portrays his religious aspect ambiguously. Jane calls him "a very good man," yet she finds him cold and forbidding. In his determination to do good deeds (in the form of missionary work in India), Rivers courts martyrdom. Moreover, he is unable to see Jane as a whole person, but views her as a helpmate in his proposed missionary work. Rochester is far less a perfect Christian. He is, indeed, a sinner: He attempts to enter into a bigamous marriage with Jane and, when that fails, tries to persuade her to become his mistress. He also confesses that he has had three previous mistresses. In the end, however, he repents his sinfulness, thanks God for returning Jane to him, and begs God to give him the strength to lead a purer life.
Atonement and Forgiveness
Much of the religious concern in Jane Eyre has to do with atonement and forgiveness. Rochester is tormented by his awareness of his past sins and misdeeds. He frequently confesses that he has led a life of vice, and many of his actions in the course of the novel are less than commendable. Readers may accuse him of behaving sadistically in deceiving Jane about the nature of his relationship (or rather, non-relationship) with Blanche Ingram in order to provoke Jane's jealousy. His confinement of Bertha may bespeak mixed motives. He is certainly aware that in the eyes of both religious and civil authorities, his marriage to Jane before Bertha's death would be bigamous. Yet, at the same time, he makes genuine efforts to atone for his behavior. For example, although he does not believe that he is Adèle's natural father, he adopts her as his ward and sees that she is well cared for. This adoption may well be an act of atonement for the sins he has committed. He expresses his self-disgust at having tried to console himself by having three different mistresses during his travels in Europe and begs Jane to forgive him for these past transgressions. However, Rochester can only atone completely — and be forgiven completely — after Jane has refused to be his mistress and left him. The destruction of Thornfield by fire finally removes the stain of his past sins; the loss of his right hand and of his eyesight is the price he must pay to atone completely for his sins. Only after this purgation can he be redeemed by Jane's love.
Search for Home and Family
Without any living family that she is aware of (until well into the story), throughout the course of the novel Jane searches for a place that she can call home. Significantly, houses play a prominent part in the story. (In keeping with a long English tradition, all the houses in the book have names.) The novel's opening finds Jane living at Gateshead Hall, but this is hardly a home. Mrs. Reed and her children refuse to acknowledge her as a relation, treating her instead as an unwanted intruder and an inferior.
Shunted off to Lowood Institution, a boarding school for orphans and destitute children, Jane finds a home of sorts, although her place here is ambiguous and temporary. The school's manager, Mr. Brocklehurst, treats it more as a business than as school in loco parentis (in place of the parent). His emphasis on discipline and on spartan conditions at the expense of the girls' health make it the antithesis of the ideal home.
Jane subsequently believes she has found a home at Thornfield Hall. Anticipating the worst when she arrives, she is relieved when she is made to feel welcome by Mrs. Fairfax. She feels genuine affection for Adèle (who in a way is also an orphan) and is happy to serve as her governess. As her love for Rochester grows, she believes that she has found her ideal husband in spite of his eccentric manner and that they will make a home together at Thornfield. The revelation — as they are literally on the verge of marriage — that he is already legally married — brings her dream of home crashing down. Fleeing Thornfield, she literally becomes homeless and is reduced to begging for food and shelter. The opportunity of having a home presents itself when she enters Moor House, where the Rivers sisters and their brother, the Reverend St. John Rivers, are mourning the death of their father. (When the housekeeper at first shuts the door in her face, Jane has a dreadful feeling that "that anchor of home was gone.") She soon speaks of Diana and Mary Rivers as her own sisters, and is overjoyed when she learns that they are indeed her cousins. She tells St. John Rivers that learning that she has living relations is far more important than inheriting twenty thousand pounds. (She mourns the uncle she never knew. Earlier she was disheartened on learning that Mrs. Reed told her uncle that Jane had died and sent him away.) However, St. John Rivers' offer of marriage cannot sever her emotional attachment to Rochester. In an almost visionary episode, she hears Rochester's voice calling her to return to him. The last chapter begins with the famous simple declarative sentence, "Reader, I married him," and after a long series of travails Jane's search for home and family ends in a union with her ideal mate.
Context
The early sequences, in which Jane is sent to Lowood, a harsh boarding school, are derived from the author's own experiences. Helen Burns's death from tuberculosis (referred to as consumption) recalls the deaths of Charlotte Brontë's sisters Elizabeth and Maria, who died of the disease in childhood as a result of the conditions at their school, the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, near Tunstall, Lancashire. Mr. Brocklehurst is based on Rev. William Carus Wilson (1791–1859), the Evangelical minister who ran the school, and Helen Burns is likely modelled on Charlotte's sister Maria. Additionally, John Reed's decline into alcoholism and dissolution recalls the life of Charlotte's brother Branwell, who became an opium and alcohol addict in the years preceding his death. Finally, like Jane, Charlotte becomes a governess. These facts were revealed to the public in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) by Charlotte's friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.
The Gothic manor of Thornfield was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in the Peak District. This was visited by Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer of 1845 and is described by the latter in a letter dated 22 July 1845. It was the residence of the Eyre family, and its first owner, Agnes Ashurst, was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded second floor room.
Literary motifs and allusions
Jane Eyre uses many motifs from Gothic fiction, such as the Gothic manor (Thornfield), the Byronic hero (Mr Rochester and Jane herself) and The Madwoman in the Attic (Bertha), whom Jane perceives as resembling "the foul German spectre—the Vampyre" (Chapter XXV) and who attacks her own brother in a distinctly vampiric way: "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart" (Chapter XX). Also, besides gothicism, Jane Eyre displays romanticism to create a unique Victorian novel.
Literary allusions from the Bible, fairy tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott are also much in evidence. The novel deliberately avoids some conventions of Victorian fiction, not contriving a deathbed reconciliation between Aunt Reed and Jane Eyre and avoiding the portrayal of a "fallen woman".
Adaptations
Mr. Reed torments young Jane Eyre in Suffolk Youth Theatre's 2008 production of Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre has engendered numerous adaptations and related works inspired by the novel. The best known are the 1944 version starring Orson Welles as Rochester and Joan Fontaine as Jane, the BBC television adaptation with Timothy Dalton as Rochester and Zelah Clarke as Jane, and the 1996 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli with William Hurt as Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane.
Radio show versions
* 1943: Extremely loose adaptation (primarily chapters 11–26) on The Weird Circle, premiering on 11 November.
Silent film versions
* Several silent film adaptations entitled Jane Eyre were released; one in 1910, two in 1914, plus:
* 1915: Jane Eyre starring Louise Vale.
* 1915: A version was released called The Castle of Thornfield.
* 1918: A version was released called Woman and Wife, directed by Edward José, adapted by Paul West, starring Alice Brady as Jane.
* 1921: Jane Eyre starring Mabel Ballin and directed by Hugo Ballin.
* 1926: A version was made in Germany called Orphan of Lowood.
Motion picture versions
* 1934: Jane Eyre, starring Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce.
* 1940: Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based upon the novel of the same name which was influenced by Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine, who starred in this film, would also be cast in the 1944 version of Jane Eyre to reinforce the connection.
* 1943: I Walked with a Zombie is a horror movie loosely based upon Jane Eyre.
* 1944: Jane Eyre, with a screenplay by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. It features Orson Welles as Mr Rochester, Joan Fontaine as Jane, Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Reed, Margaret O'Brien as Adele and Elizabeth Taylor as Helen Burns.
* 1956: A version was made in Hong Kong called The Orphan Girl.
* 1963: A version was released in Mexico called El Secreto (English: "The Secret").
* 1970: Jane Eyre, starring George C. Scott as Mr Rochester and Susannah York as Jane.
* 1972: An Indian adaptation in Telugu, Shanti Nilayam, directed by C. Vaikuntarama Sastry, starring Anjali Devi.
* 1978: A version was released in Mexico called Ardiente Secreto (English: "Ardent Secret").
* 1996: Jane Eyre, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring William Hurt as Mr Rochester, Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane, Elle Macpherson as Blanche Ingram, Joan Plowright as Mrs. Fairfax, Anna Paquin as the young Jane, Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Reed and Geraldine Chaplin as Miss Scatcherd.
* 2006: Jane Eyre, Directed by Susanna White, starring Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester and Ruth Wilson as Jane Eyre.
* 2011: Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga, starring Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Rochester.
Musical versions
* A two-act ballet of Jane Eyre was created for the first time by the London Children's Ballet in 1994, with an original score by composer Julia Gomelskaya and choreography by Polyanna Buckingham. The run was a sell-out success.
* A musical version with a book by John Caird and music and lyrics by Paul Gordon, with Marla Schaffel as Jane and James Stacy Barbour as Mr Rochester, opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 10 December 2000. It closed on 10 June 2001.
* Jane Eyre, opera in three acts, Op. 134 was composed by John Joubert in 1987–1997 to a libretto by Kenneth Birkin after the novel.
* An opera based on the novel was written in 2000 by English composer Michael Berkeley, with a libretto by David Malouf. It was given its premiere by Music Theatre Wales at the Cheltenham Festival.
* Jane Eyre was played for the first time in Europe in Beveren, Belgium. It was given its premiere at the cultural centre.
* The ballet "Jane," based on the book was created in 2007, a Bullard/Tye production with music by Max Reger. Its world premiere was scheduled at the Civic Auditorium, Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 29 and 30, performed by the Kalamazoo Ballet Company, Therese Bullard, Director.
* A musical production directed by Debby Race, book by Jana Smith and Wayne R. Scott, with a musical score by Jana Smith and Brad Roseborough, premiered in 2008 at the Lifehouse Theatre in Redlands, California
* A symphony (7th) by Michel Bosc premiered in Bandol (France), 11 October 2009.
Television versions
* 1952: This was a live television production presented by "Westinghouse Studio One (Summer Theatre)".
* Adaptations appeared on British and American television in 1956 and 1961.
* 1963:Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Richard Leech as Mr Rochester and Ann Bell as Jane.
* 1973: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Sorcha Cusack as Jane, Michael Jayston as Mr Rochester, Juliet Waley as the child Jane, and Tina Heath as Helen Burns.
* 1978: Telenovela El Ardiente Secreto (English The impassioned secret) was an adaptation of this novel.
* 1982: BBC Classics Presents: Jane Eyrehead. A parody movie by SCTV starred Andrea Martin as Jane Eyrehead, Joe Flaherty as Mr Rochester, also starting John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Martin Short in supporting roles.
* 1983: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Zelah Clarke as Jane, Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester, Sian Pattenden as the child Jane, and Colette Barker as Helen Burns.
* 1997: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the A&E Network and starred Ciaran Hinds as Mr Rochester and Samantha Morton as Jane.
* 2006: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester, Ruth Wilson as Jane, and Georgie Henley as Young Jane.
Literature
* 1938: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier was partially inspired by Jane Eyre.
* 1961: The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart adapts many of the motifs of Jane Eyre to 1950s northern England. The main character, Annabel, falls in love with her older neighbor who is married to a mentally ill woman. Like Jane, Annabel runs away to try to get over her love. The novel begins when she returns from her eight-year exile.
* 1966: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. The character Bertha Mason serves as the main protagonist for this novel which acts as a "prequel" to Jane Eyre. It describes the meeting and marriage of Antoinette (later renamed Bertha by Mr Rochester) and Mr Rochester. In its reshaping of events related to Jane Eyre, the novel suggests that Bertha's madness is the result of Mr Rochester's rejection of her and her Creole heritage. It was also adapted into film twice.
* 1997: Mrs Rochester: A Sequel to Jane Eyre by Hilary Bailey
* 2000: Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant
* 2000: Jane Rochester by Kimberly A. Bennett, content explores the first years of the Rochesters' marriage with gothic and explicit content. A fan favorite.
* 2001 novel The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde revolves around the plot of Jane Eyre. It portrays the book as originally largely free of literary contrivance: Jane and Mr Rochester's first meeting is a simple conversation without the dramatic horse accident, and Jane does not hear his voice calling for her and ends up starting a new life in India. The protagonist's efforts mostly accidentally change it to the real version.
* 2002: Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn, a science fiction novel based upon Jane Eyre
* 2006: The French Dancer's Bastard: The Story of Adele From Jane Eyre by Emma Tennant. This is a slightly modified version of Tennant's 2000 novel.
* 2007: Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant. This is another version of Jane Eyre.
* 2010: Rochester: A Novel Inspired by Jane Eyre by J.L. Niemann. Jane Eyre told from the first person-perspective of Edward Rochester.
* The novelist Angela Carter was working on a sequel to Jane Eyre at the time of her death in 1992. This was to have been the story of Jane's stepdaughter Adèle Varens and her mother Céline. Only a synopsis survives.
《簡·愛》是一部帶有自傳色彩的長篇小說，它闡釋了這樣一個主題：人的價值＝尊嚴＋愛。《簡·愛》剛出版時,作者夏洛蒂勃朗特用的筆名是柯勒貝爾。以至於之後她的姐妹們出的書都被誤認為是她寫的。好在她之後親自在《簡·愛》再版時澄清事實。
《簡·愛》的作者夏洛蒂·勃朗特和《呼嘯山莊》的作者艾米莉是姐妹。雖然兩人生活在同一社會，家庭環境中，性格卻大不相同，夏洛蒂.勃朗特顯得更加的溫柔，更加的清純，更加的喜歡追求一些美好的東西，儘管她傢境貧窮，從小失去了母愛，父愛也很少，再加上她身材矮小，容貌不美，但也許就是這樣一種靈魂深處的很深的自卑，反映在她的性格上就是一種非常敏感的自尊，以自尊作為她內心深處的自卑的補償。她描寫的簡。愛也是一個不美的，矮小的女人，但是她有着極其強烈的自尊心。她堅定不移地去追求一種光明的，聖潔的，美好的生活。
《簡·愛》-故事梗概
簡·愛的父親是個窮牧師，當她還在幼年時，父母就染病雙雙去世。簡·愛被送到蓋茨海德莊園的舅母裏德太太傢撫養，裏德先生臨死前曾囑咐妻子好好照顧簡·愛。簡·愛在裏德太太傢的地位，連使女都不如，受盡了表兄表姊妹的欺侮。一天表兄又打她了，她回手反抗，卻被舅母關進紅房子裏，她的舅舅裏德先生就死在這間屋子裏。她被幻想中的鬼魂嚇昏了過去。重病一場，過了很久纔慢慢恢復健康。
她再也不想呆在裏德太太傢了，裏德太太就把她送進達羅沃德孤兒院。孤兒院院長是個冷酷的偽君子，他用種種辦法從精神和肉體上摧殘孤兒。簡與孤兒海倫結成好友，教師潭泊爾小姐很關心她。在孤兒院裏一場傳染性的傷寒，奪走了許多降兒的生命，海倫就在這場傷寒中死去，這對簡·愛 打擊很大。
簡畢業後留校當了兩年教師，她受不了那裏的孤寂、冷漠，登廣告找到了一個家庭教師的工作，於是她來到了桑費爾德莊園。在桑費爾德莊園衹有莊園主羅徹斯特和他的私生女阿戴爾·瓦倫斯，而羅徹斯特經常到國外旅行，所以簡到桑費爾德好幾天，也沒見到羅徹斯特。
一天黃昏，簡外出散步，驚了剛剛從外面回來的羅徹斯特的馬，羅徹斯特從馬上摔了下來，簡急忙上前去扶他，回到傢後簡纔知道他便是莊園主羅徹斯特。羅徹斯特是個性格陰鬱而又喜怒無常的人，他和簡經常為某種思想新辯論不休。
在桑費爾德莊園不斷發生奇怪的事情。有一天夜裏，簡被一陣奇怪的笑聲驚醒，發現羅徹斯特的房門開着，床上着了火，她叫醒羅徹斯特並撲滅火。羅徹斯特告訴簡三樓住着一個女栽縫格雷斯·普爾，她神精錯亂，時常發出令人毛骨悚然的狂笑聲，並要她對此事嚴守秘密。
羅徹斯特經常參加舞會，一天他把客人請到傢裏來玩，人們都以為在這場舞會上羅徹斯特會嚮布蘭奇小姐求婚。在宴會上羅徹斯特堅持要簡也到客廳裏去，客人們對簡的太度十分輕慢，羅徹卻邀請簡跳舞，簡感覺到自己對羅徹斯特發生感情。
一天，羅徹斯特外出，傢裏來了一個蒙着蓋頭的吉卜賽人。當輪到給簡算命時，簡發現這個神秘的吉卜賽人就是羅徹斯特，他想藉此試探簡對他的感情。這時莊園裏又來了個名梅森的陌生人，當晚他被三樓的神秘女人咬傷了，簡幫羅徹斯特把他秘密送走。
不久，裏德太太派人來找簡，說她病危要見簡一面。回到舅母傢中，裏德太太給她一封信，這封信是三年前簡的叔父寄來的，嚮她打聽侄女的消息，並把自己的遺産交給簡。裏德太太謊稱簡在孤兒院病死了，直到臨終前纔良心發現把真相告訴簡。
簡又回到桑費爾德莊園感覺像回到傢一樣。回來後，羅徹斯特嚮她未婚，簡答應了，並高興地準備婚禮。婚禮前夜，簡從夢中驚醒，看到一個身材高大、面目可憎的女人正在戴她的婚紗，然後把婚紗撕成碎片。羅徹斯特告訴她那不過是一個夢，第二天當簡醒來時發現婚紗真的成了碎片。
婚禮如期舉行，一位不速之客闖進了教堂，聲稱婚禮不能進行，他說羅徹斯特15 年前娶梅森先生的妹妹伯莎·梅森為妻。羅徹斯特承認了這一事實，並領人們看被關在三樓的瘋女人，那就是他的合法妻子。她有遺傳性精神病史，就是她在羅徹斯特的房間放火，也是她撕碎簡的婚紗。
簡悲痛欲絶地離開了桑費爾德莊園。她的僅有的積蓄花光了，沿途乞討，最後暈倒在牧師聖約翰傢門前，被聖約翰和他的兩個妹妹救了。簡住了下來，聖約翰為她謀了一個鄉村教師的職位。
不久，聖約翰接到家庭律師的通知，說他的舅舅約翰簡去世了，留給簡二萬英鎊，要聖約翰幫助尋找簡。聖約翰發現簡是他的表妹，簡執意要與他們分享遺産。聖約翰準備去印度傳教，臨行前嚮簡求婚，但他坦率地告訴她，他要娶她並不是因為愛她，而是他需要一個很有教養的助手。簡覺得應該報答他的恩情，但遲遲不肯答應他。當夜，聖約翰在荒原上等待簡的答復，就在簡要作出决定的時候，她仿佛聽到羅徹斯特在遙遠的地方呼喊她的名字“簡，回來吧！簡，回來吧！”她决定回到羅徹斯特身邊。
當簡回到桑費爾德莊園時，整個莊園變成一片廢墟。原來幾個月前，在一個風雨交加的夜晚，瘋女人伯莎放火燒毀了整個莊園，羅徹斯特為了救她，被燒瞎了雙眼，孤獨地生活在幾英裏外的一個農場裏。簡趕到傢場，嚮他吐露自己的愛情，他們終於結婚了。 兩年之後，治好了羅徹斯特的一隻眼睛，他看到了簡為他生的第一個孩子。
《簡·愛》-小說評價
《簡·愛》是一本具有多年歷史的文學著作。至今已152年的歷史了，它成功地塑造了英國文學史中第一個對愛情、生活、社會以及宗教都采取了獨立自主的積極進取態度和敢於鬥爭、敢於爭取自由平等地位的女性形象。
《簡·愛》是一部帶有自轉色彩的長篇小說，是英國十九世紀著名三姐妹作傢之一的夏洛蒂·勃朗特所著。這是一本用自己的心與強烈的精神追求鑄煉成的一本書，含着作者無限的情感和個性魅力，為女性贏得了一片燦爛的天空。
簡. 愛生存在一個父母雙亡，寄人籬下的環境，從小就承受着與同齡人不一樣的待遇，姨媽的嫌棄，表姐的蔑視，表哥的侮辱和毒打。這是對一個孩子的尊嚴的無情踐踏，然而幸運的是在極其刻薄的寄宿學校的生活中，簡·愛遇到了一個可愛的朋友：海倫·彭斯,海倫溫順、聰穎和無比寬容的性格一直影響着簡.愛，使之以後面對種種睏難都不再屈服抱怨，懂得了愛和忠誠。
在羅切斯特的面前,她從不因為自己是一個地位低賤的家庭教師而感到自卑，反而認為他們是平等的。不應該因為她是僕人，而不能受到別人的尊重。也正因為她的正直，高尚，純潔，心靈沒有受到世俗社會的污染，使得羅切斯特為之震撼，並把她看做了一個可以和自己在精神上平等交談的人，並且慢慢地深深愛上了她。這是簡·愛 告訴羅切斯特她必須離開的理由，但是從內心講，更深一層的東西是簡·愛意識到自己受到了欺騙，她的自尊心受到了戲弄，因為她深愛着羅切斯特,試問哪個女人能夠承受得住被自己最信任，最親密的人所欺騙呢?這樣一種非常強大的愛情力量包圍之下，在美好，富裕的生活誘惑之下，她依然要堅持自己作為個人的尊嚴，這是簡·愛最具有精神魅力的地方。
小說設計了一個很光明的結尾－－雖然羅切斯特的莊園毀了，他自己也成了一個殘廢，但我們看到，正是這樣一個條件，使簡·愛 不再在尊嚴與愛之間矛盾，而同時獲得滿足－－她在和羅切斯特結婚的時候是有尊嚴的，同時也是有愛的。任何文學作品都是作者體驗生活的結晶，從書中多少可看出作者的影子。《簡·愛》也是如此，大量的細節可以在作者的生活中得到印證。當然 《簡·愛》並不是一本自傳，作者衹是把自己豐富的生活經歷融進了一部充滿想象力的文章裏。人們知道《簡·愛》是作者生活中的寫照，但又有多少人知道作者是在怎樣的情況下寫下《簡·愛》的呢。
小說告訴我們，人的最美好的生活是人的尊嚴加愛，小說的結局給女主人公安排的就是這樣一種生活。雖然我覺得這樣的結局過於完美，甚至這種圓滿本身標志着浮淺，但是我依然尊重作者對這種美好生活的理想－－就是尊嚴加愛，畢竟在當今社會，要將人的價值＝尊嚴＋愛這道公式付之實現常常離不開金錢的幫助。人們都瘋狂地似乎為了金錢和地位而淹沒愛情。在窮與富之間選擇富，在愛與不愛之間選擇不愛。很少有人會像簡這樣為愛情為人格拋棄所有，而且義無反顧。《簡·愛》所展現給我們的正是一種化繁為簡，是一種返樸歸真，是一種追求全心付出的感覺，是一種不計得失的簡化的感情，它猶如一杯冰水，淨化每一個讀者的心靈，同時引起讀者，特別是女性讀者的共鳴。
Plot introduction
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family at Marsh's End (or Moor House) and Morton, where her cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers proposes to her; and her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester. Partly autobiographical, the novel abounds with social criticism. It is a novel considered ahead of its time. In spite of the dark, brooding elements, it has a strong sense of right and wrong, of morality at its core.
Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters and most editions are at least 400 pages long (although the preface and introduction on certain copies are liable to take up another 100). The original was published in three volumes, comprising chapters 1 to 15, 16 to 26, and 27 to 38.
Brontë dedicated the novel's second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray.
Plot summary
Chapters 1-4: Jane's childhood at Gateshead
Young Jane argues with her guardian Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. Illustration by F. H. Townsend.
A ten-year-old orphan named Jane Eyre lives with her uncle's family, the Reeds. Jane's aunt, Sarah Reed, dislikes her intensely. When her uncle dies, her aunt and the three Reed children become abusive. When bullied by her cousin John, Jane retaliates but is punished for the ensuing fight and is locked in the room where Mr. Reed died. As night falls, Jane's panicked screams rouse the house, but Mrs. Reed won't let her out. Jane faints and Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, is summoned. He talks with Jane and sympathetically suggests that she should go away to school.
Chapters 5-10: Jane's education at Lowood School
Mrs. Reed sends Jane to Lowood Institution, a charity school, and warns them that Jane is deceitful. During an inspection, Jane accidentally breaks her slate, and Mr. Brocklehurst, the self-righteous clergyman who runs the school, brands her as a liar and shames her before the entire assembly.
Jane is comforted by her friend, Helen Burns. Miss Temple, a caring teacher, facilitates Jane's self-defense and writes to Mr. Lloyd whose reply agrees with Jane's. Ultimately, Jane is publicly cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst's accusations.
Jane tries to catch Mr. Rochester's horse.
While the Brocklehurst family lives in luxury, the eighty pupils are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes. Jane's friend Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms.
When Mr. Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty are laid bare, several benefactors erect a new building and conditions at the school improve dramatically.
Chapters 11-26: Jane's time as governess at Thornfield Hall
Eight years later, Jane is a teacher employed by Alice Fairfax (the housekeeper of Thornfield Hall) as governess for Adèle Varens, a young French girl. Out walking one day, Jane encounters and helps a horseman who has sprained his ankle. On her return to Thornfield, she discovers that the horseman is Edward Rochester, Master of Thornfield Hall. Rochester is a moody, self-willed man nearly twenty years older than Jane. Adèle is his ward, belonging to a French "opera dancer" with whom he had a romantic relationship in the past. Adèle, however, is not his daughter, but is brought up by him after her mother abandons her.
Jane saves Mr. Rochester from a fire.
Miss Blanche Ingram looking in a book.
Mr. Rochester disguised as a Gypsy woman.
Bertha Mason rips Jane's wedding veil.
Mr. Rochester seems quite taken with Jane, and she enjoys his company. However, odd things begin to happen: a strange laugh is heard in the halls, a near-fatal fire mysteriously breaks out, and a guest named Mason is attacked.
Jane receives word that Mrs. Reed has suffered a stroke and is asking for her. Returning to Gateshead, she remains for over a month while her aunt lies dying. Mrs. Reed rejects Jane's efforts at reconciliation, but does give her a letter previously withheld out of spite. The letter is from John Eyre, Jane's uncle, notifying her that he wanted her to live with him in Madeira.
After returning to Thornfield, Jane broods over Rochester's impending marriage to Blanche Ingram. But on a midsummer evening, he proclaims his love for Jane and proposes. As she prepares for her wedding, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. As with previous mysterious events, Mr Rochester attributes the incident to drunkenness on the part of Grace Poole, one of his servants.
During the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr. Rochester cannot marry because he is already married to Mr. Mason's sister. Mr. Rochester bitterly admits the truth, explaining that his wife is a violent madwoman whom he keeps locked in the attic, in the care of Grace Poole. When Grace occasionally drinks too much, it gives his wife a chance to escape, and she is the true cause of Thornfield's strange events.
Mr. Rochester asks Jane to go with him to the south of France, and live as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married. Refusing to go against her principles, and despite her love for him, Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night.
Chapters 27-35: Jane's time with the Rivers family
Jane leaves Thornfield and sleeps outside.
Jane begs for food.
St. John Rivers admits Jane to Moor House.
Jane travels to the north of England. After mislaying her funds, she sleeps on the moor and begs for food, but is turned away as a beggar, a thief, or worse. Exhausted, she is saved by St. John Rivers, a young clergyman, who brings her to the home of his sisters, Diana and Mary. As she regains her health, St. John finds her a teaching position at a nearby charity school. Jane becomes warm friends with Mary and Diana, but St. John is too reserved for her to relate to, despite his efforts on her behalf. Jane sees that the brother and sisters have money-related worries, but does not enquire further.
Rosamond Oliver shows an interest in St. John.
St. John tells Jane she has inherited £20,000.
Jane considering St. John's proposal.
When the sisters leave for governess jobs in London, St. John becomes more comfortable around Jane, evidencing his own conflicts of the heart, which involve the beautiful and wealthy Rosamond Oliver. When Jane confronts him about his feelings for Miss Oliver, he confesses that he has turned away from them, because he feels called to be a missionary, and he knows that Miss Oliver would not accept such a life.
St. John discovers Jane's true identity, and astounds her by showing her a letter stating that her uncle John has died and left her his entire fortune of £20,000, equivalent to £1,560,000 in today's pounds. When Jane questions him further, St. John reveals that John is also his and his sisters' uncle. They had once hoped for a share of the inheritance, but have since resigned themselves to nothing. Jane, overjoyed by finding her family, insists on sharing the money equally with her cousins.
St. John asks Jane to accompany him to India as his wife. He asks solely because he wishes a good missionary's wife, a role in which he believes Jane will excel. She agrees to go, but refuses marriage, believing his reserve and reason incompatible with her warmth and passion. But, his powers of persuasion eventually begin to convince her to change her mind.
However, at that very moment, she suddenly seems to hear Mr. Rochester calling her name. The next morning, she leaves for Thornfield to ascertain Mr. Rochester's well-being before departing forever for India.
Chapters 36-38: Jane's reunion with Mr. Rochester
Thornfield burned to the ground by Bertha.
Jane and Mr. Rochester reunited.
Mr. Rochester's sight improving.
Jane arrives at Thornfield to find only blackened ruins. She learns that Rochester's wife set the house on fire and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. In his rescue attempts, Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him, but he fears that she will be repulsed by his condition. When Jane assures him of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, Mr. Rochester again proposes. He eventually recovers enough sight to see their first-born son.
Characters
* Jane Eyre: The protagonist of the novel and the title character. Orphaned as a baby, she struggles through her nearly loveless childhood and becomes governess at Thornfield Hall. Although she falls in love with her wealthy employer, Edward Rochester, her strong sense of conscience does not permit her to become his mistress, and she does not return to him until his insane wife is dead and she herself has come into an inheritance.
* Mr. Reed: Jane's maternal uncle, who adopts Jane when her parents die. Before his own death, he makes his wife promise to care for Jane.
* Mrs. Sarah Reed: Jane's aunt by marriage, who adopts Jane but neglects and abuses her. Her dislike of Jane continues to her death.
* John Reed: Jane's cousin, who bullies Jane constantly, sometimes in his mother's presence. He ruins himself as an adult and is believed to die by suicide.
* Eliza Reed: Jane's cousin. Bitter because she is not as attractive as her sister, she devotes herself self-righteously to religion.
* Georgiana Reed: Jane's cousin. Though spiteful and insolent, she is also beautiful and indulged. Her sister Eliza foils her marriage to a wealthy Lord.
* Bessie Lee: The plain-spoken nursemaid at Gateshead. She sometimes treats Jane kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Later she marries Robert Leaven.
* Robert Leaven: The coachman at Gateshead, who brings Jane the news of John Reed's death, which brought on Mrs. Reed's stroke.
* Mr. Lloyd: A compassionate apothecary who recommends that Jane be sent to school. Later, he writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Jane's account of her childhood and thereby clearing Jane of Mrs. Reed's charge of lying.
* Mr. Brocklehurst: The clergyman headmaster and treasurer of Lowood School, whose mistreatment of the students is eventually exposed.
* Miss Maria Temple: The kind superintendent of Lowood School, who treats Jane and Helen (and others) with respect and compassion. She helps clear Jane of Mr. Brocklehurst's false accusation of deceit.
* Miss Scatcherd: A sour and vicious teacher at Lowood.
* Helen Burns: A fellow-student and best friend of Jane's at Lowood School. She refuses to hate those who abuse her, trusting in God and turning the other cheek. She dies of consumption in Jane's arms. Some speculate that the book's author based Helen Burns on her elder sister Maria Brontë , who showed signs of dyspraxia.
* Edward Fairfax Rochester: The master of Thornfield Manor. A Byronic hero, he makes an unfortunate first marriage before he meets Jane.
* Bertha Antoinetta Mason: The violently insane first wife of Edward Rochester.
* Adèle Varens: An excitable French child to whom Jane is governess at Thornfield. She is Mr Rochester's ward and possibly his daughter. However Mr. Rochester denies this because her mother had been seeing another man behind his back.
* Mrs. Alice Fairfax: An elderly widow and housekeeper of Thornfield Manor. She treats Jane kindly and respectfully, but disapproves of her engagement to Mr Rochester.
* Blanche Ingram: A socialite whom Mr. Rochester appears to court in order to make Jane jealous. She is described as having great beauty, but displays callous behaviour and avaricious intent.
* Richard Mason: An Englishman from the West Indies, whose sister is Mr. Rochester's first wife. His appearance at Thornfield heralds the eventual revelation of Bertha Mason.
* Grace Poole: Bertha Mason's keeper. Jane is told that it is Grace Poole who causes the mysterious things to happen at Thornfield Hall.
* St. John Eyre Rivers: A clergyman who befriends Jane and turns out to be her cousin. He is Jane Eyre's cousin on her father's side. He is a devout Christian of Calvinistic leanings. By nature he is very reserved and single-minded.
* Diana and Mary Rivers: St. John's sisters and (as it turns out) Jane's cousins.
* Rosamond Oliver: A wealthy young woman who patronizes the village school where Jane teaches, and who is attracted to the Rev. St. John.
* John Eyre: Jane's paternal uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune. He never appears as a character.
Themes
Morality
Jane refuses to become Mr Rochester's paramour because of her "impassioned self-respect and moral conviction." She rejects St. John Rivers' Puritanism as much as the libertine aspects of Mr Rochester's character. Instead, she works out a morality expressed in love, independence, and forgiveness.
Religion
Throughout the novel, Jane endeavours to attain an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly happiness. She despises the hypocritical puritanism of Mr. Brocklehurst, and rejects St. John Rivers' cold devotion to his Christian duty, but neither can she bring herself to emulate Helen Burns' turning the other cheek, although she admires Helen for it. Ultimately, she rejects these three extremes and finds a middle ground in which religion serves to curb her immoderate passions but does not repress her true self.
Social class
Jane's ambiguous social position—a penniless yet moderately educated orphan from a good family—leads her to criticise discrimination based on class. Although she is educated, well-mannered, and relatively sophisticated, she is still a governess, a paid servant of low social standing, and therefore powerless. Nevertheless, Brontë possesses certain class prejudices herself, as is made clear when Jane has to remind herself that her unsophisticated village pupils at Morton "are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy."
Gender relations
A particularly important theme in the novel is the depiction of a patriarchal society. Jane attempts to assert her own identity within male-dominated society. Three of the main male characters, Brocklehurst, Mr Rochester and St. John, try to keep Jane in a subordinate position and prevent her from expressing her own thoughts and feelings. Jane escapes Brocklehurst and rejects St. John, and she only marries Mr Rochester once she is sure that their marriage is one between equals. Through Jane, Brontë opposes Victorian stereotypes about women, articulating her own feminist philosophy:
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. (Chapter XII)
Love and Passion
One of the secrets to the success of Jane Eyre lies in the way that it touches on a number of important themes while telling a compelling story. Indeed, so lively and dramatic is the story that the reader might not be fully conscious of all the thematic strands that weave through this work. Critics have argued about what comprises the main theme of Jane Eyre. There can be little doubt, however, that love and passion together form a major thematic element of the novel.
On its most simple and obvious level, Jane Eyre is a love story. The love between the orphaned and initially impoverished Jane and the wealthy but tormented Rochester is at its heart. The obstacles to the fulfillment of this love provide the main dramatic conflict in the work. However, the novel explores other types of love as well. Helen Burns, for example, exemplifies the selfless love of a friend. We also see some of the consequences of the absence of love, as in the relationship between Jane and Mrs. Reed, in the selfish relations among the Reed children, and in the mocking marriage of Rochester and Bertha. Jane realizes that the absence of love between herself and St. John Rivers would make their marriage a living death, too.
Throughout the work, Brontë suggests that a life that is not lived passionately is not lived fully. Jane undoubtedly is the central passionate character; her nature is shot through with passion. Early on, she refuses to live by Mrs. Reed's rules, which would restrict all passion. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first, but by no means her last, passionate act. Her passion for Rochester is all consuming. Significantly, however, it is not the only force that governs her life. She leaves Rochester because her moral reason tells her that it would be wrong to live with him as his mistress: "Laws and principles are not for the time when there is no temptation," she tells Rochester; "they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise against their rigor."
Blanche Ingram feels no passion for Rochester; she is only attracted to the landowner because of his wealth and social position. St. John Rivers is a more intelligent character than Blanche, but like her he also lacks the necessary passion that would allow him to live fully. His marriage proposal to Jane has no passion behind it; rather, he regards marriage as a business arrangement, with Jane as his potential junior partner in his missionary work. His lack of passion contrasts sharply with Rochester, who positively seethes with passion. His injury in the fire at Thornfield may be seen as a chastisement for his past passionate indiscretions and as a symbolic taming of his passionate excesses.
Independence
Jane Eyre is not only a love story; it is also a plea for the recognition of the individual's worth. Throughout the book, Jane demands to be treated as an independent human being, a person with her own needs and talents. Early on, she is unjustly punished, precisely for being herself — first by Mrs. Reed and John Reed, and subsequently by Mr. Brocklehurst. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first active declaration of independence in the novel, but not her last. Helen Burns and Miss Temple are the first characters to acknowledge her as an individual; they love her for herself, in spite of her obscurity. Rochester too loves her for herself; the fact that she is a governess and therefore his servant does not negatively affect his perception of her. Rochester confesses that his ideal woman is intellectual, faithful, and loving — qualities that Jane embodies. Rochester's acceptance of Jane as an independent person is contrasted by Blanche and Lady Ingram's attitude toward her: they see her merely as a servant. Lady Ingram speaks disparagingly of Jane in front of her face as though Jane isn't there. To her, Jane is an inferior barely worthy of notice, and certainly not worthy of respect. And even though she is his cousin, St. John Rivers does not regard Jane as a full, independent person. Rather, he sees her as an instrument, an accessory that would help him to further his own plans. Jane acknowledges that his cause (missionary work) may be worthy, but she knows that to marry simply for the sake of expedience would be a fatal mistake. Her marriage to Mr. Rochester, by contrast, is the marriage of two independent beings. It is because of their independence, Brontë suggests, that they acknowledge their dependence on each other and are able to live happily ever after.
God and Religion
In her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, Brontë made clear her belief that "conventionality is not morality" and "self-righteousness is not religion." She declared that "narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ." Throughout the novel, Brontë presents contrasts between characters who believe in and practice what she considers a true Christianity and those who pervert religion to further their own ends. Mr. Brocklehurst, who oversees Lowood Institution, is a hypocritical Christian. He professes charity but uses religion as a justification for punishment. For example, he cites the biblical passage "man shall not live by bread alone" to rebuke Miss Temple for having fed the girls an extra meal to compensate for their inedible breakfast of burnt porridge. He tells Miss Temple that she "may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!" Helen Burns is a complete contrast to Brocklehurst; she follows the Christian creed of turning the other cheek and loving those who hate her. On her deathbed, Helen tells Jane that she is "going home to God, who loves her."
Jane herself cannot quite profess Helen's absolute, selfless faith. Jane does not seem to follow a particular doctrine, but she is sincerely religious in a nondoctrinaire way. (It is Jane, after all, who places the stone with the word "Resurgam" on Helen's grave, some fifteen years after her friend's death.) Jane frequently prays and calls on God to assist her, particularly in her trouble with Rochester. She prays too that Rochester is safe. When the Rivers's housekeeper, Hannah, tries to turn the begging Jane away, Jane tells her that "if you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime." The young evangelical clergyman St. John Rivers is a more conventionally religious figure. However, Brontë portrays his religious aspect ambiguously. Jane calls him "a very good man," yet she finds him cold and forbidding. In his determination to do good deeds (in the form of missionary work in India), Rivers courts martyrdom. Moreover, he is unable to see Jane as a whole person, but views her as a helpmate in his proposed missionary work. Rochester is far less a perfect Christian. He is, indeed, a sinner: He attempts to enter into a bigamous marriage with Jane and, when that fails, tries to persuade her to become his mistress. He also confesses that he has had three previous mistresses. In the end, however, he repents his sinfulness, thanks God for returning Jane to him, and begs God to give him the strength to lead a purer life.
Atonement and Forgiveness
Much of the religious concern in Jane Eyre has to do with atonement and forgiveness. Rochester is tormented by his awareness of his past sins and misdeeds. He frequently confesses that he has led a life of vice, and many of his actions in the course of the novel are less than commendable. Readers may accuse him of behaving sadistically in deceiving Jane about the nature of his relationship (or rather, non-relationship) with Blanche Ingram in order to provoke Jane's jealousy. His confinement of Bertha may bespeak mixed motives. He is certainly aware that in the eyes of both religious and civil authorities, his marriage to Jane before Bertha's death would be bigamous. Yet, at the same time, he makes genuine efforts to atone for his behavior. For example, although he does not believe that he is Adèle's natural father, he adopts her as his ward and sees that she is well cared for. This adoption may well be an act of atonement for the sins he has committed. He expresses his self-disgust at having tried to console himself by having three different mistresses during his travels in Europe and begs Jane to forgive him for these past transgressions. However, Rochester can only atone completely — and be forgiven completely — after Jane has refused to be his mistress and left him. The destruction of Thornfield by fire finally removes the stain of his past sins; the loss of his right hand and of his eyesight is the price he must pay to atone completely for his sins. Only after this purgation can he be redeemed by Jane's love.
Search for Home and Family
Without any living family that she is aware of (until well into the story), throughout the course of the novel Jane searches for a place that she can call home. Significantly, houses play a prominent part in the story. (In keeping with a long English tradition, all the houses in the book have names.) The novel's opening finds Jane living at Gateshead Hall, but this is hardly a home. Mrs. Reed and her children refuse to acknowledge her as a relation, treating her instead as an unwanted intruder and an inferior.
Shunted off to Lowood Institution, a boarding school for orphans and destitute children, Jane finds a home of sorts, although her place here is ambiguous and temporary. The school's manager, Mr. Brocklehurst, treats it more as a business than as school in loco parentis (in place of the parent). His emphasis on discipline and on spartan conditions at the expense of the girls' health make it the antithesis of the ideal home.
Jane subsequently believes she has found a home at Thornfield Hall. Anticipating the worst when she arrives, she is relieved when she is made to feel welcome by Mrs. Fairfax. She feels genuine affection for Adèle (who in a way is also an orphan) and is happy to serve as her governess. As her love for Rochester grows, she believes that she has found her ideal husband in spite of his eccentric manner and that they will make a home together at Thornfield. The revelation — as they are literally on the verge of marriage — that he is already legally married — brings her dream of home crashing down. Fleeing Thornfield, she literally becomes homeless and is reduced to begging for food and shelter. The opportunity of having a home presents itself when she enters Moor House, where the Rivers sisters and their brother, the Reverend St. John Rivers, are mourning the death of their father. (When the housekeeper at first shuts the door in her face, Jane has a dreadful feeling that "that anchor of home was gone.") She soon speaks of Diana and Mary Rivers as her own sisters, and is overjoyed when she learns that they are indeed her cousins. She tells St. John Rivers that learning that she has living relations is far more important than inheriting twenty thousand pounds. (She mourns the uncle she never knew. Earlier she was disheartened on learning that Mrs. Reed told her uncle that Jane had died and sent him away.) However, St. John Rivers' offer of marriage cannot sever her emotional attachment to Rochester. In an almost visionary episode, she hears Rochester's voice calling her to return to him. The last chapter begins with the famous simple declarative sentence, "Reader, I married him," and after a long series of travails Jane's search for home and family ends in a union with her ideal mate.
Context
The early sequences, in which Jane is sent to Lowood, a harsh boarding school, are derived from the author's own experiences. Helen Burns's death from tuberculosis (referred to as consumption) recalls the deaths of Charlotte Brontë's sisters Elizabeth and Maria, who died of the disease in childhood as a result of the conditions at their school, the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, near Tunstall, Lancashire. Mr. Brocklehurst is based on Rev. William Carus Wilson (1791–1859), the Evangelical minister who ran the school, and Helen Burns is likely modelled on Charlotte's sister Maria. Additionally, John Reed's decline into alcoholism and dissolution recalls the life of Charlotte's brother Branwell, who became an opium and alcohol addict in the years preceding his death. Finally, like Jane, Charlotte becomes a governess. These facts were revealed to the public in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) by Charlotte's friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.
The Gothic manor of Thornfield was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in the Peak District. This was visited by Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer of 1845 and is described by the latter in a letter dated 22 July 1845. It was the residence of the Eyre family, and its first owner, Agnes Ashurst, was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded second floor room.
Literary motifs and allusions
Jane Eyre uses many motifs from Gothic fiction, such as the Gothic manor (Thornfield), the Byronic hero (Mr Rochester and Jane herself) and The Madwoman in the Attic (Bertha), whom Jane perceives as resembling "the foul German spectre—the Vampyre" (Chapter XXV) and who attacks her own brother in a distinctly vampiric way: "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart" (Chapter XX). Also, besides gothicism, Jane Eyre displays romanticism to create a unique Victorian novel.
Literary allusions from the Bible, fairy tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott are also much in evidence. The novel deliberately avoids some conventions of Victorian fiction, not contriving a deathbed reconciliation between Aunt Reed and Jane Eyre and avoiding the portrayal of a "fallen woman".
Adaptations
Mr. Reed torments young Jane Eyre in Suffolk Youth Theatre's 2008 production of Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre has engendered numerous adaptations and related works inspired by the novel. The best known are the 1944 version starring Orson Welles as Rochester and Joan Fontaine as Jane, the BBC television adaptation with Timothy Dalton as Rochester and Zelah Clarke as Jane, and the 1996 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli with William Hurt as Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane.
Radio show versions
* 1943: Extremely loose adaptation (primarily chapters 11–26) on The Weird Circle, premiering on 11 November.
Silent film versions
* Several silent film adaptations entitled Jane Eyre were released; one in 1910, two in 1914, plus:
* 1915: Jane Eyre starring Louise Vale.
* 1915: A version was released called The Castle of Thornfield.
* 1918: A version was released called Woman and Wife, directed by Edward José, adapted by Paul West, starring Alice Brady as Jane.
* 1921: Jane Eyre starring Mabel Ballin and directed by Hugo Ballin.
* 1926: A version was made in Germany called Orphan of Lowood.
Motion picture versions
* 1934: Jane Eyre, starring Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce.
* 1940: Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based upon the novel of the same name which was influenced by Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine, who starred in this film, would also be cast in the 1944 version of Jane Eyre to reinforce the connection.
* 1943: I Walked with a Zombie is a horror movie loosely based upon Jane Eyre.
* 1944: Jane Eyre, with a screenplay by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. It features Orson Welles as Mr Rochester, Joan Fontaine as Jane, Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Reed, Margaret O'Brien as Adele and Elizabeth Taylor as Helen Burns.
* 1956: A version was made in Hong Kong called The Orphan Girl.
* 1963: A version was released in Mexico called El Secreto (English: "The Secret").
* 1970: Jane Eyre, starring George C. Scott as Mr Rochester and Susannah York as Jane.
* 1972: An Indian adaptation in Telugu, Shanti Nilayam, directed by C. Vaikuntarama Sastry, starring Anjali Devi.
* 1978: A version was released in Mexico called Ardiente Secreto (English: "Ardent Secret").
* 1996: Jane Eyre, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring William Hurt as Mr Rochester, Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane, Elle Macpherson as Blanche Ingram, Joan Plowright as Mrs. Fairfax, Anna Paquin as the young Jane, Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Reed and Geraldine Chaplin as Miss Scatcherd.
* 2006: Jane Eyre, Directed by Susanna White, starring Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester and Ruth Wilson as Jane Eyre.
* 2011: Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga, starring Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Rochester.
Musical versions
* A two-act ballet of Jane Eyre was created for the first time by the London Children's Ballet in 1994, with an original score by composer Julia Gomelskaya and choreography by Polyanna Buckingham. The run was a sell-out success.
* A musical version with a book by John Caird and music and lyrics by Paul Gordon, with Marla Schaffel as Jane and James Stacy Barbour as Mr Rochester, opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 10 December 2000. It closed on 10 June 2001.
* Jane Eyre, opera in three acts, Op. 134 was composed by John Joubert in 1987–1997 to a libretto by Kenneth Birkin after the novel.
* An opera based on the novel was written in 2000 by English composer Michael Berkeley, with a libretto by David Malouf. It was given its premiere by Music Theatre Wales at the Cheltenham Festival.
* Jane Eyre was played for the first time in Europe in Beveren, Belgium. It was given its premiere at the cultural centre.
* The ballet "Jane," based on the book was created in 2007, a Bullard/Tye production with music by Max Reger. Its world premiere was scheduled at the Civic Auditorium, Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 29 and 30, performed by the Kalamazoo Ballet Company, Therese Bullard, Director.
* A musical production directed by Debby Race, book by Jana Smith and Wayne R. Scott, with a musical score by Jana Smith and Brad Roseborough, premiered in 2008 at the Lifehouse Theatre in Redlands, California
* A symphony (7th) by Michel Bosc premiered in Bandol (France), 11 October 2009.
Television versions
* 1952: This was a live television production presented by "Westinghouse Studio One (Summer Theatre)".
* Adaptations appeared on British and American television in 1956 and 1961.
* 1963:Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Richard Leech as Mr Rochester and Ann Bell as Jane.
* 1973: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Sorcha Cusack as Jane, Michael Jayston as Mr Rochester, Juliet Waley as the child Jane, and Tina Heath as Helen Burns.
* 1978: Telenovela El Ardiente Secreto (English The impassioned secret) was an adaptation of this novel.
* 1982: BBC Classics Presents: Jane Eyrehead. A parody movie by SCTV starred Andrea Martin as Jane Eyrehead, Joe Flaherty as Mr Rochester, also starting John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Martin Short in supporting roles.
* 1983: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Zelah Clarke as Jane, Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester, Sian Pattenden as the child Jane, and Colette Barker as Helen Burns.
* 1997: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the A&E Network and starred Ciaran Hinds as Mr Rochester and Samantha Morton as Jane.
* 2006: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester, Ruth Wilson as Jane, and Georgie Henley as Young Jane.
Literature
* 1938: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier was partially inspired by Jane Eyre.
* 1961: The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart adapts many of the motifs of Jane Eyre to 1950s northern England. The main character, Annabel, falls in love with her older neighbor who is married to a mentally ill woman. Like Jane, Annabel runs away to try to get over her love. The novel begins when she returns from her eight-year exile.
* 1966: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. The character Bertha Mason serves as the main protagonist for this novel which acts as a "prequel" to Jane Eyre. It describes the meeting and marriage of Antoinette (later renamed Bertha by Mr Rochester) and Mr Rochester. In its reshaping of events related to Jane Eyre, the novel suggests that Bertha's madness is the result of Mr Rochester's rejection of her and her Creole heritage. It was also adapted into film twice.
* 1997: Mrs Rochester: A Sequel to Jane Eyre by Hilary Bailey
* 2000: Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant
* 2000: Jane Rochester by Kimberly A. Bennett, content explores the first years of the Rochesters' marriage with gothic and explicit content. A fan favorite.
* 2001 novel The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde revolves around the plot of Jane Eyre. It portrays the book as originally largely free of literary contrivance: Jane and Mr Rochester's first meeting is a simple conversation without the dramatic horse accident, and Jane does not hear his voice calling for her and ends up starting a new life in India. The protagonist's efforts mostly accidentally change it to the real version.
* 2002: Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn, a science fiction novel based upon Jane Eyre
* 2006: The French Dancer's Bastard: The Story of Adele From Jane Eyre by Emma Tennant. This is a slightly modified version of Tennant's 2000 novel.
* 2007: Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant. This is another version of Jane Eyre.
* 2010: Rochester: A Novel Inspired by Jane Eyre by J.L. Niemann. Jane Eyre told from the first person-perspective of Edward Rochester.
* The novelist Angela Carter was working on a sequel to Jane Eyre at the time of her death in 1992. This was to have been the story of Jane's stepdaughter Adèle Varens and her mother Céline. Only a synopsis survives.
瑪格麗特原來是個貧苦的鄉下姑娘，來到巴黎後，開始了賣笑生涯。由於生得花容月貌，巴黎的貴族公子爭相追逐，成了紅極一時的“社交明星”。她隨身的裝扮總是少不了一束茶花，人稱“茶花女”。
茶花女得了肺病，在接受礦泉治療時，療養院裏有位貴族小姐，身材、長相和瑪格麗特差不多，衹是肺病已到了第三期，不久便死了。小姐的父親摩裏阿竜公爵在偶然發現瑪格麗特很像他女兒，便收她做了幹女兒。瑪格麗特說出了自己的身世，公爵答應衹要她能改變自己過去的生活，便負擔她的全部日常費用。但瑪格麗特不能完全做到，公爵便將錢減少了一半，瑪格麗特入不敷出，到現在已欠下幾萬法郎的債務。
In the English-speaking world, The Lady of the Camellias became known as Camille and 16 versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The titular lady is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas, fils.
Stage performances
Since its debut as a play, numerous editions have been performed at theatres around the world. The role of the tragic "Marguerite Gautier" became one of the most coveted amongst actresses and included performances by Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Margaret Anglin, Gabrielle Réjane, Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, Isabelle Adjani, Cacilda Becker, and especially Sarah Bernhardt, who starred in Paris, London, and several Broadway revivals, plus a 1912 film. Dancer/Impressario Ida Rubinstein successfully recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid-1920s, coached by the great actress herself before she died.
It is also the inspiration for the 2008 musical Marguerite, which places the story in 1944 German-occupied France.
Adaptations
Film
In addition to inspiring La Traviata, The Lady of the Camellias has been adapted for approximately twenty different motion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages. The role of "Marguerite Gautier" has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt, Clara Kimball Young, Theda Bara, Yvonne Printemps, Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Micheline Presle, Francesca Bertini, Isabelle Huppert, and others.
films entitled Camille
There have been at least eight adaptations of The Lady of the Camellias entitled Camille.
other films based on La Dame aux Camélias
In addition to the Camille films, the story has been the adapted into numerous other screen versions: Elena Lunda
* Kameliadamen, the first movie based on the work. Kameliadamen was a 1907 Danish silent film directed by Viggo Larsen and starring Oda Alstrup, Larsen, Gustave Lund and Robert Storm Petersen.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1911 French language silent film, directed by André Calmettes and Henri Pouctal. It stars Sarah Bernhardt.
* La Signora delle Camelie, a 1915 Italian language film. It was directed by Baldassarre Negroni and Gustavo Serena. It stars Hesperia, Alberto Collo and Ida Carloni Talli.
* A 1921 English language silent film that stars Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino. It was directed by Ray C. Smallwood.
* Damen med kameliorna, a 1925 Swedish film adapted and directed by Olof Molander. It stars Uno Henning and Tora Teje.
* La Dame aux Camélias, the first sound adaptation. La Dame aux Camélias was a 1934 French film adapted by Abel Gance and directed by Gance and Fernand Rivers. It stars Yvonne Printemps and Pierre Fresnay.
* Greta Garbo had the starring role in Camille (1936), directed by George Cukor
* A 1944 Spanish language version was produced in Mexico. It was adapted by Roberto Tasker and directed by Gabriel Soria, and stars Lina Montes and Emilio Tuero.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1953 French film adapted by Bernard Natanson and directed by Raymond Bernard. It stars Gino Cervi, Micheline Presle and Roland Alexandre.
* Camelia, a 1954 Mexican film adapted by José Arenas, Edmundo Báez, Roberto Gavaldón and Gregorio Walerstein. It was directed by Gavaldón, and stars María Félix.
* La Mujer de las camelias, a 1954 Argentine film adapted by Alexis de Arancibia (as Wassen Eisen) and Ernesto Arancibia, and directed by Ernesto Arancibia. It stars Zully Moreno.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1981 French language film adapted by Jean Aurenche, Enrico Medioli and Vladimir Pozner, and directed by Mauro Bolognini. It stars Isabelle Huppert.
Ballet
* John Neumeier made a The Lady of the Camellias ballet on his Hamburg Ballet company.
* Marguerite and Armand is an adaptation created in 1963 by renowned choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton specifically for Rudolf Nureyev and prima ballerina assoluta Dame Margot Fonteyn.
茶花女得了肺病，在接受礦泉治療時，療養院裏有位貴族小姐，身材、長相和瑪格麗特差不多，衹是肺病已到了第三期，不久便死了。小姐的父親摩裏阿竜公爵在偶然發現瑪格麗特很像他女兒，便收她做了幹女兒。瑪格麗特說出了自己的身世，公爵答應衹要她能改變自己過去的生活，便負擔她的全部日常費用。但瑪格麗特不能完全做到，公爵便將錢減少了一半，瑪格麗特入不敷出，到現在已欠下幾萬法郎的債務。
In the English-speaking world, The Lady of the Camellias became known as Camille and 16 versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The titular lady is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas, fils.
Stage performances
Since its debut as a play, numerous editions have been performed at theatres around the world. The role of the tragic "Marguerite Gautier" became one of the most coveted amongst actresses and included performances by Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Margaret Anglin, Gabrielle Réjane, Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, Isabelle Adjani, Cacilda Becker, and especially Sarah Bernhardt, who starred in Paris, London, and several Broadway revivals, plus a 1912 film. Dancer/Impressario Ida Rubinstein successfully recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid-1920s, coached by the great actress herself before she died.
It is also the inspiration for the 2008 musical Marguerite, which places the story in 1944 German-occupied France.
Adaptations
Film
In addition to inspiring La Traviata, The Lady of the Camellias has been adapted for approximately twenty different motion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages. The role of "Marguerite Gautier" has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt, Clara Kimball Young, Theda Bara, Yvonne Printemps, Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Micheline Presle, Francesca Bertini, Isabelle Huppert, and others.
films entitled Camille
There have been at least eight adaptations of The Lady of the Camellias entitled Camille.
other films based on La Dame aux Camélias
In addition to the Camille films, the story has been the adapted into numerous other screen versions: Elena Lunda
* Kameliadamen, the first movie based on the work. Kameliadamen was a 1907 Danish silent film directed by Viggo Larsen and starring Oda Alstrup, Larsen, Gustave Lund and Robert Storm Petersen.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1911 French language silent film, directed by André Calmettes and Henri Pouctal. It stars Sarah Bernhardt.
* La Signora delle Camelie, a 1915 Italian language film. It was directed by Baldassarre Negroni and Gustavo Serena. It stars Hesperia, Alberto Collo and Ida Carloni Talli.
* A 1921 English language silent film that stars Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino. It was directed by Ray C. Smallwood.
* Damen med kameliorna, a 1925 Swedish film adapted and directed by Olof Molander. It stars Uno Henning and Tora Teje.
* La Dame aux Camélias, the first sound adaptation. La Dame aux Camélias was a 1934 French film adapted by Abel Gance and directed by Gance and Fernand Rivers. It stars Yvonne Printemps and Pierre Fresnay.
* Greta Garbo had the starring role in Camille (1936), directed by George Cukor
* A 1944 Spanish language version was produced in Mexico. It was adapted by Roberto Tasker and directed by Gabriel Soria, and stars Lina Montes and Emilio Tuero.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1953 French film adapted by Bernard Natanson and directed by Raymond Bernard. It stars Gino Cervi, Micheline Presle and Roland Alexandre.
* Camelia, a 1954 Mexican film adapted by José Arenas, Edmundo Báez, Roberto Gavaldón and Gregorio Walerstein. It was directed by Gavaldón, and stars María Félix.
* La Mujer de las camelias, a 1954 Argentine film adapted by Alexis de Arancibia (as Wassen Eisen) and Ernesto Arancibia, and directed by Ernesto Arancibia. It stars Zully Moreno.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1981 French language film adapted by Jean Aurenche, Enrico Medioli and Vladimir Pozner, and directed by Mauro Bolognini. It stars Isabelle Huppert.
Ballet
* John Neumeier made a The Lady of the Camellias ballet on his Hamburg Ballet company.
* Marguerite and Armand is an adaptation created in 1963 by renowned choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton specifically for Rudolf Nureyev and prima ballerina assoluta Dame Margot Fonteyn.
《三劍客》是以17世紀初期法國國王路易十三和手握重兵、權傾朝野的首相黎塞留紅衣主教的矛盾為背景，穿插群臣派係的明爭暗鬥，圍繞宮廷裏的秘史軼聞，展開了極饒趣味的故事。書中的主人公少年勇士達達尼昂，懷揣其父留給他的十五個埃居，騎一匹長毛瘦馬，告別及親，遠赴巴黎，希望在同鄉父執的特雷維爾為隊長的國王火槍隊裏當一名火槍手。在隊長府上，他遇上阿托斯，波托斯和阿拉米斯三個火槍手，通過歐洲騎士風行的决鬥，四人結成生死與共的知己。
其時，國王路易十三，王後安娜·奧地利，以及首相黎塞留三分國權，彼此有隙。國王對達達尼昂幾次打敗首相部下暗自褒奬，而首相卻懷恨在心。恰逢安娜·奧地利王後的舊時情人英國白金漢公爵對她情絲未斷，王後便以金剛鑽墜相贈以表懷念。主教遂利用契機構陷，嚮國王屢進讒言，要國王派人組織宮廷舞會，讓王後配帶國王送給她的那條金剛鑽墜以正虛實。王後眼見舞會日期逼近，惶然無計，幸得心腹侍女波那瑟獻計設法，請達達尼昂幫忙相助。達達尼昂對波那瑟一見鐘情，頗相見恨晚，便不顧個人安危，滿口答應，在三個朋友的全力支持下，四人分頭赴英。經過一路麯折離奇的磨難，唯有達達尼昂如期抵達，嚮白金漢說明原委，及時索回金剛鑽墜，解救了王後的燃眉之急，粉碎了紅衣主教的陰謀詭計。
紅衣主教黎塞留對安娜·奧地利也早已有意，但一直未獲王後垂青。於是他妒火中燒，移恨於情敵白金漢公爵，利用新舊教徒的矛盾引發的法英戰爭，妄圖除掉白金漢以解心頭之恨。為達此目的，他網羅一批心腹黨羽，其中最得力的親信便是佳麗米拉迪。此女天生麗質，豔若桃李，但卻兩面三刀，口蜜腹劍，心狠手辣，毒如蛇蝎。達達尼昂為其美貌所動，巧構計謀，潛入內室，誘她失身。就在雲雨交歡之中，達達尼昂偶然發現米拉迪肩烙一朵百合花，那是當時歐洲女子犯罪的恥辱刑跡。隱藏數年的這個機密的暴露，使她對達達尼昂恨之入骨，不共戴天，幾次設陷阱暗害，但均未成功。
在以圍困拉羅捨爾城為戰事焦點的法英對壘中，黎塞留和白金漢各為兩國披挂上陣的主帥。黎塞留暗派米拉迪赴英臥底，乘機行刺白金漢；米拉迪提出以殺死達達尼昂為交換條件。她一踏上英國的土地，即被預先得到達達尼昂通知的溫特勳爵抓獲，遂遭其軟禁。囚禁中，她極盡賣弄風騷和花言巧語之能事，誘惑了溫特勳爵的心腹看守費爾頓，後者自告奮勇救米拉迪出獲，並僥幸刺死了白金漢。米拉迪在歸法途中，巧進修道院，找到了受王後派人庇護的達達尼昂的情婦波那瑟，將她毒死。達達尼昂、阿托斯、波托斯、阿拉米斯四位朋友晝夜兼程，苦苦追蹤，會同溫特勳爵和一名劊子手，終於在利斯河畔抓到企圖潛逃比利時的米拉迪。六位仇人齊討共誅，揭開了米拉迪的老底：原來她早已遁入空門，但她不甘青春寂寞，誘惑了一個小教士與其同居。因敗壞教門清規，教士身陷囹圄，她也被劊子手——小教士的胞兄烙下了一朵百合花。教士越獄逃跑，攜帶米拉迪私奔他鄉，劊子手因受株連入獄，替弟頂罪。在異鄉，米拉迪嫌貧愛富，又拋棄了小教士，和當地一位少年拉費爾伯爵結婚，弄得後者傾傢蕩産又棄他而去。拉費爾伯爵恨之切切，便化名阿托斯投軍，進了國王火槍隊，以慰失戀受騙之苦。米拉迪逃到英國，騙取溫特勳爵伯兄之愛成婚，並生有一子。但為了獨占丈夫及兄弟之遺産，她又謀害了第二個丈夫。她罪惡纍纍，天怒人怨，當即在利斯河畔被殺正法。至此，達達尼昂、阿托斯、波托斯、阿拉米斯、溫特勳爵和劊子手各自都報仇雪恨，了卻夙願。
黎塞留得知心腹米拉迪遇害一事中，達達尼昂是主謀，便命親信羅什福爾將他捉拿。達達尼昂不卑不亢，坦言相陳，明示原委。黎塞留見他視死如歸，義勇無雙，少年有為，深為感動，非但不加罪行誅，反而擢升其火槍隊副官。阿托斯、波托斯、阿拉米斯三人或歸鄉裏，或娶孀婦，或皈教門，萍飄絮飛，全書就此結局。
《三劍客》是一部歷史小說，但作者大仲馬不拘泥於歷史，在此基礎上添加自己豐富的想像力，使它成為一部引人入勝的俠士小說，至今仍為人們所喜愛。
The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d'Artagnan Romances.
The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844.
Origin
In the very first sentences of his preface Alexandre Dumas indicated as his source Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, printed by Pierre Rouge in Amsterdam. It was in this book, he said, that d'Artagnan relates his first visit to M. de Tréville, captain of the Musketeers, where in the antechamber he met three young men with the names Athos, Porthos and Aramis. This information struck the imagination of Dumas so much—he tells us—that he continued his investigation and finally encountered once more the names of the three musketeers in a manuscript with the title Mémoire de M. le comte de la Fère, etc.. Elated—so continues his yarn—he asked permission to reprint the manuscript. Permission granted:
"Well, it is the first part of this precious manuscript that we offer today to our readers, while giving it back its more convenient title and under the engagement to publish immediately the second part should this first part be successful. In the meantime, as the godfather is as good as a second father, we invite the reader to address himself to us, and not to the Comte de La Fère, about his pleasure or boredom. This being said, let's get on with our story."
The book he referred to was Mémoires de M .d'Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la première compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi (Memoirs of Mister d'Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King's Musketeers) by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Cologne, 1700). The book was borrowed from the Marseille public library, and the card-index remains to this day; Dumas kept the book when he went back to Paris.
Attention to the extent of Dumas' preface is called for when compared with the recent analysis (2008) of the book's origin by Roger MacDonald in his The Man in the Iron Mask:The True Story of the Most Famous Prisoner in History and the Four Musketeers where the identity of the man in the iron mask is presented as real history.
Following Dumas's lead in his preface, Eugène d'Auriac (de la Bibliothèque Royale) in 1847 was able to write the biography of d'Artagnan: d'Artagnan, Capitaine-Lieutenant des Mousquetaires – Sa vie aventureuse – Ses duels – etc. based on Courtilz de Sandras. This work and especially its introduction with reference to the preface is uncited by MacDonald.
Plot summary
Plot brief
The poor d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers. He suffers misadventure and is challenged to a duel by each of three musketeers (Athos, Aramis and Porthos). Attacked by the Cardinal's guards, the four unite and escape.
D'Artagnan and his new love interest, Constance, help the French queen give a particular piece of jewellery to her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham. The Cardinal learns of this and coaxes the French king to hold a ball where the queen must wear the jewellery; its absence will reveal her infidelity. The four companions retrieve the jewellery from England.
The Cardinal kidnaps Constance who is later rescued by the queen. D'Artagnan meets Milady de Winter and discovers she is a felon, the ex-wife of Athos and the widow of Count de Winter. The Cardinal recruits Milady to kill Buckingham, also granting her a hand-written pardon for the future killing of d'Artagnan. Athos learns of this, takes the pardon but is unable to warn Buckingham. He sends word to Lord de Winter that Milady is arriving; Lord de Winter arrests her on suspicion of killing Count de Winter, his brother.
She seduces her guard and escapes to the monastery in France where the queen secreted Constance. Milady kills Constance. The four companions arrive and Athos identifies her as a multiple murderess. She is tried and beheaded.
On the road, d'Artagnan is arrested. Taken before the Cardinal, d'Artagnan relates recent events and reveals the Cardinal’s pardon. Impressed, the Cardinal offers him a blank musketeer officer's commission. D’Artagnan’s friends refuse the commission, each retiring to a new life, telling him to take it himself.
Detailed plot summary
The main character, d'Artagnan, born into an impoverished noble family of Gascony, leaves home for Paris to fulfill his greatest dream: becoming a Musketeer of the Guard. Fortunately his father knows Monsieur De Treville, Captain of the Company of Musketeers (and fellow Gascon) and has written a letter of introduction. On the road to Paris, the young Gascon soon gets in a quarrel with a mysterious gentleman and is set upon by the servants of the nearby inn. When d'Artagnan regains consciousness he realizes that the gentleman has stolen his letter of introduction. The innkeeper manages to get his hands on much of d'Artagnan's limited money as he recuperates.
In Paris d'Artagnan goes straight to M. De Treville's hôtel, but lacking his father's letter is received somewhat coolly. In a series of incidents at the hôtel, d'Artagnan is challenged to duels by three musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The four men meet and d'Artagnan begins to fight Athos (the first challenger). They are interrupted by Cardinal Richelieu's guards who threaten to arrest them because duels are forbidden by royal decree. The three musketeers and d'Artagnan unite to defeat the cardinal's guards. In this manner the young Gascon earns the respect and friendship of Athos, Porthos and Aramis and soon becomes a soldier in a regiment of the Royal Guard.
After obtaining lodging and hiring a servant (Planchet), he meets his aging landlord's pretty young wife, Constance Bonacieux, with whom he falls instantly in love. Constance and d'Artagnan help the Queen Consort of France, Anne of Austria, and the Duke of Buckingham have a rendezvous and the Queen presents her lover with a wooden box containing a set of diamond jewels originally given to her by her husband Louis XIII. Cardinal Richelieu, informed by his spies of the gift, persuades the King to invite the Queen to a ball where she would be expected to wear the diamonds; in hopes of uncovering her love affair.
Constance attempts to get her husband to go to London and retrieve the diamonds, but he has been recruited as an agent by the cardinal and refuses. D'Artagnan and his friends are convinced to take on the mission instead. After a series of adventures, they retrieve the jewels and return them to Queen Anne, just in time to save her façade of honour. Athos, Porthos and Aramis are all badly wounded by the cardinal's agents in this endeavor.
The cardinal's revenge comes swiftly: the next evening, Constance is kidnapped. D'Artagnan brings his friends back to Paris and tries to find her, but fails. Meanwhile, he befriends the Lord de Winter, an English nobleman who introduces him to his sister-in-law, Milady de Winter. D'Artagnan quickly develops a crush on the pretty noblewoman, but soon learns that she has no love for him, being an agent for the cardinal. He manages to sleep with her and learns that Milady has a fleur-de-lis burned into her shoulder, marking her as a felon. She had apparently been married to both Athos and the Count de Winter at different times in her wicked life and was livid that the young musketeer knew her secret. D'Artagnan is able to escape her home but is relieved when all the King's guards are ordered to La Rochelle where a siege of the Protestant-held town is taking place.
Milady makes several attempts to kill d'Artagnan in and around La Rochelle, but fails. At the same time, d'Artagnan finds out that the Queen has managed to save Constance from the prison where the cardinal and Milady had thrown her and that his beloved is now hidden somewhere safe.
The Musketeers stake out the inn and overhear a conversation between the cardinal and Milady, during which the cardinal asks her to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham (a supporter of the Protestant Rochellais rebels). The churchman then writes out a blanket pardon to Milady, effectively giving her permission to kill d'Artagnan. Athos quickly confronts his former wife and forces her to relinquish the cardinal's pardon. Because of the war between France and England, any attempt by the musketeers to warn the Duke of Buckingham about Milady would be considered treason, but they are able to send Planchet with a letter to Milady's brother-in-law (Lord de Winter) who suspects Milady killed his brother.
Milady is imprisoned on arrival in England, but soon seduces her hard-hearted Puritan jailer Felton and convinces him not only to help her escape, but also to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham. While the naive Felton shanks the prime minister, Milady sails to France. Milady sends a message to the cardinal and hides in the same North French monastery where Constance had been sent by the Queen. The trusting Constance bares her soul to Milady and the evil woman realizes that her enemy d'Artagnan is expected to arrive at the monastery at any moment. She escapes just before his arrival, but not before taking her revenge: she poisons Constance who dies minutes later in the arms of her beloved d'Artagnan.
They arrange to track down the whereabouts of Milady to exact punishment, joined by the Lord de Winter. The noblemen find her and try the countess on numerous charges: the poisoning of Madame Bonacieux; the assassination attempts on d'Artagnan; accomplice to the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham; the corruption of the Lord de Winter's servant, Felton; and the assassination of her late husband, Count de Winter. The most damning charge comes when Athos states that Milady, his wife, is a marked criminal with a brand on her shoulder. When the countess demands that Athos present the one who branded her, a man in a red cloak steps forward. She immediately recognizes him as the executioner of Lille and he recounts Milady's early misdeeds that led to the brand.
After Milady is beheaded the musketeers return to La Rochelle. On their way they encounter the Count of Rochefort, who was traveling to Milady to pay her. Rochefort also has an order to arrest d'Artagnan. He decides to postpone his trip to Milady in order to take d'Artagnan directly to the cardinal. When the young Gascon is presented before him the entire story about Milady's assassination attempts, her poisoning of Madame Bonacieux, etc. is told. The cardinal states that if Milady is indeed guilty, the courts will deal harshly with her. D'Artagnan frankly admits that he and his friends have already dealt with this evil woman. He then presents Richelieu with the blanket pardon written in the cardinal's own hand. The cardinal, impressed by d'Artagnan's resourcefulness and having already gotten what he wanted from Milady, offers the young man a lieutenant's commission with the musketeers — with the name left blank. The cardinal then presents Rochefort and asks both men to be on good terms.
The book ends with d'Artagnan offering the officer's commission to each of his friends, but he is told that he should insert his own name. Athos intends to retire to his estates, Porthos has decided to marry the widow of a rich lawyer and Aramis will soon fulfill his dream of entering the priesthood. Their lives will cross again, in Twenty Years After.
Important characters
Musketeers
* Athos
* Porthos
* Aramis
D'Artagnan was not one of the titular "three musketeers." The novel recounts his becoming a musketeer.
Musketeers' servants
* Planchet (d'Artagnan) – A clever fellow whom Porthos found to serve d'Artagnan.
* Grimaud (Athos) – A Breton, trained to speak only in emergencies and mostly communicates through sign language.
* Mousqueton (Porthos) – A would-be dandy, just as vain as his master, whose only pay is his master's old clothes
* Bazin (Aramis) – Waits for the day his master will join the church, as Bazin has always dreamed to serve a priest.
Others
* Milady de Winter
* Cardinal Richelieu
* Comte de Rochefort
* Louis XIII of France
* M. de Tréville
* Constance Bonacieux
* Monsieur Bonacieux
* Queen Anne of Austria
* George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
Editions
Les Trois Mousquetaires was translated into three English versions by 1846. One of these, by William Barrow, is still in print and fairly faithful to the original, available in the Oxford World's Classics 1999 edition. However, all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality had been removed to conform to 19th-century English standards, thereby making the scenes between d'Artagnan and Milady, for example, confusing and strange. The most recent and now standard English translation is by Richard Pevear (2006), who in his introduction notes that most of the modern translations available today are "textbook examples of bad translation practices" which "give their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas' writing."
Adaptations
Musical theatre
The Three Musketeers is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire, lyrics by Clifford Grey and P. G. Wodehouse, and music by Rudolf Friml. The original 1928 production ran on Broadway for 318 performances. A 1984 revival ran for 15 previews and 9 performances. In 2003 a Dutch musical 3 Musketiers premiered, which went on to open in Germany (both the Dutch and German production starring Pia Douwes as Milady De Winter) and Hungary. Composer George Stiles, lyricist Paul Leigh and playwright Peter Raby have produced another version (under the title The 3 Musketeers, One Musical For All), which opened at the American Musical Theatre of San José on 10 March 2001.
Films
See The Three Musketeers (film) for a list of film adaptations.
Games
1995 saw the release by publisher U.S. Gold of Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer by video game developers Clipper Software, a classic point-and-click adventure game using the SCUMM engine.
In 2005, Swedish developer Legendo Entertainment published the side-scrolling platform game The Three Musketeers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. In July 2009, a version of the game was released for WiiWare in North America and Europe under the title The Three Musketeers: One for All!.
In 2009, Canadian developer Dingo Games self-published The Three Musketeers: The Game for Windows and Mac OS X. It is the first game to be truly based on the novel (in that it closely follows the novel's story).
2009 also saw the publication of the asymmetric team board game The Three Musketeers "The Queen's Pendants" (Настольная игра «Три мушкетера») from French designer Pascal Bernard by the Russian publisher Zvezda.
Television
* Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is an anthropomorphic animated series adaptation
* Albert the Fifth Musketeer, animated series which is a sequel to the novel
* Young Blades, television series which is a sequel to the novels, centered on the son of d'Artagnan
* Three Musketeers is an anime series adaption
* The Three Musketeers, an animated adaption that aired as part of Hanna-Barbera's "The Banana Splits Comedy-Adventure Hour" & "The Banana Splits & Friends" show.
Influence on later works
In 1939, American author Tiffany Thayer published a book entitled Three Musketeers (Thayer, 1939). This is a re-telling of the story in Thayer's words, true to the original plot but told in a different order and with different points of view and emphasis from the original. For example, the book opens with the scene of Milady's youth and how she came to be branded, and more development of her early character, making her later scheming more believable and understandable. Thayer's treatment of sex and sexual politics is more explicit than typical English translations of the original, occasionally leading to consternation when this book found its way to library children's sections and school libraries.
其時，國王路易十三，王後安娜·奧地利，以及首相黎塞留三分國權，彼此有隙。國王對達達尼昂幾次打敗首相部下暗自褒奬，而首相卻懷恨在心。恰逢安娜·奧地利王後的舊時情人英國白金漢公爵對她情絲未斷，王後便以金剛鑽墜相贈以表懷念。主教遂利用契機構陷，嚮國王屢進讒言，要國王派人組織宮廷舞會，讓王後配帶國王送給她的那條金剛鑽墜以正虛實。王後眼見舞會日期逼近，惶然無計，幸得心腹侍女波那瑟獻計設法，請達達尼昂幫忙相助。達達尼昂對波那瑟一見鐘情，頗相見恨晚，便不顧個人安危，滿口答應，在三個朋友的全力支持下，四人分頭赴英。經過一路麯折離奇的磨難，唯有達達尼昂如期抵達，嚮白金漢說明原委，及時索回金剛鑽墜，解救了王後的燃眉之急，粉碎了紅衣主教的陰謀詭計。
紅衣主教黎塞留對安娜·奧地利也早已有意，但一直未獲王後垂青。於是他妒火中燒，移恨於情敵白金漢公爵，利用新舊教徒的矛盾引發的法英戰爭，妄圖除掉白金漢以解心頭之恨。為達此目的，他網羅一批心腹黨羽，其中最得力的親信便是佳麗米拉迪。此女天生麗質，豔若桃李，但卻兩面三刀，口蜜腹劍，心狠手辣，毒如蛇蝎。達達尼昂為其美貌所動，巧構計謀，潛入內室，誘她失身。就在雲雨交歡之中，達達尼昂偶然發現米拉迪肩烙一朵百合花，那是當時歐洲女子犯罪的恥辱刑跡。隱藏數年的這個機密的暴露，使她對達達尼昂恨之入骨，不共戴天，幾次設陷阱暗害，但均未成功。
在以圍困拉羅捨爾城為戰事焦點的法英對壘中，黎塞留和白金漢各為兩國披挂上陣的主帥。黎塞留暗派米拉迪赴英臥底，乘機行刺白金漢；米拉迪提出以殺死達達尼昂為交換條件。她一踏上英國的土地，即被預先得到達達尼昂通知的溫特勳爵抓獲，遂遭其軟禁。囚禁中，她極盡賣弄風騷和花言巧語之能事，誘惑了溫特勳爵的心腹看守費爾頓，後者自告奮勇救米拉迪出獲，並僥幸刺死了白金漢。米拉迪在歸法途中，巧進修道院，找到了受王後派人庇護的達達尼昂的情婦波那瑟，將她毒死。達達尼昂、阿托斯、波托斯、阿拉米斯四位朋友晝夜兼程，苦苦追蹤，會同溫特勳爵和一名劊子手，終於在利斯河畔抓到企圖潛逃比利時的米拉迪。六位仇人齊討共誅，揭開了米拉迪的老底：原來她早已遁入空門，但她不甘青春寂寞，誘惑了一個小教士與其同居。因敗壞教門清規，教士身陷囹圄，她也被劊子手——小教士的胞兄烙下了一朵百合花。教士越獄逃跑，攜帶米拉迪私奔他鄉，劊子手因受株連入獄，替弟頂罪。在異鄉，米拉迪嫌貧愛富，又拋棄了小教士，和當地一位少年拉費爾伯爵結婚，弄得後者傾傢蕩産又棄他而去。拉費爾伯爵恨之切切，便化名阿托斯投軍，進了國王火槍隊，以慰失戀受騙之苦。米拉迪逃到英國，騙取溫特勳爵伯兄之愛成婚，並生有一子。但為了獨占丈夫及兄弟之遺産，她又謀害了第二個丈夫。她罪惡纍纍，天怒人怨，當即在利斯河畔被殺正法。至此，達達尼昂、阿托斯、波托斯、阿拉米斯、溫特勳爵和劊子手各自都報仇雪恨，了卻夙願。
黎塞留得知心腹米拉迪遇害一事中，達達尼昂是主謀，便命親信羅什福爾將他捉拿。達達尼昂不卑不亢，坦言相陳，明示原委。黎塞留見他視死如歸，義勇無雙，少年有為，深為感動，非但不加罪行誅，反而擢升其火槍隊副官。阿托斯、波托斯、阿拉米斯三人或歸鄉裏，或娶孀婦，或皈教門，萍飄絮飛，全書就此結局。
《三劍客》是一部歷史小說，但作者大仲馬不拘泥於歷史，在此基礎上添加自己豐富的想像力，使它成為一部引人入勝的俠士小說，至今仍為人們所喜愛。
The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d'Artagnan Romances.
The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844.
Origin
In the very first sentences of his preface Alexandre Dumas indicated as his source Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, printed by Pierre Rouge in Amsterdam. It was in this book, he said, that d'Artagnan relates his first visit to M. de Tréville, captain of the Musketeers, where in the antechamber he met three young men with the names Athos, Porthos and Aramis. This information struck the imagination of Dumas so much—he tells us—that he continued his investigation and finally encountered once more the names of the three musketeers in a manuscript with the title Mémoire de M. le comte de la Fère, etc.. Elated—so continues his yarn—he asked permission to reprint the manuscript. Permission granted:
"Well, it is the first part of this precious manuscript that we offer today to our readers, while giving it back its more convenient title and under the engagement to publish immediately the second part should this first part be successful. In the meantime, as the godfather is as good as a second father, we invite the reader to address himself to us, and not to the Comte de La Fère, about his pleasure or boredom. This being said, let's get on with our story."
The book he referred to was Mémoires de M .d'Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la première compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi (Memoirs of Mister d'Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King's Musketeers) by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Cologne, 1700). The book was borrowed from the Marseille public library, and the card-index remains to this day; Dumas kept the book when he went back to Paris.
Attention to the extent of Dumas' preface is called for when compared with the recent analysis (2008) of the book's origin by Roger MacDonald in his The Man in the Iron Mask:The True Story of the Most Famous Prisoner in History and the Four Musketeers where the identity of the man in the iron mask is presented as real history.
Following Dumas's lead in his preface, Eugène d'Auriac (de la Bibliothèque Royale) in 1847 was able to write the biography of d'Artagnan: d'Artagnan, Capitaine-Lieutenant des Mousquetaires – Sa vie aventureuse – Ses duels – etc. based on Courtilz de Sandras. This work and especially its introduction with reference to the preface is uncited by MacDonald.
Plot summary
Plot brief
The poor d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers. He suffers misadventure and is challenged to a duel by each of three musketeers (Athos, Aramis and Porthos). Attacked by the Cardinal's guards, the four unite and escape.
D'Artagnan and his new love interest, Constance, help the French queen give a particular piece of jewellery to her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham. The Cardinal learns of this and coaxes the French king to hold a ball where the queen must wear the jewellery; its absence will reveal her infidelity. The four companions retrieve the jewellery from England.
The Cardinal kidnaps Constance who is later rescued by the queen. D'Artagnan meets Milady de Winter and discovers she is a felon, the ex-wife of Athos and the widow of Count de Winter. The Cardinal recruits Milady to kill Buckingham, also granting her a hand-written pardon for the future killing of d'Artagnan. Athos learns of this, takes the pardon but is unable to warn Buckingham. He sends word to Lord de Winter that Milady is arriving; Lord de Winter arrests her on suspicion of killing Count de Winter, his brother.
She seduces her guard and escapes to the monastery in France where the queen secreted Constance. Milady kills Constance. The four companions arrive and Athos identifies her as a multiple murderess. She is tried and beheaded.
On the road, d'Artagnan is arrested. Taken before the Cardinal, d'Artagnan relates recent events and reveals the Cardinal’s pardon. Impressed, the Cardinal offers him a blank musketeer officer's commission. D’Artagnan’s friends refuse the commission, each retiring to a new life, telling him to take it himself.
Detailed plot summary
The main character, d'Artagnan, born into an impoverished noble family of Gascony, leaves home for Paris to fulfill his greatest dream: becoming a Musketeer of the Guard. Fortunately his father knows Monsieur De Treville, Captain of the Company of Musketeers (and fellow Gascon) and has written a letter of introduction. On the road to Paris, the young Gascon soon gets in a quarrel with a mysterious gentleman and is set upon by the servants of the nearby inn. When d'Artagnan regains consciousness he realizes that the gentleman has stolen his letter of introduction. The innkeeper manages to get his hands on much of d'Artagnan's limited money as he recuperates.
In Paris d'Artagnan goes straight to M. De Treville's hôtel, but lacking his father's letter is received somewhat coolly. In a series of incidents at the hôtel, d'Artagnan is challenged to duels by three musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The four men meet and d'Artagnan begins to fight Athos (the first challenger). They are interrupted by Cardinal Richelieu's guards who threaten to arrest them because duels are forbidden by royal decree. The three musketeers and d'Artagnan unite to defeat the cardinal's guards. In this manner the young Gascon earns the respect and friendship of Athos, Porthos and Aramis and soon becomes a soldier in a regiment of the Royal Guard.
After obtaining lodging and hiring a servant (Planchet), he meets his aging landlord's pretty young wife, Constance Bonacieux, with whom he falls instantly in love. Constance and d'Artagnan help the Queen Consort of France, Anne of Austria, and the Duke of Buckingham have a rendezvous and the Queen presents her lover with a wooden box containing a set of diamond jewels originally given to her by her husband Louis XIII. Cardinal Richelieu, informed by his spies of the gift, persuades the King to invite the Queen to a ball where she would be expected to wear the diamonds; in hopes of uncovering her love affair.
Constance attempts to get her husband to go to London and retrieve the diamonds, but he has been recruited as an agent by the cardinal and refuses. D'Artagnan and his friends are convinced to take on the mission instead. After a series of adventures, they retrieve the jewels and return them to Queen Anne, just in time to save her façade of honour. Athos, Porthos and Aramis are all badly wounded by the cardinal's agents in this endeavor.
The cardinal's revenge comes swiftly: the next evening, Constance is kidnapped. D'Artagnan brings his friends back to Paris and tries to find her, but fails. Meanwhile, he befriends the Lord de Winter, an English nobleman who introduces him to his sister-in-law, Milady de Winter. D'Artagnan quickly develops a crush on the pretty noblewoman, but soon learns that she has no love for him, being an agent for the cardinal. He manages to sleep with her and learns that Milady has a fleur-de-lis burned into her shoulder, marking her as a felon. She had apparently been married to both Athos and the Count de Winter at different times in her wicked life and was livid that the young musketeer knew her secret. D'Artagnan is able to escape her home but is relieved when all the King's guards are ordered to La Rochelle where a siege of the Protestant-held town is taking place.
Milady makes several attempts to kill d'Artagnan in and around La Rochelle, but fails. At the same time, d'Artagnan finds out that the Queen has managed to save Constance from the prison where the cardinal and Milady had thrown her and that his beloved is now hidden somewhere safe.
The Musketeers stake out the inn and overhear a conversation between the cardinal and Milady, during which the cardinal asks her to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham (a supporter of the Protestant Rochellais rebels). The churchman then writes out a blanket pardon to Milady, effectively giving her permission to kill d'Artagnan. Athos quickly confronts his former wife and forces her to relinquish the cardinal's pardon. Because of the war between France and England, any attempt by the musketeers to warn the Duke of Buckingham about Milady would be considered treason, but they are able to send Planchet with a letter to Milady's brother-in-law (Lord de Winter) who suspects Milady killed his brother.
Milady is imprisoned on arrival in England, but soon seduces her hard-hearted Puritan jailer Felton and convinces him not only to help her escape, but also to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham. While the naive Felton shanks the prime minister, Milady sails to France. Milady sends a message to the cardinal and hides in the same North French monastery where Constance had been sent by the Queen. The trusting Constance bares her soul to Milady and the evil woman realizes that her enemy d'Artagnan is expected to arrive at the monastery at any moment. She escapes just before his arrival, but not before taking her revenge: she poisons Constance who dies minutes later in the arms of her beloved d'Artagnan.
They arrange to track down the whereabouts of Milady to exact punishment, joined by the Lord de Winter. The noblemen find her and try the countess on numerous charges: the poisoning of Madame Bonacieux; the assassination attempts on d'Artagnan; accomplice to the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham; the corruption of the Lord de Winter's servant, Felton; and the assassination of her late husband, Count de Winter. The most damning charge comes when Athos states that Milady, his wife, is a marked criminal with a brand on her shoulder. When the countess demands that Athos present the one who branded her, a man in a red cloak steps forward. She immediately recognizes him as the executioner of Lille and he recounts Milady's early misdeeds that led to the brand.
After Milady is beheaded the musketeers return to La Rochelle. On their way they encounter the Count of Rochefort, who was traveling to Milady to pay her. Rochefort also has an order to arrest d'Artagnan. He decides to postpone his trip to Milady in order to take d'Artagnan directly to the cardinal. When the young Gascon is presented before him the entire story about Milady's assassination attempts, her poisoning of Madame Bonacieux, etc. is told. The cardinal states that if Milady is indeed guilty, the courts will deal harshly with her. D'Artagnan frankly admits that he and his friends have already dealt with this evil woman. He then presents Richelieu with the blanket pardon written in the cardinal's own hand. The cardinal, impressed by d'Artagnan's resourcefulness and having already gotten what he wanted from Milady, offers the young man a lieutenant's commission with the musketeers — with the name left blank. The cardinal then presents Rochefort and asks both men to be on good terms.
The book ends with d'Artagnan offering the officer's commission to each of his friends, but he is told that he should insert his own name. Athos intends to retire to his estates, Porthos has decided to marry the widow of a rich lawyer and Aramis will soon fulfill his dream of entering the priesthood. Their lives will cross again, in Twenty Years After.
Important characters
Musketeers
* Athos
* Porthos
* Aramis
D'Artagnan was not one of the titular "three musketeers." The novel recounts his becoming a musketeer.
Musketeers' servants
* Planchet (d'Artagnan) – A clever fellow whom Porthos found to serve d'Artagnan.
* Grimaud (Athos) – A Breton, trained to speak only in emergencies and mostly communicates through sign language.
* Mousqueton (Porthos) – A would-be dandy, just as vain as his master, whose only pay is his master's old clothes
* Bazin (Aramis) – Waits for the day his master will join the church, as Bazin has always dreamed to serve a priest.
Others
* Milady de Winter
* Cardinal Richelieu
* Comte de Rochefort
* Louis XIII of France
* M. de Tréville
* Constance Bonacieux
* Monsieur Bonacieux
* Queen Anne of Austria
* George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
Editions
Les Trois Mousquetaires was translated into three English versions by 1846. One of these, by William Barrow, is still in print and fairly faithful to the original, available in the Oxford World's Classics 1999 edition. However, all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality had been removed to conform to 19th-century English standards, thereby making the scenes between d'Artagnan and Milady, for example, confusing and strange. The most recent and now standard English translation is by Richard Pevear (2006), who in his introduction notes that most of the modern translations available today are "textbook examples of bad translation practices" which "give their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas' writing."
Adaptations
Musical theatre
The Three Musketeers is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire, lyrics by Clifford Grey and P. G. Wodehouse, and music by Rudolf Friml. The original 1928 production ran on Broadway for 318 performances. A 1984 revival ran for 15 previews and 9 performances. In 2003 a Dutch musical 3 Musketiers premiered, which went on to open in Germany (both the Dutch and German production starring Pia Douwes as Milady De Winter) and Hungary. Composer George Stiles, lyricist Paul Leigh and playwright Peter Raby have produced another version (under the title The 3 Musketeers, One Musical For All), which opened at the American Musical Theatre of San José on 10 March 2001.
Films
See The Three Musketeers (film) for a list of film adaptations.
Games
1995 saw the release by publisher U.S. Gold of Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer by video game developers Clipper Software, a classic point-and-click adventure game using the SCUMM engine.
In 2005, Swedish developer Legendo Entertainment published the side-scrolling platform game The Three Musketeers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. In July 2009, a version of the game was released for WiiWare in North America and Europe under the title The Three Musketeers: One for All!.
In 2009, Canadian developer Dingo Games self-published The Three Musketeers: The Game for Windows and Mac OS X. It is the first game to be truly based on the novel (in that it closely follows the novel's story).
2009 also saw the publication of the asymmetric team board game The Three Musketeers "The Queen's Pendants" (Настольная игра «Три мушкетера») from French designer Pascal Bernard by the Russian publisher Zvezda.
Television
* Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is an anthropomorphic animated series adaptation
* Albert the Fifth Musketeer, animated series which is a sequel to the novel
* Young Blades, television series which is a sequel to the novels, centered on the son of d'Artagnan
* Three Musketeers is an anime series adaption
* The Three Musketeers, an animated adaption that aired as part of Hanna-Barbera's "The Banana Splits Comedy-Adventure Hour" & "The Banana Splits & Friends" show.
Influence on later works
In 1939, American author Tiffany Thayer published a book entitled Three Musketeers (Thayer, 1939). This is a re-telling of the story in Thayer's words, true to the original plot but told in a different order and with different points of view and emphasis from the original. For example, the book opens with the scene of Milady's youth and how she came to be branded, and more development of her early character, making her later scheming more believable and understandable. Thayer's treatment of sex and sexual politics is more explicit than typical English translations of the original, occasionally leading to consternation when this book found its way to library children's sections and school libraries.
1801年，洛剋烏先生來到山莊拜訪希刺剋厲夫先生，要租下他的畫眉山莊，希刺剋厲夫先生對他很粗暴，還有一群惡狗嚮他發起進攻。但他還是又一次造訪希刺剋厲夫先生，他遇到了行為粗俗，不修邊 幅的英俊少年哈裏頓恩蕭，和貌美的希刺剋厲夫先生之子的遺孀。由於天黑又下雪希刺剋厲夫先生不得不留他住了下來，夜裏他做了一個奇怪的夢，夢見樹枝打在窗齒打碎玻璃，想折斷外頭的樹枝，可手指卻觸到一雙冰涼的小手，一個幽靈似的啜泣聲乞求他放她進來。她說她叫凱瑟琳·林惇，已經在這遊蕩了20年了，她想闖進來，嚇得洛剋烏失聲大叫。希刺剋厲夫先生聞聲趕來，讓希剋厲出去，他自己撲倒在床上，哭着叫起來：“凱蒂，來吧！啊，來呀，再來一次！啊，我心中最親愛的！凱瑟琳，最後一次！”可窗外毫無聲息，一陣冷風吹滅了蠟燭。
第二天，洛剋烏先生來到畫眉山莊，嚮女管傢艾倫迪恩問起此事，女管傢便講了發生在呼嘯山莊的事情。
呼嘯山莊已有300年的歷史，以前的主人恩蕭夫婦從街頭撿來一個吉普賽人的棄兒，收他做養子，這就是希刺剋厲夫。希刺剋厲夫一到這傢就受到纔先生的兒子辛得雷的欺負和虐待，可享德萊的妹妹凱瑟琳卻瘋狂地愛上了希刺剋厲夫。
《呼嘯山莊》老主人死了之後，已婚的辛得雷成了呼嘯山莊的主人。他開始阻止希刺剋厲夫和凱瑟琳的交往，並把希刺剋厲夫趕到田裏去幹活，不斷地差辱他，折磨他，他變得不近人情，近乎癡呆，凱瑟琳也變得野性十足。
一次，他們到畫眉山莊去玩，凱瑟琳被狗咬傷，主人林惇夫婦知道她是恩蕭傢的孩子，就熱情地留她養傷，而把希刺剋厲夫當成壞小子趕跑了。卡凱瑟琳和林敦的兒子埃德加、女兒伊莎貝拉成了好朋友。凱瑟琳住了五個長星期回來後，變成溫文爾雅，儀態萬方的富傢小姐。當他再次見到希刺剋厲夫時，生怕他弄髒了自己的衣服。希刺剋厲夫的自尊心受到了傷害，他說：“我願意怎麽髒，就怎麽髒。”他發誓要對辛得雷進行報復，他心中的野性和憤恨全部對準辛得雷。
1778年6月，辛得雷的妻子生下哈裏頓恩蕭後因肺病死去，辛得雷受了很大的打擊，
從此變得更加殘忍，更加冷酷無情。凱瑟琳徘徊於希刺剋厲夫和埃德加的愛情之間，她真心愛希剋厲，但又覺得與一個僕人結婚，有失身份。當埃德加嚮她求婚時，想到他的漂亮和富有，便答應了。但在她靈魂深處，非常明白自己錯了，便嚮女僕艾倫迪恩吐露真情：“我對埃德加的愛像樹林中的葉子，當鼕季改變樹木的時候，隨之就會改變葉子。我對希剋厲的愛卻像地下水久不變的岩石……我就是希剋厲！他無時無刻不在我心中，並不是作為一種樂趣，擊是作為我的一部分。”
希剋厲聽到她們的對話，痛苦萬分，當夜離開了呼嘯山莊，卡瑟林因希剋厲的離去而大病一場。後來林敦夫婦相繼得熱病而死，在他們死後三年，卡瑟林同埃德加結婚了。
數年後，希刺剋厲夫突然出現在畫眉山莊，這時他已經長成了一個蕭灑英俊而又很有錢的青年。凱瑟琳見到他時欣喜若狂，他意味深長地說：“我衹是為了你纔奮鬥的”。他經常出入於畫眉山莊，這使伊莎貝拉發病似的愛上了他。他為的報復整夜整夜地和辛得雷打牌、喝酒，慢慢地使他破了産，最後把整個莊園抵押給希剋厲。儘管卡瑟林想盡辦法想輓回希剋厲的感情，但他還是和伊莎貝拉結婚了，婚後以虐待伊莎貝拉來發泄自己的仇恨。
此時卡瑟林正值臨産，希刺剋厲夫趁埃德加不在，進入了畫眉山莊，他死命地抱住凱瑟琳，悲切地叫道：“啊，凱蒂，啊，我的命！我怎能受得了哇！……” 凱瑟琳着說：“如果我做錯了，我會因此而死，你也離開過我，但我寬恕了你，你也寬恕我吧！”希刺剋夫厲答道：“這是難以辦到的，但我饒恕你對我做的事。我可以愛害了我的人，可是害了你的人，我又怎麽能夠饒恕他呢？”他們就這樣瘋狂地擁抱着，互相怨恨。
直到埃德加回來後，他們才分開，凱瑟琳再也沒有醒來。當天夜裏，她昏迷中生下一個女孩便死去了。希刺剋厲夫整夜守在莊園裏，當得知凱瑟琳死了，他用力地把頭撞在樹幹上，“天啊！沒有我的命根子，我不能活下去呀！”幾個月後享德萊死了，希剋厲成了呼嘯山莊的主人。把辛得雷的兒子哈裏頓培養成一個粗野無禮，沒有教養的野小子。伊莎貝拉忍受不了丈夫的虐待，逃到倫敦附近，在那兒生了一個兒子取名林敦。
12年後林敦已長成一個少年，凱瑟琳的小女兒也已長成一個美麗的少女，他雖不喜歡林敦，他還是趁小卡凱瑟琳的父親病危之際，把小凱瑟琳接到呼嘯山莊，逼迫她和林敦結婚，因為他要“勝利地看見我的後代堂皇地作為他們産業的主人，我的孩子用工錢雇他們的孩子種他們的土地”。
幾個月後，埃德加也死了，希刺剋厲夫作為小凱瑟琳的父親搬進了畫眉山莊。不久林敦也死了，小凱瑟琳成了年輕的寡婦。
小凱瑟琳和哈裏頓就像當年的希剋厲和卡瑟林一樣，希剋厲瘋狂地阻止他們的來往，當她抓住小凱瑟琳想打她時，他從她的眼睛裏看到了凱瑟琳的影子，而此時的哈裏頓不正是當年的自己嗎！他變得更孤獨了，他渴望着和凱瑟琳的孤魂在一起。連續幾天他不吃不喝，在沼地裏遊蕩，回來後把自己關在凱瑟琳住過的房間裏，第二天，人們發現他死了。
他死後被埋在凱瑟琳的墓旁，小凱瑟琳終於和哈裏頓結婚了。
《呼嘯山莊》-寫作背景
艾米莉•勃朗特所生活的三十年間正是英國社會動蕩的時代。資本主義正在發展並越來越暴露它內在的缺陷；勞資之
間矛盾尖銳化；失業工人的貧睏；大量的童工被殘酷地折磨至死（這從同時期的英國著名女詩人伊莉莎白•巴雷特•勃朗寧①的長詩《孩子們的哭聲》，可以看到一些概貌）。再加上英國政府對民主改革鬥爭和工人運動采取高壓手段：如一八一九年的彼得路大屠殺就是一個例子。因此這一時期的文學作品也有所反映。我們的女作傢艾米莉•勃朗特就是誕生在這樣鬥爭的年代！她生在一個牧師家庭裏，父親名叫佩特裏剋•勃朗特（1777—1861），原是個愛爾蘭教士，一八一二年娶英國西南部康瓦耳郡（Cornwall）人瑪麗亞•勃蘭威爾為妻，膝下六個兒女。大女兒瑪麗亞（1814），二女兒伊莉莎白（1815），三女兒夏洛蒂（1816），獨子勃蘭威爾（1817），下邊就是艾米莉（1818）和安恩（1820）。後面四個都生在位於約剋郡曠野的桑頓村②，勃朗特先生便在這一教區任牧師職。一八二○年全家搬到豪渥斯地區，在曠野的一處偏僻的角落安了傢。她們三姊妹就在這個地方度過了一生。
一八二七年她們的母親逝世，姨母從康瓦耳群來照顧家庭。三年後，以瑪麗亞為首的四姊妹進寄宿學校讀書。由於生活條件太差，瑪麗亞與伊莉莎白患肺結核夭折，夏洛蒂與艾米莉幸存，自此在傢與兄弟勃蘭威爾一起自學。這個家庭一嚮離群索居，四個兄弟姊妹便常以讀書、寫作詩歌，及杜撰傳奇故事來打發寂寞的時光。夏洛蒂和勃蘭威爾以想象的安格裏阿王朝為中心來寫小說，而艾米莉和小妹安則創造了一個她們稱為岡多爾的太平洋島嶼來杜撰故事。
她們的傢雖然臨近豪渥斯工業區，然而這所住宅恰好位於城鎮與荒野之間。艾米莉經常和她的姊妹們到西邊的曠野地裏散步。因此一方面勃朗特姊妹看到了城鎮中正在發展的資本主義社會，另一方面也受到了曠野氣氛的感染。特別是艾米莉，她表面沉默寡言，內心卻熱情奔放，雖不懂政治，卻十分關心政治。三姊妹常常看自由黨或保守黨的期刊，喜歡議論政治，這當然是受了她們父親的影響。佩特裏剋•勃朗特是個比較激進的保守黨人，早年反對過路德運動③，後來也幫助豪渥斯工人，支持他們的罷工。艾米莉和她的姊妹繼承了他的正義感，同情手工業工人的反抗和鬥爭。這就為《呼嘯山莊》的誕生創造了條件。
這個家庭收入很少，經濟相當拮据。三姊妹不得不經常出外謀生，以教書或做家庭教師來貼補傢用，幾年來歷受艱辛挫折。夏洛蒂曾打算她們自己開設一所學校，她和艾米莉因此到布魯塞爾學習了一年，隨後因夏洛蒂失戀而離開。一八四六年她們自己籌款以假名出版了一本詩集④，卻衹賣掉兩本。一八四七年，她們三姊妹的三本小說⑤終於出版，然而衹有《簡愛》獲得成功，得到了重視。《呼嘯山莊》的出版並不為當時讀者所理解，甚至她自己的姐姐夏洛蒂也無法理解艾米莉的思想。
一八四八年，她們唯一的兄弟勃蘭威爾由於長期酗酒、吸毒，也傳染了肺病，於九月死去，雖然這位家庭中的暴君之死對於這三姊妹也是一種解脫，然而，正如在夏洛蒂姊妹的書簡集中所說的：“過失與罪惡都已遺忘，剩下來的是憐憫和悲傷盤踞了心頭與記憶……”對勃蘭威爾的悼念縮短了艾米莉走嚮墳墓的路途，同年十二月艾米莉終於棄世。她們的小妹妹安也於第二年五月相繼死去，這時這個家庭最後的成員衹有夏洛蒂和她的老父了。
這一位後來纔馳名世界文壇的極有才華的年輕女作傢，當時就這樣抱憾地離開了衹能使她嘗到冷漠無情的人世間，默默地和她傢中僅餘的三位親人告別了！她曾在少女時期的一首詩中這樣寫道：
“我是唯一的人，命中註定 無人過問，也無人流淚哀悼； 自從我生下來，從未引起過 一綫憂慮，一個快樂的微笑。 在秘密的歡樂，秘密的眼淚中， 這個變化多端的生活就這樣滑過， 十八年後仍然無依無靠， 一如在我誕生那天同樣的寂寞。……”
她在同一首詩中最後慨嘆道：
“起初青春的希望被融化， 然後幻想的虹彩迅速退開； 於是經驗告訴我，說真理 决不會在人類的心胸中成長起來。……”
但是她很想振作起來，有所作為，卻已掙紮不起，這種痛苦的思想鬥爭和瀕於絶望的情緒，在她同一時期的詩句中也可以找到：“然而如今當我希望過歌唱， 我的手指卻撥動了一根無音的弦； 而歌詞的疊句仍舊是 ‘不要再奮鬥了，’一切全是枉然。”
《呼嘯山莊》-作品賞析
《呼嘯山莊》通過一個愛情悲劇，嚮人們展示了一副畸形社會的生活畫面，勾勒了被這個畸形社會扭麯的人性及其造成的種種可怖的事件，整個故事情節是通過四個階段逐步鋪開的：
第一階段敘述了希斯剋利夫與凱瑟琳朝夕相處的童年生活；一個棄兒和一個小姐在這種特殊環境中所形成的特殊感情，以及他們對辛德雷專橫暴虐的反抗。
第二階段着重描寫凱瑟琳因為虛榮、無知和愚昧，背棄了希斯剋利夫，成了畫眉田莊的女主人。
第三階段以大量筆墨描繪希斯剋利夫如何在絶望中把滿腔仇恨化為報仇雪恥的計謀和行動。
最後階段儘管衹交代了希斯剋利夫的死亡，卻突出地揭示了當他瞭解哈裏頓和凱蒂相愛後，思想上經歷的一種嶄新的變化——人性的復蘇，從而使這出具有恐怖色彩的愛情悲劇透露出一束令人快慰的希望之光。
因此，希斯剋利夫的愛一恨一復仇一人性的復蘇，既是小說的精髓，又是貫穿始終的一條紅綫。作者依此脈絡，謀篇佈局，把場景安排得變幻莫測，有時在陰雲密佈、鬼哭狼嚎的曠野，有時又是風狂雨驟、陰森慘暗的庭院，故事始終籠罩在一種神秘和恐怖的氣氛之中。
在小說中，作者的全部心血凝聚在希斯剋利夫形象的刻畫上，她在這裏寄托了自己的全部憤慨、同情和理想。這個被剝奪了人間溫暖的棄兒在實際生活中培養了強烈的愛與憎，辛德雷的皮鞭使他嘗到了人生的殘酷，也教會他懂得忍氣吞聲的屈服無法改變自己受辱的命運。他選擇了反抗。凱瑟琳曾經是他忠實的夥伴，他倆在共同的反抗中萌發了真摯的愛情。然而，凱瑟琳最後卻背叛了希斯剋利夫，嫁給了她不瞭解、也根本不愛的埃德加·林頓。造成這個愛情悲劇的直接原因是她的虛榮、無知和愚蠢，結果卻葬送了自己的青春、愛情和生命，也毀了對她始終一往情深的希斯剋利夫，還差一點坑害了下一代。艾米莉·勃朗特刻畫這個人物時，有同情，也有憤慨；有惋惜，也有鞭笞；既哀其不幸，又怒其不爭，心情是極其復雜的。
凱瑟琳的背叛及其婚後悲苦的命運，是全書最重大的轉折點。它使希斯剋利夫滿腔的愛化為無比的恨；凱瑟琳一死，這腔仇恨火山般迸發出來，成了瘋狂的復仇動力。希斯剋利夫的目的達到了，他不僅讓辛德雷和埃德加凄苦死去，獨霸了兩傢莊園的産業，還讓他們平白無辜的下一代也飽嘗了苦果。這種瘋狂的報仇泄恨，貌似悖於常理，但卻淋漓盡致地表達了他非同一般的叛逆精神，這是一種特殊環境、特殊性格所决定的特殊反抗。希斯剋利夫的愛情悲劇是社會的悲劇，也是時代的悲劇。
《呼嘯山莊》的故事是以希斯剋利夫達到復仇目的而自殺告終的。他的死是一種殉情，表達了他對凱瑟琳生死不渝的愛，一種生不能同衾、死也求同穴的愛的追求。而他臨死前放棄了在下一代身上報復的念頭，表明他的天性本來是善良的，衹是由於殘酷的現實扭麯了他的天性，迫使他變得暴虐無情。這種人性的復蘇是一種精神上的升華，閃耀着作者人道主義的理想。
《呼嘯山莊》出版後一直被人認為是英國文學史上一部“最奇特的小說”，是一部“奧秘莫測”的“怪書”。原因在於它一反同時代作品普遍存在的傷感主義情調，而以強烈的愛、狂暴的恨及由之而起的無情的報復，取代了低沉的傷感和憂鬱。它宛如一首奇特的抒情詩，字裏行間充滿着豐富的想象和狂飆般猛烈的情感，具有震撼人心的藝術力量。
人物表
恩蕭先生 ———— 呼嘯山莊主人
辛德雷·恩蕭—— 其 子
凱瑟琳·恩蕭 —— 其女，小名凱蒂
希斯剋利夫 ——— 恩蕭撫養的孤兒
弗蘭西斯 ———— 辛德雷之妻
哈裏頓·恩蕭 —— 辛德雷之子
丁耐莉 ————— 女管傢，又名艾倫
約瑟夫 ————— 呼嘯山莊的老僕人
林敦先生 ———— 畫眉田莊主人
埃德加·林敦 —— 其子，後娶凱瑟琳·恩蕭
伊莎貝拉·林敦 — 其女，後嫁希刺剋厲夫
凱瑟琳·林敦 —— 埃德加與凱瑟琳之女，亦名凱蒂林敦·希刺剋厲夫
伊莎貝拉與希刺剋厲夫之子
洛剋烏德先生 —— 房 客
肯尼茲醫生 ——— 當地醫生
齊 拉 ————— 呼嘯山莊的女僕
《呼嘯山莊》-故事情節年表
１７５７ 辛德雷·恩蕭誕生。丁耐莉之母攜其嬰兒耐莉往呼嘯山莊當保姆。
１７６２ 埃德加·林敦誕生。
１７６５ 凱瑟琳·恩蕭誕生。
１７６６ 伊莎貝拉·林敦誕生。
１７７１ 夏天，恩蕭先生從利物浦帶回希刺剋厲夫。
１７７３ 春天，恩蕭夫人逝世。
１７７４ 辛德雷上大學。
１７７７ 十月，恩蕭先生逝世。辛德雷攜其妻弗蘭西斯返傢。
十一月底，凱瑟琳在畫眉田莊闖禍。
聖誕節，凱瑟琳返傢。
１７７８ 六月，哈裏頓·恩蕭誕生。弗蘭西斯逝世。丁耐莉照顧哈裏頓。
１７８０ 夏天，凱瑟琳接受了埃德加·林敦的求婚。希刺剋厲夫失蹤。凱瑟琳患重病。老林敦先生與夫人逝世。
１７８３ 三月，埃德加娶凱瑟琳。丁耐莉陪同往畫眉田莊。
九月，希刺剋厲夫歸。
１７８４ 一月，埃德加·凱瑟琳和希刺剋厲夫之間發生爭吵。希刺剋厲夫帶伊莎貝拉私奔。凱瑟琳第二次重病。
三月，希刺剋厲夫與伊莎貝拉回呼嘯山莊。希刺剋厲夫去看凱瑟琳。
三月廿日，凱瑟琳逝世，留下纔誕生的女兒凱瑟琳。
三月廿五日，凱瑟琳下葬。希刺剋厲夫當晚到墓園去。
三月廿六日，伊莎貝拉逃跑。
九月，辛德雷逝世。希刺剋厲夫占有呼嘯山莊。
十月，林敦·希刺剋厲夫誕生於外地。
１７９７ 伊莎貝拉逝世。
小凱蒂首次到呼嘯山莊。
埃德加接外甥林敦回畫眉田莊。希刺剋厲夫要走他的兒子。
１８００ 三月廿日，小凱蒂第二次到呼嘯山莊。
秋天，埃德加感冒病倒。
十月，凱蒂第三次到呼嘯山莊。
這以後三個星期，凱蒂秘密往呼嘯山莊。
１８０１ 八月，凱蒂與表弟林敦在野外見面，被希刺剋厲夫所迫又進呼嘯山莊與林敦結婚。
九月，埃德加·林敦逝世。後希刺剋厲夫往凱瑟琳墓地掘墓。
林敦·希刺剋厲夫繼承了畫眉田莊。
十月，林敦死去。希刺剋厲夫占有了其子産業。
十一月，希刺剋厲夫將畫眉田莊出租給洛剋烏德先生。
洛剋烏德先生拜訪呼嘯山莊。
１８０２ 一月，洛剋烏德先生離開畫眉田莊往倫敦。
二月，丁耐莉回呼嘯山莊。
四月，希刺剋厲夫逝世。
九月，洛剋烏德先生路經畫眉田莊與呼嘯山莊，再次拜訪。
１８０３ 元旦，哈裏頓·恩蕭與凱蒂結婚。
The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective; wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.
Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was initially considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior. Wuthering Heights has also given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, ballet, opera, and song.
Plot
Writing in his diary, Mr. Lockwood describes arriving in the winter of 1801, at the manor house of Thrushcross Grange, on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. He soon meets his landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man and the master of nearby Wuthering Heights. Despite not being welcome at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood returns for a second visit and is forced to stay overnight, due to a snow storm. Unable to sleep, he finds the diary of a girl named Catherine Earnshaw and reads an entry. Lockwood learns that she was a close childhood friend of Heathcliff. Later, he has a nightmare in which the ghost of a young girl appears at his window and begs to be let in. While Lockwood struggles to keep the ghost out of his room, Heathcliff is awakened by his cries of terror and rushes into the room. Upon hearing of Catherine's ghost, he asks Lockwood to leave the room. Standing outside the door, Lockwood hears Heathcliff sobbing, opening the window, and calling for Catherine to enter.
Upon returning to Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the others at Wuthering Heights. Nelly begins her story thirty years earlier, when Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff, an orphan boy, home to raise with his own children, Hindley and Catherine. Eventually, Mr. Earnshaw comes to favour Heathcliff over his own children. Both Earnshaw children initially resent Heathcliff, but soon he and Catherine become inseparable. Hindley continues to hate and physically abuse him
Mr. Earnshaw dies three years later and Hindley, now married to Frances after returning from boarding school, inherits Wuthering Heights. He brutalises Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand. Catherine becomes friends with the neighboring Linton family who live at Thrushcross Grange, and Mrs. Linton starts teaching her to be a proper lady. She is attracted to young Edgar Linton, whom Heathcliff immediately dislikes.
A year later, Frances dies from consumption shortly after giving birth to a son, Hareton. Hindley takes to drinking and becomes even more abusive to Heathcliff. Some two years later, Catherine informs Nelly that she wishes to marry Edgar Linton, as it will give her status and riches; despite her love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff, upon hearing this, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return three years later, soon after Catherine and Edgar are wed.
Heathcliff has apparently become a wealthy, respectable gentleman and now seeks revenge against all those he believes have wronged him. Heathcliff makes loans to Hindley that he knows cannot be repaid. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister, Isabella Linton, setting himself up to inherit Thrushcross Grange. After their marriage, Heathcliff becomes very cruel and abusive towards Isabella.
Catherine becomes very ill and dies shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. A few hours before her death, however, she and Heathcliff reaffirm their feelings for one another. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff becomes more bitter and vengeful towards those around him. Isabella flees to London a month later and gives birth to a boy, Linton Heathcliff.
About this time, Hindley dies. Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights and raises Hindley's son, Hareton, with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands.
Thirteen years later, Isabella dies and Linton comes to live at Wuthering Heights with his father, Heathcliff. He treats his son even more cruelly than he treated his wife. Three years pass and Heathcliff invites Cathy to Wuthering Heights. He then introduces her to his son, Linton, wishing them to marry which would strengthen his claim on Thrushcross Grange.
Cathy receives news that Linton has fallen ill. She hurries to Wuthering Heights to see if she can be of help. Linton's health declines swiftly and Heathcliff puts Cathy under house arrest, forcing her to marry his son. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, followed shortly by Linton. Heathcliff has now gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Cathy to stay at Wuthering Heights and treats her as a common servant. It is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, and Nelly’s story reaches the present day. Lockwood is appalled and leaves for London.
Lockwood returns six months later to visit Nelly. She tells him that in his absence, Cathy gradually softened toward her rough, uneducated cousin Hareton, just as Catherine was tender towards Heathcliff. Having originally mocked Hareton for his illiteracy, she now teaches him to read. He allows her to open up again after becoming so bitter from Heathcliff's brutal treatment.
When Heathcliff is confronted by Cathy and Hareton's love, he seems to suffer a mental breakdown and begins to see Catherine's ghost. He seemingly abandons his life-long vendetta and dies, having "swallowed nothing for four days". Nelly describes finding Heathcliff lying on the bed, stiff with rigor mortis. Only Hareton mourns Heathcliff's death. He is buried next to Catherine in the graveyard. Cathy and Hareton inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and plan their wedding for New Year’s Day. Upon hearing the end of the story, Lockwood leaves Nelly and on his walk home he visits the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.
Characters
* Heathcliff: Found, and presumably orphaned, on the streets of Liverpool, he is taken to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw and reluctantly cared for by the rest of the family. He and Catherine later grow close, and their love becomes the central theme of the first volume; his revenge and its consequences are the main theme of the second volume. Heathcliff is typically considered a Byronic hero, but critics have found his character, with a capacity for self-invention, to be profoundly difficult to assess. His position in society, without status (Heathcliff serves as both his given name and surname), is often the subject of Marxist criticism.
* Catherine Earnshaw: First introduced in Lockwood's discovery of her diary and etchings, Catherine's life is almost entirely detailed in the first volume. She seemingly suffers from a crisis of identity, unable to choose between nature and culture (and, by extension, Heathcliff and Edgar). Her decision to marry Edgar Linton over Heathcliff has been seen as a surrender to culture, and has implications for all the characters of Wuthering Heights. The character of Catherine has been analysed by many forms of literary criticism, including: psychoanalytic and feminist.
* Edgar Linton: Introduced as a child of the Linton family, who reside at Thrushcross Grange, Edgar's life and mannerisms are immediately contrasted with those of Heathcliff and Catherine, and indeed the former dislikes him. Yet, owing much to his status, Catherine marries him and not Heathcliff. This decision, and the differences between Edgar and Heathcliff, have been read into by feminist criticisms.
* Nelly Dean: The second and primary narrator of the novel, Nelly has been a servant of each generation of both the Earnshaw and Linton families. She is presented as a character who straddles the idea of a 'culture versus nature' divide in the novel: she is a local of the area and a servant, and has experienced life at Wuthering Heights. However, she is also an educated woman and has lived at Thrushcross Grange. This idea is represented in her having two names, Ellen—her given name and used to show respect, and Nelly—used by her familiars. Whether Nelly is an unbiased narrator and how far her actions, as an apparent bystander, affect the other characters are two points of her character discussed by critics.
* Isabella Linton: Introduced as part of the Linton family, Isabella is only ever shown in relation to other characters. She views Heathcliff as a romantic hero, despite Catherine warning her against such an opinion, and becomes an unwitting participant in his plot for revenge. After being married to Heathcliff and abused at Wuthering Heights, she escapes to London and gives birth to Linton. Such abusive treatment has led many, especially feminist critics, to consider Isabella the true/conventional 'tragic romantic' figure of Wuthering Heights.
* Hindley Earnshaw
* Hareton Earnshaw
* Catherine Linton
* Linton Heathcliff
* Joseph
* Lockwood
Timeline
1500: The stone above the front door of Wuthering Heights, bearing the name of Mr Earnshaw, is inscribed, possibly to mark the completion of the house.
1757: Hindley Earnshaw born (summer); Nelly Dean born
1762: Edgar Linton born
1765: Catherine Earnshaw born (summer); Isabella Linton born (late 1765)
1771: Heathcliff brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr Earnshaw (late summer)
1773: Mrs Earnshaw dies (spring)
1774: Hindley sent off to college
1777: Hindley marries Frances; Mr Earnshaw dies and Hindley comes back (October); Heathcliff and Cathy visit Thrushcross Grange for the first time; Cathy remains behind (November), and then returns to Wuthering Heights (Christmas Eve)
1778: Hareton born (June); Frances dies
1780: Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights; Mr and Mrs Linton both die
1783: Catherine has married Edgar (March); Heathcliff comes back (September)
1784: Heathcliff marries Isabella (February); Catherine dies and Cathy born (20 March); Hindley dies; Linton born (September)
1797: Isabella dies; Cathy visits Wuthering Heights and meets Hareton; Linton brought to Thrushcross Grange and then taken to Wuthering Heights
1800: Cathy meets Heathcliff and sees Linton again (20 March)
1801: Cathy and Linton are married (August); Edgar dies (August); Linton dies (September); Mr Lockwood goes to Thrushcross Grange and visits Wuthering Heights, beginning his narrative
1802: Mr Lockwood goes back to London (January); Heathcliff dies (April); Mr Lockwood comes back to Thrushcross Grange (September)
1803: Cathy plans to marry Hareton (1 January)
Development history
There are several theories as to which building was the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. One is Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse, that is located in a isolated area near the Haworth Parsonage. Yet, its structure does not match that of the farmhouse described in the novel, and is therefore considered less likely to be the model. Top Withens was first suggested as the model for the fictitious farmhouse by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë's, to Edward Morison Wimperis, a commissioned artist for the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872.
The second option is the now demolished High Sunderland Hall, near Halifax, West Yorkshire. This Gothic edifice is located near Law Hill, and was where Emily worked briefly as a governess in 1838. While very grand for the farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the hall had grotesque embellishments of griffins and misshapen nude men similar to those described by Lockwood of Wuthering Heights in chapter one of the novel:
"Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door, above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date '1500'".
The inspiration for Thrushcross Grange has been traditionally connected to Ponden Hall, near Haworth, although very small. More likely is Shibden Hall, near Halifax.
Critical response
Early reviews
Early reviews of Wuthering Heights were mixed in their assessment. Whilst most critics recognised the power and imagination of the novel, many found the story unlikeable and ambiguous.[note 1] Released in 1847, at a time when the background of the author was deemed to have an important impact on the story itself, many critics were also intrigued by the authorship of the novels.[note 2] H. F. Chorley of the Athenaeum said that it was a "disagreeable story" and that the 'Bells' (Brontës) "seem to affect painful and exceptional subjects". The Atlas review called it a "strange, inartistic story", but commented that every chapter seems to contain a "sort of rugged power". It supported the second point made in the Athenaeum, suggesting that the general effect of the novel was "inexpressibly painful", but adding that all of its subjects were either "utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible".
The Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper critique was more positive, emphasizing the "great power" of the novel and its provocative qualities; it said that it was a "strange sort of book—baffling all regular criticism" and that "[it is] impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it". Although the Examiner agreed on the strangeness, it saw the book as "wild, confused; disjointed and improbable". The Britannia review mirrored those comments made on the unpleasant characters, arguing that it would have been a "far better romance" if the characters were not "nearly as violent and destructive as [Heathcliff]". The unidentified review was less critical, considering it a "work of great ability" and that "it is not every day that so good a novel makes its appearance".
Adaptations
The earliest known film adaptation of Wuthering Heights was filmed in England and directed by A. V. Bramble. It is unknown if any prints still exist. The most famous was 1939's Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon and directed by William Wyler. This adaptation, like many others, eliminated the second generation's story (young Cathy, Linton and Hareton). It won the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film and was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Best Picture.
The 1970 film with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff is notable for emphasizing that Heathcliff may be Cathy's illegitimate half-brother. This is the first colour version of the novel, and gained acceptance over the years though it was initially poorly received. The character of Hindley is portrayed much more sympathetically, and his story-arc is altered.
The 1992 film Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche is notable for including the oft-omitted second generation story of the children of Cathy, Hindley , and Heathcliff.
Adaptations which reset the story in a new setting include the 1954 adaptation by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel set in Catholic Mexico, with Heathcliff and Cathy renamed Alejandro and Catalina, and Yoshishige Yoshida's 1988 adaptation which set the story in Tokugawa period Japan. In 2003, MTV produced a poorly reviewed version set in a modern California with the characters as high school students.
The novel has been popular in opera and theatre, including operas written by Bernard Herrmann and Carlisle Floyd (both of which like many films cover only the first half of the book) and a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, as well as a song by Kate Bush.
In autumn of 2008, Mark Ryan launched a dramatic musical adaptation of the novel, narrated by Beowulf and Sexy Beast star Ray Winstone. He composed, sang and produced the tracks with Robb Vallier who also worked on Spamalot. He also directed the video for the song "Women" filmed especially for the website and featuring Jennifer Korbee, Jessica Keenan Wynn and Katie Boeck.
In August 2009 ITV aired a two part drama series starring Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Sarah Lancashire, and Andrew Lincoln.
Announced in April 2008, Natalie Portman was originally set to star as Cathy in a new film adaptation of the novel, but she left the project in May. In May 2008, director John Maybury cast Michael Fassbender as Heathcliff and Abbie Cornish as Cathy. They later left the project and in May 2009, Peter Webber was announced as the director, with Ed Westwick and Gemma Arterton attached to play Heathcliff and Cathy respectively. However, the project did not get off the ground and Andrea Arnold signed on to direct in January 2010. Kaya Scodelario was then cast as Cathy, with the filmmakers searching for an unknown young Yorkshire actor to play Heathcliff.
第二天，洛剋烏先生來到畫眉山莊，嚮女管傢艾倫迪恩問起此事，女管傢便講了發生在呼嘯山莊的事情。
呼嘯山莊已有300年的歷史，以前的主人恩蕭夫婦從街頭撿來一個吉普賽人的棄兒，收他做養子，這就是希刺剋厲夫。希刺剋厲夫一到這傢就受到纔先生的兒子辛得雷的欺負和虐待，可享德萊的妹妹凱瑟琳卻瘋狂地愛上了希刺剋厲夫。
《呼嘯山莊》老主人死了之後，已婚的辛得雷成了呼嘯山莊的主人。他開始阻止希刺剋厲夫和凱瑟琳的交往，並把希刺剋厲夫趕到田裏去幹活，不斷地差辱他，折磨他，他變得不近人情，近乎癡呆，凱瑟琳也變得野性十足。
一次，他們到畫眉山莊去玩，凱瑟琳被狗咬傷，主人林惇夫婦知道她是恩蕭傢的孩子，就熱情地留她養傷，而把希刺剋厲夫當成壞小子趕跑了。卡凱瑟琳和林敦的兒子埃德加、女兒伊莎貝拉成了好朋友。凱瑟琳住了五個長星期回來後，變成溫文爾雅，儀態萬方的富傢小姐。當他再次見到希刺剋厲夫時，生怕他弄髒了自己的衣服。希刺剋厲夫的自尊心受到了傷害，他說：“我願意怎麽髒，就怎麽髒。”他發誓要對辛得雷進行報復，他心中的野性和憤恨全部對準辛得雷。
1778年6月，辛得雷的妻子生下哈裏頓恩蕭後因肺病死去，辛得雷受了很大的打擊，
從此變得更加殘忍，更加冷酷無情。凱瑟琳徘徊於希刺剋厲夫和埃德加的愛情之間，她真心愛希剋厲，但又覺得與一個僕人結婚，有失身份。當埃德加嚮她求婚時，想到他的漂亮和富有，便答應了。但在她靈魂深處，非常明白自己錯了，便嚮女僕艾倫迪恩吐露真情：“我對埃德加的愛像樹林中的葉子，當鼕季改變樹木的時候，隨之就會改變葉子。我對希剋厲的愛卻像地下水久不變的岩石……我就是希剋厲！他無時無刻不在我心中，並不是作為一種樂趣，擊是作為我的一部分。”
希剋厲聽到她們的對話，痛苦萬分，當夜離開了呼嘯山莊，卡瑟林因希剋厲的離去而大病一場。後來林敦夫婦相繼得熱病而死，在他們死後三年，卡瑟林同埃德加結婚了。
數年後，希刺剋厲夫突然出現在畫眉山莊，這時他已經長成了一個蕭灑英俊而又很有錢的青年。凱瑟琳見到他時欣喜若狂，他意味深長地說：“我衹是為了你纔奮鬥的”。他經常出入於畫眉山莊，這使伊莎貝拉發病似的愛上了他。他為的報復整夜整夜地和辛得雷打牌、喝酒，慢慢地使他破了産，最後把整個莊園抵押給希剋厲。儘管卡瑟林想盡辦法想輓回希剋厲的感情，但他還是和伊莎貝拉結婚了，婚後以虐待伊莎貝拉來發泄自己的仇恨。
此時卡瑟林正值臨産，希刺剋厲夫趁埃德加不在，進入了畫眉山莊，他死命地抱住凱瑟琳，悲切地叫道：“啊，凱蒂，啊，我的命！我怎能受得了哇！……” 凱瑟琳着說：“如果我做錯了，我會因此而死，你也離開過我，但我寬恕了你，你也寬恕我吧！”希刺剋夫厲答道：“這是難以辦到的，但我饒恕你對我做的事。我可以愛害了我的人，可是害了你的人，我又怎麽能夠饒恕他呢？”他們就這樣瘋狂地擁抱着，互相怨恨。
直到埃德加回來後，他們才分開，凱瑟琳再也沒有醒來。當天夜裏，她昏迷中生下一個女孩便死去了。希刺剋厲夫整夜守在莊園裏，當得知凱瑟琳死了，他用力地把頭撞在樹幹上，“天啊！沒有我的命根子，我不能活下去呀！”幾個月後享德萊死了，希剋厲成了呼嘯山莊的主人。把辛得雷的兒子哈裏頓培養成一個粗野無禮，沒有教養的野小子。伊莎貝拉忍受不了丈夫的虐待，逃到倫敦附近，在那兒生了一個兒子取名林敦。
12年後林敦已長成一個少年，凱瑟琳的小女兒也已長成一個美麗的少女，他雖不喜歡林敦，他還是趁小卡凱瑟琳的父親病危之際，把小凱瑟琳接到呼嘯山莊，逼迫她和林敦結婚，因為他要“勝利地看見我的後代堂皇地作為他們産業的主人，我的孩子用工錢雇他們的孩子種他們的土地”。
幾個月後，埃德加也死了，希刺剋厲夫作為小凱瑟琳的父親搬進了畫眉山莊。不久林敦也死了，小凱瑟琳成了年輕的寡婦。
小凱瑟琳和哈裏頓就像當年的希剋厲和卡瑟林一樣，希剋厲瘋狂地阻止他們的來往，當她抓住小凱瑟琳想打她時，他從她的眼睛裏看到了凱瑟琳的影子，而此時的哈裏頓不正是當年的自己嗎！他變得更孤獨了，他渴望着和凱瑟琳的孤魂在一起。連續幾天他不吃不喝，在沼地裏遊蕩，回來後把自己關在凱瑟琳住過的房間裏，第二天，人們發現他死了。
他死後被埋在凱瑟琳的墓旁，小凱瑟琳終於和哈裏頓結婚了。
《呼嘯山莊》-寫作背景
艾米莉•勃朗特所生活的三十年間正是英國社會動蕩的時代。資本主義正在發展並越來越暴露它內在的缺陷；勞資之
間矛盾尖銳化；失業工人的貧睏；大量的童工被殘酷地折磨至死（這從同時期的英國著名女詩人伊莉莎白•巴雷特•勃朗寧①的長詩《孩子們的哭聲》，可以看到一些概貌）。再加上英國政府對民主改革鬥爭和工人運動采取高壓手段：如一八一九年的彼得路大屠殺就是一個例子。因此這一時期的文學作品也有所反映。我們的女作傢艾米莉•勃朗特就是誕生在這樣鬥爭的年代！她生在一個牧師家庭裏，父親名叫佩特裏剋•勃朗特（1777—1861），原是個愛爾蘭教士，一八一二年娶英國西南部康瓦耳郡（Cornwall）人瑪麗亞•勃蘭威爾為妻，膝下六個兒女。大女兒瑪麗亞（1814），二女兒伊莉莎白（1815），三女兒夏洛蒂（1816），獨子勃蘭威爾（1817），下邊就是艾米莉（1818）和安恩（1820）。後面四個都生在位於約剋郡曠野的桑頓村②，勃朗特先生便在這一教區任牧師職。一八二○年全家搬到豪渥斯地區，在曠野的一處偏僻的角落安了傢。她們三姊妹就在這個地方度過了一生。
一八二七年她們的母親逝世，姨母從康瓦耳群來照顧家庭。三年後，以瑪麗亞為首的四姊妹進寄宿學校讀書。由於生活條件太差，瑪麗亞與伊莉莎白患肺結核夭折，夏洛蒂與艾米莉幸存，自此在傢與兄弟勃蘭威爾一起自學。這個家庭一嚮離群索居，四個兄弟姊妹便常以讀書、寫作詩歌，及杜撰傳奇故事來打發寂寞的時光。夏洛蒂和勃蘭威爾以想象的安格裏阿王朝為中心來寫小說，而艾米莉和小妹安則創造了一個她們稱為岡多爾的太平洋島嶼來杜撰故事。
她們的傢雖然臨近豪渥斯工業區，然而這所住宅恰好位於城鎮與荒野之間。艾米莉經常和她的姊妹們到西邊的曠野地裏散步。因此一方面勃朗特姊妹看到了城鎮中正在發展的資本主義社會，另一方面也受到了曠野氣氛的感染。特別是艾米莉，她表面沉默寡言，內心卻熱情奔放，雖不懂政治，卻十分關心政治。三姊妹常常看自由黨或保守黨的期刊，喜歡議論政治，這當然是受了她們父親的影響。佩特裏剋•勃朗特是個比較激進的保守黨人，早年反對過路德運動③，後來也幫助豪渥斯工人，支持他們的罷工。艾米莉和她的姊妹繼承了他的正義感，同情手工業工人的反抗和鬥爭。這就為《呼嘯山莊》的誕生創造了條件。
這個家庭收入很少，經濟相當拮据。三姊妹不得不經常出外謀生，以教書或做家庭教師來貼補傢用，幾年來歷受艱辛挫折。夏洛蒂曾打算她們自己開設一所學校，她和艾米莉因此到布魯塞爾學習了一年，隨後因夏洛蒂失戀而離開。一八四六年她們自己籌款以假名出版了一本詩集④，卻衹賣掉兩本。一八四七年，她們三姊妹的三本小說⑤終於出版，然而衹有《簡愛》獲得成功，得到了重視。《呼嘯山莊》的出版並不為當時讀者所理解，甚至她自己的姐姐夏洛蒂也無法理解艾米莉的思想。
一八四八年，她們唯一的兄弟勃蘭威爾由於長期酗酒、吸毒，也傳染了肺病，於九月死去，雖然這位家庭中的暴君之死對於這三姊妹也是一種解脫，然而，正如在夏洛蒂姊妹的書簡集中所說的：“過失與罪惡都已遺忘，剩下來的是憐憫和悲傷盤踞了心頭與記憶……”對勃蘭威爾的悼念縮短了艾米莉走嚮墳墓的路途，同年十二月艾米莉終於棄世。她們的小妹妹安也於第二年五月相繼死去，這時這個家庭最後的成員衹有夏洛蒂和她的老父了。
這一位後來纔馳名世界文壇的極有才華的年輕女作傢，當時就這樣抱憾地離開了衹能使她嘗到冷漠無情的人世間，默默地和她傢中僅餘的三位親人告別了！她曾在少女時期的一首詩中這樣寫道：
“我是唯一的人，命中註定 無人過問，也無人流淚哀悼； 自從我生下來，從未引起過 一綫憂慮，一個快樂的微笑。 在秘密的歡樂，秘密的眼淚中， 這個變化多端的生活就這樣滑過， 十八年後仍然無依無靠， 一如在我誕生那天同樣的寂寞。……”
她在同一首詩中最後慨嘆道：
“起初青春的希望被融化， 然後幻想的虹彩迅速退開； 於是經驗告訴我，說真理 决不會在人類的心胸中成長起來。……”
但是她很想振作起來，有所作為，卻已掙紮不起，這種痛苦的思想鬥爭和瀕於絶望的情緒，在她同一時期的詩句中也可以找到：“然而如今當我希望過歌唱， 我的手指卻撥動了一根無音的弦； 而歌詞的疊句仍舊是 ‘不要再奮鬥了，’一切全是枉然。”
《呼嘯山莊》-作品賞析
《呼嘯山莊》通過一個愛情悲劇，嚮人們展示了一副畸形社會的生活畫面，勾勒了被這個畸形社會扭麯的人性及其造成的種種可怖的事件，整個故事情節是通過四個階段逐步鋪開的：
第一階段敘述了希斯剋利夫與凱瑟琳朝夕相處的童年生活；一個棄兒和一個小姐在這種特殊環境中所形成的特殊感情，以及他們對辛德雷專橫暴虐的反抗。
第二階段着重描寫凱瑟琳因為虛榮、無知和愚昧，背棄了希斯剋利夫，成了畫眉田莊的女主人。
第三階段以大量筆墨描繪希斯剋利夫如何在絶望中把滿腔仇恨化為報仇雪恥的計謀和行動。
最後階段儘管衹交代了希斯剋利夫的死亡，卻突出地揭示了當他瞭解哈裏頓和凱蒂相愛後，思想上經歷的一種嶄新的變化——人性的復蘇，從而使這出具有恐怖色彩的愛情悲劇透露出一束令人快慰的希望之光。
因此，希斯剋利夫的愛一恨一復仇一人性的復蘇，既是小說的精髓，又是貫穿始終的一條紅綫。作者依此脈絡，謀篇佈局，把場景安排得變幻莫測，有時在陰雲密佈、鬼哭狼嚎的曠野，有時又是風狂雨驟、陰森慘暗的庭院，故事始終籠罩在一種神秘和恐怖的氣氛之中。
在小說中，作者的全部心血凝聚在希斯剋利夫形象的刻畫上，她在這裏寄托了自己的全部憤慨、同情和理想。這個被剝奪了人間溫暖的棄兒在實際生活中培養了強烈的愛與憎，辛德雷的皮鞭使他嘗到了人生的殘酷，也教會他懂得忍氣吞聲的屈服無法改變自己受辱的命運。他選擇了反抗。凱瑟琳曾經是他忠實的夥伴，他倆在共同的反抗中萌發了真摯的愛情。然而，凱瑟琳最後卻背叛了希斯剋利夫，嫁給了她不瞭解、也根本不愛的埃德加·林頓。造成這個愛情悲劇的直接原因是她的虛榮、無知和愚蠢，結果卻葬送了自己的青春、愛情和生命，也毀了對她始終一往情深的希斯剋利夫，還差一點坑害了下一代。艾米莉·勃朗特刻畫這個人物時，有同情，也有憤慨；有惋惜，也有鞭笞；既哀其不幸，又怒其不爭，心情是極其復雜的。
凱瑟琳的背叛及其婚後悲苦的命運，是全書最重大的轉折點。它使希斯剋利夫滿腔的愛化為無比的恨；凱瑟琳一死，這腔仇恨火山般迸發出來，成了瘋狂的復仇動力。希斯剋利夫的目的達到了，他不僅讓辛德雷和埃德加凄苦死去，獨霸了兩傢莊園的産業，還讓他們平白無辜的下一代也飽嘗了苦果。這種瘋狂的報仇泄恨，貌似悖於常理，但卻淋漓盡致地表達了他非同一般的叛逆精神，這是一種特殊環境、特殊性格所决定的特殊反抗。希斯剋利夫的愛情悲劇是社會的悲劇，也是時代的悲劇。
《呼嘯山莊》的故事是以希斯剋利夫達到復仇目的而自殺告終的。他的死是一種殉情，表達了他對凱瑟琳生死不渝的愛，一種生不能同衾、死也求同穴的愛的追求。而他臨死前放棄了在下一代身上報復的念頭，表明他的天性本來是善良的，衹是由於殘酷的現實扭麯了他的天性，迫使他變得暴虐無情。這種人性的復蘇是一種精神上的升華，閃耀着作者人道主義的理想。
《呼嘯山莊》出版後一直被人認為是英國文學史上一部“最奇特的小說”，是一部“奧秘莫測”的“怪書”。原因在於它一反同時代作品普遍存在的傷感主義情調，而以強烈的愛、狂暴的恨及由之而起的無情的報復，取代了低沉的傷感和憂鬱。它宛如一首奇特的抒情詩，字裏行間充滿着豐富的想象和狂飆般猛烈的情感，具有震撼人心的藝術力量。
人物表
恩蕭先生 ———— 呼嘯山莊主人
辛德雷·恩蕭—— 其 子
凱瑟琳·恩蕭 —— 其女，小名凱蒂
希斯剋利夫 ——— 恩蕭撫養的孤兒
弗蘭西斯 ———— 辛德雷之妻
哈裏頓·恩蕭 —— 辛德雷之子
丁耐莉 ————— 女管傢，又名艾倫
約瑟夫 ————— 呼嘯山莊的老僕人
林敦先生 ———— 畫眉田莊主人
埃德加·林敦 —— 其子，後娶凱瑟琳·恩蕭
伊莎貝拉·林敦 — 其女，後嫁希刺剋厲夫
凱瑟琳·林敦 —— 埃德加與凱瑟琳之女，亦名凱蒂林敦·希刺剋厲夫
伊莎貝拉與希刺剋厲夫之子
洛剋烏德先生 —— 房 客
肯尼茲醫生 ——— 當地醫生
齊 拉 ————— 呼嘯山莊的女僕
《呼嘯山莊》-故事情節年表
１７５７ 辛德雷·恩蕭誕生。丁耐莉之母攜其嬰兒耐莉往呼嘯山莊當保姆。
１７６２ 埃德加·林敦誕生。
１７６５ 凱瑟琳·恩蕭誕生。
１７６６ 伊莎貝拉·林敦誕生。
１７７１ 夏天，恩蕭先生從利物浦帶回希刺剋厲夫。
１７７３ 春天，恩蕭夫人逝世。
１７７４ 辛德雷上大學。
１７７７ 十月，恩蕭先生逝世。辛德雷攜其妻弗蘭西斯返傢。
十一月底，凱瑟琳在畫眉田莊闖禍。
聖誕節，凱瑟琳返傢。
１７７８ 六月，哈裏頓·恩蕭誕生。弗蘭西斯逝世。丁耐莉照顧哈裏頓。
１７８０ 夏天，凱瑟琳接受了埃德加·林敦的求婚。希刺剋厲夫失蹤。凱瑟琳患重病。老林敦先生與夫人逝世。
１７８３ 三月，埃德加娶凱瑟琳。丁耐莉陪同往畫眉田莊。
九月，希刺剋厲夫歸。
１７８４ 一月，埃德加·凱瑟琳和希刺剋厲夫之間發生爭吵。希刺剋厲夫帶伊莎貝拉私奔。凱瑟琳第二次重病。
三月，希刺剋厲夫與伊莎貝拉回呼嘯山莊。希刺剋厲夫去看凱瑟琳。
三月廿日，凱瑟琳逝世，留下纔誕生的女兒凱瑟琳。
三月廿五日，凱瑟琳下葬。希刺剋厲夫當晚到墓園去。
三月廿六日，伊莎貝拉逃跑。
九月，辛德雷逝世。希刺剋厲夫占有呼嘯山莊。
十月，林敦·希刺剋厲夫誕生於外地。
１７９７ 伊莎貝拉逝世。
小凱蒂首次到呼嘯山莊。
埃德加接外甥林敦回畫眉田莊。希刺剋厲夫要走他的兒子。
１８００ 三月廿日，小凱蒂第二次到呼嘯山莊。
秋天，埃德加感冒病倒。
十月，凱蒂第三次到呼嘯山莊。
這以後三個星期，凱蒂秘密往呼嘯山莊。
１８０１ 八月，凱蒂與表弟林敦在野外見面，被希刺剋厲夫所迫又進呼嘯山莊與林敦結婚。
九月，埃德加·林敦逝世。後希刺剋厲夫往凱瑟琳墓地掘墓。
林敦·希刺剋厲夫繼承了畫眉田莊。
十月，林敦死去。希刺剋厲夫占有了其子産業。
十一月，希刺剋厲夫將畫眉田莊出租給洛剋烏德先生。
洛剋烏德先生拜訪呼嘯山莊。
１８０２ 一月，洛剋烏德先生離開畫眉田莊往倫敦。
二月，丁耐莉回呼嘯山莊。
四月，希刺剋厲夫逝世。
九月，洛剋烏德先生路經畫眉田莊與呼嘯山莊，再次拜訪。
１８０３ 元旦，哈裏頓·恩蕭與凱蒂結婚。
The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective; wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.
Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was initially considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior. Wuthering Heights has also given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, ballet, opera, and song.
Plot
Writing in his diary, Mr. Lockwood describes arriving in the winter of 1801, at the manor house of Thrushcross Grange, on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. He soon meets his landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man and the master of nearby Wuthering Heights. Despite not being welcome at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood returns for a second visit and is forced to stay overnight, due to a snow storm. Unable to sleep, he finds the diary of a girl named Catherine Earnshaw and reads an entry. Lockwood learns that she was a close childhood friend of Heathcliff. Later, he has a nightmare in which the ghost of a young girl appears at his window and begs to be let in. While Lockwood struggles to keep the ghost out of his room, Heathcliff is awakened by his cries of terror and rushes into the room. Upon hearing of Catherine's ghost, he asks Lockwood to leave the room. Standing outside the door, Lockwood hears Heathcliff sobbing, opening the window, and calling for Catherine to enter.
Upon returning to Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the others at Wuthering Heights. Nelly begins her story thirty years earlier, when Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff, an orphan boy, home to raise with his own children, Hindley and Catherine. Eventually, Mr. Earnshaw comes to favour Heathcliff over his own children. Both Earnshaw children initially resent Heathcliff, but soon he and Catherine become inseparable. Hindley continues to hate and physically abuse him
Mr. Earnshaw dies three years later and Hindley, now married to Frances after returning from boarding school, inherits Wuthering Heights. He brutalises Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand. Catherine becomes friends with the neighboring Linton family who live at Thrushcross Grange, and Mrs. Linton starts teaching her to be a proper lady. She is attracted to young Edgar Linton, whom Heathcliff immediately dislikes.
A year later, Frances dies from consumption shortly after giving birth to a son, Hareton. Hindley takes to drinking and becomes even more abusive to Heathcliff. Some two years later, Catherine informs Nelly that she wishes to marry Edgar Linton, as it will give her status and riches; despite her love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff, upon hearing this, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return three years later, soon after Catherine and Edgar are wed.
Heathcliff has apparently become a wealthy, respectable gentleman and now seeks revenge against all those he believes have wronged him. Heathcliff makes loans to Hindley that he knows cannot be repaid. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister, Isabella Linton, setting himself up to inherit Thrushcross Grange. After their marriage, Heathcliff becomes very cruel and abusive towards Isabella.
Catherine becomes very ill and dies shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. A few hours before her death, however, she and Heathcliff reaffirm their feelings for one another. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff becomes more bitter and vengeful towards those around him. Isabella flees to London a month later and gives birth to a boy, Linton Heathcliff.
About this time, Hindley dies. Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights and raises Hindley's son, Hareton, with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands.
Thirteen years later, Isabella dies and Linton comes to live at Wuthering Heights with his father, Heathcliff. He treats his son even more cruelly than he treated his wife. Three years pass and Heathcliff invites Cathy to Wuthering Heights. He then introduces her to his son, Linton, wishing them to marry which would strengthen his claim on Thrushcross Grange.
Cathy receives news that Linton has fallen ill. She hurries to Wuthering Heights to see if she can be of help. Linton's health declines swiftly and Heathcliff puts Cathy under house arrest, forcing her to marry his son. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, followed shortly by Linton. Heathcliff has now gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Cathy to stay at Wuthering Heights and treats her as a common servant. It is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, and Nelly’s story reaches the present day. Lockwood is appalled and leaves for London.
Lockwood returns six months later to visit Nelly. She tells him that in his absence, Cathy gradually softened toward her rough, uneducated cousin Hareton, just as Catherine was tender towards Heathcliff. Having originally mocked Hareton for his illiteracy, she now teaches him to read. He allows her to open up again after becoming so bitter from Heathcliff's brutal treatment.
When Heathcliff is confronted by Cathy and Hareton's love, he seems to suffer a mental breakdown and begins to see Catherine's ghost. He seemingly abandons his life-long vendetta and dies, having "swallowed nothing for four days". Nelly describes finding Heathcliff lying on the bed, stiff with rigor mortis. Only Hareton mourns Heathcliff's death. He is buried next to Catherine in the graveyard. Cathy and Hareton inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and plan their wedding for New Year’s Day. Upon hearing the end of the story, Lockwood leaves Nelly and on his walk home he visits the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.
Characters
* Heathcliff: Found, and presumably orphaned, on the streets of Liverpool, he is taken to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw and reluctantly cared for by the rest of the family. He and Catherine later grow close, and their love becomes the central theme of the first volume; his revenge and its consequences are the main theme of the second volume. Heathcliff is typically considered a Byronic hero, but critics have found his character, with a capacity for self-invention, to be profoundly difficult to assess. His position in society, without status (Heathcliff serves as both his given name and surname), is often the subject of Marxist criticism.
* Catherine Earnshaw: First introduced in Lockwood's discovery of her diary and etchings, Catherine's life is almost entirely detailed in the first volume. She seemingly suffers from a crisis of identity, unable to choose between nature and culture (and, by extension, Heathcliff and Edgar). Her decision to marry Edgar Linton over Heathcliff has been seen as a surrender to culture, and has implications for all the characters of Wuthering Heights. The character of Catherine has been analysed by many forms of literary criticism, including: psychoanalytic and feminist.
* Edgar Linton: Introduced as a child of the Linton family, who reside at Thrushcross Grange, Edgar's life and mannerisms are immediately contrasted with those of Heathcliff and Catherine, and indeed the former dislikes him. Yet, owing much to his status, Catherine marries him and not Heathcliff. This decision, and the differences between Edgar and Heathcliff, have been read into by feminist criticisms.
* Nelly Dean: The second and primary narrator of the novel, Nelly has been a servant of each generation of both the Earnshaw and Linton families. She is presented as a character who straddles the idea of a 'culture versus nature' divide in the novel: she is a local of the area and a servant, and has experienced life at Wuthering Heights. However, she is also an educated woman and has lived at Thrushcross Grange. This idea is represented in her having two names, Ellen—her given name and used to show respect, and Nelly—used by her familiars. Whether Nelly is an unbiased narrator and how far her actions, as an apparent bystander, affect the other characters are two points of her character discussed by critics.
* Isabella Linton: Introduced as part of the Linton family, Isabella is only ever shown in relation to other characters. She views Heathcliff as a romantic hero, despite Catherine warning her against such an opinion, and becomes an unwitting participant in his plot for revenge. After being married to Heathcliff and abused at Wuthering Heights, she escapes to London and gives birth to Linton. Such abusive treatment has led many, especially feminist critics, to consider Isabella the true/conventional 'tragic romantic' figure of Wuthering Heights.
* Hindley Earnshaw
* Hareton Earnshaw
* Catherine Linton
* Linton Heathcliff
* Joseph
* Lockwood
Timeline
1500: The stone above the front door of Wuthering Heights, bearing the name of Mr Earnshaw, is inscribed, possibly to mark the completion of the house.
1757: Hindley Earnshaw born (summer); Nelly Dean born
1762: Edgar Linton born
1765: Catherine Earnshaw born (summer); Isabella Linton born (late 1765)
1771: Heathcliff brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr Earnshaw (late summer)
1773: Mrs Earnshaw dies (spring)
1774: Hindley sent off to college
1777: Hindley marries Frances; Mr Earnshaw dies and Hindley comes back (October); Heathcliff and Cathy visit Thrushcross Grange for the first time; Cathy remains behind (November), and then returns to Wuthering Heights (Christmas Eve)
1778: Hareton born (June); Frances dies
1780: Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights; Mr and Mrs Linton both die
1783: Catherine has married Edgar (March); Heathcliff comes back (September)
1784: Heathcliff marries Isabella (February); Catherine dies and Cathy born (20 March); Hindley dies; Linton born (September)
1797: Isabella dies; Cathy visits Wuthering Heights and meets Hareton; Linton brought to Thrushcross Grange and then taken to Wuthering Heights
1800: Cathy meets Heathcliff and sees Linton again (20 March)
1801: Cathy and Linton are married (August); Edgar dies (August); Linton dies (September); Mr Lockwood goes to Thrushcross Grange and visits Wuthering Heights, beginning his narrative
1802: Mr Lockwood goes back to London (January); Heathcliff dies (April); Mr Lockwood comes back to Thrushcross Grange (September)
1803: Cathy plans to marry Hareton (1 January)
Development history
There are several theories as to which building was the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. One is Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse, that is located in a isolated area near the Haworth Parsonage. Yet, its structure does not match that of the farmhouse described in the novel, and is therefore considered less likely to be the model. Top Withens was first suggested as the model for the fictitious farmhouse by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë's, to Edward Morison Wimperis, a commissioned artist for the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872.
The second option is the now demolished High Sunderland Hall, near Halifax, West Yorkshire. This Gothic edifice is located near Law Hill, and was where Emily worked briefly as a governess in 1838. While very grand for the farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the hall had grotesque embellishments of griffins and misshapen nude men similar to those described by Lockwood of Wuthering Heights in chapter one of the novel:
"Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door, above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date '1500'".
The inspiration for Thrushcross Grange has been traditionally connected to Ponden Hall, near Haworth, although very small. More likely is Shibden Hall, near Halifax.
Critical response
Early reviews
Early reviews of Wuthering Heights were mixed in their assessment. Whilst most critics recognised the power and imagination of the novel, many found the story unlikeable and ambiguous.[note 1] Released in 1847, at a time when the background of the author was deemed to have an important impact on the story itself, many critics were also intrigued by the authorship of the novels.[note 2] H. F. Chorley of the Athenaeum said that it was a "disagreeable story" and that the 'Bells' (Brontës) "seem to affect painful and exceptional subjects". The Atlas review called it a "strange, inartistic story", but commented that every chapter seems to contain a "sort of rugged power". It supported the second point made in the Athenaeum, suggesting that the general effect of the novel was "inexpressibly painful", but adding that all of its subjects were either "utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible".
The Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper critique was more positive, emphasizing the "great power" of the novel and its provocative qualities; it said that it was a "strange sort of book—baffling all regular criticism" and that "[it is] impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it". Although the Examiner agreed on the strangeness, it saw the book as "wild, confused; disjointed and improbable". The Britannia review mirrored those comments made on the unpleasant characters, arguing that it would have been a "far better romance" if the characters were not "nearly as violent and destructive as [Heathcliff]". The unidentified review was less critical, considering it a "work of great ability" and that "it is not every day that so good a novel makes its appearance".
Adaptations
The earliest known film adaptation of Wuthering Heights was filmed in England and directed by A. V. Bramble. It is unknown if any prints still exist. The most famous was 1939's Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon and directed by William Wyler. This adaptation, like many others, eliminated the second generation's story (young Cathy, Linton and Hareton). It won the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film and was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Best Picture.
The 1970 film with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff is notable for emphasizing that Heathcliff may be Cathy's illegitimate half-brother. This is the first colour version of the novel, and gained acceptance over the years though it was initially poorly received. The character of Hindley is portrayed much more sympathetically, and his story-arc is altered.
The 1992 film Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche is notable for including the oft-omitted second generation story of the children of Cathy, Hindley , and Heathcliff.
Adaptations which reset the story in a new setting include the 1954 adaptation by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel set in Catholic Mexico, with Heathcliff and Cathy renamed Alejandro and Catalina, and Yoshishige Yoshida's 1988 adaptation which set the story in Tokugawa period Japan. In 2003, MTV produced a poorly reviewed version set in a modern California with the characters as high school students.
The novel has been popular in opera and theatre, including operas written by Bernard Herrmann and Carlisle Floyd (both of which like many films cover only the first half of the book) and a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, as well as a song by Kate Bush.
In autumn of 2008, Mark Ryan launched a dramatic musical adaptation of the novel, narrated by Beowulf and Sexy Beast star Ray Winstone. He composed, sang and produced the tracks with Robb Vallier who also worked on Spamalot. He also directed the video for the song "Women" filmed especially for the website and featuring Jennifer Korbee, Jessica Keenan Wynn and Katie Boeck.
In August 2009 ITV aired a two part drama series starring Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Sarah Lancashire, and Andrew Lincoln.
Announced in April 2008, Natalie Portman was originally set to star as Cathy in a new film adaptation of the novel, but she left the project in May. In May 2008, director John Maybury cast Michael Fassbender as Heathcliff and Abbie Cornish as Cathy. They later left the project and in May 2009, Peter Webber was announced as the director, with Ed Westwick and Gemma Arterton attached to play Heathcliff and Cathy respectively. However, the project did not get off the ground and Andrea Arnold signed on to direct in January 2010. Kaya Scodelario was then cast as Cathy, with the filmmakers searching for an unknown young Yorkshire actor to play Heathcliff.
查理·包法利是個軍醫的兒子。他天資不高，但很勤勉、老實，為人懦弱無能。父親對教育不重視。他在十二歲是由母親為他爭得了上學的權利，後來當了醫生。這時他的父母又為他找了個每年有一千二百法郎收入的寡婦——杜比剋夫人做妻子，她已四十五歲了，又老又醜，“柴一樣幹，象春季發芽一樣一臉疙瘩”。但她因為有錢，並不缺少應選的夫婿。她和查理結婚後，便成了管束他的主人：查理必須順從她的心思穿衣服，照她的吩咐逼迫欠款的病人；她拆閱他的信件，隔着板壁偷聽他給婦女看病。
一天，查理醫生接到一封緊急的信件，要他到拜爾鬥給一個富裕農民盧歐先生治病，他的一條腿摔斷了。盧歐是個五十歲左右的矮胖子，他的太太二年前已去世了。傢裏由她的獨生女愛瑪料理。這是個具有浪漫氣質的女孩子，面頰是玫瑰色的，頭髮黑油油的，在腦後輓成一個大髻，眼睛很美麗，由於睫毛的緣故，棕顔色仿佛是黑顔色，她“朝你望來，毫無顧慮，有一種天真無邪膽大的神情”。她給查理留下了深刻的印象。查理給盧歐診治過後，答應他三天後再去拜訪，但到第二天他就去了。此後，他一星期去兩次。先後花了四十六天的時間，治好了盧歐的腿。
查理妻子同丈夫常上拜爾鬥去。免不了要打聽病人的底細。當她知道盧歐小姐曾受過教育，懂得跳舞、地理、素描、刺綉和彈琴時，醋勁大發。她要丈夫把手放在彌撒書上，嚮她發誓，今後再也不去拜爾鬥了。查理唯命是聽，照樣做了。但不久發生了一件意外的事，他妻子的財産保管人帶着她的現金逃跑了。查理的父母發現媳婦一年並沒有一千二百法郎的收入（她在訂婚的時候撒了謊），於是跑來和她吵鬧。她在一氣之下，吐血死了。
盧歐老爹給查理送診費來，當他知道查理的不幸後，便盡力安慰他，說自己也曾經歷過喪偶的痛苦。他邀請查理到拜爾鬥去散散心。查理去了，並且愛上了愛瑪。他嚮盧歐老爹提親。盧歐感到查理不是理想的女婿，不過人傢說他品行端正，省吃儉用，自然也不會太計較陪嫁，便答應了。開春後，查理和愛瑪按當地的風俗舉行了婚禮。
愛瑪十三歲進了修道院附設的寄宿女校念書。她在那裏受着貴族式的教育。她愛教堂的花卉、宗教的音樂，並在浪漫主義小說的熏陶下成長。彼耶的小說《保耳與維爾吉妮》是她最喜愛的圖書之一。她夢想過小竹房子的生活，尤其是有位好心的小哥哥，情意纏綿，爬上比鐘樓還要高的大樹去摘紅果子，或者赤着腳在沙灘上跑，給你抱來一個鳥巢；她又“衷心尊敬那些出名或者不幸的婦女”，沉浸在羅漫蒂剋的緬想中。一位在大革命前出身於貴族世傢的老姑娘，每月到修道院做一星期女工，她嚮女生們講浪漫故事，而且衣袋裏總有一本傳奇小說。後來，愛瑪的母親死了，父親把她接回傢去。
愛瑪結婚了，她終於得到了那種不可思議的愛情。在這以前，愛情仿佛是一隻玫瑰色羽毛的巨鳥，可望而不可即，在詩的燦爛的天堂裏翺翔。婚後，她卻發覺查理是個平凡而又庸俗的人。他“談吐象人行道一樣平板，見解庸俗，如同來往行人一般衣著尋常，激不起情緒，也激不起笑或者夢想”。查理不會遊泳、不會比劍，不會放槍。有一次愛瑪用傳奇小說中一個騎馬的術語問他，他竟瞠目不知所對。她悔恨自己為什麽要結婚！有時，她為了彌補感情上的空虛，她嚮查理吟誦她記得起來的情詩，一面吟，一面嘆息。可是吟過之後，她發現自己如同吟唱前一樣平靜，而查理也沒有因此而感動，正如火刀敲石子，她這樣敲過之後，不見冒出一顆火星來。
不久，查理醫好了一位聲名顯赫的侯爵的口瘡。侯爵為答謝查理，他邀請查理夫婦到他的田莊渥畢薩爾去作客。查理夫婦坐着馬車去了。那是個有着意大利風格的莊園，房子很大，還有美麗的花園。愛瑪對侯爵傢豪華的氣派，高雅的客人，珠光寶氣的舞會場面，一一感到入迷。一位風流瀟灑的子爵來邀她跳舞，給她留下了極深的印象。在回傢的路上，她拾得了子爵的一個雪茄匣，又勾起了她對舞伴的懷念。回到傢，她嚮女僕人發脾氣。她把雪茄匣藏起來，每當查理不在傢時，她把它取出來，開了又開，看了又看，甚至還聞了襯裏的味道：一種雜有美女櫻和煙草的味道。她“希望死，又希望住到巴黎”。
渥畢薩爾之行，在愛瑪的生活上，鑿了一個洞眼，如同山上那些大裂縫，一陣狂風暴雨，一夜工夫，就成了這般模樣。她無可奈何，衹得想開些。不過她參加舞會的漂亮衣著、緞鞋，她都虔誠地放入五鬥櫃。“她的心也象它們一樣，和財富有過接觸之後，添了一些磨蹭不掉的東西”。愛瑪辭退了女傭人，不願意在道特住下去了。她對丈夫老是看不順眼。她變得懶散，“乖戾和任性”。
查理怕引起愛瑪生病。他們從道特搬到永鎮居住。這是個通大路的村鎮，有一個古老的教堂和一條子彈射程那樣長的街。街上有金獅客店和引人註目的郝麥先生的藥房。郝麥是個藥劑師，戴一頂金墜小絨帽，穿一雙緑皮拖鞋，他那洋洋自得的臉上有幾顆細麻子，神氣就象挂在他頭上的柳條籠裏的金翅雀那樣。他經常愛自我吹噓，標榜自己是個無神論者，他沒有醫生執照，但私自給農民看病。愛瑪到永鎮那天，由郝麥和一個在律師那裏做練習生的賴昂陪着吃晚飯。
賴昂·都普意是個有着金黃頭髮的青年，金獅飯店包飯吃的房客。愛瑪和他初次見面便很談得來。他們有相同的志趣，而且都愛好旅行和音樂。此後，他們便經常在一道談天，議論浪漫主義的小說和時行的戲劇，並且“不斷地交換書籍和歌麯”。包法利先生難得妒忌，並不引以為怪。
愛瑪生了一個女孩，起名為白爾特。交給木匠的女人喂養。賴昂有時陪她一道去看女兒。他們日益接近起來，愛瑪生日時，賴昂送了一份厚禮，愛瑪也送給他一張毯子。
時裝商人勒樂，是個狡黠的做生意的能手，虛胖的臉上不留鬍須，仿佛抹了一道稀薄的甘草汁；一雙賊亮的小黑眼睛，襯上白頭髮，越發顯得靈活。他逢人脅肩諂笑，腰一直哈着，姿勢又象鞠躬，又象邀請。他看出愛瑪是個愛裝飾的“風雅的婦女”，便自動上門兜攬生意，並賒帳給她，滿足她各種虛榮的愛好。
愛瑪愛上了賴昂。她為了擺脫這一心思，轉而關心傢務，把小白爾特也接回傢來，並按時上教堂。她瘦了，面色蒼白，象大理石一樣冰涼。有一次，她甚至想把心中的秘密在懺悔時嚮教士吐露，但她看到教士布爾尼賢俗不可耐，纔沒有這樣做。她由於心情煩躁，把女兒推跌了，碰破了她的臉。賴昂也陷入愛情的羅網。他為了擺脫這一苦悶，便上巴黎念完法科的課程。臨別時，他和愛瑪依依惜別。他們都感到無限的惆悵。
愛瑪因煩惱生起病來。對賴昂的回憶成了她愁悶的中心。即使旅客在俄國大草原雪地上燃起的火堆，也比不上賴昂在她回憶中那麽明亮。一次，徐赦特的地主羅道耳弗·布朗皆來找包法利醫生替其馬夫放血。這是個風月場中的老手。約莫三十四歲光景，性情粗野，思悟明敏。他有兩處莊田，新近又買下一個莊園，每年有一萬五千法郎以上的收入。他見愛瑪生得標緻，初見面便打下勾引她的壞主意。
羅道耳弗利用在永鎮舉辦州農業展覽會的機會接近愛瑪，為她當嚮導，嚮她傾吐衷麯，他把自己裝扮成一個沒有朋友、沒人關心，鬱悶到極點的可憐蟲。他說衹要能得到一個真心相待他的人，他將剋服一切睏難，去達到目的。他們一同談到內地的庸俗，生活的窒悶，理想的毀滅……
展覽會揭幕典禮開始了，州行政委員廖萬坐着四輪大馬車姍姍來遲。這是個禿額頭，厚眼皮，臉色灰白的人。他嚮群衆發佈演說，對“美麗祖國的現狀”進行了一番歌功頌德。他說目前法國“處處商業繁盛，藝術發達，處處興修新的道路，集體國傢添了許多新的動脈，構成新的聯繫；我們偉大的工業中心又活躍起來；宗教加強鞏固，法光普照，我們的碼頭堆滿貨物……”??，群衆還嚮他吐舌頭。會後，舉行了發奬儀式。政府把一枚值二十五法郎的銀質奬章頒發給一個“在一傢田莊服務了五十四年”的老婦。那老婦一臉皺紋，幹瘦疲憊不堪。當她領到奬章後說：“我拿這送給我們的教堂堂長，給我作彌撒。”最後，又舉行了放焰火。愛瑪和羅道耳弗都不關心展覽會一幕幕滑稽劇的進行。他們衹是藉此機會說話兒，談天，直到出診的查理回來為止。
展覽會後，愛瑪已忘不了羅道耳弗了。而羅道耳弗卻有意過了六星期纔去看她。他以關心愛瑪的健康為由，把自己的馬藉給她騎。他們一同到野外散心。愛瑪經不起羅道耳弗的誘惑，做了他的情婦。他們瞞着包法利醫生常在一起幽會。這時，愛瑪感情發展到狂熱的程度，她要求羅道耳弗把她帶走，和他一同出奔。她和查理的母親也吵翻了。
然而，羅道耳弗完全是個口是心非的偽君子。他抱着玩弄女性、逢場作戲的醜惡思想，欺騙了愛瑪的感情。他答應和她一同出逃，可是出逃那天，他托人送給愛瑪一封信。信中說，逃走對他們兩人都不合適，愛瑪終有一天會後悔的。他不願成為她後悔的原因；再說人世冷酷，逃到那兒都不免受到侮辱。因此，他要和她的愛情永別了。愛瑪氣得發昏，她的心跳得象大杠子撞城門一樣。傍晚，她看到羅道耳弗坐着馬車急駛過永鎮，去盧昂找他的情婦--一個女戲子去了。愛瑪當即暈倒。此後，她生了一場大病。病好後，她想痛改前非，重新生活。可是，這時又發生了另一場事。
藥劑師郝麥邀請包法利夫婦到盧昂去看戲。在劇場裏，愛瑪遇見了過去曾為之動情的練習生賴昂。現在，他在盧昂的一傢事務所實習。於是，他們埋藏在心底多年的愛情種子又萌芽了。他們未看完戲，便跑到碼頭談天。這時，賴昂已不是初出茅廬的後生，而是一個有着充分社會經驗的人了。他一見面便想占有愛瑪，並嚮她訴說離別後的痛苦。當愛瑪談到自己害了一場大病，差點死掉時，賴昂裝出十分悲傷的樣子。他說，他也“羨慕墳墓的寧靜”，時常想到死，甚至有一天，他還立了個遺囑，吩咐別人在他死後，要用愛瑪送給他的那條漂亮的毯子裹着埋他。他極力慫恿愛瑪再留一天，去看完這場戲。包法利醫生因醫療事務先趕回永鎮去了。愛瑪留下來。於是她和賴昂便一同去參觀盧昂大教堂，坐着馬車在市內兜風。這樣，愛瑪和賴昂姘搭上了。
愛瑪回到永鎮後，藉口到盧昂去學鋼琴，實際上，她是去和賴昂幽會。愛瑪再一次把自己的全部熱情傾註在賴昂身上，沉溺在恣情的享樂之中。為了不花銷，她背着丈夫嚮商人勒樂藉債。
然而，賴昂和羅道耳弗一樣欺騙了愛瑪的感情。他漸漸地對愛瑪感到厭膩了。尤其是當他收到母親的來信和都包卡吉律師的解勸時，决定和愛瑪斷絶來往。因為這種曖昧的關係，將要影響他的前程。不久，他就要升為第一練習生了。於是，他開始回避她。
正在這時，愛瑪接到法院的一張傳票。商人勒樂要逼她還債，法院限定愛瑪在二十四小時內，把全部八千法郎的藉款還清，否則以傢産抵押。愛瑪無奈去嚮勒樂求情，要他再寬限幾天，但他翻臉不認人，不肯變通。愛瑪去嚮賴昂求援，賴昂騙她藉不到錢，躲開了。她去嚮律師居由曼借錢，可是這老鬼卻乘她眉急之際想占有她。她氣憤地走了。最後，她想到徐赦特去找羅道耳弗幫助。羅道耳弗竟公然說他沒有錢。愛瑪受盡凌辱，心情萬分沉重。當她從羅道耳弗傢出來時，感到墻在搖晃，天花板往下壓她。她走進一條悠長的林蔭道上，絆在隨風散開的枯葉堆上……回到傢，愛瑪吞吃了砒霜。她想這樣一來“一切欺詐，卑鄙和折磨她的無數欲望，都和她不相幹了”。包法利醫生跪在她的床邊，她把手放在他的頭髮裏面，這種甜蜜的感覺，越發使醫生感到難過。愛瑪也感到對不起自己的丈夫。她對他說：“你是好人。”最後，她看了孩子一眼，痛苦地離開了這個世界。
為了償清債務，包法利醫生把全部傢産都當光賣盡了。他在翻抽屜時，發現了妻子和賴昂的來往情書以及羅道耳弗的畫像。他傷心極了，好長時間都閉門不出。一次，他在市場上遇見了羅道耳弗，但他原諒了自己的情敵，認為“錯的是命”。他在承受了種種打擊之後，也死了。愛瑪遺下的女兒寄養在姨母傢裏，後來進了紗廠。
包法利醫生死後，先後有三個醫生到永鎮開業，但都經不起郝麥拼命的排擠，沒有一個站得住腳。於是這位非法開業的藥劑師大走紅運，並獲得了政府頒發給他的十字勳章。
The novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between October 1, 1856 and December 15, 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made the story notorious. After the acquittal on February 7, 1857, it became a bestseller when it was published as a book in April 1857, and now stands virtually unchallenged not only as a seminal work of Realism, but as one of the most influential novels ever written.
A 2007 poll of contemporary authors, published in a book entitled The Top Ten, cited Madame Bovary as one of the two greatest novels ever written, second only to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
Plot summary
Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. The story begins and ends with Charles Bovary, a stolid, kindhearted man without much ability or ambition. As the novel opens, Charles is a shy, oddly-dressed teenager arriving at a new school amidst the ridicule of his new classmates. Later, Charles struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes an officier de santé in the Public Health Service. His mother chooses a wife for him, an unpleasant but supposedly rich widow, and Charles sets out to build a practice in the village of Tostes (now Tôtes).
One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg, and meets his client's daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, daintily-dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent and who has a latent but powerful yearning for luxury and romance imbibed from the popular novels she has read. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and begins checking on his patient far more often than necessary until his wife's jealousy puts a stop to the visits. When his wife dies, Charles waits a decent interval, then begins courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles are married.
At this point, the novel begins to focus on Emma. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy, and after he and Emma attend a ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma grows disillusioned with married life and becomes dull and listless. Charles consequently decides that his wife needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes into a larger, but equally stultifying market town, Yonville (traditionally based on the town of Ry). Here, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe; however, motherhood, too, proves to be a disappointment to Emma. She then becomes infatuated with one of the first intelligent young men she meets in Yonville, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life", and who returns her admiration. Out of fear and shame, however, Emma hides her love for Léon and her contempt for Charles, and plays the role of the devoted wife and mother, all the while consoling herself with thoughts and self-congratulations of her own virtue. Finally, in despair of ever gaining Emma's affection, Léon departs to study in Paris.
One day, a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger, brings a servant to the doctor's office to be bled. He casts his eye over Emma and decides she is ripe for seduction. To this end, he invites Emma to go riding with him for the sake of her health; solicitous only for Emma's health, Charles embraces the plan, suspecting nothing. A three-year affair follows. Swept away by romantic fantasy, Emma risks compromising herself with indiscreet letters and visits to her lover, and finally insists on making a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, has no intention of carrying Emma off, and ends the relationship on the eve of the great elopement with an apologetic, self-excusing letter delivered at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill, and briefly turns to religion.
When Emma is nearly fully recovered, she and Charles attend the opera, on Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she re-encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. While Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons, Emma travels to the city each week to meet Léon, always in the same room of the same hotel, which the two come to view as their "home." The love affair is, at first, ecstatic; then, by degrees, Léon grows bored with Emma's emotional excesses, and Emma grows ambivalent about Léon, who becoming himself more like the mistress in the relationship, compares poorly, at least implicitly, to the rakish and domineering Rodolphe. Meanwhile, Emma, given over to vanity, purchases increasing amounts of luxury items on credit from the crafty merchant, Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles’ estate, and crushing levels of debts mount quickly.
When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, including Léon and Rodolphe, only to be turned down. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death; even the romance of suicide fails her. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, preserves Emma's room as if it is a shrine, and in an attempt to keep her memory alive, adopts several of her attitudes and tastes. In his last months, he stops working and lives off the sale of his possessions. When he accidentally comes across Rodolphe's love letters one day, he still tries to understand and forgive. Soon after, he becomes reclusive; what has not already been sold of his possessions is seized to pay off Lheureux, and he dies, leaving his young daughter Berthe to live with distant relatives and eventually sent to work at a cotton mill.
Chapter-by-chapter
Part One
1. Charles Bovary's childhood, student days
2. First marriage, Charles meets Rouault and his daughter Emma; Charles's first wife dies
3. Charles proposes to Emma
4. The wedding
5. The new household at Tostes
6. An account of Emma's childhood and secret fantasy world
7. Emma becomes bored; invitation to a ball by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
8. The ball at the château La Vaubyessard
9. Emma follows fashions; her boredom concerns Charles, and they decide to move; they find out she is pregnant
Part Two
1. Description of Yonville-l'Abbaye: Homais, Lestiboudois, Binet, Bournisien, Lheureux
2. Emma meets Léon Dupuis, the lawyer's clerk
3. Emma gives birth to Berthe, visits her at the nurse's house with Léon
4. A card game; Emma's friendship with Léon grows
5. Trip to see flax mill; Lheureux's pitch; Emma is resigned to her life
6. Emma visits the priest Bournisien; Berthe is injured; Léon leaves for Paris
7. Charles's mother bans novels; the blood-letting of Rodolphe's farmhand; Rodolphe meets Emma
8. The comice agricole (agricultural show); Rodolphe woos Emma
9. Six weeks later Rodolphe returns and they go out riding; he seduces her and the affair begins
10. Emma crosses paths with Binet; Rodolphe gets nervous; a letter from her father makes Emma repent
11. Operation on Hippolyte's clubfoot; M. Canivet has to amputate; Emma returns to Rodolphe
12. Emma's extravagant presents; quarrel with mother-in-law; plans to elope
13. Rodolphe runs away; Emma falls gravely ill
14. Charles is beset by bills; Emma turns to religion; Homais and Bournisien argue
15. Emma meets Léon at performance of Lucie de Lammermoor
Part Three
1. Emma and Léon converse; tour of Rouen Cathedral; cab-ride synecdoche
2. Emma goes to Homais; the arsenic; Bovary senior's death; Lheureux's bill
3. She visits Léon in Rouen
4. She resumes "piano lessons" on Thursdays
5. Visits to Léon; the singing tramp; Emma starts to fiddle the accounts
6. Emma becomes noticeably anxious; debts spiral out of control
7. Emma begs for money from several people
8. Rodolphe cannot help; she swallows arsenic; her death
9. Emma lies in state
10. The funeral
11. Charles finds letter; his death
Characters
Emma Bovary
Emma is the novel's protagonist and is the main source of the novel's title (although Charles's mother and his former wife are also referred to as Madame Bovary). She has a highly romanticized view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion and high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, most notably leading her into two extramarital love affairs as well as causing her to accrue an insurmountable amount of debt that eventually leads to her suicide.
Emma is quite intelligent, but she never has a chance to develop her mind. As an adult, Emma's capacity for imagination is far greater than her capacity for analysis. She is observant about surface details, such as how people are dressed, but she never looks below the surface. As a result, she is easily taken in by people who are pretending to be something more than they really are (which most people in the book do for one reason or another). Emma not only believes in the false fronts other people present to her, but she despises the very few people (Charles's mother, Madame Homais, and Monsieur Binet) who are exactly as they appear to be.
Convinced that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, Emma does not realize that extreme joy, even for the wealthy and powerful, comes rarely. Not only country or bourgeois life is dull. For instance, Emma is surprised to see that aristocrats do not serve fancy food and drink at their everyday breakfasts: she'd prefer to believe that for the nobility, life is really an excitement-filled drama. Later, she fails to see that Rodolphe's wealth hasn't made him happy, despite obvious evidence of this fact.
Since Emma lives chiefly in her own fantasy world, other people's opinions or perceptions of her aren't important except to the extent that they serve some aspect of whatever drama she's trying to act out. At the ball, she's convinced that her aristocratic hosts have fully accepted her as one of their own, so much so that she expects an invitation the following year. In reality, the hosts condescended to invite Charles and Emma to the ball as reward for a favor, intending for it to be a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Indeed, Emma makes several missteps that would be embarrassing to anyone steeped in upper-class culture of the period. She waltzes so badly that she tangles her dress up with her dance partner, and she uses the gaffe as an excuse to rest her head on his chest. She is one of the few people left at the party when the hosts finally go to bed. She does not attempt to establish new social contacts at the party, nor does she write a thank-you note afterwards. She does not attempt to return the cigar-case she and Charles find later, which might have been a reasonable pretext to resume correspondence with their host. So she is far from a gracious guest, and she fails to do the things that could, under the right circumstances, lead to real social connections in high places.
Emma seldom makes an effort to cultivate friendships with other people, unless doing so serves the image she has of herself. She wants desperately to be an aristocrat, particularly after the d'Andervilliers ball, but although she's very good at aping the superficial behaviors (such as clothing and figures of speech), she lacks the manners and savoir-faire to actually operate in their culture. No matter what social group she decides she belongs to (aristocrats, the people of Yonville, people with "noble souls", adulteresses, religious martyrs, dramatic heroines, etc.), every time her role requires interaction with someone who actually is in that group Emma messes up. She doesn't go out of her way to ingratiate herself with new people, because she genuinely doesn't care what they think of her. The same indifference causes her to be rejected by most people in Tostes and Yonville, and to be very careless of her reputation once she starts having extramarital affairs. Binet, Homais, Charles's mother, and Lheureux all catch her in compromising situations, and she truly doesn't care. At some level, she wants not only the excitement of taking the risk, but possibly the drama that would result from being caught.
Emma seeks out the extremes in life, both positive and negative. That she seeks out positive experiences is obvious, because unless she's experiencing the peak of ecstasy, she's convinced she's miserable. She also re-writes her own history and memory, telling herself that she has "never" been happy every time it appears to her that, by indulging some whim, she can achieve the emotional experiences to which she feels entitled. Her appetite for stimulation grows to the point where she becomes jaded enough not to appreciate the small pleasures in life, simply because they are small pleasures. The more she experiences, the less she is satisfied with more normal activities. Consider, for example, her taste in literature. She starts out with romances and bourgeois women's magazines targeted to her real social and economic position. From there she graduates to high-fashion women's magazines that advocate conspicuous consumption. The next step is overwrought romantic poetry, followed by tragic opera, and culminating in the violent pornography which she reads between assignations with Léon. As Vladimir Nabokov observes, Emma "reads books emotionally, in a shallow juvenile manner, putting herself in this or that female character's place."
Emma feels entitled to seek out increasing pleasure and stimulation for herself. Her sense of entitlement grows over time, as does her belief that she has been somehow wronged by destiny or by the people around her. As a young girl, Emma was influenced by her improvident but pretentious father. She was also indulged as a teen and as a young adult, and nobody ever realized her expectations and attitudes about life were unreasonable or attempted to correct them. Emma's mother died too early, and her father let her be raised at a convent and educated like a young woman of independent means. Emma eventually comes to believe that all her wishes will come true, if she believes in them strongly enough and throws a big enough tantrum when she doesn't get her way. Although her father is aware of the problem, he never tries to address it and chooses to leave it to Charles instead.
Over the course of the book, Emma finds different ways to rationalize her feeling of entitlement at different times of her life. Before her marriage, she craves excitement because she is bored. In Tostes, particularly after the ball, she believes she was unjustly born into the wrong socioeconomic class and that everything would be better if only she were rich. Later, after being introduced to poetry, she believes she suffers because she has a noble soul. Ultimately she casts herself as a tragic heroine.
Emma's attraction to the negative extremes of the human experience is less obvious, but the signs are there. As a teenager, she's rewarded for an overblown, somewhat fake display of grief after her mother's death. Her father caters to her whims, as does Charles, who responds to Emma's ennui and psychosomatic illnesses by ignoring his patients and concentrating solely on his wife. Emma's fleeting but intense fascination with religion is much the same: people reward her pious conduct with extra attention and treat her as though she's superior, which reinforces her feelings of entitlement.
It is Emma's sense of superiority and entitlement that make her vulnerable to people who seek to use and manipulate her. Anyone who plays along with Emma's pretentiousness is assured of her good graces. Lheureux, the predatory money-lender who fleeces Emma and Charles, is obsequious to Emma in order to get her to spend more money on unnecessary purchases. He takes advantage of her sense of entitlement by treating her like a grand lady and by indicating that she deserves all the impractical luxuries he persuades her to buy. By giving Emma credit for business sense and experience she doesn't actually possess, Lheureux takes advantage of Emma's financial inexperience. He skims ridiculous sums off the top of every promissory note he has Emma sign, and bluffs her into believing that large commissions are somehow customary in business. Unwilling to admit her ignorance, Emma lets herself be conned instead.
Throughout her life, Emma selects dramatic, exaggerated depictions of human existence and adopts them as a romantic or personal ideal; moreover, she convinces herself that her ideal is somehow the norm, and that the reality she experiences is the exception to the rule. As a teenager, she seeks to emulate the romantic novels she read while at the convent. After the ball, she seeks to emulate the nobility and the wealthy and creates a new romantic ideal based on a man she met at the ball. After being introduced to poetry, she adopts a romantic martyr-like facade. After being exposed to the melodramatic opera "Lucia de Lammermoor", Emma adopts the insane fictional character Lucy Ashton as her role model and becomes convinced that the correct way to respond to adversity is to lose her mind and commit suicide, which she eventually does.
Each individual decision of Emma's seems plausible and reasonable in isolation, but her actions and decisions on the whole make her a very difficult character to like. She is too self-absorbed to consider the consequences of her actions as they affect other people. Her recklessness with money leads to financial ruin not just for herself but for her husband and child.
Charles Bovary
Emma's husband, Charles Bovary, is a very simple and common man. He is a country doctor by profession, but is, as in everything else, not very good at it. He is in fact not qualified enough to be termed a doctor, but is instead an officier de santé, or "health officer". When he is persuaded by Homais, the local pharmacist, to attempt a difficult operation on a patient's clubfoot, the effort is an enormous failure, and his patient's leg must be amputated by a better doctor.
Charles adores his wife and finds her faultless, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. He never suspects her affairs and gives her complete control over his finances, thereby securing his own ruin. Despite Charles's complete devotion to Emma, she despises him as he is the epitome of all that is dull and common. When Charles discovers Emma's deceptions after her death he is devastated and dies soon after, but not before frittering away the very last of the assets remaining after his bankruptcy by living the way he believed Emma would have wanted him to live.
Charles is presented from the start as a likeable and well-meaning fool who happens to have a good memory and a way with people. Although it annoys Emma that Charles doesn't deduce her attitude toward him based on her very subtle hints and cues, she would need a far more blunt approach to get her message across. Charles's lack of insight regarding Emma is not unique. He fails to realize that Homais is not his friend but his enemy and lets the pharmacist isolate him from the other people in town. He fails to realize that Rodolphe has designs on Emma. He trusts Léon implicitly even though he's aware Emma is emotionally attached to the young clerk. He fails to realize that Emma's expenditures have put the household in debt, and he doesn't realize that Lheureux is a financial predator. He also ignores potential allies in the town who might have pointed out what everybody else thought was obvious.
Charles is no genius, but at the time he meets Emma he's doing well financially. He's married, he's got a thriving practice that has grown in response to his popularity with his patients, and he's got a good reputation in the community. After he moves to a new town, he never regains his former position, and Emma is part of the reason why. He knows he is in financial trouble, but continues to enable Emma's spendthrift ways. He takes on more than his share of his responsibility for the success of the marriage, and he tries to cover for Emma's lapses. Meanwhile, he gives up control over the financial aspects of his practice, which allows Emma to start embezzling. In fact, he borrows from a moneylender and does not tell Emma.
During Emma's first mysterious collapse, which is in response to her realization that she's not getting a second ball invitation, Charles abandons his patients and acts as her full-time nurse even though her life is not obviously in danger. The more he hovers, the worse Emma's "health problem" becomes. He gives up a thriving practice and moves to an area where he knows nobody. He nurses her through two more collapses, and allows her to talk him into attempting an operation he is not qualified to perform.
Monsieur Homais
Monsieur Homais is the town pharmacist. In one incident, he convinces Charles to perform corrective surgery on a young stable boy, afflicted with a club foot. During this era, correcting or eliminating a disability was a daring option and he may have considered this an opportunity to garner personal attention and praise. The operation is a disaster, and the stable boy is left with his leg amputated at the thigh.
Despite having been convicted of practicing medicine without a license, he continues to give "consultations" in his pharmacy. This means that the presence of a licensed health officer in town is a threat to him. Not only are he and Charles in competition for patients, but if Charles were to report Homais for practicing medicine without a license, the courts would deal strictly with Homais given that it would be a second conviction. So, to keep the clueless Charles from turning him in to the authorities should Charles ever find out about the "consultations", Homais becomes Charles's best friend, at least on the surface. Meanwhile he undermines Charles at every opportunity. Convincing him to attempt the risky club foot operation may have been part of an ongoing strategy to discredit Charles so as to run him out of town. At the end of the book, after Charles's death, Homais uses similar strategies to get rid of subsequent doctors and is left in sole control of the medical profession in Yonville.
He is also vehemently anti-clerical and an atheist. He is the one who insists that Emma should go riding with Rodolphe, that Charles take her to see the opera in Rouen, and that she be allowed to take expensive music lessons in Rouen. No idiot, and with his ear to the ground for gossip, Homais appears to be completely unaware of Emma's adultery but subtly goes out of his way to make it easier for her. He also directly enables her ultimate act of self-destruction by detailing in her presence the means by which his supply of arsenic might be accessed.
Madame Homais
The wife of Monsieur Homais, Madame Homais is a simple woman whose life revolves around her husband and children, of which she has four. Caring for four children is no trivial task, especially without electricity, hot running water, or any form of public schooling beyond occasional classes offered by the parish priest. Furthermore, in addition to her own four children Madame Homais cares for Justin, a teenage relative who lives with the Homais family and who helps Monsieur Homais out in the pharmacy. She also takes care of a boarder: a young male student by the name of Léon Dupuis. With that many people in the household, Madame Homais can be excused for having a live-in maid to help with at least some of the cooking, cleaning, and mending. Even with the maid's help, Madame Homais works very hard. Since the pharmacy is quite successful, she could perhaps get away with having her own horse or dressing in the latest fashions, but she does not. Instead, she takes in a boarder to earn extra money.
Madame Homais serves chiefly as a foil for Emma. Whereas Madame Homais, or even Charles's infirm first wife, has a legitimate reason for wanting a maid, Emma is able-bodied aside from her drama-induced fainting fits and collapses. She simply chooses to do no housework, and to refrain from any of the activities bourgeois women generally did in order to earn money on the side. She does not sub-let an upstairs bedroom to a tenant the way Madame Homais rents to Léon, she leaves all the housekeeping to the maid, and does no work herself unless it suits whatever religious or social fantasy she has about herself at the time. Madame Homais does not dress fashionably or even well, whereas Emma is always dressed in the latest expensive fashions that are more lavish than what anyone else in Yonville seems able to afford. Madame Homais dotes on her children, while Emma ignores and despises her daughter unless she's acting out a maternal fantasy.
Emma despises Madame Homais for her simplicity, unless she's in the mood to pretend to idealize good mothers. Madame Homais, however, seems unaware that Emma dislikes her. Even when other people gossip about Emma, Madame Homais defends her. That naive loyalty is rewarded with nothing but contempt most of the time.
Léon Dupuis
First befriending Emma when she moves to Yonville, Léon seems a perfect match for her. He shares her romantic ideals as well as her disdain for common life. He worships Emma from afar before leaving to study law in Paris. A chance encounter brings the two together several years later and this time they begin an affair. Though the relationship is passionate at first, after a time the mystique wears off.
Financially, Léon cannot afford to carry on the affair, so Emma pays more and more of the bills. Eventually she assumes the whole financial burden. She also takes the lead in planning meetings and setting up communication, which is a reversal of the role she had with Rodolphe. Léon does not seem to find Emma's financial aggression disturbing or inappropriate, although when Emma asks him to pawn some spoons she'd received as a wedding gift from her father, Léon does become uncomfortable. He objects to the heavy spending, but does not press too hard when Emma overrules him. He's content to be the recipient of Emma's largesse, and to not think too much about where the money is coming from. He also does not feel particularly obligated to reciprocate later, when Emma asks him for help in her hour of financial need.
Over time, Léon becomes disenchanted with Emma, particularly after her attentions start to affect his work. The first time she arrives at his office, he's charmed and leaves work quickly. After a while, the interruptions have an effect on his work and his attitude to the other clerks. Eventually someone sends word to Léon's mother that her son is "ruining himself with a married woman", and Léon's mother and employer insist that he break off the affair. Léon does, briefly, but cannot stay away from Emma. His reluctance is tempered with relief because Emma's pursuit of him has become increasingly disturbing. When Emma's debts finally come due, she attempts to seduce Léon into stealing the money to cover her debts from his employer. At this point, he becomes genuinely afraid. He fobs her off with an excuse and disappears from her life.
Rodolphe Boulanger
Rodolphe is a wealthy local man who seduces Emma as one more addition to a long string of mistresses. Though occasionally charmed by Emma, Rodolphe feels little true emotion towards her. As Emma becomes more and more desperate, Rodolphe loses interest and worries about her lack of caution. He eventually ends their relationship, but not before going through a collection of letters and tokens from previous mistresses, all of whom ended up wanting either love or money.
Rodolphe's deteriorating feelings for Emma do not keep him from accepting the valuable gifts she showers on him throughout their relationship, even though he realizes at some level that she can't afford to be so generous. The gifts she gives him are of the same value and quality as she imagines an aristocrat such as the Vicount might receive from a similarly aristocratic mistress. Rodolphe's gifts to Emma are nowhere near as valuable even though he is by far the wealthier of the two. He does not feel particularly obligated by having accepted the gifts, even though they create a large part of Emma's debt to Lheureux.
When Emma asks Rodolphe for help at the peak of her financial crisis, after refusing the sex-for-money exchange offered by the wealthy Monsieur Guillaumin, she essentially attempts to initiate a sex-for-money exchange with Rodolphe. She pretends at first to have returned out of love, then when the timing feels right she asks him for money, using an obvious lie about why she needs a loan. She therefore comes across as among the most mercenary of Rodolphe's past mistresses. Rodolphe therefore sees no need to help her, though he could perhaps not afford to lend her enough money to keep her creditors at bay even if he desired to.
Monsieur L'heureux
A manipulative and sly merchant who continually convinces Emma to buy goods on credit and borrow money from him. L'heureux plays Emma masterfully and eventually leads her so far into debt as to cause her financial ruin and subsequent suicide.
L'heureux's reputation as an aggressive money lender is well known in Yonville. Had Emma or Charles had the wit to make inquiries about him or even to listen to the gossip, they would have realized that L'heureux had ruined at least one other person in town through his stratagems. Yet the only "friend" they trust, Homais, is fully aware of L'heureux's treachery but disinclined to warn Emma or Charles. So both Emma and Charles end up borrowing money from L'heureux without each other's knowledge.
Setting
The setting of Madame Bovary is crucial to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flaubert's realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to the protagonist Emma.
It has been calculated that the novel begins in October 1827 and ends in August 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the “July Monarchy”, or the rule of King Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class. Flaubert detested the bourgeoisie. Much of the time and effort, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interpreted as social criticism.
Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city of Rouen in Normandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in looking at the style of the novel. It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as “literary realism”.
Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to contrast with his protagonist. Emma's romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more capricious and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token, however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in comparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in the bourgeois class.
Style
The book, loosely based on the life story of a schoolfriend who had become a doctor, was written at the urging of friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to "cure" Flaubert of his deep-dyed Romanticism by assigning him the dreariest subject they could think of, and challenging him to make it interesting without allowing anything out-of-the-way to occur. Although Flaubert had little liking for the styles of Balzac or Zola, the novel is now seen as a prime example of Realism, a fact which contributed to the trial for obscenity (which was a politically-motivated attack by the government on the liberal newspaper in which it was being serialized, La Revue de Paris). Flaubert, as the author of the story, does not comment directly on the moral character of Emma Bovary and abstains from explicitly condemning her adultery. This decision caused some to accuse Flaubert of glorifying adultery and creating a scandal.
The Realist movement used verisimilitude through a focus on character development. Realism was a reaction against Romanticism. Emma may be said to be the embodiment of a romantic; in her mental and emotional process, she has no relation to the realities of her world. She inevitably becomes dissatisfied since her larger-than-life fantasies are impossible to realize. Flaubert declared that much of what is in the novel is in his own life by saying, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary is me").
Madame Bovary, on the whole, is a commentary on the entire self-satisfied, deluded, bourgeois culture of Flaubert's time period. His contempt for the bourgeoisie is expressed through his characters: Emma and Charles Bovary lost in romantic delusions; absurd and harmful scientific characters, a self-serving money lender, lovers seeking excitement finding only the banality of marriage in their adulterous affairs. All are seeking escape in empty church rituals, unrealistic romantic novels, or delusions of one sort or another.
Literary significance and reception
Long established as one of the greatest novels ever written, the book has often been described as a "perfect" work of fiction. Henry James writes: "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment."
Adaptations
Madame Bovary has been made into several films, beginning with Jean Renoir's 1932 version. It has also been the subject of multiple television miniseries and made-for-TV movies. The most notable of these adaptations was the 1949 film produced by MGM. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it starred Jennifer Jones in the title role, co-starring James Mason, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, and Gene Lockhart. It was adapted by Giles Cooper for the BBC in 1964, with the same script being used for a new production in 1975. A new BBC version adapted by Heidi Thomas was made in 2000, starring Frances O'Connor and Hugh Bonneville.
Claude Chabrol made his version starring Isabelle Huppert.
Madame Bovary has been adapted into a piece of musical theatre, entitled The Bovary Tale. Composer: Anne Freier. Librettist: Laura Steel. The first performance was at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate Village in September 2009.
David Lean's film Ryan's Daughter (1970) was a loose adaptation of the story, relocating it to Ireland during the time of the Easter Rebellion. The script had begun life as a straight adaptation of Bovary, but Lean convinced writer Robert Bolt to re-work it into another setting.
Indian director Ketan Mehta adapted the novel into a 1992 Hindi film Maya Memsaab.
Madame Blueberry is an 1998 film in the Veggietales animated series. It is a loose parody of Madame Bovary, in which Madame Blueberry, an anthropomorphic blueberry, gathers material possessions in a vain attempt to find happiness.
Academy Award nominated film Little Children features the novel as part of a book club discussion, and shares a few elements of the main idea.
Naomi Ragen loosely based her 2007 novel The Saturday Wife on Madame Bovary.
Posy Simmonds graphic novel Gemma Bovery reworked the story into a satirical tale of English expatriates in France.
Vale Abraão (1993) (Abraham's Vale) by Manoel de Oliveira is a close interpretation set in Portugal, even referencing and discussing Flaubert's novel several times.
"Madame Ovary" is the name of a character in DC Comics' The Adventures of the Outsiders #33-35. Madame Ovary's name was really Dr. Ovarin, and she was created by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis.
一天，查理醫生接到一封緊急的信件，要他到拜爾鬥給一個富裕農民盧歐先生治病，他的一條腿摔斷了。盧歐是個五十歲左右的矮胖子，他的太太二年前已去世了。傢裏由她的獨生女愛瑪料理。這是個具有浪漫氣質的女孩子，面頰是玫瑰色的，頭髮黑油油的，在腦後輓成一個大髻，眼睛很美麗，由於睫毛的緣故，棕顔色仿佛是黑顔色，她“朝你望來，毫無顧慮，有一種天真無邪膽大的神情”。她給查理留下了深刻的印象。查理給盧歐診治過後，答應他三天後再去拜訪，但到第二天他就去了。此後，他一星期去兩次。先後花了四十六天的時間，治好了盧歐的腿。
查理妻子同丈夫常上拜爾鬥去。免不了要打聽病人的底細。當她知道盧歐小姐曾受過教育，懂得跳舞、地理、素描、刺綉和彈琴時，醋勁大發。她要丈夫把手放在彌撒書上，嚮她發誓，今後再也不去拜爾鬥了。查理唯命是聽，照樣做了。但不久發生了一件意外的事，他妻子的財産保管人帶着她的現金逃跑了。查理的父母發現媳婦一年並沒有一千二百法郎的收入（她在訂婚的時候撒了謊），於是跑來和她吵鬧。她在一氣之下，吐血死了。
盧歐老爹給查理送診費來，當他知道查理的不幸後，便盡力安慰他，說自己也曾經歷過喪偶的痛苦。他邀請查理到拜爾鬥去散散心。查理去了，並且愛上了愛瑪。他嚮盧歐老爹提親。盧歐感到查理不是理想的女婿，不過人傢說他品行端正，省吃儉用，自然也不會太計較陪嫁，便答應了。開春後，查理和愛瑪按當地的風俗舉行了婚禮。
愛瑪十三歲進了修道院附設的寄宿女校念書。她在那裏受着貴族式的教育。她愛教堂的花卉、宗教的音樂，並在浪漫主義小說的熏陶下成長。彼耶的小說《保耳與維爾吉妮》是她最喜愛的圖書之一。她夢想過小竹房子的生活，尤其是有位好心的小哥哥，情意纏綿，爬上比鐘樓還要高的大樹去摘紅果子，或者赤着腳在沙灘上跑，給你抱來一個鳥巢；她又“衷心尊敬那些出名或者不幸的婦女”，沉浸在羅漫蒂剋的緬想中。一位在大革命前出身於貴族世傢的老姑娘，每月到修道院做一星期女工，她嚮女生們講浪漫故事，而且衣袋裏總有一本傳奇小說。後來，愛瑪的母親死了，父親把她接回傢去。
愛瑪結婚了，她終於得到了那種不可思議的愛情。在這以前，愛情仿佛是一隻玫瑰色羽毛的巨鳥，可望而不可即，在詩的燦爛的天堂裏翺翔。婚後，她卻發覺查理是個平凡而又庸俗的人。他“談吐象人行道一樣平板，見解庸俗，如同來往行人一般衣著尋常，激不起情緒，也激不起笑或者夢想”。查理不會遊泳、不會比劍，不會放槍。有一次愛瑪用傳奇小說中一個騎馬的術語問他，他竟瞠目不知所對。她悔恨自己為什麽要結婚！有時，她為了彌補感情上的空虛，她嚮查理吟誦她記得起來的情詩，一面吟，一面嘆息。可是吟過之後，她發現自己如同吟唱前一樣平靜，而查理也沒有因此而感動，正如火刀敲石子，她這樣敲過之後，不見冒出一顆火星來。
不久，查理醫好了一位聲名顯赫的侯爵的口瘡。侯爵為答謝查理，他邀請查理夫婦到他的田莊渥畢薩爾去作客。查理夫婦坐着馬車去了。那是個有着意大利風格的莊園，房子很大，還有美麗的花園。愛瑪對侯爵傢豪華的氣派，高雅的客人，珠光寶氣的舞會場面，一一感到入迷。一位風流瀟灑的子爵來邀她跳舞，給她留下了極深的印象。在回傢的路上，她拾得了子爵的一個雪茄匣，又勾起了她對舞伴的懷念。回到傢，她嚮女僕人發脾氣。她把雪茄匣藏起來，每當查理不在傢時，她把它取出來，開了又開，看了又看，甚至還聞了襯裏的味道：一種雜有美女櫻和煙草的味道。她“希望死，又希望住到巴黎”。
渥畢薩爾之行，在愛瑪的生活上，鑿了一個洞眼，如同山上那些大裂縫，一陣狂風暴雨，一夜工夫，就成了這般模樣。她無可奈何，衹得想開些。不過她參加舞會的漂亮衣著、緞鞋，她都虔誠地放入五鬥櫃。“她的心也象它們一樣，和財富有過接觸之後，添了一些磨蹭不掉的東西”。愛瑪辭退了女傭人，不願意在道特住下去了。她對丈夫老是看不順眼。她變得懶散，“乖戾和任性”。
查理怕引起愛瑪生病。他們從道特搬到永鎮居住。這是個通大路的村鎮，有一個古老的教堂和一條子彈射程那樣長的街。街上有金獅客店和引人註目的郝麥先生的藥房。郝麥是個藥劑師，戴一頂金墜小絨帽，穿一雙緑皮拖鞋，他那洋洋自得的臉上有幾顆細麻子，神氣就象挂在他頭上的柳條籠裏的金翅雀那樣。他經常愛自我吹噓，標榜自己是個無神論者，他沒有醫生執照，但私自給農民看病。愛瑪到永鎮那天，由郝麥和一個在律師那裏做練習生的賴昂陪着吃晚飯。
賴昂·都普意是個有着金黃頭髮的青年，金獅飯店包飯吃的房客。愛瑪和他初次見面便很談得來。他們有相同的志趣，而且都愛好旅行和音樂。此後，他們便經常在一道談天，議論浪漫主義的小說和時行的戲劇，並且“不斷地交換書籍和歌麯”。包法利先生難得妒忌，並不引以為怪。
愛瑪生了一個女孩，起名為白爾特。交給木匠的女人喂養。賴昂有時陪她一道去看女兒。他們日益接近起來，愛瑪生日時，賴昂送了一份厚禮，愛瑪也送給他一張毯子。
時裝商人勒樂，是個狡黠的做生意的能手，虛胖的臉上不留鬍須，仿佛抹了一道稀薄的甘草汁；一雙賊亮的小黑眼睛，襯上白頭髮，越發顯得靈活。他逢人脅肩諂笑，腰一直哈着，姿勢又象鞠躬，又象邀請。他看出愛瑪是個愛裝飾的“風雅的婦女”，便自動上門兜攬生意，並賒帳給她，滿足她各種虛榮的愛好。
愛瑪愛上了賴昂。她為了擺脫這一心思，轉而關心傢務，把小白爾特也接回傢來，並按時上教堂。她瘦了，面色蒼白，象大理石一樣冰涼。有一次，她甚至想把心中的秘密在懺悔時嚮教士吐露，但她看到教士布爾尼賢俗不可耐，纔沒有這樣做。她由於心情煩躁，把女兒推跌了，碰破了她的臉。賴昂也陷入愛情的羅網。他為了擺脫這一苦悶，便上巴黎念完法科的課程。臨別時，他和愛瑪依依惜別。他們都感到無限的惆悵。
愛瑪因煩惱生起病來。對賴昂的回憶成了她愁悶的中心。即使旅客在俄國大草原雪地上燃起的火堆，也比不上賴昂在她回憶中那麽明亮。一次，徐赦特的地主羅道耳弗·布朗皆來找包法利醫生替其馬夫放血。這是個風月場中的老手。約莫三十四歲光景，性情粗野，思悟明敏。他有兩處莊田，新近又買下一個莊園，每年有一萬五千法郎以上的收入。他見愛瑪生得標緻，初見面便打下勾引她的壞主意。
羅道耳弗利用在永鎮舉辦州農業展覽會的機會接近愛瑪，為她當嚮導，嚮她傾吐衷麯，他把自己裝扮成一個沒有朋友、沒人關心，鬱悶到極點的可憐蟲。他說衹要能得到一個真心相待他的人，他將剋服一切睏難，去達到目的。他們一同談到內地的庸俗，生活的窒悶，理想的毀滅……
展覽會揭幕典禮開始了，州行政委員廖萬坐着四輪大馬車姍姍來遲。這是個禿額頭，厚眼皮，臉色灰白的人。他嚮群衆發佈演說，對“美麗祖國的現狀”進行了一番歌功頌德。他說目前法國“處處商業繁盛，藝術發達，處處興修新的道路，集體國傢添了許多新的動脈，構成新的聯繫；我們偉大的工業中心又活躍起來；宗教加強鞏固，法光普照，我們的碼頭堆滿貨物……”??，群衆還嚮他吐舌頭。會後，舉行了發奬儀式。政府把一枚值二十五法郎的銀質奬章頒發給一個“在一傢田莊服務了五十四年”的老婦。那老婦一臉皺紋，幹瘦疲憊不堪。當她領到奬章後說：“我拿這送給我們的教堂堂長，給我作彌撒。”最後，又舉行了放焰火。愛瑪和羅道耳弗都不關心展覽會一幕幕滑稽劇的進行。他們衹是藉此機會說話兒，談天，直到出診的查理回來為止。
展覽會後，愛瑪已忘不了羅道耳弗了。而羅道耳弗卻有意過了六星期纔去看她。他以關心愛瑪的健康為由，把自己的馬藉給她騎。他們一同到野外散心。愛瑪經不起羅道耳弗的誘惑，做了他的情婦。他們瞞着包法利醫生常在一起幽會。這時，愛瑪感情發展到狂熱的程度，她要求羅道耳弗把她帶走，和他一同出奔。她和查理的母親也吵翻了。
然而，羅道耳弗完全是個口是心非的偽君子。他抱着玩弄女性、逢場作戲的醜惡思想，欺騙了愛瑪的感情。他答應和她一同出逃，可是出逃那天，他托人送給愛瑪一封信。信中說，逃走對他們兩人都不合適，愛瑪終有一天會後悔的。他不願成為她後悔的原因；再說人世冷酷，逃到那兒都不免受到侮辱。因此，他要和她的愛情永別了。愛瑪氣得發昏，她的心跳得象大杠子撞城門一樣。傍晚，她看到羅道耳弗坐着馬車急駛過永鎮，去盧昂找他的情婦--一個女戲子去了。愛瑪當即暈倒。此後，她生了一場大病。病好後，她想痛改前非，重新生活。可是，這時又發生了另一場事。
藥劑師郝麥邀請包法利夫婦到盧昂去看戲。在劇場裏，愛瑪遇見了過去曾為之動情的練習生賴昂。現在，他在盧昂的一傢事務所實習。於是，他們埋藏在心底多年的愛情種子又萌芽了。他們未看完戲，便跑到碼頭談天。這時，賴昂已不是初出茅廬的後生，而是一個有着充分社會經驗的人了。他一見面便想占有愛瑪，並嚮她訴說離別後的痛苦。當愛瑪談到自己害了一場大病，差點死掉時，賴昂裝出十分悲傷的樣子。他說，他也“羨慕墳墓的寧靜”，時常想到死，甚至有一天，他還立了個遺囑，吩咐別人在他死後，要用愛瑪送給他的那條漂亮的毯子裹着埋他。他極力慫恿愛瑪再留一天，去看完這場戲。包法利醫生因醫療事務先趕回永鎮去了。愛瑪留下來。於是她和賴昂便一同去參觀盧昂大教堂，坐着馬車在市內兜風。這樣，愛瑪和賴昂姘搭上了。
愛瑪回到永鎮後，藉口到盧昂去學鋼琴，實際上，她是去和賴昂幽會。愛瑪再一次把自己的全部熱情傾註在賴昂身上，沉溺在恣情的享樂之中。為了不花銷，她背着丈夫嚮商人勒樂藉債。
然而，賴昂和羅道耳弗一樣欺騙了愛瑪的感情。他漸漸地對愛瑪感到厭膩了。尤其是當他收到母親的來信和都包卡吉律師的解勸時，决定和愛瑪斷絶來往。因為這種曖昧的關係，將要影響他的前程。不久，他就要升為第一練習生了。於是，他開始回避她。
正在這時，愛瑪接到法院的一張傳票。商人勒樂要逼她還債，法院限定愛瑪在二十四小時內，把全部八千法郎的藉款還清，否則以傢産抵押。愛瑪無奈去嚮勒樂求情，要他再寬限幾天，但他翻臉不認人，不肯變通。愛瑪去嚮賴昂求援，賴昂騙她藉不到錢，躲開了。她去嚮律師居由曼借錢，可是這老鬼卻乘她眉急之際想占有她。她氣憤地走了。最後，她想到徐赦特去找羅道耳弗幫助。羅道耳弗竟公然說他沒有錢。愛瑪受盡凌辱，心情萬分沉重。當她從羅道耳弗傢出來時，感到墻在搖晃，天花板往下壓她。她走進一條悠長的林蔭道上，絆在隨風散開的枯葉堆上……回到傢，愛瑪吞吃了砒霜。她想這樣一來“一切欺詐，卑鄙和折磨她的無數欲望，都和她不相幹了”。包法利醫生跪在她的床邊，她把手放在他的頭髮裏面，這種甜蜜的感覺，越發使醫生感到難過。愛瑪也感到對不起自己的丈夫。她對他說：“你是好人。”最後，她看了孩子一眼，痛苦地離開了這個世界。
為了償清債務，包法利醫生把全部傢産都當光賣盡了。他在翻抽屜時，發現了妻子和賴昂的來往情書以及羅道耳弗的畫像。他傷心極了，好長時間都閉門不出。一次，他在市場上遇見了羅道耳弗，但他原諒了自己的情敵，認為“錯的是命”。他在承受了種種打擊之後，也死了。愛瑪遺下的女兒寄養在姨母傢裏，後來進了紗廠。
包法利醫生死後，先後有三個醫生到永鎮開業，但都經不起郝麥拼命的排擠，沒有一個站得住腳。於是這位非法開業的藥劑師大走紅運，並獲得了政府頒發給他的十字勳章。
The novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between October 1, 1856 and December 15, 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made the story notorious. After the acquittal on February 7, 1857, it became a bestseller when it was published as a book in April 1857, and now stands virtually unchallenged not only as a seminal work of Realism, but as one of the most influential novels ever written.
A 2007 poll of contemporary authors, published in a book entitled The Top Ten, cited Madame Bovary as one of the two greatest novels ever written, second only to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
Plot summary
Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. The story begins and ends with Charles Bovary, a stolid, kindhearted man without much ability or ambition. As the novel opens, Charles is a shy, oddly-dressed teenager arriving at a new school amidst the ridicule of his new classmates. Later, Charles struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes an officier de santé in the Public Health Service. His mother chooses a wife for him, an unpleasant but supposedly rich widow, and Charles sets out to build a practice in the village of Tostes (now Tôtes).
One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg, and meets his client's daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, daintily-dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent and who has a latent but powerful yearning for luxury and romance imbibed from the popular novels she has read. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and begins checking on his patient far more often than necessary until his wife's jealousy puts a stop to the visits. When his wife dies, Charles waits a decent interval, then begins courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles are married.
At this point, the novel begins to focus on Emma. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy, and after he and Emma attend a ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma grows disillusioned with married life and becomes dull and listless. Charles consequently decides that his wife needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes into a larger, but equally stultifying market town, Yonville (traditionally based on the town of Ry). Here, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe; however, motherhood, too, proves to be a disappointment to Emma. She then becomes infatuated with one of the first intelligent young men she meets in Yonville, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life", and who returns her admiration. Out of fear and shame, however, Emma hides her love for Léon and her contempt for Charles, and plays the role of the devoted wife and mother, all the while consoling herself with thoughts and self-congratulations of her own virtue. Finally, in despair of ever gaining Emma's affection, Léon departs to study in Paris.
One day, a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger, brings a servant to the doctor's office to be bled. He casts his eye over Emma and decides she is ripe for seduction. To this end, he invites Emma to go riding with him for the sake of her health; solicitous only for Emma's health, Charles embraces the plan, suspecting nothing. A three-year affair follows. Swept away by romantic fantasy, Emma risks compromising herself with indiscreet letters and visits to her lover, and finally insists on making a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, has no intention of carrying Emma off, and ends the relationship on the eve of the great elopement with an apologetic, self-excusing letter delivered at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill, and briefly turns to religion.
When Emma is nearly fully recovered, she and Charles attend the opera, on Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she re-encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. While Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons, Emma travels to the city each week to meet Léon, always in the same room of the same hotel, which the two come to view as their "home." The love affair is, at first, ecstatic; then, by degrees, Léon grows bored with Emma's emotional excesses, and Emma grows ambivalent about Léon, who becoming himself more like the mistress in the relationship, compares poorly, at least implicitly, to the rakish and domineering Rodolphe. Meanwhile, Emma, given over to vanity, purchases increasing amounts of luxury items on credit from the crafty merchant, Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles’ estate, and crushing levels of debts mount quickly.
When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, including Léon and Rodolphe, only to be turned down. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death; even the romance of suicide fails her. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, preserves Emma's room as if it is a shrine, and in an attempt to keep her memory alive, adopts several of her attitudes and tastes. In his last months, he stops working and lives off the sale of his possessions. When he accidentally comes across Rodolphe's love letters one day, he still tries to understand and forgive. Soon after, he becomes reclusive; what has not already been sold of his possessions is seized to pay off Lheureux, and he dies, leaving his young daughter Berthe to live with distant relatives and eventually sent to work at a cotton mill.
Chapter-by-chapter
Part One
1. Charles Bovary's childhood, student days
2. First marriage, Charles meets Rouault and his daughter Emma; Charles's first wife dies
3. Charles proposes to Emma
4. The wedding
5. The new household at Tostes
6. An account of Emma's childhood and secret fantasy world
7. Emma becomes bored; invitation to a ball by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
8. The ball at the château La Vaubyessard
9. Emma follows fashions; her boredom concerns Charles, and they decide to move; they find out she is pregnant
Part Two
1. Description of Yonville-l'Abbaye: Homais, Lestiboudois, Binet, Bournisien, Lheureux
2. Emma meets Léon Dupuis, the lawyer's clerk
3. Emma gives birth to Berthe, visits her at the nurse's house with Léon
4. A card game; Emma's friendship with Léon grows
5. Trip to see flax mill; Lheureux's pitch; Emma is resigned to her life
6. Emma visits the priest Bournisien; Berthe is injured; Léon leaves for Paris
7. Charles's mother bans novels; the blood-letting of Rodolphe's farmhand; Rodolphe meets Emma
8. The comice agricole (agricultural show); Rodolphe woos Emma
9. Six weeks later Rodolphe returns and they go out riding; he seduces her and the affair begins
10. Emma crosses paths with Binet; Rodolphe gets nervous; a letter from her father makes Emma repent
11. Operation on Hippolyte's clubfoot; M. Canivet has to amputate; Emma returns to Rodolphe
12. Emma's extravagant presents; quarrel with mother-in-law; plans to elope
13. Rodolphe runs away; Emma falls gravely ill
14. Charles is beset by bills; Emma turns to religion; Homais and Bournisien argue
15. Emma meets Léon at performance of Lucie de Lammermoor
Part Three
1. Emma and Léon converse; tour of Rouen Cathedral; cab-ride synecdoche
2. Emma goes to Homais; the arsenic; Bovary senior's death; Lheureux's bill
3. She visits Léon in Rouen
4. She resumes "piano lessons" on Thursdays
5. Visits to Léon; the singing tramp; Emma starts to fiddle the accounts
6. Emma becomes noticeably anxious; debts spiral out of control
7. Emma begs for money from several people
8. Rodolphe cannot help; she swallows arsenic; her death
9. Emma lies in state
10. The funeral
11. Charles finds letter; his death
Characters
Emma Bovary
Emma is the novel's protagonist and is the main source of the novel's title (although Charles's mother and his former wife are also referred to as Madame Bovary). She has a highly romanticized view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion and high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, most notably leading her into two extramarital love affairs as well as causing her to accrue an insurmountable amount of debt that eventually leads to her suicide.
Emma is quite intelligent, but she never has a chance to develop her mind. As an adult, Emma's capacity for imagination is far greater than her capacity for analysis. She is observant about surface details, such as how people are dressed, but she never looks below the surface. As a result, she is easily taken in by people who are pretending to be something more than they really are (which most people in the book do for one reason or another). Emma not only believes in the false fronts other people present to her, but she despises the very few people (Charles's mother, Madame Homais, and Monsieur Binet) who are exactly as they appear to be.
Convinced that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, Emma does not realize that extreme joy, even for the wealthy and powerful, comes rarely. Not only country or bourgeois life is dull. For instance, Emma is surprised to see that aristocrats do not serve fancy food and drink at their everyday breakfasts: she'd prefer to believe that for the nobility, life is really an excitement-filled drama. Later, she fails to see that Rodolphe's wealth hasn't made him happy, despite obvious evidence of this fact.
Since Emma lives chiefly in her own fantasy world, other people's opinions or perceptions of her aren't important except to the extent that they serve some aspect of whatever drama she's trying to act out. At the ball, she's convinced that her aristocratic hosts have fully accepted her as one of their own, so much so that she expects an invitation the following year. In reality, the hosts condescended to invite Charles and Emma to the ball as reward for a favor, intending for it to be a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Indeed, Emma makes several missteps that would be embarrassing to anyone steeped in upper-class culture of the period. She waltzes so badly that she tangles her dress up with her dance partner, and she uses the gaffe as an excuse to rest her head on his chest. She is one of the few people left at the party when the hosts finally go to bed. She does not attempt to establish new social contacts at the party, nor does she write a thank-you note afterwards. She does not attempt to return the cigar-case she and Charles find later, which might have been a reasonable pretext to resume correspondence with their host. So she is far from a gracious guest, and she fails to do the things that could, under the right circumstances, lead to real social connections in high places.
Emma seldom makes an effort to cultivate friendships with other people, unless doing so serves the image she has of herself. She wants desperately to be an aristocrat, particularly after the d'Andervilliers ball, but although she's very good at aping the superficial behaviors (such as clothing and figures of speech), she lacks the manners and savoir-faire to actually operate in their culture. No matter what social group she decides she belongs to (aristocrats, the people of Yonville, people with "noble souls", adulteresses, religious martyrs, dramatic heroines, etc.), every time her role requires interaction with someone who actually is in that group Emma messes up. She doesn't go out of her way to ingratiate herself with new people, because she genuinely doesn't care what they think of her. The same indifference causes her to be rejected by most people in Tostes and Yonville, and to be very careless of her reputation once she starts having extramarital affairs. Binet, Homais, Charles's mother, and Lheureux all catch her in compromising situations, and she truly doesn't care. At some level, she wants not only the excitement of taking the risk, but possibly the drama that would result from being caught.
Emma seeks out the extremes in life, both positive and negative. That she seeks out positive experiences is obvious, because unless she's experiencing the peak of ecstasy, she's convinced she's miserable. She also re-writes her own history and memory, telling herself that she has "never" been happy every time it appears to her that, by indulging some whim, she can achieve the emotional experiences to which she feels entitled. Her appetite for stimulation grows to the point where she becomes jaded enough not to appreciate the small pleasures in life, simply because they are small pleasures. The more she experiences, the less she is satisfied with more normal activities. Consider, for example, her taste in literature. She starts out with romances and bourgeois women's magazines targeted to her real social and economic position. From there she graduates to high-fashion women's magazines that advocate conspicuous consumption. The next step is overwrought romantic poetry, followed by tragic opera, and culminating in the violent pornography which she reads between assignations with Léon. As Vladimir Nabokov observes, Emma "reads books emotionally, in a shallow juvenile manner, putting herself in this or that female character's place."
Emma feels entitled to seek out increasing pleasure and stimulation for herself. Her sense of entitlement grows over time, as does her belief that she has been somehow wronged by destiny or by the people around her. As a young girl, Emma was influenced by her improvident but pretentious father. She was also indulged as a teen and as a young adult, and nobody ever realized her expectations and attitudes about life were unreasonable or attempted to correct them. Emma's mother died too early, and her father let her be raised at a convent and educated like a young woman of independent means. Emma eventually comes to believe that all her wishes will come true, if she believes in them strongly enough and throws a big enough tantrum when she doesn't get her way. Although her father is aware of the problem, he never tries to address it and chooses to leave it to Charles instead.
Over the course of the book, Emma finds different ways to rationalize her feeling of entitlement at different times of her life. Before her marriage, she craves excitement because she is bored. In Tostes, particularly after the ball, she believes she was unjustly born into the wrong socioeconomic class and that everything would be better if only she were rich. Later, after being introduced to poetry, she believes she suffers because she has a noble soul. Ultimately she casts herself as a tragic heroine.
Emma's attraction to the negative extremes of the human experience is less obvious, but the signs are there. As a teenager, she's rewarded for an overblown, somewhat fake display of grief after her mother's death. Her father caters to her whims, as does Charles, who responds to Emma's ennui and psychosomatic illnesses by ignoring his patients and concentrating solely on his wife. Emma's fleeting but intense fascination with religion is much the same: people reward her pious conduct with extra attention and treat her as though she's superior, which reinforces her feelings of entitlement.
It is Emma's sense of superiority and entitlement that make her vulnerable to people who seek to use and manipulate her. Anyone who plays along with Emma's pretentiousness is assured of her good graces. Lheureux, the predatory money-lender who fleeces Emma and Charles, is obsequious to Emma in order to get her to spend more money on unnecessary purchases. He takes advantage of her sense of entitlement by treating her like a grand lady and by indicating that she deserves all the impractical luxuries he persuades her to buy. By giving Emma credit for business sense and experience she doesn't actually possess, Lheureux takes advantage of Emma's financial inexperience. He skims ridiculous sums off the top of every promissory note he has Emma sign, and bluffs her into believing that large commissions are somehow customary in business. Unwilling to admit her ignorance, Emma lets herself be conned instead.
Throughout her life, Emma selects dramatic, exaggerated depictions of human existence and adopts them as a romantic or personal ideal; moreover, she convinces herself that her ideal is somehow the norm, and that the reality she experiences is the exception to the rule. As a teenager, she seeks to emulate the romantic novels she read while at the convent. After the ball, she seeks to emulate the nobility and the wealthy and creates a new romantic ideal based on a man she met at the ball. After being introduced to poetry, she adopts a romantic martyr-like facade. After being exposed to the melodramatic opera "Lucia de Lammermoor", Emma adopts the insane fictional character Lucy Ashton as her role model and becomes convinced that the correct way to respond to adversity is to lose her mind and commit suicide, which she eventually does.
Each individual decision of Emma's seems plausible and reasonable in isolation, but her actions and decisions on the whole make her a very difficult character to like. She is too self-absorbed to consider the consequences of her actions as they affect other people. Her recklessness with money leads to financial ruin not just for herself but for her husband and child.
Charles Bovary
Emma's husband, Charles Bovary, is a very simple and common man. He is a country doctor by profession, but is, as in everything else, not very good at it. He is in fact not qualified enough to be termed a doctor, but is instead an officier de santé, or "health officer". When he is persuaded by Homais, the local pharmacist, to attempt a difficult operation on a patient's clubfoot, the effort is an enormous failure, and his patient's leg must be amputated by a better doctor.
Charles adores his wife and finds her faultless, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. He never suspects her affairs and gives her complete control over his finances, thereby securing his own ruin. Despite Charles's complete devotion to Emma, she despises him as he is the epitome of all that is dull and common. When Charles discovers Emma's deceptions after her death he is devastated and dies soon after, but not before frittering away the very last of the assets remaining after his bankruptcy by living the way he believed Emma would have wanted him to live.
Charles is presented from the start as a likeable and well-meaning fool who happens to have a good memory and a way with people. Although it annoys Emma that Charles doesn't deduce her attitude toward him based on her very subtle hints and cues, she would need a far more blunt approach to get her message across. Charles's lack of insight regarding Emma is not unique. He fails to realize that Homais is not his friend but his enemy and lets the pharmacist isolate him from the other people in town. He fails to realize that Rodolphe has designs on Emma. He trusts Léon implicitly even though he's aware Emma is emotionally attached to the young clerk. He fails to realize that Emma's expenditures have put the household in debt, and he doesn't realize that Lheureux is a financial predator. He also ignores potential allies in the town who might have pointed out what everybody else thought was obvious.
Charles is no genius, but at the time he meets Emma he's doing well financially. He's married, he's got a thriving practice that has grown in response to his popularity with his patients, and he's got a good reputation in the community. After he moves to a new town, he never regains his former position, and Emma is part of the reason why. He knows he is in financial trouble, but continues to enable Emma's spendthrift ways. He takes on more than his share of his responsibility for the success of the marriage, and he tries to cover for Emma's lapses. Meanwhile, he gives up control over the financial aspects of his practice, which allows Emma to start embezzling. In fact, he borrows from a moneylender and does not tell Emma.
During Emma's first mysterious collapse, which is in response to her realization that she's not getting a second ball invitation, Charles abandons his patients and acts as her full-time nurse even though her life is not obviously in danger. The more he hovers, the worse Emma's "health problem" becomes. He gives up a thriving practice and moves to an area where he knows nobody. He nurses her through two more collapses, and allows her to talk him into attempting an operation he is not qualified to perform.
Monsieur Homais
Monsieur Homais is the town pharmacist. In one incident, he convinces Charles to perform corrective surgery on a young stable boy, afflicted with a club foot. During this era, correcting or eliminating a disability was a daring option and he may have considered this an opportunity to garner personal attention and praise. The operation is a disaster, and the stable boy is left with his leg amputated at the thigh.
Despite having been convicted of practicing medicine without a license, he continues to give "consultations" in his pharmacy. This means that the presence of a licensed health officer in town is a threat to him. Not only are he and Charles in competition for patients, but if Charles were to report Homais for practicing medicine without a license, the courts would deal strictly with Homais given that it would be a second conviction. So, to keep the clueless Charles from turning him in to the authorities should Charles ever find out about the "consultations", Homais becomes Charles's best friend, at least on the surface. Meanwhile he undermines Charles at every opportunity. Convincing him to attempt the risky club foot operation may have been part of an ongoing strategy to discredit Charles so as to run him out of town. At the end of the book, after Charles's death, Homais uses similar strategies to get rid of subsequent doctors and is left in sole control of the medical profession in Yonville.
He is also vehemently anti-clerical and an atheist. He is the one who insists that Emma should go riding with Rodolphe, that Charles take her to see the opera in Rouen, and that she be allowed to take expensive music lessons in Rouen. No idiot, and with his ear to the ground for gossip, Homais appears to be completely unaware of Emma's adultery but subtly goes out of his way to make it easier for her. He also directly enables her ultimate act of self-destruction by detailing in her presence the means by which his supply of arsenic might be accessed.
Madame Homais
The wife of Monsieur Homais, Madame Homais is a simple woman whose life revolves around her husband and children, of which she has four. Caring for four children is no trivial task, especially without electricity, hot running water, or any form of public schooling beyond occasional classes offered by the parish priest. Furthermore, in addition to her own four children Madame Homais cares for Justin, a teenage relative who lives with the Homais family and who helps Monsieur Homais out in the pharmacy. She also takes care of a boarder: a young male student by the name of Léon Dupuis. With that many people in the household, Madame Homais can be excused for having a live-in maid to help with at least some of the cooking, cleaning, and mending. Even with the maid's help, Madame Homais works very hard. Since the pharmacy is quite successful, she could perhaps get away with having her own horse or dressing in the latest fashions, but she does not. Instead, she takes in a boarder to earn extra money.
Madame Homais serves chiefly as a foil for Emma. Whereas Madame Homais, or even Charles's infirm first wife, has a legitimate reason for wanting a maid, Emma is able-bodied aside from her drama-induced fainting fits and collapses. She simply chooses to do no housework, and to refrain from any of the activities bourgeois women generally did in order to earn money on the side. She does not sub-let an upstairs bedroom to a tenant the way Madame Homais rents to Léon, she leaves all the housekeeping to the maid, and does no work herself unless it suits whatever religious or social fantasy she has about herself at the time. Madame Homais does not dress fashionably or even well, whereas Emma is always dressed in the latest expensive fashions that are more lavish than what anyone else in Yonville seems able to afford. Madame Homais dotes on her children, while Emma ignores and despises her daughter unless she's acting out a maternal fantasy.
Emma despises Madame Homais for her simplicity, unless she's in the mood to pretend to idealize good mothers. Madame Homais, however, seems unaware that Emma dislikes her. Even when other people gossip about Emma, Madame Homais defends her. That naive loyalty is rewarded with nothing but contempt most of the time.
Léon Dupuis
First befriending Emma when she moves to Yonville, Léon seems a perfect match for her. He shares her romantic ideals as well as her disdain for common life. He worships Emma from afar before leaving to study law in Paris. A chance encounter brings the two together several years later and this time they begin an affair. Though the relationship is passionate at first, after a time the mystique wears off.
Financially, Léon cannot afford to carry on the affair, so Emma pays more and more of the bills. Eventually she assumes the whole financial burden. She also takes the lead in planning meetings and setting up communication, which is a reversal of the role she had with Rodolphe. Léon does not seem to find Emma's financial aggression disturbing or inappropriate, although when Emma asks him to pawn some spoons she'd received as a wedding gift from her father, Léon does become uncomfortable. He objects to the heavy spending, but does not press too hard when Emma overrules him. He's content to be the recipient of Emma's largesse, and to not think too much about where the money is coming from. He also does not feel particularly obligated to reciprocate later, when Emma asks him for help in her hour of financial need.
Over time, Léon becomes disenchanted with Emma, particularly after her attentions start to affect his work. The first time she arrives at his office, he's charmed and leaves work quickly. After a while, the interruptions have an effect on his work and his attitude to the other clerks. Eventually someone sends word to Léon's mother that her son is "ruining himself with a married woman", and Léon's mother and employer insist that he break off the affair. Léon does, briefly, but cannot stay away from Emma. His reluctance is tempered with relief because Emma's pursuit of him has become increasingly disturbing. When Emma's debts finally come due, she attempts to seduce Léon into stealing the money to cover her debts from his employer. At this point, he becomes genuinely afraid. He fobs her off with an excuse and disappears from her life.
Rodolphe Boulanger
Rodolphe is a wealthy local man who seduces Emma as one more addition to a long string of mistresses. Though occasionally charmed by Emma, Rodolphe feels little true emotion towards her. As Emma becomes more and more desperate, Rodolphe loses interest and worries about her lack of caution. He eventually ends their relationship, but not before going through a collection of letters and tokens from previous mistresses, all of whom ended up wanting either love or money.
Rodolphe's deteriorating feelings for Emma do not keep him from accepting the valuable gifts she showers on him throughout their relationship, even though he realizes at some level that she can't afford to be so generous. The gifts she gives him are of the same value and quality as she imagines an aristocrat such as the Vicount might receive from a similarly aristocratic mistress. Rodolphe's gifts to Emma are nowhere near as valuable even though he is by far the wealthier of the two. He does not feel particularly obligated by having accepted the gifts, even though they create a large part of Emma's debt to Lheureux.
When Emma asks Rodolphe for help at the peak of her financial crisis, after refusing the sex-for-money exchange offered by the wealthy Monsieur Guillaumin, she essentially attempts to initiate a sex-for-money exchange with Rodolphe. She pretends at first to have returned out of love, then when the timing feels right she asks him for money, using an obvious lie about why she needs a loan. She therefore comes across as among the most mercenary of Rodolphe's past mistresses. Rodolphe therefore sees no need to help her, though he could perhaps not afford to lend her enough money to keep her creditors at bay even if he desired to.
Monsieur L'heureux
A manipulative and sly merchant who continually convinces Emma to buy goods on credit and borrow money from him. L'heureux plays Emma masterfully and eventually leads her so far into debt as to cause her financial ruin and subsequent suicide.
L'heureux's reputation as an aggressive money lender is well known in Yonville. Had Emma or Charles had the wit to make inquiries about him or even to listen to the gossip, they would have realized that L'heureux had ruined at least one other person in town through his stratagems. Yet the only "friend" they trust, Homais, is fully aware of L'heureux's treachery but disinclined to warn Emma or Charles. So both Emma and Charles end up borrowing money from L'heureux without each other's knowledge.
Setting
The setting of Madame Bovary is crucial to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flaubert's realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to the protagonist Emma.
It has been calculated that the novel begins in October 1827 and ends in August 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the “July Monarchy”, or the rule of King Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class. Flaubert detested the bourgeoisie. Much of the time and effort, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interpreted as social criticism.
Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city of Rouen in Normandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in looking at the style of the novel. It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as “literary realism”.
Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to contrast with his protagonist. Emma's romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more capricious and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token, however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in comparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in the bourgeois class.
Style
The book, loosely based on the life story of a schoolfriend who had become a doctor, was written at the urging of friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to "cure" Flaubert of his deep-dyed Romanticism by assigning him the dreariest subject they could think of, and challenging him to make it interesting without allowing anything out-of-the-way to occur. Although Flaubert had little liking for the styles of Balzac or Zola, the novel is now seen as a prime example of Realism, a fact which contributed to the trial for obscenity (which was a politically-motivated attack by the government on the liberal newspaper in which it was being serialized, La Revue de Paris). Flaubert, as the author of the story, does not comment directly on the moral character of Emma Bovary and abstains from explicitly condemning her adultery. This decision caused some to accuse Flaubert of glorifying adultery and creating a scandal.
The Realist movement used verisimilitude through a focus on character development. Realism was a reaction against Romanticism. Emma may be said to be the embodiment of a romantic; in her mental and emotional process, she has no relation to the realities of her world. She inevitably becomes dissatisfied since her larger-than-life fantasies are impossible to realize. Flaubert declared that much of what is in the novel is in his own life by saying, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary is me").
Madame Bovary, on the whole, is a commentary on the entire self-satisfied, deluded, bourgeois culture of Flaubert's time period. His contempt for the bourgeoisie is expressed through his characters: Emma and Charles Bovary lost in romantic delusions; absurd and harmful scientific characters, a self-serving money lender, lovers seeking excitement finding only the banality of marriage in their adulterous affairs. All are seeking escape in empty church rituals, unrealistic romantic novels, or delusions of one sort or another.
Literary significance and reception
Long established as one of the greatest novels ever written, the book has often been described as a "perfect" work of fiction. Henry James writes: "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment."
Adaptations
Madame Bovary has been made into several films, beginning with Jean Renoir's 1932 version. It has also been the subject of multiple television miniseries and made-for-TV movies. The most notable of these adaptations was the 1949 film produced by MGM. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it starred Jennifer Jones in the title role, co-starring James Mason, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, and Gene Lockhart. It was adapted by Giles Cooper for the BBC in 1964, with the same script being used for a new production in 1975. A new BBC version adapted by Heidi Thomas was made in 2000, starring Frances O'Connor and Hugh Bonneville.
Claude Chabrol made his version starring Isabelle Huppert.
Madame Bovary has been adapted into a piece of musical theatre, entitled The Bovary Tale. Composer: Anne Freier. Librettist: Laura Steel. The first performance was at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate Village in September 2009.
David Lean's film Ryan's Daughter (1970) was a loose adaptation of the story, relocating it to Ireland during the time of the Easter Rebellion. The script had begun life as a straight adaptation of Bovary, but Lean convinced writer Robert Bolt to re-work it into another setting.
Indian director Ketan Mehta adapted the novel into a 1992 Hindi film Maya Memsaab.
Madame Blueberry is an 1998 film in the Veggietales animated series. It is a loose parody of Madame Bovary, in which Madame Blueberry, an anthropomorphic blueberry, gathers material possessions in a vain attempt to find happiness.
Academy Award nominated film Little Children features the novel as part of a book club discussion, and shares a few elements of the main idea.
Naomi Ragen loosely based her 2007 novel The Saturday Wife on Madame Bovary.
Posy Simmonds graphic novel Gemma Bovery reworked the story into a satirical tale of English expatriates in France.
Vale Abraão (1993) (Abraham's Vale) by Manoel de Oliveira is a close interpretation set in Portugal, even referencing and discussing Flaubert's novel several times.
"Madame Ovary" is the name of a character in DC Comics' The Adventures of the Outsiders #33-35. Madame Ovary's name was really Dr. Ovarin, and she was created by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis.
百年孤独被譽為“再現拉丁美洲歷史社會圖景的鴻篇巨著”的《百年孤獨》，是加西亞·馬爾剋斯的代表作，也是拉丁美洲魔幻現實主義文學作品中的代表作。這部小說是作者根據拉丁美洲血淋淋的歷史事實,憑藉自己豐富的想像,描繪而成的。《百年孤獨》是哥倫比亞著名作傢、諾貝爾文學奬獲得者馬爾剋斯歷時18個月創作的一部小說，成書於1966年。被富恩特斯譽為“美洲《聖經》”，多年來年來好評如潮，影響波及了整個世界。
最初令世界震驚的是它獨特的敘述方式：“多年以後，奧雷良諾·布恩蒂亞上校面對行刑隊，準會想起父親帶他去見識冰塊的那個遙遠的下午……”這句為全書奠定“圓周模式”或圓形敘事結構的開篇語，仿佛一個永恆而孤寂的圓心，卻能把過去和將來牢牢地吸附在某個人們可以想見，甚至感同身受的現在。緊隨其後的是作者令人目瞪口呆的魔幻色彩，後現代主義者們對之進行了玄之又玄的解讀。
然而，在馬爾剋斯看來，《百年孤獨》衹不過是藉用了“外祖母的口吻”，“她老人傢講故事就是這種方式，好像人物就在眼前，事情正在發生……而且常常人鬼不分、古今輪回。”如今看來，《百年孤獨》的最大特點也許在於：用外祖母的表述方式，展現了美洲人的歷史及其撲朔迷離的集體無意識；通過對《聖經》的戲仿和拓展，並藉布恩蒂亞一傢幾代，描繪了人類的發展軌跡——從創始到原始社會、奴隸社會、封建社會，再到資本主義社會，乃至跨國資本主義時代。
《百年孤獨》-作者簡介
馬爾剋斯馬爾剋斯
馬爾剋斯（Gabriel Garcla Marquez，1928-）哥倫比亞作傢，全名：加夫列爾·加西亞·馬爾剋斯。生於馬格達萊納的阿拉卡塔卡鎮的一個醫生家庭。8歲前，一直生活在外祖父傢。外祖父是位受人尊敬的上校，參加過兩次內戰。外祖母是位勤勞的主婦，很會講神話故事。這段充滿幻想和神奇色彩的童年生活，為他後來的文學創作提供了豐富的素材。
在中小學學習期間，他閱讀了大量的經典作品。18歲入大學攻讀法律，因政局動蕩而中途輟學，進入報界，並開始文學創作。1955年，第一部長篇小說《枯枝敗葉》問世，引起拉美文學界重視，頗受好評。1962年他發表了《惡時辰》，小說獲得美國埃索石油公司在波哥大舉辦的埃索奬。1967年，他的《百年孤獨》轟動了西班牙語文學界並奠定了他在世界文壇上的地位。由於這部小說的成功，他先後榮獲哥倫比亞文學奬、法國最佳外國作品奬和拉美最高文學奬—一委內瑞拉“羅慕洛·加列戈斯”國際文學奬。並於1982年獲諾貝爾文學奬和哥倫比亞語言科學院名譽院士稱號。
主要作品有：《枯枝敗葉》、《惡時辰》、《百年孤獨》、《霍亂時期的愛情》、《迷宮裏的將軍》、《我的上校外祖父的故事》、《異國故事十二篇》、《米格爾·利了回國歷險記》等。
《百年孤獨》-著書背景
從1830年至上世紀末的70年間，哥倫比亞爆發過幾十次內戰，使數十萬人喪生。本書以很大的篇幅描述了這方面的史實，並且通過書中主人公帶有傳奇色彩的生涯集中表現出來。政客們的虛偽，統治者們的殘忍，民衆的盲從和愚昧等等都寫得淋漓盡致。
作傢以生動的筆觸，刻畫了性格鮮明的衆多人物，描繪了這個傢族的孤獨精神。在這個傢族中，夫妻之間、父子之間、母女之間、兄弟姐妹之間，沒有感情溝通，缺乏信任和瞭解。儘管很多人為打破孤獨進行過種種艱苦的探索，但由於無法找到一種有效的辦法把分散的力量統一起來，最後均以失敗告終。這種孤獨不僅彌漫在布恩地亞傢族和馬貢多鎮，而且滲入了狹隘思想，成為阻礙民族嚮上、國傢進步的一大包袱。作傢寫出這一點，是希望拉美民衆團结起來，共同努力擺脫孤獨。所以，《百年孤獨》中浸淫着的孤獨感，其主要內涵應該是對整個苦難的拉丁美洲被排斥現代文明世界的進程之外的憤懣和抗議，是作傢在對拉丁美洲近百年的歷史、以及這塊大陸上人民獨特的生命力、生存狀態、想象力進行獨特的研究之後形成的倔強的自信。
《百年孤獨》-內容梗概
《百年孤獨》描寫布恩地亞傢族7代人的命運，描繪了哥倫比亞農村小鎮馬孔多從荒蕪的沼澤中興起到最後被一陣旋風捲走而完全毀滅的100多年的圖景。馬孔多是哥倫比亞農村的縮影，也是整個拉丁美洲的縮影。
何塞·阿卡迪奧·布恩迪亞是西班牙人的後裔，他與烏蘇拉新婚時，由於害怕像姨母與叔父結婚那樣生出長尾巴的孩子來，於是烏蘇拉每夜都會穿上特製的緊身衣，拒絶與丈夫同房。後來丈夫因此而遭鄰居阿吉拉爾的恥笑，殺死了阿吉拉爾。從此，死者的鬼魂經常出現在他眼前，鬼魂那痛苦而凄涼的眼神，使他日夜不得安寧。於是他們衹好離開村子，外出謀安身之所。他們跋涉了兩年多，由此受到夢的啓示，他們來到一片灘地上，定居下來。後來又有許多人遷移至此，這地方被命名為馬孔多。布恩迪亞傢族在馬孔多的百年興廢史由此開始。
何塞·阿卡迪奧·布恩迪亞是個富於創造精神的人，他從吉卜賽人那裏看到磁鐵，便想用它來開採金子。看到放大鏡可以聚焦太陽光便試圖因此研製一種威力無比的武器。他通過卜吉賽人送給他的航海用的觀像儀和六分儀，便通過實驗認識到”地球是圓的，像橙子”。他不滿於自己所在的貧窮而落後的村落生活，因為馬孔多隱沒在寬廣的沼澤地中，與世隔絶。他决心要開闢一條道路，把馬孔多與外界的偉大發明連接起來。可他帶一幫人披荊斬棘幹了兩個多星期，卻以失敗告終。後來他又研究煉金術，整日沉迷不休。由於他的精神世界與馬孔多狹隘的現實格格不入，他陷入孤獨的天井中，以致於精神失常，被傢人綁在一棵大樹上，幾十年後纔在那棵樹上死去。烏蘇拉成為傢裏的頂梁柱，她活了115至120歲。
布恩迪亞傢族的第二代有兩男一女。老大何塞·阿卡迪奧是在來馬孔多的路上出生的。他在那裏長大，和一個叫皮拉·苔列娜的女人私通，有了孩子。他十分害怕，後來與傢裏的養女蕾蓓卡結婚。但他一直對人們懷着戒心，渴望浪跡天涯。後來，他果然隨吉卜賽人出走，回來後變得放蕩不羈，最後奇怪地被人暗殺了。老二奧雷良諾生於馬孔多，在娘肚裏就會哭，睜着眼睛出世，從小就賦有預見事物的本領，長大後愛上鎮長千金雷梅苔絲。在此之前；他與哥哥的情人生有一子名叫奧雷良諾·何塞。妻子暴病而亡後，他參加了內戰，當上上校。他一生遭遇過十四次暗殺，七十三次埋伏和一次槍决，均幸免於難。與17個外地女子姘居，生下17 個男孩。這些男孩以後不約而同回馬孔多尋根，卻在一星期內全被打死。奧雷良諾年老歸傢，和父親一樣對煉金術癡迷不已，每日煉金子作小金魚，一直到死。他們的妹妹阿馬蘭塔愛上了意大利技師，後又與侄子亂倫，愛情的不如意使她終日把自己關在房中縫製殮衣，孤獨萬狀。
第三代人衹有兩個堂兄弟，阿卡迪奧和奧雷良諾·何塞。前者不知生母為誰，竟狂熱地愛上生母，幾乎釀成大錯。後者成為馬孔多的軍隊長官，貪贓枉法，最後被保守派軍隊槍斃。生前他與一女人未婚便生一女兩男。其堂弟熱戀姑媽阿馬蘭塔，但無法與她成婚，故而參加軍隊，去找妓女尋求安慰，最終也死於亂軍之中。
第四代即是阿卡迪奧與人私通生下的一女兩男。女兒俏姑娘雷梅苦絲楚楚動人，她身上散發着引人不安的氣味，曾因此置幾個男人於死地。她總願意裸體，把時間耗費在反復洗澡上面，而她一樣在孤獨的沙漠上徘徊，後來在晾床單時，被一陣風颳上天不見了，永遠消失在空中。她的孿生子弟弟——阿卡迪奧第二，在美國人辦的香蕉公司裏當監工，鼓動工人罷工。後來，3 000多工人全被鎮壓遭難，衹他一人幸免。他目擊政府用火車把工人們的屍體運往海邊丟棄，四處訴說這場大屠殺，反被認為神智不清。他無比恐懼失望，最後把自己關在房子裏潛心研究吉卜賽人留下的羊皮手稿。另一個奧雷良諾第二終日縱情酒色，棄妻子於不顧，在情婦傢中廝混。奇怪的是，這使他傢中的牲畜迅速地繁殖，給他帶來了財富。他與妻子生有二女一男，後在病痛中死去。因此，人們一直沒認清他們兄弟倆兒誰是誰。
布恩迪亞傢族的第五代是奧雷良諾第二的一男二女，長子何塞·阿卡迪奧小時便被送往羅馬神學院去學習。母親希望他日後能當主教，但他對此毫無興趣，衹是為了那假想中的遺産，纔欺騙母親。母親死後，他回傢靠變賣傢業為生。後為保住烏蘇拉藏在地窖裏的 7 000多個金幣，被歹徒殺死。女兒梅·香梅苔絲與香蕉公司學徒相好，母親禁止他們見面，他們衹好暗中在浴室相會，母親發現後以偷雞賊為名打死了他。梅萬念俱灰，懷着身孕被送往修道院。小女兒阿馬蘭塔·烏蘇娜早年在布魯塞爾上學，在那裏成婚後歸來，見到馬孔多一片凋敝，决心重整傢園。她朝氣蓬勃，充滿活力，她的到來，使馬孔多出現了一個最特別的人。她的情緒比這傢族的人都好，也就是說，她想把一切陳規陋習打入十八層地獄。因此，她訂出長遠計劃，準備定居下來，拯救這個災難深重的村鎮。
布恩迪亞傢族的第六代是梅送回的私生子奧雷良諾·布恩迪亞。他出生後一直在孤獨中長大。他唯一的嗜好是躲在吉卜賽人梅爾加德斯的房間裏研究各種神秘的書籍和手稿。他甚至能與死去多年的老吉卜賽人對話，並受到指示學習梵文。他一直對周圍的世界既不關心也不過問，但對中世紀的學問卻了如指掌。自從姨母阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜回鄉之後，他不知不覺地對她産生了難以剋製的戀情，兩人發生了亂倫關係，但他們認為，儘管他們受到孤獨與愛情的折磨，但他們畢竟是人世間唯一最幸福的人。後來阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜生下了一個健壯的男孩，“他是百年裏誕生的布恩迪亞當中惟一由於愛情而受胎的嬰兒。”然而，他身上竟長着一條豬尾巴。 阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜産後大出血而亡。
那個長豬尾巴的男孩就是這延續百年的傢族的第七代繼承人。他被一群螞蟻圍攻並被吃掉。就在這時，奧雷良諾·布恩迪亞終於破譯出了梅爾加德斯的手稿。手稿捲首的題辭是：“傢族中的第一個人將被綁在樹上，傢族中的最後一個人將被螞蟻吃掉。”原來，這手稿記載的正是布恩迪亞傢族的歷史。在他譯完最後一章的瞬間，一場突如其來的颶風把整個兒馬孔多鎮從地球上颳走，從此這個鎮不復存在了。
《百年孤獨》-評論
加西亞馬爾剋斯遵循“變現實為幻想而又不失其真”的魔幻現實主義創作原則，經過巧妙的構思和想象，把觸目驚心的現實和源於神話、傳說的幻想結合起來，形成色彩斑斕、風格獨特的圖畫，使讀者在“似是而非，似非而是”的形象中，獲得一種似曾相識又覺陌生的感受，從而激起尋根溯源去追索作傢創作真諦的願望。魔幻現實主義必須以現實力基礎，但這並不妨礙它采取極端誇張的手法。如本書寫外部文明對馬貢多的侵入，是現實的，但又魔幻化了：吉卜賽人拖着兩塊磁鐵 “……挨傢串戶地走着……鐵鍋、鐵盆、鐵鉗、小鐵爐紛紛從原地落下，木板因鐵釘和蠃釘沒命地掙脫出來而嘎嘎作響……跟在那兩塊魔鐵的後面亂滾”；又如寫夜的寂靜，人們居然能聽到“螞蟻在月光下的哄鬧聲、蛀蟲啃食時的巨響以及野草生長時持續而清晰的尖叫聲”；再如寫政府把大批罷工者殺害後，將屍體裝上火車運到海裏扔掉，那輛火車竟有200節車廂，前、中、後共有 3個車頭牽引！作傢似乎在不斷地變換着哈哈鏡、望遠鏡、放大鏡甚至顯微鏡，讀讀者看到一幅幅真真假假、虛實交錯的畫面，從而豐富了想象力，收到強烈的藝術效果。
印第安傳說、東方神話以及《聖經》典故的運用，進一步加強了本書的神秘氣氛。如寫普羅登肖的鬼魂日夜糾纏布恩地亞一傢，便取材於印第安傳說中冤鬼自己不得安寧也不讓仇人安寧的說法；有關飛毯以及俏姑娘雷梅苔絲抓住床單升天的描寫是阿拉伯神話《天方夜譚》的引伸；而馬貢多一連下了四年十一個月零兩天的大雨則是《聖經創世紀》中有關洪水浩劫及挪亞方舟等故事的移植。拉丁美洲的民間傳說往往帶有迷信色彩，作傢在采用這些民間傳說時，有時把它們作為現實來描寫；如好漢弗朗西斯科“曾和魔鬼對歌，擊敗了對手”；阿瑪蘭塔在長廊裏綉花時與死神交談等等。有時則反其意而用之，如寫尼卡諾爾神父喝了一杯巧剋力後居然能離地12釐米，以證明“上帝有無限神力”等等，顯然是對宗教迷信的諷刺和嘲笑。
本書中象徵主義手法運用得比較成功且有意義的，應首推關於不眠癥的描寫。馬貢多全體居民在建村後不久都傳染上一種不眠癥。嚴重的是，得了這種病，人會失去記憶。為了生活，他們不得不在物品上貼上標簽。例如他們在牛身上貼標簽道：“這是牛，每天要擠它的奶；要把奶煮開加上咖啡才能做成牛奶咖啡。”這類例子書中比比皆是，作傢意在提醒公衆牢記容易被人遺忘的歷史。
另外，作傢還獨創了從未來的角度回憶過去的新穎倒敘手法。例如小說一開頭，作傢就這樣寫道：“許多年之後，面對行刑隊，奧雷良諾布恩地亞上校將會回想起，他父親帶他去見識冰塊的那個遙遠的下午。”短短的一句話，實際上容納了未來、過去和現在三個時間層面，而作傢顯然隱匿在“現在”的敘事角度。緊接着，作傢筆鋒一轉，把讀者引回到馬貢多的初創時期。這樣的時間結構，在小說中一再重複出現，一環接一環，環環相扣，不斷地給讀者造成新的懸念。
最後，值得註意的是，本書凝重的歷史內涵、犀利的批判眼光、深刻的民族文化反省、龐大的神話隱喻體係是由一種讓人耳目一新的神秘語言貫串始終的。有的評傢認為這部小說出自8歲兒童之口，加西亞馬爾剋斯對此說頗感欣慰。這是很深刻的評判目光。因為這種直觀的、簡約的語言確實有效地反映了一種新的視角，一種落後民族（人類兒童）的自我意識。當事人的苦笑取代了旁觀者的眼淚，“愚者”自我表達的切膚之痛取代了“智者”貌似公允的批判和分析，更能收到喚起被愚弄者群體深刻反省的客觀效果。
《百年孤獨》是一部極其豐富的、多層次的小說，它可以有多重解釋。它是一部關於霍塞·阿卡狄奧·布恩狄亞幾代子孫的家庭編年史；它描寫了一個象徵着馬爾剋斯故鄉阿拉卡塔卡的小鎮馬孔多的時代變遷；同時也是哥倫比亞、拉丁美洲和現代世界一個世紀以來風雲變幻的神話般的歷史。從更深遠的意義上說，它是西方文明的一個總結，從它的源頭古希臘神話、荷馬史詩、《創世紀》中的創世神話開始，帶着對蒙昧狀態的伊甸園和淨土世界那種質樸和純潔的深深的懷念。讀者從作品中讀到，這部編年史是一個吉卜賽智者用梵文寫的手稿衹有布恩狄亞傢族的最後的一個男人才能譯解，並且衹有在每一個讀者單獨讀它時，才能理解它的含義。這是一個充滿神奇與狂歡的故事，是這個世界和它的睏境、迷信的一面鏡子。但它也是一個充滿虛構的世界，吸引每一個讀者步入令人浮想聯翩的幻境。
《百年孤獨》-藝術成就
《百年孤獨》在藝術上也取得了舉世公認的巨大成就。
首先是藝術構思上的魔幻性。《百年孤獨》在小說結構上始終貫穿着一條明顯的綫索，這就是布恩迪亞傢族害怕近親結婚會生出長“豬尾巴”的孩子。這種深深的恐懼作為小說的內在精神彌漫全書，並且代代相傳，影響着他們的行為。
其次，故事情節的魔幻性。小說最引人入勝的就是故事情節的魔幻性。許多故事情節神奇怪誕、奇妙無比，看得人眼花繚亂，比如小說的重要情節，關於吉卜賽人梅爾加德斯的神奇故事。梅爾加德斯與布恩迪亞家庭有着密切的關係，梅爾加德斯給布恩迪亞傢帶來了啓蒙知識，後來他死於熱病，屍體被拋入大海。但他不堪寂寞，又重回人間，來到馬孔多，治好了全鎮人的健忘癥。不久他又一次死了，這回是淹死在河裏。布恩迪亞傢埋葬了他，但他的幽靈仍然一直在布恩迪亞傢各間房子裏遊蕩，給這個家庭留下了那本神秘的羊皮書手稿。這些充滿“魔幻”的故事情節，鮮明地帶有拉丁美洲本土傳統文化和觀念意識的特點。
再次，“魔幻”式的象徵和誇張手法。《百年孤獨》中廣泛地運用了象徵和誇張的藝術手法。但和其他文學流派不同的是，這種象徵和誇張的手法更多地帶有 “魔幻”的色彩。比如，作品中黃色是不幸和死亡的象徵，當阿·布恩迪亞死亡時，“窗外下起了細微的黃花雨。整整一夜，黃色的花朵像無聲的暴雨，在市鎮上空紛紛飄落……翌日早晨，整個馬孔多仿佛鋪上了一層密實的地毯，所以不得不用鏟子和耙子為送葬隊伍清理道路。”
最後，作者為了表現拉丁美洲的百年孤獨的現實，還特意創造了新的時間觀念和表現方法。他認為時間在拉丁美洲是停滯的，是在一個封閉的時間圈裏循環的。
《百年孤獨》中的第一句話是“多年以後，面對着行刑隊，奧雷連諾上校將會想起那久遠的一天下午，他父親帶他去認識了冰塊。”這就給全書定下了一個基調，即敘述的口吻是站在某一個時間不明確的“現在”去講述“多年以後”的一個“將來”，然後又從這個“將來”回顧到“那久遠的一天”的“過去”。一句話裏包含了現在、過去、將來，形成了一個時間性的圓圈。還有，作品中相似的活動、相似的命運，都訴說着時間的封閉性和停滯性。這正是拉丁美洲百年孤獨、停滯的社會歷史的藝術反映。
總而言之，《百年孤獨》的巨大成功，說明馬爾剋斯站在新的世界普遍性的高度上去認識拉美這塊土地、這個民族，從不同角度不同層面反映了民族性與世界性、傳統與創新的關係。正因為如此，馬爾剋斯才能夠把他的遠見卓識和非凡的藝術才華與拉丁美洲的社會現實完美地結合起來，把魔幻現實主義推上了世界文學的高峰。
《百年孤獨》-價值
《百年孤獨》的內容異常豐富、復雜而深廣，具有很高的思想認識價值。主要表現在兩方面：首先，《百年孤獨》中的小鎮馬孔多所經歷的興建、發展、鼎盛到消亡的百年滄桑，影射和濃縮了哥倫比亞自19世紀初到20世紀上半葉的歷史。小說開始時是19世紀初，但馬孔多卻像是史前社會，質樸而寧靜，這是個衹有20來戶人傢的小村莊，人們往在河邊用泥和蘆葦蓋的房子裏，取水非常方便。河水清澈、明亮、急速地流過，可以看見河床上光潔的鵝卵石，“世界，一切都是剛開始，很多東西還沒有名字，必須用手指指着說”。這裏，馬爾剋斯特意引用《聖經》中的話“必須用手指指着說。”，表示馬孔多最初就是這樣一個與世隔絶的世外桃源。這是16世紀以前哥倫比亞土著生活的寫照。隨後西班牙殖民者闖入，用箭與火和十字架徵服了拉丁美洲，繼而大批移民涌入這塊大陸，哥倫比亞從社會結構、思想信仰到習俗風尚都發生了深刻變化，形成了哥倫比亞歷史上第一次重大轉折。小說中有關吉卜賽人帶來吸鐵石、望遠鏡等東西像魔術和雜技一樣吸引全村人去圍觀、烏蘇拉發現與外界的通道以及引來第一批移民的描寫，就是這段史實的再現。
19世紀初哥倫比亞獨立後，國傢政權被土生白人的大地主、大商人所把持。他們中的自由黨、保守黨鬥爭不斷，進行長期內戰。政客們濫用職權，營私舞弊，操縱選舉，踐踏憲法，導致國傢政變不斷、內戰頻仍。從1830年到1899年，全國爆發了27次內戰，給人民帶來了無窮無盡的痛苦。小說以很大的篇幅描寫馬孔多也被捲進了這場鬥爭。通過奧雷連諾·布恩迪亞上校的傳奇生涯表現了這方面的史實。上校為反對腐敗的保守黨政府，一生發動過32次武裝起義，打了20年內戰。這些描寫生動地概括了哥倫比亞歷史上第二次重大轉折時期的社會生活。
20世紀初期，哥倫比亞內戰停止，經濟恢復，但近在咫尺的美國新殖民主義勢力又涌進了哥倫比亞。火車、電燈、電話、電影、留聲機等出現在馬孔多。小說描寫馬孔多人這樣迎接新事物：“馬孔多人對電影上活動的人物非常生氣，因為他們為電影上一個死了被埋了的人流下痛苦的眼淚，而他卻在下一個電影中變成了阿拉伯人出現了，馬孔多人受不了這樣對他們感情的嘲弄，把電影院的座椅都給砸了。最後鎮長解釋電影是幻覺的機器，不需要觀衆這樣動感情，馬孔多人終於明白了他們上了吉卜賽人新玩意兒的當了，决定再也不看電影。”他們就這樣被這些新玩意驚得目瞪口呆，看得眼花繚亂。緊着，美國人又建立了很多香蕉園，各種人像潮水一樣涌進馬孔多，他們喧賓奪主，控製了馬孔多歷史上最重大的變革。這種變革從表面上看，好像給馬孔多帶來了繁榮，但實質上卻是外國資本傢更加殘酷剝削和掠奪的開始，而且為了維護既得利益，帝國主義者用野蠻暴力鎮壓人民的反抗。在香蕉工人罷工運動中，政府和帝國主義“授命軍隊不惜用子彈打死他們”，“機槍從兩個方面掃射人群。何塞·阿卡迪奧第二倒在地上，滿臉是血。他蘇醒時纔發現自己躺在塞滿屍體的火車車廂上。他從一個車廂爬到另一個車廂，透過些微弱的亮光，便看出了死了的男人、女人和孩子：他們像報廢的香蕉給扔到大海裏……這是他見過的最長的列車—幾乎有200節運貨車廂。”小說就這樣憤怒地揭露了帝國主義、新殖民主義的入侵給哥倫比亞造成的巨大災難。這也正是造成拉丁美洲貧窮落後的重要原因之一。
其次，小說在對布恩迪亞傢族衆多人物的刻畫中，着力表現了這個家庭成員共同的性格特徵，這就是馬孔多人的孤獨感，從第一代何塞·阿卡迪奧·布恩迪亞到第六代奧雷連諾·布恩迪亞，每個人都生活在自己營造的孤獨之中，而且極力保持着這種孤獨。第一代布恩迪亞和表妹結婚以後就遭受到孤獨的折磨，他由於害怕生下長豬尾巴的孩子而不敢和妻子同房，殺死嘲笑者後又受到鬼魂睏擾，不得不遠走他鄉。晚年，他精神恍惚、瘋瘋癲癲，最後被綁在慄子樹上孤獨地死去。第二代奧雷連諾上校年輕時身經百戰，卻不知為誰賣命。退休後他把自己反鎖在屋子裏製作小金魚，做好化掉，化掉再做，“連內心也上了門閂”。第二代中的阿瑪蘭塔陰險地破壞別人的幸福，又冷酷地拒絶自己的求婚者。她整天為自己織着屍衣，孤獨地等待着死神召喚。第四代中俏姑娘雷梅苔絲根本就“不是這個世界的人”，她每天都在浴室是衝洗身子，幾小時幾小時地打發時間，最後她抓住一條床單飛上了天……這種孤獨的惡習在這個家庭代代相傳，周而復始，惡性循環，在新人之間築起一道無形的墻，使人與世隔絶、不思進取、自我封閉、離群索居。它製造了愚味落後、保守僵化的社會現狀。作者認為“孤獨”已經滲入了拉丁美洲的民族精神，成為阻礙民族上進、國傢發展的心理負擔。這種孤獨的本質是人民因為不能掌握自己的命運而産生的絶望、冷漠和疏離感。它是傢族衰敗、民族落後、國傢滅亡的根源。小說最後描寫布恩迪亞家庭連同馬孔多小鎮被颶風颳走，深刻揭示了由孤獨所産生的社會悲劇的必然性。
《百年孤獨》全面深刻地提示了拉丁美洲近百年來“孤獨”的社會現實和造成這種現狀的深刻的歷史、政治、經濟、文化等諸多方面的原因，是一部當代拉丁美洲的百科全書。
《百年孤獨》-書評
被譽為“再現拉丁美洲歷史社會圖景的鴻篇巨著”的《百年孤獨》，是加西亞馬爾剋斯的代表作，也是拉丁美洲魔幻現實主義文學作品的代表作。全書近30萬字，內容龐雜，人物衆多，情節麯折離奇，再加上神話故事、宗教典故、民間傳說以及作傢獨創的從未來的角度來回憶過去的新穎倒敘手法等等，令人眼花繚亂。但閱畢全書，讀者可以領悟，作傢是要通過布恩地亞傢族 7代人充滿神秘色彩的坎坷經歷來反映哥倫比亞乃至拉丁美洲的歷史演變和社會現實，要求讀者思考造成馬貢多百年孤獨的原因，從而去尋找擺脫命運括弄的正確途徑。
從1830年至上世紀末的70年間，哥倫比亞爆發過幾十次內戰，使數十萬人喪生。本書以很大的篇幅描述了這方面的史實，並且通過書中主人公帶有傳奇色彩的生涯集中表現出來。政客們的虛偽，統治者們的殘忍，民衆的盲從和愚昧等等都寫得淋漓盡致。作傢以生動的筆觸，刻畫了性格鮮明的衆多人物，描繪了這個傢族的孤獨精神。在這個傢族中，夫妻之間、父子之間、母女之間、兄弟姐妹之間，沒有感情溝通，缺乏信任和瞭解。儘管很多人為打破孤獨進行過種種艱苦的探索，但由於無法找到一種有效的辦法把分散的力量統一起來，最後均以失敗告終。這種孤獨不僅彌漫在布恩地亞傢族和馬貢多鎮，而且滲入了狹隘思想，成為阻礙民族嚮上、國傢進步的一大包袱。作傢寫出這一點，是希望拉美民衆團结起來，共同努力擺脫孤獨。所以，《百年孤獨》中浸淫着的孤獨感，其主要內涵應該是對整個苦難的拉丁美洲被排斥現代文明世界的進程之外的憤懣和抗議，是作傢在對拉丁美洲近百年的歷史、以及這塊大陸上人民獨特的生命力、生存狀態、想象力進行獨特的研究之後形成的倔強的自信。
加西亞馬爾剋斯遵循“變現實為幻想而又不失其真”的魔幻現實主義創作原則，經過巧妙的構思和想象，把觸目驚心的現實和源於神話、傳說的幻想結合起來，形成色彩斑斕、風格獨特的圖畫，使讀者在“似是而非，似非而是”的形象中，獲得一種似曾相識又覺陌生的感受，從而激起尋根溯源去追索作傢創作真諦的願望。魔幻現實主義必須以現實力基礎，但這並不妨礙它采取極端誇張的手法。如本書寫外部文明對馬貢多的侵入，是現實的，但又魔幻化了：吉卜賽人拖着兩塊磁鐵“……挨傢串戶地走着……鐵鍋、鐵盆、鐵鉗、小鐵爐紛紛從原地落下，木板因鐵釘和蠃釘沒命地掙脫出來而嘎嘎作響……跟在那兩塊魔鐵的後面亂滾”；又如寫夜的寂靜，人們居然能聽到“螞蟻在月光下的哄鬧聲、蛀蟲啃食時的巨響以及野草生長時持續而清晰的尖叫聲”；再如寫政府把大批罷工者殺害後，將屍體裝上火車運到海裏扔掉，那輛火車竟有200節車廂，前、中、後共有 3個車頭牽引！作傢似乎在不斷地變換着哈哈鏡、望遠鏡、放大鏡甚至顯微鏡，讀讀者看到一幅幅真真假假、虛實交錯的畫面，從而豐富了想象力，收到強烈的藝術效果。
印第安傳說、東方神話以及《聖經》典故的運用，進一步加強了本書的神秘氣氛。如寫普羅登肖的鬼魂日夜糾纏布恩地亞一傢，便取材於印第安傳說中冤鬼自己不得安寧也不讓仇人安寧的說法；有關飛毯以及俏姑娘雷梅苔絲抓住床單升天的描寫是阿拉伯神話《天方夜譚》的引伸；而馬貢多一連下了四年十一個月零兩天的大雨則是《聖經創世紀》中有關洪水浩劫及挪亞方舟等故事的移植。拉丁美洲的民間傳說往往帶有迷信色彩，作傢在采用這些民間傳說時，有時把它們作為現實來描寫；如好漢弗朗西斯科“曾和魔鬼對歌，擊敗了對手”；阿瑪蘭塔在長廊裏綉花時與死神交談等等。有時則反其意而用之，如寫尼卡諾爾神父喝了一杯巧剋力後居然能離地12釐米，以證明“上帝有無限神力”等等，顯然是對宗教迷信的諷刺和嘲笑。
本書中象徵主義手法運用得比較成功且有意義的，應首推關於不眠癥的描寫。馬貢多全體居民在建村後不久都傳染上一種不眠癥。嚴重的是，得了這種病，人會失去記憶。為了生活，他們不得不在物品上貼上標簽。例如他們在牛身上貼標簽道：“這是牛，每天要擠它的奶；要把奶煮開加上咖啡才能做成牛奶咖啡。”這類例子書中比比皆是，作傢意在提醒公衆牢記容易被人遺忘的歷史。
另外，作傢還獨創了從未來的角度回憶過去的新穎倒敘手法。例如小說一開頭，作傢就這樣寫道：“許多年之後，面對行刑隊，奧雷良諾布恩地亞上校將會回想起，他父親帶他去見識冰塊的那個遙遠的下午。”短短的一句話，實際上容納了未來、過去和現在三個時間層面，而作傢顯然隱匿在 “現在”的敘事角度。緊接着，作傢筆鋒一轉，把讀者引回到馬貢多的初創時期。這樣的時間結構，在小說中一再重複出現，一環接一環，環環相扣，不斷地給讀者造成新的懸念。
最後，值得註意的是，本書凝重的歷史內涵、犀利的批判眼光、深刻的民族文化反省、龐大的神話隱喻體係是由一種讓人耳目一新的神秘語言貫串始終的。有的評傢認為這部小說出自 8歲兒童之口，加西亞馬爾剋斯對此說頗感欣慰。這是很深刻的評判目光。因為這種直觀的、簡約的語言確實有效地反映了一種新的視角，一種落後民族（人類兒童）的自我意識。當事人的苦笑取代了旁觀者的眼淚，“愚者”自我表達的切膚之痛取代了“智者”貌似公允的批判和分析，更能收到喚起被愚弄者群體深刻反省的客觀效果。
《百年孤獨》-傢族人物表
霍·阿·布恩蒂亞 第一代
烏蘇娜 霍·阿·布恩蒂亞之妻 第一代
霍·阿卡蒂奧 霍·阿·布恩蒂亞之長子 第二代
雷貝卡 霍·阿卡蒂奧之妻 第二代
奧雷連諾上校 霍·阿·布恩蒂亞之次子 第二代
雷麥黛絲·摩斯柯特 奧雷連諾上校之妻 第二代
阿瑪蘭塔 霍·阿·布恩蒂亞之小女兒 第二代
皮拉·苔列娜 霍·阿卡蒂奧之情婦 第二代
阿卡蒂奧 霍·阿卡蒂奧之子 第三代
聖索菲婭·德拉佩德 阿卡蒂奧之妻 第三代
奧雷連諾·霍塞 奧雷連諾上校之子 第三代
十七個奧雷連諾 奧雷連諾上校之子 第三代
俏姑娘雷麥黛絲 阿卡蒂奧之長女 第四代
霍·阿卡蒂奧第二 阿卡蒂奧之次子 第四代
奧雷連諾第二 阿卡蒂奧之小兒子 第四代
菲蘭達·德卡皮奧 奧雷連諾第二之妻 第四代
佩特娜·柯特 奧雷連諾第二之情婦 第四代
霍·阿卡蒂奧（神學院學生） 奧雷連諾第二之長子 第五代
梅梅（雷納塔） 奧雷連諾第二之次女 第五代
巴比洛尼亞 梅梅之夫 第五代
阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜 奧雷連諾第二之小女兒 第五代
加斯東 阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜之夫 第五代
奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞（破譯手稿者）梅梅之子 第六代
有尾巴的嬰兒 奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞之後代 第七代
《百年孤獨》-寫作特點
我加西亞·馬爾剋斯遵循“變現實為幻想而又不失其真”的魔幻現實主義創作原則，經過巧妙的構思和想象，把觸目驚心的現實和源於神話、傳說的幻想結合起來，形成色彩斑斕、風格獨特的圖畫，使讀者在“似是而非，似非而是”的形象中，獲得一種似曾相識又覺陌生的感受，從而激起尋根溯源去追索作傢創作真諦的願望。魔幻現實主義必須以現實力基礎，但這並不妨礙它采取極端誇張的手法。如本書寫外部文明對馬貢多的侵入，是現實的，但又魔幻化了：吉卜賽人拖着兩塊磁鐵“……挨傢串戶地走着……鐵鍋、鐵盆、鐵鉗、小鐵爐紛紛從原地落下，木板因鐵釘和蠃釘沒命地掙脫出來而嘎嘎作響……跟在那兩塊魔鐵的後面亂滾”；又如寫夜的寂靜，人們居然能聽到“螞蟻在月光下的哄鬧聲、蛀蟲啃食時的巨響以及野草生長時持續而清晰的尖叫聲”；再如寫政府把大批罷工者殺害後，將屍體裝上火車運到海裏扔掉，那輛火車竟有200節車廂，前、中、後共有3個車頭牽引！作傢似乎在不斷地變換着哈哈鏡、望遠鏡、放大鏡甚至顯微鏡，讓讀者看到一幅幅真真假假、虛實交錯的畫面，從而豐富了想象力，收到強烈的藝術效果。
印第安傳說、東方神話以及《聖經》典故的運用，進一步加強了本書的神秘氣氛。如寫普羅登肖的鬼魂日夜糾纏布恩地亞一傢，便取材於印第安傳說中冤鬼自己不得安寧也不讓仇人安寧的說法；有關飛毯以及俏姑娘雷梅苔絲抓住床單升天的描寫是阿拉伯神話《天方夜譚》的引伸；而馬貢多一連下了四年十一個月零兩天的大雨則是《聖經·創世紀》中有關洪水浩劫及挪亞方舟等故事的移植。拉丁美洲的民間傳說往往帶有迷信色彩，作傢在采用這些民間傳說時，有時把它們作為現實來描寫；如好漢弗朗西斯科“曾和魔鬼對歌，擊敗了對手”；阿瑪蘭塔在長廊裏綉花時與死神交談等等。有時則反其意而用之，如寫尼卡諾爾神父喝了一杯巧剋力後居然能離地12釐米，以證明“上帝有無限神力”等等，顯然是對宗教迷信的諷刺和嘲笑。
本書中象徵主義手法運用得比較成功且有意義的，應首推關於不眠癥的描寫。馬貢多全體居民在建村後不久都傳染上一種不眠癥。嚴重的是，得了這種病，人會失去記憶。為了生活，他們不得不在物品上貼上標簽。例如他們在牛身上貼標簽道：“這是牛，每天要擠它的奶；要把奶煮開加上咖啡才能做成牛奶咖啡。”這類例子書中比比皆是，作傢意在提醒公衆牢記容易被人遺忘的歷史。
另外，作傢還獨創了從未來的角度回憶過去的新穎倒敘手法。例如小說一開頭，作傢就這樣寫道：“許多年之後，面對行刑隊，奧雷良諾·布恩地亞上校將會回想起，他父親帶他去見識冰塊的那個遙遠的下午。”短短的一句話，實際上容納了未來、過去和現在三個時間層面，而作傢顯然隱匿在“現在”的敘事角度。緊接着，作傢筆鋒一轉，把讀者引回到馬貢多的初創時期。這樣的時間結構，在小說中一再重複出現，一環接一環，環環相扣，不斷地給讀者造成新的懸念。
最後，值得註意的是，本書凝重的歷史內涵、犀利的批判眼光、深刻的民族文化反省、龐大的神話隱喻體係是由一種讓人耳目一新的神秘語言貫串始終的。有的評傢認為這部小說出自8歲兒童之口，加西亞·馬爾剋斯對此說頗感欣慰。這是很深刻的評判目光。因為這種直觀的、簡約的語言確實有效地反映了一種新的視角，一種落後民族（人類兒童）的自我意識。當事人的苦笑取代了旁觀者的眼淚， “愚者”自我表達的切膚之痛取代了“智者”貌似公允的批判和分析，更能收到喚起被愚弄者群體深刻反省的客觀效果。
《百年孤獨》被認為是拉丁美洲“文學爆炸”時代的代表作品。在世界文學史上占有重要的地位。在拉美世界衹有博爾赫斯等少數作傢可以媲美。而且在世界各地掀起了拉美文學風。魔幻現實主義也被認為是衹具有創意的寫作手法之一。
The novel chronicles the history of the Buendía family in the town founded by their patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía. It is built on multiple time frames, playing on ideas presented earlier by Jorge Luis Borges in stories such as The Garden of Forking Paths.
Biographical background and publication
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born on March 6, 1927. García Márquez is a Colombian-born author and journalist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and a pioneer of the Latin American “Boom.” Affectionately known as “Gabo” to millions of readers, he first won international fame with his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, a defining classic of twentieth century literature . His Colombian roots influenced large parts of the novel, as evidenced by the different myths throughout the novel . These myths, along with events in the novel, recount a large portion of Colombian history. For instance, “the arguments over reform in the nineteenth century, the arrival of the railway, the War of the Thousand Days, the American fruit company, the cinema, the automobile, and the massacre of striking plantation workers” are all incorporated in the novel at one point or another".
Plot summary
The novel chronicles the seven generations of the Buendía family in the town of Macondo. The family patriarch and founder of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and his wife (and first cousin), Úrsula, leave their home in Riohacha, Colombia in hopes of finding a new home. One night on their journey while camping on the banks of a river, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of a city of mirrors named Macondo. Upon awakening, José Arcadio Buendía decides to found this city on the site of their campground. After wandering aimlessly in the jungle for many days, the founding of Macondo can be seen as the founding of UtopiaJosé Arcadio Buendía believes it to be surrounded by water, and from this 'island' he invents the world according to him, naming things at will. After its establishment, Macondo soon becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events. All the events revolve around the many generations of the Buendía family, who are either unable or unwilling to escape periodic, mostly self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, Macondo is destroyed by a terrible hurricane, which symbolizes the cyclical turmoil inherent in Macondo. At the end of the book one of the Buendía male decendants finally cracks a cipher that the males in his family had been trying to solve for generation. The cipher stated all the events that the Buendía family had gone through. Note that this information was available at the beginning of time, and in possession of the Buendia family, before Macondo was even thought of, just indecipherable.
Historical Context
Although One Hundred Years of Solitude is considered a work of fiction, Gabriel García Márquez, a Colombian native, drew upon his country’s history to create a world which parallels many of the major events in Colombia’s history, thus establishing the novel as a piece of critical interpretation.
Prior to European conquest, the region now called Colombia had no cultural developments akin to those of the Incas, the Mayas or the Aztecs The region consisted mainly of large families grouped into larger units that served to define local monarchies . The most well defined tribal groups of the area were the Tairona, the Cenu, the Chibcha . The first Spanish settlement was established in 1509 under the direction of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, as a precursor to the conquest of the territory . Marquez uses the founding of the town of Macondo by the Buendia family as a metaphor for the colonization of the region of Colombia.
After Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada’s conquest of the Chibchas in 1538, Bogotá became the center of Spanish rule . After the collapse of Spanish control in 1810, provincial juntas sprang up almost everywhere to challenge Bogotá’s authority. Eventually though, royalist armies led by Pablo Morillo restored Spanish rule in 1816. Three years later when Simon Bolivar began a second war for independence, he declared the creation of a supranational state-Gran Colombia. With its capital at Bogotá, Gran Colombia survived long enough to witness Spain's final defeat in 1825.
The achievement of Independence in 1819 revealed the further obstacles. Colombia’s geography was a formidable obstacle to modernization. High transportation costs made self-sufficient and disconnected enclaves viable much like the description of the town of Macondo). Colombia had been wrestling with modernity since the eighteenth century. The dynamism of the capitalist revolution gave Colombia’s ruling classes a stark choice: integration with the modern industrial world or perishing in a backwater of barbarism. To incorporate the country with the world, Colombia would have to look to the institutional, political, and economic models of Europe and the United States.
“As nineteenth century Colombians explored, described, and colonized their interior, they mapped racial hierarchy onto an emerging national geography composed of distinct localities and regions. This created a racialized discourse of regional differentiation that assigned greater morality and progress to certain regions that they marked as “white”. Meanwhile, those places defined as “black” and “Indian” were associated with disorder, backwardness, and danger” technology and modernization became associated with race.
In Macondo, with the introduction of technology, a rising population, and modernization came the insomnia plague, which was characterized by forgetfulness. The people of Macondo forgot the words for objects (such as tables and chairs) and eventually forgot the significance or usages of these objects. Not only does this serve as a criticism by Marquez of the modernization of Colombia, but also of the plagues characteristic of the Spanish conquest, which killed many indigenous people throughout the South American continent and the Caribbean. It is estimated that smallpox killed up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas during the conquest. The insomnia of the story represents the nostalgia for the better days of the past, which are now lost upon the residents of Macondo (as a metaphor for Colombia): days before the modernization of the town and before the spread of deadly disease.
The history of Colombia is one that has been marked by years of violence, from wars for independence to the modern-day rebel group commonly known as the FARC. The first major violence in Colombia was a product of the Bolivar Liberation from 1810 to 1821. The leader of the revolution, Simon Bolivar, led many battles against the Spanish in an attempt to free the country from Spanish rule. After independence, well-defined socioeconomic regions, divided in a roughly north-south direction by parallel spurs of the Andes mountains, came into being. During the nineteenth century, the existence of several powerful regional centers undoubtedly contributed to civil disorder . Politically, the relative dispersion of the population and its economic resources caused difficulties for the government’s modernizing programs.
In 1934 a reformist wave brought Dr. Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo to the presidency by unanimous Liberal choice. Lopez imposed La Revolución en Marcha, a revolution characterized by labor reform and social legislation, which angered many Conservatives. In August 1946, Mariano Ospina Pérez took office as the first Conservative president of Colombia. This marked the start of a political breakdown that drew the people under increasingly undemocratic rule . On April 9, 1948, influential and celebrated Liberal candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, was assassinated, sparking the period of Colombia’s history known as “la Violencia”.
By the mid-1960’s, Colombia had witnessed in excess of two hundred thousand politically motivated deaths. La Violencia, from 1946–66, can be broken into five stages: the revival of political violence before and after the presidential election of 1946, the popular urban upheavals generated by Gaitan’s assassination, open guerrilla warfare, first against Conservative government of Ospina Perez, incomplete attempts at pacification and negotiation resulting from the Rojas Pinilla (who had ousted Laureano Gómez), and, finally, disjointed fighting under the Liberal/Conservative coalition of the “National Front,” from 1958 to 1975.
The politically charged violence characteristic of Colombia’s history is paralleled in One Hundred Years of Solitude by the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who wages war against the Conservatives who are facilitating the rise to power of foreign imperialists. The wealthy banana plantation owners (perhaps based on the United Fruit Co.) set up their own dictatorial police force, which brutally attacks citizens for even the slightest offenses.
The use of real events and Colombian history by Garcia Marquez makes One Hundred Years of Solitude an excellent example of magical realism. Not only are the events of the story an interweaving of reality and fiction, but the novel as a whole tells the history of Colombia from a critical perspective using magical realism. In this way, the novel compresses several centuries of Latin American history into a manageable text.
Furthermore, the novel points out that the current state of Latin America is the result of the inability to obtain the confidence required to construct a meaningful sense of direction and progress. The tragedy of Latin America is that it lacks a meaningful and solid identity, causing a lack of self-preservation. This can be attributed to a past highlighted by five hundred years of colonization. Subsequently, there is a seemingly perpetual repetition of violence, repression, and exploitation resulting in a loss of authenticity. The reality of Latin America is presented as a reoccurring fantastical world in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is a vacuum in which the characters have no chance of survival. The desire for change and forward movement exists in Macondo, just as it does in the countries of Latin America. However, the cyclical nature of time in the novel symbolizes the tendency toward repeating history in reality. Subsequently, meaningful progress is never achieved in Macondo or in Latin America. In this manner, Marquez provides insight into the feeling of solitude in present-day Latin America.
Symbolism and metaphors
A dominant theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the inevitable and inescapable repetition of history in Macondo. The protagonists are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel the characters are visited by ghosts. "The ghosts are symbols of the past and the haunting nature it has over Macondo. The ghosts and the displaced repetition that they evoke are, in fact, firmly grounded in the particular development of Latin American history". "Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions.
The fate of Macondo is both doomed and predetermined from its very existence. "Fatalism is a metaphor for the particular part that ideology has played in maintaining historical dependence, by locking the interpretation of Latin American history into certain patterns that deny alternative possibilities.The narrative seemingly confirms fatalism in order to illustrate the feeling of entrapment that ideology can performatively create.
The Ghosts that haunt the people of Macondo are symbols of an inescapable past."Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions".
Márquez uses colours as symbols. Yellow and gold are the most frequently used colours and they are symbols of imperialism and the Spanish Siglo de Oro. Gold signifies a search for economic wealth, whereas yellow represents death, change, and destruction.
The glass city is an image that comes to José Arcadio Buendía in a dream. It is the reason for the location of the founding of Macondo, but it is also a symbol of the ill fate of Macondo. Higgins writes that, "By the final page, however, the city of mirrors has become a city of mirages. Macondo thus represents the dream of a brave new world that America seemed to promise and that was cruelly proved illusory by the subsequent course of history". Images such as the glass city and the ice factory represent how Latin America already has its history outlined and is, therefore, fated for destruction.
Overall, there is an underlying pattern of Latin American history in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It could be said that the novel is one of a number of texts that "Latin American culture has created to understand itself" . In this sense, the novel can be conceived as a linear archive. This archive narrates the story of a Latin America discovered by European explorers, which had its historical entity developed by the printing press. The Archive is a symbol of the literature that is the foundation of Latin American history and also a decoding instrument. Melquiades, the keeper of the historical archive in the novel, represents both the whimsical and the literary. Finally, “the world of One Hundred Years of Solitude is a place where beliefs and metaphors become forms of fact, and where more ordinary facts become uncertain”
Characters
Buendía Family Tree
First generation
José Arcadio Buendía
Jose Arcadio Buendía is the patriarch of the Buendía family and the founder of Macondo. Buendía leaves Riohacha, Colombia with his wife, Úrsula Iguarán, after murdering Prudencio Aguilar in a duel. One night camping at the side of a river, Buendía dreams of a city of mirrors named Macondo and decides to establish the town in this location. Jose Arcadio is an introspective, inquisitive man of massive strength and energy who spends more time on his scientific pursuits than with his family. He flirts with alchemy and astronomy and becomes increasingly withdrawn from his family and community. Marquez uses carefully chosen diction, imagery and biblical references to portray this wonderfully unique character to the reader .
Úrsula Iguarán
Úrsula Iguarán is one of the two matriarchs of the Buendía family and is wife to José Arcadio Buendía.
Second generation
José Arcadio
José Arcadio Buendía's firstborn son, José Arcadio seems to have inherited his father's headstrong, impulsive mannerisms. He eventually leaves the family to chase a Gypsy girl and unexpectedly returns many years later as an enormous man covered in tattoos, claiming that he's sailed the seas of the world. He marries his adopted sister Rebeca, causing his banishment from the mansion, and he dies from a mysterious gunshot wound, days after saving his brother from execution.
Colonel Aureliano Buendía
José Arcadio Buendía's second son and the first person to be born in Macondo. He was thought to have premonitions because everything he said came true.He represents not only a warrior figure but also an artist due to his ability to write poetry and create finely crafted golden fish. During the wars he fathered 17 children by unknown women.
Remedios Moscote
Remedios was the youngest daughter of the town's Conservative administrator, Don Apolinar Moscote. Her most striking physical features are her beautiful skin and her emerald-green eyes. The future Colonel Aureliano falls in love with her, despite her extreme youth. She dies shortly after the marriage from a blood poisoning illness during her pregnancy.
Amaranta
The third child of José Arcadio Buendía, Amaranta grows up as a companion of her adopted sister Rebeca. However, her feelings toward Rebeca turn sour over Pietro Crespi, whom both sisters intensely desire in their teenage years. Amaranta dies a lonely and virginal spinster, but comfortable in her existence after having finally accepted what she had become.
Rebeca
Rebeca is the orphaned daughter of Ursula Iguaran's second cousins. At first she is extremely timid, refuses to speak, and has the habits of eating earth and whitewash from the walls of the house, a condition known as pica. She arrives carrying a canvas bag containing her parents' bones and seems not to understand or speak Spanish. However, she responds to questions asked by Visitacion and Cataure in the Guajiro or Wayuu language. She falls in love with and marries her adoptive brother José Arcadio after his return from traveling the world. After his mysterious and untimely death, she lives in seclusion for the rest of her life.
Third generation
Arcadio
Arcadio is José Arcadio's illegitimate son by Pilar Ternera. He is a schoolteacher who assumes leadership of Macondo after Colonel Aureliano Buendía leaves. He becomes a tyrannical dictator and uses his schoolchildren as his personal army. Macondo soon becomes subject to his whims. When the Liberal forces in Macondo fall, Arcadio is shot by a Conservative firing squad.
Aureliano José
Aureliano José is the illegitimate son of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and Pilar Ternera. He joins his father in several wars before deserting to return to Macondo. He deserted because he is obsessed with his aunt, Amaranta, who raised him since his birth. He is eventually shot to death by a Conservative captain midway through the wars.
Santa Sofía de la Piedad
Santa Sofía is a beautiful virgin girl and the daughter of a shopkeeper. She is hired by Pilar Ternera to have sex with her son Arcadio, her eventual husband. She is taken in along with her children by the Buendías after Arcadio's execution. After Úrsula's death she leaves unexpectedly, not knowing her destination.
17 Aurelianos
During his 32 civil war campaigns, Colonel Aureliano Buendía has 17 sons by 17 different women, each named after their father.. Four of these Aurelianos (A. Triste, A. Serrador, A. Arcaya and A. Centeno) stay in Macondo and become a permanent part of the family. Eventually, as revenge against the Colonel, all are assassinated by the government, which identified them by the mysteriously permanent Ash Wednesday cross on their foreheads. The only survivor of the massacre is A. Amador, who escapes into the jungle only to be assassinated at the doorstep of his father's house many years later.
Fourth generation
Remedios the Beauty
Remedios the Beauty is Arcadio and Santa Sofía's first child. It is said she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, and unintentionally causes the deaths of several men who love or lust over her. She appears to most of the town as naively innocent, and some come to think that she is mentally retarded. However, Colonel Aureliano Buendía believes she has inherited great lucidity: "It is as if she's come back from twenty years of war," he said. She rejects clothing and beauty. Too beautiful and, arguably, too wise for the world, Remedios ascends into the sky one morning, while folding laundry.
José Arcadio Segundo
José Arcadio Segundo is the twin brother of Aureliano Segundo, the children of Arcadio and Santa Sofía. Úrsula believes that the two were switched in their childhood, as José Arcadio begins to show the characteristics of the family's Aurelianos, growing up to be pensive and quiet. He plays a major role in the banana worker strike, and is the only survivor when the company massacres the striking workers. Afterward, he spends the rest of his days studying the parchments of Melquiades, and tutoring the young Aureliano. He dies at the exact instant that his twin does.
Aureliano Segundo
Of the two brothers, Aureliano Segundo is the more boisterous and impulsive, much like the José Arcadios of the family. He takes his first girlfriend Petra Cotes as his mistress during his marriage to the beautiful and bitter Fernanda del Carpio. When living with Petra, his livestock propagate wildly, and he indulges in unrestrained revelry. After the long rains, his fortune dries up, and the Buendías are left almost penniless. He turns to search for a buried treasure, which nearly drives him to insanity. He dies of throat cancer at the same moment as his twin. During the confusion at the funeral, the bodies are switched, and each is buried in the other's grave (highlighting Ursula's earlier comment that they had been switched at birth). Aureliano Segundo represents Colombia's economy: gaining and losing weight according to the situation at the time.
Fernanda del Carpio
Fernanda del Carpio is the only major character (except for Rebeca and the First generation) not from Macondo. She comes from a ruined, aristocratic family that kept her isolated from the world. She was chosen as the most beautiful of 5000 girls. Fernanda is brought to Macondo to compete with Remedios for the title of Queen of the carnival after her father promises her she will be the Queen of Madagascar. After the fiasco, she marries Aureliano Segundo and soon takes the leadership of the family away from the now-frail Úrsula. She manages the Buendía affairs with an iron fist. She has three children by Aureliano Segundo, José Arcadio, Renata Remedios, a.k.a. Meme, and Amaranta Úrsula. She remains in the house after he dies, taking care of the household until her death.
Fernanda is never accepted by anyone in the Buendía household who regard her as an outsider. Although, none of the Buendías rebel against her inflexible conservatism. Her mental and emotional instability is revealed through her paranoia, her correspondence with the 'invisible doctors', and her irrational behavior towards Aureliano, whom she tries to isolate from the whole world.
Fifth generation
Renata Remedios (a.k.a. Meme)
Renata Remedios, or Meme is the second child and first daughter of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. While she doesn't inherit Fernanda's beauty, she does have Aureliano Segundo's love of life and natural charisma. After her mother declares that she is to do nothing but play the clavichord, she is sent to school where she receives her performance degree as well as academic recognition. While she pursues the clavichord with 'an inflexible discipline', to placate Fernanda, she also enjoys partying and exhibits the same tendency towards excess as her father.
Meme meets and falls in love with Mauricio Babilonia, but when Fernanda discovers their affair, she arranges for Mauricio to be shot, claiming that he was a chicken thief. She then takes Meme to a convent. Meme remains mute for the rest of her life, partially because of the trauma, but also as a sign of rebellion. Several months later she gives birth to a son, Aureliano, at the convent. He is sent to live with the Buendías. She dies of old age in a hospital in Krakow.
José Arcadio (II)
José Arcadio II, named after his ancestors in the Buendía tradition, follows the trend of previous Arcadios. He is raised by Úrsula, who intends for him to become Pope. He returns from Rome without having become a priest. Eventually, he discovers buried treasure, which he wastes on lavish parties and escapades with adolescent boys. Later, he begins a tentative friendship with Aureliano Babilonia, his nephew. José Arcadio plans to set Aureliano up in a business and return to Rome, but is murdered in his bath by four of the adolescent boys who ransack his house and steal his gold.
Amaranta Úrsula
Amaranta Úrsula is the third child of Fernanda and Aureliano. She displays the same characteristics as her namesake who dies when she is only a child. She never knows that the child sent to the Buendía home is her nephew, the illegitimate son of Meme. He becomes her best friend in childhood. She returns home from Europe with an elder husband, Gastón, who leaves her when she informs him of her passionate affair with her nephew, Aureliano. She dies of hemorragia, after she has given birth to the last of the Buendía line.
Sixth generation
Aureliano Babilonia (Aureliano II)
Aureliano Babilonia, or Aureliano II, is the illegitimate child of Meme. He is hidden from everyone by his grandmother, Fernanda. He is strikingly similar to his namesake, the Colonel, and has the same character patterns as well. He is taciturn, silent, and emotionally charged. He barely knows Úrsula, who dies during his childhood. He is a friend of José Arcadio Segundo, who explains to him the true story of the banana worker massacre.
While other members of the family leave and return, Aureliano stays in the Buendía home. He only ventures into the empty town after the death of Fernanda. He works to decipher the parchments of Melquíades but stops to have an affair with his childhood partner and the love of his life, Amaranta Úrsula, not knowing that she is his aunt. When both her and her child die, he is able to decipher the parchments. "...Melquíades' final keys were revealed to him and he saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man's time and space: 'The first in line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by ants'." It is assumed he dies in the great wind that destroys Macondo the moment he finishes reading Mequiades' parchments.
Seventh generation
Aureliano (III)
Aureliano III is the child of Aureliano and his aunt, Amaranta Úrsula. He is born with a pig's tail, as the eldest and long dead Úrsula had always feared would happen (the parents of the child had never heard of the omen). His mother dies after giving birth to him, and, due to his grief-stricken father's negligence, he is devoured by ants.
Others
Melquíades
Melquíades is one of a band of gypsies who visit Macondo every year in March, displaying amazing items from around the world. Melquíades sells José Arcadio Buendía several new inventions including a pair of magnets and an alchemist's lab. Later, the gypsies report that Melquíades died in Singapore, but he, nonetheless, returns to live with the Buendía family, stating he could not bear the solitude of death. He stays with the Buendías and begins to write the mysterious parchments that Aureliano Babilonia eventually translates, before dying a second time. This time he drowns in the river near Macondo. He is buried in a grand ceremony organized by the Buendías.
Pilar Ternera
Pilar is a local woman who sleeps with the brothers Aureliano and José Arcadio. She becomes mother of their sons, Aureliano and José Arcadio. Pilar reads the future with cards, and every so often makes an accurate, though vague, prediction. She has close ties with the Buendias throughout the whole novel, helping them with her card predictions. She dies some time after she turns 145 years old (she had eventually stopped counting), surviving until the very last days of Macondo.
The word "Ternera" in Spanish signifies veal or calf, which is fitting considering the way she is treated by Aureliano, Jose Arcadio, and Arcadio. Also, it could be a play on the word "Ternura", which in Spanish means "Tenderness". Pilar is always presented as a very loving figure, and the author often uses names in a similar fashion.
Pietro Crespi
Pietro is a very handsome and polite Italian musician who runs a music school. He installs the pianola in the Buendía house. He becomes engaged to Rebeca, but Amaranta, who also loves him, manages to delay the wedding for years. When José Arcadio and Rebeca agree to be married, Pietro begins to woo Amaranta, who is so embittered that she cruelly rejects him. Despondent over the loss of both sisters, he kills himself.
Petra Cotes
Petra is a dark-skinned woman with gold-brown eyes similar to those of a panther. She is Aureliano Segundo's mistress and the love of his life. She arrives in Macondo as a teenager with her first husband. She briefly dates both of them before her husband dies. After José Arcadio decides to leave her, Aureliano Segundo gets her forgiveness and remains by her side. He continues to see her, even after his marriage. He eventually lives with her, which greatly embitters his wife, Fernanda del Carpio. When Aureliano and Petra make love, their animals reproduce at an amazing rate, but their livestock is wiped out during the four years of rain. Petra makes money by keeping the lottery alive and provides food baskets for Fernanda and her family after the death of Aureliano Segundo.
Mr. Herbert and Mr. Brown
Mr. Herbert is a gringo who showed up at the Buendía house for lunch one day. After tasting the local bananas for the first time, he arranges for a banana company to set up a plantation in Macondo. The plantation is run by the dictatorial Mr. Brown. When José Arcadio Segundo helps arrange a workers' strike on the plantation, the company traps the more than three thousand strikers and machine guns them down in the town square. The banana company and the government completely cover up the event. José Arcadio is the only one who remembers the slaughter. The company arranges for the army to kill off any resistance, then leaves Macondo for good. That event is likely based on the Banana massacre, that took place in Santa Marta, Colombia in 1928.
Mauricio Babilonia
Mauricio is a brutally honest, generous and handsome mechanic for the banana company. He is said to be a descendant of the gypsies who visit Macondo in the early days. He has the unusual characteristic of being constantly swarmed by yellow butterflies, which follow even his lover for a time. Mauricio begins a romantic affair with Meme until Fernanda discovers them and tries to end it. When Mauricio continues to sneak into the house to see her, Fernanda has him shot, claiming he is a chicken thief. Paralyzed and bedridden, he spends the rest of his long life in solitude.
Gastón
Gastón is Amaranta Úrsula's wealthy, Belgian husband. She marries him in Europe and returns to Macondo leading him on a silk leash. Gastón is about fifteen years older than his wife. He is an aviator and an adventurer. When he moves with Amaranta Ursula to Macondo he thinks it is only a matter of time before she realizes that her European ways out of place, causing her to want to move back to Europe. However, when he realizes his wife intends to stay in Macondo, he arranges for his airplane to be shipped over so he can start an airmail service. The plane is shipped to Africa by mistake. When he travels there to claim it, Amaranta writes him of her love for Aureliano Babilonia Buendía. Gastón takes the news in stride, only asking that they ship him his velocipede.
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez is only a minor character in the novel but he has the distinction of bearing the same name as the author. He is the great-great-grandson of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez. He and Aureliano Babilonia are close friends because they know the history of the town, which no one else believes. He leaves for Paris after winning a contest and decides to stay there, selling old newspapers and empty bottles. He is one of the few who is able to leave Macondo before the town is wiped out entirely.
Major themes
The subjectivity of reality and Magical Realism
Critics often cite certain works by García Márquez, such as A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and One Hundred Years of Solitude, as exemplary of magical realism, a style of writing in which the supernatural is presented as mundane, and the mundane as supernatural or extraordinary. The term was coined by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925.
The novel presents a fictional story in a fictional setting. The extraordinary events and characteres are fabricated. However the message that Marquez intends to deliver explains a true history. Marquez utilizes his fantastic story as an expression of reality. "In One Hundred Years of Solitude myth and history overlap. The myth acts as a vehicle to transmit history to the reader. Marquez’s novel can furthermore be referred to as anthropology, where truth is found in language and myth. What is real and what is fiction are indistinguishable. There are three main mythical elements of the novel: classical stories alluding to foundations and origins, characters resembling mythical heroes, and supernatural elements" Magical realism is inherent in the novel-achieved by the constant intertwining of the ordinary with the extraordinary. This magical realism strikes at one's traditional sense of naturalistic fiction. There is something clearly magical about the world of Macondo. It is a state of mind as much as, or more than, a geographical place. For example, one learns very little about its actual physical layout. Furthermore, once in it, the reader must be prepared to meet whatever the imagination of the author presents to him or her.
García Márquez achieves a perfect blend of the real with the magical through the masterful use of tone and narration. By maintaining the same tone throughout the novel, Márquez makes the extraordinary blend with the ordinary. His condensation of and lackadaisical manner in describing events causes the extraordinary to seem less remarkable than it actually is, thereby perfectly blending the real with the magical. Reinforcing this effect is the unastonished tone in which the book is written. This tone restricts the ability of the reader to question the events of the novel, however, it also causes the reader to call into question the limits of reality. Furthermore, maintaining the same narrator throughout the novel familiarizes the reader with his voice and causes he or she to become accustomed to the extraordinary events in the novel .
The fluidity of time
One Hundred Years of Solitude contains several ideas concerning time. Although the story can be read as a linear progression of events, both when considering individual lives and Macondo's history, García Márquez allows room for several other interpretations of time:
* He reiterates the metaphor of history as a circular phenomenon through the repetition of names and characteristics belonging to the Buendía family. Over six generations, all the José Arcadios possess inquisitive and rational dispositions as well as enormous physical strength. The Aurelianos, meanwhile, lean towards insularity and quietude. This repetition of traits reproduces the history of the individual characters and, ultimately, a history of the town as a succession of the same mistakes ad infinitum due to some endogenous hubris in our nature.
* The novel explores the issue of timelessness or eternity even within the framework of mortal existence. A major trope with which it accomplishes this task is the alchemist's laboratory in the Buendía family home. The laboratory was first designed by Melquíades near the start of the story and remains essentially unchanged throughout its course. It is a place where the male Buendía characters can indulge their will to solitude, whether through attempts to deconstruct the world with reason as in the case of José Arcadio Buendía, or by the endless creation and destruction of golden fish as in the case of his son Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Furthermore, a sense of inevitability prevails throughout the text. This is a feeling that regardless of what way one looks at time, its encompassing nature is the one truthful admission.
* On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind that One Hundred Years of Solitude, while basically chronological and "linear" enough in its broad outlines, also shows abundant zigzags in time, both flashbacks of matters past and long leaps towards future events. One example of this is the youthful amour between Meme and Mauricio Babilonia, which is already in full swing before we are informed about the origins of the affair .
Incest
A recurring theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the Buendía family's propensity toward incest. The patriarch of the family, Jose Arcadio Buendía, is the first of numerous Buendías to intermarry when he marries his first cousin, Úrsula. It is worth noting that this initial, incestuous act can be viewed as an "original sin", however it will not be the last one. Furthermore, the fact that "throughout the novel the family is haunted by the fear of punishment in the form of the birth of a monstrous child with a pig's tail" can be attributed to this initial, and the recurring acts of incest among the Buendías.
Solitude
Perhaps the most dominant theme in the book is that of solitude. Macondo was founded in the remote jungles of the Colombian rainforest. The solitude of the town is representative of the colonial period in Latin American history, where outposts and colonies were, for all intents and purposes, not interconnected. Isolated from the rest of the world, the Buendías grow to be increasingly solitary and selfish. With every member of the family living only for him or her self, the Buendías become representative of the aristocratic, land-owning elite who came to dominate Latin America in keeping with the sense of Latin American history symbolized in the novel. This egocentricity is embodied, especially, in the characters of Aureliano, who lives in a private world of his own, and Remedios, who destroys the lives of four men enamored by her beauty. Throughout the novel it seems as if no character can find true love or escape the destructiveness of their own egocentricity.
The selfishness of the Buendía family is eventually broken by the once superficial Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes, who discover a sense of mutual solidarity and the joy of helping others in need during Macondo's economic crisis. This pair even finds love, and their pattern is repeated by Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula. Eventually, Aureliano and Amaranta decide to have a child, and the latter is convinced that it will represent a fresh start for the once-conceited Buendía family. However, the child turns out to be the perpetually-feared monster with the pig's tail.
Nonetheless, the appearance of love represents a shift in Macondo, albeit one that leads to its destruction. "The emergence of love in the novel to displace the traditional egoism of the Buendías reflects the emergence of socialist values as a political force in Latin America, a force that will sweep away the Buendías and the order they represent". A well-known socialist, the ending to One Hundred Years of Solitude could be a wishful prediction by García Márquez regarding the future of Latin America.
Literary significance, reception and recognition
One Hundred Years of Solitude has received universal recognition. The novel has been awarded Italy’s Chianciano Award, France’s Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger, Venezuela’s Romulo Gallegos Prize, and the Books Abroad/ Neustadt International Prize for Literature. García Márquez also received an honorary LL.D. from Columbia University in New York City. These awards set the stage for García Márquez’s 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.
García Márquez is said to have a gift for blending the everyday with the miraculous, the historical with the fabulous, and psychological realism with surreal flights of fancy. It is a revolutionary novel that provides a looking glass into the thoughts and beliefs of its author, who chose to give a literary voice to Latin America: "A Latin America which neither wants, nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western aspiration." Gabriel García Márquez
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech Márquez addressed the significance of his writing and proposed its role to be more than just literary expression: "I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude"
* In 1970, reviewing the book in the National Observer, William Kennedy hailed One Hundred Years of Solitude as "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race."
* The novel topped the list of books that have most shaped world literature over the last 25 years, according to a survey of international writers commissioned by the global literary journal Wasafiri as a part of its 25th anniversary.
According to Antonio Sacoto, professor at The City College of the City University of New York, One Hundred Years of Solitude is considered as one of the five key novels in Hispanic American literature. (Together with El señor Presidente, Pedro Páramo, La muerte de Artemio Cruz, y La ciudad los perros). These novels, representative of the boom allowed Hispanic American literature to reach the quality of North American and European literature in terms of technical quality, rich themes, and linguistic innovations, among other attributes.
Although we are faced with a very convoluted narrative, Garcia Marquez is able to define clear themes while maintaining individual character identities, and using different narrative techniques such as third person narrators, specific point of view narrators, and streams of consciousness. Cinematographic techniques are also employed in the novel, with the idea of the montage and the close-up, which effectively combine the comic and grotesque with the dramatic and tragic. Furthermore, political and historical realities are combined with the mythical and magical Latin American world. Lastly, through human comedy the problems of a family, a town, and a country are unveiled. This is all presented through Garcia Marquez’s unique form of narration, which causes the novel to never cease being at its most interesting point.
The characters in the novel are never defined; they are not created from a mold. Instead, they are developed and formed throughout the novel. All characters are individualized, with many characteristics that differentiate them from others.. Ultimately, the novel has a rich imagination achieved by its rhythmic tone, narrative technique, and fascinating character creation, making it a thematic quarry, where the trivial and anecdotal and the historic and political are combined. (260)
Criticisms
Style
Although One Hundred Years of Solitude has come to be considered one of, if not the, most influential Latin American texts of all time, the novel and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have both received many critical criticisms and reviews. Harold Bloom says “My primary impression, in the act of rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude, is a kind of aesthetic battle fatigue, since every page is rammed full of life beyond the capacity of any single reader to absorb . . . There are no wasted sentences, no mere transitions, in this novel, and you must notice everything at the moment you read it.”
Inspirations
Garcia Marquez has been accused of using many texts as his inspirations for One Hundred Years of Solitude. Of these, the most well-known is Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha David T. Haberly alleges that “strong cases have been made for Faulkner, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, and Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, and one which has not been mentioned is Chateaubriand’s Atala.” Hopkins backs his statement with evidence that Atala was available for Spanish-speaking audiences before the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude and makes comparisons between the plot of the two stories and some of the characters.
Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes
Critics have also speculated the potential of Marquez harboring ideals of marianismo, adhering to sexist stereotypes, and reinforcing these stereotypes and sexist attitudes in Cien Anos de Soledad through his portrayal of female characters as domestic housewives. This potentially sexist view also can be viewed as Marquez’s profound reflection on the social and cultural realities that exist in Latin America in terms of how women were viewed, and in particular, in Colombia. “What sort of values does Ursula symbolize? They are these: middle class stinginess, stupidity, superstition, insanity, reactionary activism, etc.” “There are numerous episodes and statements in the book which reinforce the patriarchical values of the story” . “One Hundred Years of Solitude reflects the traditional Latin American role of women as adjuncts to men and implies neither qualitative awareness nor literary criticism of the restrictive political and economic systems and notions (ie marianismo) that perpetuate such notions. As a whole, the women of Macondo are pictured as male-defined, biological reproducers or sexually pleasing objects who are treated thematically as accessories to the men who actually shape and control the world.”
McOndo Movement
The portrayal of Latin American culture and society in One Hundred Years of Solitude has been a point of criticism as well. It has been said that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has created a work in which Western audiences portray popular Latin American culture as a primitive society, lacking in technology, and as a region on the world which has been excluded from the effects of globalization. One group movement that speaks out against this portrayal of Latin America as a primitive society is the McOndo movement. McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks away from the long-dominant magical realist literary tradition by strongly associating itself with mass media culture . McOndo attempts to contextualize being Latin American in a world dominated by American pop culture . The movement challenges the natural or rural, magical world typically depicted by the Magical Realism genre .
The work McOndo, by editors Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gomez, critiques the re-emphasis of the primitive stereotypes of Latin America in One Hundred Years of Solitude. They say “Nuestro McOndo es tan latinoamericano y magico (exotico) como el Macondo real (que, a todo esto no es real sin virtual). Nuestro pais McOndo es mas grande, sobrepoblado y lleno de contaminacion, con autopistas, metro, TV-cable y barriadas. En McOndo hay McDonald’s, computadores Mac y condominios, amen de hotels cinco estrellas construidos con dinero lavando y malls gigantescos” , roughly translated to say “Our McOndo is just as Latin American as the magic (exotic) as the real Macondo (which isn’t real so much as virtual). Our country McOndo is bigger, densely populated and full on contamination, with highways, public transit, cable TV and neighborhoods. In McOndo there are McDonald’s, Mac computers and condominiums, as well as five-star hotels built with clean money and gigantic malls” . He aims to denounce the primitive nature of Garcia Marquez’s Macondo and contrast it with the new McOndo, the metaphorical Latin America we now know after the effects of globalization and corporatization. “Now, thanks to Fuguet and his peers, there is a new voice south of the Rio Grande. It is savvy, street-smart, sometimes wiseass and un-ashamedly over the top. Fuguet calls this the voice of McOndo--a blend of McDonald's, Macintosh computers and condos. The label is a spoof, of course, not only on Garcia Marquez's fictitious village but also on all the poseurs who have turned these latitudes into a pastel tequila ad. ¡Hola! Fuguet is saying. Latin America is no paradise” .
Internal references
In the novel's final chapter, Márquez references the novel Hopscotch (Spanish: Rayuela) by Julio Cortázar in the following line: "...in the room that smelled of boiled cauliflower where Rocamadour was to die" (p. 412). Rocamadour is a fictional character in Hopscotch who indeed dies in the room described. He also references two other major works by Latin American writers in the novel: The Death of Artemio Cruz (Spanish: La Muerte de Artemio Cruz) by Carlos Fuentes and Explosion in a Cathedral (Spanish: El siglo de las luces) by Alejo Carpentier.
Adaptations
* Shuji Terayama's play One Hundred Years of Solitude (百年の孤独, originally performed by the Tenjo Sajiki theater troupe), as well as his film Farewell to the Ark (さらば箱舟) are loose (and not officially authorized) adaptations of the novel by García Marquez transplanted into the realm of Japanese culture and history.
Although One Hundred Years of Solitude has had such a big impact on the literature world, and although this novel is the author's best selling and most translated around the world, there have been no movies produced about it. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has never agreed to sell the rights for producing such film, even though his novel has inspired many to write and has more than enough themes to work on in the film industry.
《傲慢與偏見》是簡· 奧斯丁的代表作，是一部經典的小說。這部作品以日常生活為素材，一反當時社會上流行的感傷小說的內容和矯揉造作的寫作方法，生動地反映了18世紀末到19世紀初處於保守和閉塞狀態下的英國鄉鎮生活和世態人情。這部社會風情畫式的小說不僅在當時吸引着廣大的讀者，時至今日，仍給讀者以獨特的藝術享受。 《傲慢與偏見》以婚姻嫁娶和家庭風波為題材，描寫自己熟稔的鄉間所謂體面人傢的生活與交往，像在“二寸象牙”上“細細地描畫”，看似平凡而瑣碎，小天地卻可映出大世界，因此始終能引起長盛不衰、雅俗共賞的興趣，英國詩人和歷史小說傢司各特曾說，“在描寫人們日常生活中各種錯綜復雜的瑣事，內心情感和人物性格方面，這位姑娘很有才能。這種才能是我所遇到的最令人賞心悅目的。”正是簡.奧斯丁爐火純青的語言描寫功力，使筆下的人物栩栩如生，耐人尋味。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-作者簡介
簡·奧斯汀簡· 奧斯汀
簡· 奧斯汀出生於1775年12月16日，是喬治·奧斯汀傢的第七個孩子。簡·奧斯汀一直過着安靜平和的隱居生活，她一生未婚。英國文學史上出現過幾次趣味革命，文學口味的翻新幾乎影響了所有作傢的聲譽，唯獨莎士比亞和奧斯汀經久不衰。而這位偉大的女性一生衹走過了42個春夏秋鼕。1817年7月8日，她死於溫徹斯特，葬於當地大教堂。
她的父親是斯蒂文頓的教區長，也是一位藏書頗豐的博學之土。她的母親名叫卡桑德拉·李·奧斯汀，出身於貴族家庭。簡衹有一個姐姐，叫卡桑德拉，並一生都與她保持着密切的聯繫。簡的同胞兄弟從事着不同的職業：有幾個擔任聖職，一個是銀行傢，其他的則在軍隊服役。儘管她的家庭不是名門望族，也沒有富甲一方，但喬治·奧斯汀很重視教育，甚至對女兒也不例外。簡和卡桑德拉上了幾年學，之後就在傢裏學習，主要是廣泛閱讀各種書籍和資料，並從父兄們與輔導的學生之間有趣的討論中獲益。通過自己的努力，簡熟知18世紀的英國文學。
簡· 奧斯汀生前匿名出版了四部小說：《理智與情感》(1811)、《傲慢與偏見}》(1813)、《曼斯菲爾德莊園》(1814) 和《艾瑪》(1815)。另外兩部，《諾桑格修道院》和《勸導》是她去世後於 1817年出版的。她的這些小說以其對英國社會和風俗的諷刺性描述而聞名於世。
奧斯汀所處的英國社會是一個階級等級分明的社會。而階級的區分主要源於傢族與財富。奧斯汀在她的作品中經常批評英國上層階級的自負和偏見。簡註意區分人的內在價值 (個人品德)和外在價值(地位和財産)。簡雖然經常諷刺勢利小人，但也嘲笑出身低微的人缺乏教養和舉止不當。總的來說，奧斯汀是一個現實主義作傢，她所描繪的英國是一個缺少變化但階級意識強烈的社會。
從18世紀末到19世紀初，“感傷小說”和“哥特小說”充斥英國文壇，而奧斯汀的小說破舊立新，一反常規地展現了當時尚未受到資本主義工業革命衝擊的英國鄉村中産階級的日常生活和田園風光。她的作品往往通過喜劇性的場面嘲諷人們的愚蠢、自私、勢利和盲目自信等可鄙可笑的弱點。奧斯丁的小說出現在19世紀初葉，一掃風行一時的假浪漫主義潮流，繼承和發展了英國18世紀優秀的現實主義傳統，為19世紀現實主義小說的高潮做了準備。雖然其作品反映的廣度和深度有限，但她的作品如“兩寸牙雕”，從一個小窗口中窺視到整個社會形態和人情世故，對改變當時小說創作中的風氣起了好的作用，在英國小說的發展史上有承上啓下的意義，被譽為地位“可與莎士比亞平起平坐”的作傢。 她最喜愛的作傢是18世紀古典主義和理智的典範塞繆爾·約翰遜。奧斯汀的小說表現出一種情感上的模棱兩可，以及對聰明才智與自然美的贊賞，這些特點使其作品和浪漫主義走到一起。遺憾的是，簡·奧斯汀的小說在她生前並未受到好評。但是後來，尤其是在20世紀，她的小說越來越受歡迎。如今，簡·奧斯汀已經躋身於英國真正偉大的作傢之列。簡·奧斯汀是世界上為數極少的著名女性作傢之一，介於新古典主義和浪漫運動的抒情主義之間的“小幅畫傢”和“家庭小說”傢，文學評論傢眼裏堪與莎士比亞在不朽性方面相提並論的英國作傢。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-創作背景
《傲慢與偏見》是簡·奧斯汀最早完成的作品，她在1796年開始動筆，取名為《最初的印象》，1797年8月完成。她父親看後很感動，特意拿給湯瑪·卡士德爾，請他出版，但對方一口回絶，使得他們十分失望。後來，她重寫了《最初的印象》，並改名為“傲慢與偏見”於1813年1月出版。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-內容簡介
女主角：：伊麗莎白
男主角：達西
重要配角：簡（伊麗莎白的姐姐）、賓利（達西的好朋友）
內容提要
《傲慢與偏見》是描寫伊麗莎白•貝內特和威廉•達西這對青年男女之間的愛情故事，起初他們倆人總是話不投機。故事發生在18世紀後期，距離英國倫敦，效外約50英裏的赫特福德郡（位於英國英格蘭東南部），書中生動地描繪了當時婦女生活的艱難，她們幾乎都不能把握自己的命運。由於18世紀的英國社會十分看重社會地位和個人舉止風度與纔藝，女人們都竭盡所能去尋覓富有的丈夫。
詳細內容
小鄉紳班納特有五個待字閨中的千金，班納特太太整天操心着為女兒物色稱心如意的丈夫。 新來的鄰居彬格萊(Charles)是個有錢的單身漢，他立即成了班納特太太追獵的目標。在一次舞會上，彬格萊對班納特傢的大女兒簡(Jane)一見鐘情，班納特太太為此欣喜若狂。參加舞會的還有彬格萊的好友達西(Darcy)。他儀表堂堂，非常富有，許多姑娘紛紛嚮他投去羨慕的目光；但他非常驕傲，認為她們都不配做他的舞伴，其中包括簡的妹妹伊麗莎白(Elizabeth)。伊麗莎白自尊心很強，决定不去理睬這個傲慢的傢夥。可是不久，達西對她活潑可愛的舉止産生了好感，在另一次舞會上主動請她同舞，卻遭到伊麗莎白的拒絶，達西狼狽不堪。
彬格萊的妹妹卡羅琳(Caroline)一心追求達西，她發現達西有意於伊麗莎白，妒火中燒，决意從中阻撓。而遭到伊麗莎白冷遇的達西也鄙視班納特太太及其小女兒麗迪亞(Lydia)的粗俗。在妹妹和好友達西的勸說下，彬格萊不辭而別，去了倫敦，但簡對他還是一片深情。
班納特沒有兒子，他的傢産將由遠親柯林斯(Collins)繼承。柯林斯粗鄙無知，卻善於趨炎附勢，居然當上牧師。他嚮伊麗莎白求婚，遭拒絶後，馬上與她的女友夏洛特(Charlotte)結婚。
附近小鎮的民團聯隊裏有個英俊瀟灑的青年軍官威肯(Wickham)，人人都誇他，伊麗莎白也對他産生了好感。一天，他對伊麗莎白說，他父親是達西傢的總管，達西的父親曾給他一大筆遺贈，卻被達西吞沒了。伊麗莎白聽後，對達西更加反感。
柯林斯夫婦請伊麗莎白去他們傢作客，伊麗莎白在那裏遇到達西的姨媽凱瑟琳(Catherine)，不久，又見到了達西。同時也認識了威廉少校，從他口中得知達西藏起她姐姐的信，使伊麗莎白對達西的討厭達到頂峰。所以在達西無法抑製自己對伊麗莎白的愛慕之情，嚮她求婚的時候，但態度還是那麽傲慢。伊麗莎白堅决地謝絶了。這一打擊使達西第一次認識到驕傲自負所帶來的惡果，他痛苦地離開了她，臨走前留下一封長信作了幾點解釋：他承認彬格萊不辭而別是他促使的，原因是他不滿班納特太太的輕浮和鄙俗，並且認為簡並沒有鐘情於彬格萊；威肯說的卻全是謊言，事實是威肯自己把那筆遺産揮霍殆盡，還企圖勾引達西的妹妹私奔。伊麗莎白讀信後十分後悔，既對錯怪達西感到內疚，又為母親的行為羞愧，還對自己的偏見深深懊悔。她逐漸改變了對達西的看法。
第二年夏天，伊麗莎白隨舅父母來到達西的莊園，與他再次相遇。她發現達西變了，不僅對人彬彬有禮，在當地很受人們尊敬，而且對他妹妹非常愛護。她對他的偏見消除了。正當其時，伊麗莎白接到傢信，說小妹麗迪亞隨身負纍纍賭債的威肯私奔了。這種傢醜使伊麗莎白非常難堪，以為達西會更瞧不起自己。但事實出乎她的意料，達西得知上述消息以後，在舅父母的幫主下，不僅替威肯還清賭債，還給了他一筆巨款，讓他與麗迪亞完婚。自此以後，伊麗莎白往日對達西的種種偏見統統化為真誠之愛。
彬格萊和簡經過一番周折，言歸於好，一對情人沉浸在歡樂之中。而一心想讓自己的女兒安妮(Anne)嫁給達西的凱瑟琳夫人匆匆趕來，蠻橫地要伊麗莎白保證不與達西結婚。伊麗莎白對這一無理要求斷然拒絶。此事傳到達西耳中。他知道伊麗莎白已經改變了對自己的看法，誠懇地再次嚮她求婚。到此，一對曾因傲慢和偏見而延擱婚事的有情人終成眷屬。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-語言特色
《傲慢與偏見》是簡·奧斯丁(Jane Austen)的代表作品，寫於十八世紀九十年代，其影響經歷兩世紀而不衰，並對後代作傢産生影響，其重要的原因之一就是小說的語言魅力。在語言中對話是文學作品塑造人物形象最基本的手段之一，簡.奧斯丁筆下的人物對話鮮明生動，頗具個性，含義豐富，耐人尋味。本文用會話合作原則分析《傲慢與偏見》書中的人物對話風格，解開簡·奧斯丁作品中人物對話語言風格機智幽默妙趣橫生之謎。奧斯丁的語言是經過錘煉的，她在對話藝術上講究幽默、詼諧風趣、諷刺，這種藝術創新使她的作品具有自己的特色，而這種富有特色的語言在《傲慢與偏見》中發揮得尤為淋漓盡致。
比如在寫班納特太太時，作者就這樣寫到：“衹要碰到不稱心的事，她就自以為神經衰弱。”又在班納特太太與其丈夫的對話中寫到：“我的好老爺，你怎麽捨得這樣糟蹋自己的親生女兒？你是在故意叫我氣惱，好讓你自己得意吧。你半點也不體諒我的神經衰弱。”“你真錯怪了我，我的好太太。我非常尊重你的神經。它們是我的老朋友。至少在最近二十年以來，我一直聽到你鄭重其事地提到它們。”活靈活現的語言，絶妙的嘲諷與詼諧，立刻使兩個不同的人物形象在讀者腦海中變得立體而清晰。
再如另一個片段的描寫：咖苔琳夫人的馬車路過門口，柯林斯牧師全家手忙腳亂出去迎接，伊麗莎白卻說：“就是這麽回事嗎？我還以為是豬玀闖進了花園呢。”直率的挖苦，戳穿了咖苔琳夫人自己吹起來的唬人架勢，也使伊麗莎白這個蔑視權貴的形象在人們腦海中留下了更深的印象，越發覺得她的可愛。奧斯汀還善於通過最普通的語言讓人物自己暴露自己。例如小說開頭時，班納特太太曾說郎格太太“是個自私自利、假仁假義的女人，我瞧不起她。”而到故事的結尾，當其大女兒與彬格萊的婚事已成定局時，她又說“我覺得郎格太太這個人真是太好了。” 這兩段截然相反的話，讓讀者不禁啞然失笑的同時，又多麽生動地表現出班納特太太的反復無常、自我中心。這樣的例子在書中還有很多。一個曾充滿偏見的伊麗莎白、一個曾渾身傲慢的達西、一對有趣的班納特夫婦、一個可笑的柯林斯、衆多出場人物、再加上喜劇效果和特殊寫作技巧，這就是《傲慢與偏見》，卻不是它的全部。奧斯汀的幽默是需要反復咀嚼的。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-評價
1、奧斯丁在這部小說中通過班納特五個女兒對待終身大事的不同處理，表現出鄉鎮中産階級家庭出身的少女對婚姻愛情問題的不同態度，從而反映了作者本人的婚姻觀：為了財産、金錢和地位而結婚是錯誤的；而結婚不考慮上述因素也是愚蠢的。因此，她既反對為金錢而結婚，也反對把婚姻當兒戲。她強調理想婚姻的重要性，並把男女雙方感情作為締結理想婚姻的基石。書中的女主人公伊麗莎白出身於小地主家庭，為富豪子弟達西所熱愛。達西不顧門第和財富的差距，嚮她求婚，卻遭到拒絶。伊麗莎白對他的誤會和偏見是一個原因，但主要的是她討厭他的傲慢。因為達西的這種傲慢實際上是地位差異的反映，衹要存在這種傲慢，他與伊麗莎白之間就不可能有共同的思想感情，也不可能有理想的婚姻。以後伊麗莎白親眼觀察了達西的為人處世和一係列所作所為，特別是看到他改變了過去那種驕傲自負的神態，消除了對他的誤會和偏見，從而與他締結了美滿姻緣。伊麗莎白對達西先後幾次求婚的不同態度，實際上反映了女性對人格獨立和平等權利的追求。這是伊麗莎白這一人物形象的進步意義。在《傲慢與偏見》中，奧斯丁還寫了伊麗莎白的幾個姐妹和女友的婚事，這些都是陪襯，用來與女主人公理想的婚姻相對照。如夏洛特和柯林斯儘管婚後過着舒適的物質生活，但他們之間沒有愛情，這種婚姻實際上是掩蓋在華麗外衣下的社會悲劇。還有她的姐姐也是完美結局的。不過他們所經歷的遠遠沒有伊麗莎白和達西這樣從討厭誤會到相愛的，一開始就相愛，有點像一見鐘情的味道。從而看出，經歷波折的愛情纔是完美深刻的。
奧斯丁的小說儘管題材比較狹窄，故事相當平淡，但是她善於在日常平凡事物中塑造鮮明的人物形象，不論是伊麗莎白、達西那種作者認為值得肯定的人物，還是威肯、柯林斯這類遭到諷刺挖苦的對象，都寫得真實動人。同時，奧斯丁的語言是經過錘煉的，她在對話藝術上講究幽默、諷刺，常以風趣詼諧的語言來烘托人物的性格特徵。這種藝術創新使她的作品具有自己的特色。
2、愛情是小說永恆的主題，《傲慢與偏見》以愛情和婚姻為主要內容，自然是吸引讀者的。但描寫愛情的小說不計其數（言情小說似乎就很多産），要像《傲慢與偏見》這樣在世界文學中占有一席之地，也並不是一件容易的事。《傲慢與偏見》之所以稱得上世界文學名著而不流俗於一般愛情小說，自有它的魅力所在。那麽到底是什麽使它脫穎而出呢？一部好的小說，內容、情節是非常重要的。《傲慢與偏見》的內容並不復雜，情節卻引人入勝。讀過本書的讀者應該對小說開篇的一句話記憶猶新：“凡是有財産的單身漢，必定需要娶位太太，這已經成了一條舉世公認的真理。(It is a true universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.) ” 在英文中in want of 是指客觀需要，而不是主觀想要；這簡簡單單的一句話卻深深反映出資産階級婚姻的實質無非是金錢交易與利益的結合，可見作者的目光之透徹犀利，也正應證了前面所說的細微之處卻能反映大問題。小說開篇就這樣牢牢抓住了讀者，接着通過班納特夫婦風趣的對話，把讀者帶進一個女兒多得發愁的中産階級家庭中。這個家庭傢道已經中落，卻還有5個待嫁的女兒，而且不幸班納特先生又沒有兒子，其財産將由表親柯林斯繼承。在資産階級社會，如果女孩沒有豐厚的嫁妝，就是再有才貌，也難找到體面的丈夫，就像書中達西所說：“她們倘使想嫁給有地位的男人，機會可就大大減少了。”所以處在婚姻要權衡雙方階級地位和金錢利害的情況下，這五位姑娘的出嫁前景確實不太美妙。小說采用古典的現實主義筆法，描寫了四對青年男女的結合，通過班納特五個女兒對待終身大事的不同處理，表現出鄉鎮中産階級家庭出身的少女對婚姻愛情問題的不同態度，也藉此表達了作者本人的婚姻觀，即為財産打算的婚姻是沒有幸福的，結婚不考慮財産是愚蠢的，講究門第的包辦婚姻不堪忍受，把婚姻當兒戲毫不足取，理想的婚姻要以感情為基礎。書中的女主人公伊麗莎白與達西不顧門第和財富的差距，真心相愛，美滿結合，是作者所頌揚的幸福婚姻。從伊麗莎白的身上，我們可以看到女性對人格獨立和平等權利的追求；作者雖然沒有反映出她那個時代的階級矛盾和階級鬥爭，然而她的強烈的階級意識卻表現了出來，對經濟、財産决定婚姻關係乃至生活命運的揭露也可謂入木三分。西方有位馬剋思主義批評傢大衛•戴剋斯曾半開玩笑的說，在“揭露人類行為的經濟原因”方面，奧斯汀“從某種意義上可以說在馬剋思以前就是馬剋思主義者了。”
The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, moral rightness, education and marriage in her aristocratic society of early 19th century England. Elizabeth is the second eldest of five daughters of a country gentleman landed in the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, not far from London.
Though the story's setting is uniquely turn of the 19th century, it retains a fascination for modern readers, continuing near the top of lists of 'most loved books' such as the Big Read. It still receives considerable attention from literary critics. This modern interest has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels and stories imitating Austen's memorable characters or themes.
To date, the book has sold some 20 million copies worldwide.
Plot summary
The novel revolves around the Bennet family. The five marriageable daughters and mother will be without a home and income once Mr. Bennet dies: The terms on which Mr. Bennet inherited Longbourn ("fee tail male," now abolished by statute in England) prohibit women from inheriting it, with the effect that instead one of Mr. Bennet's collateral relatives will inherit the estate. The mother worries about this predicament, and wishes to find husbands for them quickly. The father doesn't seem to be worried at all, and Elizabeth, the heroine, has decided to only marry for love, even though she has no real ideas about how she will survive financially. She is of the opinion that her sister Jane, being kind and beautiful, will find a wealthy husband, and that she can then live with her. As the novel opens, Mr Bingley, a wealthy young gentleman, rents a country estate near the Bennets called Netherfield. He arrives in town accompanied by his fashionable sisters and his good friend, Mr Darcy. While Bingley is well-received in the community, Darcy begins his acquaintance with smug condescension and proud distaste for all the 'country' people. Bingley and Elizabeth Bennet's older sister Jane begin to grow close. Elizabeth's best friend Charlotte advises that Jane should be more affectionate to Bingley, as they are both shy, and he may not know that she is indeed interested in him. Elizabeth disregards her friend's opinion, saying that Jane is shy and modest, and that if Bingley can't see how she feels, he is a fool. With that, she never even tells Jane what Charlotte advised. Elizabeth is stung by Darcy's haughty rejection of her at a local dance and decides to match his coldness with her own wit.
At the same time Elizabeth begins a friendship with Mr Wickham, a militia officer who relates a prior acquaintance with Darcy. Wickham tells her that he has been seriously mistreated by Darcy. Elizabeth immediately seizes upon this information as another reason to hate Darcy. Ironically, but unbeknownst to her, Darcy finds himself gradually drawn to Elizabeth.
Just as Bingley appears to be on the point of proposing marriage to Jane Bennet, he quits Netherfield, leaving Jane confused and upset. Elizabeth is convinced that Bingley's sister has conspired with Darcy to separate Jane and Bingley.
Before Bingley leaves, Mr Collins, the male relative who is to inherit Longbourn, makes a sudden appearance and stays with the Bennets. He is a recently ordained clergyman employed by the wealthy and patronizing Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though he was partially entreated to visit by his patroness, Collins has another reason for visiting: he wishes to find a wife from among the Bennet sisters. Mr Bennet and Elizabeth are amused by his self-important and pedantic behaviour. He immediately enters pursuit of Jane; however, when Mrs Bennet mentions her preoccupation with Mr Bingley, he turns to Elizabeth. He soon proposes marriage to Elizabeth, who refuses him, much to her mother's distress. Collins quickly recovers and proposes to Elizabeth's close friend, Charlotte Lucas, who immediately accepts him. Once the marriage is arranged, Charlotte asks Elizabeth to come for an extended visit.
In the spring, Elizabeth joins Charlotte and her cousin at his parish in Kent. The parish is adjacent to Rosings Park, the grand manor of Mr Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, where Elizabeth is frequently invited. While calling on Lady Catherine, Mr Darcy encounters Elizabeth. She discovers from a cousin of Darcy that it was he who separated Bingley and Jane. Soon after, Darcy admits his love of Elizabeth and proposes to her. Insulted by his high-handed and insulting manner of proposing, Elizabeth refuses him. When he asks why she should refuse him, she confronts him with his sabotage of Bingley's relationship with Jane and Wickham's account of their dealings.
Deeply shaken by Elizabeth's vehemence and accusations, Darcy writes her a letter justifying his actions. The letter reveals that Wickham soon dissipated his legacy-settlement (from Darcy's father's estate), then came back to Darcy requesting permanent patronage; and that he became angry when rejected, accusing Darcy of cheating him. To exact revenge and to make off with part of the Darcy family fortune, he attempted to seduce Darcy's young sister Georgiana—to gain her hand and fortune, almost persuading her to elope with him—before he was found out and stopped. Towards Bingley and Jane, Darcy justifies his actions from having observed that Jane did not show any reciprocal interest in his friend; thus his aim in separating them was mainly to protect Bingley from heartache.
Darcy admits he was concerned about the disadvantageous connection with Elizabeth's family, especially her embarrassing mother and wild younger sisters. After reading the letter, Elizabeth begins to question both her family's behaviour and Wickham's credibility. She concludes that Wickham is not as trustworthy as his easy manners would indicate, that he had lied to her previously, and that her early impressions of Darcy might have been inaccurate. Soon after receiving the letter, Elizabeth returns home.
Elizabeth tells her father that Darcy was responsible for uniting Lydia and Wickham. This is one of the two earliest illustrations of Pride and Prejudice. The clothing styles reflect the time the illustration was engraved (the 1830s), not the time the novel was written or set.
Some months later, during a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth visits Pemberley, Darcy's estate. Darcy's housekeeper, an older woman who has known Darcy since childhood, presents Elizabeth and her relatives with a flattering and benevolent impression of his character. Unexpectedly, Darcy arrives at Pemberley as they tour its grounds. He makes an effort to be gracious and welcoming to them, thus strengthening Elizabeth's newly favourable impression of him. Darcy then introduces Elizabeth to his sister Georgiana. He treats her uncle and aunt very well, and finds them of a more sound character than her other relatives, whom he previously dismissed as socially inferior.
Elizabeth and Darcy's renewed acquaintance is cut short when news arrives that Elizabeth's younger sister Lydia has run away with Wickham. Initially, the Bennets believe that Wickham and Lydia have eloped, but soon it is surmised that Wickham has no plans to marry Lydia. Lydia's antics threaten the family's reputation and the Bennet sisters with social ruin. Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle hurriedly leave Derbyshire, and Elizabeth is convinced that Darcy will avoid her from now on.
Soon, thanks to the intervention of Elizabeth's uncle, Lydia and Wickham are found and married. After the marriage, Wickham and Lydia make a visit to Longbourn. While bragging to Elizabeth, Lydia comments that Darcy was present at the wedding. Surprised, Elizabeth sends an inquiry to her aunt, from whom she discovers that Darcy was responsible for both finding the couple and arranging their marriage at great expense to himself.
Soon after, Bingley and Darcy return to the area. Bingley proposes marriage to Jane, and this news starts rumors that Darcy will propose to Elizabeth. Lady Catherine travels to Longbourn with the sole aim of confronting Elizabeth and demanding that she never accept such a proposal. Elizabeth refuses to bow to Lady Catherine's demands. When news of this obstinance reaches Darcy, it convinces him that her opinion of him has changed. When he visits, he once again proposes marriage. Elizabeth accepts, and the two become engaged.
The final chapters of the book establish the future of the characters. Elizabeth and Darcy settle at Pemberley where Mr Bennet visits often. Mrs Bennet remains frivolous and silly; she often visits the new Mrs Bingley and talks of the new Mrs Darcy. Later, Jane and Bingley move from Netherfield to avoid Jane's mother and Meryton relations and to locate near the Darcys in Derbyshire. Elizabeth and Jane manage to teach Kitty greater social grace, and Mary learns to accept the difference between herself and her sisters' beauty and mixes more with the outside world. Lydia and Wickham continue to move often, leaving their debts for Jane and Elizabeth to pay off. At Pemberley, Elizabeth and Georgiana grow close, though Georgiana is surprised by Elizabeth's playful treatment of Darcy. Lady Catherine stays very angry with her nephew's marriage but over time the relationship between the two is repaired and she eventually decides to visit them. Elizabeth and Darcy also remain close with her uncle and aunt.
Main characters
[show]Character genealogy
Mr Hurst
Mrs Hurst
Mr Philips
Caroline Bingley
Mrs Philips
Mr Charles Bingley
Mrs Gardiner
Jane Bennet
Mr Gardiner
Elizabeth Bennet
Mrs Bennet
Mary Bennet
Mr Bennet
Catherine "Kitty" Bennet
Mr William Collins
Lydia Bennet
Charlotte Lucas
Mr George Wickham
(Old) Mr Darcy
Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy
Lady Anne Darcy
Georgiana Darcy
Lady Catherine De Bourgh
Anne De Bourgh
Lord ——
Colonel Fitzwilliam
* Elizabeth Bennet is the main character and protagonist. The reader sees the unfolding plot and the other characters mostly from her viewpoint. The second of the Bennet daughters at twenty years old, she is intelligent, lively, attractive, and witty, but with a tendency to judge on first impressions and perhaps to be a little selective of the evidence upon which she bases her judgments. As the plot begins, her closest relationships are with her father, her sister Jane, her aunt Mrs Gardiner, and her best friend Charlotte Lucas.
* Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is the main male character. Twenty-eight years old and unmarried, Darcy is the wealthy owner of the famous family estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire. Handsome, tall, and intelligent, but not convivial, his aloof decorum and moral rectitude are seen by many as an excessive pride and concern for social status. He makes a poor impression on strangers, such as the gentry of Meryton, but is valued by those who know him well.
* Mr Bennet has a wife and five daughters, and seems to have inurred himself to his fate. A bookish and intelligent gentleman somewhat withdrawn from society, he dislikes the indecorous behaviours of his wife and three younger daughters; but he offers little beyond mockery by way of correcting them. Rather than guiding these daughters to more sensible understanding, he is instead content to laugh at them. He relates very well with his two elder daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, showing them much more love and respect than his wife and younger daughters.
* Mrs Bennet is the wife of her social superior Mr Bennet, and mother of Elizabeth and her sisters. She is frivolous, excitable, and narrow-minded. She is susceptible to attacks of tremors and palpitations; her public manners and social climbing are embarrassing to Jane and Elizabeth. Her favourite daughter is the youngest, Lydia.
Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth about Darcy, on the title page of the first illustrated edition. This is the other of the first two illustrations of the novel.
* Jane Bennet is the eldest Bennet sister. Twenty-two years old when the novel begins, she is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighbourhood. Her character is contrasted with Elizabeth's as sweeter, shyer, and equally sensible, but not as clever; her most notable trait is a desire to see only the good in others. Jane is closest to Elizabeth, and her character is often contrasted with that of Elizabeth.
* Mary Bennet is the only plain Bennet sister, and rather than join in some of the family activities, she reads, although is often impatient for display. She works hard for knowledge and accomplishment, but has neither genius nor taste. At the ball at Netherfield, she embarrasses her family by singing badly.
* Catherine "Kitty" Bennet is the fourth Bennet sister, aged seventeen. She is portrayed as a less headstrong but equally silly shadow of Lydia.
* Lydia Bennet is the youngest Bennet sister, aged fifteen. She is repeatedly described as frivolous and headstrong. Her main activity in life is socialising, especially flirting with the military officers stationed in the nearby town of Meryton. She dominates her older sister Kitty and is supported in the family by her mother. After she elopes with Wickham and he is paid to marry her, she shows no remorse for the embarrassment that her actions caused for her family, but acts as if she has made a wonderful match of which her sisters should be jealous.
* Charles Bingley is a young gentleman without an estate. His wealth was recent, and he is seeking a permanent home. He rents the Netherfield estate near Longbourn when the novel opens. Twenty-two years old at the start of the novel, handsome, good-natured, and wealthy, he is contrasted with his friend Darcy as being less intelligent but kinder and more charming, and hence more popular in Meryton. He lacks resolve and is easily influenced by others.
* Caroline Bingley is the snobbish sister of Charles Bingley. Clearly harbouring romantic intentions on Darcy herself, she views his growing attachment to Elizabeth Bennet with some jealousy, resulting in disdain and frequent verbal attempts to undermine Elizabeth and her society.
* George Wickham is an old acquaintance of Darcy from childhood, and an officer in the militia unit stationed near Meryton. Superficially charming, he rapidly forms a friendship with Elizabeth Bennet, prompting remarks upon his suitability as a potential husband. He spreads numerous tales about the wrongs Darcy has done to him, colouring the popular perception of the other man in local society. It is eventually revealed that these tales are distortions, and that Darcy was the wronged man in their acquaintance.
* William Collins, aged twenty-five, is Mr Bennet's clergyman cousin and, as Mr Bennet has no son, heir to his estate. Austen described him as "not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society." Collins boasts of his acquaintance with — and advantageous patronage from — Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Mr Bennet, Jane, and Elizabeth consider him pompous and lacking in common sense. Elizabeth's rejection of Collins' marriage proposal is welcomed by her father, regardless of the financial benefit to the family of such a match. Elizabeth is later somewhat distressed — although understanding — when her closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, consents to marry Collins out of her need for a settled position and to avoid the low status and lack of autonomy of an old maid.
* Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has wealth and social standing, is haughty, domineering and condescending. Mr Collins, among others, enables these characteristics by deferring to her opinions and desires. Elizabeth, however, is duly respectful but not intimidated. Darcy, whilst respectful of their shared family connection, is offended by her lack of manners, especially towards Elizabeth, and later — when pressed by her demand that he not marry Elizabeth — is quick to assert his intentions to marry whom he wishes.
* Mr Gardiner is Mrs Bennet's brother, and a businessman. He is quite sensible and gentleman-like. He tries to help Lydia when she elopes with Wickham. His wife has close relationships with Elizabeth and Jane. Jane stays with the Gardiners in London for a while, and Elizabeth travels with them to Derbyshire, where she again meets Darcy.
* Georgiana Darcy is Mr Darcy's quiet and amiable younger sister, aged sixteen when the story begins. In a letter from Mr Darcy to Elizabeth, he describes that Wickham tried to persuade her to elope with him and inherit her 30,000 pounds. Later on, Elizabeth meets her at their home at Pemberly, where she is amiable and sweet. She is very happy with her brother's choosing of Elizabeth and maintains an extremely close relationship to both of them.
Interrelationships
A comprehensive web showing the relationships between the main characters in Pride and Prejudice
Major themes
Many critics take the novel's title as a starting point when analysing the major themes of Pride and Prejudice; however, Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title since commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title. It should be pointed out that the qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice."
A major theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing on the development of young people's character and morality. Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her world, and a further theme common to Jane Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr and Mrs Bennet (particularly the latter) as parents is blamed for Lydia's lack of moral judgment; Darcy, on the other hand, has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable, but is also proud and overbearing. Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.
Style
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke". By using narrative which adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, that of Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."
Publication history
Modern paperback editions of Pride and Prejudice
The novel was originally titled First Impressions by Jane Austen, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. On 1 November 1797 Austen's father gave the draft to London bookseller Thomas Cadell in hopes of it being published, but it was rejected. The unpublished manuscript was returned to Austen and it stayed with her.
Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice. In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarized in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.
Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton of Whitehall in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150). This proved a costly decision. Austen had published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140, she passed the copyright to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two editions of the book.
Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes in January 1813, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in November that year. A third edition was published in 1817.
Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were published in German, Danish and Swedish. Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or, Pride and Prejudice. The novel was also included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition from which many modern publications of the novel are based.
Reception
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication. Jan Fergus calls it "her most popular novel, both with the public and with her family and friends", and quotes David Gilson's A Bibliography of Jane Austen (Clarendon, 1982), where it is stated that Pride and Prejudice was referred to as "the fashionable novel" by Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron. However, others did not agree. Charlotte Brontë wrote to noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes after reading a review of his published in Fraser's Magazine in 1847. He had praised Jane Austen's work and declared that he, "... would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels". Miss Brontë, though, found Pride and Prejudice a disappointment, "... a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck."
Modern popularity
* In 2003 the BBC conducted the largest ever poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.
* In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first in a list of the 101 best books ever written.
Adaptations
Film, television, and theatre
Pride and Prejudice has engendered numerous adaptations. Some of the notable film versions include that of 1940 starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, that of 2003 starring Kam Heskin and Orlando Seale (which placed the characters of Pride and Prejudice in a Mormon university, and was directed by Andrew Black and that of 2005 starring Keira Knightley (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Matthew Macfadyen. Notable television versions include two by the BBC: the 1995 version starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and a 1980 version starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul. A 1936 stage version was created by Helen Jerome played at the St. James's Theatre in London, starring Celia Johnson and Hugh Williams. First Impressions was a 1959 Broadway musical version starring Polly Bergen, Farley Granger, and Hermione Gingold. In 1995, a musical concept album was written by Bernard J. Taylor, with Peter Karrie in the role of Mr Darcy and Claire Moore in the role of Elizabeth Bennet. A new stage production, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, The New Musical, was presented in concert on 21 October 2008 in Rochester, New York with Colin Donnell as Darcy. The popular film Bridget Jones's Diary is a contemporary retelling, starring Renee Zellweger as a modern day Elizabeth, and Colin Firth, once again, as Mr Darcy.
Bride and Prejudice, starring Aishwarya Rai, is a Bollywood adaptation of the novel, while Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003) places the novel in contemporary times. The off-Broadway musical I Love You Because reverses the gender of the main roles, set in modern day New York City. The Japanese comic Hana Yori Dango by Yoko Kamio, in which the wealthy, arrogant and proud protagonist, Doumyouji Tsukasa, falls in love with a poor, lower-class girl named Makino Tsukushi, is loosely based on Pride and Prejudice. A 2008 Israeli television six-part miniseries set the story in the Galilee with Mr Darcy a well-paid worker in the high-tech industry.
Pride and Prejudice has also crossed into the science fiction and horror genres. In the 1997 episode of science fiction comedy Red Dwarf entitled "Beyond a Joke", the crew of the space ship relax in a virtual reality rendition of "Pride and Prejudice Land" in "Jane Austen World". The central premise of the television miniseries Lost in Austen is a modern woman suddenly swapping lives with that of Elizabeth Bennet. In February 2009, it was announced that Elton John's Rocket Pictures production company was making a film, Pride and Predator, based on the story, but with the added twist of an alien landing in Longbourne.
Literature
The novel has inspired a number of other works that are not direct adaptations. Books inspired by Pride and Prejudice include: Mr. Darcy's Daughters and The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by Elizabeth Aston; Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued and An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later by Emma Tennant; The Book of Ruth (ASIN B00262ZRBM) by Helen Baker; Jane Austen Ruined My Life and Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo; Precipitation - A Continuation of Miss Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Helen Baker; Searching for Pemberley by Mary Simonsen and Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and its sequel Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberly by Linda Berdoll. In Gwyn Cready's comedic romance novel, Seducing Mr. Darcy, the heroine lands in Pride and Prejudice by way of magic massage, has a fling with Darcy and unknowingly changes the rest of the story. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, which started as a newspaper column before becoming a novel and a film, was inspired by the then-current BBC adaptation; both works share a Mr. Darcy of serious disposition (both played by Colin Firth), a foolish match-making mother, and a detached affectionate father, as well as the protagonist overhearing Mr. Darcy speaking about her disparagingly, followed by the caddish character gaining the protagonist's affections by telling lies about Mr. Darcy. The self-referential in-jokes continue with the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.
In March 2009, Quirk Books released Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which takes Austen's actual, original work, and laces it with zombie hordes, cannibalism, ninjas, and ultra-violent mayhem. Scheduled for publication in March 2010, Quirk Books has announced that it will produce a prequel which deals with Elizabeth Bennett's early days as a zombie hunter, entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.
Yet another angle was introduced by Monica Fairview, who wrote about Miss Caroline Bingley in The Other Mr Darcy, published in October 2009. Pride and Prejudice has also inspired many scholarly articles and books including: So Odd a Mixture: Along the Autism Spectrum in 'Pride and Prejudice' by Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer, Forewords by Eileen Sutherland and Tony Attwood.
Marvel has also published their take on this classic, releasing a short comic series of five issues that stays true to the original storyline. The first issue was published on 1 April 2009 and was written by Nancy Hajeski.
Author Amanda Grange wrote Mr. Darcy's Diary in 2007 that tells the original story of Pride and Prejudice from the view of Mr Darcy. In 2009, she wrote Mr. Darcy, Vampyre which reimagines Darcy as a vampire after he has married Elizabeth. Following the same premise is Regina Jeffers' "Vampire Darcy's Desire", which retells Pride and Prejudice on the basis that Darcy is a dhampir (part-human, part-vampire) joined by his lover Elizabeth to fight the evil vampire George Wickham.
傲慢與偏見[小說]-作者簡介
簡·奧斯汀簡· 奧斯汀
簡· 奧斯汀出生於1775年12月16日，是喬治·奧斯汀傢的第七個孩子。簡·奧斯汀一直過着安靜平和的隱居生活，她一生未婚。英國文學史上出現過幾次趣味革命，文學口味的翻新幾乎影響了所有作傢的聲譽，唯獨莎士比亞和奧斯汀經久不衰。而這位偉大的女性一生衹走過了42個春夏秋鼕。1817年7月8日，她死於溫徹斯特，葬於當地大教堂。
她的父親是斯蒂文頓的教區長，也是一位藏書頗豐的博學之土。她的母親名叫卡桑德拉·李·奧斯汀，出身於貴族家庭。簡衹有一個姐姐，叫卡桑德拉，並一生都與她保持着密切的聯繫。簡的同胞兄弟從事着不同的職業：有幾個擔任聖職，一個是銀行傢，其他的則在軍隊服役。儘管她的家庭不是名門望族，也沒有富甲一方，但喬治·奧斯汀很重視教育，甚至對女兒也不例外。簡和卡桑德拉上了幾年學，之後就在傢裏學習，主要是廣泛閱讀各種書籍和資料，並從父兄們與輔導的學生之間有趣的討論中獲益。通過自己的努力，簡熟知18世紀的英國文學。
簡· 奧斯汀生前匿名出版了四部小說：《理智與情感》(1811)、《傲慢與偏見}》(1813)、《曼斯菲爾德莊園》(1814) 和《艾瑪》(1815)。另外兩部，《諾桑格修道院》和《勸導》是她去世後於 1817年出版的。她的這些小說以其對英國社會和風俗的諷刺性描述而聞名於世。
奧斯汀所處的英國社會是一個階級等級分明的社會。而階級的區分主要源於傢族與財富。奧斯汀在她的作品中經常批評英國上層階級的自負和偏見。簡註意區分人的內在價值 (個人品德)和外在價值(地位和財産)。簡雖然經常諷刺勢利小人，但也嘲笑出身低微的人缺乏教養和舉止不當。總的來說，奧斯汀是一個現實主義作傢，她所描繪的英國是一個缺少變化但階級意識強烈的社會。
從18世紀末到19世紀初，“感傷小說”和“哥特小說”充斥英國文壇，而奧斯汀的小說破舊立新，一反常規地展現了當時尚未受到資本主義工業革命衝擊的英國鄉村中産階級的日常生活和田園風光。她的作品往往通過喜劇性的場面嘲諷人們的愚蠢、自私、勢利和盲目自信等可鄙可笑的弱點。奧斯丁的小說出現在19世紀初葉，一掃風行一時的假浪漫主義潮流，繼承和發展了英國18世紀優秀的現實主義傳統，為19世紀現實主義小說的高潮做了準備。雖然其作品反映的廣度和深度有限，但她的作品如“兩寸牙雕”，從一個小窗口中窺視到整個社會形態和人情世故，對改變當時小說創作中的風氣起了好的作用，在英國小說的發展史上有承上啓下的意義，被譽為地位“可與莎士比亞平起平坐”的作傢。 她最喜愛的作傢是18世紀古典主義和理智的典範塞繆爾·約翰遜。奧斯汀的小說表現出一種情感上的模棱兩可，以及對聰明才智與自然美的贊賞，這些特點使其作品和浪漫主義走到一起。遺憾的是，簡·奧斯汀的小說在她生前並未受到好評。但是後來，尤其是在20世紀，她的小說越來越受歡迎。如今，簡·奧斯汀已經躋身於英國真正偉大的作傢之列。簡·奧斯汀是世界上為數極少的著名女性作傢之一，介於新古典主義和浪漫運動的抒情主義之間的“小幅畫傢”和“家庭小說”傢，文學評論傢眼裏堪與莎士比亞在不朽性方面相提並論的英國作傢。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-創作背景
《傲慢與偏見》是簡·奧斯汀最早完成的作品，她在1796年開始動筆，取名為《最初的印象》，1797年8月完成。她父親看後很感動，特意拿給湯瑪·卡士德爾，請他出版，但對方一口回絶，使得他們十分失望。後來，她重寫了《最初的印象》，並改名為“傲慢與偏見”於1813年1月出版。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-內容簡介
女主角：：伊麗莎白
男主角：達西
重要配角：簡（伊麗莎白的姐姐）、賓利（達西的好朋友）
內容提要
《傲慢與偏見》是描寫伊麗莎白•貝內特和威廉•達西這對青年男女之間的愛情故事，起初他們倆人總是話不投機。故事發生在18世紀後期，距離英國倫敦，效外約50英裏的赫特福德郡（位於英國英格蘭東南部），書中生動地描繪了當時婦女生活的艱難，她們幾乎都不能把握自己的命運。由於18世紀的英國社會十分看重社會地位和個人舉止風度與纔藝，女人們都竭盡所能去尋覓富有的丈夫。
詳細內容
小鄉紳班納特有五個待字閨中的千金，班納特太太整天操心着為女兒物色稱心如意的丈夫。 新來的鄰居彬格萊(Charles)是個有錢的單身漢，他立即成了班納特太太追獵的目標。在一次舞會上，彬格萊對班納特傢的大女兒簡(Jane)一見鐘情，班納特太太為此欣喜若狂。參加舞會的還有彬格萊的好友達西(Darcy)。他儀表堂堂，非常富有，許多姑娘紛紛嚮他投去羨慕的目光；但他非常驕傲，認為她們都不配做他的舞伴，其中包括簡的妹妹伊麗莎白(Elizabeth)。伊麗莎白自尊心很強，决定不去理睬這個傲慢的傢夥。可是不久，達西對她活潑可愛的舉止産生了好感，在另一次舞會上主動請她同舞，卻遭到伊麗莎白的拒絶，達西狼狽不堪。
彬格萊的妹妹卡羅琳(Caroline)一心追求達西，她發現達西有意於伊麗莎白，妒火中燒，决意從中阻撓。而遭到伊麗莎白冷遇的達西也鄙視班納特太太及其小女兒麗迪亞(Lydia)的粗俗。在妹妹和好友達西的勸說下，彬格萊不辭而別，去了倫敦，但簡對他還是一片深情。
班納特沒有兒子，他的傢産將由遠親柯林斯(Collins)繼承。柯林斯粗鄙無知，卻善於趨炎附勢，居然當上牧師。他嚮伊麗莎白求婚，遭拒絶後，馬上與她的女友夏洛特(Charlotte)結婚。
附近小鎮的民團聯隊裏有個英俊瀟灑的青年軍官威肯(Wickham)，人人都誇他，伊麗莎白也對他産生了好感。一天，他對伊麗莎白說，他父親是達西傢的總管，達西的父親曾給他一大筆遺贈，卻被達西吞沒了。伊麗莎白聽後，對達西更加反感。
柯林斯夫婦請伊麗莎白去他們傢作客，伊麗莎白在那裏遇到達西的姨媽凱瑟琳(Catherine)，不久，又見到了達西。同時也認識了威廉少校，從他口中得知達西藏起她姐姐的信，使伊麗莎白對達西的討厭達到頂峰。所以在達西無法抑製自己對伊麗莎白的愛慕之情，嚮她求婚的時候，但態度還是那麽傲慢。伊麗莎白堅决地謝絶了。這一打擊使達西第一次認識到驕傲自負所帶來的惡果，他痛苦地離開了她，臨走前留下一封長信作了幾點解釋：他承認彬格萊不辭而別是他促使的，原因是他不滿班納特太太的輕浮和鄙俗，並且認為簡並沒有鐘情於彬格萊；威肯說的卻全是謊言，事實是威肯自己把那筆遺産揮霍殆盡，還企圖勾引達西的妹妹私奔。伊麗莎白讀信後十分後悔，既對錯怪達西感到內疚，又為母親的行為羞愧，還對自己的偏見深深懊悔。她逐漸改變了對達西的看法。
第二年夏天，伊麗莎白隨舅父母來到達西的莊園，與他再次相遇。她發現達西變了，不僅對人彬彬有禮，在當地很受人們尊敬，而且對他妹妹非常愛護。她對他的偏見消除了。正當其時，伊麗莎白接到傢信，說小妹麗迪亞隨身負纍纍賭債的威肯私奔了。這種傢醜使伊麗莎白非常難堪，以為達西會更瞧不起自己。但事實出乎她的意料，達西得知上述消息以後，在舅父母的幫主下，不僅替威肯還清賭債，還給了他一筆巨款，讓他與麗迪亞完婚。自此以後，伊麗莎白往日對達西的種種偏見統統化為真誠之愛。
彬格萊和簡經過一番周折，言歸於好，一對情人沉浸在歡樂之中。而一心想讓自己的女兒安妮(Anne)嫁給達西的凱瑟琳夫人匆匆趕來，蠻橫地要伊麗莎白保證不與達西結婚。伊麗莎白對這一無理要求斷然拒絶。此事傳到達西耳中。他知道伊麗莎白已經改變了對自己的看法，誠懇地再次嚮她求婚。到此，一對曾因傲慢和偏見而延擱婚事的有情人終成眷屬。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-語言特色
《傲慢與偏見》是簡·奧斯丁(Jane Austen)的代表作品，寫於十八世紀九十年代，其影響經歷兩世紀而不衰，並對後代作傢産生影響，其重要的原因之一就是小說的語言魅力。在語言中對話是文學作品塑造人物形象最基本的手段之一，簡.奧斯丁筆下的人物對話鮮明生動，頗具個性，含義豐富，耐人尋味。本文用會話合作原則分析《傲慢與偏見》書中的人物對話風格，解開簡·奧斯丁作品中人物對話語言風格機智幽默妙趣橫生之謎。奧斯丁的語言是經過錘煉的，她在對話藝術上講究幽默、詼諧風趣、諷刺，這種藝術創新使她的作品具有自己的特色，而這種富有特色的語言在《傲慢與偏見》中發揮得尤為淋漓盡致。
比如在寫班納特太太時，作者就這樣寫到：“衹要碰到不稱心的事，她就自以為神經衰弱。”又在班納特太太與其丈夫的對話中寫到：“我的好老爺，你怎麽捨得這樣糟蹋自己的親生女兒？你是在故意叫我氣惱，好讓你自己得意吧。你半點也不體諒我的神經衰弱。”“你真錯怪了我，我的好太太。我非常尊重你的神經。它們是我的老朋友。至少在最近二十年以來，我一直聽到你鄭重其事地提到它們。”活靈活現的語言，絶妙的嘲諷與詼諧，立刻使兩個不同的人物形象在讀者腦海中變得立體而清晰。
再如另一個片段的描寫：咖苔琳夫人的馬車路過門口，柯林斯牧師全家手忙腳亂出去迎接，伊麗莎白卻說：“就是這麽回事嗎？我還以為是豬玀闖進了花園呢。”直率的挖苦，戳穿了咖苔琳夫人自己吹起來的唬人架勢，也使伊麗莎白這個蔑視權貴的形象在人們腦海中留下了更深的印象，越發覺得她的可愛。奧斯汀還善於通過最普通的語言讓人物自己暴露自己。例如小說開頭時，班納特太太曾說郎格太太“是個自私自利、假仁假義的女人，我瞧不起她。”而到故事的結尾，當其大女兒與彬格萊的婚事已成定局時，她又說“我覺得郎格太太這個人真是太好了。” 這兩段截然相反的話，讓讀者不禁啞然失笑的同時，又多麽生動地表現出班納特太太的反復無常、自我中心。這樣的例子在書中還有很多。一個曾充滿偏見的伊麗莎白、一個曾渾身傲慢的達西、一對有趣的班納特夫婦、一個可笑的柯林斯、衆多出場人物、再加上喜劇效果和特殊寫作技巧，這就是《傲慢與偏見》，卻不是它的全部。奧斯汀的幽默是需要反復咀嚼的。
傲慢與偏見[小說]-評價
1、奧斯丁在這部小說中通過班納特五個女兒對待終身大事的不同處理，表現出鄉鎮中産階級家庭出身的少女對婚姻愛情問題的不同態度，從而反映了作者本人的婚姻觀：為了財産、金錢和地位而結婚是錯誤的；而結婚不考慮上述因素也是愚蠢的。因此，她既反對為金錢而結婚，也反對把婚姻當兒戲。她強調理想婚姻的重要性，並把男女雙方感情作為締結理想婚姻的基石。書中的女主人公伊麗莎白出身於小地主家庭，為富豪子弟達西所熱愛。達西不顧門第和財富的差距，嚮她求婚，卻遭到拒絶。伊麗莎白對他的誤會和偏見是一個原因，但主要的是她討厭他的傲慢。因為達西的這種傲慢實際上是地位差異的反映，衹要存在這種傲慢，他與伊麗莎白之間就不可能有共同的思想感情，也不可能有理想的婚姻。以後伊麗莎白親眼觀察了達西的為人處世和一係列所作所為，特別是看到他改變了過去那種驕傲自負的神態，消除了對他的誤會和偏見，從而與他締結了美滿姻緣。伊麗莎白對達西先後幾次求婚的不同態度，實際上反映了女性對人格獨立和平等權利的追求。這是伊麗莎白這一人物形象的進步意義。在《傲慢與偏見》中，奧斯丁還寫了伊麗莎白的幾個姐妹和女友的婚事，這些都是陪襯，用來與女主人公理想的婚姻相對照。如夏洛特和柯林斯儘管婚後過着舒適的物質生活，但他們之間沒有愛情，這種婚姻實際上是掩蓋在華麗外衣下的社會悲劇。還有她的姐姐也是完美結局的。不過他們所經歷的遠遠沒有伊麗莎白和達西這樣從討厭誤會到相愛的，一開始就相愛，有點像一見鐘情的味道。從而看出，經歷波折的愛情纔是完美深刻的。
奧斯丁的小說儘管題材比較狹窄，故事相當平淡，但是她善於在日常平凡事物中塑造鮮明的人物形象，不論是伊麗莎白、達西那種作者認為值得肯定的人物，還是威肯、柯林斯這類遭到諷刺挖苦的對象，都寫得真實動人。同時，奧斯丁的語言是經過錘煉的，她在對話藝術上講究幽默、諷刺，常以風趣詼諧的語言來烘托人物的性格特徵。這種藝術創新使她的作品具有自己的特色。
2、愛情是小說永恆的主題，《傲慢與偏見》以愛情和婚姻為主要內容，自然是吸引讀者的。但描寫愛情的小說不計其數（言情小說似乎就很多産），要像《傲慢與偏見》這樣在世界文學中占有一席之地，也並不是一件容易的事。《傲慢與偏見》之所以稱得上世界文學名著而不流俗於一般愛情小說，自有它的魅力所在。那麽到底是什麽使它脫穎而出呢？一部好的小說，內容、情節是非常重要的。《傲慢與偏見》的內容並不復雜，情節卻引人入勝。讀過本書的讀者應該對小說開篇的一句話記憶猶新：“凡是有財産的單身漢，必定需要娶位太太，這已經成了一條舉世公認的真理。(It is a true universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.) ” 在英文中in want of 是指客觀需要，而不是主觀想要；這簡簡單單的一句話卻深深反映出資産階級婚姻的實質無非是金錢交易與利益的結合，可見作者的目光之透徹犀利，也正應證了前面所說的細微之處卻能反映大問題。小說開篇就這樣牢牢抓住了讀者，接着通過班納特夫婦風趣的對話，把讀者帶進一個女兒多得發愁的中産階級家庭中。這個家庭傢道已經中落，卻還有5個待嫁的女兒，而且不幸班納特先生又沒有兒子，其財産將由表親柯林斯繼承。在資産階級社會，如果女孩沒有豐厚的嫁妝，就是再有才貌，也難找到體面的丈夫，就像書中達西所說：“她們倘使想嫁給有地位的男人，機會可就大大減少了。”所以處在婚姻要權衡雙方階級地位和金錢利害的情況下，這五位姑娘的出嫁前景確實不太美妙。小說采用古典的現實主義筆法，描寫了四對青年男女的結合，通過班納特五個女兒對待終身大事的不同處理，表現出鄉鎮中産階級家庭出身的少女對婚姻愛情問題的不同態度，也藉此表達了作者本人的婚姻觀，即為財産打算的婚姻是沒有幸福的，結婚不考慮財産是愚蠢的，講究門第的包辦婚姻不堪忍受，把婚姻當兒戲毫不足取，理想的婚姻要以感情為基礎。書中的女主人公伊麗莎白與達西不顧門第和財富的差距，真心相愛，美滿結合，是作者所頌揚的幸福婚姻。從伊麗莎白的身上，我們可以看到女性對人格獨立和平等權利的追求；作者雖然沒有反映出她那個時代的階級矛盾和階級鬥爭，然而她的強烈的階級意識卻表現了出來，對經濟、財産决定婚姻關係乃至生活命運的揭露也可謂入木三分。西方有位馬剋思主義批評傢大衛•戴剋斯曾半開玩笑的說，在“揭露人類行為的經濟原因”方面，奧斯汀“從某種意義上可以說在馬剋思以前就是馬剋思主義者了。”
The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, moral rightness, education and marriage in her aristocratic society of early 19th century England. Elizabeth is the second eldest of five daughters of a country gentleman landed in the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, not far from London.
Though the story's setting is uniquely turn of the 19th century, it retains a fascination for modern readers, continuing near the top of lists of 'most loved books' such as the Big Read. It still receives considerable attention from literary critics. This modern interest has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels and stories imitating Austen's memorable characters or themes.
To date, the book has sold some 20 million copies worldwide.
Plot summary
The novel revolves around the Bennet family. The five marriageable daughters and mother will be without a home and income once Mr. Bennet dies: The terms on which Mr. Bennet inherited Longbourn ("fee tail male," now abolished by statute in England) prohibit women from inheriting it, with the effect that instead one of Mr. Bennet's collateral relatives will inherit the estate. The mother worries about this predicament, and wishes to find husbands for them quickly. The father doesn't seem to be worried at all, and Elizabeth, the heroine, has decided to only marry for love, even though she has no real ideas about how she will survive financially. She is of the opinion that her sister Jane, being kind and beautiful, will find a wealthy husband, and that she can then live with her. As the novel opens, Mr Bingley, a wealthy young gentleman, rents a country estate near the Bennets called Netherfield. He arrives in town accompanied by his fashionable sisters and his good friend, Mr Darcy. While Bingley is well-received in the community, Darcy begins his acquaintance with smug condescension and proud distaste for all the 'country' people. Bingley and Elizabeth Bennet's older sister Jane begin to grow close. Elizabeth's best friend Charlotte advises that Jane should be more affectionate to Bingley, as they are both shy, and he may not know that she is indeed interested in him. Elizabeth disregards her friend's opinion, saying that Jane is shy and modest, and that if Bingley can't see how she feels, he is a fool. With that, she never even tells Jane what Charlotte advised. Elizabeth is stung by Darcy's haughty rejection of her at a local dance and decides to match his coldness with her own wit.
At the same time Elizabeth begins a friendship with Mr Wickham, a militia officer who relates a prior acquaintance with Darcy. Wickham tells her that he has been seriously mistreated by Darcy. Elizabeth immediately seizes upon this information as another reason to hate Darcy. Ironically, but unbeknownst to her, Darcy finds himself gradually drawn to Elizabeth.
Just as Bingley appears to be on the point of proposing marriage to Jane Bennet, he quits Netherfield, leaving Jane confused and upset. Elizabeth is convinced that Bingley's sister has conspired with Darcy to separate Jane and Bingley.
Before Bingley leaves, Mr Collins, the male relative who is to inherit Longbourn, makes a sudden appearance and stays with the Bennets. He is a recently ordained clergyman employed by the wealthy and patronizing Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though he was partially entreated to visit by his patroness, Collins has another reason for visiting: he wishes to find a wife from among the Bennet sisters. Mr Bennet and Elizabeth are amused by his self-important and pedantic behaviour. He immediately enters pursuit of Jane; however, when Mrs Bennet mentions her preoccupation with Mr Bingley, he turns to Elizabeth. He soon proposes marriage to Elizabeth, who refuses him, much to her mother's distress. Collins quickly recovers and proposes to Elizabeth's close friend, Charlotte Lucas, who immediately accepts him. Once the marriage is arranged, Charlotte asks Elizabeth to come for an extended visit.
In the spring, Elizabeth joins Charlotte and her cousin at his parish in Kent. The parish is adjacent to Rosings Park, the grand manor of Mr Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, where Elizabeth is frequently invited. While calling on Lady Catherine, Mr Darcy encounters Elizabeth. She discovers from a cousin of Darcy that it was he who separated Bingley and Jane. Soon after, Darcy admits his love of Elizabeth and proposes to her. Insulted by his high-handed and insulting manner of proposing, Elizabeth refuses him. When he asks why she should refuse him, she confronts him with his sabotage of Bingley's relationship with Jane and Wickham's account of their dealings.
Deeply shaken by Elizabeth's vehemence and accusations, Darcy writes her a letter justifying his actions. The letter reveals that Wickham soon dissipated his legacy-settlement (from Darcy's father's estate), then came back to Darcy requesting permanent patronage; and that he became angry when rejected, accusing Darcy of cheating him. To exact revenge and to make off with part of the Darcy family fortune, he attempted to seduce Darcy's young sister Georgiana—to gain her hand and fortune, almost persuading her to elope with him—before he was found out and stopped. Towards Bingley and Jane, Darcy justifies his actions from having observed that Jane did not show any reciprocal interest in his friend; thus his aim in separating them was mainly to protect Bingley from heartache.
Darcy admits he was concerned about the disadvantageous connection with Elizabeth's family, especially her embarrassing mother and wild younger sisters. After reading the letter, Elizabeth begins to question both her family's behaviour and Wickham's credibility. She concludes that Wickham is not as trustworthy as his easy manners would indicate, that he had lied to her previously, and that her early impressions of Darcy might have been inaccurate. Soon after receiving the letter, Elizabeth returns home.
Elizabeth tells her father that Darcy was responsible for uniting Lydia and Wickham. This is one of the two earliest illustrations of Pride and Prejudice. The clothing styles reflect the time the illustration was engraved (the 1830s), not the time the novel was written or set.
Some months later, during a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth visits Pemberley, Darcy's estate. Darcy's housekeeper, an older woman who has known Darcy since childhood, presents Elizabeth and her relatives with a flattering and benevolent impression of his character. Unexpectedly, Darcy arrives at Pemberley as they tour its grounds. He makes an effort to be gracious and welcoming to them, thus strengthening Elizabeth's newly favourable impression of him. Darcy then introduces Elizabeth to his sister Georgiana. He treats her uncle and aunt very well, and finds them of a more sound character than her other relatives, whom he previously dismissed as socially inferior.
Elizabeth and Darcy's renewed acquaintance is cut short when news arrives that Elizabeth's younger sister Lydia has run away with Wickham. Initially, the Bennets believe that Wickham and Lydia have eloped, but soon it is surmised that Wickham has no plans to marry Lydia. Lydia's antics threaten the family's reputation and the Bennet sisters with social ruin. Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle hurriedly leave Derbyshire, and Elizabeth is convinced that Darcy will avoid her from now on.
Soon, thanks to the intervention of Elizabeth's uncle, Lydia and Wickham are found and married. After the marriage, Wickham and Lydia make a visit to Longbourn. While bragging to Elizabeth, Lydia comments that Darcy was present at the wedding. Surprised, Elizabeth sends an inquiry to her aunt, from whom she discovers that Darcy was responsible for both finding the couple and arranging their marriage at great expense to himself.
Soon after, Bingley and Darcy return to the area. Bingley proposes marriage to Jane, and this news starts rumors that Darcy will propose to Elizabeth. Lady Catherine travels to Longbourn with the sole aim of confronting Elizabeth and demanding that she never accept such a proposal. Elizabeth refuses to bow to Lady Catherine's demands. When news of this obstinance reaches Darcy, it convinces him that her opinion of him has changed. When he visits, he once again proposes marriage. Elizabeth accepts, and the two become engaged.
The final chapters of the book establish the future of the characters. Elizabeth and Darcy settle at Pemberley where Mr Bennet visits often. Mrs Bennet remains frivolous and silly; she often visits the new Mrs Bingley and talks of the new Mrs Darcy. Later, Jane and Bingley move from Netherfield to avoid Jane's mother and Meryton relations and to locate near the Darcys in Derbyshire. Elizabeth and Jane manage to teach Kitty greater social grace, and Mary learns to accept the difference between herself and her sisters' beauty and mixes more with the outside world. Lydia and Wickham continue to move often, leaving their debts for Jane and Elizabeth to pay off. At Pemberley, Elizabeth and Georgiana grow close, though Georgiana is surprised by Elizabeth's playful treatment of Darcy. Lady Catherine stays very angry with her nephew's marriage but over time the relationship between the two is repaired and she eventually decides to visit them. Elizabeth and Darcy also remain close with her uncle and aunt.
Main characters
[show]Character genealogy
Mr Hurst
Mrs Hurst
Mr Philips
Caroline Bingley
Mrs Philips
Mr Charles Bingley
Mrs Gardiner
Jane Bennet
Mr Gardiner
Elizabeth Bennet
Mrs Bennet
Mary Bennet
Mr Bennet
Catherine "Kitty" Bennet
Mr William Collins
Lydia Bennet
Charlotte Lucas
Mr George Wickham
(Old) Mr Darcy
Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy
Lady Anne Darcy
Georgiana Darcy
Lady Catherine De Bourgh
Anne De Bourgh
Lord ——
Colonel Fitzwilliam
* Elizabeth Bennet is the main character and protagonist. The reader sees the unfolding plot and the other characters mostly from her viewpoint. The second of the Bennet daughters at twenty years old, she is intelligent, lively, attractive, and witty, but with a tendency to judge on first impressions and perhaps to be a little selective of the evidence upon which she bases her judgments. As the plot begins, her closest relationships are with her father, her sister Jane, her aunt Mrs Gardiner, and her best friend Charlotte Lucas.
* Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is the main male character. Twenty-eight years old and unmarried, Darcy is the wealthy owner of the famous family estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire. Handsome, tall, and intelligent, but not convivial, his aloof decorum and moral rectitude are seen by many as an excessive pride and concern for social status. He makes a poor impression on strangers, such as the gentry of Meryton, but is valued by those who know him well.
* Mr Bennet has a wife and five daughters, and seems to have inurred himself to his fate. A bookish and intelligent gentleman somewhat withdrawn from society, he dislikes the indecorous behaviours of his wife and three younger daughters; but he offers little beyond mockery by way of correcting them. Rather than guiding these daughters to more sensible understanding, he is instead content to laugh at them. He relates very well with his two elder daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, showing them much more love and respect than his wife and younger daughters.
* Mrs Bennet is the wife of her social superior Mr Bennet, and mother of Elizabeth and her sisters. She is frivolous, excitable, and narrow-minded. She is susceptible to attacks of tremors and palpitations; her public manners and social climbing are embarrassing to Jane and Elizabeth. Her favourite daughter is the youngest, Lydia.
Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth about Darcy, on the title page of the first illustrated edition. This is the other of the first two illustrations of the novel.
* Jane Bennet is the eldest Bennet sister. Twenty-two years old when the novel begins, she is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighbourhood. Her character is contrasted with Elizabeth's as sweeter, shyer, and equally sensible, but not as clever; her most notable trait is a desire to see only the good in others. Jane is closest to Elizabeth, and her character is often contrasted with that of Elizabeth.
* Mary Bennet is the only plain Bennet sister, and rather than join in some of the family activities, she reads, although is often impatient for display. She works hard for knowledge and accomplishment, but has neither genius nor taste. At the ball at Netherfield, she embarrasses her family by singing badly.
* Catherine "Kitty" Bennet is the fourth Bennet sister, aged seventeen. She is portrayed as a less headstrong but equally silly shadow of Lydia.
* Lydia Bennet is the youngest Bennet sister, aged fifteen. She is repeatedly described as frivolous and headstrong. Her main activity in life is socialising, especially flirting with the military officers stationed in the nearby town of Meryton. She dominates her older sister Kitty and is supported in the family by her mother. After she elopes with Wickham and he is paid to marry her, she shows no remorse for the embarrassment that her actions caused for her family, but acts as if she has made a wonderful match of which her sisters should be jealous.
* Charles Bingley is a young gentleman without an estate. His wealth was recent, and he is seeking a permanent home. He rents the Netherfield estate near Longbourn when the novel opens. Twenty-two years old at the start of the novel, handsome, good-natured, and wealthy, he is contrasted with his friend Darcy as being less intelligent but kinder and more charming, and hence more popular in Meryton. He lacks resolve and is easily influenced by others.
* Caroline Bingley is the snobbish sister of Charles Bingley. Clearly harbouring romantic intentions on Darcy herself, she views his growing attachment to Elizabeth Bennet with some jealousy, resulting in disdain and frequent verbal attempts to undermine Elizabeth and her society.
* George Wickham is an old acquaintance of Darcy from childhood, and an officer in the militia unit stationed near Meryton. Superficially charming, he rapidly forms a friendship with Elizabeth Bennet, prompting remarks upon his suitability as a potential husband. He spreads numerous tales about the wrongs Darcy has done to him, colouring the popular perception of the other man in local society. It is eventually revealed that these tales are distortions, and that Darcy was the wronged man in their acquaintance.
* William Collins, aged twenty-five, is Mr Bennet's clergyman cousin and, as Mr Bennet has no son, heir to his estate. Austen described him as "not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society." Collins boasts of his acquaintance with — and advantageous patronage from — Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Mr Bennet, Jane, and Elizabeth consider him pompous and lacking in common sense. Elizabeth's rejection of Collins' marriage proposal is welcomed by her father, regardless of the financial benefit to the family of such a match. Elizabeth is later somewhat distressed — although understanding — when her closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, consents to marry Collins out of her need for a settled position and to avoid the low status and lack of autonomy of an old maid.
* Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has wealth and social standing, is haughty, domineering and condescending. Mr Collins, among others, enables these characteristics by deferring to her opinions and desires. Elizabeth, however, is duly respectful but not intimidated. Darcy, whilst respectful of their shared family connection, is offended by her lack of manners, especially towards Elizabeth, and later — when pressed by her demand that he not marry Elizabeth — is quick to assert his intentions to marry whom he wishes.
* Mr Gardiner is Mrs Bennet's brother, and a businessman. He is quite sensible and gentleman-like. He tries to help Lydia when she elopes with Wickham. His wife has close relationships with Elizabeth and Jane. Jane stays with the Gardiners in London for a while, and Elizabeth travels with them to Derbyshire, where she again meets Darcy.
* Georgiana Darcy is Mr Darcy's quiet and amiable younger sister, aged sixteen when the story begins. In a letter from Mr Darcy to Elizabeth, he describes that Wickham tried to persuade her to elope with him and inherit her 30,000 pounds. Later on, Elizabeth meets her at their home at Pemberly, where she is amiable and sweet. She is very happy with her brother's choosing of Elizabeth and maintains an extremely close relationship to both of them.
Interrelationships
A comprehensive web showing the relationships between the main characters in Pride and Prejudice
Major themes
Many critics take the novel's title as a starting point when analysing the major themes of Pride and Prejudice; however, Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title since commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title. It should be pointed out that the qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice."
A major theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing on the development of young people's character and morality. Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her world, and a further theme common to Jane Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr and Mrs Bennet (particularly the latter) as parents is blamed for Lydia's lack of moral judgment; Darcy, on the other hand, has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable, but is also proud and overbearing. Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.
Style
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke". By using narrative which adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, that of Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."
Publication history
Modern paperback editions of Pride and Prejudice
The novel was originally titled First Impressions by Jane Austen, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. On 1 November 1797 Austen's father gave the draft to London bookseller Thomas Cadell in hopes of it being published, but it was rejected. The unpublished manuscript was returned to Austen and it stayed with her.
Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice. In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarized in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.
Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton of Whitehall in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150). This proved a costly decision. Austen had published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140, she passed the copyright to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two editions of the book.
Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes in January 1813, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in November that year. A third edition was published in 1817.
Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were published in German, Danish and Swedish. Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or, Pride and Prejudice. The novel was also included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition from which many modern publications of the novel are based.
Reception
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication. Jan Fergus calls it "her most popular novel, both with the public and with her family and friends", and quotes David Gilson's A Bibliography of Jane Austen (Clarendon, 1982), where it is stated that Pride and Prejudice was referred to as "the fashionable novel" by Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron. However, others did not agree. Charlotte Brontë wrote to noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes after reading a review of his published in Fraser's Magazine in 1847. He had praised Jane Austen's work and declared that he, "... would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels". Miss Brontë, though, found Pride and Prejudice a disappointment, "... a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck."
Modern popularity
* In 2003 the BBC conducted the largest ever poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.
* In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first in a list of the 101 best books ever written.
Adaptations
Film, television, and theatre
Pride and Prejudice has engendered numerous adaptations. Some of the notable film versions include that of 1940 starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, that of 2003 starring Kam Heskin and Orlando Seale (which placed the characters of Pride and Prejudice in a Mormon university, and was directed by Andrew Black and that of 2005 starring Keira Knightley (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Matthew Macfadyen. Notable television versions include two by the BBC: the 1995 version starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and a 1980 version starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul. A 1936 stage version was created by Helen Jerome played at the St. James's Theatre in London, starring Celia Johnson and Hugh Williams. First Impressions was a 1959 Broadway musical version starring Polly Bergen, Farley Granger, and Hermione Gingold. In 1995, a musical concept album was written by Bernard J. Taylor, with Peter Karrie in the role of Mr Darcy and Claire Moore in the role of Elizabeth Bennet. A new stage production, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, The New Musical, was presented in concert on 21 October 2008 in Rochester, New York with Colin Donnell as Darcy. The popular film Bridget Jones's Diary is a contemporary retelling, starring Renee Zellweger as a modern day Elizabeth, and Colin Firth, once again, as Mr Darcy.
Bride and Prejudice, starring Aishwarya Rai, is a Bollywood adaptation of the novel, while Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003) places the novel in contemporary times. The off-Broadway musical I Love You Because reverses the gender of the main roles, set in modern day New York City. The Japanese comic Hana Yori Dango by Yoko Kamio, in which the wealthy, arrogant and proud protagonist, Doumyouji Tsukasa, falls in love with a poor, lower-class girl named Makino Tsukushi, is loosely based on Pride and Prejudice. A 2008 Israeli television six-part miniseries set the story in the Galilee with Mr Darcy a well-paid worker in the high-tech industry.
Pride and Prejudice has also crossed into the science fiction and horror genres. In the 1997 episode of science fiction comedy Red Dwarf entitled "Beyond a Joke", the crew of the space ship relax in a virtual reality rendition of "Pride and Prejudice Land" in "Jane Austen World". The central premise of the television miniseries Lost in Austen is a modern woman suddenly swapping lives with that of Elizabeth Bennet. In February 2009, it was announced that Elton John's Rocket Pictures production company was making a film, Pride and Predator, based on the story, but with the added twist of an alien landing in Longbourne.
Literature
The novel has inspired a number of other works that are not direct adaptations. Books inspired by Pride and Prejudice include: Mr. Darcy's Daughters and The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by Elizabeth Aston; Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued and An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later by Emma Tennant; The Book of Ruth (ASIN B00262ZRBM) by Helen Baker; Jane Austen Ruined My Life and Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo; Precipitation - A Continuation of Miss Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Helen Baker; Searching for Pemberley by Mary Simonsen and Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and its sequel Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberly by Linda Berdoll. In Gwyn Cready's comedic romance novel, Seducing Mr. Darcy, the heroine lands in Pride and Prejudice by way of magic massage, has a fling with Darcy and unknowingly changes the rest of the story. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, which started as a newspaper column before becoming a novel and a film, was inspired by the then-current BBC adaptation; both works share a Mr. Darcy of serious disposition (both played by Colin Firth), a foolish match-making mother, and a detached affectionate father, as well as the protagonist overhearing Mr. Darcy speaking about her disparagingly, followed by the caddish character gaining the protagonist's affections by telling lies about Mr. Darcy. The self-referential in-jokes continue with the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.
In March 2009, Quirk Books released Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which takes Austen's actual, original work, and laces it with zombie hordes, cannibalism, ninjas, and ultra-violent mayhem. Scheduled for publication in March 2010, Quirk Books has announced that it will produce a prequel which deals with Elizabeth Bennett's early days as a zombie hunter, entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.
Yet another angle was introduced by Monica Fairview, who wrote about Miss Caroline Bingley in The Other Mr Darcy, published in October 2009. Pride and Prejudice has also inspired many scholarly articles and books including: So Odd a Mixture: Along the Autism Spectrum in 'Pride and Prejudice' by Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer, Forewords by Eileen Sutherland and Tony Attwood.
Marvel has also published their take on this classic, releasing a short comic series of five issues that stays true to the original storyline. The first issue was published on 1 April 2009 and was written by Nancy Hajeski.
Author Amanda Grange wrote Mr. Darcy's Diary in 2007 that tells the original story of Pride and Prejudice from the view of Mr Darcy. In 2009, she wrote Mr. Darcy, Vampyre which reimagines Darcy as a vampire after he has married Elizabeth. Following the same premise is Regina Jeffers' "Vampire Darcy's Desire", which retells Pride and Prejudice on the basis that Darcy is a dhampir (part-human, part-vampire) joined by his lover Elizabeth to fight the evil vampire George Wickham.
《八十天環遊地球》是凡爾納一部引入入勝的小說，筆調生動活潑，富有幽默感。小說敘述了英國人福格先生因和朋友打賭，而在八十天剋服重重睏難完成環遊地球一周的壯舉。書中不僅詳細描寫了福格先生一行在途中的種種離奇經歷和他們所遇到的千難萬險，而且還在情節的展開中使人物的性格逐漸立體化。沉默寡言、機智、勇敢、充滿人道精神的福格，活潑好動易衝動的僕人等等。作品發表後，引起了轟動，多次再版。
《八十天環遊地球》-作品內容
在還沒有飛機的19世紀70年代，當人們還以馬車、雪橇、輪船、火車……作為代步工具的時候，要想在短短的八十天之內環球一周，怎能不讓人驚嘆和佩服。完成此舉的這個人，就是費雷亞斯•福格。
這件事就發生在1872年的倫敦。由於英國國傢銀行的一次失竊，福格和改良俱樂部的會友以兩萬英鎊作為賭註，打賭可以在八十天裏環遊地球一周。為了證實這一推算的準確性，福格帶着剛剛雇用的，綽號叫萬事通的僕人立刻啓程從倫敦出發，開始了這次不可思議的環球旅行。福格設想的旅行路綫是這樣的：乘火車先到蘇伊士運河，在這裏乘船到印度，然後坐火車橫穿印度，來到中國的香港，再乘船到日本，接着到美國，坐火車穿過美國後，最後再回到倫敦。在此期間，他必須分秒不差地從一個地方趕到另一個地方，衹有始終準確無誤才能保證按時回來。
這位性格冷僻、精確準時的紳士在旅途中遇到的事情：遭人跟蹤、置身荒村無路可走、捨身救人、與惡僧對簿公堂、遭暗算誤了輪船、遇風浪海上搏擊、與僕人失散、勇鬥劫匪、救僕人身赴險境、燃料告急海上經受考驗、疑為竊賊海關被囚……幾乎所有的意外和睏難都被福格不幸遇到了，就算他臨危不懼，冷靜守時，他也無法預料旅途上所發生的所有的事情。更何況，還有一位名叫菲剋斯的偵探始終跟在他身邊不停地設置障礙，虎視眈眈一心想把他捉拿歸案，其原因是他與警方描述的疑犯的外貌特徵驚人地相似。然而，所有的睏難都沒有難倒福格，他總能在危難關頭找到問題的解决辦法，一次次神奇地化險為夷、擺脫睏境：買大象穿越密林趕火車、英雄救美贏得美人心、花重金取保候審擺脫官司、高價雇航船渡海赴日本。機緣巧合與僕人重聚、英勇禦敵戰劫匪、坐雪橇穿越冰原、燒輪船解燃眉之急、消除誤會重獲自由……這是一位怎樣的紳士呀！他的鎮定自若、慷慨大方、勇敢機智和善良細心給每一個人都留下了深刻的印象；正是他身上的這些異乎尋常的優秀品質使他每次均能逢兇化吉、轉危為安，最後勝利完成旅行；那個偵探則是一個意外捲入這次旅行中的特殊人物，他固執多疑、急功近利、精於算計，但卻忠於職守，出於職責和貪心，他一路跟蹤福格，被迫也進行了一次環球旅行。他想方設法處處給福格製造麻煩，阻止他順利完成計劃，但他的計謀卻一次次落空；而那個叫萬事通的法國小夥子則為這次旅行增添了不少笑料；他誠實勇敢、身懷絶技、正直善良，但卻容易上當受騙，他既為主人化解了不少危機也為主人製造了不少麻煩，他的加入使這次旅行變得趣味橫生；還有一位人物雖然話語不多，但卻有着舉足輕重的地位，她就是福格捨身搭救的阿嫵達夫人，也是後來的福格夫人。她光彩照人、溫柔高雅、善解人意，一直在福格身邊從精神上支持他、鼓勵他堅持到勝利。有了她的陪伴，這次環球之旅也變得浪漫多情和溫情脈脈了。故事的結局當然是如人所願：福格贏得了這次打賭，並且找到了他一生的伴侶。
《八十天環遊地球》-作者簡介
《八十天環遊地球》儒勒•凡爾納
儒勒•凡爾納（Verne•Jules1828-1905），法國最著名的科幻小說作傢。出生於海港城市，自幼迷上航海，曾離傢出走當水手，又被父親找回，送到巴黎學習法律。他畢業後不願做法官，卻去劇院做了秘書，開始撰寫劇本。凡爾納熱衷於各種科學新發現，也創作科幻小說打下紮實基礎。1863年，出版《氣球上的五個星期》，獲得成功。此後40餘年間筆耕不綴，幾乎每年都有一兩部新作問世，題材廣泛。他的科學幻想小說的總名是《在已知和未知的世界中奇異的漫遊》，簡稱《奇異的漫遊》。
主要作品：《八十天環遊地球》、《底兩萬裏》、《格蘭特船長的兒女》、《環繞月球》、《神秘島》、《世界主宰者》、《米歇爾•斯特羅哥夫》、《氣球上的五星期》、《空中歷險記》、《墨西哥的“幽靈”》、《佐奇瑞大師》、《牛博士》、《一個在冰雪中度過的鼕天》、《徵服者羅比爾》、《兩年假期》、《從地球到月球》、《八十天環繞地球》、《奧蘭情遊》、《升D先生和降E小姐》、《隱身新娘》、《昂梯菲爾奇遇記》、《大海入侵》、《烽火島》、《太陽係歷險記》、《巴爾薩剋考察隊的驚險遭遇》、《哈特拉斯船長歷險記》、《大木筏》、《喀爾巴阡古堡》、《金火山》、《魯濱遜叔叔》、《多瑙河領航員》、《魯濱遜學校》、《馬丁•帕茲》《旅行基金》、《漂逝的半島》、《桑道夫伯爵》、《黑印度》、《南非洲歷險記》、《突破封鎖》、《沙皇的郵件》、《印度貴婦的五億法郎》、《小把戲》。
《八十天環遊地球》-作品主題
《八十天環遊地球》的敘事技巧並不復雜，福格的這次旅行其實是和偵探菲剋斯的被動旅行同時平行展開的兩條敘事綫，這兩條綫既平行發展又交錯交匯，交叉點就是故事的衝突點，也是故事的出彩之處。而萬事通和阿嫵達都是福格旅行這條綫上的兩個小分支，他們的故事為全文增色不少。每一次衝突都為故事掀起了一個小高潮，福格的每次遇險也都讓人緊張萬分，尤其是小說的最後一部分：就在福格眼看勝利在望的時候，他偏偏被關在海關，當他被放出來之後，耽誤的時間已經太多，沒有可能準時趕回倫敦了。讀者都以為福格已經輸掉這次打賭了，可誰都沒有料到，萬事通發現他的主人居然算錯了日期，於是福格又出人意料地贏得了打賭。全文就是這樣在一次又一次的意外中讓讀者體會到了驚險和刺激的。
《八十天環遊地球》-內容分析
《八十天環遊地球》是儒勒.凡爾納一步引人入勝的小說。裏邊講了一個英國人福剋先生因和朋友打賭，在八十天內剋服重重睏難完成環遊地球一周的壯舉。書中不僅講了他們所遇到的千難萬險，而且在情節中體現出每個人的個性。沉着、機智、勇敢、冷靜的福剋和他活潑、好動、易衝動的僕人等等都給人留下了深刻的印象。
福剋先生到哪都是沉默不語的冷靜態度，即使是錯過了搭往美國的郵船浪費了他一天多的時間，還是在火車的鐵軌上遇見了千百萬匹牛群從軌道上穿過而耽誤了3個多小時，他總是面無表情，就像他已經知道他自己一定會贏的一樣。不過如果輸了這個打賭就得賠掉兩千萬英鎊——他所有的財産。一開始就講福剋先生是非常有生活規律的人，就像是個機器人，定了時間似的，總是一分不多一秒不差的做完他計劃之內的事。當然這八十天環遊地球也是他規定好的，前幾天，他的行程的確跟本子上的計劃一模一樣，到達一個地點，他就拿出小本子，在上面寫着，某月某日，到底哪裏。
可是世上沒有不起浪的海，在一路上的天氣變化，倒黴衝動但又絶對忠實的僕人路路通所造的麻煩和某些人為的成心破壞，使他們的路程總是沒有他們所預計的完美。可不管多麽糟糕的情況下，福剋先生總是能衝出重圍，總能有解决的辦法。當然他都是靠他揮灑留下的大把大把的英鎊。有他那麽用巨大資金連眼皮都不眨一下的人，現實生活中應該是不會有的。
最叫我驚心動魄的還是馬上要回到紐約完成他八十天的環球任務去領大把大把鈔票的時候，眼看就要到達紐約了，居然被一直跟在他們身邊的探警費剋斯當作銀行搶劫犯抓了起來。時間一分一秒的流逝，眼看勝利就在眼前，卻一下子成了泡影，福剋先生臉上仍是沒有一點表情。他心裏真的一點不急嗎？誰也不知道。
當費剋斯弄清了真相，連蹦帶跳的跑進監獄放了福剋時，福剋衹是兩手一揮當作伸懶腰打了費剋斯兩拳，就急忙趕去紐約。可是，當他們到達樓鐘下的時候，時針卻指着8點50分，他們衹晚了5分鐘!
福剋知道自己已經一無所有了，但還有一件值得慶幸的事就是在他們旅途上救了一位艾娥達夫人，現在她就要成為他的妻子了。當路路通到教堂通知神甫的時候，卻發現了一個驚人的消息，今天不是2月21號，是2月20號！他們整整早到了一天！可是福剋到達倫敦的時候是2月20號，怎麽會記錯呢？
原來是他們在這次旅途中不知不覺占了二十四小時的便宜。由於他這次旅行往東走，每當他們走過一條經綫他們就會提前4分鐘看到日出，整個地球一共分作三百六十度，用四分鐘乘三百六十，結果正好是二十四小時。此時此刻，還不到5分鐘，跟他打賭的會友正在俱樂部等他。
俱樂部裏的成員，包括所有到來的人們和記者攝影師都來到了現場。倒數一分鐘裏，第四十秒平安的過去了，到了第五十秒是平安無事！到了第五十五秒的時候，聽到外面人聲雷動，掌聲，歡呼聲，還夾雜着咒駡聲，五位紳士都站了起來！到了第五十七秒，這千鈞一發的時候，大廳的門被打開了，鐘擺還沒有來得及響第六十下，一群狂熱的群衆簇擁着福剋衝進了大門。衹見他沉靜地說：“先生們，我回來了。
《八十天環遊地球》-作品評價
凡爾納的《八十天環遊地球》故事生動幽默，妙語橫生，又能激發人們尤其是青少年熱愛科學、嚮往探險的熱情，所以一百多年來，一直受到世界各地讀者的歡迎。據聯合國教科文組織的資料表明，凡爾納是世界上被翻譯的作品最多的十大名傢之一。
凡爾納是一個非常優秀的通俗小說作傢，有一種能夠把自己的幻覺變得能夠觸摸的本領，其感覺是全方位的，從平淡的文學中傳達出某種人類的熱情。但凡爾納的《八十天環遊地球》中人物除了少數幾個外都是一模一樣的，他似乎塑造不出更重要的人物，人物都是臉譜化的簡單的好人壞人，沒有什麽心理活動；從其作品人物性別單一化上還可看出他對女人的偏見，隱隱流露出深受其苦的心態。此外凡爾納的作品中充滿了明顯的社會傾嚮，是一個愛國者（法國人最好）、民族解放主義者（支持被壓迫民族鬥爭），在某種程度上是一個無政府主義者（從某些作品中表現出無秩序者），最後還是一個銀河帝國主義者（有締造宇宙帝國的欲望）。
《八十天環遊地球》裏充滿了知識，但他本人卻是一名宇宙神秘主義者，對世界有一種神秘的崇拜。在他的小說中，有時候思考問題不夠深刻，主題也常常重複。
但總的來說，凡爾納的嘗試仍然是偉大的。正如1884年教皇在接見凡爾納時曾說：“我並不是不知道您的作品的科學價值，但我最珍重的卻是它們的純潔、道德價值和精神力量。”
結尾有點走到盡頭苦盡甘來的感覺，福格先生花了畢生的錢打了一個賭，這個賭令他找到了他生命的另一半，而由於一個糊塗探長的糊塗行動使他失去了那些錢，在這樣的情況下他還能樂觀地面對生活，結局出乎意料他以時差贏得了那些奬金。這個結尾就足見凡爾納的寫作功力。
《八十天環遊地球》-BBC版本
《BBC八十天環遊地球 》
海報海報
【譯名】BBC Around The World In 80 Days
【集數】7CD
【年代】2005年
【國傢】英國
【片長】7小時
【類別】紀錄片
【語言】英語
【格式】XVID5 AC3
【字幕】 （請點）英文字幕（請點）中文字幕
【簡介】： BBC王牌主持人，英國名喜劇演員Micheal Palin帶您展開了另一次絢麗的80天旅途，一起周遊世界。 與世界名著“環遊世界八十天”相同旅程！環遊世界旅行者必備的經典參考指南！你曾夢想環遊世界嗎？八十天內繞完地球一周，會是怎麽樣的奇幻刺激冒險？麥剋爾·帕林自告奮勇要完成這一部紀錄片（這輩子在這之前衹有一次經驗），跟時間賽跑，在全無劇本的情況下，踏上這段路程，所有的變化，毫無預警。這是前所未有的嘗試』 ---麥可帕林威尼斯的垃圾船、在埃及被撞壞的計程車、橫渡波斯灣的簡陋小船、中國的蒸汽船、越過換日綫的貨櫃船…… 麥剋爾·帕林環繞世界一週的壯舉，除了坐不完的船、上吐下泄，饑不擇食的鸚鵡之外，更有著目不暇給的驚喜!!
分集目錄
第1集 艱鉅挑戰
按照作著朱勒凡爾納的路徑，從倫敦由海路及陸路展開…
第 2集 阿拉伯恐慌
從蘇伊士港到沙烏地港，這一切都得看阿拉的旨意了…
第3集 古代水手
古加拉特水手帶領航行到印度孟買，但引擎卻突然故障..
第4集 驚險颳鬍
在印度第一大城孟買當街颳鬍後，轉輾前往馬德拉斯…
第5集 東方快車
從新加坡港出發到香港之前在南中國海遇到三個颱風…
第6集 深入遠東
航行到上海、橫濱，在東京稍為休息後面對廣大的太平洋..
第 7集 從換日綫到最後期限
時間漸逼但他們得通過美國和太西洋回到起點…
Plot summary
The story starts in London on October 2, 1872. Phileas Fogg is a wealthy English gentleman who lives unmarried in solitude at Number 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens. Despite his wealth, which is £40,000, Mr. Fogg, whose countenance is described as "repose in action", lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. As is noted in the first chapter, very little can be said about Mr. Fogg's social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84° Fahrenheit instead of 86°, Mr. Fogg hires the Frenchman Passepartout, who is about 30 years old, as a replacement.
Later, on that day, in the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph, stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000 from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on October 2, 1872, and thus is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, on December 21.
Map of the trip
The proposed schedule London to Suez rail and steamer 7 days
Suez to Bombay steamer 13 days
Bombay to Calcutta rail 3 days
Calcutta to Hong Kong steamer 13 days
Hong Kong to Yokohama steamer 6 days
Yokohama to San Francisco steamer 22 days
San Francisco to New York City rail 7 days
New York to London steamer and rail 9 days
Total 80 days
Fogg and Passepartout reach Suez in time. While disembarking in Egypt, they are watched by a Scotland Yard detective named Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of a bank robber. Because Fogg matches the description of the bank robber, Fix mistakes Fogg for the criminal. Since he cannot secure a warrant in time, Fix goes on board the steamer conveying the travellers to Bombay. During the voyage, Fix becomes acquainted with Passepartout, without revealing his purpose. On the voyage, Fogg promises the engineer a large reward if he gets them to Bombay early. They dock two days ahead of schedule.
After reaching India they take a train from Bombay to Calcutta. About halfway there Fogg learns that the Daily Telegraph newspaper article was wrong – the railroad ends at Kholby and starts 50 miles further on at Allahabad. Fogg promptly buys an elephant, hires a guide and starts toward Allahabad.
During the ride, they come across a suttee procession, in which a young Parsi woman, Aouda, is led to a sanctuary to be sacrificed by the process of sati the next day by Brahmins. Since the young woman is drugged with the smoke of opium and hemp and obviously not going voluntarily, the travellers decide to rescue her. They follow the procession to the site, where Passepartout secretly takes the place of Aouda's deceased husband on the funeral pyre, on which she is to be burned the next morning. During the ceremony, he then rises from the pyre, scaring off the priests, and carries the young woman away. Due to this incident, the two days gained earlier are lost but Fogg shows no sign of regret.
The travellers then hasten on to catch the train at the next railway station, taking Aouda with them. At Calcutta, they can finally board a steamer going to Hong Kong. Fix, who has secretly been following them, has Fogg and Passepartout arrested in Calcutta. However, they jump bail and Fix is forced to follow them to Hong Kong. On board, he shows himself to Passepartout, who is delighted to meet again his travelling companion from the earlier voyage.
In Hong Kong, it turns out that Aouda's distant relative, in whose care they had been planning to leave her, has moved, probably to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe. Meanwhile, still without a warrant, Fix sees Hong Kong as his last chance to arrest Fogg on British soil. He therefore confides in Passepartout, who does not believe a word and remains convinced that his master is not a bank robber. To prevent Passepartout from informing his master about the premature departure of their next vessel, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. In his dizziness, Passepartout still manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama, but neglects to inform Fogg.
Fogg, on the next day, discovers that he has missed his connection. He goes in search of a vessel that will take him to Yokohama. He finds a pilot boat that takes him and Aouda to Shanghai, where they catch a steamer to Yokohama. In Yokohama, they go on a search for Passepartout, believing that he may have arrived there on the original boat. They find him in a circus, trying to earn the fare for his homeward journey. Reunited, the four board a steamer taking them across the Pacific to San Francisco. Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey, but rather support him in getting back to Britain as fast as possible (to have him arrested there).
In San Francisco they get on a trans-American train to New York, encountering a number of obstacles along the way: a massive herd of bison crossing the tracks, a failing suspension bridge, and most disastrously, the train is attacked and overcome by Sioux Indians. After heroically uncoupling the locomotive from the carriages, Passepartout is kidnapped by the Indians, but Fogg rescues him after some soldiers volunteer to help. They continue by a wind-powered sledge over the snowy prairie to Omaha, where they get a train to New York.
Once in New York, and having missed departure of their ship (the China) by 35 minutes, Fogg starts looking for an alternative for the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He finds a small steamboat, destined for Bordeaux. However, the captain of the boat refuses to take the company to Liverpool, whereupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux for the price of $2000 per passenger. On the voyage, he bribes the crew to mutiny and take course for Liverpool. Against hurricane winds and going on full steam all the time, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. Fogg buys the boat at a very high price from the captain, soothing him thereby, and has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam.
The companions arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. However, once on British soil again, Fix produces a warrant and arrests Fogg. A short time later, the misunderstanding is cleared up—the actual bank robber had been caught three days earlier in Edinburgh. In response to this, Fogg, in a rare moment of impulse, punches Fix, who immediately falls to the ground. However, Fogg has missed the train and returns to London five minutes late, assured that he has lost the wager.
In his London house the next day, he apologises to Aouda for bringing her with him, since he now has to live in poverty and cannot financially support her. Aouda suddenly confesses that she loves him and asks him to marry her, which he gladly accepts. He calls for Passepartout to notify the reverend. At the reverend's, Passepartout learns that he is mistaken in the date, which he takes to be Sunday but which actually is Saturday due to the fact that the party travelled east, thereby gaining a full day on their journey around the globe, by crossing the International Date Line. He did not notice this after landing in North America because the only phase of the trip that depended on vehicles departing less often than daily was the Atlantic crossing, and he had hired his own ship for that.
Passepartout hurries back to Fogg, who immediately sets off for the Reform Club, where he arrives just in time to win the wager. Fogg marries Aouda and the journey around the world is complete.
Passepartout and Fogg's Baggage
Passepartout and Fogg carry only a carpet bag with only two shirts and three pairs of stockings each, a mackintosh, a travelling cloak, and a spare pair of shoes. The only book carried is Bradshaw's Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide. This contains timetables of trains and steamers. He also carried a huge roll of English banknotes-about twenty thousand pounds. He also left with twenty guineas won at whist, which he soon disposed of.
Background and analysis
Around the World in Eighty Days was written during difficult times, both for France and for Verne. It was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) in which Verne was conscripted as a coastguard, he was having money difficulties (his previous works were not paid royalties), his father had died recently, and he had witnessed a public execution which had disturbed him. However despite all this, Verne was excited about his work on the new book, the idea of which came to him one afternoon in a Paris café while reading a newspaper (see "Origins" below).
The technological innovations of the 19th century had opened the possibility of rapid circumnavigation and the prospect fascinated Verne and his readership. In particular three technological breakthroughs occurred in 1869-70 that made a tourist-like around-the-world journey possible for the first time: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). It was another notable mark in the end of an age of exploration and the start of an age of fully global tourism that could be enjoyed in relative comfort and safety. It sparked the imagination that anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, a feat previously reserved for only the most heroic and hardy of adventurers.
Verne is often characterised as a futurist or science fiction author but there is not a glimmer of science-fiction in this, his most popular work (at least in English speaking countries). Rather than any futurism, it remains a memorable portrait of the British Empire "on which the sun never sets" shortly before its very peak, drawn by an outsider. It is also interesting to note that, as of 2006, there has never been a critical edition of Around the World in Eighty Days. This is in part due to the poor translations available of his works, the stereotype of "science fiction" or "boys' literature". However, Verne's works were being looked at more seriously in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with new translations and scholarship appearing. It is also rather interesting to note that the book is a source of common notable English and extended British attitudes in quotes such as, "Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty ... endured the discomfort with true British phlegm, talking little, and scarcely able to catch a glimpse of each other" as seen in Chapter Twelve when the group is being jostled around on the elephant ride across the jungle. Also seen in chapter Twenty-Five, when Phileas Fogg is insulted in San Francisco, and Detective Fix acknowledges that "It was clear that Mr. Fogg was one of those Englishmen who, while they do not tolerate dueling at home, fight abroad when their honor is attacked."
It is interesting to note that The China's departure from New York on the day of Fogg's arrival there constitutes a minor flaw in Verne's logic, because Fogg had already crossed the Pacific without accounting for the International Date Line so his entire journey across North America was apparently conducted with an erroneous belief about the date and day of the week. Had The China sailed in agreement with the published steamer schedule used by Fogg, it would have departed a day later than Fogg expected, and he would have been able to catch it in spite of arriving what he thought was a few minutes late.
The closing date of the novel, 22 December 1872, was also the same date as the serial publication. As it was being published serially for the first time, some readers believed that the journey was actually taking place — bets were placed, and some railway companies and ship liner companies actually lobbied Verne to appear in the book. It is unknown if Verne actually submitted to their requests, but the descriptions of some rail and shipping lines leave some suspicion he was influenced.
Although a journey by hot air balloon has become one of the images most strongly associated with the story, this iconic symbol was never deployed in the book by Verne himself – the idea is briefly brought up in chapter 32, but dismissed, it "would have been highly risky and, in any case, impossible." However the popular 1956 movie adaptation Around the World in Eighty Days floated the balloon idea, and it has now become a part of the mythology of the story, even appearing on book covers. This plot element is reminiscent of Verne's earlier Five Weeks in a Balloon which first made him a well-known author.
Following Towle and d'Anver's 1873 English translation, many people have tried to follow in the footsteps of Fogg's fictional circumnavigation, often within self-imposed constraints:
* 1889 – Nellie Bly undertook to travel around the world in 80 days for her newspaper, the New York World. She managed to do the journey within 72 days. Her book about the trip, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, became a best seller.
* 1903 – James Willis Sayre, a Seattle theatre critic and arts promoter, set the world record for circling the earth using public transportation exclusively, completing his trip in 54 days, 9 hours, and 42 minutes.
* 1908 – Harry Bensley, on a wager, set out to circumnavigate the world on foot wearing an iron mask.
* 1984 - Nicholas Coleridge emulated Fogg's trip and wrote a book entitled Around the World in 78 Days about his experience.
* 1988 – Monty Python alumnus Michael Palin took a similar challenge without using aircraft as a part of a television travelogue, called Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days. He completed the journey in 79 days and 7 hours.
* 1993–present – The Jules Verne Trophy is held by the boat that sails around the world without stopping, and with no outside assistance in the shortest time.
* 2009 - in Around the World in 80 Days twelve celebrities performed a relay version of the journey for the BBC Children In Need charity appeal. This featured a carpet bag.
Origins
The idea of a trip around the world within a set period had clear external origins and was popular before Verne published his book in 1872. Even the title Around the World in Eighty Days is not original to Verne. About six sources have been suggested as the origins of the story:
Greek traveller Pausanias (c. 100 AD) wrote a work that was translated into French in 1797 as Voyage autour du monde ("Around the World"). Verne's friend, Jacques Arago, had written a very popular Voyage autour du monde in 1853. However in 1869/70 the idea of travelling around the world reached critical popular attention when three geographical breakthroughs occurred: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). In 1871 appeared Around the World by Steam, via Pacific Railway, published by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and an Around the World in A Hundred and Twenty Days by Edmond Planchut. Between 1869 and 1871, an American William Perry Fogg went around the world describing his tour in a series of letters to the Cleveland Leader, titled Round the World: Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (1872). Additionally, in early 1870, the Erie Railway Company published a statement of routes, times, and distances detailing a trip around the globe of 23,739 miles in seventy-seven days and twenty-one hours.
In 1872 Thomas Cook organised the first around the world tourist trip, leaving on 20 September 1872 and returning seven months later. The journey was described in a series of letters that were later published in 1873 as Letter from the Sea and from Foreign Lands, Descriptive of a tour Round the World. Scholars have pointed out similarities between Verne's account and Cook's letters, although some argue that Cook's trip happened too late to influence Verne. Verne, according to a second-hand 1898 account, refers to a Thomas Cook advertisement as a source for the idea of his book. In interviews in 1894 and 1904, Verne says the source was "through reading one day in a Paris cafe" and "due merely to a tourist advertisement seen by chance in the columns of a newspaper.” Around the World itself says the origins were a newspaper article. All of these point to Cook's advert as being a probable spark for the idea of the book.
Further, the periodical Le Tour du monde (3 October 1869) contained a short piece entitled "Around the World in Eighty Days", which refers to "140 miles" of railway not yet completed between Allahabad and Bombay, a central point in Verne's work. But even the Le Tour de monde article was not entirely original; it cites in its bibliography the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie, de l'Histoire et de l'Archéologie (August, 1869), which also contains the title Around the World in Eighty Days in its contents page. The Nouvelles Annales were written by Conrad Malte-Brun (1775—1826) and his son Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun (1816—1889). Scholars believe Verne was aware of either the Le Tour de monde article, or the Nouvelles Annales (or both), and consulted it — the 'Le Tour du monde even included a trip schedule very similar to Verne's final version.
A possible inspiration was the traveller George Francis Train, who made four trips around the world, including one in 80 days in 1870. Similarities include the hiring of a private train and his being imprisoned. Train later claimed "Verne stole my thunder. I'm Phileas Fogg."
Regarding the idea of gaining a day, Verne said of its origin: "I have a great number of scientific odds and ends in my head. It was thus that, when, one day in a Paris café, I read in the Siècle that a man could travel around the world in eighty days, it immediately struck me that I could profit by a difference of meridian and make my traveller gain or lose a day in his journey. There was a dénouement ready found. The story was not written until long after. I carry ideas about in my head for years – ten, or fifteen years, sometimes – before giving them form." In his lecture of April 1873 "The Meridians and the Calendar", Verne responded to a question about where the change of day actually occurred, since the international date line had only become current in 1880 and the Greenwich prime meridian was not adopted internationally until 1884. Verne cited an 1872 article in Nature, and Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841), which was also based on going around the world and the difference in a day linked to a marriage at the end. Verne even analysed Poe's story in his Edgar Poe and His Works (1864).
In summary either the periodical 'Le Tour du monde or the Nouvelles Annales, W. P. Fogg, probably Thomas Cook's advert (and maybe his letters) would be the main likely source for the book. In addition, Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" was clearly the inspiration for the lost day plot device.
Literary significance and criticism
Select quotes:
1. "We will only remind readers en passant of Around the World in Eighty Days, that tour de force of Mr Verne's—and not the first he has produced. Here, however, he has summarised and concentrated himself, so to speak ... No praise of his collected works is strong enough .. they are truly useful, entertaining, poignant, and moral; and Europe and America have merely produced rivals that are remarkably similar to them, but in any case inferior." (Henry Trianon, Le Constitutionnel, December 20, 1873).
2. "His first books, the shortest, Around the World or From the Earth to the Moon, are still the best in my view. However, the works should be judged as a whole rather than in detail, and on their results rather than their intrinsic quality. Over the last forty years, they have had an influence unequalled by any other books on the children of this and every country in Europe. And the influence has been good, in so far as can be judged today." (Léon Blum, L'Humanité, April 3, 1905).
3. "Jules Verne's masterpiece .. stimulated our childhood and taught us more than all the atlases: the taste of adventure and the love of travel. 'Thirty thousand banknotes for you, Captain, if we reach Liverpool within the hour.' This cry of Phileas Fogg's remains for me the call of the sea." (Jean Cocteau, Mon premier voyage (Tour du monde en 80 jours), Gallimard, 1936).
4. "Leo Tolstoy loved his works. 'Jules Verne's novels are matchless', he would say. 'I read them as an adult, and yet I remember they excited me. Jules Verne is an astonishing past master at the art of constructing a story that fascinates and impassions the reader. (Cyril Andreyev, "Preface to the Complete Works", trans. François Hirsch, Europe, 33: 112-113, 22-48).
5. "Jules Verne's work is nothing but a long meditation, a reverie on the straight line—which represents the predication of nature on industry and industry on nature, and which is recounted as a tale of exploration. Title: the adventures of a straight line ... The train.. cleaves through nature, jumps obstacles .. and continues both the actual journey—whose form is a furrow—and the perfect embodiment of human industry. The machine has the additional advantage here of not being isolated in a purpose-built, artificial place, like the factory or all similar structures, but of remaining in permanent and direct contact with the variety of nature." Pierre Macherey (1966).
Adaptations and influences
The book has been adapted many times in different forms.
Theatre
* A 1874 play written by Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, where it was shown 415 times.
* In 1946 Orson Welles produced and starred in Around the World, a musical stage version, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, that was only loosely faithful to Verne's original.
* A musical version, 80 Days, with songs by Ray Davies of The Kinks and a book by playwright Snoo Wilson, directed by Des McAnuff, ran at the Mandell Weiss Theatre in San Diego from August 23 to October 9, 1988. The musical received mixed responses from the critics. Ray Davies's multi-faceted music, McAnuff's directing, and the acting, however, were well received, with the show winning the "Best Musical" award from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.
* In 2001, the story was adapted for the stage by American playwright Mark Brown. In what has been described as "a wildly wacky, unbelievably creative, 90-miles-an-hour, hilarious journey" this award winning stage adaptation is written for five actors who portray thirty-nine characters.
* A stage musical adaptation premiered at the Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, PA in March 2007 with music by Ron Barnett, book and lyrics by Julianne Homokay, and direction by Robin McKercher.
Films
* A 1919 silent black and white parody by director Richard Oswald didn't disguise its use of locations in Germany as placeholders for the international voyage; part of the movie's joke is that Fogg's trip is obviously going to places in and around Berlin. There are no remaining copies of the film available today.
* The best known version was released in 1956, with David Niven and Cantinflas heading a huge cast. Many famous performers play bit parts, and part of the pleasure in this movie is playing "spot the star". The movie earned five Oscars, out of eight nominations. This film was also responsible for the popular misconception that Fogg and company travel by balloon for part of the trip in the novel, which has prompted later adaptations to include similar sequences. See Around the World in Eighty Days (1956 film) for details.
* 1963 saw the release of The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze. In this parody, the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Joe DeRita) are cast as the menservants of Phileas Fogg III (Jay Sheffield), great-grandson of the original around-the-world voyager. When Phileas Fogg III is tricked into replicating his ancestor's feat of circumnavigation, Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe dutifully accompany their master. Along the way, the boys get into and out of trouble in typical Stooge fashion.
* In 1983 the basic idea was expanded to a galactic scope in Japan's Ginga Shippu Sasuraiger, where a team of adventurers travel through the galaxy in a train-like ship that can transform into a giant robot. The characters are travelling to different planets in order to return within a certain period and win a bet.
* The story was again adapted for the screen in the 2004 film Around the World in 80 Days, starring Jackie Chan as Passepartout and Steve Coogan as Fogg. This version makes Passepartout the hero and the thief of the treasure of the Bank; Fogg's character is an eccentric inventor who bets a rival scientist that he can travel the world with (then) modern means of transportation.
TV
* An episode of the American television series, Have Gun – Will Travel, entitled "Fogg Bound", had the series' hero, Palladin (Richard Boone), escorting Phileas Fogg (Patric Knowles) through part of his journey. This episode was broadcasted by CBS on December 3, 1960.
* A 1989 three-part TV mini-series starred Pierce Brosnan as Fogg, Eric Idle as Passepartout, Peter Ustinov as Fix and several TV stars in cameo roles. The heroes travel a slightly different route than in the book and the script makes several contemporary celebrities part of the story who were not mentioned in the book. See Around the World in 80 Days (TV miniseries) for details.
* The BBC along with Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) created a 1989 television travel series following the book's path. It was one of many travelogues Michael Palin has done with the BBC and was a commercially successful transition from his comedic career. The latest series in a similar format was Michael Palin's New Europe in 2007.
* Around the World in 80 Days, a six part 2009 BBC One show in which twelve celebrities attempt to travel the world in aid of the Children in Need appeal. This featured a carpet bag similar to one carried by Fogg and Passeportout.
Animation
* An Indian Fantasy Story is an unfinished French/English co-production from 1938, featuring the wager at the Reform Club and the rescue of the Indian Princess. It was never completed as a full feature film.
* Around the World in 79 Days, a serial segment on the Hanna-Barbera show The Cattanooga Cats from 1969 to 1971.
* Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by American studio Rankin/Bass with Japanese Mushi productions as part of the Festival of Family Classics series.
* A one-season cartoon series Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by Australian Air Programs International. NBC aired the series in the US during the 1972-73 season on Saturday mornings.
* Puss 'N Boots Travels Around the World, a 1976 anime from Toei Animation
* A Walt Disney adaptation was produced in 1986. It featured Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy as the main characters.
* Around the World with Willy Fog by Spanish studio BRB Internacional from 1981 with a second season produced in 1993. This series depicts the characters as talking animals, and, despite adding some new characters and making some superficial modifications to the original story, it remains one of the most accurate adaptations of the book made for film or television. The show has gained a cult following in Finland, Britain, Germany and Spain. The first season is "Around the World in 80 Days", and the second season is "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"; all three books are by Jules Verne.
* Tweety's High-Flying Adventure is a direct-to-video cartoon by Warner Brothers from 2000 starring the Looney Tunes characters. It takes a great many liberties with the original story, but the central idea is still there - indeed, one of the songs in this film is entitled Around the World in Eighty Days. Tweety not only had to travel the world, he had to also collect 80 cat pawprints, all while evading the constant pursuits of Slyvester. This movie frequently appears on various US-based cable TV networks.
* "Around the World in 80 Narfs" is a Pinky and the Brain episode where the Brain claims to be able to make the travel in less than 80 days and the Pompous Explorers club agrees to make him their new president. With this, the Brain expects to be UK's new Prime Minister, what he considers back at that time, the fastest way to take over the world.
* A Mickey Mouse episode shows the effort of Mickey to get around the world in 80 days with the help of Goofy. The cartoon made reference to the ending of the novel. They realise they have a day extra by hearing church bells on what they believe to be a Monday. This referenced the ending with the vicar in the church.
Exhibitions
* "Around the World in 80 Days", group show curated by Jens Hoffman at the ICA London 2006
Cultural references
* "Around the Universe in 80 Days" is a song by the Canadian band Klaatu, and makes reference to a spaceship travelling around the galaxy, coming home to find the Earth second from the Sun. It was originally included on the 1977 album "Hope", but also appears on at least two compilations.
* There are at least four board games by this name.
* Worlds of Fun, an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, was conceived using the novel as its theme. It uses the hot air balloon in its logo, and the park's layout is based on world geography.
Argentinian avant-garde writer Julio Cortazar wrote in 1967 his book titled Around the Day in Eighty Worlds.
《八十天環遊地球》-作品內容
在還沒有飛機的19世紀70年代，當人們還以馬車、雪橇、輪船、火車……作為代步工具的時候，要想在短短的八十天之內環球一周，怎能不讓人驚嘆和佩服。完成此舉的這個人，就是費雷亞斯•福格。
這件事就發生在1872年的倫敦。由於英國國傢銀行的一次失竊，福格和改良俱樂部的會友以兩萬英鎊作為賭註，打賭可以在八十天裏環遊地球一周。為了證實這一推算的準確性，福格帶着剛剛雇用的，綽號叫萬事通的僕人立刻啓程從倫敦出發，開始了這次不可思議的環球旅行。福格設想的旅行路綫是這樣的：乘火車先到蘇伊士運河，在這裏乘船到印度，然後坐火車橫穿印度，來到中國的香港，再乘船到日本，接着到美國，坐火車穿過美國後，最後再回到倫敦。在此期間，他必須分秒不差地從一個地方趕到另一個地方，衹有始終準確無誤才能保證按時回來。
這位性格冷僻、精確準時的紳士在旅途中遇到的事情：遭人跟蹤、置身荒村無路可走、捨身救人、與惡僧對簿公堂、遭暗算誤了輪船、遇風浪海上搏擊、與僕人失散、勇鬥劫匪、救僕人身赴險境、燃料告急海上經受考驗、疑為竊賊海關被囚……幾乎所有的意外和睏難都被福格不幸遇到了，就算他臨危不懼，冷靜守時，他也無法預料旅途上所發生的所有的事情。更何況，還有一位名叫菲剋斯的偵探始終跟在他身邊不停地設置障礙，虎視眈眈一心想把他捉拿歸案，其原因是他與警方描述的疑犯的外貌特徵驚人地相似。然而，所有的睏難都沒有難倒福格，他總能在危難關頭找到問題的解决辦法，一次次神奇地化險為夷、擺脫睏境：買大象穿越密林趕火車、英雄救美贏得美人心、花重金取保候審擺脫官司、高價雇航船渡海赴日本。機緣巧合與僕人重聚、英勇禦敵戰劫匪、坐雪橇穿越冰原、燒輪船解燃眉之急、消除誤會重獲自由……這是一位怎樣的紳士呀！他的鎮定自若、慷慨大方、勇敢機智和善良細心給每一個人都留下了深刻的印象；正是他身上的這些異乎尋常的優秀品質使他每次均能逢兇化吉、轉危為安，最後勝利完成旅行；那個偵探則是一個意外捲入這次旅行中的特殊人物，他固執多疑、急功近利、精於算計，但卻忠於職守，出於職責和貪心，他一路跟蹤福格，被迫也進行了一次環球旅行。他想方設法處處給福格製造麻煩，阻止他順利完成計劃，但他的計謀卻一次次落空；而那個叫萬事通的法國小夥子則為這次旅行增添了不少笑料；他誠實勇敢、身懷絶技、正直善良，但卻容易上當受騙，他既為主人化解了不少危機也為主人製造了不少麻煩，他的加入使這次旅行變得趣味橫生；還有一位人物雖然話語不多，但卻有着舉足輕重的地位，她就是福格捨身搭救的阿嫵達夫人，也是後來的福格夫人。她光彩照人、溫柔高雅、善解人意，一直在福格身邊從精神上支持他、鼓勵他堅持到勝利。有了她的陪伴，這次環球之旅也變得浪漫多情和溫情脈脈了。故事的結局當然是如人所願：福格贏得了這次打賭，並且找到了他一生的伴侶。
《八十天環遊地球》-作者簡介
《八十天環遊地球》儒勒•凡爾納
儒勒•凡爾納（Verne•Jules1828-1905），法國最著名的科幻小說作傢。出生於海港城市，自幼迷上航海，曾離傢出走當水手，又被父親找回，送到巴黎學習法律。他畢業後不願做法官，卻去劇院做了秘書，開始撰寫劇本。凡爾納熱衷於各種科學新發現，也創作科幻小說打下紮實基礎。1863年，出版《氣球上的五個星期》，獲得成功。此後40餘年間筆耕不綴，幾乎每年都有一兩部新作問世，題材廣泛。他的科學幻想小說的總名是《在已知和未知的世界中奇異的漫遊》，簡稱《奇異的漫遊》。
主要作品：《八十天環遊地球》、《底兩萬裏》、《格蘭特船長的兒女》、《環繞月球》、《神秘島》、《世界主宰者》、《米歇爾•斯特羅哥夫》、《氣球上的五星期》、《空中歷險記》、《墨西哥的“幽靈”》、《佐奇瑞大師》、《牛博士》、《一個在冰雪中度過的鼕天》、《徵服者羅比爾》、《兩年假期》、《從地球到月球》、《八十天環繞地球》、《奧蘭情遊》、《升D先生和降E小姐》、《隱身新娘》、《昂梯菲爾奇遇記》、《大海入侵》、《烽火島》、《太陽係歷險記》、《巴爾薩剋考察隊的驚險遭遇》、《哈特拉斯船長歷險記》、《大木筏》、《喀爾巴阡古堡》、《金火山》、《魯濱遜叔叔》、《多瑙河領航員》、《魯濱遜學校》、《馬丁•帕茲》《旅行基金》、《漂逝的半島》、《桑道夫伯爵》、《黑印度》、《南非洲歷險記》、《突破封鎖》、《沙皇的郵件》、《印度貴婦的五億法郎》、《小把戲》。
《八十天環遊地球》-作品主題
《八十天環遊地球》的敘事技巧並不復雜，福格的這次旅行其實是和偵探菲剋斯的被動旅行同時平行展開的兩條敘事綫，這兩條綫既平行發展又交錯交匯，交叉點就是故事的衝突點，也是故事的出彩之處。而萬事通和阿嫵達都是福格旅行這條綫上的兩個小分支，他們的故事為全文增色不少。每一次衝突都為故事掀起了一個小高潮，福格的每次遇險也都讓人緊張萬分，尤其是小說的最後一部分：就在福格眼看勝利在望的時候，他偏偏被關在海關，當他被放出來之後，耽誤的時間已經太多，沒有可能準時趕回倫敦了。讀者都以為福格已經輸掉這次打賭了，可誰都沒有料到，萬事通發現他的主人居然算錯了日期，於是福格又出人意料地贏得了打賭。全文就是這樣在一次又一次的意外中讓讀者體會到了驚險和刺激的。
《八十天環遊地球》-內容分析
《八十天環遊地球》是儒勒.凡爾納一步引人入勝的小說。裏邊講了一個英國人福剋先生因和朋友打賭，在八十天內剋服重重睏難完成環遊地球一周的壯舉。書中不僅講了他們所遇到的千難萬險，而且在情節中體現出每個人的個性。沉着、機智、勇敢、冷靜的福剋和他活潑、好動、易衝動的僕人等等都給人留下了深刻的印象。
福剋先生到哪都是沉默不語的冷靜態度，即使是錯過了搭往美國的郵船浪費了他一天多的時間，還是在火車的鐵軌上遇見了千百萬匹牛群從軌道上穿過而耽誤了3個多小時，他總是面無表情，就像他已經知道他自己一定會贏的一樣。不過如果輸了這個打賭就得賠掉兩千萬英鎊——他所有的財産。一開始就講福剋先生是非常有生活規律的人，就像是個機器人，定了時間似的，總是一分不多一秒不差的做完他計劃之內的事。當然這八十天環遊地球也是他規定好的，前幾天，他的行程的確跟本子上的計劃一模一樣，到達一個地點，他就拿出小本子，在上面寫着，某月某日，到底哪裏。
可是世上沒有不起浪的海，在一路上的天氣變化，倒黴衝動但又絶對忠實的僕人路路通所造的麻煩和某些人為的成心破壞，使他們的路程總是沒有他們所預計的完美。可不管多麽糟糕的情況下，福剋先生總是能衝出重圍，總能有解决的辦法。當然他都是靠他揮灑留下的大把大把的英鎊。有他那麽用巨大資金連眼皮都不眨一下的人，現實生活中應該是不會有的。
最叫我驚心動魄的還是馬上要回到紐約完成他八十天的環球任務去領大把大把鈔票的時候，眼看就要到達紐約了，居然被一直跟在他們身邊的探警費剋斯當作銀行搶劫犯抓了起來。時間一分一秒的流逝，眼看勝利就在眼前，卻一下子成了泡影，福剋先生臉上仍是沒有一點表情。他心裏真的一點不急嗎？誰也不知道。
當費剋斯弄清了真相，連蹦帶跳的跑進監獄放了福剋時，福剋衹是兩手一揮當作伸懶腰打了費剋斯兩拳，就急忙趕去紐約。可是，當他們到達樓鐘下的時候，時針卻指着8點50分，他們衹晚了5分鐘!
福剋知道自己已經一無所有了，但還有一件值得慶幸的事就是在他們旅途上救了一位艾娥達夫人，現在她就要成為他的妻子了。當路路通到教堂通知神甫的時候，卻發現了一個驚人的消息，今天不是2月21號，是2月20號！他們整整早到了一天！可是福剋到達倫敦的時候是2月20號，怎麽會記錯呢？
原來是他們在這次旅途中不知不覺占了二十四小時的便宜。由於他這次旅行往東走，每當他們走過一條經綫他們就會提前4分鐘看到日出，整個地球一共分作三百六十度，用四分鐘乘三百六十，結果正好是二十四小時。此時此刻，還不到5分鐘，跟他打賭的會友正在俱樂部等他。
俱樂部裏的成員，包括所有到來的人們和記者攝影師都來到了現場。倒數一分鐘裏，第四十秒平安的過去了，到了第五十秒是平安無事！到了第五十五秒的時候，聽到外面人聲雷動，掌聲，歡呼聲，還夾雜着咒駡聲，五位紳士都站了起來！到了第五十七秒，這千鈞一發的時候，大廳的門被打開了，鐘擺還沒有來得及響第六十下，一群狂熱的群衆簇擁着福剋衝進了大門。衹見他沉靜地說：“先生們，我回來了。
《八十天環遊地球》-作品評價
凡爾納的《八十天環遊地球》故事生動幽默，妙語橫生，又能激發人們尤其是青少年熱愛科學、嚮往探險的熱情，所以一百多年來，一直受到世界各地讀者的歡迎。據聯合國教科文組織的資料表明，凡爾納是世界上被翻譯的作品最多的十大名傢之一。
凡爾納是一個非常優秀的通俗小說作傢，有一種能夠把自己的幻覺變得能夠觸摸的本領，其感覺是全方位的，從平淡的文學中傳達出某種人類的熱情。但凡爾納的《八十天環遊地球》中人物除了少數幾個外都是一模一樣的，他似乎塑造不出更重要的人物，人物都是臉譜化的簡單的好人壞人，沒有什麽心理活動；從其作品人物性別單一化上還可看出他對女人的偏見，隱隱流露出深受其苦的心態。此外凡爾納的作品中充滿了明顯的社會傾嚮，是一個愛國者（法國人最好）、民族解放主義者（支持被壓迫民族鬥爭），在某種程度上是一個無政府主義者（從某些作品中表現出無秩序者），最後還是一個銀河帝國主義者（有締造宇宙帝國的欲望）。
《八十天環遊地球》裏充滿了知識，但他本人卻是一名宇宙神秘主義者，對世界有一種神秘的崇拜。在他的小說中，有時候思考問題不夠深刻，主題也常常重複。
但總的來說，凡爾納的嘗試仍然是偉大的。正如1884年教皇在接見凡爾納時曾說：“我並不是不知道您的作品的科學價值，但我最珍重的卻是它們的純潔、道德價值和精神力量。”
結尾有點走到盡頭苦盡甘來的感覺，福格先生花了畢生的錢打了一個賭，這個賭令他找到了他生命的另一半，而由於一個糊塗探長的糊塗行動使他失去了那些錢，在這樣的情況下他還能樂觀地面對生活，結局出乎意料他以時差贏得了那些奬金。這個結尾就足見凡爾納的寫作功力。
《八十天環遊地球》-BBC版本
《BBC八十天環遊地球 》
海報海報
【譯名】BBC Around The World In 80 Days
【集數】7CD
【年代】2005年
【國傢】英國
【片長】7小時
【類別】紀錄片
【語言】英語
【格式】XVID5 AC3
【字幕】 （請點）英文字幕（請點）中文字幕
【簡介】： BBC王牌主持人，英國名喜劇演員Micheal Palin帶您展開了另一次絢麗的80天旅途，一起周遊世界。 與世界名著“環遊世界八十天”相同旅程！環遊世界旅行者必備的經典參考指南！你曾夢想環遊世界嗎？八十天內繞完地球一周，會是怎麽樣的奇幻刺激冒險？麥剋爾·帕林自告奮勇要完成這一部紀錄片（這輩子在這之前衹有一次經驗），跟時間賽跑，在全無劇本的情況下，踏上這段路程，所有的變化，毫無預警。這是前所未有的嘗試』 ---麥可帕林威尼斯的垃圾船、在埃及被撞壞的計程車、橫渡波斯灣的簡陋小船、中國的蒸汽船、越過換日綫的貨櫃船…… 麥剋爾·帕林環繞世界一週的壯舉，除了坐不完的船、上吐下泄，饑不擇食的鸚鵡之外，更有著目不暇給的驚喜!!
分集目錄
第1集 艱鉅挑戰
按照作著朱勒凡爾納的路徑，從倫敦由海路及陸路展開…
第 2集 阿拉伯恐慌
從蘇伊士港到沙烏地港，這一切都得看阿拉的旨意了…
第3集 古代水手
古加拉特水手帶領航行到印度孟買，但引擎卻突然故障..
第4集 驚險颳鬍
在印度第一大城孟買當街颳鬍後，轉輾前往馬德拉斯…
第5集 東方快車
從新加坡港出發到香港之前在南中國海遇到三個颱風…
第6集 深入遠東
航行到上海、橫濱，在東京稍為休息後面對廣大的太平洋..
第 7集 從換日綫到最後期限
時間漸逼但他們得通過美國和太西洋回到起點…
Plot summary
The story starts in London on October 2, 1872. Phileas Fogg is a wealthy English gentleman who lives unmarried in solitude at Number 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens. Despite his wealth, which is £40,000, Mr. Fogg, whose countenance is described as "repose in action", lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. As is noted in the first chapter, very little can be said about Mr. Fogg's social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84° Fahrenheit instead of 86°, Mr. Fogg hires the Frenchman Passepartout, who is about 30 years old, as a replacement.
Later, on that day, in the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph, stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000 from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on October 2, 1872, and thus is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, on December 21.
Map of the trip
The proposed schedule London to Suez rail and steamer 7 days
Suez to Bombay steamer 13 days
Bombay to Calcutta rail 3 days
Calcutta to Hong Kong steamer 13 days
Hong Kong to Yokohama steamer 6 days
Yokohama to San Francisco steamer 22 days
San Francisco to New York City rail 7 days
New York to London steamer and rail 9 days
Total 80 days
Fogg and Passepartout reach Suez in time. While disembarking in Egypt, they are watched by a Scotland Yard detective named Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of a bank robber. Because Fogg matches the description of the bank robber, Fix mistakes Fogg for the criminal. Since he cannot secure a warrant in time, Fix goes on board the steamer conveying the travellers to Bombay. During the voyage, Fix becomes acquainted with Passepartout, without revealing his purpose. On the voyage, Fogg promises the engineer a large reward if he gets them to Bombay early. They dock two days ahead of schedule.
After reaching India they take a train from Bombay to Calcutta. About halfway there Fogg learns that the Daily Telegraph newspaper article was wrong – the railroad ends at Kholby and starts 50 miles further on at Allahabad. Fogg promptly buys an elephant, hires a guide and starts toward Allahabad.
During the ride, they come across a suttee procession, in which a young Parsi woman, Aouda, is led to a sanctuary to be sacrificed by the process of sati the next day by Brahmins. Since the young woman is drugged with the smoke of opium and hemp and obviously not going voluntarily, the travellers decide to rescue her. They follow the procession to the site, where Passepartout secretly takes the place of Aouda's deceased husband on the funeral pyre, on which she is to be burned the next morning. During the ceremony, he then rises from the pyre, scaring off the priests, and carries the young woman away. Due to this incident, the two days gained earlier are lost but Fogg shows no sign of regret.
The travellers then hasten on to catch the train at the next railway station, taking Aouda with them. At Calcutta, they can finally board a steamer going to Hong Kong. Fix, who has secretly been following them, has Fogg and Passepartout arrested in Calcutta. However, they jump bail and Fix is forced to follow them to Hong Kong. On board, he shows himself to Passepartout, who is delighted to meet again his travelling companion from the earlier voyage.
In Hong Kong, it turns out that Aouda's distant relative, in whose care they had been planning to leave her, has moved, probably to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe. Meanwhile, still without a warrant, Fix sees Hong Kong as his last chance to arrest Fogg on British soil. He therefore confides in Passepartout, who does not believe a word and remains convinced that his master is not a bank robber. To prevent Passepartout from informing his master about the premature departure of their next vessel, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. In his dizziness, Passepartout still manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama, but neglects to inform Fogg.
Fogg, on the next day, discovers that he has missed his connection. He goes in search of a vessel that will take him to Yokohama. He finds a pilot boat that takes him and Aouda to Shanghai, where they catch a steamer to Yokohama. In Yokohama, they go on a search for Passepartout, believing that he may have arrived there on the original boat. They find him in a circus, trying to earn the fare for his homeward journey. Reunited, the four board a steamer taking them across the Pacific to San Francisco. Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey, but rather support him in getting back to Britain as fast as possible (to have him arrested there).
In San Francisco they get on a trans-American train to New York, encountering a number of obstacles along the way: a massive herd of bison crossing the tracks, a failing suspension bridge, and most disastrously, the train is attacked and overcome by Sioux Indians. After heroically uncoupling the locomotive from the carriages, Passepartout is kidnapped by the Indians, but Fogg rescues him after some soldiers volunteer to help. They continue by a wind-powered sledge over the snowy prairie to Omaha, where they get a train to New York.
Once in New York, and having missed departure of their ship (the China) by 35 minutes, Fogg starts looking for an alternative for the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He finds a small steamboat, destined for Bordeaux. However, the captain of the boat refuses to take the company to Liverpool, whereupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux for the price of $2000 per passenger. On the voyage, he bribes the crew to mutiny and take course for Liverpool. Against hurricane winds and going on full steam all the time, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. Fogg buys the boat at a very high price from the captain, soothing him thereby, and has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam.
The companions arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. However, once on British soil again, Fix produces a warrant and arrests Fogg. A short time later, the misunderstanding is cleared up—the actual bank robber had been caught three days earlier in Edinburgh. In response to this, Fogg, in a rare moment of impulse, punches Fix, who immediately falls to the ground. However, Fogg has missed the train and returns to London five minutes late, assured that he has lost the wager.
In his London house the next day, he apologises to Aouda for bringing her with him, since he now has to live in poverty and cannot financially support her. Aouda suddenly confesses that she loves him and asks him to marry her, which he gladly accepts. He calls for Passepartout to notify the reverend. At the reverend's, Passepartout learns that he is mistaken in the date, which he takes to be Sunday but which actually is Saturday due to the fact that the party travelled east, thereby gaining a full day on their journey around the globe, by crossing the International Date Line. He did not notice this after landing in North America because the only phase of the trip that depended on vehicles departing less often than daily was the Atlantic crossing, and he had hired his own ship for that.
Passepartout hurries back to Fogg, who immediately sets off for the Reform Club, where he arrives just in time to win the wager. Fogg marries Aouda and the journey around the world is complete.
Passepartout and Fogg's Baggage
Passepartout and Fogg carry only a carpet bag with only two shirts and three pairs of stockings each, a mackintosh, a travelling cloak, and a spare pair of shoes. The only book carried is Bradshaw's Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide. This contains timetables of trains and steamers. He also carried a huge roll of English banknotes-about twenty thousand pounds. He also left with twenty guineas won at whist, which he soon disposed of.
Background and analysis
Around the World in Eighty Days was written during difficult times, both for France and for Verne. It was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) in which Verne was conscripted as a coastguard, he was having money difficulties (his previous works were not paid royalties), his father had died recently, and he had witnessed a public execution which had disturbed him. However despite all this, Verne was excited about his work on the new book, the idea of which came to him one afternoon in a Paris café while reading a newspaper (see "Origins" below).
The technological innovations of the 19th century had opened the possibility of rapid circumnavigation and the prospect fascinated Verne and his readership. In particular three technological breakthroughs occurred in 1869-70 that made a tourist-like around-the-world journey possible for the first time: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). It was another notable mark in the end of an age of exploration and the start of an age of fully global tourism that could be enjoyed in relative comfort and safety. It sparked the imagination that anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, a feat previously reserved for only the most heroic and hardy of adventurers.
Verne is often characterised as a futurist or science fiction author but there is not a glimmer of science-fiction in this, his most popular work (at least in English speaking countries). Rather than any futurism, it remains a memorable portrait of the British Empire "on which the sun never sets" shortly before its very peak, drawn by an outsider. It is also interesting to note that, as of 2006, there has never been a critical edition of Around the World in Eighty Days. This is in part due to the poor translations available of his works, the stereotype of "science fiction" or "boys' literature". However, Verne's works were being looked at more seriously in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with new translations and scholarship appearing. It is also rather interesting to note that the book is a source of common notable English and extended British attitudes in quotes such as, "Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty ... endured the discomfort with true British phlegm, talking little, and scarcely able to catch a glimpse of each other" as seen in Chapter Twelve when the group is being jostled around on the elephant ride across the jungle. Also seen in chapter Twenty-Five, when Phileas Fogg is insulted in San Francisco, and Detective Fix acknowledges that "It was clear that Mr. Fogg was one of those Englishmen who, while they do not tolerate dueling at home, fight abroad when their honor is attacked."
It is interesting to note that The China's departure from New York on the day of Fogg's arrival there constitutes a minor flaw in Verne's logic, because Fogg had already crossed the Pacific without accounting for the International Date Line so his entire journey across North America was apparently conducted with an erroneous belief about the date and day of the week. Had The China sailed in agreement with the published steamer schedule used by Fogg, it would have departed a day later than Fogg expected, and he would have been able to catch it in spite of arriving what he thought was a few minutes late.
The closing date of the novel, 22 December 1872, was also the same date as the serial publication. As it was being published serially for the first time, some readers believed that the journey was actually taking place — bets were placed, and some railway companies and ship liner companies actually lobbied Verne to appear in the book. It is unknown if Verne actually submitted to their requests, but the descriptions of some rail and shipping lines leave some suspicion he was influenced.
Although a journey by hot air balloon has become one of the images most strongly associated with the story, this iconic symbol was never deployed in the book by Verne himself – the idea is briefly brought up in chapter 32, but dismissed, it "would have been highly risky and, in any case, impossible." However the popular 1956 movie adaptation Around the World in Eighty Days floated the balloon idea, and it has now become a part of the mythology of the story, even appearing on book covers. This plot element is reminiscent of Verne's earlier Five Weeks in a Balloon which first made him a well-known author.
Following Towle and d'Anver's 1873 English translation, many people have tried to follow in the footsteps of Fogg's fictional circumnavigation, often within self-imposed constraints:
* 1889 – Nellie Bly undertook to travel around the world in 80 days for her newspaper, the New York World. She managed to do the journey within 72 days. Her book about the trip, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, became a best seller.
* 1903 – James Willis Sayre, a Seattle theatre critic and arts promoter, set the world record for circling the earth using public transportation exclusively, completing his trip in 54 days, 9 hours, and 42 minutes.
* 1908 – Harry Bensley, on a wager, set out to circumnavigate the world on foot wearing an iron mask.
* 1984 - Nicholas Coleridge emulated Fogg's trip and wrote a book entitled Around the World in 78 Days about his experience.
* 1988 – Monty Python alumnus Michael Palin took a similar challenge without using aircraft as a part of a television travelogue, called Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days. He completed the journey in 79 days and 7 hours.
* 1993–present – The Jules Verne Trophy is held by the boat that sails around the world without stopping, and with no outside assistance in the shortest time.
* 2009 - in Around the World in 80 Days twelve celebrities performed a relay version of the journey for the BBC Children In Need charity appeal. This featured a carpet bag.
Origins
The idea of a trip around the world within a set period had clear external origins and was popular before Verne published his book in 1872. Even the title Around the World in Eighty Days is not original to Verne. About six sources have been suggested as the origins of the story:
Greek traveller Pausanias (c. 100 AD) wrote a work that was translated into French in 1797 as Voyage autour du monde ("Around the World"). Verne's friend, Jacques Arago, had written a very popular Voyage autour du monde in 1853. However in 1869/70 the idea of travelling around the world reached critical popular attention when three geographical breakthroughs occurred: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). In 1871 appeared Around the World by Steam, via Pacific Railway, published by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and an Around the World in A Hundred and Twenty Days by Edmond Planchut. Between 1869 and 1871, an American William Perry Fogg went around the world describing his tour in a series of letters to the Cleveland Leader, titled Round the World: Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (1872). Additionally, in early 1870, the Erie Railway Company published a statement of routes, times, and distances detailing a trip around the globe of 23,739 miles in seventy-seven days and twenty-one hours.
In 1872 Thomas Cook organised the first around the world tourist trip, leaving on 20 September 1872 and returning seven months later. The journey was described in a series of letters that were later published in 1873 as Letter from the Sea and from Foreign Lands, Descriptive of a tour Round the World. Scholars have pointed out similarities between Verne's account and Cook's letters, although some argue that Cook's trip happened too late to influence Verne. Verne, according to a second-hand 1898 account, refers to a Thomas Cook advertisement as a source for the idea of his book. In interviews in 1894 and 1904, Verne says the source was "through reading one day in a Paris cafe" and "due merely to a tourist advertisement seen by chance in the columns of a newspaper.” Around the World itself says the origins were a newspaper article. All of these point to Cook's advert as being a probable spark for the idea of the book.
Further, the periodical Le Tour du monde (3 October 1869) contained a short piece entitled "Around the World in Eighty Days", which refers to "140 miles" of railway not yet completed between Allahabad and Bombay, a central point in Verne's work. But even the Le Tour de monde article was not entirely original; it cites in its bibliography the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie, de l'Histoire et de l'Archéologie (August, 1869), which also contains the title Around the World in Eighty Days in its contents page. The Nouvelles Annales were written by Conrad Malte-Brun (1775—1826) and his son Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun (1816—1889). Scholars believe Verne was aware of either the Le Tour de monde article, or the Nouvelles Annales (or both), and consulted it — the 'Le Tour du monde even included a trip schedule very similar to Verne's final version.
A possible inspiration was the traveller George Francis Train, who made four trips around the world, including one in 80 days in 1870. Similarities include the hiring of a private train and his being imprisoned. Train later claimed "Verne stole my thunder. I'm Phileas Fogg."
Regarding the idea of gaining a day, Verne said of its origin: "I have a great number of scientific odds and ends in my head. It was thus that, when, one day in a Paris café, I read in the Siècle that a man could travel around the world in eighty days, it immediately struck me that I could profit by a difference of meridian and make my traveller gain or lose a day in his journey. There was a dénouement ready found. The story was not written until long after. I carry ideas about in my head for years – ten, or fifteen years, sometimes – before giving them form." In his lecture of April 1873 "The Meridians and the Calendar", Verne responded to a question about where the change of day actually occurred, since the international date line had only become current in 1880 and the Greenwich prime meridian was not adopted internationally until 1884. Verne cited an 1872 article in Nature, and Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841), which was also based on going around the world and the difference in a day linked to a marriage at the end. Verne even analysed Poe's story in his Edgar Poe and His Works (1864).
In summary either the periodical 'Le Tour du monde or the Nouvelles Annales, W. P. Fogg, probably Thomas Cook's advert (and maybe his letters) would be the main likely source for the book. In addition, Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" was clearly the inspiration for the lost day plot device.
Literary significance and criticism
Select quotes:
1. "We will only remind readers en passant of Around the World in Eighty Days, that tour de force of Mr Verne's—and not the first he has produced. Here, however, he has summarised and concentrated himself, so to speak ... No praise of his collected works is strong enough .. they are truly useful, entertaining, poignant, and moral; and Europe and America have merely produced rivals that are remarkably similar to them, but in any case inferior." (Henry Trianon, Le Constitutionnel, December 20, 1873).
2. "His first books, the shortest, Around the World or From the Earth to the Moon, are still the best in my view. However, the works should be judged as a whole rather than in detail, and on their results rather than their intrinsic quality. Over the last forty years, they have had an influence unequalled by any other books on the children of this and every country in Europe. And the influence has been good, in so far as can be judged today." (Léon Blum, L'Humanité, April 3, 1905).
3. "Jules Verne's masterpiece .. stimulated our childhood and taught us more than all the atlases: the taste of adventure and the love of travel. 'Thirty thousand banknotes for you, Captain, if we reach Liverpool within the hour.' This cry of Phileas Fogg's remains for me the call of the sea." (Jean Cocteau, Mon premier voyage (Tour du monde en 80 jours), Gallimard, 1936).
4. "Leo Tolstoy loved his works. 'Jules Verne's novels are matchless', he would say. 'I read them as an adult, and yet I remember they excited me. Jules Verne is an astonishing past master at the art of constructing a story that fascinates and impassions the reader. (Cyril Andreyev, "Preface to the Complete Works", trans. François Hirsch, Europe, 33: 112-113, 22-48).
5. "Jules Verne's work is nothing but a long meditation, a reverie on the straight line—which represents the predication of nature on industry and industry on nature, and which is recounted as a tale of exploration. Title: the adventures of a straight line ... The train.. cleaves through nature, jumps obstacles .. and continues both the actual journey—whose form is a furrow—and the perfect embodiment of human industry. The machine has the additional advantage here of not being isolated in a purpose-built, artificial place, like the factory or all similar structures, but of remaining in permanent and direct contact with the variety of nature." Pierre Macherey (1966).
Adaptations and influences
The book has been adapted many times in different forms.
Theatre
* A 1874 play written by Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, where it was shown 415 times.
* In 1946 Orson Welles produced and starred in Around the World, a musical stage version, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, that was only loosely faithful to Verne's original.
* A musical version, 80 Days, with songs by Ray Davies of The Kinks and a book by playwright Snoo Wilson, directed by Des McAnuff, ran at the Mandell Weiss Theatre in San Diego from August 23 to October 9, 1988. The musical received mixed responses from the critics. Ray Davies's multi-faceted music, McAnuff's directing, and the acting, however, were well received, with the show winning the "Best Musical" award from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.
* In 2001, the story was adapted for the stage by American playwright Mark Brown. In what has been described as "a wildly wacky, unbelievably creative, 90-miles-an-hour, hilarious journey" this award winning stage adaptation is written for five actors who portray thirty-nine characters.
* A stage musical adaptation premiered at the Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, PA in March 2007 with music by Ron Barnett, book and lyrics by Julianne Homokay, and direction by Robin McKercher.
Films
* A 1919 silent black and white parody by director Richard Oswald didn't disguise its use of locations in Germany as placeholders for the international voyage; part of the movie's joke is that Fogg's trip is obviously going to places in and around Berlin. There are no remaining copies of the film available today.
* The best known version was released in 1956, with David Niven and Cantinflas heading a huge cast. Many famous performers play bit parts, and part of the pleasure in this movie is playing "spot the star". The movie earned five Oscars, out of eight nominations. This film was also responsible for the popular misconception that Fogg and company travel by balloon for part of the trip in the novel, which has prompted later adaptations to include similar sequences. See Around the World in Eighty Days (1956 film) for details.
* 1963 saw the release of The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze. In this parody, the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Joe DeRita) are cast as the menservants of Phileas Fogg III (Jay Sheffield), great-grandson of the original around-the-world voyager. When Phileas Fogg III is tricked into replicating his ancestor's feat of circumnavigation, Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe dutifully accompany their master. Along the way, the boys get into and out of trouble in typical Stooge fashion.
* In 1983 the basic idea was expanded to a galactic scope in Japan's Ginga Shippu Sasuraiger, where a team of adventurers travel through the galaxy in a train-like ship that can transform into a giant robot. The characters are travelling to different planets in order to return within a certain period and win a bet.
* The story was again adapted for the screen in the 2004 film Around the World in 80 Days, starring Jackie Chan as Passepartout and Steve Coogan as Fogg. This version makes Passepartout the hero and the thief of the treasure of the Bank; Fogg's character is an eccentric inventor who bets a rival scientist that he can travel the world with (then) modern means of transportation.
TV
* An episode of the American television series, Have Gun – Will Travel, entitled "Fogg Bound", had the series' hero, Palladin (Richard Boone), escorting Phileas Fogg (Patric Knowles) through part of his journey. This episode was broadcasted by CBS on December 3, 1960.
* A 1989 three-part TV mini-series starred Pierce Brosnan as Fogg, Eric Idle as Passepartout, Peter Ustinov as Fix and several TV stars in cameo roles. The heroes travel a slightly different route than in the book and the script makes several contemporary celebrities part of the story who were not mentioned in the book. See Around the World in 80 Days (TV miniseries) for details.
* The BBC along with Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) created a 1989 television travel series following the book's path. It was one of many travelogues Michael Palin has done with the BBC and was a commercially successful transition from his comedic career. The latest series in a similar format was Michael Palin's New Europe in 2007.
* Around the World in 80 Days, a six part 2009 BBC One show in which twelve celebrities attempt to travel the world in aid of the Children in Need appeal. This featured a carpet bag similar to one carried by Fogg and Passeportout.
Animation
* An Indian Fantasy Story is an unfinished French/English co-production from 1938, featuring the wager at the Reform Club and the rescue of the Indian Princess. It was never completed as a full feature film.
* Around the World in 79 Days, a serial segment on the Hanna-Barbera show The Cattanooga Cats from 1969 to 1971.
* Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by American studio Rankin/Bass with Japanese Mushi productions as part of the Festival of Family Classics series.
* A one-season cartoon series Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by Australian Air Programs International. NBC aired the series in the US during the 1972-73 season on Saturday mornings.
* Puss 'N Boots Travels Around the World, a 1976 anime from Toei Animation
* A Walt Disney adaptation was produced in 1986. It featured Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy as the main characters.
* Around the World with Willy Fog by Spanish studio BRB Internacional from 1981 with a second season produced in 1993. This series depicts the characters as talking animals, and, despite adding some new characters and making some superficial modifications to the original story, it remains one of the most accurate adaptations of the book made for film or television. The show has gained a cult following in Finland, Britain, Germany and Spain. The first season is "Around the World in 80 Days", and the second season is "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"; all three books are by Jules Verne.
* Tweety's High-Flying Adventure is a direct-to-video cartoon by Warner Brothers from 2000 starring the Looney Tunes characters. It takes a great many liberties with the original story, but the central idea is still there - indeed, one of the songs in this film is entitled Around the World in Eighty Days. Tweety not only had to travel the world, he had to also collect 80 cat pawprints, all while evading the constant pursuits of Slyvester. This movie frequently appears on various US-based cable TV networks.
* "Around the World in 80 Narfs" is a Pinky and the Brain episode where the Brain claims to be able to make the travel in less than 80 days and the Pompous Explorers club agrees to make him their new president. With this, the Brain expects to be UK's new Prime Minister, what he considers back at that time, the fastest way to take over the world.
* A Mickey Mouse episode shows the effort of Mickey to get around the world in 80 days with the help of Goofy. The cartoon made reference to the ending of the novel. They realise they have a day extra by hearing church bells on what they believe to be a Monday. This referenced the ending with the vicar in the church.
Exhibitions
* "Around the World in 80 Days", group show curated by Jens Hoffman at the ICA London 2006
Cultural references
* "Around the Universe in 80 Days" is a song by the Canadian band Klaatu, and makes reference to a spaceship travelling around the galaxy, coming home to find the Earth second from the Sun. It was originally included on the 1977 album "Hope", but also appears on at least two compilations.
* There are at least four board games by this name.
* Worlds of Fun, an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, was conceived using the novel as its theme. It uses the hot air balloon in its logo, and the park's layout is based on world geography.
Argentinian avant-garde writer Julio Cortazar wrote in 1967 his book titled Around the Day in Eighty Worlds.
《安娜·卡列尼娜》（俄語：Анна Каренина）是俄國作傢列夫·托爾斯泰於1875年-1877年間創作的小說，被廣泛認為是寫實主義小說的經典代表。《安娜·卡列尼娜》完稿於1877年，1875年1月開始連載於〈俄羅斯公報〉上。小說甫發表就引發了熱烈的討論。托爾斯泰的堂姑母亞歷山德拉·安得烈葉夫娜·托爾斯泰婭曾寫道：“《安娜·卡列尼娜》的每個篇章都轟動了整個社會，引起了熱烈的爭論，毀譽參半，褒貶不一。似乎議論的是他們的切身問題一樣。”作品共分八章，開場白“幸福的家庭都是相似的，不幸的家庭各有各的不幸”（Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way），是托氏對婚姻和家庭的悟言。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-簡介
在托爾斯泰全部作品中，《戰爭與和平》、《安娜·卡列尼娜》、《復活》是三個里程碑，也是他的三部代表作品。《安娜·卡列尼娜》在這三部代表作中有其特殊的重要性，它是三部巨著之中藝術上最為完整的一部，並且體現了托氏思想和藝術發展道路的過渡與轉變，可以稱之為代表作中的代表作。它通過女主人公安娜追求愛情而失敗的悲劇，和列文在農村面臨危機而進行的改革與探索這兩條綫索，描繪了俄國從莫斯科到外省鄉村廣阔而豐富多彩的圖景，先後描寫了150多個人物，是一部社會百科全書式的作品。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-作傢簡介
列夫·尼古拉耶維奇·托爾斯泰（1828-1910）是俄國批判現實主義文學最偉大的代表，世界文學史上最偉大的作傢之一。在世界文壇中堪與莎士比亞、歌德、巴爾紮剋並肩而立的作傢當首推列夫托爾斯泰。他那三部鴻篇巨著無疑代表了19世紀世界現實主義文學的最高水平。列夫·托爾斯泰是俄國文學史上最偉大的文豪之一，他在文學方面的成就受到舉世矚目的認同。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-內容梗概
《安娜·卡列尼娜》通過女主人公安娜追求愛情而失敗的悲劇，和列文在農村面臨危機而進行的改革與探索這兩條綫索，描繪了俄國從莫斯科到外省鄉村廣阔而豐富多彩的圖景，先後描寫了150多個人物，是一部社會百科全書式的作品。
故事以雙綫進行，一為安娜，一為列文。托氏以二人為軸，描寫出不同的婚姻和家庭生活，更進一步則寫出當時俄國政治，宗教，農事景像。
在文中，列文為托氏之化身，代表着1860,70年代的社會轉型催生者。列文重視農事，對貴族生活不甚投入，住在鄉村和指導農民工作。列文熱愛吉蒂，起初求婚被拒，但幾經波折，終抱得美人歸，並一同住在鄉下。
女主人翁安娜，年青時和丈夫亞歷山大．卡列寧（Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin）結合，本婚姻美滿，育有一子。卡列寧在仕途上成功，安娜亦於交際場上光茫四射。故事始於奧布朗斯基公爵和英國家庭女教師戀愛，與妻子道麗鬧翻，求助於其妺安娜。安娜從聖．彼得堡到莫斯科替二人調解，在車站認識了年輕軍官佛倫斯基（Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky）。並在莫斯科一次舞會中和佛倫斯基發生致命的戀情，自此不能自拔，最後身敗名列並自殺身亡。佛倫斯基為求得美人，追隨安娜至聖彼得堡，最後兩人陷入熱戀。他倆頻頻幽會，最後安娜懷孕，並嚮丈夫承認了私情。卡列寧一度想與妻子分居，但為存面子，拒絶離婚並要求妻子終止戀情。然而安娜分娩時幾乎難産而瀕臨死亡，在死亡面前，卡列寧原諒了她。安娜病後無法壓抑自己對佛倫斯基的愛，終於離傢出走。佛倫斯基帶着安娜前往意大利旅行，這時安娜感到無比的幸福。其後回到俄羅斯，於兒子生日時，按捺不住偷偷會見自己的兒子。卻無法見容於俄國社會，上流社會把安娜看作墮落的女人，斷絶和她的往來。安娜衹得移居鄉下，靠寫作打發時間。二人共處日久，佛倫斯基和安娜在生活上的不信任日增。安娜感到很難過，認為情人為前途名譽離她而去，沮喪失望之下，安娜為處罰佛倫斯基，在火車駛近時跳下火車月臺自殺。葬禮之後，亞歷山大·卡列寧帶走她的女兒，佛倫斯基受到良心的譴責，大病一場，後來志願從軍，前往巴爾幹參戰，但求一死。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-創作背景資料
在世界文學的巍巍群山中，堪與莎士比亞、歌德、巴爾紮剋這幾座高峰比肩而立的俄國作傢當首推列夫·托爾斯泰。托爾斯泰是一位有思想的藝術傢，也是一位博學的藝術大師。他的作品展現的社會畫面之廣阔，藴含的思想之豐饒，融會的藝術、語言、哲學、歷史、民俗乃至自然科學等各種知識之廣博，常常令人望洋興嘆。《安娜·卡列尼娜》是他的一部既美不勝收而又博大精深的巨製。
巨大的思想和藝術價值，使得這部巨著一發表便引起巨大社會反響。托爾斯泰並沒有簡單地寫一個男女私通的故事，而是通過這個故事揭示了俄國社會中婦女的地位，並由此來鞭撻它的不合理性。作品描寫了個人感情需要與社會道德之間的衝突。1877年，小說首版發行。據同代人稱，它不啻是引起了“一場真正的社會大爆炸”，它的各個章節都引起了整個社會的“蹺足”註視，及無休無止的“議論、推崇、非難和爭吵，仿佛事情關涉到每個人最切身的問題”。
但不久，社會就公認它是一部了不起的巨著，它所達到的高度是俄國文學從未達到過的。偉大作傢陀思妥耶夫斯基興奮地評論道：“這是一部盡善盡美的藝術傑作，現代歐洲文學中沒有一部同類的東西可以和它相比！”他甚至稱托爾斯泰為“藝術之神”。而書中的女主人公安娜·卡列尼娜則成為世界文學史上最優美豐滿的女性形象之一。這個資産階級婦女解放的先鋒，以自己的方式追求個性的解放和真誠的愛情，雖然由於制度的桎梏，她的悲劇衹能以失敗而告終。但她以內心體驗的深刻與感情的強烈真摯，以蓬勃的生命力和悲劇性命運而扣人心弦。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》的構思始於1870年，而到1873年托爾斯泰纔開始動筆。這是他一生中精神睏頓的時期。最初，托爾斯泰是想寫一個上流社會已婚婦女失足的故事，但隨着寫作的深入，原來的構思不斷被修改。小說的初步創作不過僅用了短短的50天時間便得以完成，然而托爾斯泰很不滿意，他又花費了數十倍的時間來不斷修正，前後經過12次大的改動，遲至4年之後纔正式出版。這時，小說廢棄的手稿高達1米多！“全部都應當改寫，再改寫”，這是托爾斯泰經常挂在嘴邊的一句話。顯然，一部《安娜·卡列尼娜》與其說是寫出來的，不如說是改出來的。
正是在作者近乎苛刻的追求中，小說的重心有了巨大的轉移，安娜由最初構思中的“失了足的女人”（她趣味惡劣、賣弄風情，品行不端），變成了一個品格高雅、敢於追求真正的愛情與幸福的“叛女”形象，從而成為世界文學中最具反抗精神的女性之一。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》通過安娜追求愛情而失敗的悲劇，列文在農村面臨危機而進行的改革與探索這兩條綫索，描繪了俄國從莫斯科到外省鄉村廣阔而豐富多彩的圖景，先後描寫了150多個人物，是一部社會百科全書式的作品。小說藝術上最突出的特點是首次成功地采用了兩條平行綫索互相對照、相輔相成的“拱門式” 結構，並在心理描寫上細緻入微、精妙絶倫。小說中那大段的人物內心獨白，無疑都是現實主義描寫的典範。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-人物形象
安娜
《安娜·卡列尼娜》是由兩條主要的平行綫索和一條聯結性次要綫索結構而成的，整體上反映了農奴製改革後“一切都翻了一個身，一切都剛剛安排下來”的那個時代在政治、經濟、道德、心理等方面的矛盾。小說通過安娜—— 卡列寧——渥倫斯基綫索展示了封建主義家庭關係的瓦解和道德的淪喪；通過列文——吉提綫索描繪出資本主義勢力侵入農村後，地主經濟面臨危機的情景，揭示出作者執着地探求出路的痛苦心情。而道麗——奧勃朗斯基這一次要綫索巧妙地聯結兩條主綫，在家庭思想上三條綫索相互對應、參照，勾勒出三種不同類型的家庭模式和生活方式。作者以這種建築學而自豪，圓拱將兩座大廈聯結得天衣無縫，“使人覺察不出什麽地方是拱頂”。
主人公安娜·卡列尼娜是世界文學史上最優美豐滿的女性形象之一。她以內心體驗的深刻與感情的強烈真摯，以蓬勃的生命力和悲劇性命運而扣人心弦。
安娜第一次出現時的音容笑貌令人難以忘懷：她姿態端麗、溫雅，一雙濃密的睫毛掩映下的眼睛中“有一股被壓抑的生氣在她的臉上流露……仿佛有一種過剩的生命力洋溢在她的全身心，違反她的意志”，在眼神和微笑中顯現出來。在這幅出色的肖像中展現了安娜的精神美，也提示我們去探究她的生活之謎。安娜父母早逝，在姑母包辦下嫁給了比她大二十歲的大官僚卡列寧。婚後在宗法思想支配下她曾安於天命，衹是把全部感情寄托在兒子身上。渥倫斯基喚醒了她晚熟的愛情。她渴望自由而大膽地愛，不願像別特西公爵夫人那樣在傢宴上公開接待情人；也不願接受丈夫的建議仍然保持表面的夫妻關係，偷偷與情人往來；終於衝出家庭與渥倫斯基結合，公然與整個上流社會對抗。從此安娜失去了一個貴族婦女在社交界的一切地位和權利，除了渥倫斯基的愛，她一無所有，因此，她熱烈而執着地獻身於這種愛。確實，在國外，在渥倫斯基的莊園裏，安娜曾體驗過短暫的“不可原諒的幸福”。她丟棄母親的天職，但內心無法平息因失去愛子而産生的悲傷；她想昂起驕傲的頭，宣稱她是幸福的女人，但卻擺脫不掉有罪的妻子的意識。她的靈魂一直受到折磨。而孤註一擲的、囿於自我的對渥倫斯基的愛又不可能得到相應的感情反響，安娜絶望了，她在臨終前滿含怨憤地喊出：“一切全是虛偽、全是謊言、全是欺騙、全是罪惡。”
安娜的形象在作傢創作過程中有過極大變化：從一個低級趣味的失足女人改寫成真誠、嚴肅、寧為玉碎、不為瓦全的女性。托爾斯泰通過安娜的愛情、家庭悲劇寄寓了他對當時動蕩的俄國社會中人的命運和倫理道德準則的思考。作傢歌頌人的生命力，贊揚人性的合理要求；同時，他又堅决否定一切政治、社會活動（包括婦女解放運動）對改善人們命運的作用，強調母親——婦女天職的重要性。作傢世界觀的矛盾構成安娜形象的復雜性。一百多年來各國作傢按自己的理解把安娜搬上舞臺、銀幕、熒光屏。安娜形象一直激動着不同時代、不同民族的讀者，這正說明安娜形象的藝術生命力是不朽的。
列文
列文則是托爾斯泰式主人公中自傳性特別強的一個人物，他在托爾斯泰的創作中起着承前啓後的作用，在他身上藝術地再現了作傢世界觀激變前夕的思想感情和生活感受，從結構安排來看，列文的幸福家庭與安娜的不幸家庭互為對照，但從思想探索來看，列文婚後卻産生了精神危機，他為貴族階級自甘敗落而憂心忡忡。他研究勞動力在農業生産中的作用，製定“不流血的革命”方案，探討人生的目的，但卻毫無出路。羅曼·羅蘭指出，列文不僅體現了托爾斯泰看待事物的既保守又民主的觀點，而且“列文和吉提的戀愛，他倆婚後的頭幾年生活，就是作傢自己家庭生活回憶的搬演。同樣，列文哥哥之死也是托爾斯泰的哥哥德米特裏之死的痛苦追憶”。而作品的尾聲“則是作者本人趨嚮精神革命的過渡”。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-主題思想
關於列夫·托爾斯泰，馬原有一個說法，他認為托爾斯泰是小說史上爭議最少的作傢。這裏所說的爭議最少，指的是他在文學史上的地位。也就是說，你可以喜歡或不喜歡托爾斯泰的作品，但似乎無人能夠否認他作為一位傑出思想傢和第一流小說傢的地位。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》在列夫·托爾斯泰的所有作品中，是寫得最好的。《戰爭與和平》也許更波瀾壯闊、更雄偉、更有氣勢，但它不如《安娜·卡列尼娜》那麽純粹、那麽完美。順便說一句，列夫·托爾斯泰並不是一個出色的文體傢，但他的文體的精美與和諧無與倫比，這並非來自作者對小說修辭、技巧、敘述方式的刻意追求，而僅僅源於藝術上的直覺。
在《安娜·卡列尼娜》這部小說中，列夫·托爾斯泰塑造了許多在文學史上光芒四射的人物：安娜、渥倫斯基、吉提、列文、卡列寧、奧布浪斯基公爵……在這些人物中，惟一一個在生活中左右逢源，帶有點喜劇色彩的就是奧布浪斯基公爵，其他的人物無不與死亡主題有關。如果我們簡單地歸納一下，這部作品主要寫了兩個故事：其一，是安娜與渥倫斯基從相識、熱戀到毀滅的過程，以及圍繞這一進程的所有社會關係的糾葛，其二是列文的故事以及他在宗教意義上的展開個人思考。
正如那句著名的開場白所顯示的一樣，作者對現實的思考是以家庭婚姻為基本單位而展開的，至少涉及到了四種婚姻或愛情答案：卡列寧夫婦，安娜和渥倫斯基，奧布浪斯基夫婦，列文與吉提。每一個答案都意味着罪惡和災難。安娜是惟一經歷了兩種不同婚姻(愛情)形式的人物。在作者所賦予的安娜的性格中，我以為激情和活力是其基本的內涵，正是這種壓抑不住的活力使美貌純潔的吉提相形見絀；正是這種被喚醒的激情使她與卡列寧的婚姻、甚至彼得堡習以為常的社交生活、甚至包括孩子謝遼沙都黯然失色。
與這種激情與活力相伴而來的是不顧一切的勇氣。當小說中寫到渥倫斯基在賽馬會上摔下馬來，安娜因失聲大叫而暴露了"姦情"之時，對丈夫說出下面這段話是需要一點勇氣的，“我愛他，我是他的情婦……隨你高興怎麽樣把我處置吧。”托爾斯泰對這種激情真是太熟悉了，我們不妨想一想《戰爭與和平》中的娜塔莎，《復活》中的卡秋莎，還有蟄伏於作者心中的那頭強壯的熊--它的咆哮聲一直睏擾着列夫·托爾斯泰。
馬丁·杜伽爾曾認為，托爾斯泰是最具洞察力的作傢，他的目光十分銳利，能夠穿透生活的壁壘而發現隱含其中的"真實"。但我卻傾嚮於認為，從根本上來說，托爾斯泰是一個圖解自我觀念的作傢，不管是早期還是晚期作品，主題上的聯繫十分清晰，尤其是《戰爭與和平》、《安娜·卡列尼娜》兩部巨著，其中的人物、情節、主題多有雷同之處，他的觀念的疆域並不寬廣，他的素材也不豐富，但這並不妨礙托爾斯泰的偉大，正如塞萬提斯的狹隘主題並不妨礙《堂吉訶德》的偉大一樣。小說的真實來自他的智慧，敏感而浩瀚的心靈，而更為重要的是他的誠實。維特根斯坦在讀完《哈澤·穆拉特》以後曾感慨地說： “他(托爾斯泰)是一個真正的人，他有權寫作。”
托爾斯泰與《安娜·卡列尼娜》
關於列夫·托爾斯泰，馬原有一個說法，他認為托爾斯泰是小說史上爭議最少的作傢。我理解他的意思，這裏所說的爭議最少，指的是他在文學史上的地位。也就是說，你可以喜歡或不喜歡托爾斯泰的作品，但似乎無人能夠否認他作為一位傑出思想傢和第一流小說傢的地位。
在我的學生中間，對托爾斯泰不屑一顧的大有人在。有一次碰到一位學生，依我看他的導師是一名頗有學問的俄國文學專傢，不知何故，該生卻對恩師頗為不滿，提出是否可以轉到我的名下，讓我給他指導。我問他為何要更換導師，他便列舉了原導師的幾個罪狀，其中一條是：他竟然讓我去讀什麽《安娜·卡列尼娜》。可見，在這些言必稱美國的學生們的頭腦中，老托爾斯泰顯然已經是一個不中用的古董了。我對他說，導師就不必換了。因為如果我當你的導師，第一本推薦的書恐怕還是《安娜·卡列尼娜》。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》不僅是我最喜歡的長篇小說，而且我也認為，在列夫·托爾斯泰的所有作品中，它也是寫得最好的。《戰爭與和平》也許更波瀾壯闊、更雄偉、更有氣勢，但它不如《安娜·卡列尼娜》那麽純粹、那麽完美。順便說一句，列夫·托爾斯泰並不是一個出色的文體傢，但他的文體的精美與和諧無與倫比，這並非來自作者對小說修辭、技巧、敘述方式的刻意追求，而僅僅源於藝術上的直覺。
在《安娜·卡列尼娜》這部小說中，列夫·托爾斯泰塑造了許多在文學史上光芒四射的人物：安娜、渥倫斯基、吉提、列文、卡列寧、奧布浪斯基公爵……在這些人物中，惟一一個在生活中左右逢源，帶有點喜劇色彩的就是奧布浪斯基公爵，其他的人物無不與死亡主題有關。如果我們簡單地歸納一下，這部作品主要寫了兩個故事：其一，是安娜與渥倫斯基從相識、熱戀到毀滅的過程，以及圍繞這一進程的所有社會關係的糾葛，其二是列文的故事以及他在宗教意義上的展開個人思考。
正如那句著名的開場白所顯示的一樣，作者對現實的思考是以家庭婚姻為基本單位而展開的，至少涉及到了四種婚姻或愛情答案：卡列寧夫婦，安娜和渥倫斯基，奧布浪斯基夫婦，列文與吉提。每一個答案都意味着罪惡和災難。安娜是惟一經歷了兩種不同婚姻(愛情)形式的人物。在作者所賦予的安娜的性格中，我以為激情和活力是其基本的內涵，正是這種壓抑不住的活力使美貌純潔的吉提相形見絀；正是這種被喚醒的激情使她與卡列寧的婚姻、甚至彼得堡習以為常的社交生活、甚至包括孩子謝遼沙都黯然失色。
與這種激情與活力相伴而來的是不顧一切的勇氣。當小說中寫到渥倫斯基在賽馬會上摔下馬來，安娜因失聲大叫而暴露了“姦情”之時，對丈夫說出下面這段話是需要一點勇氣的，“我愛他，我是他的情婦……隨你高興怎麽樣把我處置吧。”托爾斯泰對這種激情真是太熟悉了，我們不妨想一想《戰爭與和平》中的娜塔莎，《復活》中的卡秋莎，還有蟄伏於作者心中的那頭強壯的熊——它的咆哮聲一直睏擾着列夫·托爾斯泰。
馬丁·杜伽爾曾認為，托爾斯泰是最具洞察力的作傢，他的目光十分銳利，能夠穿透生活的壁壘而發現隱含其中的"真實"。但我卻傾嚮於認為，從根本上來說，托爾斯泰是一個圖解自我觀念的作傢，不管是早期還是晚期作品，主題上的聯繫十分清晰，尤其是《戰爭與和平》、《安娜·卡列尼娜》兩部巨著，其中的人物、情節、主題多有雷同之處，他的觀念的疆域並不寬廣，他的素材也不豐富，但這並不妨礙托爾斯泰的偉大，正如塞萬提斯的狹隘主題並不妨礙《堂吉訶德》的偉大一樣。小說的真實來自他的智慧，敏感而浩瀚的心靈，而更為重要的是他的誠實。維特根斯坦在讀完《哈澤·穆拉特》以後曾感慨地說：“他(托爾斯泰)是一個真正的人，他有權寫作。”
Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (Russian spelling Maria Gartung, 1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.[citation needed] Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy began reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.
Although Russian critics dismissed the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style", and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as "the best ever written".[citation needed] The novel is currently enjoying popularity as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in The Top Ten, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest novel ever written".
The title: Anna Karenin vs Anna Karenina
The title has been translated as both Anna Karenin and Anna Karenina. The first instance naturalizes the Russian name into English, whereas the second is a direct transliteration of the actual Russian name. As Vladimir Nabokov explains: "In Russian, a surname ending in a consonant acquires a final 'a' (except for the cases of such names that cannot be declined) when designating a woman".
Nabokov favours the first convention - removing the Russian 'a' to naturalize the name into English - but subsequent translators mostly allow Anna's actual Russian name to stand. Larissa Volokhonsky, herself a Russian, prefers the second option, while other translators like Constance Garnett and Rosemary Edmonds prefer the first solution.
Main characters
* Anna Arkadyevna Karenina – Stepan Oblonsky's sister, Karenin's wife and Vronsky's lover. She is also a minor character in War and Peace. [citation needed]
* Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky – Lover of Anna
* Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky ("Stiva") – a civil servant and Anna's brother.
* Princess Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya ("Dolly") – Stepan's wife
* Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin – a senior statesman and Anna's husband, twenty years her senior.
* Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin ("Kostya") – Kitty's suitor and then husband.
* Nikolai Levin – Konstantin's brother
* Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev – Konstantin's half-brother
* Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty") – Dolly's younger sister and later Levin's wife
* Princess Elizaveta ("Betsy") – Anna's wealthy, morally loose society friend and Vronsky's cousin
* Countess Lidia Ivanovna – Leader of a high society circle that includes Karenin, and shuns Princess Betsy and her circle. She maintains an interest in the mystical and spiritual
* Countess Vronskaya – Vronsky's mother
* Sergei Alexeyitch Karenin ("Seryozha") – Anna and Karenin's son
* Anna ("Annie") – Anna and Vronsky's daughter
* Varenka – a young orphaned girl, semi-adopted by an ailing Russian noblewoman, whom Kitty befriends while abroad
Plot summary
The novel is divided into eight parts. The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines:
“ Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ”
Part 1
The novel opens with a scene introducing Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky, "Stiva", a Moscow aristocrat and civil servant who has been unfaithful to his wife Darya Alexandrovna, nicknamed "Dolly". Dolly has discovered his affair - with the family's governess - and the house and family are in turmoil. Stiva's affair and his reaction to his wife's distress shows an amorous personality that he cannot seem to suppress.
In the midst of the turmoil, Stiva reminds the household that his married sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina is coming to visit from Saint Petersburg.
Meanwhile, Stiva's childhood friend Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin ("Kostya") arrives in Moscow with the aim of proposing to Dolly's youngest sister Princess Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, "Kitty". Levin is a passionate, restless but shy aristocratic landowner who, unlike his Moscow friends, chooses to live in the country on his large estate. He discovers that Kitty is also being pursued by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, an army officer.
At the railway station to meet Anna, Stiva bumps into Vronsky. Vronsky is there to meet his mother. Anna and the Countess Vronskaya have travelled together in the same carriage and talked together. As the family members are reunited, and Vronsky sees Anna for the first time, a railway worker accidentally falls in front of a train and is killed. Anna interprets this as an "evil omen." Vronsky is infatuated with Anna. Anna, who is uneasy about leaving her young son, Seryozha, alone for the first time, talks openly and emotionally to Dolly about Stiva's affair and convinces Dolly that her husband still loves her, despite his infidelity. Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva.
Dolly's youngest sister, Kitty, comes to visit her sister and Anna. Kitty, just 18, is in her first season as a debutante and is expected to make an excellent match with a man of her social standing. Vronsky has been paying her considerable attention, and she expects to dance with him at a ball that evening. Kitty is very struck by Anna's beauty and personality and is infatuated with her. When Levin proposes to Kitty at her home, she clumsily turns him down, because she believes she is in love with Vronsky and that he will propose to her.
At the ball, Vronsky pays Anna considerable attention, and dances with her, choosing her as a partner instead of Kitty, who is shocked and heartbroken. Kitty realises that Vronsky has fallen in love with Anna, and that despite his overt flirtations with her he has no intention of marrying her and in fact views his attentions to her as mere amusement, believing that she does the same.
Anna, shaken by her emotional and physical response to Vronsky, returns at once to Saint Petersburg. Vronsky travels on the same train. During the overnight journey, the two meet and Vronsky confesses his love. Anna refuses him, although she is deeply affected by his attentions to her.
Levin, crushed by Kitty's refusal, returns to his estate farm, abandoning any hope of marriage, and Anna returns to her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a senior government official, and their son Sergei ("Seryozha") in Petersburg.
Tatiana Samoilova as Anna in the 1967 Soviet screen version of Tolstoy's novel.
On seeing her husband for the first time since her encounter with Vronsky, Anna realises that she finds him repulsive, noting the odd way that his ears press against his hat.
Part 2
The Shcherbatskys consult doctors over Kitty's health which has been failing since she realizes that Vronsky did not love her and that he did not intend to propose marriage to her, and that she refused and hurt Levin, whom she cares for, in vain. A specialist doctor advises that Kitty should go abroad to a health spa to recover. Dolly speaks to Kitty and understands that she is suffering because of Vronsky and Levin. Kitty, humiliated by Vronsky and tormented by her rejection of Levin, upsets her sister by referring to Stiva's infidelity and says she could never love a man who betrayed her.
Stiva stays with Levin on his country estate when he makes a sale of a plot of land, to provide funds for his expensive city lifestyle. Levin is upset at the poor deal he makes with the buyer and his lack of understanding of the rural lifestyle.
In St. Petersburg, Anna begins to spend more time with the fashionable socialite and gossip Princess Betsy and her circle, in order to meet Vronsky, Betsy's cousin. Vronsky continues to pursue Anna. Although Anna initially tries to reject him, she eventually succumbs to his attentions.
Karenin warns Anna of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is becoming a subject of society gossip. He is concerned about his and his wife's public image, although he believes that Anna is above suspicion.
Vronsky, a keen horseman, takes part in a steeplechase event, during which he rides his mare Frou-Frou too hard and she falls and breaks her back. Vronsky escapes with minimal injuries but is devastated that his mare must be shot. Anna tells him that she is pregnant with his child, and is unable to hide her distress when Vronsky falls from the racehorse. Karenin is also present at the races and remarks to her that her behaviour is improper. Anna, in a state of extreme distress and emotion, confesses her affair to her husband. Karenin asks her to break off the affair to avoid society gossip and believes that their relationship can then continue as previously.
Kitty goes with her mother to a resort at a German spa to recover from her ill health. There they meet the Pietist Madame Stahl and the saintly Varenka, her adopted daughter. Influenced by Varenka, Kitty becomes extremely pious, but is disillusioned by her father`s criticism. She then returns to Moscow.
Part 3
Levin continues his work on his large country estate, a setting closely tied to his spiritual thoughts and struggles. Levin wrestles with the idea of falseness, wondering how he should go about ridding himself of it, and criticising what he feels is falseness in others. He develops ideas relating to agriculture and the unique relationship between the agricultural labourer and his native land and culture. He believes that the agricultural reforms of Europe will not work in Russia because of the unique culture and personality of the Russian peasant.
Levin pays Dolly a visit, and she attempts to understand what happened between him and Kitty and to explain Kitty's behaviour to him. Levin is very agitated by Dolly's talk about Kitty, and he begins to feel distant from her as he perceives her behaviour towards her children as false. Levin resolves to forget Kitty and contemplates the possibility of marriage to a peasant woman. However, a chance sighting of Kitty in her carriage as she travels to Dolly's house makes Levin realise he still loves her.
In St. Petersburg, Karenin crushes Anna by refusing to separate from her. He insists that their relationship remain as it was and threatens to take away their son Seryozha if she continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky.
Part 4
Anna continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky. Karenin begins to find the situation intolerable. He talks with a lawyer about obtaining a divorce. In Russia at that time, divorce could only be requested by the innocent party in an affair, and required either that the guilty party confessed (which would ruin Anna's position in society) or that the guilty party was discovered in the act. Karenin forces Anna to give him some letters written to her by Vronsky as proof of the affair. However, Anna's brother Stiva argues against it and persuades Karenin to speak with Dolly first.
Dolly broaches the subject with Karenin and asks him to reconsider his plans to divorce Anna. She seems to be unsuccessful, but Karenin changes his plans after hearing that Anna is dying after a difficult childbirth. At her bedside, Karenin forgives Vronsky. Vronsky, embarrassed by Karenin's magnanimity, attempts suicide by shooting himself. He fails in his attempt but wounds himself badly.
Anna recovers, having given birth to a daughter, Anna ("Annie"). Although her husband has forgiven her, and has become attached to the new baby, Anna cannot bear living with him. She hears that Vronsky is about to leave for a military posting in Tashkent and becomes desperate. Stiva finds himself pleading to Karenin on her behalf to free her by giving her a divorce. Vronsky is intent on leaving for Tashkent, but changes his mind after seeing Anna.
The couple leave for Europe - leaving behind Anna's son Seryozha - without obtaining a divorce.
Much more straightforward is Stiva's matchmaking with Levin: he arranges a meeting between Levin and Kitty which results in their reconciliation and betrothal.
Part 5
Levin and Kitty marry and immediately go to start their new life together on Levin's country estate. The couple are happy but do not have a very smooth start to their married life and take some time to get used to each other. Levin feels some dissatisfaction at the amount of time Kitty wants to spend with him and is slightly scornful of her preoccupation with domestic matters, which he feels are too prosaic and not compatible with his romantic ideas of love.
A few months later, Levin learns that his brother Nikolai is dying of consumption. Levin wants to go to him, and is initially angry and put out that Kitty wishes to accompany him. Levin feels that Kitty, whom he has placed on a pedestal, should not come down to earth and should not mix with people from a lower class. Levin assumes her insistence on coming must relate to a fear of boredom from being left alone, despite her true desire to support her husband in a difficult time. Kitty persuades him to take her with him after much discussion, where she proves a great help nursing Nikolai for weeks over his slow death. She also discovers she is pregnant.
In Europe, Vronsky and Anna struggle to find friends who will accept their situation. Whilst Anna is happy to be finally alone with Vronsky, he feels suffocated. They cannot socialize with Russians of their own social set and find it difficult to amuse themselves. Vronsky, who believed that being with Anna in freedom was the key to his happiness, finds himself increasingly bored and unsatisfied. He takes up painting, and makes an attempt to patronize an émigré Russian artist of genius. Vronsky cannot see that his own art lacks talent and passion, and that his clever conversation about art is an empty shell. Bored and restless, Anna and Vronsky decide to return to Russia.
In Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky stay in one of the best hotels but take separate suites. It becomes clear that whilst Vronsky is able to move in Society, Anna is barred from it. Even her old friend, Princess Betsy - who has had affairs herself - evades her company. Anna starts to become very jealous and anxious that Vronsky no longer loves her.
Karenin is comforted – and influenced – by the strong-willed Countess Lidia Ivanovna, an enthusiast of religious and mystic ideas fashionable with the upper classes. She counsels him to keep Seryozha away from Anna and to make him believe that his mother is dead. However, Seryozha refuses to believe that this is true. Anna manages to visit Seryozha unannounced and uninvited on his ninth birthday, but is discovered by Karenin.
Anna, desperate to resume at least in part her former position in Society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of Petersburg's high society are present. Vronsky begs her not to go, but is unable to bring himself to explain to her why she cannot go. At the theatre, Anna is openly snubbed by her former friends, one of whom makes a deliberate scene and leaves the theatre. Anna is devastated.
Unable to find a place for themselves in Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's country estate.
Part 6
Dolly, her mother the Princess Scherbatskaya, and Dolly's children spend the summer with Levin and Kitty on the Levins' country estate. The Levins' life is simple and unaffected, although Levin is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Scherbatskys. He is able to cope until he is consumed with an intense jealousy when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Levin tries to overcome his jealousy but eventually succumbs to it and in an embarrassing scene evicts Veslovsky from his house. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky, whose estate is close by.
Dolly also pays a short visit to Anna at Vronsky's estate. The difference between the Levins' aristocratic but simple home life and Vronsky's overtly luxurious and lavish country home strikes Dolly, who is unable to keep pace with Anna's fashionable dresses or Vronsky's extravagant spending on the hospital he is building. However, all is not quite well with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly is also struck by Anna's anxious behaviour and new habit of half closing her eyes when she alludes to her difficult position. When Veslovsky flirts openly with Anna, she plays along with him even though she clearly feels uncomfortable. Vronsky makes an emotional request to Dolly, asking her to convince Anna to divorce her husband so that the two might marry and live normally. Dolly broaches the subject with Anna, who appears not to be convinced. However, Anna is becoming intensely jealous of Vronsky, and cannot bear it when he leaves her for short excursions. The two have started to quarrel about this and when Vronsky leaves for several days of provincial elections, a combination of boredom and suspicion convinces Anna she must marry him in order to prevent him from leaving her. She writes to Karenin, and she and Vronsky leave the countryside for Moscow.
Part 7
The Levins are in Moscow for Kitty's confinement. Despite initial reservations, Levin quickly gets used to the fast-paced, expensive and frivolous Moscow society life. He starts to accompany Stiva to his Moscow gentleman's club, where drinking and gambling are popular pastimes. At the club, Levin meets Vronsky and Stiva introduces them. Levin and Stiva pay a visit to Anna, who is occupying her empty days by being a patroness to an orphaned English girl. Levin is uneasy about the visit and not sure it is the proper thing to do, and Anna easily puts Levin under her spell. When he confesses to Kitty where he has been, she accuses him falsely of falling in love with Anna. The couple are reconciled, realising that Moscow life has had a negative, corrupting effect on Levin.
Anna, who has made a habit of inducing the young men who visit her to fall in love with her, cannot understand why she can attract a man like Levin, who has a young and beautiful new wife, but cannot attract Vronsky in the way she wants to. Anna's relationship with Vronsky is under increasing strain, as whilst he can move freely in Society - and continues to spend considerable time doing so to stress to Anna his independence as a man - she is excluded from all her previous social connections. She is estranged from baby Annie, her child with Vronsky and her increasing bitterness, boredom, jealousy and emotional strain cause the couple to argue. Anna uses morphine to help her sleep, a habit we learned she had begun during her time living with Vronsky at his country estate. Now she has become dependent on it.
After a long and difficult labour, Kitty gives birth to a son, Dmitri, nicknamed Mitya. Levin is both extremely moved and horrified by the sight of the tiny, helpless baby.
Stiva visits Karenin to encourage his commendation for a new post he is seeking. During the visit he asks him to grant Anna a divorce, but Karenin's decisions are now governed by a French "clairvoyant" – recommended by Lidia Ivanovna – who apparently has a vision in his sleep during Stiva's visit, and gives Karenin a cryptic message that is interpreted as meaning that he must decline the request for divorce.
Anna becomes increasingly jealous and irrational towards Vronsky, whom she suspects of having love affairs with other women, and of giving in to his mother's plans to marry him off to a rich Society woman. There is a bitter row, and Anna believes that the relationship is over. She starts to think of suicide as an escape from her torments. In her mental and emotional confusion, she sends a telegram to Vronsky asking him to come home to her, and pays a visit to Dolly and Kitty. Anna's confusion overcomes her, and in a parallel to the railway worker's accidental death in part 1, she commits suicide by throwing herself in the path of a train.
Part 8
Stiva gets the job he desired so much, and Karenin takes custody of baby Annie. A group of Russian volunteers, including Vronsky, who does not plan to return alive, depart from Russia to fight in the Orthodox Serbian revolt that has broken out against the Turks. Meanwhile, a lightning storm occurs at Levin's estate while his wife and newborn son are outside, causing him to fear for the safety of both of them, and to realize that he does indeed love his son similarly to how he loves Kitty. Also, Kitty's family concerns, namely, that a man as altruistic as her husband does not consider himself to be a Christian, are also addressed when Levin decides after talking to a peasant that devotion to living righteously as decreed by the Christian God is the only justifiable reason for living. After coming to this decision, but without telling anyone about it, he is initially displeased that this change of thought does not bring with it a complete transformation of his behavior to be more righteous. However, at the end of the book he comes to the conclusion that this fact, and the fact that there are other religions with similar views on goodness that are not Christian, are acceptable and that neither of these things diminish the fact that now his life can be meaningfully oriented toward goodness.
Style
Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered by many critics to be transitional, forming a bridge between the realist and modernist novel. The novel is narrated from a third-person-omniscient perspective, shifting between the perspectives of several major characters, though most frequently focusing on the opposing lifestyles and attitudes of its central protagonists of Anna and Levin. As such, each of the novel's eight sections contains internal variations in tone: it assumes a relaxed voice when following Stepan Oblonsky's thoughts and actions and a much more tense voice when describing Levin's social encounters. Much of the novel's seventh section depicts Anna's thoughts fluidly, following each one of her ruminations and free associations with its immediate successor. This groundbreaking use of stream-of-consciousness would be utilised by such later authors as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.
Also of significance is Tolstoy's use of real events in his narrative, to lend greater verisimilitude to the fictional events of his narrative. Characters debate significant sociopolitical issues affecting Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, such as the place and role of the Russian peasant in society, education reform, and women's rights. Tolstoy's depiction of the characters in these debates, and of their arguments, allows him to communicate his own political beliefs. Characters often attend similar social functions to those which Tolstoy attended, and he includes in these passages his own observations of the ideologies, behaviors, and ideas running through contemporary Russia through the thoughts of Levin. The broad array of situations and ideas depicted in Anna Karenina allows Tolstoy to present a treatise on his era's Russia, and, by virtue of its very breadth and depth, all of human society. This stylistic technique, as well as the novel's use of perspective, greatly contributes to the thematic structure of Anna Karenina.[citation needed]
Major themes
Anna Karenina is commonly thought to explore the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion, and the agrarian connection to land in contrast to the lifestyles of the city. Translator Rosemary Edmonds wrote that Tolstoy doesn't explicitly moralise in the book, he allows his themes to emerge naturally from the "vast panorama of Russian life." She also writes that a key message is that "no one may build their happiness on another's pain," which is why things don't work out for Anna.
Levin is often considered as a semi-autobiographical portrayal of Tolstoy's own beliefs, struggles and life events. Tolstoy's first name is "Lev", and the Russian surname "Levin" means "of Lev". According to footnotes in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, the viewpoints Levin supports throughout the novel in his arguments match Tolstoy's outspoken views on the same issues. Moreover, according to W. Gareth Jones, Levin proposed to Kitty in the same way as Tolstoy to Sophie Behrs. Additionally, Levin's request that his fiancée read his diary as a way of disclosing his faults and previous sexual encounters, parallels Tolstoy's own requests to his fiancée Sophie Behrs.
Anna Karenina and Tolstoy's A Confession
Alla Tarasova as Anna Karenina in 1937
Many of the novel's themes can also be found in Tolstoy's A Confession, his first-person rumination about the nature of life and faith, written just two years after the publication of Anna Karenina.
In this book, Tolstoy describes his dissatisfaction with the hypocrisy of his social class:
“ Every time I tried to display my innermost desires – a wish to be morally good – I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged. ”
Tolstoy also details the acceptability of adulterous "liaisons" in aristocratic Russian society:
“ A dear old aunt of mine, the purest of creatures, with whom I lived, was always saying that she wished for nothing as much as that I would have a relationship with a married woman. "Rien ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut." ("Nothing educates a young man better than an affair with a woman established in society.") ”
Another theme in Anna Karenina is that of the aristocratic habit of speaking French instead of Russian, which Tolstoy suggests is another form of society's falseness. When Dolly insists on speaking French to her young daughter, Tanya, she begins to seem false and tedious to Levin, who finds himself unable to feel at ease in her house.
In a passage that could be interpreted as a sign of Anna's eventual redemption in Tolstoy's eyes, the narrator explains:
“ For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet cannot resolve to commit it, other than the weakest, the most inconsistent and, speaking frankly, the most stupid of people, making such a song and dance with our banalities? ”
A Confession contains many other autobiographical insights into the themes of Anna Karenina. A public domain version of it is here.
Film, television, and theatrical adaptations
For more details on this topic, see Adaptations of Anna Karenina.
* Operas based on Anna Karenina have been written by Sassano (Naples, 1905), Leoš Janáček (unfinished, 1907), Granelli (1912), E. Malherbe (unperformed, 1914), Jeno Hubay (Budapest, 1915), Robbiani (Rome, 1924), Goldbach (1930), Iain Hamilton (London, 1981) and David Carlson (Miami, 2007).
* Love, a 1927 silent film based loosely on the novel. The film starred Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
* Anna Karenina, a critically acclaimed 1935 film, directed by Clarence Brown. The film stars Greta Garbo, Fredric March, and Maureen O'Sullivan.
* Anna Karenina, a 1948 film directed by Julien Duvivier with Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and Kieron Moore.
* "MGM Theater Of The Air - Anna Karenina (Radio Broadcast)" (Broadcast 12/09/1949; on American radio, starring Marlene Dietrich
* "Nahr al-Hob" (or River of Love; 1960; an Egyptian movie starring Omar Sharif and Faten Hamama
* Anna Karenina, a 1967 Russian film directed by Aleksandr Zarkhi and starring Tatyana Samojlova, Nikolai Gritsenko and Vasili Lanovoy.
* Anna Karenina (1968) a ballet composed by Rodion Shchedrin
* Anna Karenina, a 1977 TV version in ten episodes. Made by the BBC it was directed by Basil Coleman and starred Nicola Pagett, Eric Porter and Stuart Wilson.
* Anna Karenina, a 1985 TV film directed by Simon Langton and starring Jacqueline Bisset, Paul Scofield and Christopher Reeve.
* Anna Karenina, a 1992 Broadway musical starring Ann Crumb and John Cunningham
* Anna Karenina, a 1997 British-American production filmed in St. Peterburg, Russia, by director Bernard Rose with Sophie Marceau as Anna Karenina.
* Anna Karenina, a 2000 TV version in four episodes. It was directed by David Blair and starred Helen McCrory, Stephen Dillane and Kevin McKidd.
* Anna Karenina a 2005 ballet with choreography by Boris Eifman and music drawn from the works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Anna Karenina in literature
* Quirk Classics transformed Anna Karenina into the book 'Android Karenina' (other past transformations have included 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' and 'Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters')
* The novel is referenced in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.
* Repeated reference is made explicitly to Leo Tolstoy and Anna Karenin in Muriel Barbery's Elegance of the Hedgehog
* Anna Karenina is also mentioned in R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series Don't Go To Sleep.
* Mikhail Bulgakov makes reference to the Oblonsky household and Tolstoy in The Master and Margarita.
* In Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book, a recurring joke is two unnamed "crowd-scene" characters from Anna Karenina discussing its plot.
* In the short-story "Sleep" by Haruki Murakami, the main character, an insomniac housewife, spends much time reading through and considering "Anna Karenina". Furthermore, in the short story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo", by the same author, the character of Frog references "Anna Karenina" when discussing how to beat Worm.
* Martin Amis's character Lev, in the novel House of Meetings, compares the protagonist with Anna Karenina's Vronsky.
* In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being Anna Karenina is compared with the novel like beauty of life, and Tereza arrives at Tomas's apartment with a copy of the book under her arm. In addition, Tereza and Tomas have a pet dog named Karenin, after Anna's husband.
* In the novel What Happened to Anna K. Irina Reyn loosely transfers the Anna Karenina story to a setting in modern-day New York City.
* Anna Karenina plays a central role in Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics (2002), set in 1929, as a new lector, Juan Julian, reads the text as background for cigar rollers in the Ybor City section of Tampa, FL. As he reads the story of adultery, the workers' passions are inflamed, and end in tragedy like Anna's.
* In "The Slippery Slope", the 10th book in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, the Baudelaire orphans Violet, Klaus and the third Quagmire triplet Quigley need to use the central theme of "Anna Karenina" as the final password to open the Vernacularly Fastened Door leading to the V.F.D. Headquarters. Klaus remembered how his mother had read it to him one summer when he was young as a summer reading book. Klaus summarized the theme with these words: "The central theme of Anna Karenina is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy." Esme Squalor later said she once was supposed to read the book over the summer, but she decided it would never help her in her life and threw it in the fireplace.
* Guns, Germs, and Steel (by Jared Diamond) has a chapter (#9) on the domestication of large mammals, titled "Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle." This chapter begins with a variation on the quote, above.
* in Nicholas Sparks's book The Last Song, the main character, Ronnie, reads Anna Karenina and other Tolstoy books throughout the story.
Further reading
Translations
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Constance Garnett. Still widely reprinted.
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Allen Lane/Penguin, London, 2000)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Margaret Wettlin (Progress Publishers, 1978)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Joel Carmichael (Bantam Books, New York, 1960)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by David Magarshack (A Signet Classic, New American Library, New York and Scarborough, Ontario, 1961)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1918)
* Anna Karenin, Translated by Rosemary Edmonds (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1954)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1886)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Kyril Zinovieff (Oneworld Classics 2008) ISBN 978-1-84749-059-9
Biographical and literary criticism
* Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981)
* Bayley, John, Tolstoy and the Novel (Chatto and Windus, London, 1966)
* Berlin, Isaiah, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967)
* Eikhenbaum, Boris, Tolstoi in the Seventies, trans. Albert Kaspin (Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1982)
* Evans, Mary, Anna Karenina (Routledge, London and New York, 1989)
* Gifford, Henry, Tolstoy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982)
* Gifford, Henry (ed) Leo Tolstoy (Penguin Critical Anthologies, Harmondsworth, 1971)
* Leavis, F. R., Anna Karenina and Other Essays (Chatto and Windus, London, 1967)
* Mandelker, Amy, Framing 'Anna Karenina': Tolstoy, the Woman Question, and the Victorian Novel (Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1993)
* Morson,Gary Saul, Anna Karenina in our time: seeing more wisely (Yale University Press 2007) read parts at Google-Books
* Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Russian Literature (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1981)
* Orwin, Donna Tussing, Tolstoy's Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993)
* Speirs, Logan, Tolstoy and Chekhov (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971)
* Strakhov, Nikolai, N., "Levin and Social Chaos", in Gibian, ed., (W.W. Norton & Company New York, 2005).
* Steiner, George, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (Faber and Faber, London, 1959)
* Thorlby, Anthony, Anna Karenina (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1987)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Correspondence, 2. vols., selected, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1978)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Diaries, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1985)
* Tolstoy, Sophia A., The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy, ed. O. A. Golinenko, trans. Cathy Porter (Random House, New York, 1985)
* Turner, C. J. G., A Karenina Companion (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, 1993)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Critical Essays on Tolstoy (G. K. Hall, Boston, 1986)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Tolstoy's Major Fiction (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978)
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-簡介
在托爾斯泰全部作品中，《戰爭與和平》、《安娜·卡列尼娜》、《復活》是三個里程碑，也是他的三部代表作品。《安娜·卡列尼娜》在這三部代表作中有其特殊的重要性，它是三部巨著之中藝術上最為完整的一部，並且體現了托氏思想和藝術發展道路的過渡與轉變，可以稱之為代表作中的代表作。它通過女主人公安娜追求愛情而失敗的悲劇，和列文在農村面臨危機而進行的改革與探索這兩條綫索，描繪了俄國從莫斯科到外省鄉村廣阔而豐富多彩的圖景，先後描寫了150多個人物，是一部社會百科全書式的作品。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-作傢簡介
列夫·尼古拉耶維奇·托爾斯泰（1828-1910）是俄國批判現實主義文學最偉大的代表，世界文學史上最偉大的作傢之一。在世界文壇中堪與莎士比亞、歌德、巴爾紮剋並肩而立的作傢當首推列夫托爾斯泰。他那三部鴻篇巨著無疑代表了19世紀世界現實主義文學的最高水平。列夫·托爾斯泰是俄國文學史上最偉大的文豪之一，他在文學方面的成就受到舉世矚目的認同。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-內容梗概
《安娜·卡列尼娜》通過女主人公安娜追求愛情而失敗的悲劇，和列文在農村面臨危機而進行的改革與探索這兩條綫索，描繪了俄國從莫斯科到外省鄉村廣阔而豐富多彩的圖景，先後描寫了150多個人物，是一部社會百科全書式的作品。
故事以雙綫進行，一為安娜，一為列文。托氏以二人為軸，描寫出不同的婚姻和家庭生活，更進一步則寫出當時俄國政治，宗教，農事景像。
在文中，列文為托氏之化身，代表着1860,70年代的社會轉型催生者。列文重視農事，對貴族生活不甚投入，住在鄉村和指導農民工作。列文熱愛吉蒂，起初求婚被拒，但幾經波折，終抱得美人歸，並一同住在鄉下。
女主人翁安娜，年青時和丈夫亞歷山大．卡列寧（Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin）結合，本婚姻美滿，育有一子。卡列寧在仕途上成功，安娜亦於交際場上光茫四射。故事始於奧布朗斯基公爵和英國家庭女教師戀愛，與妻子道麗鬧翻，求助於其妺安娜。安娜從聖．彼得堡到莫斯科替二人調解，在車站認識了年輕軍官佛倫斯基（Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky）。並在莫斯科一次舞會中和佛倫斯基發生致命的戀情，自此不能自拔，最後身敗名列並自殺身亡。佛倫斯基為求得美人，追隨安娜至聖彼得堡，最後兩人陷入熱戀。他倆頻頻幽會，最後安娜懷孕，並嚮丈夫承認了私情。卡列寧一度想與妻子分居，但為存面子，拒絶離婚並要求妻子終止戀情。然而安娜分娩時幾乎難産而瀕臨死亡，在死亡面前，卡列寧原諒了她。安娜病後無法壓抑自己對佛倫斯基的愛，終於離傢出走。佛倫斯基帶着安娜前往意大利旅行，這時安娜感到無比的幸福。其後回到俄羅斯，於兒子生日時，按捺不住偷偷會見自己的兒子。卻無法見容於俄國社會，上流社會把安娜看作墮落的女人，斷絶和她的往來。安娜衹得移居鄉下，靠寫作打發時間。二人共處日久，佛倫斯基和安娜在生活上的不信任日增。安娜感到很難過，認為情人為前途名譽離她而去，沮喪失望之下，安娜為處罰佛倫斯基，在火車駛近時跳下火車月臺自殺。葬禮之後，亞歷山大·卡列寧帶走她的女兒，佛倫斯基受到良心的譴責，大病一場，後來志願從軍，前往巴爾幹參戰，但求一死。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-創作背景資料
在世界文學的巍巍群山中，堪與莎士比亞、歌德、巴爾紮剋這幾座高峰比肩而立的俄國作傢當首推列夫·托爾斯泰。托爾斯泰是一位有思想的藝術傢，也是一位博學的藝術大師。他的作品展現的社會畫面之廣阔，藴含的思想之豐饒，融會的藝術、語言、哲學、歷史、民俗乃至自然科學等各種知識之廣博，常常令人望洋興嘆。《安娜·卡列尼娜》是他的一部既美不勝收而又博大精深的巨製。
巨大的思想和藝術價值，使得這部巨著一發表便引起巨大社會反響。托爾斯泰並沒有簡單地寫一個男女私通的故事，而是通過這個故事揭示了俄國社會中婦女的地位，並由此來鞭撻它的不合理性。作品描寫了個人感情需要與社會道德之間的衝突。1877年，小說首版發行。據同代人稱，它不啻是引起了“一場真正的社會大爆炸”，它的各個章節都引起了整個社會的“蹺足”註視，及無休無止的“議論、推崇、非難和爭吵，仿佛事情關涉到每個人最切身的問題”。
但不久，社會就公認它是一部了不起的巨著，它所達到的高度是俄國文學從未達到過的。偉大作傢陀思妥耶夫斯基興奮地評論道：“這是一部盡善盡美的藝術傑作，現代歐洲文學中沒有一部同類的東西可以和它相比！”他甚至稱托爾斯泰為“藝術之神”。而書中的女主人公安娜·卡列尼娜則成為世界文學史上最優美豐滿的女性形象之一。這個資産階級婦女解放的先鋒，以自己的方式追求個性的解放和真誠的愛情，雖然由於制度的桎梏，她的悲劇衹能以失敗而告終。但她以內心體驗的深刻與感情的強烈真摯，以蓬勃的生命力和悲劇性命運而扣人心弦。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》的構思始於1870年，而到1873年托爾斯泰纔開始動筆。這是他一生中精神睏頓的時期。最初，托爾斯泰是想寫一個上流社會已婚婦女失足的故事，但隨着寫作的深入，原來的構思不斷被修改。小說的初步創作不過僅用了短短的50天時間便得以完成，然而托爾斯泰很不滿意，他又花費了數十倍的時間來不斷修正，前後經過12次大的改動，遲至4年之後纔正式出版。這時，小說廢棄的手稿高達1米多！“全部都應當改寫，再改寫”，這是托爾斯泰經常挂在嘴邊的一句話。顯然，一部《安娜·卡列尼娜》與其說是寫出來的，不如說是改出來的。
正是在作者近乎苛刻的追求中，小說的重心有了巨大的轉移，安娜由最初構思中的“失了足的女人”（她趣味惡劣、賣弄風情，品行不端），變成了一個品格高雅、敢於追求真正的愛情與幸福的“叛女”形象，從而成為世界文學中最具反抗精神的女性之一。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》通過安娜追求愛情而失敗的悲劇，列文在農村面臨危機而進行的改革與探索這兩條綫索，描繪了俄國從莫斯科到外省鄉村廣阔而豐富多彩的圖景，先後描寫了150多個人物，是一部社會百科全書式的作品。小說藝術上最突出的特點是首次成功地采用了兩條平行綫索互相對照、相輔相成的“拱門式” 結構，並在心理描寫上細緻入微、精妙絶倫。小說中那大段的人物內心獨白，無疑都是現實主義描寫的典範。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-人物形象
安娜
《安娜·卡列尼娜》是由兩條主要的平行綫索和一條聯結性次要綫索結構而成的，整體上反映了農奴製改革後“一切都翻了一個身，一切都剛剛安排下來”的那個時代在政治、經濟、道德、心理等方面的矛盾。小說通過安娜—— 卡列寧——渥倫斯基綫索展示了封建主義家庭關係的瓦解和道德的淪喪；通過列文——吉提綫索描繪出資本主義勢力侵入農村後，地主經濟面臨危機的情景，揭示出作者執着地探求出路的痛苦心情。而道麗——奧勃朗斯基這一次要綫索巧妙地聯結兩條主綫，在家庭思想上三條綫索相互對應、參照，勾勒出三種不同類型的家庭模式和生活方式。作者以這種建築學而自豪，圓拱將兩座大廈聯結得天衣無縫，“使人覺察不出什麽地方是拱頂”。
主人公安娜·卡列尼娜是世界文學史上最優美豐滿的女性形象之一。她以內心體驗的深刻與感情的強烈真摯，以蓬勃的生命力和悲劇性命運而扣人心弦。
安娜第一次出現時的音容笑貌令人難以忘懷：她姿態端麗、溫雅，一雙濃密的睫毛掩映下的眼睛中“有一股被壓抑的生氣在她的臉上流露……仿佛有一種過剩的生命力洋溢在她的全身心，違反她的意志”，在眼神和微笑中顯現出來。在這幅出色的肖像中展現了安娜的精神美，也提示我們去探究她的生活之謎。安娜父母早逝，在姑母包辦下嫁給了比她大二十歲的大官僚卡列寧。婚後在宗法思想支配下她曾安於天命，衹是把全部感情寄托在兒子身上。渥倫斯基喚醒了她晚熟的愛情。她渴望自由而大膽地愛，不願像別特西公爵夫人那樣在傢宴上公開接待情人；也不願接受丈夫的建議仍然保持表面的夫妻關係，偷偷與情人往來；終於衝出家庭與渥倫斯基結合，公然與整個上流社會對抗。從此安娜失去了一個貴族婦女在社交界的一切地位和權利，除了渥倫斯基的愛，她一無所有，因此，她熱烈而執着地獻身於這種愛。確實，在國外，在渥倫斯基的莊園裏，安娜曾體驗過短暫的“不可原諒的幸福”。她丟棄母親的天職，但內心無法平息因失去愛子而産生的悲傷；她想昂起驕傲的頭，宣稱她是幸福的女人，但卻擺脫不掉有罪的妻子的意識。她的靈魂一直受到折磨。而孤註一擲的、囿於自我的對渥倫斯基的愛又不可能得到相應的感情反響，安娜絶望了，她在臨終前滿含怨憤地喊出：“一切全是虛偽、全是謊言、全是欺騙、全是罪惡。”
安娜的形象在作傢創作過程中有過極大變化：從一個低級趣味的失足女人改寫成真誠、嚴肅、寧為玉碎、不為瓦全的女性。托爾斯泰通過安娜的愛情、家庭悲劇寄寓了他對當時動蕩的俄國社會中人的命運和倫理道德準則的思考。作傢歌頌人的生命力，贊揚人性的合理要求；同時，他又堅决否定一切政治、社會活動（包括婦女解放運動）對改善人們命運的作用，強調母親——婦女天職的重要性。作傢世界觀的矛盾構成安娜形象的復雜性。一百多年來各國作傢按自己的理解把安娜搬上舞臺、銀幕、熒光屏。安娜形象一直激動着不同時代、不同民族的讀者，這正說明安娜形象的藝術生命力是不朽的。
列文
列文則是托爾斯泰式主人公中自傳性特別強的一個人物，他在托爾斯泰的創作中起着承前啓後的作用，在他身上藝術地再現了作傢世界觀激變前夕的思想感情和生活感受，從結構安排來看，列文的幸福家庭與安娜的不幸家庭互為對照，但從思想探索來看，列文婚後卻産生了精神危機，他為貴族階級自甘敗落而憂心忡忡。他研究勞動力在農業生産中的作用，製定“不流血的革命”方案，探討人生的目的，但卻毫無出路。羅曼·羅蘭指出，列文不僅體現了托爾斯泰看待事物的既保守又民主的觀點，而且“列文和吉提的戀愛，他倆婚後的頭幾年生活，就是作傢自己家庭生活回憶的搬演。同樣，列文哥哥之死也是托爾斯泰的哥哥德米特裏之死的痛苦追憶”。而作品的尾聲“則是作者本人趨嚮精神革命的過渡”。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》-主題思想
關於列夫·托爾斯泰，馬原有一個說法，他認為托爾斯泰是小說史上爭議最少的作傢。這裏所說的爭議最少，指的是他在文學史上的地位。也就是說，你可以喜歡或不喜歡托爾斯泰的作品，但似乎無人能夠否認他作為一位傑出思想傢和第一流小說傢的地位。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》在列夫·托爾斯泰的所有作品中，是寫得最好的。《戰爭與和平》也許更波瀾壯闊、更雄偉、更有氣勢，但它不如《安娜·卡列尼娜》那麽純粹、那麽完美。順便說一句，列夫·托爾斯泰並不是一個出色的文體傢，但他的文體的精美與和諧無與倫比，這並非來自作者對小說修辭、技巧、敘述方式的刻意追求，而僅僅源於藝術上的直覺。
在《安娜·卡列尼娜》這部小說中，列夫·托爾斯泰塑造了許多在文學史上光芒四射的人物：安娜、渥倫斯基、吉提、列文、卡列寧、奧布浪斯基公爵……在這些人物中，惟一一個在生活中左右逢源，帶有點喜劇色彩的就是奧布浪斯基公爵，其他的人物無不與死亡主題有關。如果我們簡單地歸納一下，這部作品主要寫了兩個故事：其一，是安娜與渥倫斯基從相識、熱戀到毀滅的過程，以及圍繞這一進程的所有社會關係的糾葛，其二是列文的故事以及他在宗教意義上的展開個人思考。
正如那句著名的開場白所顯示的一樣，作者對現實的思考是以家庭婚姻為基本單位而展開的，至少涉及到了四種婚姻或愛情答案：卡列寧夫婦，安娜和渥倫斯基，奧布浪斯基夫婦，列文與吉提。每一個答案都意味着罪惡和災難。安娜是惟一經歷了兩種不同婚姻(愛情)形式的人物。在作者所賦予的安娜的性格中，我以為激情和活力是其基本的內涵，正是這種壓抑不住的活力使美貌純潔的吉提相形見絀；正是這種被喚醒的激情使她與卡列寧的婚姻、甚至彼得堡習以為常的社交生活、甚至包括孩子謝遼沙都黯然失色。
與這種激情與活力相伴而來的是不顧一切的勇氣。當小說中寫到渥倫斯基在賽馬會上摔下馬來，安娜因失聲大叫而暴露了"姦情"之時，對丈夫說出下面這段話是需要一點勇氣的，“我愛他，我是他的情婦……隨你高興怎麽樣把我處置吧。”托爾斯泰對這種激情真是太熟悉了，我們不妨想一想《戰爭與和平》中的娜塔莎，《復活》中的卡秋莎，還有蟄伏於作者心中的那頭強壯的熊--它的咆哮聲一直睏擾着列夫·托爾斯泰。
馬丁·杜伽爾曾認為，托爾斯泰是最具洞察力的作傢，他的目光十分銳利，能夠穿透生活的壁壘而發現隱含其中的"真實"。但我卻傾嚮於認為，從根本上來說，托爾斯泰是一個圖解自我觀念的作傢，不管是早期還是晚期作品，主題上的聯繫十分清晰，尤其是《戰爭與和平》、《安娜·卡列尼娜》兩部巨著，其中的人物、情節、主題多有雷同之處，他的觀念的疆域並不寬廣，他的素材也不豐富，但這並不妨礙托爾斯泰的偉大，正如塞萬提斯的狹隘主題並不妨礙《堂吉訶德》的偉大一樣。小說的真實來自他的智慧，敏感而浩瀚的心靈，而更為重要的是他的誠實。維特根斯坦在讀完《哈澤·穆拉特》以後曾感慨地說： “他(托爾斯泰)是一個真正的人，他有權寫作。”
托爾斯泰與《安娜·卡列尼娜》
關於列夫·托爾斯泰，馬原有一個說法，他認為托爾斯泰是小說史上爭議最少的作傢。我理解他的意思，這裏所說的爭議最少，指的是他在文學史上的地位。也就是說，你可以喜歡或不喜歡托爾斯泰的作品，但似乎無人能夠否認他作為一位傑出思想傢和第一流小說傢的地位。
在我的學生中間，對托爾斯泰不屑一顧的大有人在。有一次碰到一位學生，依我看他的導師是一名頗有學問的俄國文學專傢，不知何故，該生卻對恩師頗為不滿，提出是否可以轉到我的名下，讓我給他指導。我問他為何要更換導師，他便列舉了原導師的幾個罪狀，其中一條是：他竟然讓我去讀什麽《安娜·卡列尼娜》。可見，在這些言必稱美國的學生們的頭腦中，老托爾斯泰顯然已經是一個不中用的古董了。我對他說，導師就不必換了。因為如果我當你的導師，第一本推薦的書恐怕還是《安娜·卡列尼娜》。
《安娜·卡列尼娜》不僅是我最喜歡的長篇小說，而且我也認為，在列夫·托爾斯泰的所有作品中，它也是寫得最好的。《戰爭與和平》也許更波瀾壯闊、更雄偉、更有氣勢，但它不如《安娜·卡列尼娜》那麽純粹、那麽完美。順便說一句，列夫·托爾斯泰並不是一個出色的文體傢，但他的文體的精美與和諧無與倫比，這並非來自作者對小說修辭、技巧、敘述方式的刻意追求，而僅僅源於藝術上的直覺。
在《安娜·卡列尼娜》這部小說中，列夫·托爾斯泰塑造了許多在文學史上光芒四射的人物：安娜、渥倫斯基、吉提、列文、卡列寧、奧布浪斯基公爵……在這些人物中，惟一一個在生活中左右逢源，帶有點喜劇色彩的就是奧布浪斯基公爵，其他的人物無不與死亡主題有關。如果我們簡單地歸納一下，這部作品主要寫了兩個故事：其一，是安娜與渥倫斯基從相識、熱戀到毀滅的過程，以及圍繞這一進程的所有社會關係的糾葛，其二是列文的故事以及他在宗教意義上的展開個人思考。
正如那句著名的開場白所顯示的一樣，作者對現實的思考是以家庭婚姻為基本單位而展開的，至少涉及到了四種婚姻或愛情答案：卡列寧夫婦，安娜和渥倫斯基，奧布浪斯基夫婦，列文與吉提。每一個答案都意味着罪惡和災難。安娜是惟一經歷了兩種不同婚姻(愛情)形式的人物。在作者所賦予的安娜的性格中，我以為激情和活力是其基本的內涵，正是這種壓抑不住的活力使美貌純潔的吉提相形見絀；正是這種被喚醒的激情使她與卡列寧的婚姻、甚至彼得堡習以為常的社交生活、甚至包括孩子謝遼沙都黯然失色。
與這種激情與活力相伴而來的是不顧一切的勇氣。當小說中寫到渥倫斯基在賽馬會上摔下馬來，安娜因失聲大叫而暴露了“姦情”之時，對丈夫說出下面這段話是需要一點勇氣的，“我愛他，我是他的情婦……隨你高興怎麽樣把我處置吧。”托爾斯泰對這種激情真是太熟悉了，我們不妨想一想《戰爭與和平》中的娜塔莎，《復活》中的卡秋莎，還有蟄伏於作者心中的那頭強壯的熊——它的咆哮聲一直睏擾着列夫·托爾斯泰。
馬丁·杜伽爾曾認為，托爾斯泰是最具洞察力的作傢，他的目光十分銳利，能夠穿透生活的壁壘而發現隱含其中的"真實"。但我卻傾嚮於認為，從根本上來說，托爾斯泰是一個圖解自我觀念的作傢，不管是早期還是晚期作品，主題上的聯繫十分清晰，尤其是《戰爭與和平》、《安娜·卡列尼娜》兩部巨著，其中的人物、情節、主題多有雷同之處，他的觀念的疆域並不寬廣，他的素材也不豐富，但這並不妨礙托爾斯泰的偉大，正如塞萬提斯的狹隘主題並不妨礙《堂吉訶德》的偉大一樣。小說的真實來自他的智慧，敏感而浩瀚的心靈，而更為重要的是他的誠實。維特根斯坦在讀完《哈澤·穆拉特》以後曾感慨地說：“他(托爾斯泰)是一個真正的人，他有權寫作。”
Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (Russian spelling Maria Gartung, 1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.[citation needed] Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy began reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.
Although Russian critics dismissed the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style", and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as "the best ever written".[citation needed] The novel is currently enjoying popularity as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in The Top Ten, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest novel ever written".
The title: Anna Karenin vs Anna Karenina
The title has been translated as both Anna Karenin and Anna Karenina. The first instance naturalizes the Russian name into English, whereas the second is a direct transliteration of the actual Russian name. As Vladimir Nabokov explains: "In Russian, a surname ending in a consonant acquires a final 'a' (except for the cases of such names that cannot be declined) when designating a woman".
Nabokov favours the first convention - removing the Russian 'a' to naturalize the name into English - but subsequent translators mostly allow Anna's actual Russian name to stand. Larissa Volokhonsky, herself a Russian, prefers the second option, while other translators like Constance Garnett and Rosemary Edmonds prefer the first solution.
Main characters
* Anna Arkadyevna Karenina – Stepan Oblonsky's sister, Karenin's wife and Vronsky's lover. She is also a minor character in War and Peace. [citation needed]
* Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky – Lover of Anna
* Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky ("Stiva") – a civil servant and Anna's brother.
* Princess Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya ("Dolly") – Stepan's wife
* Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin – a senior statesman and Anna's husband, twenty years her senior.
* Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin ("Kostya") – Kitty's suitor and then husband.
* Nikolai Levin – Konstantin's brother
* Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev – Konstantin's half-brother
* Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty") – Dolly's younger sister and later Levin's wife
* Princess Elizaveta ("Betsy") – Anna's wealthy, morally loose society friend and Vronsky's cousin
* Countess Lidia Ivanovna – Leader of a high society circle that includes Karenin, and shuns Princess Betsy and her circle. She maintains an interest in the mystical and spiritual
* Countess Vronskaya – Vronsky's mother
* Sergei Alexeyitch Karenin ("Seryozha") – Anna and Karenin's son
* Anna ("Annie") – Anna and Vronsky's daughter
* Varenka – a young orphaned girl, semi-adopted by an ailing Russian noblewoman, whom Kitty befriends while abroad
Plot summary
The novel is divided into eight parts. The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines:
“ Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ”
Part 1
The novel opens with a scene introducing Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky, "Stiva", a Moscow aristocrat and civil servant who has been unfaithful to his wife Darya Alexandrovna, nicknamed "Dolly". Dolly has discovered his affair - with the family's governess - and the house and family are in turmoil. Stiva's affair and his reaction to his wife's distress shows an amorous personality that he cannot seem to suppress.
In the midst of the turmoil, Stiva reminds the household that his married sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina is coming to visit from Saint Petersburg.
Meanwhile, Stiva's childhood friend Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin ("Kostya") arrives in Moscow with the aim of proposing to Dolly's youngest sister Princess Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, "Kitty". Levin is a passionate, restless but shy aristocratic landowner who, unlike his Moscow friends, chooses to live in the country on his large estate. He discovers that Kitty is also being pursued by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, an army officer.
At the railway station to meet Anna, Stiva bumps into Vronsky. Vronsky is there to meet his mother. Anna and the Countess Vronskaya have travelled together in the same carriage and talked together. As the family members are reunited, and Vronsky sees Anna for the first time, a railway worker accidentally falls in front of a train and is killed. Anna interprets this as an "evil omen." Vronsky is infatuated with Anna. Anna, who is uneasy about leaving her young son, Seryozha, alone for the first time, talks openly and emotionally to Dolly about Stiva's affair and convinces Dolly that her husband still loves her, despite his infidelity. Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva.
Dolly's youngest sister, Kitty, comes to visit her sister and Anna. Kitty, just 18, is in her first season as a debutante and is expected to make an excellent match with a man of her social standing. Vronsky has been paying her considerable attention, and she expects to dance with him at a ball that evening. Kitty is very struck by Anna's beauty and personality and is infatuated with her. When Levin proposes to Kitty at her home, she clumsily turns him down, because she believes she is in love with Vronsky and that he will propose to her.
At the ball, Vronsky pays Anna considerable attention, and dances with her, choosing her as a partner instead of Kitty, who is shocked and heartbroken. Kitty realises that Vronsky has fallen in love with Anna, and that despite his overt flirtations with her he has no intention of marrying her and in fact views his attentions to her as mere amusement, believing that she does the same.
Anna, shaken by her emotional and physical response to Vronsky, returns at once to Saint Petersburg. Vronsky travels on the same train. During the overnight journey, the two meet and Vronsky confesses his love. Anna refuses him, although she is deeply affected by his attentions to her.
Levin, crushed by Kitty's refusal, returns to his estate farm, abandoning any hope of marriage, and Anna returns to her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a senior government official, and their son Sergei ("Seryozha") in Petersburg.
Tatiana Samoilova as Anna in the 1967 Soviet screen version of Tolstoy's novel.
On seeing her husband for the first time since her encounter with Vronsky, Anna realises that she finds him repulsive, noting the odd way that his ears press against his hat.
Part 2
The Shcherbatskys consult doctors over Kitty's health which has been failing since she realizes that Vronsky did not love her and that he did not intend to propose marriage to her, and that she refused and hurt Levin, whom she cares for, in vain. A specialist doctor advises that Kitty should go abroad to a health spa to recover. Dolly speaks to Kitty and understands that she is suffering because of Vronsky and Levin. Kitty, humiliated by Vronsky and tormented by her rejection of Levin, upsets her sister by referring to Stiva's infidelity and says she could never love a man who betrayed her.
Stiva stays with Levin on his country estate when he makes a sale of a plot of land, to provide funds for his expensive city lifestyle. Levin is upset at the poor deal he makes with the buyer and his lack of understanding of the rural lifestyle.
In St. Petersburg, Anna begins to spend more time with the fashionable socialite and gossip Princess Betsy and her circle, in order to meet Vronsky, Betsy's cousin. Vronsky continues to pursue Anna. Although Anna initially tries to reject him, she eventually succumbs to his attentions.
Karenin warns Anna of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is becoming a subject of society gossip. He is concerned about his and his wife's public image, although he believes that Anna is above suspicion.
Vronsky, a keen horseman, takes part in a steeplechase event, during which he rides his mare Frou-Frou too hard and she falls and breaks her back. Vronsky escapes with minimal injuries but is devastated that his mare must be shot. Anna tells him that she is pregnant with his child, and is unable to hide her distress when Vronsky falls from the racehorse. Karenin is also present at the races and remarks to her that her behaviour is improper. Anna, in a state of extreme distress and emotion, confesses her affair to her husband. Karenin asks her to break off the affair to avoid society gossip and believes that their relationship can then continue as previously.
Kitty goes with her mother to a resort at a German spa to recover from her ill health. There they meet the Pietist Madame Stahl and the saintly Varenka, her adopted daughter. Influenced by Varenka, Kitty becomes extremely pious, but is disillusioned by her father`s criticism. She then returns to Moscow.
Part 3
Levin continues his work on his large country estate, a setting closely tied to his spiritual thoughts and struggles. Levin wrestles with the idea of falseness, wondering how he should go about ridding himself of it, and criticising what he feels is falseness in others. He develops ideas relating to agriculture and the unique relationship between the agricultural labourer and his native land and culture. He believes that the agricultural reforms of Europe will not work in Russia because of the unique culture and personality of the Russian peasant.
Levin pays Dolly a visit, and she attempts to understand what happened between him and Kitty and to explain Kitty's behaviour to him. Levin is very agitated by Dolly's talk about Kitty, and he begins to feel distant from her as he perceives her behaviour towards her children as false. Levin resolves to forget Kitty and contemplates the possibility of marriage to a peasant woman. However, a chance sighting of Kitty in her carriage as she travels to Dolly's house makes Levin realise he still loves her.
In St. Petersburg, Karenin crushes Anna by refusing to separate from her. He insists that their relationship remain as it was and threatens to take away their son Seryozha if she continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky.
Part 4
Anna continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky. Karenin begins to find the situation intolerable. He talks with a lawyer about obtaining a divorce. In Russia at that time, divorce could only be requested by the innocent party in an affair, and required either that the guilty party confessed (which would ruin Anna's position in society) or that the guilty party was discovered in the act. Karenin forces Anna to give him some letters written to her by Vronsky as proof of the affair. However, Anna's brother Stiva argues against it and persuades Karenin to speak with Dolly first.
Dolly broaches the subject with Karenin and asks him to reconsider his plans to divorce Anna. She seems to be unsuccessful, but Karenin changes his plans after hearing that Anna is dying after a difficult childbirth. At her bedside, Karenin forgives Vronsky. Vronsky, embarrassed by Karenin's magnanimity, attempts suicide by shooting himself. He fails in his attempt but wounds himself badly.
Anna recovers, having given birth to a daughter, Anna ("Annie"). Although her husband has forgiven her, and has become attached to the new baby, Anna cannot bear living with him. She hears that Vronsky is about to leave for a military posting in Tashkent and becomes desperate. Stiva finds himself pleading to Karenin on her behalf to free her by giving her a divorce. Vronsky is intent on leaving for Tashkent, but changes his mind after seeing Anna.
The couple leave for Europe - leaving behind Anna's son Seryozha - without obtaining a divorce.
Much more straightforward is Stiva's matchmaking with Levin: he arranges a meeting between Levin and Kitty which results in their reconciliation and betrothal.
Part 5
Levin and Kitty marry and immediately go to start their new life together on Levin's country estate. The couple are happy but do not have a very smooth start to their married life and take some time to get used to each other. Levin feels some dissatisfaction at the amount of time Kitty wants to spend with him and is slightly scornful of her preoccupation with domestic matters, which he feels are too prosaic and not compatible with his romantic ideas of love.
A few months later, Levin learns that his brother Nikolai is dying of consumption. Levin wants to go to him, and is initially angry and put out that Kitty wishes to accompany him. Levin feels that Kitty, whom he has placed on a pedestal, should not come down to earth and should not mix with people from a lower class. Levin assumes her insistence on coming must relate to a fear of boredom from being left alone, despite her true desire to support her husband in a difficult time. Kitty persuades him to take her with him after much discussion, where she proves a great help nursing Nikolai for weeks over his slow death. She also discovers she is pregnant.
In Europe, Vronsky and Anna struggle to find friends who will accept their situation. Whilst Anna is happy to be finally alone with Vronsky, he feels suffocated. They cannot socialize with Russians of their own social set and find it difficult to amuse themselves. Vronsky, who believed that being with Anna in freedom was the key to his happiness, finds himself increasingly bored and unsatisfied. He takes up painting, and makes an attempt to patronize an émigré Russian artist of genius. Vronsky cannot see that his own art lacks talent and passion, and that his clever conversation about art is an empty shell. Bored and restless, Anna and Vronsky decide to return to Russia.
In Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky stay in one of the best hotels but take separate suites. It becomes clear that whilst Vronsky is able to move in Society, Anna is barred from it. Even her old friend, Princess Betsy - who has had affairs herself - evades her company. Anna starts to become very jealous and anxious that Vronsky no longer loves her.
Karenin is comforted – and influenced – by the strong-willed Countess Lidia Ivanovna, an enthusiast of religious and mystic ideas fashionable with the upper classes. She counsels him to keep Seryozha away from Anna and to make him believe that his mother is dead. However, Seryozha refuses to believe that this is true. Anna manages to visit Seryozha unannounced and uninvited on his ninth birthday, but is discovered by Karenin.
Anna, desperate to resume at least in part her former position in Society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of Petersburg's high society are present. Vronsky begs her not to go, but is unable to bring himself to explain to her why she cannot go. At the theatre, Anna is openly snubbed by her former friends, one of whom makes a deliberate scene and leaves the theatre. Anna is devastated.
Unable to find a place for themselves in Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's country estate.
Part 6
Dolly, her mother the Princess Scherbatskaya, and Dolly's children spend the summer with Levin and Kitty on the Levins' country estate. The Levins' life is simple and unaffected, although Levin is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Scherbatskys. He is able to cope until he is consumed with an intense jealousy when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Levin tries to overcome his jealousy but eventually succumbs to it and in an embarrassing scene evicts Veslovsky from his house. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky, whose estate is close by.
Dolly also pays a short visit to Anna at Vronsky's estate. The difference between the Levins' aristocratic but simple home life and Vronsky's overtly luxurious and lavish country home strikes Dolly, who is unable to keep pace with Anna's fashionable dresses or Vronsky's extravagant spending on the hospital he is building. However, all is not quite well with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly is also struck by Anna's anxious behaviour and new habit of half closing her eyes when she alludes to her difficult position. When Veslovsky flirts openly with Anna, she plays along with him even though she clearly feels uncomfortable. Vronsky makes an emotional request to Dolly, asking her to convince Anna to divorce her husband so that the two might marry and live normally. Dolly broaches the subject with Anna, who appears not to be convinced. However, Anna is becoming intensely jealous of Vronsky, and cannot bear it when he leaves her for short excursions. The two have started to quarrel about this and when Vronsky leaves for several days of provincial elections, a combination of boredom and suspicion convinces Anna she must marry him in order to prevent him from leaving her. She writes to Karenin, and she and Vronsky leave the countryside for Moscow.
Part 7
The Levins are in Moscow for Kitty's confinement. Despite initial reservations, Levin quickly gets used to the fast-paced, expensive and frivolous Moscow society life. He starts to accompany Stiva to his Moscow gentleman's club, where drinking and gambling are popular pastimes. At the club, Levin meets Vronsky and Stiva introduces them. Levin and Stiva pay a visit to Anna, who is occupying her empty days by being a patroness to an orphaned English girl. Levin is uneasy about the visit and not sure it is the proper thing to do, and Anna easily puts Levin under her spell. When he confesses to Kitty where he has been, she accuses him falsely of falling in love with Anna. The couple are reconciled, realising that Moscow life has had a negative, corrupting effect on Levin.
Anna, who has made a habit of inducing the young men who visit her to fall in love with her, cannot understand why she can attract a man like Levin, who has a young and beautiful new wife, but cannot attract Vronsky in the way she wants to. Anna's relationship with Vronsky is under increasing strain, as whilst he can move freely in Society - and continues to spend considerable time doing so to stress to Anna his independence as a man - she is excluded from all her previous social connections. She is estranged from baby Annie, her child with Vronsky and her increasing bitterness, boredom, jealousy and emotional strain cause the couple to argue. Anna uses morphine to help her sleep, a habit we learned she had begun during her time living with Vronsky at his country estate. Now she has become dependent on it.
After a long and difficult labour, Kitty gives birth to a son, Dmitri, nicknamed Mitya. Levin is both extremely moved and horrified by the sight of the tiny, helpless baby.
Stiva visits Karenin to encourage his commendation for a new post he is seeking. During the visit he asks him to grant Anna a divorce, but Karenin's decisions are now governed by a French "clairvoyant" – recommended by Lidia Ivanovna – who apparently has a vision in his sleep during Stiva's visit, and gives Karenin a cryptic message that is interpreted as meaning that he must decline the request for divorce.
Anna becomes increasingly jealous and irrational towards Vronsky, whom she suspects of having love affairs with other women, and of giving in to his mother's plans to marry him off to a rich Society woman. There is a bitter row, and Anna believes that the relationship is over. She starts to think of suicide as an escape from her torments. In her mental and emotional confusion, she sends a telegram to Vronsky asking him to come home to her, and pays a visit to Dolly and Kitty. Anna's confusion overcomes her, and in a parallel to the railway worker's accidental death in part 1, she commits suicide by throwing herself in the path of a train.
Part 8
Stiva gets the job he desired so much, and Karenin takes custody of baby Annie. A group of Russian volunteers, including Vronsky, who does not plan to return alive, depart from Russia to fight in the Orthodox Serbian revolt that has broken out against the Turks. Meanwhile, a lightning storm occurs at Levin's estate while his wife and newborn son are outside, causing him to fear for the safety of both of them, and to realize that he does indeed love his son similarly to how he loves Kitty. Also, Kitty's family concerns, namely, that a man as altruistic as her husband does not consider himself to be a Christian, are also addressed when Levin decides after talking to a peasant that devotion to living righteously as decreed by the Christian God is the only justifiable reason for living. After coming to this decision, but without telling anyone about it, he is initially displeased that this change of thought does not bring with it a complete transformation of his behavior to be more righteous. However, at the end of the book he comes to the conclusion that this fact, and the fact that there are other religions with similar views on goodness that are not Christian, are acceptable and that neither of these things diminish the fact that now his life can be meaningfully oriented toward goodness.
Style
Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered by many critics to be transitional, forming a bridge between the realist and modernist novel. The novel is narrated from a third-person-omniscient perspective, shifting between the perspectives of several major characters, though most frequently focusing on the opposing lifestyles and attitudes of its central protagonists of Anna and Levin. As such, each of the novel's eight sections contains internal variations in tone: it assumes a relaxed voice when following Stepan Oblonsky's thoughts and actions and a much more tense voice when describing Levin's social encounters. Much of the novel's seventh section depicts Anna's thoughts fluidly, following each one of her ruminations and free associations with its immediate successor. This groundbreaking use of stream-of-consciousness would be utilised by such later authors as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.
Also of significance is Tolstoy's use of real events in his narrative, to lend greater verisimilitude to the fictional events of his narrative. Characters debate significant sociopolitical issues affecting Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, such as the place and role of the Russian peasant in society, education reform, and women's rights. Tolstoy's depiction of the characters in these debates, and of their arguments, allows him to communicate his own political beliefs. Characters often attend similar social functions to those which Tolstoy attended, and he includes in these passages his own observations of the ideologies, behaviors, and ideas running through contemporary Russia through the thoughts of Levin. The broad array of situations and ideas depicted in Anna Karenina allows Tolstoy to present a treatise on his era's Russia, and, by virtue of its very breadth and depth, all of human society. This stylistic technique, as well as the novel's use of perspective, greatly contributes to the thematic structure of Anna Karenina.[citation needed]
Major themes
Anna Karenina is commonly thought to explore the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion, and the agrarian connection to land in contrast to the lifestyles of the city. Translator Rosemary Edmonds wrote that Tolstoy doesn't explicitly moralise in the book, he allows his themes to emerge naturally from the "vast panorama of Russian life." She also writes that a key message is that "no one may build their happiness on another's pain," which is why things don't work out for Anna.
Levin is often considered as a semi-autobiographical portrayal of Tolstoy's own beliefs, struggles and life events. Tolstoy's first name is "Lev", and the Russian surname "Levin" means "of Lev". According to footnotes in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, the viewpoints Levin supports throughout the novel in his arguments match Tolstoy's outspoken views on the same issues. Moreover, according to W. Gareth Jones, Levin proposed to Kitty in the same way as Tolstoy to Sophie Behrs. Additionally, Levin's request that his fiancée read his diary as a way of disclosing his faults and previous sexual encounters, parallels Tolstoy's own requests to his fiancée Sophie Behrs.
Anna Karenina and Tolstoy's A Confession
Alla Tarasova as Anna Karenina in 1937
Many of the novel's themes can also be found in Tolstoy's A Confession, his first-person rumination about the nature of life and faith, written just two years after the publication of Anna Karenina.
In this book, Tolstoy describes his dissatisfaction with the hypocrisy of his social class:
“ Every time I tried to display my innermost desires – a wish to be morally good – I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged. ”
Tolstoy also details the acceptability of adulterous "liaisons" in aristocratic Russian society:
“ A dear old aunt of mine, the purest of creatures, with whom I lived, was always saying that she wished for nothing as much as that I would have a relationship with a married woman. "Rien ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut." ("Nothing educates a young man better than an affair with a woman established in society.") ”
Another theme in Anna Karenina is that of the aristocratic habit of speaking French instead of Russian, which Tolstoy suggests is another form of society's falseness. When Dolly insists on speaking French to her young daughter, Tanya, she begins to seem false and tedious to Levin, who finds himself unable to feel at ease in her house.
In a passage that could be interpreted as a sign of Anna's eventual redemption in Tolstoy's eyes, the narrator explains:
“ For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet cannot resolve to commit it, other than the weakest, the most inconsistent and, speaking frankly, the most stupid of people, making such a song and dance with our banalities? ”
A Confession contains many other autobiographical insights into the themes of Anna Karenina. A public domain version of it is here.
Film, television, and theatrical adaptations
For more details on this topic, see Adaptations of Anna Karenina.
* Operas based on Anna Karenina have been written by Sassano (Naples, 1905), Leoš Janáček (unfinished, 1907), Granelli (1912), E. Malherbe (unperformed, 1914), Jeno Hubay (Budapest, 1915), Robbiani (Rome, 1924), Goldbach (1930), Iain Hamilton (London, 1981) and David Carlson (Miami, 2007).
* Love, a 1927 silent film based loosely on the novel. The film starred Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
* Anna Karenina, a critically acclaimed 1935 film, directed by Clarence Brown. The film stars Greta Garbo, Fredric March, and Maureen O'Sullivan.
* Anna Karenina, a 1948 film directed by Julien Duvivier with Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and Kieron Moore.
* "MGM Theater Of The Air - Anna Karenina (Radio Broadcast)" (Broadcast 12/09/1949; on American radio, starring Marlene Dietrich
* "Nahr al-Hob" (or River of Love; 1960; an Egyptian movie starring Omar Sharif and Faten Hamama
* Anna Karenina, a 1967 Russian film directed by Aleksandr Zarkhi and starring Tatyana Samojlova, Nikolai Gritsenko and Vasili Lanovoy.
* Anna Karenina (1968) a ballet composed by Rodion Shchedrin
* Anna Karenina, a 1977 TV version in ten episodes. Made by the BBC it was directed by Basil Coleman and starred Nicola Pagett, Eric Porter and Stuart Wilson.
* Anna Karenina, a 1985 TV film directed by Simon Langton and starring Jacqueline Bisset, Paul Scofield and Christopher Reeve.
* Anna Karenina, a 1992 Broadway musical starring Ann Crumb and John Cunningham
* Anna Karenina, a 1997 British-American production filmed in St. Peterburg, Russia, by director Bernard Rose with Sophie Marceau as Anna Karenina.
* Anna Karenina, a 2000 TV version in four episodes. It was directed by David Blair and starred Helen McCrory, Stephen Dillane and Kevin McKidd.
* Anna Karenina a 2005 ballet with choreography by Boris Eifman and music drawn from the works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Anna Karenina in literature
* Quirk Classics transformed Anna Karenina into the book 'Android Karenina' (other past transformations have included 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' and 'Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters')
* The novel is referenced in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.
* Repeated reference is made explicitly to Leo Tolstoy and Anna Karenin in Muriel Barbery's Elegance of the Hedgehog
* Anna Karenina is also mentioned in R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series Don't Go To Sleep.
* Mikhail Bulgakov makes reference to the Oblonsky household and Tolstoy in The Master and Margarita.
* In Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book, a recurring joke is two unnamed "crowd-scene" characters from Anna Karenina discussing its plot.
* In the short-story "Sleep" by Haruki Murakami, the main character, an insomniac housewife, spends much time reading through and considering "Anna Karenina". Furthermore, in the short story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo", by the same author, the character of Frog references "Anna Karenina" when discussing how to beat Worm.
* Martin Amis's character Lev, in the novel House of Meetings, compares the protagonist with Anna Karenina's Vronsky.
* In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being Anna Karenina is compared with the novel like beauty of life, and Tereza arrives at Tomas's apartment with a copy of the book under her arm. In addition, Tereza and Tomas have a pet dog named Karenin, after Anna's husband.
* In the novel What Happened to Anna K. Irina Reyn loosely transfers the Anna Karenina story to a setting in modern-day New York City.
* Anna Karenina plays a central role in Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics (2002), set in 1929, as a new lector, Juan Julian, reads the text as background for cigar rollers in the Ybor City section of Tampa, FL. As he reads the story of adultery, the workers' passions are inflamed, and end in tragedy like Anna's.
* In "The Slippery Slope", the 10th book in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, the Baudelaire orphans Violet, Klaus and the third Quagmire triplet Quigley need to use the central theme of "Anna Karenina" as the final password to open the Vernacularly Fastened Door leading to the V.F.D. Headquarters. Klaus remembered how his mother had read it to him one summer when he was young as a summer reading book. Klaus summarized the theme with these words: "The central theme of Anna Karenina is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy." Esme Squalor later said she once was supposed to read the book over the summer, but she decided it would never help her in her life and threw it in the fireplace.
* Guns, Germs, and Steel (by Jared Diamond) has a chapter (#9) on the domestication of large mammals, titled "Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle." This chapter begins with a variation on the quote, above.
* in Nicholas Sparks's book The Last Song, the main character, Ronnie, reads Anna Karenina and other Tolstoy books throughout the story.
Further reading
Translations
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Constance Garnett. Still widely reprinted.
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Allen Lane/Penguin, London, 2000)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Margaret Wettlin (Progress Publishers, 1978)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Joel Carmichael (Bantam Books, New York, 1960)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by David Magarshack (A Signet Classic, New American Library, New York and Scarborough, Ontario, 1961)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1918)
* Anna Karenin, Translated by Rosemary Edmonds (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1954)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1886)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Kyril Zinovieff (Oneworld Classics 2008) ISBN 978-1-84749-059-9
Biographical and literary criticism
* Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981)
* Bayley, John, Tolstoy and the Novel (Chatto and Windus, London, 1966)
* Berlin, Isaiah, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967)
* Eikhenbaum, Boris, Tolstoi in the Seventies, trans. Albert Kaspin (Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1982)
* Evans, Mary, Anna Karenina (Routledge, London and New York, 1989)
* Gifford, Henry, Tolstoy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982)
* Gifford, Henry (ed) Leo Tolstoy (Penguin Critical Anthologies, Harmondsworth, 1971)
* Leavis, F. R., Anna Karenina and Other Essays (Chatto and Windus, London, 1967)
* Mandelker, Amy, Framing 'Anna Karenina': Tolstoy, the Woman Question, and the Victorian Novel (Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1993)
* Morson,Gary Saul, Anna Karenina in our time: seeing more wisely (Yale University Press 2007) read parts at Google-Books
* Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Russian Literature (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1981)
* Orwin, Donna Tussing, Tolstoy's Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993)
* Speirs, Logan, Tolstoy and Chekhov (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971)
* Strakhov, Nikolai, N., "Levin and Social Chaos", in Gibian, ed., (W.W. Norton & Company New York, 2005).
* Steiner, George, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (Faber and Faber, London, 1959)
* Thorlby, Anthony, Anna Karenina (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1987)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Correspondence, 2. vols., selected, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1978)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Diaries, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1985)
* Tolstoy, Sophia A., The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy, ed. O. A. Golinenko, trans. Cathy Porter (Random House, New York, 1985)
* Turner, C. J. G., A Karenina Companion (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, 1993)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Critical Essays on Tolstoy (G. K. Hall, Boston, 1986)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Tolstoy's Major Fiction (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978)
本片描述了在拿破侖指揮軍隊進攻俄國時大動蕩年代中的一段經典愛情故事，是一部史詩般的前蘇聯戰爭巨片。
安德烈不顧懷孕的妻子和年邁的父親，堅持到軍隊服役。戰役失敗，他頽喪回傢，恰逢妻子難産而死，彼埃爾則在父親臨終前被立為財産繼承人，並承襲了其父的伯爵稱號，和貴族庫拉金的女兒艾倫結婚。婚後不久，因兩人性格不合而分居。彼埃爾與羅斯托夫伯爵一傢在去打獵的路上，把沉浸在喪妻之痛的安德烈也拉去打獵，伯爵的女兒娜塔莎·羅斯托娃對安德烈産生了好感。不久，娜塔莎接受了安德烈的求婚，訂立了婚約。
過了一段時間，安德烈重返軍隊。艾倫的弟弟阿納托裏騙得娜塔莎的愛，唆使其與他私奔。俄法戰爭開始，擔任總司令的庫圖佐夫將軍决定暫時放棄莫斯科。在撤退途中，娜塔莎遇到受重傷的安德烈，安德烈諒解了娜塔莎，但他卻因傷勢過重而離開了人世。
戰爭勝利結束後，彼埃爾回到了莫斯科，娜塔莎把自己的命運永遠的與彼埃爾結合在了一起……
《戰爭與和平》-影片評價
這是一部製作精緻、構思嚴謹的巨片。場面壯闊，氣勢磅礴，繼承了前蘇聯在拍攝歷史題材影片方面的傳統，完美地融托爾斯泰原著精神於其中，再現了俄法戰爭時期俄羅斯大地廣阔的歷史畫捲。影片以1812年俄國衛國戰爭為中心，反映了1805年至1820年重大事件，包括奧斯特利茨大戰、波羅底諾會戰、莫斯科大火、拿破侖潰退等。通過對四大家庭以及安德烈、彼埃爾、娜塔莎在戰爭與和平環境中的思想和行動的描寫，展示了當時俄國社會的風貌。耗時五年，據稱耗資一億美元(當時的價錢)的宏偉巨製，試圖極其忠實地復製托爾斯泰的長篇巨著。戰爭戲和舞會戲非常出色，但整體水準參差不齊。影片長達六個半小時，在蘇聯電影史上有着舉足輕重的地位，同時獲奧斯卡最佳外語片奬。1956年的美國版雖然比這部短，但也有 208分鐘，有奧黛麗·赫本、亨利·方達等主演，也是以戰爭場面取勝。1973年英國BBC推出750分鐘的電視版。
《戰爭與和平》-花絮
影片拍攝耗資高達5億6000萬美元，堪稱影史上最昂貴的影片。
影片拍攝得到了蘇聯軍方的大力協助，甚至軍方試圖讓片中兵力盡量與實際戰役的參戰人數基本相同。在世界影史上，本片成為動用臨時演員最多的影片之一，超過本片的衹有1982年的《甘地傳》，參加該片拍攝的臨時演員多達30萬人。
1981年3月，本片在墨西哥電視一臺和二臺首次播出，創下了電視臺播放最長影片的吉尼斯世界紀錄。
1958年，好萊塢著名製片人邁剋爾·托德(Michael Todd)訪問莫斯科，他曾提議聯合拍攝本片，但遭到蘇聯政府的拒絶。
《戰爭與和平》-精彩對白
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Natasha... I love you too much. More than anything in the world.
安德烈王子：娜塔莎……我太愛你了。超過這世上的一切。
Natasha Rostova: And I! But why too much?
娜塔莎：我也是！但為什麽這麽強烈？
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Why too much? Well, what do you think? What do you feel in your soul, deep in your soul? Shall I live? What do you think?
安德烈王子：為什麽？你是怎麽想的？在你心靈深處感知到什麽？我會活下去嗎？你是怎麽想的？
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
Natasha Rostova: I'm sure of it.
娜塔莎：當然。
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: How good that would be.
安德烈王子：那會多好。
Narrator: Enough, enough, men. Stop, consider, what are you doing? Into the minds of tired and hungry men on both sides, a flicker of doubt began to creep. Were they to go on slaughtering one another? Kill whom you like, do what you like, but I've had enough. Yet some inexplicable, mysterious power continued to control them, and the terrible business went on, carried out not by the will of individual men.
旁白：夠了，夠了，停下吧，你們想想，你們在做什麽？交戰雙方饑寒交迫筋疲力盡的人們開始思考，一絲疑慮開始蔓延。他們還將互相殺戮嗎？隨便你們為所欲為吧，我已經厭倦了。然而一些無法解釋的、神秘的力量在繼續控製着他們，災難扔在繼續，個人的意願無法改變這一切。
《戰爭與和平》-劇情
日本侵華戰爭期間，小柴健一所在運輸船被炸沉後，他被中國漁民救活，從此留在中國軍隊服務。健一的死亡通知單被送到東京的妻子町子手中，町子和健一幼年時的朋友伍東康吉結合了，帶着健一的兒子茂男幸福地生活在一起。但在空襲中，康吉精神上受到了刺激變得失常。日本投降後，健一回到家乡，他沒有想到，妻子町子已經與康吉結了婚，他在絶望中要求把茂男交給自己撫養，但是茂男已經和康吉有了感情，健一不得不放棄帶走茂男的念頭。...
《戰爭與和平》- 幕後花絮
此片是按照當時占日美軍的意圖拍攝的，是為日本新憲法放棄戰爭作宣傳的影片。但對於兩位導演來說，這正是他們想要拍攝的主題，因為在戰爭期間，他們目睹了戰爭帶給人民的殘酷和不幸生活。此片的重要意義還在於，導演龜井文夫把大量表現中國難民的鏡頭組接在影片中，使日本人民看到了真實的戰爭殘酷的一面，對日本人民的觸動很大，因此廣大日本人民對此片的評價很高，影片在日本電影史上有不可忽視的地位。
《戰爭與和平》-小說引言
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
托爾斯泰捲秩浩繁的長篇小說。場面浩大，人物繁多，被稱為“世界上最偉大的小說”，成就非凡。《戰爭與和平》問世至今，一直被人稱為“世界上最偉大的小說”。 這部捲帙浩繁的巨著以史詩般廣阔與雄渾的氣勢，生動 地描寫了1805至1820年俄國社會的重大歷史事件和各個生活領域：“近千個人物，無數的場景，國傢和私人生活的一切可能的領域，歷史，戰爭，人間一切慘劇，各種情欲，人生各個階段，從嬰兒降臨人間的啼聲到氣息奄奄的老人的感情最後迸發，人所能感受到的一切歡樂和痛苦，各種可能的內心思緒，從竊取自己同伴的錢幣的小偷的感覺，到英雄主義的最崇高的衝動和領悟透徹的沉思— —在這幅畫裏都應有盡有。”作者對生活的大面積涵蓋和整體把握，對個別現象與事物整體、個人命運與周圍世界的內在聯繫的充分揭示，使這部小說具有極大的思想和藝術容量。 這是托爾斯泰創作的第一部捲秩浩繁的長篇小說。 作者把戰爭與和平，前綫與後方、國內與國外、軍隊與社會、上層與下層連結起來，既全面反映了時代風貌，又為各式各樣的典型人物創造了極廣阔的典型環境。作者對人物的描寫形象既復雜又豐滿，常用對比的藝術方法來表述，體裁在俄國文學史上是一種創新，也超越了歐洲長篇小說的傳統規範。
《戰爭與和平》-作者簡介
列夫·托爾斯泰（Л.Н.Толстой,Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy,1828—1910)，19世紀俄羅斯文學寫實主義的代表作傢，公認的最偉大的俄羅斯文學家， 《西方正典》作者、美國著名文學教授兼批評傢哈洛·卜倫甚至稱之為“從文藝復興以來，惟一能挑戰荷馬、但丁與莎士比亞的偉大作傢”。對文學擁有“狂戀式愛情”的托爾
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
斯泰，是俄羅斯文學史上創作時間最長、作品數量最多、影響最深遠、地位最崇高的作傢，重情節、重典型、重寫實、重批判的文學時代，在他筆下達到巔峰。長篇巨著《戰爭與和平》、 《安娜·卡列尼娜》 和《復活》是托爾斯泰文學藝術上的三個里程碑。百年來，他的作品被譯為各國文字，銷售量纍積超過5億册，是大師中的大師。
《戰爭與和平》恢弘的構思和卓越的藝術描寫震驚世界文壇，成為舉世公認的世界文學名著和人類寶貴的精神財富。英國作傢毛姆及諾貝爾文學奬得主羅曼·羅蘭稱贊它是“有史以來最偉大的小說”，“是我們時代最偉大的史詩，是近代的伊利亞特”。
《戰爭與和平》是一部宏偉巨著，它以戰爭問題為中心，以庫拉金、包爾康斯基、勞斯托夫、別竺豪夫四傢貴族的生活為綫索，展示了19世紀最初15年的俄國歷史，描繪了各個階級的生活，是一部再現當時社會風貌的恢弘史詩。作品中的各色人物刻畫精準細膩，景物如臨眼前，雖是19世紀的小說作品，但流傳至今，卻沒有任何隔閡感，其中流露出來對人性的悲憫情懷，穿越時空背景，仍舊撼動人心。
《戰爭與和平》-內容簡要
1805年7月，拿破侖率兵徵服了歐洲，法俄之間正醖釀着激烈的戰爭。然而在彼得堡上層的人們依舊過着恬靜悠閑的生活，達官貴人們都彙聚在皇后的女官兼寵臣安娜·巴甫洛夫娜舉辦傢宴招待會上。
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
赴宴的有宮廷官高位重的伐西裏王爵和他漂亮卻行為不端的女兒美倫，還有個頭高大健壯的年輕人彼爾，他戴着眼鏡，剪短發，穿淺色的流行短褲和褐色燕尾服。彼爾是莫斯科著名貴族別竺豪夫的私生子，從小出國留學，今年20歲，學成回國到首都謀職。他一進宴會廳，對人們議論拿破侖徵戰歐洲頗感興趣。在這裏，他高興地結識了英俊而剛毅的青年安德烈－－先朝保羅皇帝的退職老總司令包爾康斯基的長子，兩人很快成了好朋友。
此時，安德烈正應庫圖佐夫將軍的召喚，去任他的傳令官，將出國跟徵戰歐洲的拿破侖軍隊作戰，任即將分娩的妻子和妹妹瑪麗再三勸留，也改變不了他的决心，他期望通過這次戰爭為自己帶來輝煌與榮耀。在出徵之前，安德烈把妻子從首都送到了在莫斯科郊外居住的父親那裏，委托父親加以關照。於是他急奔前綫，在波蘭追上了俄軍總司令庫圖佐夫，總司令派他到聯合縱隊去任職，並受到了嘉奬。
彼爾回到莫斯科，他繼承了別竺豪夫伯爵身後所有的遺産，搖身一變成為莫斯科數一數二的資本傢，成為社交界的寵兒。他的親戚伐西裏早就窺視別竺豪夫傢的財産，本想通過篡改遺囑來謀得，失敗後，又處心積慮地要拉攏彼爾，一方面為他在彼得堡謀得一個不小的官職，又挖空心思巧安排，讓已是宮廷女官的女兒美倫嫁給彼爾，以圖錢財。結果他的計謀順利達成，可這樁婚事實在不幸之至。彼爾發現了妻子與好友多勃赫夫之間的曖昧關係，他與多勃赫夫進行搏鬥，並幸運的擊倒對方，隨之與妻子分居，自己也陷入了善惡和生死的睏擾之中，在加入共濟會後，受到寬宏大量的哲學的熏陶，接回了妻子。
當安德烈再次回到總司令身邊，俄奧聯軍對法的奧斯特裏齊戰鬥就要打響了。由於在戰前的軍事會議上，否决了幾位老將軍的意見，采取了馬上出擊的戰略，結果慘敗。安德烈受傷被俘，途中昏迷，被敵人誤以為活不成而丟下，庫圖佐夫也以為安德烈陣亡，給他的父親去信報喪。可是安德烈在老百姓的救治下又康復了。愈後的他直奔老傢，是日夜晚，妻子莉沙正好産下一名男嬰，但她卻在分娩中死去了。安德烈在孤獨與絶望之中給妻子最後一個吻，他覺得人生已再無意義，决定終老於領地。
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
一八零七年六月，俄與法言和，和平生活開始了。
一八零九年春天，安德烈·保爾康斯基因貴族會之事而去拜托羅斯托夫伯爵。在伯爵傢他被充滿生命力的年輕小姐娜達莎深深地吸引了。但由於禿山老公爵強烈反對，衹好互相約以一年的緩衝期，而 後，安德烈·保爾康斯基即出國去了。但是，年輕的娜達莎無法忍受寂寞，且經不起彼爾之妻愛倫的哥哥阿納托爾的誘惑，而擅自約定私奔，因此，與安德烈·保爾康斯基的婚約即告無效。
一八一二年，俄、法兩國再度交戰，安德烈·保爾康斯基於多勃琪諾戰役中身受重傷，而俄軍節節敗退，眼見莫斯科即將陷於敵人之手了。羅斯托夫傢將原本用來搬運傢産的馬車，改派去運送傷兵，娜達莎方能能於傷兵中發現將死的安德烈·保爾康斯基。她嚮他謝罪並熱誠看護他，但一切都是徒勞了，安德烈·保爾康斯基仍然逃不過死亡之神而去世了。
彼爾化裝成農夫，想伺機刺殺拿破 侖，但卻被法軍逮捕而成為俘虜。其妻愛倫於戰火中，仍繼續其放蕩行為，最後，因誤服墮胎藥而且死亡。
幾番奮戰後，俄國終於贏得勝利，彼爾於莫斯科巧遇娜達莎，兩人便結為夫 婦，而安德烈·保爾康斯基的妹妹瑪莉亞也與娜達莎之兄尼剋拉結婚，而組成一個幸福的家庭。
《戰爭與和平》-相關評價
《戰爭與和平》問世至今，一直被人稱為“世界上最偉大的小說”。這部捲帙浩繁的巨著以史詩般廣阔與雄渾的氣勢，生動地描寫了1805至1820年俄國社會的重大歷史事件和各個生活領域：“近千個人物，無數的場景，國傢和私人生活的一切可能的領域，歷史，戰爭，人間一切慘劇，各種情欲，人生各個階段，從嬰兒降臨人間的啼聲到氣息奄奄的老人的感情最後迸發，人所能感受到的一切歡樂和痛苦，各種可能的內心思緒，從竊取自己同伴的錢幣的小偷的感覺，到英雄主義的最崇高的衝動和領悟透徹的沉思——在這幅畫裏都應有盡有。”（斯特拉霍夫語）作傢對生活的大面積涵蓋和整體把握，對個別現象與事物整體、個人命運與周圍世界的內在聯繫的充分揭示，使這部小說具有極大的思想和藝術容量。
這是一部人民戰爭的英雄史詩。托爾斯泰曾經表示：“在《戰爭與和平》裏我喜歡人民的思想。”也就是說，作者力圖在這部作品裏表現俄國人民在反侵略戰爭中的愛國主義精神及其歷史作用。在國傢危急的嚴重關頭，許多來自下層的俄軍普通官兵同仇敵愾，浴血奮戰，雖然戰事一度失利，但精神上卻始終占有壓倒的優勢。老百姓也主動起來保傢衛國。在人民群衆中涌現出一大批像網升、傑尼索夫、謝爾巴狄那樣的英雄人物。俄軍統帥庫圖佐夫也因為體現了人民的意志，纔具有過人的膽略和决勝的信心。整部小說以無可辯駁的事實證明了托爾斯泰的“人民戰爭的巨棒以全部威嚴雄偉的力量”趕走了侵略者的思想。
作者在小說中也認真探索了貴族階級的歷史命運問題。小說的主要情節就是圍繞着包爾康斯基、別素霍夫、羅斯托夫、庫拉金四大貴族家庭的生活展開的。60年代，托爾斯泰仍站在貴族階級的立場上，但是他對接近宮廷的上
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
層貴族卻給予深刻的揭露和批判。在民族危亡的關頭，庫拉金之流漠視國傢命運，畏敵如虎，他們關心的是尋歡作樂，積聚私産。小說中，庫拉金是官痞，兒子阿納托爾是惡少，女兒愛侖則是蕩婦。這些貴族的卑劣行徑與人民為國獻身的崇高精神形成了強烈的反差。托爾斯泰認為，俄國的前途在於“優秀”貴族與人民的合作。他用詩意的筆觸描寫了京城以外的莊園貴族羅斯托夫一傢和包爾康斯基一傢，指出在這些貴族身上仍保留着淳厚的古風，他們有愛國心，與人民的精神相通。這裏，作者在一定程度上美化了宗法製貴族。
這部小說的主人公是安德烈·包爾康斯基、彼埃爾·別素霍夫和娜塔莎·羅斯托娃。這三個人物都是作者喜愛的正面形象。安德烈和彼埃爾是探索型的青年貴族知識分子。小說中，這兩個人物在性格和生活道路上形成了鮮明的對比。安德烈性格內嚮，意志堅強，有較強的社會活動能力，他後來投身軍隊和參與社會活動庫塞、阿多諾、弗洛姆、哈貝馬斯（JürgenHabermas，1929—），在嚴酷的事實面前逐步認識到上層統治階級的腐敗和人民的力量，彼埃爾心直口快，易動感情，缺少實際活動能力，更側重於對道德理想的追求，後來主要在與人民的直接接觸中精神上得到成長。女主人公娜塔莎與兩位主人公的關係使她成為小說中重要的連綴人物，而這一形象本身又是個性鮮明，生氣勃勃的。小說充分展開了娜塔莎熱烈而豐富的情感，她與人民和大自然的接近，她的民族氣質，以及她在精神上的成長。這幾個主要人物形象都具有較高的認識價值和審美價值。
《戰爭與和平》藝術成就卓著。在這部作品中，托爾斯泰有力地拓寬了長篇小說表現生活的幅度，並在傳統的史詩體小說和戲劇式小說的基礎上創造了一種比較成熟的形態。小說場面壯闊，結構清晰，人物形象鮮明，有一種大海般恢宏開闊的美。同時，小說時代感強烈，它雖是一部歷史題材小說，但卻反映了農奴製改革後俄國前途和人民作用的問題。因此，《戰爭與和平》當之無愧地是一部“了不起的巨著”。（列寧語）
《戰爭與和平》-閱讀價值
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
戰爭是一場歷史爭論不休的話題。有人說它是為了和平，也有人說是為了進步，因為戰爭確實有的時候加快了文明的步伐。不管戰爭為何，但似乎都起源於矛盾與行為。不可否認，人的心理是存在好鬥的一面，在平凡的生活中家庭、事業、感情等一係列瑣事，都讓我們活得無比擔憂，在單調乏味的生活裏，人是很難適應這種不變動的生活。
在托爾斯泰的小說裏《戰爭與和平》，如果拿戰爭單獨的來講的話，那麽戰爭是自由的。這種自由為人性與釋放的自由。在一場戰爭中瞬間的生死是可以選擇的，活着的目的就是為了殺人，殺人的目的就是為了活着。在這個簡單而殘酷的圈子裏衹存有兩種人，即朋友和敵人，除此之外一切都變得不重要了，這讓許多復雜事情也顯現得無比鮮明化了。小說中羅斯托夫是喜歡這種簡單的人。在瘋狂的爭奪與罪惡的戰爭中，羅斯托夫找到了自己的價值，這種價值並非是在上層交際圈裏固有的。更多的是羅斯托夫作為一個傳統人物，在虛榮和榮耀的引導下更多的懂得犧牲自己。然而戰爭是需要這類人的，生活也不排斥，但在托爾斯泰的小說裏卻並未得到贊揚，這讓人不難想象其中包含裏面的趣味與真誠，值得讓人感動！
索尼亞是那麽的愛着他，與其說她是愛着他的靈魂與全部，還不如說她是為自己編織的信念而愛着。在托爾斯泰的小說中很容易看到，一目目的愛情都存在着一定的目的性和世俗的挺嚮性。索尼亞為姨媽傢的名利放棄了羅斯托夫，安德安為世俗的貞操放棄了娜塔沙，一切都那麽的變換莫測，但又存在單調的一致性——即為名、利、虛榮而放棄自己原本的生活。
在安德列經歷了幾次的生死離別之後，戰爭就像是一盞明燈似的忽暗忽明的出現在他眼前，有時像是指清道路有時卻顯得那麽的撲朔迷離。衹有在生與死即將分開的時候，現實和理想在他眼中纔看得那麽清楚。作者一個年齡段一個年齡段的敘述了安德列所經歷的感受，這讓我門毫不費解的走進了他的內心世界，心有靈犀的思考着擺在自己面前的問題。現實—理想，當思考的時候必然會産生矛盾，也必然會有所結果。書中一步步在矛盾中不完善的結果來闡述了安德列的思想升華，通過對他的人物塑造讓我們比較完整的瞭解了人性的一面。
在戰場上，安德列開始也和羅斯托夫一樣，想通過戰爭來建立一份殊榮，做為一個男人來講這是應具備的。但他不明白應該具備這種殊榮的目的是為什麽，也許是一種無形的力量在引誘他這樣做。在亞歷山大的皇權下，大多數人都可以為勇氣和殊榮獻身，與其說是為進步和文明而戰，還不如說是為別人和其他的東西而戰。
不難看到，在這場關鍵性的戰域中，拿破侖的真正對手並不是亞歷山大，而是亞歷山大的屬下庫圖佐夫，一個深
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
受皇帝排斥但又離不開他的人。確定他為一名將軍倒還不如說他是一位仁智的老頭，一位懂得平平凡凡生活真諦的人。在拿破侖的天才戰略中，被人類認為是瘋狂加藝術的行為在這裏得到了休息，就像是一隻十分威猛的蜂子撞進了棉花堆裏，一切鋒芒都包容在不痛不癢的棉絲裏。而衹能像是蒼蠅一樣等待着蜘蛛的進食。在這裏我們衹能用托爾斯泰的話語：庫圖佐夫是一位懂得自然規律的人！——生活又何嘗不一樣需要這樣的人呢。
在安德列臨死的那一刻（有幾次這樣的時刻），文中總會出現藍天、白雲、童年時的想象和一切當時認為不愉快而現在想起來令他愉快的事，這些東西在安德列的眼中就像過雨雲煙，一切都顯得那麽的真實與美好，這讓我們不難想象生活其實是美好的，衹是我們過與苛求。
在安德列死後僅接着是皮埃爾和娜塔沙（安德列的未婚妻）、安德列的姐姐馬麗亞（虔誠的教徒）和羅斯托夫的幸福婚姻生活，這也正預示了無論是在戰爭的背後，還是在經過一切腥風血雨的掙紮之後，生活的要求其實很簡單，一切都是人類在作怪罷了！
《戰爭與和平》-現代註釋[精文]
[英國] 埃裏剋·霍布斯鮑姆 尹宏毅 翻譯
20世紀是人類有記載的歷史上最殺人不眨眼的世紀。戰爭所造成的或者與戰爭有關的死亡總人數估計為1.87億，相當於1913年世界人口的10%以上。如果算作是從1914年開始，這是一個戰爭幾乎不間斷的世紀，其中某地沒有發生有組織的武裝衝突的時期很少也很短暫。占據世紀主導地位的是世界大戰：即國傢或國傢聯盟之間的戰爭。
從1914年到1945年的時期可以被看作一場單一的“30年戰爭”，僅僅被20年代的一段間歇所打斷——在日本人於1922年最終從蘇聯北亞撤退和1931年對東北亞的進攻之間的時期。幾乎緊隨其後的是大約40年的冷戰，這一時期符合霍布斯的戰爭定義，即其“不是僅僅包括戰鬥或者戰爭行為，而且包括一段時間，其中通過戰鬥來進行鬥爭的意志得到了充分的表達。”一個可以辯論的問題是，從冷戰結束以來，美軍在世界各地所參與的行動在多大程度上構成了這個世界大戰時代的延續。然而毫無疑義的是，20世紀90年代充滿了歐洲、非洲和西亞及東亞的正式與非正式的軍事衝突。世界整體來說從1914年以來一直沒有和平，現在也是一樣。
儘管如此，這個世紀不能被籠統地來對待，不論是從年代上還是從地理上來說。按照年代順序，它分為三個階段：以德國為中心的世界大戰時代（1914年到 1945年）、兩個超級大國對峙的時代（1945年到1989年）和傳統的國際實力體係終結以來的時代。我將把這些時期稱為第一、第二和第三時期。從地理上講，軍事行動的影響一直是十分不勻稱的。除了一個例外（1932年到1935年的查科戰爭），西半球（美洲）在20世紀裏沒有重大的國傢間戰爭（與內戰相區分）。敵人的軍事行動很少觸及這些領土：因此，9月11日世界貿易中心和五角大樓被炸纔令人震驚。
從1945年以來，國傢間的戰爭也從歐洲消失了，而在此之前，歐洲曾經是主要的戰場地區。雖然在第三時期裏，戰爭回到了東南歐，但是在該大陸的其餘地方，它卻看來不大可能重演。另一方面，在第二時期，與全球對峙並不一定毫無聯繫的國傢間戰爭仍然在中東和南亞肆虐，直接産生於這場全球對峙的主要戰爭在東亞和東南亞（韓國和印度支那）發生。與此同時，撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲等地區在第一時期裏受戰爭影響比較少（埃塞俄比亞除外，它遲遲地於1935到1936年遭受意大利的殖民徵服），在第二時期成為武裝衝突的戰場，並在第三時期目睹了屍橫遍野和水深火熱。
20世紀的另外兩個戰爭特點很突出，第一個不如第二個明顯。21世紀開始之際，我們不知不覺地進入這樣一個世界：武裝的行動基本上不再為政府或者其所授權的代理人所掌握，爭端的各方除了動用武力的願望外，毫無共同特徵、身份或目標。
國傢間的戰爭在第一和第二時期主導了戰爭的形象，以致現有國傢或帝國領土範圍內的內戰或其它武裝衝突在一定程度上被掩蓋了。就連十月革命後俄羅斯帝國領土上的內戰以及中華帝國崩潰後發生的內戰，也能夠與國際衝突的框架相吻合，因為它們彼此不可分離。另一方面，拉丁美洲在20世紀裏可能並沒有軍隊跨越國界，但它卻是重大國內衝突的場所：例如1911年以後在墨西哥、1948年以來在哥倫比亞，以及第二時期在許多中美洲國傢，都是如此。人們一般沒有認識到，從60年代過半以來，國際戰爭的數量相當持續地減少了。60年代中期，內部衝突變得比國傢之間的衝突更加常見。國內衝突的數量繼續激增，一直到90年代纔趨於平緩。
人們更加熟悉的是戰鬥員與非戰鬥員之間區別的被侵蝕。上半個世紀的兩次世界大戰涉及交戰各國的全部人口；戰鬥員和非戰鬥員都遭受了損失。然而，在這個世紀進程中，戰爭的負擔越來越多地從武裝力量轉移到平民身上。平民不僅是其受害者，而且越來越多地成為軍事或軍事-政治行動的目標。第一次世界大戰和第二次之間的對比是顯著的：在一戰中陣亡者當中，衹有5%是平民；二戰中這一數字增加到66%。普遍的估計是，今天受戰爭影響的人們當中有80%到90%是平民。這一比例從冷戰結束以來增加了，因為從那時以來的大多數軍事行動都不是由義務兵軍隊，而是由小股正規或非正規部隊進行的，在許多情況下所使用的是高技術武器，他們還受到保護，以免承擔傷亡的風險。沒有理由懷疑，戰爭的主要受害者仍將是平民。
假如戰爭與和平像這個世紀初那樣保持涇渭分明，則20世紀對這兩者的著述會容易一些。世紀初，1899年和 1907年的海牙公約把戰爭的規則編入法典。衝突被認為主要發生在主權國傢之間，或者如果發生在一個特定國傢領土範圍內，是在組織充分、因而被其它主權國傢公認具有交戰地位的各方之間展開。戰爭當時被認為與和平有顯著區別，通過開戰時的一項戰爭宣言和戰爭結束時的一項和約。軍事行動被認為在戰鬥員之間有明顯區別——其特徵譬如他們所穿的軍裝或者顯示其屬於一支有組織的軍隊的其它跡象——以及非作戰平民。戰爭被認為是戰鬥員之間的事情。非戰鬥員衹要可能，就應當在戰時受到保護。
過去一貫的諒解是，這些公約並不涵蓋所有的國內和國際武裝衝突，特別是不包括西方國傢在國際公認的主權國傢管轄範圍以外地區進行的帝國擴張所造成的衝突，儘管這些衝突當中的一些（但絶非全部）被稱為“戰爭”。它們也不包括反對地位穩固的國傢的大規模叛亂，譬如所謂的“印度兵變”，或者在國傢或名義上統治着這些國傢的帝國當局有效控製範圍之外地區反復發生的武裝活動，譬如阿富汗或摩洛哥山區的劫掠和血仇。儘管如此，海牙公約仍然是第一次世界大戰中的指導方針。20世紀，這一相對的明確性被混亂所取代。
首先，國際衝突與國內衝突之間的界綫變得模糊不清，因為20世紀的特點不僅是戰爭，而且還有革命和帝國的解體。一國內部的革命或解放鬥爭對國際局勢産生影響，在冷戰期間尤其如此。相反地，俄羅斯革命後，國傢對自己所不支持的別國內部事務的幹預變得司空見慣，起碼在這樣做風險比較小的地方是如此。現在情況仍然是這樣。
第二，戰爭與和平之間的明確差別變得含糊不清。除了個別地方外，第二次世界大戰既不是以宣戰開始，也不是以和約結束。隨後的一個時期不論是從舊的意義上講歸類為戰爭還是和平都很睏難，因此“冷戰”這個新字眼不得不被發明來描述它。冷戰以來狀況的模糊性的一個明證就是中東的當前局勢。不論“戰爭”還是“和平” 都沒有確切描述海灣戰爭正式結束以來伊拉剋的形勢——該國仍然幾乎每天都遭到外國的轟炸——巴勒斯坦人和以色列人之間的關係也是如此，還有以色列與其鄰國、黎巴嫩和敘利亞之間的關係。所有這些都是一種不幸的後遺癥，其原因是20世紀的世界大戰，還有戰爭的越來越強大的大衆宣傳機器，以及彼此不相稱的和充滿激情的意識形態之間對峙的一個時期。這種對峙給戰爭帶來了相當於在以往的宗教衝突中所見到的正義討伐的成分。
這些衝突與國際實力體係的傳統戰爭不同，越來越多地是為了不可談判的目的，譬如“無條件投降”而進行。由於戰爭和勝利都被看作一邊倒的，所以對18和19世紀的戰爭公約所可能強加給交戰國能力的任何限製——甚至正式的宣戰——都被拋棄。對勝利者堅持自己意志的威力的任何限製也是如此。經驗表明，在和平情況下達成的協議可能很容易被撕毀。
近年來，使情況進一步復雜化的是，在人們的公開言論中，“戰爭”一詞往往被用來指部署有組織的力量打擊被看作反社會的各種國傢或國際活動——例如“反黑手黨的戰爭”或“反販毒組織的戰爭”。在這些衝突中，武裝力量的兩個類型的行動被混淆。一個類型——我們稱之為“士兵”——用來對付其他武裝力量，目的是擊敗他們。另外一個——我們把它叫做“警察”——努力保持或恢復一個現有的政治實體，一般是一個國傢內部必要程度的法律和公共秩序。並不帶有任何必要的道德隱含意義的勝利是一種力量的目的；將違法者繩之以法則帶有道德的涵義，乃是另外一種力量的目標。然而，這種區分在理論上比在實踐中容易做出，戰鬥中的一名士兵殺人本身並不犯法。但如果愛爾蘭共和軍的一名成員把自己看作交戰一方，儘管正式的英國法律把他視為殺人犯，則情況如何？
北愛爾蘭的活動是像愛爾蘭共和軍所認為的那樣是一場戰爭呢，還是在違法者面前為了維持英國的一個省有秩序的治理而做出的努力？由於不僅一支可觀的當地警察部隊，而且還有一支全國性的軍隊被動員起來對付愛爾蘭共和軍達30年左右，所以我們可以斷定，這是一場戰爭，但卻是一場像警察行動一樣有條不紊地實施的戰爭，其方式把傷亡和該省中的生活中斷減少到最低限度。新世紀開始時和平與戰爭之間關係的復雜性和混亂情況就是如此。它們得到了美國及其盟國目前正在進行的軍事與其它行動的充分詮釋。
現在像整個20世紀一樣，全然沒有任何能夠控製或解决武裝爭端的有效的全球權威機構。全球化已經在幾乎每個方面取得進展——經濟上、技術上、文化上甚至語言上——唯一例外的是，在政治與軍事上，各國仍然是唯一的有效權威。雖然正式的國傢有200個左右，但是在實踐上衹有少數舉足輕重，其中美國享有占壓倒優勢的威力。然而從來沒有任何國傢或帝國足夠地龐大、富裕或強大，以維持在世界政治領域中的霸權，就更不用說建立全球範圍的政治與軍事上的至高無上地位了。一個單一的超級大國無法彌補全球權威的空白，尤其鑒於其效力足以使之獲得主要國傢的自願接受、被當作具有約束力的公約的缺乏——例如涉及國際裁軍或者武器控製的等等。一些這種權威機構是存在的，特別是聯合國、各種法律與金融機構，譬如國際貨幣基金組織、世界銀行和世界貿易組織，以及一些國際法庭。但沒有任何一個擁有除了國傢之間的協議所賦予它們的之外的、由於強大國傢的支持而獲得的或者各國自願接受的有效權力。雖然這一點令人遺憾，但是在可以預見的將來卻不大可能改變。
由於衹有國傢纔行使實際的權力，所以風險在於，國際機構在試圖應付“戰爭罪行”等違法行為的時候會無效或者缺乏普遍的合法地位。甚至當通過普遍共識而建立世界法庭（例如根據聯合國1998年7月17日的羅馬協議建立的國際刑事法庭），它們的判斷也不一定會被當作合法和有約束力的而接受，衹要強國有條件對其加以無視。一個由強國組成的集團可能足夠強大，以確保來自比較弱小國傢的一些違犯者被送上這些法庭，從而或許在某些地區限製武裝衝突的殘酷程度。然而這是表明在一個國際體係內權力與影響力的傳統行使、而不是國際法行使的實例。
然而在21世紀與20世紀之間有重大差別：認為戰爭是發生在一個劃分為處於有效的政府權威之下的領土地區的世界上，這些政府享有對公共權力和強迫手段的壟斷，這種想法已經不再適用。它從來都不適用於經歷着革命的國傢或者四分五裂的帝國的各個分裂部分，但直到最近為止，大多數新的革命或後殖民地政權——中國在1911年和1949年之間是主要的例外——相當迅速地再生，成為基本上有組織的和正常運轉的繼承政權和國傢。然而最近30年左右，由於各種原因，國傢喪失了其對武裝力量的一貫的壟斷、很大一部分從前的穩定性與權力，而且越來越多地還喪失了合法地位或者公認的永久性的根本感覺，這種地位過去使政府得以把稅賦與徵兵等負擔強加給心甘情願的公民。戰爭的物質裝備現在對民間組織來說普遍地唾手可得，資助非國傢戰爭的手段也是如此，這樣一來，國傢與非國傢組織之間的力量對比已經改變。
國傢內部的武裝衝突已經變得更加嚴重，並且可能繼續幾十年，而沒有任何勝利或得到解决的真實前景：剋什米爾、安哥拉、斯裏蘭卡、車臣、哥倫比亞。在極端的情況下，譬如在非洲的部分地區，國傢可能已經基本不復存在，或者譬如在哥倫比亞，可能不再在本國部分領土上行使政權。甚至在強大和穩定的國傢裏，也一直難以消除非官方的小型武裝集團，譬如英國的愛爾蘭共和軍及西班牙的巴斯剋民族和自由組織。這一局面的新奇性通過一件事實顯示出來：地球上最強大的國傢在遭受了一場恐怖主義襲擊後感到有義務發動一場正式的行動，打擊一個很小的國際與非政府組織或網絡，而後者既沒有領土，也沒有一支能夠辨認的軍隊。
這些變化如何影響今後一個世紀戰爭與和平之間的平衡呢？我寧願不就很有可能爆發的戰爭或者它們可能的結局做出預測。然而不論武裝衝突的結構還是解决的方法都由於主權國傢世界體係的轉變而發生了深刻變化。
蘇聯的解體意味着，曾經指導了國際關係將近兩個世紀、除了明顯的例外還對國傢之間的衝突行使了一定的控製權的大國體係不復存在。它的消失消除了現在國傢間戰爭和國傢對別國事務進行武裝幹預的一大因素——冷戰期間外國領土的邊界基本上未曾被軍隊所跨越。然而即使那時，由於弱小國傢的大量存在（儘管這些國傢從官方意義上講是聯合國的“主權”成員國），國際體係就已經存在潛在的不穩定性。
蘇聯和歐洲共産黨政權的垮臺明顯地使這種不穩定性增加。在迄今為止穩定的民族國傢，譬如英國、西班牙、比利時和意大利，具有不同程度實力的分離主義趨勢完全可能進一步加重這種不穩定。與此同時，國際舞臺上民間表演者的數量也成倍增加。有什麽機製可以用來控製和解决這種衝突嗎？從記錄看並不令人樂觀。90年代的武裝衝突沒有一次以穩定的解决而告終。由於冷戰的機構、假設與言論的持續存在，所以舊的懷疑未曾消亡，從而惡化了東南歐共産主義以後的分崩離析，使得解决一度被稱為南斯拉夫的地區問題更加睏難。
我們要想製訂一些控製武裝衝突的手段，就必須從意識形態和權力-政治兩方面消除這些冷戰遺留下來的假設。此外明顯的是，美國通過單方的武力來強加一種（任何一種）新的世界秩序的努力都已經失敗並且必然繼續失敗，不管力量關係目前如何朝着有利於美國的方向偏斜，儘管美國得到了一個（必然短命的）聯盟的支持。國際體係仍將是多邊的，其管製將取决於幾個大國達成一致的能力，儘管其中一個國傢享有軍事上的壓倒優勢。
美國所采取的國際軍事行動在多大程度上取决於別國通過談判的協議已經很清楚。此外也清楚的是，戰爭的政治解决，甚至美國所參與的戰爭的解决，都將是通過談判而不是通過單方的強加於人。以無條件投降而結束的戰爭的時代在可以預見的將來不會重演。
對於現有的國際機構，特別是聯合國的角色，也必須重新考慮。雖然它無時不在而且通常是求助的對象，但是在解决爭端方面，卻沒有明確的角色。它的戰略與行動始終任憑不斷變幻的權力政治所宰割。缺乏一個被真正看作中立的和能夠在未經安全理事會事先授權情況下采取行動的國際中介，這一直是爭端處理體係中最明顯的空白。
冷戰結束以來，對和平與戰爭的處理一直是即興的。在最好情況下，譬如在巴爾幹地區，武裝衝突被外部武裝幹預製止，敵對行動結束時的現狀由第三方的軍隊來維持。武裝衝突未來控製的一個通用模型能否從這種幹預中産生還不清楚。
21世紀中戰爭與和平之間的平衡將不會取决於製訂比較有效的談判和解决機製，而是要看內部穩定和軍事衝突的避免情況如何。除了少數例外，現有的國傢之間的、過去導致了武裝衝突的對抗與摩擦今天造成這種局面的可能性減小了。例如現在的國際邊界問題上的政府間燃眉之急的衝突相對來說很少。另一方面，內部衝突很容易演變成暴力性的：戰爭的主要危險存在於外國或者外部軍事勢力對衝突的捲入。
與貧睏、嚴重不平等和經濟不穩定的國傢相比，經濟蒸蒸日上、穩定而且商品在居民當中比較公平地分配的國傢，其社會和政治局勢動蕩的可能性較小。然而，避免或控製國內武裝暴力活動的情況更加直接地取决於國傢政府的實力和政績，及其在多數居民眼中的合法地位。今天沒有任何政府能夠對非武裝民衆的存在或者歐洲很多地方人們所長期熟悉的公共秩序的程度，認為理所當然。今天沒有任何政府有條件無視或者清除掉國內的武裝少數民族。
儘管如此，世界越來越分裂為能夠對自己領土和公民加以有效管理的國傢以及為數越來越多的領土，其邊界是得到官方承認的國際界綫，國傢的政府則從虛弱和腐敗的到蕩然無存的都有。這些地區所醖釀的是流血的內部鬥爭和國際衝突，譬如我們在非洲中部所見到。然而這種地區沒有持續改善的即刻前景，如果動蕩不定的國傢的中央政府進一步被削弱或者世界版圖進一步巴爾幹化，則無疑會加重武裝衝突的危險。
一項嘗試性的預測：21世紀的戰爭不大可能像20世紀的那樣血腥。但造成不成比例的苦難與損失的武裝暴力仍將在世界很多地方無處不在和泛濫成災。一個和平的世紀的前景是遙遠的。
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.
Portions of an earlier version having been serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867, the novel was first published in its entirety in 1869. Newsweek in 2009 ranked it top of its list of Top 100 Books.
Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle."
War and Peace is famously long for a novel (though not the longest by any means). It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with subparts containing many chapters.
Tolstoy got the title, and some of his themes, from an 1861 work of Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix. Tolstoy had served in the Crimean War and written a series of short stories and novellas featuring scenes of war. He began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. During the writing of the second half of the book, after the first half had already been written under the name "1805", he read widely, acknowledging Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations, although he developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it.
The novel can be generally classified as historical fiction. It contains elements present in many types of popular 18th and 19th century literature, especially the romance novel. War and Peace attains its literary status by transcending genres. Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its "god-like" ability to hover over and within events, but also swiftly and seamlessly to take a particular character's point of view. His use of visual detail is often cinematic in its scope, using the literary equivalents of panning, wide shots and close-ups, to give dramatic interest to battles and ballrooms alike. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new novel that is arising in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proves himself a master.
Realism
Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research, and he was influenced by many other novels as well. Himself a veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form - he explains at the start of the novel's third volume his views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II.
The novel is set 60 years earlier than the time at which Tolstoy wrote it, "in the days of our grandfathers", as he puts it. He had spoken with people who had lived through the war of 1812 (In Russia), so the book is also, in part, accurate ethnography fictionalized. He read letters, journals, autobiographical and biographical materials pertaining to Napoleon and the dozens of other historical characters in the novel. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.
Reception
The first draft of War and Peace was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik published the first part of this early version under the title 1805 and the following year published more of the same early version. Tolstoy was increasingly dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published (with a different ending) in 1867 still under the title "1805" He heavily rewrote the entire novel between 1866 and 1869. Tolstoy's wife Sophia Tolstoy handwrote as many as 8 or 9 separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it again ready for publication. The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending than the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869.
The completed novel was then called Voyna i mir (new style orthography; in English War and Peace).
Tolstoy did not destroy the 1805 manuscript (sometimes referred to as "the original War and Peace"), which was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1983 and since has been translated separately from the "known" version, to English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Korean. The fact that so many extant versions of War and Peace survive make it one of the best revelations into the mental processes of a great novelist.
Russians who had read the serialized version, were anxious to acquire the complete first edition, which included epilogues, and it sold out almost immediately. The novel was translated almost immediately after publication into many other languages.
Isaac Babel said, after reading War and Peace, "If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy." Tolstoy "gives us a unique combination of the 'naive objectivity' of the oral narrator with the interest in detail characteristic of realism. This is the reason for our trust in his presentation."
Language
Although Tolstoy wrote most of the book, including all the narration, in Russian, significant portions of dialogue (including its opening paragraph) are written in French and characters often switch between the languages. This reflected 19th century reality since Russian aristocracy in the early nineteenth century were conversant in French, which was often considered more refined than Russian—many were much less competent in Russian. An example in the novel is Julie Karagina, Princess Marya's friend, who has to take Russian lessons in order to master her native language.
It has been suggested that it is a deliberate strategy of Tolstoy to use French to portray artifice and insincerity, as the language of the theater and deceit while Russian emerges as a language of sincerity, honesty and seriousness. When Pierre proposes to Helene he speaks to her in French—Je vous aime—and as the marriage emerges as a sham he blames those words.
As the book progresses, and the wars with the French intensify, culminating in the capture and eventual burning of Moscow, the use of French diminishes. The progressive elimination of French from the text is a means of demonstrating that Russia has freed itself from foreign cultural domination. It is also, at the level of plot development, a way of showing that a once-admired and friendly nation, France, has turned into an enemy. By midway through the book, several of the Russian aristocracy, whose command of French is far better than their command of Russian, are anxious to find Russian tutors for themselves.
English translations
War and Peace has been translated into English on several occasions, starting by Clara Bell working from a French translation. The translators Constance Garnett and Louise and Aylmer Maude knew Tolstoy personally. Translations have to deal with Tolstoy’s often peculiar syntax and his fondness of repetitions. About 2% of War and Peace is in French; Tolstoy removed the French in a revised 1873 edition, only to restore it later again. Most translators follow Garnett retaining some French, Briggs uses no French, while Pevear-Volokhonsky retain the French fully. (For a list of translations see below)
Background and historical context
In 1812 by the Russian artist Illarion Pryanishnikov
The novel begins in the year 1805 and leads up to the war of 1812[citation needed]. The era of Catherine the Great is still fresh in the minds of older people. It was Catherine who ordered the Russian court to change to speaking French, a custom that was stronger in Petersburg than in Moscow.[citation needed] Catherine's son and successor, Paul I, is the father of the current Czar, Alexander I. Alexander I came to the throne in 1801 at the age of 24. His mother, Marya Feodorovna, is the most powerful woman in the court.
The novel tells the story of five aristocratic families — the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys—and the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The Bezukhovs, while very rich, are a fragmented family as the old Count, Kirill Vladimirovich, has fathered dozens of illegitimate sons. The Bolkonskys are an old established and wealthy family based at Bald Hills. Old Prince Bolkonsky, Nikolai Andreevich, served as a general under Catherine the Great, in earlier wars. The Moscow Rostovs have many estates, but never enough cash. They are a closely knit, loving family who live for the moment regardless of their financial situation. The Kuragin family has three children, who are all of questionable character. The Drubetskoy family is of impoverished nobility, and consists of an elderly mother and her only son, Boris, whom she wishes to push up the career ladder.
Tolstoy spent years researching and rewriting the book. He worked from primary source materials (interviews and other documents), as well as from history books, philosophy texts and other historical novels. Tolstoy also used a great deal of his own experience in the Crimean War to bring vivid detail and first-hand accounts of how the Russian army was structured.
The standard Russian text of 'War and Peace' is divided into four books (fifteen parts) and two epilogues – one mainly narrative, the other thematic. While roughly the first half of the novel is concerned strictly with the fictional characters, the later parts, as well as one of the work's two epilogues, increasingly consist of essays about the nature of war, power, history, and historiography. Tolstoy interspersed these essays into the story in a way that defies previous fictional convention. Certain abridged versions remove these essays entirely, while others, published even during Tolstoy's life, simply moved these essays into an appendix.
Plot summary
War and Peace has a large cast of characters, some historically real (like Napoleon and Alexander I), the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. The scope of the novel is vast, but the focus is primarily on five aristocratic families and their experiences in life. The interactions of these characters are set in the era leading up to, around and following the French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars.
Book/Volume One
The novel begins in Saint Petersburg, at a soirée given in July 1805 by Anna Pavlovna Scherer — the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main players and aristocratic families of the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. He is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad after his mother's death and at his father's expense, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward owing in part to his open, benevolent nature, and finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. He is his father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children, and this is known to everyone at Anna Pavlovna's.
Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of the charming society favourite Lise, also attends the soireé. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon.
The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his teenage love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances.
At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate, Prince Andrei leaves his terrified, pregnant wife Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky and his devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya, and departs for the war.
The second part opens with descriptions of the impending Russian-French war preparations. At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, who is now conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first taste of battle. He meets Prince Andrei, whom he insults in a fit of impetuousness. Even more than most young soldiers, he is deeply attracted by Tsar Alexander's charisma. Nikolai gambles and socializes with his officer, Vasily Dmitrich Denisov, and befriends the ruthless and perhaps psychopathic Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov.
Book/Volume Two
Book Two begins with Nikolai Rostov briefly returning home to Moscow on home leave in early 1806. Nikolai finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor estate management. He spends an eventful winter at home, accompanied by his friend Denisov, his officer from the Pavlograd Regiment in which he serves. Natasha has blossomed into a beautiful young girl. Denisov falls in love with her, proposes marriage but is rejected. Although his mother pleads with Nikolai to find himself a good financial prospect in marriage, Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother's request. He promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the dowry-less Sonya.
Pierre Bezukhov, upon finally receiving his massive inheritance, is suddenly transformed from a bumbling young man into the richest and most eligible bachelor in the Russian Empire. Despite rationally knowing that it is wrong, he proposes marriage with Prince Kuragin's beautiful and immoral daughter Hélène (Elena Vasilyevna Kuragina), to whom he is sexually attracted. Hélène, who is rumoured to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother, the equally charming and immoral Anatol, tells Pierre that she will never have children with him. Hélène has an affair with Dolokhov, who mocks Pierre in public. Pierre loses his temper and challenges Dolokhov, a seasoned dueller and a ruthless killer, to a duel. Unexpectedly, Pierre wounds Dolokhov. Hélène denies her affair, but Pierre is convinced of her guilt and, after almost being violent to her, leaves her. In his moral and spiritual confusion, he joins the Freemasons, and becomes embroiled in Masonic internal politics. Much of Book Two concerns his struggles with his passions and his spiritual conflicts to be a better man. Now a rich aristocrat, he abandons his former carefree behavior and enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? The question continually baffles and confuses Pierre. He attempts to liberate his serfs, but ultimately achieves nothing of note.
Pierre is vividly contrasted with the intelligent and ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a charge of a straggling army. He suffers a near fatal artillery wound. In the face of death, Andrei realizes all his former ambitions are pointless and his former hero Napoleon (who rescues him in a horseback excursion to the battlefield) is apparently as vain as himself.
Prince Andrei recovers from his injuries in a military hospital and returns home, only to find his wife Lise dying in childbirth. He is stricken by his guilty conscience for not treating Lise better when she was alive and is haunted by the pitiful expression on his dead wife's face. His child, Nikolenka, survives.
Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment, Prince Andrei does not return to the army but chooses to remain on his estate, working on a project that would codify military behavior and help solve some of the problems of Russian disorganization that he believes were responsible for the loss of life in battle on the Russian side. Pierre comes to visit him and brings new questions: where is God in this amoral world? Pierre is interested in panentheism and the possibility of an afterlife.
Pierre's estranged wife, Hélène, begs him to take her back, and against his better judgment he does. Despite her vapid shallowness, Hélène establishes herself as an influential hostess in Petersburg society.
Prince Andrei feels impelled to take his newly written military notions to Petersburg, naively expecting to influence either the Emperor himself or those close to him. Young Natasha, also in Petersburg, is caught up in the excitement of dressing for her first grand ball, where she meets Prince Andrei and briefly reinvigorates him with her vivacious charm. Andrei believes he has found purpose in life again and, after paying the Rostovs several visits, proposes marriage to Natasha. However, old Prince Bolkonsky, Andrei's father, dislikes the Rostovs, opposes the marriage, and insists on a year's delay. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. She soon recovers her spirits, however, and Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to spend some time with a friend in Moscow.
Natasha visits the Moscow opera, where she meets Hélène and her brother Anatol. Anatol has since married a Polish woman whom he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and is determined to seduce her. Hélène and Anatol conspire together to accomplish this plan. Anatol kisses Natasha and writes her passionate letters, eventually establishing plans to elope. Natasha is convinced that she loves Anatol and writes to Princess Maria, Andrei's sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Pierre is initially shocked and horrified at Natasha's behavior, but comes to realize he has fallen in love with her himself. During the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre.
Prince Andrei accepts coldly Natasha's breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal of marriage. Shamed by her near-seduction and at the realisation that Andrei will not forgive her, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill.
Book/Volume Three
With the help of her family, especially Sonya, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming showdown between Napoleon's troops and the Russian army. Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke while trying to protect his estate from French marauders. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to Princess Maria, but remembers his promise to Sonya.
Back in Moscow, the war-obsessed Petya manages to snatch a loose piece of the Tsar's biscuit outside the Cathedral of the Assumption; he finally convinces his parents to allow him to enlist.
Napoleon himself is a main character in this section of the novel and is presented in vivid detail, as both thinker and would-be strategist. His toilette and his customary attitudes and traits of mind are depicted in detail. Also described are the well-organized force of over 400,000 French Army (only 140,000 of them actually French-speaking) which marches quickly through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. In the midst of the turmoil he experiences firsthand the death and destruction of war. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon's reputedly invincible army. For strategic reasons and having suffered grievous losses, the Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatol Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatol loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a cannon wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified.
Book/Volume Four
The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory, often propagandistic, instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Rostopchin is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, and in the end load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino. Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded.
When Napoleon's Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes an anonymous man in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees while in this garb are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her.
Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon, after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. He becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor, who is incapable of malice. In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: an honest person of integrity (unlike the aristocrats of Petersburg society) who is utterly without pretense. Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by living and interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation—during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French—Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action.
Meanwhile, Andrei, wounded during Napoleon's invasion, has been taken in as a casualty and cared for by the fleeing Rostovs. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying.
As the novel draws to a close, Pierre's wife Hélène dies in a botched operation (implied to be an abortion). Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's. Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and, revealing his love after being released by his former wife's death, marries Natasha.
Epilogues
The first epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813. It is the last happy event for the Rostov family, which is undergoing a transition. Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate.
Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally in spite of rather than according to his mother's wishes, he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing also saves his family from financial ruin.
Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their life. Buoyed by his wife's fortune, Nikolai pays off all his family's debts. They also raise Prince Andrei's orphaned son, Nikolai Andreyevich (Nikolenka) Bolkonsky.
As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples–Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria–remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in 1820, much to the jubilation of everyone concerned. There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father "would be satisfied..." (presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt).
The second epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. He attempts to show that there is a great force behind history, which he first terms divine. He offers the entire book as evidence of this force, and critiques his own work. God, therefore, becomes the word Tolstoy uses to refer to all the forces that produce history, taken together and operating behind the scenes.
Principal characters in War and Peace
Main article: List of characters in War and Peace
War and Peace character tree
* Count Pyotr Kirillovich (Pierre) Bezukhov — The central character and often a voice for Tolstoy's own beliefs or struggles. He is one of several illegitimate children of Count Bezukhov; he is his father's favorite offspring.
* Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky — A strong but cynical, thoughtful and philosophical aide-de-camp in the Napoleonic Wars.
* Princess Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya — A pious woman whose eccentric father attempted to give her a good education. The caring, nurturing nature of her large eyes in her otherwise thin and plain face are frequently mentioned.
* Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov — The pater-familias of the Rostov family; terrible with finances, generous to a fault.
* Countess Natalya Rostova — Wife of Count Ilya Rostov, mother of the four Rostov children.
* Countess Natalia Ilyinichna (Natasha) Rostova — Introduced as a beautiful and romantic young girl, she evolves through trials and suffering and eventually finds happiness. She is an accomplished singer and dancer.[citation needed]
* Count Nikolai Ilyich Rostov — A hussar, the beloved eldest son of the Rostov family.
* Sofia Alexandrovna (Sonya) Rostova — Orphaned cousin of Vera, Nikolai, Natasha and Petya Rostov.
* Countess Vera Ilyinichna Rostova — Eldest of the Rostov children, she marries the German career soldier, Berg.
* Pyotr Ilyich (Petya) Rostov — Youngest of the Rostov children.
* Prince Vasily Sergeyevich Kuragin — A ruthless man who is determined to marry his children well, despite having doubts about the character of some of them.
* Princess Elena Vasilyevna (Hélène) Kuragina — A beautiful and sexually alluring woman who has many affairs, including (it is rumoured) with her brother Anatole
* Prince Anatol Vasilyevich Kuragin — Hélène's brother and a very handsome, ruthless and amoral pleasure seeker who is secretly married yet tries to elope with Natasha Rostova.
* Prince Ipolit Vasilyevich — The eldest and perhaps most dim-witted of the Kuragin children.
* Prince Boris Drubetskoy — A poor but aristocratic young man who is determined to make his career, even at the expense of his friends and benefactors, marries a rich and ugly woman to help him climb the social ladder.
* Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoya — The mother of Boris.
* Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov — A cold, almost psychopathic officer, he ruins Nikolai Rostov after his proposal to Sonya is refused, he only shows love to his doting mother.
* Adolf Karlovich Berg — A young Russian officer, who desires to be just like everyone else.
* Anna Pavlovna Sherer — Also known as Annette, she is the hostess of the salon that is the site of much of the novel's action in Petersburg.
* Maria Dmitryevna Akhrosimova — An older Moscow society lady, she is an elegant dancer and trend-setter, despite her age and size.
* Amalia Evgenyevna Bourienne — A French woman who lives with the Bolkonskys, primarily as Princess Marya's companion.
* Vasily Dmitrich Denisov — Nikolai Rostov's friend and brother officer, who proposes to Natasha.
* Platon Krataev - The archetypal good Russian peasant, whom Pierre meets in the prisoner of war camp.
* Napoleon I of France — the Great Man, whose fate is detailed in the book.
* General Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov — Russian commander-in-chief throughout the book. His diligence and modesty eventually save Russia from Napoleon.[citation needed]
* Osip Bazdeyev — the Freemason who interests Pierre in his mysterious group, starting a lengthy subplot.[citation needed]
* Tsar Alexander I of Russia — He signed a peace treaty with Napoleon in 1807 and then went to war with him.
Many of Tolstoy's characters in War and Peace were based on real-life people known to Tolstoy himself. His grandparents and their friends were the models for many of the main characters, his great-grandparents would have been of the generation of Prince Vasilly or Count Ilya Rostov. Some of the characters, obviously, are actual historic figures.
Adaptations
Film
The first Russian film adaptation of War and Peace was the 1915 film Война и мир (Voyna i mir), directed by Vladimir Gardin and starring Gardin and the Russian ballerina Vera Karalli. It was followed in 1968 by the critically acclaimed four-part film version War and Peace, by the Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk, released individually in 1965-1967, and as a re-edited whole in 1968. This starred Lyudmila Savelyeva (as Natasha Rostova) and Vyacheslav Tikhonov (as Andrei Bolkonsky). Bondarchuk himself played the character of Pierre Bezukhov. The film was almost seven hours long; it involved thousands of actors, 120 000 extras, and it took seven years to finish the shooting, as a result of which the actors age changed dramatically from scene to scene. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for its authenticity and massive scale.
The novel has been adapted twice for cinema outside of Russia. The first of these was produced by F. Kamei in Japan (1947). The second was the 208-minute long 1956 War and Peace, directed by the American King Vidor. This starred Audrey Hepburn (Natasha), Henry Fonda (Pierre) and Mel Ferrer (Andrei). Audrey Hepburn was nominated for a BAFTA Award for best British actress and for a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a drama production.
Opera
* Initiated by a proposal of the German director Erwin Piscator in 1938, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev composed his opera War and Peace (Op. 91, libretto by Mira Mendelson) based on this epic novel during the 1940s. The complete musical work premiered in Leningrad in 1955. It was the first opera to be given a public performance at the Sydney Opera House (1973).
Music
* Composition by Nino Rota
* Referring to album notes, the first track "The Gates of Delirium", from the album Relayer, by the progressive rock group Yes, is said to be based loosely on the novel.
Theatre
The first successful stage adaptations of War and Peace were produced by Alfred Neumann and Erwin Piscator (1942, revised 1955, published by Macgibbon & Kee in London 1963, and staged in 16 countries since) and R. Lucas (1943).
A stage adaptation by Helen Edmundson, first produced in 1996 at the Royal National Theatre, was published that year by Nick Hern Books, London. Edmundson added to and amended the play for a 2008 production as two 3-hour parts by Shared Experience, directed by Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale. This was first put on at the Nottingham Playhouse, then toured in the UK to Liverpool, Darlington, Bath, Warwick, Oxford, Truro, London (the Hampstead Theatre) and Cheltenham.
On the 15th-18th July, The Birmingham Theatre School performed this seven-hour epic play at The Crescent Theatre in Brindleyplace with great success. Birmingham Theatre School is the only drama school in the world to perform the new adaptation of War and Peace. Directed by Chris Rozanski and Assistant to Director was Royal National Theatre performer Anthony Mark Barrow with Vocals arranged by Dr Ria Keen and choreography by Colin Lang.
Radio and television
* In December 1970, Pacifica Radio station WBAI broadcast a reading of the entire novel (the 1968 Dunnigan translation) read by over 140 celebrities and ordinary people.
* War and Peace (1972): The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made a television serial based on the novel, broadcast in 1972-73. Anthony Hopkins played the lead role of Pierre. Other lead characters were played by Rupert Davies, Faith Brook, Morag Hood, Alan Dobie, Angela Down and Sylvester Morand. This version faithfully included many of Tolstoy's minor characters, including Platon Karataev (Harry Locke). ,
* A dramatized full-cast adaptation in ten parts was written by Marcy Kahan and Mike Walker in 1997. The production won the 1998 Talkie award for Best Drama and was around 9.5 hours in length. It was directed by Janet Whitaker and featured Simon Russell Beale, Gerard Murphy, Richard Johnson, and others.
* La Guerre et la paix (TV) (2000) by François Roussillon. Robert Brubaker played the lead role of Pierre.
* War and Peace (2007): produced by the Italian Lux Vide, a TV mini-series in Russian & English co-produced in Russia, France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Directed by Robert Dornhelm, with screenplay written by Lorenzo Favella, Enrico Medioli and Gavin Scott. It features an international cast with Alexander Beyer playing the lead role of Pierre assisted by Malcolm McDowell, Clémence Poésy, Alessio Boni, Pilar Abella, J. Kimo Arbas, Ken Duken, Juozapas Bagdonas and Toni Bertorelli.
Full translations into English
* Clara Bell (from a French version) 1885-86
* Nathan Haskell Dole 1898
* Leo Wiener 1904
* Constance Garnett (1904)
* Louise and Aylmer Maude (1922-3)
* Rosemary Edmonds (1957, revised 1978)
* Ann Dunnigan (1968)
* Anthony Briggs (2005)
* Andrew Bromfield (2007), translation of the first completed draft, approx. 400 pages shorter than other English translations.
* Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007)
安德烈不顧懷孕的妻子和年邁的父親，堅持到軍隊服役。戰役失敗，他頽喪回傢，恰逢妻子難産而死，彼埃爾則在父親臨終前被立為財産繼承人，並承襲了其父的伯爵稱號，和貴族庫拉金的女兒艾倫結婚。婚後不久，因兩人性格不合而分居。彼埃爾與羅斯托夫伯爵一傢在去打獵的路上，把沉浸在喪妻之痛的安德烈也拉去打獵，伯爵的女兒娜塔莎·羅斯托娃對安德烈産生了好感。不久，娜塔莎接受了安德烈的求婚，訂立了婚約。
過了一段時間，安德烈重返軍隊。艾倫的弟弟阿納托裏騙得娜塔莎的愛，唆使其與他私奔。俄法戰爭開始，擔任總司令的庫圖佐夫將軍决定暫時放棄莫斯科。在撤退途中，娜塔莎遇到受重傷的安德烈，安德烈諒解了娜塔莎，但他卻因傷勢過重而離開了人世。
戰爭勝利結束後，彼埃爾回到了莫斯科，娜塔莎把自己的命運永遠的與彼埃爾結合在了一起……
《戰爭與和平》-影片評價
這是一部製作精緻、構思嚴謹的巨片。場面壯闊，氣勢磅礴，繼承了前蘇聯在拍攝歷史題材影片方面的傳統，完美地融托爾斯泰原著精神於其中，再現了俄法戰爭時期俄羅斯大地廣阔的歷史畫捲。影片以1812年俄國衛國戰爭為中心，反映了1805年至1820年重大事件，包括奧斯特利茨大戰、波羅底諾會戰、莫斯科大火、拿破侖潰退等。通過對四大家庭以及安德烈、彼埃爾、娜塔莎在戰爭與和平環境中的思想和行動的描寫，展示了當時俄國社會的風貌。耗時五年，據稱耗資一億美元(當時的價錢)的宏偉巨製，試圖極其忠實地復製托爾斯泰的長篇巨著。戰爭戲和舞會戲非常出色，但整體水準參差不齊。影片長達六個半小時，在蘇聯電影史上有着舉足輕重的地位，同時獲奧斯卡最佳外語片奬。1956年的美國版雖然比這部短，但也有 208分鐘，有奧黛麗·赫本、亨利·方達等主演，也是以戰爭場面取勝。1973年英國BBC推出750分鐘的電視版。
《戰爭與和平》-花絮
影片拍攝耗資高達5億6000萬美元，堪稱影史上最昂貴的影片。
影片拍攝得到了蘇聯軍方的大力協助，甚至軍方試圖讓片中兵力盡量與實際戰役的參戰人數基本相同。在世界影史上，本片成為動用臨時演員最多的影片之一，超過本片的衹有1982年的《甘地傳》，參加該片拍攝的臨時演員多達30萬人。
1981年3月，本片在墨西哥電視一臺和二臺首次播出，創下了電視臺播放最長影片的吉尼斯世界紀錄。
1958年，好萊塢著名製片人邁剋爾·托德(Michael Todd)訪問莫斯科，他曾提議聯合拍攝本片，但遭到蘇聯政府的拒絶。
《戰爭與和平》-精彩對白
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Natasha... I love you too much. More than anything in the world.
安德烈王子：娜塔莎……我太愛你了。超過這世上的一切。
Natasha Rostova: And I! But why too much?
娜塔莎：我也是！但為什麽這麽強烈？
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: Why too much? Well, what do you think? What do you feel in your soul, deep in your soul? Shall I live? What do you think?
安德烈王子：為什麽？你是怎麽想的？在你心靈深處感知到什麽？我會活下去嗎？你是怎麽想的？
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
Natasha Rostova: I'm sure of it.
娜塔莎：當然。
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: How good that would be.
安德烈王子：那會多好。
Narrator: Enough, enough, men. Stop, consider, what are you doing? Into the minds of tired and hungry men on both sides, a flicker of doubt began to creep. Were they to go on slaughtering one another? Kill whom you like, do what you like, but I've had enough. Yet some inexplicable, mysterious power continued to control them, and the terrible business went on, carried out not by the will of individual men.
旁白：夠了，夠了，停下吧，你們想想，你們在做什麽？交戰雙方饑寒交迫筋疲力盡的人們開始思考，一絲疑慮開始蔓延。他們還將互相殺戮嗎？隨便你們為所欲為吧，我已經厭倦了。然而一些無法解釋的、神秘的力量在繼續控製着他們，災難扔在繼續，個人的意願無法改變這一切。
《戰爭與和平》-劇情
日本侵華戰爭期間，小柴健一所在運輸船被炸沉後，他被中國漁民救活，從此留在中國軍隊服務。健一的死亡通知單被送到東京的妻子町子手中，町子和健一幼年時的朋友伍東康吉結合了，帶着健一的兒子茂男幸福地生活在一起。但在空襲中，康吉精神上受到了刺激變得失常。日本投降後，健一回到家乡，他沒有想到，妻子町子已經與康吉結了婚，他在絶望中要求把茂男交給自己撫養，但是茂男已經和康吉有了感情，健一不得不放棄帶走茂男的念頭。...
《戰爭與和平》- 幕後花絮
此片是按照當時占日美軍的意圖拍攝的，是為日本新憲法放棄戰爭作宣傳的影片。但對於兩位導演來說，這正是他們想要拍攝的主題，因為在戰爭期間，他們目睹了戰爭帶給人民的殘酷和不幸生活。此片的重要意義還在於，導演龜井文夫把大量表現中國難民的鏡頭組接在影片中，使日本人民看到了真實的戰爭殘酷的一面，對日本人民的觸動很大，因此廣大日本人民對此片的評價很高，影片在日本電影史上有不可忽視的地位。
《戰爭與和平》-小說引言
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
托爾斯泰捲秩浩繁的長篇小說。場面浩大，人物繁多，被稱為“世界上最偉大的小說”，成就非凡。《戰爭與和平》問世至今，一直被人稱為“世界上最偉大的小說”。 這部捲帙浩繁的巨著以史詩般廣阔與雄渾的氣勢，生動 地描寫了1805至1820年俄國社會的重大歷史事件和各個生活領域：“近千個人物，無數的場景，國傢和私人生活的一切可能的領域，歷史，戰爭，人間一切慘劇，各種情欲，人生各個階段，從嬰兒降臨人間的啼聲到氣息奄奄的老人的感情最後迸發，人所能感受到的一切歡樂和痛苦，各種可能的內心思緒，從竊取自己同伴的錢幣的小偷的感覺，到英雄主義的最崇高的衝動和領悟透徹的沉思— —在這幅畫裏都應有盡有。”作者對生活的大面積涵蓋和整體把握，對個別現象與事物整體、個人命運與周圍世界的內在聯繫的充分揭示，使這部小說具有極大的思想和藝術容量。 這是托爾斯泰創作的第一部捲秩浩繁的長篇小說。 作者把戰爭與和平，前綫與後方、國內與國外、軍隊與社會、上層與下層連結起來，既全面反映了時代風貌，又為各式各樣的典型人物創造了極廣阔的典型環境。作者對人物的描寫形象既復雜又豐滿，常用對比的藝術方法來表述，體裁在俄國文學史上是一種創新，也超越了歐洲長篇小說的傳統規範。
《戰爭與和平》-作者簡介
列夫·托爾斯泰（Л.Н.Толстой,Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy,1828—1910)，19世紀俄羅斯文學寫實主義的代表作傢，公認的最偉大的俄羅斯文學家， 《西方正典》作者、美國著名文學教授兼批評傢哈洛·卜倫甚至稱之為“從文藝復興以來，惟一能挑戰荷馬、但丁與莎士比亞的偉大作傢”。對文學擁有“狂戀式愛情”的托爾
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
斯泰，是俄羅斯文學史上創作時間最長、作品數量最多、影響最深遠、地位最崇高的作傢，重情節、重典型、重寫實、重批判的文學時代，在他筆下達到巔峰。長篇巨著《戰爭與和平》、 《安娜·卡列尼娜》 和《復活》是托爾斯泰文學藝術上的三個里程碑。百年來，他的作品被譯為各國文字，銷售量纍積超過5億册，是大師中的大師。
《戰爭與和平》恢弘的構思和卓越的藝術描寫震驚世界文壇，成為舉世公認的世界文學名著和人類寶貴的精神財富。英國作傢毛姆及諾貝爾文學奬得主羅曼·羅蘭稱贊它是“有史以來最偉大的小說”，“是我們時代最偉大的史詩，是近代的伊利亞特”。
《戰爭與和平》是一部宏偉巨著，它以戰爭問題為中心，以庫拉金、包爾康斯基、勞斯托夫、別竺豪夫四傢貴族的生活為綫索，展示了19世紀最初15年的俄國歷史，描繪了各個階級的生活，是一部再現當時社會風貌的恢弘史詩。作品中的各色人物刻畫精準細膩，景物如臨眼前，雖是19世紀的小說作品，但流傳至今，卻沒有任何隔閡感，其中流露出來對人性的悲憫情懷，穿越時空背景，仍舊撼動人心。
《戰爭與和平》-內容簡要
1805年7月，拿破侖率兵徵服了歐洲，法俄之間正醖釀着激烈的戰爭。然而在彼得堡上層的人們依舊過着恬靜悠閑的生活，達官貴人們都彙聚在皇后的女官兼寵臣安娜·巴甫洛夫娜舉辦傢宴招待會上。
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
赴宴的有宮廷官高位重的伐西裏王爵和他漂亮卻行為不端的女兒美倫，還有個頭高大健壯的年輕人彼爾，他戴着眼鏡，剪短發，穿淺色的流行短褲和褐色燕尾服。彼爾是莫斯科著名貴族別竺豪夫的私生子，從小出國留學，今年20歲，學成回國到首都謀職。他一進宴會廳，對人們議論拿破侖徵戰歐洲頗感興趣。在這裏，他高興地結識了英俊而剛毅的青年安德烈－－先朝保羅皇帝的退職老總司令包爾康斯基的長子，兩人很快成了好朋友。
此時，安德烈正應庫圖佐夫將軍的召喚，去任他的傳令官，將出國跟徵戰歐洲的拿破侖軍隊作戰，任即將分娩的妻子和妹妹瑪麗再三勸留，也改變不了他的决心，他期望通過這次戰爭為自己帶來輝煌與榮耀。在出徵之前，安德烈把妻子從首都送到了在莫斯科郊外居住的父親那裏，委托父親加以關照。於是他急奔前綫，在波蘭追上了俄軍總司令庫圖佐夫，總司令派他到聯合縱隊去任職，並受到了嘉奬。
彼爾回到莫斯科，他繼承了別竺豪夫伯爵身後所有的遺産，搖身一變成為莫斯科數一數二的資本傢，成為社交界的寵兒。他的親戚伐西裏早就窺視別竺豪夫傢的財産，本想通過篡改遺囑來謀得，失敗後，又處心積慮地要拉攏彼爾，一方面為他在彼得堡謀得一個不小的官職，又挖空心思巧安排，讓已是宮廷女官的女兒美倫嫁給彼爾，以圖錢財。結果他的計謀順利達成，可這樁婚事實在不幸之至。彼爾發現了妻子與好友多勃赫夫之間的曖昧關係，他與多勃赫夫進行搏鬥，並幸運的擊倒對方，隨之與妻子分居，自己也陷入了善惡和生死的睏擾之中，在加入共濟會後，受到寬宏大量的哲學的熏陶，接回了妻子。
當安德烈再次回到總司令身邊，俄奧聯軍對法的奧斯特裏齊戰鬥就要打響了。由於在戰前的軍事會議上，否决了幾位老將軍的意見，采取了馬上出擊的戰略，結果慘敗。安德烈受傷被俘，途中昏迷，被敵人誤以為活不成而丟下，庫圖佐夫也以為安德烈陣亡，給他的父親去信報喪。可是安德烈在老百姓的救治下又康復了。愈後的他直奔老傢，是日夜晚，妻子莉沙正好産下一名男嬰，但她卻在分娩中死去了。安德烈在孤獨與絶望之中給妻子最後一個吻，他覺得人生已再無意義，决定終老於領地。
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
一八零七年六月，俄與法言和，和平生活開始了。
一八零九年春天，安德烈·保爾康斯基因貴族會之事而去拜托羅斯托夫伯爵。在伯爵傢他被充滿生命力的年輕小姐娜達莎深深地吸引了。但由於禿山老公爵強烈反對，衹好互相約以一年的緩衝期，而 後，安德烈·保爾康斯基即出國去了。但是，年輕的娜達莎無法忍受寂寞，且經不起彼爾之妻愛倫的哥哥阿納托爾的誘惑，而擅自約定私奔，因此，與安德烈·保爾康斯基的婚約即告無效。
一八一二年，俄、法兩國再度交戰，安德烈·保爾康斯基於多勃琪諾戰役中身受重傷，而俄軍節節敗退，眼見莫斯科即將陷於敵人之手了。羅斯托夫傢將原本用來搬運傢産的馬車，改派去運送傷兵，娜達莎方能能於傷兵中發現將死的安德烈·保爾康斯基。她嚮他謝罪並熱誠看護他，但一切都是徒勞了，安德烈·保爾康斯基仍然逃不過死亡之神而去世了。
彼爾化裝成農夫，想伺機刺殺拿破 侖，但卻被法軍逮捕而成為俘虜。其妻愛倫於戰火中，仍繼續其放蕩行為，最後，因誤服墮胎藥而且死亡。
幾番奮戰後，俄國終於贏得勝利，彼爾於莫斯科巧遇娜達莎，兩人便結為夫 婦，而安德烈·保爾康斯基的妹妹瑪莉亞也與娜達莎之兄尼剋拉結婚，而組成一個幸福的家庭。
《戰爭與和平》-相關評價
《戰爭與和平》問世至今，一直被人稱為“世界上最偉大的小說”。這部捲帙浩繁的巨著以史詩般廣阔與雄渾的氣勢，生動地描寫了1805至1820年俄國社會的重大歷史事件和各個生活領域：“近千個人物，無數的場景，國傢和私人生活的一切可能的領域，歷史，戰爭，人間一切慘劇，各種情欲，人生各個階段，從嬰兒降臨人間的啼聲到氣息奄奄的老人的感情最後迸發，人所能感受到的一切歡樂和痛苦，各種可能的內心思緒，從竊取自己同伴的錢幣的小偷的感覺，到英雄主義的最崇高的衝動和領悟透徹的沉思——在這幅畫裏都應有盡有。”（斯特拉霍夫語）作傢對生活的大面積涵蓋和整體把握，對個別現象與事物整體、個人命運與周圍世界的內在聯繫的充分揭示，使這部小說具有極大的思想和藝術容量。
這是一部人民戰爭的英雄史詩。托爾斯泰曾經表示：“在《戰爭與和平》裏我喜歡人民的思想。”也就是說，作者力圖在這部作品裏表現俄國人民在反侵略戰爭中的愛國主義精神及其歷史作用。在國傢危急的嚴重關頭，許多來自下層的俄軍普通官兵同仇敵愾，浴血奮戰，雖然戰事一度失利，但精神上卻始終占有壓倒的優勢。老百姓也主動起來保傢衛國。在人民群衆中涌現出一大批像網升、傑尼索夫、謝爾巴狄那樣的英雄人物。俄軍統帥庫圖佐夫也因為體現了人民的意志，纔具有過人的膽略和决勝的信心。整部小說以無可辯駁的事實證明了托爾斯泰的“人民戰爭的巨棒以全部威嚴雄偉的力量”趕走了侵略者的思想。
作者在小說中也認真探索了貴族階級的歷史命運問題。小說的主要情節就是圍繞着包爾康斯基、別素霍夫、羅斯托夫、庫拉金四大貴族家庭的生活展開的。60年代，托爾斯泰仍站在貴族階級的立場上，但是他對接近宮廷的上
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
層貴族卻給予深刻的揭露和批判。在民族危亡的關頭，庫拉金之流漠視國傢命運，畏敵如虎，他們關心的是尋歡作樂，積聚私産。小說中，庫拉金是官痞，兒子阿納托爾是惡少，女兒愛侖則是蕩婦。這些貴族的卑劣行徑與人民為國獻身的崇高精神形成了強烈的反差。托爾斯泰認為，俄國的前途在於“優秀”貴族與人民的合作。他用詩意的筆觸描寫了京城以外的莊園貴族羅斯托夫一傢和包爾康斯基一傢，指出在這些貴族身上仍保留着淳厚的古風，他們有愛國心，與人民的精神相通。這裏，作者在一定程度上美化了宗法製貴族。
這部小說的主人公是安德烈·包爾康斯基、彼埃爾·別素霍夫和娜塔莎·羅斯托娃。這三個人物都是作者喜愛的正面形象。安德烈和彼埃爾是探索型的青年貴族知識分子。小說中，這兩個人物在性格和生活道路上形成了鮮明的對比。安德烈性格內嚮，意志堅強，有較強的社會活動能力，他後來投身軍隊和參與社會活動庫塞、阿多諾、弗洛姆、哈貝馬斯（JürgenHabermas，1929—），在嚴酷的事實面前逐步認識到上層統治階級的腐敗和人民的力量，彼埃爾心直口快，易動感情，缺少實際活動能力，更側重於對道德理想的追求，後來主要在與人民的直接接觸中精神上得到成長。女主人公娜塔莎與兩位主人公的關係使她成為小說中重要的連綴人物，而這一形象本身又是個性鮮明，生氣勃勃的。小說充分展開了娜塔莎熱烈而豐富的情感，她與人民和大自然的接近，她的民族氣質，以及她在精神上的成長。這幾個主要人物形象都具有較高的認識價值和審美價值。
《戰爭與和平》藝術成就卓著。在這部作品中，托爾斯泰有力地拓寬了長篇小說表現生活的幅度，並在傳統的史詩體小說和戲劇式小說的基礎上創造了一種比較成熟的形態。小說場面壯闊，結構清晰，人物形象鮮明，有一種大海般恢宏開闊的美。同時，小說時代感強烈，它雖是一部歷史題材小說，但卻反映了農奴製改革後俄國前途和人民作用的問題。因此，《戰爭與和平》當之無愧地是一部“了不起的巨著”。（列寧語）
《戰爭與和平》-閱讀價值
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
戰爭是一場歷史爭論不休的話題。有人說它是為了和平，也有人說是為了進步，因為戰爭確實有的時候加快了文明的步伐。不管戰爭為何，但似乎都起源於矛盾與行為。不可否認，人的心理是存在好鬥的一面，在平凡的生活中家庭、事業、感情等一係列瑣事，都讓我們活得無比擔憂，在單調乏味的生活裏，人是很難適應這種不變動的生活。
在托爾斯泰的小說裏《戰爭與和平》，如果拿戰爭單獨的來講的話，那麽戰爭是自由的。這種自由為人性與釋放的自由。在一場戰爭中瞬間的生死是可以選擇的，活着的目的就是為了殺人，殺人的目的就是為了活着。在這個簡單而殘酷的圈子裏衹存有兩種人，即朋友和敵人，除此之外一切都變得不重要了，這讓許多復雜事情也顯現得無比鮮明化了。小說中羅斯托夫是喜歡這種簡單的人。在瘋狂的爭奪與罪惡的戰爭中，羅斯托夫找到了自己的價值，這種價值並非是在上層交際圈裏固有的。更多的是羅斯托夫作為一個傳統人物，在虛榮和榮耀的引導下更多的懂得犧牲自己。然而戰爭是需要這類人的，生活也不排斥，但在托爾斯泰的小說裏卻並未得到贊揚，這讓人不難想象其中包含裏面的趣味與真誠，值得讓人感動！
索尼亞是那麽的愛着他，與其說她是愛着他的靈魂與全部，還不如說她是為自己編織的信念而愛着。在托爾斯泰的小說中很容易看到，一目目的愛情都存在着一定的目的性和世俗的挺嚮性。索尼亞為姨媽傢的名利放棄了羅斯托夫，安德安為世俗的貞操放棄了娜塔沙，一切都那麽的變換莫測，但又存在單調的一致性——即為名、利、虛榮而放棄自己原本的生活。
在安德列經歷了幾次的生死離別之後，戰爭就像是一盞明燈似的忽暗忽明的出現在他眼前，有時像是指清道路有時卻顯得那麽的撲朔迷離。衹有在生與死即將分開的時候，現實和理想在他眼中纔看得那麽清楚。作者一個年齡段一個年齡段的敘述了安德列所經歷的感受，這讓我門毫不費解的走進了他的內心世界，心有靈犀的思考着擺在自己面前的問題。現實—理想，當思考的時候必然會産生矛盾，也必然會有所結果。書中一步步在矛盾中不完善的結果來闡述了安德列的思想升華，通過對他的人物塑造讓我們比較完整的瞭解了人性的一面。
在戰場上，安德列開始也和羅斯托夫一樣，想通過戰爭來建立一份殊榮，做為一個男人來講這是應具備的。但他不明白應該具備這種殊榮的目的是為什麽，也許是一種無形的力量在引誘他這樣做。在亞歷山大的皇權下，大多數人都可以為勇氣和殊榮獻身，與其說是為進步和文明而戰，還不如說是為別人和其他的東西而戰。
不難看到，在這場關鍵性的戰域中，拿破侖的真正對手並不是亞歷山大，而是亞歷山大的屬下庫圖佐夫，一個深
《戰爭與和平》《戰爭與和平》
受皇帝排斥但又離不開他的人。確定他為一名將軍倒還不如說他是一位仁智的老頭，一位懂得平平凡凡生活真諦的人。在拿破侖的天才戰略中，被人類認為是瘋狂加藝術的行為在這裏得到了休息，就像是一隻十分威猛的蜂子撞進了棉花堆裏，一切鋒芒都包容在不痛不癢的棉絲裏。而衹能像是蒼蠅一樣等待着蜘蛛的進食。在這裏我們衹能用托爾斯泰的話語：庫圖佐夫是一位懂得自然規律的人！——生活又何嘗不一樣需要這樣的人呢。
在安德列臨死的那一刻（有幾次這樣的時刻），文中總會出現藍天、白雲、童年時的想象和一切當時認為不愉快而現在想起來令他愉快的事，這些東西在安德列的眼中就像過雨雲煙，一切都顯得那麽的真實與美好，這讓我們不難想象生活其實是美好的，衹是我們過與苛求。
在安德列死後僅接着是皮埃爾和娜塔沙（安德列的未婚妻）、安德列的姐姐馬麗亞（虔誠的教徒）和羅斯托夫的幸福婚姻生活，這也正預示了無論是在戰爭的背後，還是在經過一切腥風血雨的掙紮之後，生活的要求其實很簡單，一切都是人類在作怪罷了！
《戰爭與和平》-現代註釋[精文]
[英國] 埃裏剋·霍布斯鮑姆 尹宏毅 翻譯
20世紀是人類有記載的歷史上最殺人不眨眼的世紀。戰爭所造成的或者與戰爭有關的死亡總人數估計為1.87億，相當於1913年世界人口的10%以上。如果算作是從1914年開始，這是一個戰爭幾乎不間斷的世紀，其中某地沒有發生有組織的武裝衝突的時期很少也很短暫。占據世紀主導地位的是世界大戰：即國傢或國傢聯盟之間的戰爭。
從1914年到1945年的時期可以被看作一場單一的“30年戰爭”，僅僅被20年代的一段間歇所打斷——在日本人於1922年最終從蘇聯北亞撤退和1931年對東北亞的進攻之間的時期。幾乎緊隨其後的是大約40年的冷戰，這一時期符合霍布斯的戰爭定義，即其“不是僅僅包括戰鬥或者戰爭行為，而且包括一段時間，其中通過戰鬥來進行鬥爭的意志得到了充分的表達。”一個可以辯論的問題是，從冷戰結束以來，美軍在世界各地所參與的行動在多大程度上構成了這個世界大戰時代的延續。然而毫無疑義的是，20世紀90年代充滿了歐洲、非洲和西亞及東亞的正式與非正式的軍事衝突。世界整體來說從1914年以來一直沒有和平，現在也是一樣。
儘管如此，這個世紀不能被籠統地來對待，不論是從年代上還是從地理上來說。按照年代順序，它分為三個階段：以德國為中心的世界大戰時代（1914年到 1945年）、兩個超級大國對峙的時代（1945年到1989年）和傳統的國際實力體係終結以來的時代。我將把這些時期稱為第一、第二和第三時期。從地理上講，軍事行動的影響一直是十分不勻稱的。除了一個例外（1932年到1935年的查科戰爭），西半球（美洲）在20世紀裏沒有重大的國傢間戰爭（與內戰相區分）。敵人的軍事行動很少觸及這些領土：因此，9月11日世界貿易中心和五角大樓被炸纔令人震驚。
從1945年以來，國傢間的戰爭也從歐洲消失了，而在此之前，歐洲曾經是主要的戰場地區。雖然在第三時期裏，戰爭回到了東南歐，但是在該大陸的其餘地方，它卻看來不大可能重演。另一方面，在第二時期，與全球對峙並不一定毫無聯繫的國傢間戰爭仍然在中東和南亞肆虐，直接産生於這場全球對峙的主要戰爭在東亞和東南亞（韓國和印度支那）發生。與此同時，撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲等地區在第一時期裏受戰爭影響比較少（埃塞俄比亞除外，它遲遲地於1935到1936年遭受意大利的殖民徵服），在第二時期成為武裝衝突的戰場，並在第三時期目睹了屍橫遍野和水深火熱。
20世紀的另外兩個戰爭特點很突出，第一個不如第二個明顯。21世紀開始之際，我們不知不覺地進入這樣一個世界：武裝的行動基本上不再為政府或者其所授權的代理人所掌握，爭端的各方除了動用武力的願望外，毫無共同特徵、身份或目標。
國傢間的戰爭在第一和第二時期主導了戰爭的形象，以致現有國傢或帝國領土範圍內的內戰或其它武裝衝突在一定程度上被掩蓋了。就連十月革命後俄羅斯帝國領土上的內戰以及中華帝國崩潰後發生的內戰，也能夠與國際衝突的框架相吻合，因為它們彼此不可分離。另一方面，拉丁美洲在20世紀裏可能並沒有軍隊跨越國界，但它卻是重大國內衝突的場所：例如1911年以後在墨西哥、1948年以來在哥倫比亞，以及第二時期在許多中美洲國傢，都是如此。人們一般沒有認識到，從60年代過半以來，國際戰爭的數量相當持續地減少了。60年代中期，內部衝突變得比國傢之間的衝突更加常見。國內衝突的數量繼續激增，一直到90年代纔趨於平緩。
人們更加熟悉的是戰鬥員與非戰鬥員之間區別的被侵蝕。上半個世紀的兩次世界大戰涉及交戰各國的全部人口；戰鬥員和非戰鬥員都遭受了損失。然而，在這個世紀進程中，戰爭的負擔越來越多地從武裝力量轉移到平民身上。平民不僅是其受害者，而且越來越多地成為軍事或軍事-政治行動的目標。第一次世界大戰和第二次之間的對比是顯著的：在一戰中陣亡者當中，衹有5%是平民；二戰中這一數字增加到66%。普遍的估計是，今天受戰爭影響的人們當中有80%到90%是平民。這一比例從冷戰結束以來增加了，因為從那時以來的大多數軍事行動都不是由義務兵軍隊，而是由小股正規或非正規部隊進行的，在許多情況下所使用的是高技術武器，他們還受到保護，以免承擔傷亡的風險。沒有理由懷疑，戰爭的主要受害者仍將是平民。
假如戰爭與和平像這個世紀初那樣保持涇渭分明，則20世紀對這兩者的著述會容易一些。世紀初，1899年和 1907年的海牙公約把戰爭的規則編入法典。衝突被認為主要發生在主權國傢之間，或者如果發生在一個特定國傢領土範圍內，是在組織充分、因而被其它主權國傢公認具有交戰地位的各方之間展開。戰爭當時被認為與和平有顯著區別，通過開戰時的一項戰爭宣言和戰爭結束時的一項和約。軍事行動被認為在戰鬥員之間有明顯區別——其特徵譬如他們所穿的軍裝或者顯示其屬於一支有組織的軍隊的其它跡象——以及非作戰平民。戰爭被認為是戰鬥員之間的事情。非戰鬥員衹要可能，就應當在戰時受到保護。
過去一貫的諒解是，這些公約並不涵蓋所有的國內和國際武裝衝突，特別是不包括西方國傢在國際公認的主權國傢管轄範圍以外地區進行的帝國擴張所造成的衝突，儘管這些衝突當中的一些（但絶非全部）被稱為“戰爭”。它們也不包括反對地位穩固的國傢的大規模叛亂，譬如所謂的“印度兵變”，或者在國傢或名義上統治着這些國傢的帝國當局有效控製範圍之外地區反復發生的武裝活動，譬如阿富汗或摩洛哥山區的劫掠和血仇。儘管如此，海牙公約仍然是第一次世界大戰中的指導方針。20世紀，這一相對的明確性被混亂所取代。
首先，國際衝突與國內衝突之間的界綫變得模糊不清，因為20世紀的特點不僅是戰爭，而且還有革命和帝國的解體。一國內部的革命或解放鬥爭對國際局勢産生影響，在冷戰期間尤其如此。相反地，俄羅斯革命後，國傢對自己所不支持的別國內部事務的幹預變得司空見慣，起碼在這樣做風險比較小的地方是如此。現在情況仍然是這樣。
第二，戰爭與和平之間的明確差別變得含糊不清。除了個別地方外，第二次世界大戰既不是以宣戰開始，也不是以和約結束。隨後的一個時期不論是從舊的意義上講歸類為戰爭還是和平都很睏難，因此“冷戰”這個新字眼不得不被發明來描述它。冷戰以來狀況的模糊性的一個明證就是中東的當前局勢。不論“戰爭”還是“和平” 都沒有確切描述海灣戰爭正式結束以來伊拉剋的形勢——該國仍然幾乎每天都遭到外國的轟炸——巴勒斯坦人和以色列人之間的關係也是如此，還有以色列與其鄰國、黎巴嫩和敘利亞之間的關係。所有這些都是一種不幸的後遺癥，其原因是20世紀的世界大戰，還有戰爭的越來越強大的大衆宣傳機器，以及彼此不相稱的和充滿激情的意識形態之間對峙的一個時期。這種對峙給戰爭帶來了相當於在以往的宗教衝突中所見到的正義討伐的成分。
這些衝突與國際實力體係的傳統戰爭不同，越來越多地是為了不可談判的目的，譬如“無條件投降”而進行。由於戰爭和勝利都被看作一邊倒的，所以對18和19世紀的戰爭公約所可能強加給交戰國能力的任何限製——甚至正式的宣戰——都被拋棄。對勝利者堅持自己意志的威力的任何限製也是如此。經驗表明，在和平情況下達成的協議可能很容易被撕毀。
近年來，使情況進一步復雜化的是，在人們的公開言論中，“戰爭”一詞往往被用來指部署有組織的力量打擊被看作反社會的各種國傢或國際活動——例如“反黑手黨的戰爭”或“反販毒組織的戰爭”。在這些衝突中，武裝力量的兩個類型的行動被混淆。一個類型——我們稱之為“士兵”——用來對付其他武裝力量，目的是擊敗他們。另外一個——我們把它叫做“警察”——努力保持或恢復一個現有的政治實體，一般是一個國傢內部必要程度的法律和公共秩序。並不帶有任何必要的道德隱含意義的勝利是一種力量的目的；將違法者繩之以法則帶有道德的涵義，乃是另外一種力量的目標。然而，這種區分在理論上比在實踐中容易做出，戰鬥中的一名士兵殺人本身並不犯法。但如果愛爾蘭共和軍的一名成員把自己看作交戰一方，儘管正式的英國法律把他視為殺人犯，則情況如何？
北愛爾蘭的活動是像愛爾蘭共和軍所認為的那樣是一場戰爭呢，還是在違法者面前為了維持英國的一個省有秩序的治理而做出的努力？由於不僅一支可觀的當地警察部隊，而且還有一支全國性的軍隊被動員起來對付愛爾蘭共和軍達30年左右，所以我們可以斷定，這是一場戰爭，但卻是一場像警察行動一樣有條不紊地實施的戰爭，其方式把傷亡和該省中的生活中斷減少到最低限度。新世紀開始時和平與戰爭之間關係的復雜性和混亂情況就是如此。它們得到了美國及其盟國目前正在進行的軍事與其它行動的充分詮釋。
現在像整個20世紀一樣，全然沒有任何能夠控製或解决武裝爭端的有效的全球權威機構。全球化已經在幾乎每個方面取得進展——經濟上、技術上、文化上甚至語言上——唯一例外的是，在政治與軍事上，各國仍然是唯一的有效權威。雖然正式的國傢有200個左右，但是在實踐上衹有少數舉足輕重，其中美國享有占壓倒優勢的威力。然而從來沒有任何國傢或帝國足夠地龐大、富裕或強大，以維持在世界政治領域中的霸權，就更不用說建立全球範圍的政治與軍事上的至高無上地位了。一個單一的超級大國無法彌補全球權威的空白，尤其鑒於其效力足以使之獲得主要國傢的自願接受、被當作具有約束力的公約的缺乏——例如涉及國際裁軍或者武器控製的等等。一些這種權威機構是存在的，特別是聯合國、各種法律與金融機構，譬如國際貨幣基金組織、世界銀行和世界貿易組織，以及一些國際法庭。但沒有任何一個擁有除了國傢之間的協議所賦予它們的之外的、由於強大國傢的支持而獲得的或者各國自願接受的有效權力。雖然這一點令人遺憾，但是在可以預見的將來卻不大可能改變。
由於衹有國傢纔行使實際的權力，所以風險在於，國際機構在試圖應付“戰爭罪行”等違法行為的時候會無效或者缺乏普遍的合法地位。甚至當通過普遍共識而建立世界法庭（例如根據聯合國1998年7月17日的羅馬協議建立的國際刑事法庭），它們的判斷也不一定會被當作合法和有約束力的而接受，衹要強國有條件對其加以無視。一個由強國組成的集團可能足夠強大，以確保來自比較弱小國傢的一些違犯者被送上這些法庭，從而或許在某些地區限製武裝衝突的殘酷程度。然而這是表明在一個國際體係內權力與影響力的傳統行使、而不是國際法行使的實例。
然而在21世紀與20世紀之間有重大差別：認為戰爭是發生在一個劃分為處於有效的政府權威之下的領土地區的世界上，這些政府享有對公共權力和強迫手段的壟斷，這種想法已經不再適用。它從來都不適用於經歷着革命的國傢或者四分五裂的帝國的各個分裂部分，但直到最近為止，大多數新的革命或後殖民地政權——中國在1911年和1949年之間是主要的例外——相當迅速地再生，成為基本上有組織的和正常運轉的繼承政權和國傢。然而最近30年左右，由於各種原因，國傢喪失了其對武裝力量的一貫的壟斷、很大一部分從前的穩定性與權力，而且越來越多地還喪失了合法地位或者公認的永久性的根本感覺，這種地位過去使政府得以把稅賦與徵兵等負擔強加給心甘情願的公民。戰爭的物質裝備現在對民間組織來說普遍地唾手可得，資助非國傢戰爭的手段也是如此，這樣一來，國傢與非國傢組織之間的力量對比已經改變。
國傢內部的武裝衝突已經變得更加嚴重，並且可能繼續幾十年，而沒有任何勝利或得到解决的真實前景：剋什米爾、安哥拉、斯裏蘭卡、車臣、哥倫比亞。在極端的情況下，譬如在非洲的部分地區，國傢可能已經基本不復存在，或者譬如在哥倫比亞，可能不再在本國部分領土上行使政權。甚至在強大和穩定的國傢裏，也一直難以消除非官方的小型武裝集團，譬如英國的愛爾蘭共和軍及西班牙的巴斯剋民族和自由組織。這一局面的新奇性通過一件事實顯示出來：地球上最強大的國傢在遭受了一場恐怖主義襲擊後感到有義務發動一場正式的行動，打擊一個很小的國際與非政府組織或網絡，而後者既沒有領土，也沒有一支能夠辨認的軍隊。
這些變化如何影響今後一個世紀戰爭與和平之間的平衡呢？我寧願不就很有可能爆發的戰爭或者它們可能的結局做出預測。然而不論武裝衝突的結構還是解决的方法都由於主權國傢世界體係的轉變而發生了深刻變化。
蘇聯的解體意味着，曾經指導了國際關係將近兩個世紀、除了明顯的例外還對國傢之間的衝突行使了一定的控製權的大國體係不復存在。它的消失消除了現在國傢間戰爭和國傢對別國事務進行武裝幹預的一大因素——冷戰期間外國領土的邊界基本上未曾被軍隊所跨越。然而即使那時，由於弱小國傢的大量存在（儘管這些國傢從官方意義上講是聯合國的“主權”成員國），國際體係就已經存在潛在的不穩定性。
蘇聯和歐洲共産黨政權的垮臺明顯地使這種不穩定性增加。在迄今為止穩定的民族國傢，譬如英國、西班牙、比利時和意大利，具有不同程度實力的分離主義趨勢完全可能進一步加重這種不穩定。與此同時，國際舞臺上民間表演者的數量也成倍增加。有什麽機製可以用來控製和解决這種衝突嗎？從記錄看並不令人樂觀。90年代的武裝衝突沒有一次以穩定的解决而告終。由於冷戰的機構、假設與言論的持續存在，所以舊的懷疑未曾消亡，從而惡化了東南歐共産主義以後的分崩離析，使得解决一度被稱為南斯拉夫的地區問題更加睏難。
我們要想製訂一些控製武裝衝突的手段，就必須從意識形態和權力-政治兩方面消除這些冷戰遺留下來的假設。此外明顯的是，美國通過單方的武力來強加一種（任何一種）新的世界秩序的努力都已經失敗並且必然繼續失敗，不管力量關係目前如何朝着有利於美國的方向偏斜，儘管美國得到了一個（必然短命的）聯盟的支持。國際體係仍將是多邊的，其管製將取决於幾個大國達成一致的能力，儘管其中一個國傢享有軍事上的壓倒優勢。
美國所采取的國際軍事行動在多大程度上取决於別國通過談判的協議已經很清楚。此外也清楚的是，戰爭的政治解决，甚至美國所參與的戰爭的解决，都將是通過談判而不是通過單方的強加於人。以無條件投降而結束的戰爭的時代在可以預見的將來不會重演。
對於現有的國際機構，特別是聯合國的角色，也必須重新考慮。雖然它無時不在而且通常是求助的對象，但是在解决爭端方面，卻沒有明確的角色。它的戰略與行動始終任憑不斷變幻的權力政治所宰割。缺乏一個被真正看作中立的和能夠在未經安全理事會事先授權情況下采取行動的國際中介，這一直是爭端處理體係中最明顯的空白。
冷戰結束以來，對和平與戰爭的處理一直是即興的。在最好情況下，譬如在巴爾幹地區，武裝衝突被外部武裝幹預製止，敵對行動結束時的現狀由第三方的軍隊來維持。武裝衝突未來控製的一個通用模型能否從這種幹預中産生還不清楚。
21世紀中戰爭與和平之間的平衡將不會取决於製訂比較有效的談判和解决機製，而是要看內部穩定和軍事衝突的避免情況如何。除了少數例外，現有的國傢之間的、過去導致了武裝衝突的對抗與摩擦今天造成這種局面的可能性減小了。例如現在的國際邊界問題上的政府間燃眉之急的衝突相對來說很少。另一方面，內部衝突很容易演變成暴力性的：戰爭的主要危險存在於外國或者外部軍事勢力對衝突的捲入。
與貧睏、嚴重不平等和經濟不穩定的國傢相比，經濟蒸蒸日上、穩定而且商品在居民當中比較公平地分配的國傢，其社會和政治局勢動蕩的可能性較小。然而，避免或控製國內武裝暴力活動的情況更加直接地取决於國傢政府的實力和政績，及其在多數居民眼中的合法地位。今天沒有任何政府能夠對非武裝民衆的存在或者歐洲很多地方人們所長期熟悉的公共秩序的程度，認為理所當然。今天沒有任何政府有條件無視或者清除掉國內的武裝少數民族。
儘管如此，世界越來越分裂為能夠對自己領土和公民加以有效管理的國傢以及為數越來越多的領土，其邊界是得到官方承認的國際界綫，國傢的政府則從虛弱和腐敗的到蕩然無存的都有。這些地區所醖釀的是流血的內部鬥爭和國際衝突，譬如我們在非洲中部所見到。然而這種地區沒有持續改善的即刻前景，如果動蕩不定的國傢的中央政府進一步被削弱或者世界版圖進一步巴爾幹化，則無疑會加重武裝衝突的危險。
一項嘗試性的預測：21世紀的戰爭不大可能像20世紀的那樣血腥。但造成不成比例的苦難與損失的武裝暴力仍將在世界很多地方無處不在和泛濫成災。一個和平的世紀的前景是遙遠的。
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.
Portions of an earlier version having been serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867, the novel was first published in its entirety in 1869. Newsweek in 2009 ranked it top of its list of Top 100 Books.
Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle."
War and Peace is famously long for a novel (though not the longest by any means). It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with subparts containing many chapters.
Tolstoy got the title, and some of his themes, from an 1861 work of Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix. Tolstoy had served in the Crimean War and written a series of short stories and novellas featuring scenes of war. He began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. During the writing of the second half of the book, after the first half had already been written under the name "1805", he read widely, acknowledging Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations, although he developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it.
The novel can be generally classified as historical fiction. It contains elements present in many types of popular 18th and 19th century literature, especially the romance novel. War and Peace attains its literary status by transcending genres. Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its "god-like" ability to hover over and within events, but also swiftly and seamlessly to take a particular character's point of view. His use of visual detail is often cinematic in its scope, using the literary equivalents of panning, wide shots and close-ups, to give dramatic interest to battles and ballrooms alike. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new novel that is arising in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proves himself a master.
Realism
Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research, and he was influenced by many other novels as well. Himself a veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form - he explains at the start of the novel's third volume his views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II.
The novel is set 60 years earlier than the time at which Tolstoy wrote it, "in the days of our grandfathers", as he puts it. He had spoken with people who had lived through the war of 1812 (In Russia), so the book is also, in part, accurate ethnography fictionalized. He read letters, journals, autobiographical and biographical materials pertaining to Napoleon and the dozens of other historical characters in the novel. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.
Reception
The first draft of War and Peace was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik published the first part of this early version under the title 1805 and the following year published more of the same early version. Tolstoy was increasingly dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published (with a different ending) in 1867 still under the title "1805" He heavily rewrote the entire novel between 1866 and 1869. Tolstoy's wife Sophia Tolstoy handwrote as many as 8 or 9 separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it again ready for publication. The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending than the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869.
The completed novel was then called Voyna i mir (new style orthography; in English War and Peace).
Tolstoy did not destroy the 1805 manuscript (sometimes referred to as "the original War and Peace"), which was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1983 and since has been translated separately from the "known" version, to English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Korean. The fact that so many extant versions of War and Peace survive make it one of the best revelations into the mental processes of a great novelist.
Russians who had read the serialized version, were anxious to acquire the complete first edition, which included epilogues, and it sold out almost immediately. The novel was translated almost immediately after publication into many other languages.
Isaac Babel said, after reading War and Peace, "If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy." Tolstoy "gives us a unique combination of the 'naive objectivity' of the oral narrator with the interest in detail characteristic of realism. This is the reason for our trust in his presentation."
Language
Although Tolstoy wrote most of the book, including all the narration, in Russian, significant portions of dialogue (including its opening paragraph) are written in French and characters often switch between the languages. This reflected 19th century reality since Russian aristocracy in the early nineteenth century were conversant in French, which was often considered more refined than Russian—many were much less competent in Russian. An example in the novel is Julie Karagina, Princess Marya's friend, who has to take Russian lessons in order to master her native language.
It has been suggested that it is a deliberate strategy of Tolstoy to use French to portray artifice and insincerity, as the language of the theater and deceit while Russian emerges as a language of sincerity, honesty and seriousness. When Pierre proposes to Helene he speaks to her in French—Je vous aime—and as the marriage emerges as a sham he blames those words.
As the book progresses, and the wars with the French intensify, culminating in the capture and eventual burning of Moscow, the use of French diminishes. The progressive elimination of French from the text is a means of demonstrating that Russia has freed itself from foreign cultural domination. It is also, at the level of plot development, a way of showing that a once-admired and friendly nation, France, has turned into an enemy. By midway through the book, several of the Russian aristocracy, whose command of French is far better than their command of Russian, are anxious to find Russian tutors for themselves.
English translations
War and Peace has been translated into English on several occasions, starting by Clara Bell working from a French translation. The translators Constance Garnett and Louise and Aylmer Maude knew Tolstoy personally. Translations have to deal with Tolstoy’s often peculiar syntax and his fondness of repetitions. About 2% of War and Peace is in French; Tolstoy removed the French in a revised 1873 edition, only to restore it later again. Most translators follow Garnett retaining some French, Briggs uses no French, while Pevear-Volokhonsky retain the French fully. (For a list of translations see below)
Background and historical context
In 1812 by the Russian artist Illarion Pryanishnikov
The novel begins in the year 1805 and leads up to the war of 1812[citation needed]. The era of Catherine the Great is still fresh in the minds of older people. It was Catherine who ordered the Russian court to change to speaking French, a custom that was stronger in Petersburg than in Moscow.[citation needed] Catherine's son and successor, Paul I, is the father of the current Czar, Alexander I. Alexander I came to the throne in 1801 at the age of 24. His mother, Marya Feodorovna, is the most powerful woman in the court.
The novel tells the story of five aristocratic families — the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys—and the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The Bezukhovs, while very rich, are a fragmented family as the old Count, Kirill Vladimirovich, has fathered dozens of illegitimate sons. The Bolkonskys are an old established and wealthy family based at Bald Hills. Old Prince Bolkonsky, Nikolai Andreevich, served as a general under Catherine the Great, in earlier wars. The Moscow Rostovs have many estates, but never enough cash. They are a closely knit, loving family who live for the moment regardless of their financial situation. The Kuragin family has three children, who are all of questionable character. The Drubetskoy family is of impoverished nobility, and consists of an elderly mother and her only son, Boris, whom she wishes to push up the career ladder.
Tolstoy spent years researching and rewriting the book. He worked from primary source materials (interviews and other documents), as well as from history books, philosophy texts and other historical novels. Tolstoy also used a great deal of his own experience in the Crimean War to bring vivid detail and first-hand accounts of how the Russian army was structured.
The standard Russian text of 'War and Peace' is divided into four books (fifteen parts) and two epilogues – one mainly narrative, the other thematic. While roughly the first half of the novel is concerned strictly with the fictional characters, the later parts, as well as one of the work's two epilogues, increasingly consist of essays about the nature of war, power, history, and historiography. Tolstoy interspersed these essays into the story in a way that defies previous fictional convention. Certain abridged versions remove these essays entirely, while others, published even during Tolstoy's life, simply moved these essays into an appendix.
Plot summary
War and Peace has a large cast of characters, some historically real (like Napoleon and Alexander I), the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. The scope of the novel is vast, but the focus is primarily on five aristocratic families and their experiences in life. The interactions of these characters are set in the era leading up to, around and following the French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars.
Book/Volume One
The novel begins in Saint Petersburg, at a soirée given in July 1805 by Anna Pavlovna Scherer — the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main players and aristocratic families of the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. He is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad after his mother's death and at his father's expense, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward owing in part to his open, benevolent nature, and finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. He is his father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children, and this is known to everyone at Anna Pavlovna's.
Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of the charming society favourite Lise, also attends the soireé. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon.
The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his teenage love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances.
At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate, Prince Andrei leaves his terrified, pregnant wife Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky and his devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya, and departs for the war.
The second part opens with descriptions of the impending Russian-French war preparations. At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, who is now conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first taste of battle. He meets Prince Andrei, whom he insults in a fit of impetuousness. Even more than most young soldiers, he is deeply attracted by Tsar Alexander's charisma. Nikolai gambles and socializes with his officer, Vasily Dmitrich Denisov, and befriends the ruthless and perhaps psychopathic Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov.
Book/Volume Two
Book Two begins with Nikolai Rostov briefly returning home to Moscow on home leave in early 1806. Nikolai finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor estate management. He spends an eventful winter at home, accompanied by his friend Denisov, his officer from the Pavlograd Regiment in which he serves. Natasha has blossomed into a beautiful young girl. Denisov falls in love with her, proposes marriage but is rejected. Although his mother pleads with Nikolai to find himself a good financial prospect in marriage, Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother's request. He promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the dowry-less Sonya.
Pierre Bezukhov, upon finally receiving his massive inheritance, is suddenly transformed from a bumbling young man into the richest and most eligible bachelor in the Russian Empire. Despite rationally knowing that it is wrong, he proposes marriage with Prince Kuragin's beautiful and immoral daughter Hélène (Elena Vasilyevna Kuragina), to whom he is sexually attracted. Hélène, who is rumoured to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother, the equally charming and immoral Anatol, tells Pierre that she will never have children with him. Hélène has an affair with Dolokhov, who mocks Pierre in public. Pierre loses his temper and challenges Dolokhov, a seasoned dueller and a ruthless killer, to a duel. Unexpectedly, Pierre wounds Dolokhov. Hélène denies her affair, but Pierre is convinced of her guilt and, after almost being violent to her, leaves her. In his moral and spiritual confusion, he joins the Freemasons, and becomes embroiled in Masonic internal politics. Much of Book Two concerns his struggles with his passions and his spiritual conflicts to be a better man. Now a rich aristocrat, he abandons his former carefree behavior and enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? The question continually baffles and confuses Pierre. He attempts to liberate his serfs, but ultimately achieves nothing of note.
Pierre is vividly contrasted with the intelligent and ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a charge of a straggling army. He suffers a near fatal artillery wound. In the face of death, Andrei realizes all his former ambitions are pointless and his former hero Napoleon (who rescues him in a horseback excursion to the battlefield) is apparently as vain as himself.
Prince Andrei recovers from his injuries in a military hospital and returns home, only to find his wife Lise dying in childbirth. He is stricken by his guilty conscience for not treating Lise better when she was alive and is haunted by the pitiful expression on his dead wife's face. His child, Nikolenka, survives.
Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment, Prince Andrei does not return to the army but chooses to remain on his estate, working on a project that would codify military behavior and help solve some of the problems of Russian disorganization that he believes were responsible for the loss of life in battle on the Russian side. Pierre comes to visit him and brings new questions: where is God in this amoral world? Pierre is interested in panentheism and the possibility of an afterlife.
Pierre's estranged wife, Hélène, begs him to take her back, and against his better judgment he does. Despite her vapid shallowness, Hélène establishes herself as an influential hostess in Petersburg society.
Prince Andrei feels impelled to take his newly written military notions to Petersburg, naively expecting to influence either the Emperor himself or those close to him. Young Natasha, also in Petersburg, is caught up in the excitement of dressing for her first grand ball, where she meets Prince Andrei and briefly reinvigorates him with her vivacious charm. Andrei believes he has found purpose in life again and, after paying the Rostovs several visits, proposes marriage to Natasha. However, old Prince Bolkonsky, Andrei's father, dislikes the Rostovs, opposes the marriage, and insists on a year's delay. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. She soon recovers her spirits, however, and Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to spend some time with a friend in Moscow.
Natasha visits the Moscow opera, where she meets Hélène and her brother Anatol. Anatol has since married a Polish woman whom he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and is determined to seduce her. Hélène and Anatol conspire together to accomplish this plan. Anatol kisses Natasha and writes her passionate letters, eventually establishing plans to elope. Natasha is convinced that she loves Anatol and writes to Princess Maria, Andrei's sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Pierre is initially shocked and horrified at Natasha's behavior, but comes to realize he has fallen in love with her himself. During the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre.
Prince Andrei accepts coldly Natasha's breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal of marriage. Shamed by her near-seduction and at the realisation that Andrei will not forgive her, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill.
Book/Volume Three
With the help of her family, especially Sonya, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming showdown between Napoleon's troops and the Russian army. Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke while trying to protect his estate from French marauders. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to Princess Maria, but remembers his promise to Sonya.
Back in Moscow, the war-obsessed Petya manages to snatch a loose piece of the Tsar's biscuit outside the Cathedral of the Assumption; he finally convinces his parents to allow him to enlist.
Napoleon himself is a main character in this section of the novel and is presented in vivid detail, as both thinker and would-be strategist. His toilette and his customary attitudes and traits of mind are depicted in detail. Also described are the well-organized force of over 400,000 French Army (only 140,000 of them actually French-speaking) which marches quickly through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. In the midst of the turmoil he experiences firsthand the death and destruction of war. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon's reputedly invincible army. For strategic reasons and having suffered grievous losses, the Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatol Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatol loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a cannon wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified.
Book/Volume Four
The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory, often propagandistic, instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Rostopchin is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, and in the end load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino. Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded.
When Napoleon's Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes an anonymous man in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees while in this garb are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her.
Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon, after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. He becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor, who is incapable of malice. In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: an honest person of integrity (unlike the aristocrats of Petersburg society) who is utterly without pretense. Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by living and interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation—during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French—Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action.
Meanwhile, Andrei, wounded during Napoleon's invasion, has been taken in as a casualty and cared for by the fleeing Rostovs. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying.
As the novel draws to a close, Pierre's wife Hélène dies in a botched operation (implied to be an abortion). Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's. Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and, revealing his love after being released by his former wife's death, marries Natasha.
Epilogues
The first epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813. It is the last happy event for the Rostov family, which is undergoing a transition. Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate.
Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally in spite of rather than according to his mother's wishes, he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing also saves his family from financial ruin.
Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their life. Buoyed by his wife's fortune, Nikolai pays off all his family's debts. They also raise Prince Andrei's orphaned son, Nikolai Andreyevich (Nikolenka) Bolkonsky.
As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples–Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria–remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in 1820, much to the jubilation of everyone concerned. There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father "would be satisfied..." (presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt).
The second epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. He attempts to show that there is a great force behind history, which he first terms divine. He offers the entire book as evidence of this force, and critiques his own work. God, therefore, becomes the word Tolstoy uses to refer to all the forces that produce history, taken together and operating behind the scenes.
Principal characters in War and Peace
Main article: List of characters in War and Peace
War and Peace character tree
* Count Pyotr Kirillovich (Pierre) Bezukhov — The central character and often a voice for Tolstoy's own beliefs or struggles. He is one of several illegitimate children of Count Bezukhov; he is his father's favorite offspring.
* Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky — A strong but cynical, thoughtful and philosophical aide-de-camp in the Napoleonic Wars.
* Princess Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya — A pious woman whose eccentric father attempted to give her a good education. The caring, nurturing nature of her large eyes in her otherwise thin and plain face are frequently mentioned.
* Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov — The pater-familias of the Rostov family; terrible with finances, generous to a fault.
* Countess Natalya Rostova — Wife of Count Ilya Rostov, mother of the four Rostov children.
* Countess Natalia Ilyinichna (Natasha) Rostova — Introduced as a beautiful and romantic young girl, she evolves through trials and suffering and eventually finds happiness. She is an accomplished singer and dancer.[citation needed]
* Count Nikolai Ilyich Rostov — A hussar, the beloved eldest son of the Rostov family.
* Sofia Alexandrovna (Sonya) Rostova — Orphaned cousin of Vera, Nikolai, Natasha and Petya Rostov.
* Countess Vera Ilyinichna Rostova — Eldest of the Rostov children, she marries the German career soldier, Berg.
* Pyotr Ilyich (Petya) Rostov — Youngest of the Rostov children.
* Prince Vasily Sergeyevich Kuragin — A ruthless man who is determined to marry his children well, despite having doubts about the character of some of them.
* Princess Elena Vasilyevna (Hélène) Kuragina — A beautiful and sexually alluring woman who has many affairs, including (it is rumoured) with her brother Anatole
* Prince Anatol Vasilyevich Kuragin — Hélène's brother and a very handsome, ruthless and amoral pleasure seeker who is secretly married yet tries to elope with Natasha Rostova.
* Prince Ipolit Vasilyevich — The eldest and perhaps most dim-witted of the Kuragin children.
* Prince Boris Drubetskoy — A poor but aristocratic young man who is determined to make his career, even at the expense of his friends and benefactors, marries a rich and ugly woman to help him climb the social ladder.
* Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoya — The mother of Boris.
* Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov — A cold, almost psychopathic officer, he ruins Nikolai Rostov after his proposal to Sonya is refused, he only shows love to his doting mother.
* Adolf Karlovich Berg — A young Russian officer, who desires to be just like everyone else.
* Anna Pavlovna Sherer — Also known as Annette, she is the hostess of the salon that is the site of much of the novel's action in Petersburg.
* Maria Dmitryevna Akhrosimova — An older Moscow society lady, she is an elegant dancer and trend-setter, despite her age and size.
* Amalia Evgenyevna Bourienne — A French woman who lives with the Bolkonskys, primarily as Princess Marya's companion.
* Vasily Dmitrich Denisov — Nikolai Rostov's friend and brother officer, who proposes to Natasha.
* Platon Krataev - The archetypal good Russian peasant, whom Pierre meets in the prisoner of war camp.
* Napoleon I of France — the Great Man, whose fate is detailed in the book.
* General Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov — Russian commander-in-chief throughout the book. His diligence and modesty eventually save Russia from Napoleon.[citation needed]
* Osip Bazdeyev — the Freemason who interests Pierre in his mysterious group, starting a lengthy subplot.[citation needed]
* Tsar Alexander I of Russia — He signed a peace treaty with Napoleon in 1807 and then went to war with him.
Many of Tolstoy's characters in War and Peace were based on real-life people known to Tolstoy himself. His grandparents and their friends were the models for many of the main characters, his great-grandparents would have been of the generation of Prince Vasilly or Count Ilya Rostov. Some of the characters, obviously, are actual historic figures.
Adaptations
Film
The first Russian film adaptation of War and Peace was the 1915 film Война и мир (Voyna i mir), directed by Vladimir Gardin and starring Gardin and the Russian ballerina Vera Karalli. It was followed in 1968 by the critically acclaimed four-part film version War and Peace, by the Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk, released individually in 1965-1967, and as a re-edited whole in 1968. This starred Lyudmila Savelyeva (as Natasha Rostova) and Vyacheslav Tikhonov (as Andrei Bolkonsky). Bondarchuk himself played the character of Pierre Bezukhov. The film was almost seven hours long; it involved thousands of actors, 120 000 extras, and it took seven years to finish the shooting, as a result of which the actors age changed dramatically from scene to scene. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for its authenticity and massive scale.
The novel has been adapted twice for cinema outside of Russia. The first of these was produced by F. Kamei in Japan (1947). The second was the 208-minute long 1956 War and Peace, directed by the American King Vidor. This starred Audrey Hepburn (Natasha), Henry Fonda (Pierre) and Mel Ferrer (Andrei). Audrey Hepburn was nominated for a BAFTA Award for best British actress and for a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a drama production.
Opera
* Initiated by a proposal of the German director Erwin Piscator in 1938, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev composed his opera War and Peace (Op. 91, libretto by Mira Mendelson) based on this epic novel during the 1940s. The complete musical work premiered in Leningrad in 1955. It was the first opera to be given a public performance at the Sydney Opera House (1973).
Music
* Composition by Nino Rota
* Referring to album notes, the first track "The Gates of Delirium", from the album Relayer, by the progressive rock group Yes, is said to be based loosely on the novel.
Theatre
The first successful stage adaptations of War and Peace were produced by Alfred Neumann and Erwin Piscator (1942, revised 1955, published by Macgibbon & Kee in London 1963, and staged in 16 countries since) and R. Lucas (1943).
A stage adaptation by Helen Edmundson, first produced in 1996 at the Royal National Theatre, was published that year by Nick Hern Books, London. Edmundson added to and amended the play for a 2008 production as two 3-hour parts by Shared Experience, directed by Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale. This was first put on at the Nottingham Playhouse, then toured in the UK to Liverpool, Darlington, Bath, Warwick, Oxford, Truro, London (the Hampstead Theatre) and Cheltenham.
On the 15th-18th July, The Birmingham Theatre School performed this seven-hour epic play at The Crescent Theatre in Brindleyplace with great success. Birmingham Theatre School is the only drama school in the world to perform the new adaptation of War and Peace. Directed by Chris Rozanski and Assistant to Director was Royal National Theatre performer Anthony Mark Barrow with Vocals arranged by Dr Ria Keen and choreography by Colin Lang.
Radio and television
* In December 1970, Pacifica Radio station WBAI broadcast a reading of the entire novel (the 1968 Dunnigan translation) read by over 140 celebrities and ordinary people.
* War and Peace (1972): The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made a television serial based on the novel, broadcast in 1972-73. Anthony Hopkins played the lead role of Pierre. Other lead characters were played by Rupert Davies, Faith Brook, Morag Hood, Alan Dobie, Angela Down and Sylvester Morand. This version faithfully included many of Tolstoy's minor characters, including Platon Karataev (Harry Locke). ,
* A dramatized full-cast adaptation in ten parts was written by Marcy Kahan and Mike Walker in 1997. The production won the 1998 Talkie award for Best Drama and was around 9.5 hours in length. It was directed by Janet Whitaker and featured Simon Russell Beale, Gerard Murphy, Richard Johnson, and others.
* La Guerre et la paix (TV) (2000) by François Roussillon. Robert Brubaker played the lead role of Pierre.
* War and Peace (2007): produced by the Italian Lux Vide, a TV mini-series in Russian & English co-produced in Russia, France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Directed by Robert Dornhelm, with screenplay written by Lorenzo Favella, Enrico Medioli and Gavin Scott. It features an international cast with Alexander Beyer playing the lead role of Pierre assisted by Malcolm McDowell, Clémence Poésy, Alessio Boni, Pilar Abella, J. Kimo Arbas, Ken Duken, Juozapas Bagdonas and Toni Bertorelli.
Full translations into English
* Clara Bell (from a French version) 1885-86
* Nathan Haskell Dole 1898
* Leo Wiener 1904
* Constance Garnett (1904)
* Louise and Aylmer Maude (1922-3)
* Rosemary Edmonds (1957, revised 1978)
* Ann Dunnigan (1968)
* Anthony Briggs (2005)
* Andrew Bromfield (2007), translation of the first completed draft, approx. 400 pages shorter than other English translations.
* Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007)
《亂世佳人》（GONE WITH THE WIND）是好萊塢影史上最值得驕傲的一部曠世經典文學電影，影片放映時間長達4小時，觀者如潮。其魅力貫穿整個20世紀，有好萊塢“第一巨片” 之稱。影片當年耗資400多萬美元，歷時三年半完成，其間數次更換導演，銀幕上出現了60多位主要演員和9000多名配角演員。在1939年的第12屆奧斯卡奬中一舉奪得八項金像奬，轟動美國影壇。這部耗資巨大，場景豪華，戰爭場面宏大逼真的歷史文學題材影片，以它令人稱道的藝術成就成為美國電影史上一部經典作品，令人百看不厭。
1861年南北戰爭爆發的前夕，塔拉莊園的千金小姐郝思嘉愛上了另一莊園主的兒子艾希利，但艾希利卻選擇了郝思嘉的表妹——溫柔善良的韓媚蘭為終身伴侶。郝思嘉出於妒恨，搶先嫁給了韓媚蘭的弟弟查爾斯。不久，美國南北戰爭爆發了。艾希利和查爾斯作為徵兵上了前綫。查爾斯很快就在戰爭中死去了。郝思嘉成了寡婦， 她內心卻一直對艾希利念念不忘。
一天，在一次舉行義賣的舞會上，郝思嘉和風度翩翩的商人白瑞德相識。白瑞德開始追求郝思嘉，但遭到她的拒絶。郝思嘉一心衹想着去追求艾希利，結果也遭到拒絶。
在戰爭中，美國南方軍遭到失敗，亞特蘭大城裏擠滿了傷兵。郝思嘉和表妹韓媚蘭自願加入護士行列照顧傷兵。目睹了戰亂帶來的慘狀之後，任性的郝思嘉成熟了不少。這時，從前綫傳來消息，北方軍快打過來了，不少人傢驚惶地逃離傢園，開始了不安定的流浪生活。正在此時，韓媚蘭不巧要生孩子了，郝思嘉衹好留下來照顧她。
在北方軍大軍壓境之日，郝思嘉哀求白瑞德幫忙護送她和剛生下孩子的韓媚蘭回塔拉莊園。白瑞德告訴郝思嘉他不能目睹南方軍潰敗而不去助一臂之力，他要參加南方軍作戰，他留下一把手槍並和郝思嘉擁吻告別。郝思嘉衹好獨自駕駛馬車回到塔拉莊園，而這時傢裏已被北方軍士兵搶先洗動一空，母親在驚嚇中死去。昔日美好的傢園變成了荒涼的棲息地，郝思嘉面對這一切悲慘時，表現出了女人少有的堅毅，她决定重建傢園。
不久，戰爭結束了。但是生活依然困苦。北方來的統治者要莊園主繳納重稅，郝思嘉在絶望中去亞特蘭大城找白瑞德借錢，卻得知他已被關進監獄。歸來的途中，郝思嘉遇上了本來要迎娶她妹妹的暴發戶弗蘭剋，為了要重振破産的傢業，她騙取弗蘭剋和自己結了婚。
郝思嘉在弗蘭剋經營的木材廠非法雇用囚犯，並和北方來的商人大做生意。此時，白瑞德用錢賄賂從而恢復了自由。兩人偶然碰面，再次展開愛恨交織的關係。
弗蘭剋和艾希利因加入了反政府的秘密組織，在一次集會時遭北方軍包圍，弗蘭剋中彈死亡，艾希利負傷逃亡，在白瑞德幫助下回到韓媚蘭身邊。郝思嘉再次成為寡婦。此時，白瑞德前來嚮她求婚，她終於與一直愛她的搞私運軍火和糧食致富的白瑞德結了婚。婚後，夫妻二人住在亞特蘭大的豪華宅邸中。一年後，他們的女兒邦妮出生，白瑞德把全部感情投註到邦妮身上。郝思嘉偶然翻閱艾希利的照片被白瑞德發現，終於導致了二人感情的破裂。其後，在艾希利的生日會前夕，郝思嘉與艾希利相見時熱情的擁抱引起旁人非議，韓媚蘭雖然不相信他們之間有曖昧關係，但白瑞德卻心生懷疑。
當郝思嘉告訴白瑞德她已經再次懷孕時，白瑞德懷疑地問那是誰的孩子，郝思嘉在羞怒之下欲打白瑞德，卻不慎滾下樓梯引起流産。白瑞德感到內疚，决心同郝思嘉言歸於好，不料就在他倆談話時，小女兒邦妮在騎馬時意外墜地而死。與此同時不幸的事也在另一個家庭裏發生，韓媚蘭終因操勞過度臥病不起。臨終前，她把自己的丈夫艾希利和兒子托付給郝思嘉，但要求她保守這個秘密，郝思嘉不顧一切撲嚮艾希利的懷中，緊緊擁抱住他，站在一旁的白瑞德無法再忍受下去，衹好轉身離去。面對傷心欲絶毫無反應的艾希利，郝思嘉終於明白，她愛的艾希利其實是不存在的，她真正需要的是白瑞德。
當郝思嘉趕回傢裏告訴白瑞德，她是真正愛他的時候，白瑞德已不再相信她。他决心離開郝思嘉，返回老傢去尋找美好的事物，被遺棄的郝思嘉站在濃霧迷漫的院中，想起了父親曾經對她說過的一句話：“世界上唯有土地與明天同在。”她决定守在她的土地上重新創造新的生活，她期盼着美好的明天的到來。
《飄》-主要演員介紹
剋拉剋·蓋布爾
剋拉剋·蓋布爾剋拉剋·蓋布爾
剋拉剋·蓋布爾，1901年出生於美國俄亥俄州的農村小鎮，母親在他十個月大時便去世了，父親在他三歲時另娶圖書館職員珍妮為繼母。珍妮無所出，視剋拉剋．蓋博如親生子。十四歲時，父親賣掉田産，到奧剋拉荷馬州去當油井工人，剋拉剋不願意隨父親搬傢，乃離傢出走，到當地的一傢劇院打工，從此展開了他日後的演藝生涯。就外形而論，剋拉剋．蓋博並不算是英俊小生，主要是有一對特大號的招風耳。在他投身電影界參加試鏡時，曾先後被米高梅公司副總裁艾文泰爾伯格取笑他有一雙蝙蝠翅膀一樣的大耳朵，雷毫萍公司老闆霍華休斯更刻薄地說他的耳朵像一輛打開了兩扇門的計程車。雖然這些影壇大亨並不欣賞剋拉剋．蓋博，但女同胞卻愛他愛得要死。首先是年齡比蓋博大兩歲的女演員法蘭西絲杜芙娜。他倆在波特蘭城訂婚後，杜芙娜就積極地運用自己的關係為蓋博打天下，安排他在新戲中演出角色，又介紹他認識戲劇圈中有頭有臉的人物。蓋博因此結識了年齡比他大十四歲的資深女演員約瑟芬狄倫，她同時也是劇壇著名的演技指導，門生甚多。蓋博在狄倫女士的大力引薦下，演出機會增加了不少。他在投桃報李之下，拋棄了未婚妻，於1924年與約瑟芬狄倫結婚。
參與作品：
《娛樂世界續集》 (1976) 、《米高梅公司的喜劇電影回顧 》(1964) 、《碧港豔遇》 (1960) 、《太平洋潛艇戰 》(1958) 、《教師之戀 》(1958) 、《金漢豔奴》 (1957) 等
費雯·麗
費雯·麗（Vivien Leigh) (1913年11月5日－1967年7月7日)。原名費雯·瑪麗·哈特利（Vivien Mary Hartley），英國電影演員。她成功地飾演《亂世佳人》的斯佳麗·奧哈拉和《欲望號街車》的布蘭奇·杜波依斯，兩度獲得奧斯卡最佳女主角。1999年，她被美國電影學會選為百年來最偉大的女演員第16 名。
費雯·麗費雯·麗
主要作品：
1965《愚人船》1951《欲望號街車》（獲奧斯卡最佳女主角奬）1946《Caesar and Cleopatra》 1941《漢米登夫人》1940《21 Days》 1940 《魂斷藍橋》1939《亂世佳人》 《飄》（獲奧斯卡最佳女主角奬） 1938《Sidewalks of London》 1937 《Storm in a Teacup》 1937《Dark Journey》 1937《Fire Over England》
《飄》-經典片段
瑞德離開郝思嘉後，Scarlett O’Hara最後坐在樓梯的臺階上說——“After all， tomorrow is another day。”
思嘉在回到被毀的傢園後,在山頭上說----“上帝為我作證,上帝為我作證,北佬休想將我整垮.等熬過了這一關,我决不再忍饑挨餓,也决不再讓我的親人忍饑挨餓了,哪怕讓我去偷,去搶,去殺人.請上帝為我作證,我無論如何都不再忍饑挨餓了!”
點評
有人說這部電影最經典的場面是Scarlett O’Hara在戰爭後回到被毀的傢園，在園中手握紅土發誓，無論去偷去搶都不會讓傢人挨餓那段，因為那時她的眼神和表情真的特別震撼人。這樣說我也不反對，因為這實在是一部太經典的片子，經典的場面太多，各人有各人的偏愛。我倒是情願選擇這個：以後，明天就是新的一天了。什麽是愛？什麽是恨？愛和恨可以象兩條永不相交的平行綫，愛和恨也可能衹需要一縷陽光就可以消融。珍惜擁有的人是幸福的，因為我們總是並不確切知道我們需要的到底是什麽。太多的人衹有在失去的時候，纔知道去珍惜。泰戈爾有一句詩我特別喜歡：如果錯過太陽時你流淚了，那麽你也將錯過星星了。歷盡滄桑，你要學會忽略過去。因為——tomorrow is another day。
“不要不辭而別，我的愛人。
我看望了一夜，現在我臉上睡意重重。
衹恐我在睡中把你丟失了。
不要不辭而別，我的愛人。
我驚起伸出雙手去摸觸你，我問自己說：
“這是一個夢麽？"
但願我能用我的心係住你的雙足，緊抱在胸前！
不要不辭而別，我的愛人。”
——泰戈爾《園丁集》
《飄》-人物性格
斯佳麗
一個貓一樣的女人。有着貓一樣的目光，貓一樣的微笑，貓一樣的步伐和貓一樣的敏捷。那麽，這個貓一樣的女人提供給我們是怎樣的一些對待生活、對待愛情、對待睏難和挫折的態度和經驗呢？
亂世佳人亂世佳人
第一她在睏難的時候敢於承擔責任，雖然也有動搖，但最後仍然承擔責任,比如她救了玫蘭妮，她重振塔拉莊園, 後來長期扶助阿希禮一傢等等。
第二她敢於去愛、無怨無悔，她的整個青春都在愛着阿希禮，沒有回報但她仍沒有放棄努力，直到能力的極限為止。
第三知錯能改，當她最後明白她之前所為是錯誤時，她馬上嚮瑞特道歉，請求原諒。
總的來說，斯佳麗堪稱巾幗不讓須眉的奇女子，人中竜鳳，難怪瑞特這樣的牛人也拜倒在她的石榴裙下。每次看《亂世佳人》，每次都有不同的收穫。年輕時看，討厭虛榮愛出風頭的斯佳麗，喜歡純潔善良的玫蘭妮，不喜歡油腔滑調的瑞特巴特勒，喜歡溫文爾雅的阿希禮，喜歡南方如畫的景緻和田園牧歌式的生活，不喜歡北方的浮華和放蕩。後來看了多次之後，不由得對斯佳麗敬佩起來，原本是一個弱女子，任性而年青，第一次結婚是一時的衝動報復，嫁給了不愛的男孩，讓自己成為了年輕的寡婦。第二次結婚是為了一傢人的生存，搶走了妹妹的心上人，肯尼迪。肯尼迪雖然是一個半老頭子，卻不是斯佳麗的對手，面對她的冷酷和無情，他束手無策。最終為了斯佳麗差點遭受的侮辱去報復窮白人而被人擊斃，不幸枉死，卻從未享受過斯佳麗的一點愛。於是斯佳麗再次成為寡婦，而且還是個有錢的寡婦。在那個戰火紛飛的年代，為了答應過阿希禮照顧玫蘭妮的一句承諾，在北軍就要攻占亞特蘭大的時候，斯佳麗又果斷地替玫蘭妮接生，並找到瑞特衝破重重阻礙和關卡，回到了鄉下老傢－－塔拉莊園。在又饑又餓之時，她又遭受了母親病亡、父親癡呆、傢裏被劫，一窮二白的多重打擊，她不屈不撓，帶頭種田幹活，喝令妹妹下床摘棉花，並照顧玫蘭妮和小波，支撐一傢人的生計，那時她頂多也不過是個二十來歲的小姑娘，本應是個在母親懷裏撒嬌的小姑娘。可是面對如此巨大的睏難，她沒有選擇逃避，而是勇敢挑起傢裏的重擔，以常人難以企及的毅力抗爭命運，每每看到斯佳麗舉着蘿蔔嚮天盟誓，决不願讓傢人再受苦挨餓時，我總是覺得拍片導演對光綫和背景的運用是那麽巧妙和藝術， 它那麽生動地刻劃了思嘉渴望安定、渴望生存、渴望富裕的強烈而真實的內心情感。我覺得那時的她，已完成了最艱難的嬗變，由一隻醜陋的毛毛蟲破繭而出變成了美麗的蝶，自由而高貴，那時的思嘉就像一個女神－－－渴望富有、並為此能不擇手段的欲望女神。
剛強、堅韌
無論是面對戰爭的廢墟和硝煙、母親和父親的去世、生活的貧窮艱難還是女兒的夭折，在和她承受同樣的痛苦和艱難的人們當中，她都是最剛強、最堅韌的一個和最先從痛苦和艱難中走出來的一個。當斯佳麗面對着已是滿目傷痕泰勒莊園時，她的堅韌和剛強令她這個傢中的長女擔起傢長的重擔。在影片的末尾，她還堅定地告訴我們：Tomorrow is another day。
虛榮
這應該是一個貶義詞了，可是，斯佳麗的虛榮心似乎格外的可愛，在她的身上，虛榮似乎也變成了褒義詞。有位名模曾說：“女孩子總是要有一點虛榮心的，無論這虛榮心表現在什麽方面。”當斯佳麗扯下母親唯一的遺物——窗簾，無論如何也要用它做一件漂亮的衣服，還將它披在身上憧憬着新衣服的樣子時，她的虛榮心使她成了一個看起來不孝的女兒，但她的這種做法（也就是她的虛榮心）是當時拯救全家的唯一出路。由虛榮心而使全家人都有了生存下去的希望，這樣的虛榮心也不應該算是值得摒棄的。
貪婪
這總應該是個貶義詞了。但是，斯佳麗的貪婪不僅是有情可原的，在某種程度上來講還是難能可貴的。戰後的泰勒莊園在北方軍的控製之下，母親的去世和父親的崩潰使斯佳麗——傢中的長女擔起了“傢長”的重擔。斯佳麗一傢人過着艱辛的生活。戰爭使她貧窮，貧窮繼之以饑餓。然而最可怕的是無錢交稅險些失去生活來源的土地，為了借錢交稅，斯佳麗勾引了妹妹的情人，繼而當起了一傢小店的老闆娘。在經歷這一切後，她明白了她所處的是一個什麽樣的社會以及在這個社會中錢的重要性。所以，當她擁有了當前她所需要的錢之後，她自然會想擁有更多的錢。在她追求“更多的錢”的過程中，她表現出了一個早期資本主義的資本傢所必須具有的優秀品質——貪婪。
殘忍與自私
這兩個詞無論用在什麽人身上似乎都應該是表貶義的詞語，特別是以溫和、善良為美德的女性。但是，斯佳麗的殘忍與自私在某種適度上卻是值得褒揚的。首先，在社會轉型的時期，人的觀念需要從傳統的觀念轉變成為新型的、與社會發展相適應的觀念。不能在第一時間內轉變觀念的人就失去了領導時代的主動權。斯佳麗就是一個在第一時間內轉變觀念，接受了新的社會和社會制度、新的價值觀念、新的生活方式，並且成為了一個小資本傢的女人，在這一點，她是非常了不起的。而且，在剛剛建立了資本主義制度時，自私和殘忍對於一個資本傢來說是生存和發展的關鍵。在資本主義社會，對世界的博愛已經是阻礙資本的自身生存和發展的一個因素，此時，自私與殘忍就成了強者的優點。
美麗
斯佳麗為我們提供了一種對待愛情的態度。她美麗，但她衹是適當地運用她的美麗來得到她所喜愛的東西，從來不用自己的美貌來玩弄愛情，無論是自己的還是他人的愛情。斯佳麗是美麗的，但美麗不是擁有愛情的必備條件——你可以沒有斯佳麗那樣美麗動人，但你也有權利去追求屬於自己的愛情。
綜上所述，我們得出了這樣的一個結論：
斯佳麗，貓一樣的女人，剛強的、堅韌的、虛榮的、貪婪的、殘忍的、自私的女人，女人的典範。
思嘉這個人，很可悲，可悲到了一種可笑的程度。
就像她自己意識到的的，“她對她所愛過的兩個男人哪一個都不理解，因此到頭來兩個都失掉了。現在她纔恍惚認識到，如果她當初瞭解艾希禮，她是决不會愛他的；而如果她瞭解了瑞德，它就無論如何都不會失掉他了。”
她一直不明白戰後的人們為什麽會去追憶戰前，直到邦妮死後，她纔明白了原因，但是，哪些可以與她追憶過往的人，已經由於她自己的疏遠，排斥已經越來越遠，而她的那些“新朋友”卻也無法使思嘉高興起來。
一直很喜歡瑞德離開前的那一段話，“思嘉，我從來不是那樣的人，不能耐心的拾起一些碎片，把它們粘合在一起，然後對自己說這個修補好了的東西跟新的完全一樣。一樣東西破碎了就是破碎了——我寧願記住它最好時的模樣，而不想把它修補好，然後終生看着那些破碎了的地方。也許，假使我還年輕一點——可是我已經這麽大年紀了，不能相信那種純屬感情的說法，說是一切都可以從頭開始。我這麽大年紀了，不能終生背着謊言的負擔，在貌似體面地幻滅中過日子。我不能跟你生活在一起同時又對你說謊，而且我决不能欺騙自己。就是現在，我也不能對你說謊話啊！我是很想關心你今後的情況的，可是我不能那樣做。”
如果沒有瑞德，思嘉是不完整的，哪麽《飄》也就不能被稱為“名著”了。思嘉，自私，虛榮，貪婪，剛強，堅韌。如果說這些形容詞用在別人身上，衹怕全部都是貶義的，但是對思嘉而言，我倒覺得有點像是褒義詞。其實，就像瑞德說的，“我們都是流氓，我們都是無賴。”他對於自己與思嘉的分析是很透徹的，也正因為他的這些分析，《飄》纔會被無數人所拜讀，思嘉也纔完整。
關於電影版《飄》 ——《亂世佳人》，我衹能說，我看完電影就喜歡上了費雯麗。因為她所演繹的思嘉真的就像活着的一樣，讓我再一次感受到了思嘉的美，思嘉的一切。
瑞德
我必須承認，對我來說，《亂世佳人》的吸引力之所以這麽大，和剋拉剋蓋博主演的瑞特巴特勒絶對有關係。
當然，斯佳麗眯着那雙像貓那樣的緑眼，迷人而妖媚，同樣也讓人傾倒。她是個讓女人都能為之神魂顛倒的女人，她自私、冷酷、無情、聰明、不擇手段、堅強，卻不乏善良、美麗、脆弱；她是一個高不可攀的女神，讓許多女人都夢想着能像她那樣，集財富、美貌、能幹、堅強於一身，讓瑞特那樣的男人能夠為她而傾倒。至少我曾經就那樣想過。但我認為，瑞特給我們這些女性觀衆帶來的卻更多是對愛情和婚姻的甜美幻想，他是那麽瀟灑倜儻，那麽玩世不恭，那麽自信過人，富有並充滿了成熟男人的魅力，該是多少女性心目中的偶像啊。
在這裏，簡單回閃思嘉和瑞特相遇、相識、相愛的幾個片段，就能讓人對瑞特愛我所愛，堅持自兒，富有個性的男性魅力印象深刻：
片段一：瑞特第一次見到斯佳麗是在十二像樹園的燒烤會上。斯佳麗嚮所有的男士賣弄風情，卻發現瑞特正註意她，斯佳麗嚮身邊的女伴抱怨說：“他看我的樣子，就像我沒穿衣服”可見瑞特給人的感覺不是溫文爾雅，富有紳士風度，對世事的有種別人所不具備的強大洞察力和影響力，表明了他與一般的南方男人不同點：現實、大膽而富有進攻性，當他躲在書房裏偷聽斯佳麗大膽地嚮阿希禮表露愛慕，但因遭到婉拒，她氣急敗壞地搧了阿希禮一個耳光，並砸碎了一個小花瓶時，他吹了一個口哨，於是他被斯佳麗指責為不是一個紳士，而他同時也反唇相譏斯佳麗不是一個真正的淑女，讓斯佳麗氣極。倆人第一次相見就是一次愛情的交鋒。
片段二：斯佳麗因查爾斯病亡到亞特蘭大散心，正在服喪的她，十分渴望能再度飛旋於舞池中，表現了她在內心裏對無拘無束、自由生活的嚮往和憧憬。是瑞特看出了她的心思，並出重金替她撬開了那個壓抑而沉悶的社會道德囚籠，使她走上了和別的南方女人最不相同的命運之路。這正是斯佳麗反叛舊的社會道德標準邁出的關鍵性一步，而這一步，如果沒有瑞特暗中片段三：瑞特為了幫助斯佳麗重返故裏，拼死弄了一匹身負重傷的老馬，並幫助她把玫蘭妮抱到馬車上，同時一路歷經辛苦，並在即將要到達的時候，瑞特看到許多南方兵前仆後繼，視死如歸，深感震撼，並决定上戰場，為保衛傢園盡一份力。這時可以看出，為了心愛的女人，他能出生入死； 同樣，面臨傢園被毀之境，他也是一個熱血之人，導演在這裏纔嚮我們描繪了一個深藏在平日玩世不恭外表下，也具有一顆為榮譽甘灑熱血之心的典型南方男性的形象。在這裏我們看到，雖然瑞特平日裏非常精明、現實，但他骨子裏其實還是一個南方人。
片段四：瑞特在經歷了喪女之痛和斯佳麗在精神上的背叛後，面對玫蘭妮的之死，對一切都灰心失望至極，回傢收拾行李，返回自己的故鄉，查爾斯頓。當愚蠢的斯佳麗最後發現自己已深愛瑞特時，纔發現已最終失去了自己最心愛的人。瑞特最後走得十分幹脆，讓斯佳麗深感懊悔。直到這裏，我們纔聽到那顆曾經為愛而柔軟的心破碎的聲音，同時也因為破碎而對斯佳麗變得“冷酷無情”，這裏的瑞特纔讓我們感覺到，這個男人敢愛敢恨，處理事情十分幹脆利落，極富男性魅力。
瑞德這個人敢愛敢恨，就如上文所說，他不願拾起破碎的感情，所以纔會在最後變得那麽冷酷無情。這個人物很富有男性魅力，就像思嘉所擁有的女性魅力，同樣使人沉醉。
他們兩個的結合，確實就像瑞德所說，“珠聯璧合”。但是，在瑞德的現實與思嘉的幻想中，瑞德失敗了，他的感情也因此真正的破碎了。
而剋拉剋·蓋博的演繹更是無可挑剔，在那種翩翩風度背後的嘲弄，在那種沉穩冷靜背後的狂放不羈，都是讓人頗為迷醉的。
艾希禮與媚蘭
再說說阿希禮和玫蘭妮，他們是相似的，具備南方的一切美德，有知識，有文化，有思想，有修養。
玫蘭妮基本上是完美的，她善良，仁慈又不乏勇氣，斯佳麗摘棉花時，她想幫忙，斯佳麗殺人時她也幫忙，除了瑞特，她是斯佳麗的另一個支持者。我做過小範圍的調查，先看書的基本都喜歡斯佳麗，而先看電影的則喜歡玫蘭妮。我覺得美蘭妮太好了，好得不真實，而斯佳麗是有血有肉的，是真實的，有缺點也有優點。
阿希禮是真實的，他是個活在過去的人，時世變遷，他不想面對，他是缺乏勇氣的。他不愛斯佳麗，又不說不愛她。斯佳麗走投無路找他時他衹給了她莊園的紅土，後來知道斯佳麗賣了自己，他說他該去搶劫，他也衹是說說吧，估計不會去的，這一點，他確實不如拖着軍刀想幫斯佳麗對付逃兵的美蘭妮。
亂世佳人裏的人物都是完美的，如果沒有美蘭妮的淑女風範，怎能體現出斯佳麗的桀驁不遜。沒有阿希禮的懦弱，怎能體現出瑞德的風範呢？
斯佳麗的奶媽.瑪格麗特
溫暖，可靠，安全。象母親一樣時刻保護她的孩子斯佳麗。
理智，聰明，現實而且冷靜，帶一些黑人的狡猾。她懂斯斯佳麗，支持她，愛她，雖然沒有多說什麽，但是她一直是斯佳麗的靠山，堅強有力。
忠誠，固執，可愛。對自己的寶貝，那是不顧一切的去保護；雖然衹是一個傢奴，但她有自己所要維護的處事原則。
黑人奶媽的形象刻畫的非常成功。 由此扮演黑媽的演員哈蒂·麥剋丹尼爾(Hattie McDaniel）戰勝了奧麗維亞(玫蘭妮)獲得了第十二屆奧斯卡最佳女配角奬，據說是歷史上第一個獲得奧斯卡奬的黑人。哈蒂將其特有的幽默感註入奶媽瑪格麗特一形象中，臺詞念得完美無缺，與斯佳麗的扮演者費雯麗配合默契，猶如緑葉扶紅花，結果兩人雙雙獲奬。由於奶媽一角的成功，哈蒂後來幾乎壟斷了銀幕上所有的黑人保姆角色，在許多影片裏可以看到她那肥胖、溫順、饒舌的形象。
《飄》-幕後花絮
時代背景：美國內戰；
地點：美國南方；
戲劇高潮：火燒亞特蘭大。
在如此壯麗的時代畫捲上演繹出一個極不尋常的愛情故事，開創了以真實而遼闊的歷史背景加虛構人物故事的愛情史詩片先河(該傳統發展出《日瓦戈醫生》和《泰坦尼剋號》等佳作)。這部早期的彩色片保持了瑪格麗特·米切爾原著的韻味和深度，既有色彩渾厚的大場面(如女主角跨過遍地傷員的鏡頭)，又有對人物命運的細緻刻畫(請註意黑人女僕的性格)。無論你認為素材像莎翁名劇還是像庸俗肥皂劇，影片取得驚人的藝術和商業成就。英文片名《飄》(即《隨風而去》)出自美國詩人歐內斯特·道森的一句詩。女主角的經典壓軸臺詞“明天是新的一天”乃原作出版前的暫定名。本片榮獲奧斯卡最佳影片、最佳導演、最佳女主角、最佳女配角等七項大奬。1994年的續集《郝斯佳》(Scarlett)是一部長達360分鐘的電視劇，豪華製作，服裝布景等下了血本。故事講郝斯佳跟白瑞德離婚後依然藕斷絲連，她甚至回到愛爾蘭，被控謀殺等等。影片根據雷普利小說改編。
影片拍攝耗資390萬美元，在當時僅屈居於《賓虛》和《地獄天使》之後。在小說出版的一個月後，製片人大衛·塞爾茲尼剋就用5萬美元買下了小說的電影拍攝權，對於新人的處女作來講，這個價碼在當時可謂是天文數字。在1942年塞爾茲尼剋的製片公司解散時，他又嚮小說作者瑪格麗特·米歇爾支付了5萬美元的分紅。瑪格麗特筆下艾什利和梅蘭尼的人物原型都是她的表兄妹，多剋和馬蒂相愛，但他們是虔誠的天主教徒，有血緣關係的親屬是嚴禁結婚的。後來，多剋離開了馬蒂，到西部成了不法之徒，而馬蒂則作了修女。
片中失火的場景是最先拍攝的，包括1933年《金剛》中使用的布景均被付之一炬，這段膠片長113分鐘，共耗資25000美元，當時的火情十分猛烈，以至不知情的公衆以為米高梅都化為灰燼了，報警電話響作一團。
在拍攝斯嘉麗從火中逃生的畫面時，劇組需要一匹瘦骨嶙峋的老馬，幾經尋找，終於物色到一匹，然而當幾周後馬被帶到片場，原先清晰可見的肋骨痕跡因為增重已經蕩然無存，由於時間緊迫，化妝師衹好在馬的肋骨部位畫出陰影。
《飄》-經典臺詞
美國電影學院每年都會為一些特別的電影項目評出前100名。05年取得經典臺詞榜第一的電影《亂世佳人》是剋拉剋·蓋博在1939年出演的的一句臺詞。那是白瑞德對郝思嘉說的一句話：“坦白說，親愛的，我一點也不在乎。”“蓋博的這句臺詞被人們在不同的場合引用，”鮑博說。“無論男女，當他們陷入一種並沒有完全投入的戀愛關係時，想要控製局面，就會用到這句話。”
《飄》-所獲奬項
本片在第十二屆奧斯卡金像奬（1939）中榮獲八項大奬：
最佳女主角奬（Best Actress）.........................費·雯麗（Vivien Leigh）
最佳女配角奬（Best Supporting Actress）......哈蒂·麥剋丹尼爾（Hattie McDaniel）
最佳影片奬（Best Picture）...........................《亂世佳人》（Gone With the Wind）
最佳導演奬（Best Director）..........................維剋多·弗萊明（Victor Fleming）
最佳編劇奬（Best Screenplay）....................悉尼·霍華德 （Sidney Howard）
最佳藝術指導（Best Art Direction）...............Lyle R. Wheeler
最佳攝影奬（Best Cinematography）............Ernest Haller & Ray Rennahan
最佳剪輯奬（Best Film Editing）....................Hal C. Kern & James E. Newcom
《飄》-點評
有人說這部電影最經典的場面是Scarlett O’Hara在戰爭後回到被毀的傢園，在園中手握紅土發誓，無論去偷去搶都不會讓傢人挨餓那段，因為那時她的眼神和表情真的特別震撼人。這樣說我也不反對，因為這實在是一部太經典的片子，經典的場面太多，各人有各人的偏愛。我倒是情願選擇這個：以後，明天就是新的一天了。什麽是愛？什麽是恨？愛和恨可以象兩條永不相交的平行綫，愛和恨也可能衹需要一縷陽光就可以消融。珍惜擁有的人是幸福的，因為我們總是並不確切知道我們需要的到底是什麽。太多的人衹有在失去的時候，纔知道去珍惜。
泰戈爾有一句詩我特別喜歡：如果錯過太陽時你流淚了，那麽你也將錯過星星了。歷盡滄桑，你要學會忽略過去。因為——tomorrow is another day。
《飄》-《飄》獲選英國史上最受歡迎電影
根據英國電影學院近日進行的一項評選，由老牌影星剋拉剋·蓋博和費文麗主演的描寫美國內戰的影片《飄》榮獲英國歷史上最受歡迎影片奬。根據電影票的銷售數量統計，自從1940年在英國上映以來，已有3500萬觀衆觀看了《飄》。《音樂之聲》名列第2，自從1938年上映以來，有3000萬人觀看。名列第3和第4的分別是《白雪公主和七個小矮人》(2800萬人)和《星球大戰》(2070萬人)。這次入選最受歡迎的十部電影排行榜的電影三分之一來自英國，其中名列第5的是《枯木逢春》。這次評選活動的主辦方表示：“這是英國歷史上第一次評選最受觀衆喜愛的影片。”位列6到10名的影片分別是《黃金時代》、《森林王子》、《泰坦尼剋》、《地獄聖女》以及《七宗罪》。
Title
The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind". The novel's protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, also uses the title phrase in a line in the book: when her home area is overtaken by the Yankees, she wonders to herself if her home, a plantation called Tara, is still standing, or if it was "also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia". More generally, the title has been interpreted as referring to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "Gone with the Wind". The prologue of the movie refers to the old way of life in the South as "gone with the wind…."
The title for the novel was a problem for Mitchell. She initially titled the book "Pansy", the original name for the character of Scarlett O'Hara. Although never seriously considered, the title "Pansy" was dropped once MacMillan persuaded Mitchell to rename the main character. Other proposed titles included "Tote the Weary Load" and "Tomorrow is Another Day", the latter taken from the last line in the book; however, the publisher noted that there were several books close to the same title at the time, so Mitchell was asked to find another title, and "Gone with the Wind" was chosen.
Plot
This section's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (April 2009)
Overview
Scarlett O'Hara is the daughter of an Irish immigrant who has risen from humble origins to become materially and socially successful in the deep south of 1861. He owns a plantation named Tara in Georgia. Scarlett is infatuated with Ashley Wilkes, who, although attracted to her, marries his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. Wilkes is genuinely ambiguous about his feelings toward Scarlett. He knows his feelings run deep, and are both emotional and sexual in nature; but he never resolves whether to act upon his feelings, or to renounce them and definitively reject Scarlett’s flirtations, in favor of his wife and his social position. And though he never sins in the flesh, the novel clearly implies that he does so in his heart, leading Scarlett along; limited only by his weakness in making a decision as to what ultimately, he should do.
At the party announcing Ashley's engagement to Melanie, Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, who has a reputation as a rogue. As the Civil War begins, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton, who soon dies of disease in training. Scarlett's main concern regarding his death is that she must wear black and cannot attend parties. After the war, Scarlett inherits Tara and manages to keep the place going. When Scarlett cannot get money from Rhett to pay the taxes on Tara, she marries her sister's fiancé, Frank Kennedy, takes control of his business, and increases its profitability with business practices that make many Atlantans resent her. Frank is killed when he and other Ku Klux Klan members raid a shanty town where Scarlet was assaulted while driving alone. Remorseful after Frank's death, Scarlett marries Rhett, who is aware of her passion for Ashley but hopes that one day she will come to love him instead. Scarlett eventually comes to realize that she does love Rhett, but only once the couple has been through so much that Rhett has fallen out of love with her.
Part one
Scarlett O'Hara is the belle of the County. Her flirtatiousness and charm won the hearts of many men in Clayton County, Georgia. At sixteen years old, however, she begins the trials that will completely overtake her life for the next twelve years. She does this by having an impromptu marriage with the bashful Charles Hamilton to save face and make her real love—Ashley Wilkes—jealous. However, soon after their wedding, Charles and all the other men in Georgia who are able to bear arms, go to war against the Yankees at the start of the Civil War. After six weeks of being in camp, Charles dies of measles. With Charles's death, Scarlett's main concern is that, in order to conform to society, she must dress in black mourning clothes and attend no parties.
Parts two and three
Scarlett moves to Atlanta to stay with her sister-in-law and Ashley’s wife, Melanie Wilkes and Melanie's Aunt Pittypat. Melanie grows to love Scarlett like a sister; however, Scarlett is very self-centered and resents Melanie. Scarlett meets Rhett Butler again while in Atlanta; he is attentive to her and she uses him (and his money) when it is convenient. Rhett has a bad reputation and is "not received" in polite society. Ashley is able to come home for Christmas from the war and stay with the ladies. At the end of his stay, Scarlett promises him that she will keep Melanie safe. With the help of Rhett and her personal slave, Prissy, Scarlett delivers Melanie's child Beau in the middle of a battle and leads Melanie, the baby and Prissy to safety back at Tara. The Civil War is ending and the northern army is marching through Georgia laying waste to the country. Upon her arrival, Scarlett hears the news of the death of her beloved mother, Ellen, of typhoid. Scarlett stays at Tara Plantation and tries to keep it solvent and care for its inhabitants.
Part four
Scarlett hears that Tara is about to be charged an enormous amount of tax by the new corrupt local government which she cannot pay. She decides to go to Atlanta and charm Rhett into paying the bill. After offering herself to Rhett as his mistress and being refused, however, Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy, who has enough money to pay the tax on Tara. Frank is the fiancé of Scarlett's sister Suellen so she deceives him into thinking that Suellen is engaged to someone else in Clayton County.
With money borrowed from and then repaid to Rhett, Scarlett buys two timber mills and proceeds to make them very profitable. Her actions are considered very inappropriate for a woman by Atlanta society. As she travels home from it one night, she is attacked. Frank, Ashley, and many other men in the newly formed Ku Klux Klan avenge her attack. In the fight, Frank is killed.
A few months later Scarlett marries Rhett, who has become very rich by dubious means during the War.
Part five
Scarlett and Rhett start to enjoy their new life together. They have a child named Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler, who becomes Rhett’s pride and joy. They live happily until Scarlett’s old infatuation with Ashley takes over. When Bonnie is killed in a riding accident Scarlett in the first flush of grief tells Rhett that she blames him. Rhett is heartbroken over the death of his beloved daughter. He drinks heavily and finally decides, after the death of Melanie Wilkes, to leave Scarlett forever. However, Scarlett realizes that she loves Rhett and never truly loved Ashley, but merely an idea of him. She confesses this to Rhett, but he is adamant. The book ends on an ambiguous note, as she decided to return to the familiarity of her beloved Tara, where she will find a way to win Rhett back: "Tomorrow is another day!".
Characters
Butler family
* Rhett Butler – Scarlett's love interest and third husband, often publicly shunned for scandalous behavior, sometimes accepted for his charm. He is financially a very shrewd man and initially appears to love Scarlett dearly.
* Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler – Scarlett and Rhett's pretty, beloved daughter.
Wilkes family
* Ashley Wilkes – The gallant Ashley married his unglamourous cousin, Melanie, because she represented all that he loved and wanted in life, that is, the quiet and happy life of a Southern gentleman of the "Twelve Oaks" plantation. Ashley Wilkes marries Melanie Hamilton as an arranged marriage between the Wilkes-Hamilton families; in which the marriage of cousins (which Ashley and Melanie are) is the practice; when necessary to preserve the blood line and social position of the family. As such, Wilkes is not, in the strictest sense, brought to marriage by love, money, or sexual infatuation; but by a sense of duty to preserve the socio-economic status quo of a world which he personally enjoys and agrees with; and believes this marriage will support and sustain.
Wilkes becomes a soldier for the Confederate cause though he personally would have freed the slaves his father owned had the war not erupted, or at least that is what he claimed. Although many of his friends and relations were killed in the Civil War, Ashley survived to see its brutal aftermath. He remains the object of Scarlett's daydream of infatuated devotion, even throughout her three marriages. She is simply obsessed with unobtainable Ashley. Believing that she was in love with him, Scarlett imagined Ashley to be the "perfect man", leaving her unable to love another.
* Melanie Hamilton Wilkes – Ashley's wife and cousin, her character is that of the genuinely humble, serene and gracious Southern woman. As the story unfolds, Melanie becomes progressively physically weaker, first by childbirth, then the effects of war, and ultimately illness. She had her own unique inner spirit of perseverance, as did Scarlett. Melanie loved Ashley, Beau, and Scarlett unwaveringly, and dutifully supported the Confederate cause, revealing the naivete of her character.
* Beau Wilkes – Melanie's and Ashley's lovable son.
* India Wilkes – Ashley's sister. Almost engaged to Stuart Tarleton, she bitterly hates Scarlett for stealing his attention before he is killed at Gettysburg. Lives with Aunt Pittypat after Melanie kicks her out for accusing Scarlett and Ashley of infidelity.
* Honey Wilkes – another sister of India and Ashley. Originally hoped to marry Charles Hamilton until Scarlett marries him; following the war, she marries a man from Mississippi, and moves to his home state with him.
* John Wilkes – Owner of Twelve Oaks Plantation and patriarch of the Wilkes family. Killed during the Civil War.
O'Hara family
* Scarlett O'Hara – The wilful protagonist of the novel, whose travails the novel follows throughout war and reconstruction. She marries Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy and Rhett Butler, all the time wishing she was married to Ashley Wilkes instead. She has three children, one from each husband: Wade Hampton Hamilton (son to Charles Hamilton), Ella Lorena Kennedy (daughter to Frank Kennedy) and Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler (deceased daughter to Rhett Butler).
* Gerald O'Hara – Scarlett's impetuous Irish father.
* Suellen O'Hara – Scarlett's selfish sister.
* Carreen O'Hara – Scarlett's timid, religious sister who, in the end of the story, joins a convent.
* Ellen O'Hara – Scarlett's gracious mother, of French ancestry.
Other characters
* Mammy – Scarlett's nurse from birth; a slave. Cited by Rhett as "the real head of the household." She has a no-nonsense attitude and is outspoken and opinionated. She chastises Scarlett often. She is extremely loyal to the O'Haras, especially Scarlett, whom she cares for like a daughter.
* Prissy – A young slave girl who features in Scarlett's life. She is portrayed as flighty and silly.
* Pork – The O'Hara family's butler, favored by Gerald.
* Dilcey – Pork's wife, a strong, outspoken slave woman of mixed Indian and Black decent, Prissy's mother.
* Charles Hamilton – Melanie's brother, Scarlett's first husband, shy and loving.
* Frank Kennedy – Suellen's former beau, Scarlett's second husband, an older man who only wants peace and quiet. He originally asks for Suellen's hand in marriage, but Scarlett steals him to save Tara. He is portrayed as a pushover who will do anything to appease Scarlett.
* Belle Watling – a brothel madam and prostitute; Rhett is her friend. She is portrayed as a kind-hearted country woman and a loyal confederate. At one point she states she has nursing experience.
* Archie – an ex-convict and former Confederate soldier who is taken in by Melanie. Has a strong disliking for all women, especially Scarlett. The only woman he respects is Melanie.
* Jonas Wilkerson – former overseer of Tara, father of Emmie Slattery's illegitimate baby. After being dismissed because of the aforementioned he eventually becomes employed by the Freedmen's Bureau, where he abuses his position to get back at the O'Haras and becomes rich.
* Emmie Slattery – later wife of Jonas Wilkerson, whom Scarlett blames for her mother's death.
* Will Benteen – Confederate soldier who seeks refuge at Tara and stays on to help with the plantation, in love with Carreen but marries Suellen to stay on Tara, and repair her reputation. He is portrayed as very perceptive and lost half of his leg in the war.
* Aunt Pittypat Hamilton – Charles and Melanie's vaporish aunt who lives in Atlanta.
* Uncle Peter – Aunt Pittypat's houseman and driver, he is extremely loyal to Pittypat.
Setting
* Tara Plantation – The O'Hara home and plantation
* Twelve Oaks – The Wilkes' plantation.
* Peachtree Street – location of Aunt Pittypat's home in Atlanta
The novel opens in April 1861 and ends in the early autumn of 1873.
Politics
The book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war (some of that aspect was missing from the 1939 film). The novel showed considerable historical research. According to her biography, Mitchell herself was ten years old before she learned that the South had lost the war. Mitchell's sweeping narrative of war and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.
An episode in the book dealt with the early Ku Klux Klan. In the immediate aftermath of the War, Scarlett is assaulted by poor Southerners living in shanties, whereupon her former black slave Big Sam saves her life. In response, Scarlett's male friends attempt to make a retaliatory nighttime raid on the encampment. Northern soldiers try to stop the attacks, and Rhett helps Ashley, who is shot, to get help through his prostitute friend Belle. Scarlett's husband Frank is killed. This raid is presented sympathetically as being necessary and justified, while the law-enforcement officers trying to catch the perpetrators are depicted as oppressive Northern occupiers.
Although the Klan is not mentioned in that scene (though Rhett tells Archie to burn the "robes"), the book notes that Scarlett finds the Klan abominable. She believed the men should all just stay at home (she wanted both to be petted for her ordeal and to give the hated Yankees no more reason to tighten martial law, which is bad for her businesses). Rhett is also mentioned to be no great lover of the Klan. At one point, he said that if it were necessary, he would join in an effort to join "society". The novel never explicitly states whether this drastic step was necessary in his view. The local chapter later breaks up under the pressure from Rhett and Ashley.
Scarlett expresses views that were common of the era. Some examples:
* "How stupid negroes were! They never thought of anything unless they were told." — Scarlett thinks to herself, after returning to Tara after the fall of Atlanta.
* "How dared they laugh, the black apes!...She'd like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down...What devils the Yankees were to set them free!" — Scarlett again thinking to herself, seeing free blacks after the war.
* However, she is kind to Pork, her father's trusted manservant. He tells Scarlett that if she were as nice to white people as she is to black, a lot more people would like her.
* She almost loses her temper when the Yankee women say they would never have a black nurse in their house and talk about Uncle Peter, Aunt Pittypat's beloved and loyal servant, as if he were a mule. Scarlett informs them that Uncle Peter is a member of the family, which bewilders the Yankee women and leads them to misinterpret the situation.
* It was mentioned that only one slave was ever whipped at Tara, and that was a stablehand who didn't brush Gerald's horse. The only time Scarlett hit a slave was when Prissy was hysterical.
* Scarlett at one point criticized Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, saying no one treated their slaves that badly.
Inspirations
As several elements of Gone with the Wind have parallels with Margaret Mitchell's own life, her experiences may have provided some inspiration for the story in context. Mitchell's understanding of life and hardship during the American Civil War, for example, came from elderly relatives and neighbors passing war stories to her generation.
While Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with the Wind characters were not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities to some of the people in Mitchell's own life as well as to individuals she knew or she heard of. Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, was born in 1845; she was the daughter of an Irish immigrant, who owned a large plantation on Tara Road in Clayton County, south of Atlanta, and who married an American woman named Ellen, and had several children, all daughters.
Many researchers believe that the physical brutality and low regard for women exhibited by Rhett Butler was based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw. She divorced him after she learned he was a bootlegger amid rumors of abuse and infidelity. Some believe he was patterned on the life of George Trenholm.
After a stay at the plantation called The Woodlands, and later Barnsley Gardens, Mitchell may have gotten the inspiration for the dashing scoundrel from Sir Godfrey Barnsley of Adairsville, Georgia.
Belle Watling was based on Lexington, Kentucky, madam Belle Brezing.
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt may have been an inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Roosevelt biographer David McCullough discovered that Mitchell, as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Baker, then 87. In that interview, she described Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace, and intelligence in detail. The similarities between Martha and the Scarlett character are striking.
Reception
The sales of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the summer of 1936, at the virtually unprecedented price of three dollars, reached about one million by the end of December. Favorable critics found in the novel and its success an implicit rejection of what one reviewer dismissed as "all the thousands of technical tricks our novelists have been playing with for the past twenty years," while from the ramparts of the critical establishment almost universally male reviewers lamented the book's literary mediocrity and labeled it mere "entertainment." [citation needed]
Symbolism
Over the past years, the novel Gone with the Wind has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes. For example, Scarlett has been characterized as a heroic figure struggling and attempting to twist life to suit her own personal wishes in society. The land is considered a source of strength, as in the plantation Tara, whose name is almost certainly drawn from the Hill of Tara in Ireland, a mysterious and poorly-understood archeological site that has traditionally been connected to the temporal and/or spiritual authority of the ancient Irish kings. It also represents the permanence of the land in a rapid changing world. Scarlett’s beautiful, perky hats take part of the symbolism as well. They show her feminine side and how she wants nothing more than to be the most attractive woman and the center of attention.
Sequels
Although Mitchell refused to write a sequel to Gone With The Wind, Mitchell's estate authorised Alexandra Ripley to write the novel Scarlett in 1991.
Author Pat Conroy was approached to write a follow-up, but the project was ultimately abandoned.
In 2000, the copyright holders attempted to suppress publication of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, a book that retold the story from the point of view of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied the plaintiffs an injunction against publication in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), on the basis that the book was parody protected by the First Amendment. The parties subsequently settled out of court to allow the book to be published. After its release, the book became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2002, the copyright holders blocked distribution of an unauthorised sequel published in the U.S, The Winds of Tara by Katherine Pinotti, alleging copyright infringement. The story follows Scarlett as she returns to Tara where a family issue threatens Tara and the family's reputation. In it Scarlett shows just how far she will go to protect her family and her home. The book was immediately removed from bookstores by publisher Xlibris. The book sold in excess of 2,000 copies within 2 weeks before being removed. More recently, in 2008, Australian publisher Fontaine Press re-published "The Winds of Tara" exclusively for their domestic market, avoiding U.S. copyright restrictions.
A second sequel was released in November 2007. The story covers the same time period as Gone with the Wind and is told from Rhett Butler’s perspective – although it begins years before and ends after. Written by Donald McCaig, this novel is titled Rhett Butler's People (2007).
Adaptations
Gone With The Wind has been adapted several times for stage and screen, most famously in the 1939 film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.
On stage it has been adapted as a musical Scarlett (premiering in 1972). The musical opened in the West End followed by a pre-Broadway tryout in 1973 (with Lesley Ann Warren as Scarlett). The book was again adapted as a musical called Gone With The Wind which premiered at the New London Theatre in 2008 in a production directed by Trevor Nunn.
The Japanese Takarazuka Revue has also adapted the novel into a musical with the same name. The first performance was in 1977, performed by the Moon Troupe. It has been performed several times since by the group, the most recent being in 2004 (performed by the Cosmos Troupe).
There has also been a French musical Autant en Emporte le Vent, based on the book.
Awards
The novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. The book was also adapted during the 1970s into a stage musical Scarlett; there is also a 2008 new musical stage adaptation in London's West End titled Gone With The Wind. It is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime. It took her seven years to write the book and a further eight months to check the thousands of historical and social references. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. Over the years, the novel has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes.
Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
1861年南北戰爭爆發的前夕，塔拉莊園的千金小姐郝思嘉愛上了另一莊園主的兒子艾希利，但艾希利卻選擇了郝思嘉的表妹——溫柔善良的韓媚蘭為終身伴侶。郝思嘉出於妒恨，搶先嫁給了韓媚蘭的弟弟查爾斯。不久，美國南北戰爭爆發了。艾希利和查爾斯作為徵兵上了前綫。查爾斯很快就在戰爭中死去了。郝思嘉成了寡婦， 她內心卻一直對艾希利念念不忘。
一天，在一次舉行義賣的舞會上，郝思嘉和風度翩翩的商人白瑞德相識。白瑞德開始追求郝思嘉，但遭到她的拒絶。郝思嘉一心衹想着去追求艾希利，結果也遭到拒絶。
在戰爭中，美國南方軍遭到失敗，亞特蘭大城裏擠滿了傷兵。郝思嘉和表妹韓媚蘭自願加入護士行列照顧傷兵。目睹了戰亂帶來的慘狀之後，任性的郝思嘉成熟了不少。這時，從前綫傳來消息，北方軍快打過來了，不少人傢驚惶地逃離傢園，開始了不安定的流浪生活。正在此時，韓媚蘭不巧要生孩子了，郝思嘉衹好留下來照顧她。
在北方軍大軍壓境之日，郝思嘉哀求白瑞德幫忙護送她和剛生下孩子的韓媚蘭回塔拉莊園。白瑞德告訴郝思嘉他不能目睹南方軍潰敗而不去助一臂之力，他要參加南方軍作戰，他留下一把手槍並和郝思嘉擁吻告別。郝思嘉衹好獨自駕駛馬車回到塔拉莊園，而這時傢裏已被北方軍士兵搶先洗動一空，母親在驚嚇中死去。昔日美好的傢園變成了荒涼的棲息地，郝思嘉面對這一切悲慘時，表現出了女人少有的堅毅，她决定重建傢園。
不久，戰爭結束了。但是生活依然困苦。北方來的統治者要莊園主繳納重稅，郝思嘉在絶望中去亞特蘭大城找白瑞德借錢，卻得知他已被關進監獄。歸來的途中，郝思嘉遇上了本來要迎娶她妹妹的暴發戶弗蘭剋，為了要重振破産的傢業，她騙取弗蘭剋和自己結了婚。
郝思嘉在弗蘭剋經營的木材廠非法雇用囚犯，並和北方來的商人大做生意。此時，白瑞德用錢賄賂從而恢復了自由。兩人偶然碰面，再次展開愛恨交織的關係。
弗蘭剋和艾希利因加入了反政府的秘密組織，在一次集會時遭北方軍包圍，弗蘭剋中彈死亡，艾希利負傷逃亡，在白瑞德幫助下回到韓媚蘭身邊。郝思嘉再次成為寡婦。此時，白瑞德前來嚮她求婚，她終於與一直愛她的搞私運軍火和糧食致富的白瑞德結了婚。婚後，夫妻二人住在亞特蘭大的豪華宅邸中。一年後，他們的女兒邦妮出生，白瑞德把全部感情投註到邦妮身上。郝思嘉偶然翻閱艾希利的照片被白瑞德發現，終於導致了二人感情的破裂。其後，在艾希利的生日會前夕，郝思嘉與艾希利相見時熱情的擁抱引起旁人非議，韓媚蘭雖然不相信他們之間有曖昧關係，但白瑞德卻心生懷疑。
當郝思嘉告訴白瑞德她已經再次懷孕時，白瑞德懷疑地問那是誰的孩子，郝思嘉在羞怒之下欲打白瑞德，卻不慎滾下樓梯引起流産。白瑞德感到內疚，决心同郝思嘉言歸於好，不料就在他倆談話時，小女兒邦妮在騎馬時意外墜地而死。與此同時不幸的事也在另一個家庭裏發生，韓媚蘭終因操勞過度臥病不起。臨終前，她把自己的丈夫艾希利和兒子托付給郝思嘉，但要求她保守這個秘密，郝思嘉不顧一切撲嚮艾希利的懷中，緊緊擁抱住他，站在一旁的白瑞德無法再忍受下去，衹好轉身離去。面對傷心欲絶毫無反應的艾希利，郝思嘉終於明白，她愛的艾希利其實是不存在的，她真正需要的是白瑞德。
當郝思嘉趕回傢裏告訴白瑞德，她是真正愛他的時候，白瑞德已不再相信她。他决心離開郝思嘉，返回老傢去尋找美好的事物，被遺棄的郝思嘉站在濃霧迷漫的院中，想起了父親曾經對她說過的一句話：“世界上唯有土地與明天同在。”她决定守在她的土地上重新創造新的生活，她期盼着美好的明天的到來。
《飄》-主要演員介紹
剋拉剋·蓋布爾
剋拉剋·蓋布爾剋拉剋·蓋布爾
剋拉剋·蓋布爾，1901年出生於美國俄亥俄州的農村小鎮，母親在他十個月大時便去世了，父親在他三歲時另娶圖書館職員珍妮為繼母。珍妮無所出，視剋拉剋．蓋博如親生子。十四歲時，父親賣掉田産，到奧剋拉荷馬州去當油井工人，剋拉剋不願意隨父親搬傢，乃離傢出走，到當地的一傢劇院打工，從此展開了他日後的演藝生涯。就外形而論，剋拉剋．蓋博並不算是英俊小生，主要是有一對特大號的招風耳。在他投身電影界參加試鏡時，曾先後被米高梅公司副總裁艾文泰爾伯格取笑他有一雙蝙蝠翅膀一樣的大耳朵，雷毫萍公司老闆霍華休斯更刻薄地說他的耳朵像一輛打開了兩扇門的計程車。雖然這些影壇大亨並不欣賞剋拉剋．蓋博，但女同胞卻愛他愛得要死。首先是年齡比蓋博大兩歲的女演員法蘭西絲杜芙娜。他倆在波特蘭城訂婚後，杜芙娜就積極地運用自己的關係為蓋博打天下，安排他在新戲中演出角色，又介紹他認識戲劇圈中有頭有臉的人物。蓋博因此結識了年齡比他大十四歲的資深女演員約瑟芬狄倫，她同時也是劇壇著名的演技指導，門生甚多。蓋博在狄倫女士的大力引薦下，演出機會增加了不少。他在投桃報李之下，拋棄了未婚妻，於1924年與約瑟芬狄倫結婚。
參與作品：
《娛樂世界續集》 (1976) 、《米高梅公司的喜劇電影回顧 》(1964) 、《碧港豔遇》 (1960) 、《太平洋潛艇戰 》(1958) 、《教師之戀 》(1958) 、《金漢豔奴》 (1957) 等
費雯·麗
費雯·麗（Vivien Leigh) (1913年11月5日－1967年7月7日)。原名費雯·瑪麗·哈特利（Vivien Mary Hartley），英國電影演員。她成功地飾演《亂世佳人》的斯佳麗·奧哈拉和《欲望號街車》的布蘭奇·杜波依斯，兩度獲得奧斯卡最佳女主角。1999年，她被美國電影學會選為百年來最偉大的女演員第16 名。
費雯·麗費雯·麗
主要作品：
1965《愚人船》1951《欲望號街車》（獲奧斯卡最佳女主角奬）1946《Caesar and Cleopatra》 1941《漢米登夫人》1940《21 Days》 1940 《魂斷藍橋》1939《亂世佳人》 《飄》（獲奧斯卡最佳女主角奬） 1938《Sidewalks of London》 1937 《Storm in a Teacup》 1937《Dark Journey》 1937《Fire Over England》
《飄》-經典片段
瑞德離開郝思嘉後，Scarlett O’Hara最後坐在樓梯的臺階上說——“After all， tomorrow is another day。”
思嘉在回到被毀的傢園後,在山頭上說----“上帝為我作證,上帝為我作證,北佬休想將我整垮.等熬過了這一關,我决不再忍饑挨餓,也决不再讓我的親人忍饑挨餓了,哪怕讓我去偷,去搶,去殺人.請上帝為我作證,我無論如何都不再忍饑挨餓了!”
點評
有人說這部電影最經典的場面是Scarlett O’Hara在戰爭後回到被毀的傢園，在園中手握紅土發誓，無論去偷去搶都不會讓傢人挨餓那段，因為那時她的眼神和表情真的特別震撼人。這樣說我也不反對，因為這實在是一部太經典的片子，經典的場面太多，各人有各人的偏愛。我倒是情願選擇這個：以後，明天就是新的一天了。什麽是愛？什麽是恨？愛和恨可以象兩條永不相交的平行綫，愛和恨也可能衹需要一縷陽光就可以消融。珍惜擁有的人是幸福的，因為我們總是並不確切知道我們需要的到底是什麽。太多的人衹有在失去的時候，纔知道去珍惜。泰戈爾有一句詩我特別喜歡：如果錯過太陽時你流淚了，那麽你也將錯過星星了。歷盡滄桑，你要學會忽略過去。因為——tomorrow is another day。
“不要不辭而別，我的愛人。
我看望了一夜，現在我臉上睡意重重。
衹恐我在睡中把你丟失了。
不要不辭而別，我的愛人。
我驚起伸出雙手去摸觸你，我問自己說：
“這是一個夢麽？"
但願我能用我的心係住你的雙足，緊抱在胸前！
不要不辭而別，我的愛人。”
——泰戈爾《園丁集》
《飄》-人物性格
斯佳麗
一個貓一樣的女人。有着貓一樣的目光，貓一樣的微笑，貓一樣的步伐和貓一樣的敏捷。那麽，這個貓一樣的女人提供給我們是怎樣的一些對待生活、對待愛情、對待睏難和挫折的態度和經驗呢？
亂世佳人亂世佳人
第一她在睏難的時候敢於承擔責任，雖然也有動搖，但最後仍然承擔責任,比如她救了玫蘭妮，她重振塔拉莊園, 後來長期扶助阿希禮一傢等等。
第二她敢於去愛、無怨無悔，她的整個青春都在愛着阿希禮，沒有回報但她仍沒有放棄努力，直到能力的極限為止。
第三知錯能改，當她最後明白她之前所為是錯誤時，她馬上嚮瑞特道歉，請求原諒。
總的來說，斯佳麗堪稱巾幗不讓須眉的奇女子，人中竜鳳，難怪瑞特這樣的牛人也拜倒在她的石榴裙下。每次看《亂世佳人》，每次都有不同的收穫。年輕時看，討厭虛榮愛出風頭的斯佳麗，喜歡純潔善良的玫蘭妮，不喜歡油腔滑調的瑞特巴特勒，喜歡溫文爾雅的阿希禮，喜歡南方如畫的景緻和田園牧歌式的生活，不喜歡北方的浮華和放蕩。後來看了多次之後，不由得對斯佳麗敬佩起來，原本是一個弱女子，任性而年青，第一次結婚是一時的衝動報復，嫁給了不愛的男孩，讓自己成為了年輕的寡婦。第二次結婚是為了一傢人的生存，搶走了妹妹的心上人，肯尼迪。肯尼迪雖然是一個半老頭子，卻不是斯佳麗的對手，面對她的冷酷和無情，他束手無策。最終為了斯佳麗差點遭受的侮辱去報復窮白人而被人擊斃，不幸枉死，卻從未享受過斯佳麗的一點愛。於是斯佳麗再次成為寡婦，而且還是個有錢的寡婦。在那個戰火紛飛的年代，為了答應過阿希禮照顧玫蘭妮的一句承諾，在北軍就要攻占亞特蘭大的時候，斯佳麗又果斷地替玫蘭妮接生，並找到瑞特衝破重重阻礙和關卡，回到了鄉下老傢－－塔拉莊園。在又饑又餓之時，她又遭受了母親病亡、父親癡呆、傢裏被劫，一窮二白的多重打擊，她不屈不撓，帶頭種田幹活，喝令妹妹下床摘棉花，並照顧玫蘭妮和小波，支撐一傢人的生計，那時她頂多也不過是個二十來歲的小姑娘，本應是個在母親懷裏撒嬌的小姑娘。可是面對如此巨大的睏難，她沒有選擇逃避，而是勇敢挑起傢裏的重擔，以常人難以企及的毅力抗爭命運，每每看到斯佳麗舉着蘿蔔嚮天盟誓，决不願讓傢人再受苦挨餓時，我總是覺得拍片導演對光綫和背景的運用是那麽巧妙和藝術， 它那麽生動地刻劃了思嘉渴望安定、渴望生存、渴望富裕的強烈而真實的內心情感。我覺得那時的她，已完成了最艱難的嬗變，由一隻醜陋的毛毛蟲破繭而出變成了美麗的蝶，自由而高貴，那時的思嘉就像一個女神－－－渴望富有、並為此能不擇手段的欲望女神。
剛強、堅韌
無論是面對戰爭的廢墟和硝煙、母親和父親的去世、生活的貧窮艱難還是女兒的夭折，在和她承受同樣的痛苦和艱難的人們當中，她都是最剛強、最堅韌的一個和最先從痛苦和艱難中走出來的一個。當斯佳麗面對着已是滿目傷痕泰勒莊園時，她的堅韌和剛強令她這個傢中的長女擔起傢長的重擔。在影片的末尾，她還堅定地告訴我們：Tomorrow is another day。
虛榮
這應該是一個貶義詞了，可是，斯佳麗的虛榮心似乎格外的可愛，在她的身上，虛榮似乎也變成了褒義詞。有位名模曾說：“女孩子總是要有一點虛榮心的，無論這虛榮心表現在什麽方面。”當斯佳麗扯下母親唯一的遺物——窗簾，無論如何也要用它做一件漂亮的衣服，還將它披在身上憧憬着新衣服的樣子時，她的虛榮心使她成了一個看起來不孝的女兒，但她的這種做法（也就是她的虛榮心）是當時拯救全家的唯一出路。由虛榮心而使全家人都有了生存下去的希望，這樣的虛榮心也不應該算是值得摒棄的。
貪婪
這總應該是個貶義詞了。但是，斯佳麗的貪婪不僅是有情可原的，在某種程度上來講還是難能可貴的。戰後的泰勒莊園在北方軍的控製之下，母親的去世和父親的崩潰使斯佳麗——傢中的長女擔起了“傢長”的重擔。斯佳麗一傢人過着艱辛的生活。戰爭使她貧窮，貧窮繼之以饑餓。然而最可怕的是無錢交稅險些失去生活來源的土地，為了借錢交稅，斯佳麗勾引了妹妹的情人，繼而當起了一傢小店的老闆娘。在經歷這一切後，她明白了她所處的是一個什麽樣的社會以及在這個社會中錢的重要性。所以，當她擁有了當前她所需要的錢之後，她自然會想擁有更多的錢。在她追求“更多的錢”的過程中，她表現出了一個早期資本主義的資本傢所必須具有的優秀品質——貪婪。
殘忍與自私
這兩個詞無論用在什麽人身上似乎都應該是表貶義的詞語，特別是以溫和、善良為美德的女性。但是，斯佳麗的殘忍與自私在某種適度上卻是值得褒揚的。首先，在社會轉型的時期，人的觀念需要從傳統的觀念轉變成為新型的、與社會發展相適應的觀念。不能在第一時間內轉變觀念的人就失去了領導時代的主動權。斯佳麗就是一個在第一時間內轉變觀念，接受了新的社會和社會制度、新的價值觀念、新的生活方式，並且成為了一個小資本傢的女人，在這一點，她是非常了不起的。而且，在剛剛建立了資本主義制度時，自私和殘忍對於一個資本傢來說是生存和發展的關鍵。在資本主義社會，對世界的博愛已經是阻礙資本的自身生存和發展的一個因素，此時，自私與殘忍就成了強者的優點。
美麗
斯佳麗為我們提供了一種對待愛情的態度。她美麗，但她衹是適當地運用她的美麗來得到她所喜愛的東西，從來不用自己的美貌來玩弄愛情，無論是自己的還是他人的愛情。斯佳麗是美麗的，但美麗不是擁有愛情的必備條件——你可以沒有斯佳麗那樣美麗動人，但你也有權利去追求屬於自己的愛情。
綜上所述，我們得出了這樣的一個結論：
斯佳麗，貓一樣的女人，剛強的、堅韌的、虛榮的、貪婪的、殘忍的、自私的女人，女人的典範。
思嘉這個人，很可悲，可悲到了一種可笑的程度。
就像她自己意識到的的，“她對她所愛過的兩個男人哪一個都不理解，因此到頭來兩個都失掉了。現在她纔恍惚認識到，如果她當初瞭解艾希禮，她是决不會愛他的；而如果她瞭解了瑞德，它就無論如何都不會失掉他了。”
她一直不明白戰後的人們為什麽會去追憶戰前，直到邦妮死後，她纔明白了原因，但是，哪些可以與她追憶過往的人，已經由於她自己的疏遠，排斥已經越來越遠，而她的那些“新朋友”卻也無法使思嘉高興起來。
一直很喜歡瑞德離開前的那一段話，“思嘉，我從來不是那樣的人，不能耐心的拾起一些碎片，把它們粘合在一起，然後對自己說這個修補好了的東西跟新的完全一樣。一樣東西破碎了就是破碎了——我寧願記住它最好時的模樣，而不想把它修補好，然後終生看着那些破碎了的地方。也許，假使我還年輕一點——可是我已經這麽大年紀了，不能相信那種純屬感情的說法，說是一切都可以從頭開始。我這麽大年紀了，不能終生背着謊言的負擔，在貌似體面地幻滅中過日子。我不能跟你生活在一起同時又對你說謊，而且我决不能欺騙自己。就是現在，我也不能對你說謊話啊！我是很想關心你今後的情況的，可是我不能那樣做。”
如果沒有瑞德，思嘉是不完整的，哪麽《飄》也就不能被稱為“名著”了。思嘉，自私，虛榮，貪婪，剛強，堅韌。如果說這些形容詞用在別人身上，衹怕全部都是貶義的，但是對思嘉而言，我倒覺得有點像是褒義詞。其實，就像瑞德說的，“我們都是流氓，我們都是無賴。”他對於自己與思嘉的分析是很透徹的，也正因為他的這些分析，《飄》纔會被無數人所拜讀，思嘉也纔完整。
關於電影版《飄》 ——《亂世佳人》，我衹能說，我看完電影就喜歡上了費雯麗。因為她所演繹的思嘉真的就像活着的一樣，讓我再一次感受到了思嘉的美，思嘉的一切。
瑞德
我必須承認，對我來說，《亂世佳人》的吸引力之所以這麽大，和剋拉剋蓋博主演的瑞特巴特勒絶對有關係。
當然，斯佳麗眯着那雙像貓那樣的緑眼，迷人而妖媚，同樣也讓人傾倒。她是個讓女人都能為之神魂顛倒的女人，她自私、冷酷、無情、聰明、不擇手段、堅強，卻不乏善良、美麗、脆弱；她是一個高不可攀的女神，讓許多女人都夢想着能像她那樣，集財富、美貌、能幹、堅強於一身，讓瑞特那樣的男人能夠為她而傾倒。至少我曾經就那樣想過。但我認為，瑞特給我們這些女性觀衆帶來的卻更多是對愛情和婚姻的甜美幻想，他是那麽瀟灑倜儻，那麽玩世不恭，那麽自信過人，富有並充滿了成熟男人的魅力，該是多少女性心目中的偶像啊。
在這裏，簡單回閃思嘉和瑞特相遇、相識、相愛的幾個片段，就能讓人對瑞特愛我所愛，堅持自兒，富有個性的男性魅力印象深刻：
片段一：瑞特第一次見到斯佳麗是在十二像樹園的燒烤會上。斯佳麗嚮所有的男士賣弄風情，卻發現瑞特正註意她，斯佳麗嚮身邊的女伴抱怨說：“他看我的樣子，就像我沒穿衣服”可見瑞特給人的感覺不是溫文爾雅，富有紳士風度，對世事的有種別人所不具備的強大洞察力和影響力，表明了他與一般的南方男人不同點：現實、大膽而富有進攻性，當他躲在書房裏偷聽斯佳麗大膽地嚮阿希禮表露愛慕，但因遭到婉拒，她氣急敗壞地搧了阿希禮一個耳光，並砸碎了一個小花瓶時，他吹了一個口哨，於是他被斯佳麗指責為不是一個紳士，而他同時也反唇相譏斯佳麗不是一個真正的淑女，讓斯佳麗氣極。倆人第一次相見就是一次愛情的交鋒。
片段二：斯佳麗因查爾斯病亡到亞特蘭大散心，正在服喪的她，十分渴望能再度飛旋於舞池中，表現了她在內心裏對無拘無束、自由生活的嚮往和憧憬。是瑞特看出了她的心思，並出重金替她撬開了那個壓抑而沉悶的社會道德囚籠，使她走上了和別的南方女人最不相同的命運之路。這正是斯佳麗反叛舊的社會道德標準邁出的關鍵性一步，而這一步，如果沒有瑞特暗中片段三：瑞特為了幫助斯佳麗重返故裏，拼死弄了一匹身負重傷的老馬，並幫助她把玫蘭妮抱到馬車上，同時一路歷經辛苦，並在即將要到達的時候，瑞特看到許多南方兵前仆後繼，視死如歸，深感震撼，並决定上戰場，為保衛傢園盡一份力。這時可以看出，為了心愛的女人，他能出生入死； 同樣，面臨傢園被毀之境，他也是一個熱血之人，導演在這裏纔嚮我們描繪了一個深藏在平日玩世不恭外表下，也具有一顆為榮譽甘灑熱血之心的典型南方男性的形象。在這裏我們看到，雖然瑞特平日裏非常精明、現實，但他骨子裏其實還是一個南方人。
片段四：瑞特在經歷了喪女之痛和斯佳麗在精神上的背叛後，面對玫蘭妮的之死，對一切都灰心失望至極，回傢收拾行李，返回自己的故鄉，查爾斯頓。當愚蠢的斯佳麗最後發現自己已深愛瑞特時，纔發現已最終失去了自己最心愛的人。瑞特最後走得十分幹脆，讓斯佳麗深感懊悔。直到這裏，我們纔聽到那顆曾經為愛而柔軟的心破碎的聲音，同時也因為破碎而對斯佳麗變得“冷酷無情”，這裏的瑞特纔讓我們感覺到，這個男人敢愛敢恨，處理事情十分幹脆利落，極富男性魅力。
瑞德這個人敢愛敢恨，就如上文所說，他不願拾起破碎的感情，所以纔會在最後變得那麽冷酷無情。這個人物很富有男性魅力，就像思嘉所擁有的女性魅力，同樣使人沉醉。
他們兩個的結合，確實就像瑞德所說，“珠聯璧合”。但是，在瑞德的現實與思嘉的幻想中，瑞德失敗了，他的感情也因此真正的破碎了。
而剋拉剋·蓋博的演繹更是無可挑剔，在那種翩翩風度背後的嘲弄，在那種沉穩冷靜背後的狂放不羈，都是讓人頗為迷醉的。
艾希禮與媚蘭
再說說阿希禮和玫蘭妮，他們是相似的，具備南方的一切美德，有知識，有文化，有思想，有修養。
玫蘭妮基本上是完美的，她善良，仁慈又不乏勇氣，斯佳麗摘棉花時，她想幫忙，斯佳麗殺人時她也幫忙，除了瑞特，她是斯佳麗的另一個支持者。我做過小範圍的調查，先看書的基本都喜歡斯佳麗，而先看電影的則喜歡玫蘭妮。我覺得美蘭妮太好了，好得不真實，而斯佳麗是有血有肉的，是真實的，有缺點也有優點。
阿希禮是真實的，他是個活在過去的人，時世變遷，他不想面對，他是缺乏勇氣的。他不愛斯佳麗，又不說不愛她。斯佳麗走投無路找他時他衹給了她莊園的紅土，後來知道斯佳麗賣了自己，他說他該去搶劫，他也衹是說說吧，估計不會去的，這一點，他確實不如拖着軍刀想幫斯佳麗對付逃兵的美蘭妮。
亂世佳人裏的人物都是完美的，如果沒有美蘭妮的淑女風範，怎能體現出斯佳麗的桀驁不遜。沒有阿希禮的懦弱，怎能體現出瑞德的風範呢？
斯佳麗的奶媽.瑪格麗特
溫暖，可靠，安全。象母親一樣時刻保護她的孩子斯佳麗。
理智，聰明，現實而且冷靜，帶一些黑人的狡猾。她懂斯斯佳麗，支持她，愛她，雖然沒有多說什麽，但是她一直是斯佳麗的靠山，堅強有力。
忠誠，固執，可愛。對自己的寶貝，那是不顧一切的去保護；雖然衹是一個傢奴，但她有自己所要維護的處事原則。
黑人奶媽的形象刻畫的非常成功。 由此扮演黑媽的演員哈蒂·麥剋丹尼爾(Hattie McDaniel）戰勝了奧麗維亞(玫蘭妮)獲得了第十二屆奧斯卡最佳女配角奬，據說是歷史上第一個獲得奧斯卡奬的黑人。哈蒂將其特有的幽默感註入奶媽瑪格麗特一形象中，臺詞念得完美無缺，與斯佳麗的扮演者費雯麗配合默契，猶如緑葉扶紅花，結果兩人雙雙獲奬。由於奶媽一角的成功，哈蒂後來幾乎壟斷了銀幕上所有的黑人保姆角色，在許多影片裏可以看到她那肥胖、溫順、饒舌的形象。
《飄》-幕後花絮
時代背景：美國內戰；
地點：美國南方；
戲劇高潮：火燒亞特蘭大。
在如此壯麗的時代畫捲上演繹出一個極不尋常的愛情故事，開創了以真實而遼闊的歷史背景加虛構人物故事的愛情史詩片先河(該傳統發展出《日瓦戈醫生》和《泰坦尼剋號》等佳作)。這部早期的彩色片保持了瑪格麗特·米切爾原著的韻味和深度，既有色彩渾厚的大場面(如女主角跨過遍地傷員的鏡頭)，又有對人物命運的細緻刻畫(請註意黑人女僕的性格)。無論你認為素材像莎翁名劇還是像庸俗肥皂劇，影片取得驚人的藝術和商業成就。英文片名《飄》(即《隨風而去》)出自美國詩人歐內斯特·道森的一句詩。女主角的經典壓軸臺詞“明天是新的一天”乃原作出版前的暫定名。本片榮獲奧斯卡最佳影片、最佳導演、最佳女主角、最佳女配角等七項大奬。1994年的續集《郝斯佳》(Scarlett)是一部長達360分鐘的電視劇，豪華製作，服裝布景等下了血本。故事講郝斯佳跟白瑞德離婚後依然藕斷絲連，她甚至回到愛爾蘭，被控謀殺等等。影片根據雷普利小說改編。
影片拍攝耗資390萬美元，在當時僅屈居於《賓虛》和《地獄天使》之後。在小說出版的一個月後，製片人大衛·塞爾茲尼剋就用5萬美元買下了小說的電影拍攝權，對於新人的處女作來講，這個價碼在當時可謂是天文數字。在1942年塞爾茲尼剋的製片公司解散時，他又嚮小說作者瑪格麗特·米歇爾支付了5萬美元的分紅。瑪格麗特筆下艾什利和梅蘭尼的人物原型都是她的表兄妹，多剋和馬蒂相愛，但他們是虔誠的天主教徒，有血緣關係的親屬是嚴禁結婚的。後來，多剋離開了馬蒂，到西部成了不法之徒，而馬蒂則作了修女。
片中失火的場景是最先拍攝的，包括1933年《金剛》中使用的布景均被付之一炬，這段膠片長113分鐘，共耗資25000美元，當時的火情十分猛烈，以至不知情的公衆以為米高梅都化為灰燼了，報警電話響作一團。
在拍攝斯嘉麗從火中逃生的畫面時，劇組需要一匹瘦骨嶙峋的老馬，幾經尋找，終於物色到一匹，然而當幾周後馬被帶到片場，原先清晰可見的肋骨痕跡因為增重已經蕩然無存，由於時間緊迫，化妝師衹好在馬的肋骨部位畫出陰影。
《飄》-經典臺詞
美國電影學院每年都會為一些特別的電影項目評出前100名。05年取得經典臺詞榜第一的電影《亂世佳人》是剋拉剋·蓋博在1939年出演的的一句臺詞。那是白瑞德對郝思嘉說的一句話：“坦白說，親愛的，我一點也不在乎。”“蓋博的這句臺詞被人們在不同的場合引用，”鮑博說。“無論男女，當他們陷入一種並沒有完全投入的戀愛關係時，想要控製局面，就會用到這句話。”
《飄》-所獲奬項
本片在第十二屆奧斯卡金像奬（1939）中榮獲八項大奬：
最佳女主角奬（Best Actress）.........................費·雯麗（Vivien Leigh）
最佳女配角奬（Best Supporting Actress）......哈蒂·麥剋丹尼爾（Hattie McDaniel）
最佳影片奬（Best Picture）...........................《亂世佳人》（Gone With the Wind）
最佳導演奬（Best Director）..........................維剋多·弗萊明（Victor Fleming）
最佳編劇奬（Best Screenplay）....................悉尼·霍華德 （Sidney Howard）
最佳藝術指導（Best Art Direction）...............Lyle R. Wheeler
最佳攝影奬（Best Cinematography）............Ernest Haller & Ray Rennahan
最佳剪輯奬（Best Film Editing）....................Hal C. Kern & James E. Newcom
《飄》-點評
有人說這部電影最經典的場面是Scarlett O’Hara在戰爭後回到被毀的傢園，在園中手握紅土發誓，無論去偷去搶都不會讓傢人挨餓那段，因為那時她的眼神和表情真的特別震撼人。這樣說我也不反對，因為這實在是一部太經典的片子，經典的場面太多，各人有各人的偏愛。我倒是情願選擇這個：以後，明天就是新的一天了。什麽是愛？什麽是恨？愛和恨可以象兩條永不相交的平行綫，愛和恨也可能衹需要一縷陽光就可以消融。珍惜擁有的人是幸福的，因為我們總是並不確切知道我們需要的到底是什麽。太多的人衹有在失去的時候，纔知道去珍惜。
泰戈爾有一句詩我特別喜歡：如果錯過太陽時你流淚了，那麽你也將錯過星星了。歷盡滄桑，你要學會忽略過去。因為——tomorrow is another day。
《飄》-《飄》獲選英國史上最受歡迎電影
根據英國電影學院近日進行的一項評選，由老牌影星剋拉剋·蓋博和費文麗主演的描寫美國內戰的影片《飄》榮獲英國歷史上最受歡迎影片奬。根據電影票的銷售數量統計，自從1940年在英國上映以來，已有3500萬觀衆觀看了《飄》。《音樂之聲》名列第2，自從1938年上映以來，有3000萬人觀看。名列第3和第4的分別是《白雪公主和七個小矮人》(2800萬人)和《星球大戰》(2070萬人)。這次入選最受歡迎的十部電影排行榜的電影三分之一來自英國，其中名列第5的是《枯木逢春》。這次評選活動的主辦方表示：“這是英國歷史上第一次評選最受觀衆喜愛的影片。”位列6到10名的影片分別是《黃金時代》、《森林王子》、《泰坦尼剋》、《地獄聖女》以及《七宗罪》。
Title
The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind". The novel's protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, also uses the title phrase in a line in the book: when her home area is overtaken by the Yankees, she wonders to herself if her home, a plantation called Tara, is still standing, or if it was "also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia". More generally, the title has been interpreted as referring to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "Gone with the Wind". The prologue of the movie refers to the old way of life in the South as "gone with the wind…."
The title for the novel was a problem for Mitchell. She initially titled the book "Pansy", the original name for the character of Scarlett O'Hara. Although never seriously considered, the title "Pansy" was dropped once MacMillan persuaded Mitchell to rename the main character. Other proposed titles included "Tote the Weary Load" and "Tomorrow is Another Day", the latter taken from the last line in the book; however, the publisher noted that there were several books close to the same title at the time, so Mitchell was asked to find another title, and "Gone with the Wind" was chosen.
Plot
This section's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (April 2009)
Overview
Scarlett O'Hara is the daughter of an Irish immigrant who has risen from humble origins to become materially and socially successful in the deep south of 1861. He owns a plantation named Tara in Georgia. Scarlett is infatuated with Ashley Wilkes, who, although attracted to her, marries his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. Wilkes is genuinely ambiguous about his feelings toward Scarlett. He knows his feelings run deep, and are both emotional and sexual in nature; but he never resolves whether to act upon his feelings, or to renounce them and definitively reject Scarlett’s flirtations, in favor of his wife and his social position. And though he never sins in the flesh, the novel clearly implies that he does so in his heart, leading Scarlett along; limited only by his weakness in making a decision as to what ultimately, he should do.
At the party announcing Ashley's engagement to Melanie, Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, who has a reputation as a rogue. As the Civil War begins, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton, who soon dies of disease in training. Scarlett's main concern regarding his death is that she must wear black and cannot attend parties. After the war, Scarlett inherits Tara and manages to keep the place going. When Scarlett cannot get money from Rhett to pay the taxes on Tara, she marries her sister's fiancé, Frank Kennedy, takes control of his business, and increases its profitability with business practices that make many Atlantans resent her. Frank is killed when he and other Ku Klux Klan members raid a shanty town where Scarlet was assaulted while driving alone. Remorseful after Frank's death, Scarlett marries Rhett, who is aware of her passion for Ashley but hopes that one day she will come to love him instead. Scarlett eventually comes to realize that she does love Rhett, but only once the couple has been through so much that Rhett has fallen out of love with her.
Part one
Scarlett O'Hara is the belle of the County. Her flirtatiousness and charm won the hearts of many men in Clayton County, Georgia. At sixteen years old, however, she begins the trials that will completely overtake her life for the next twelve years. She does this by having an impromptu marriage with the bashful Charles Hamilton to save face and make her real love—Ashley Wilkes—jealous. However, soon after their wedding, Charles and all the other men in Georgia who are able to bear arms, go to war against the Yankees at the start of the Civil War. After six weeks of being in camp, Charles dies of measles. With Charles's death, Scarlett's main concern is that, in order to conform to society, she must dress in black mourning clothes and attend no parties.
Parts two and three
Scarlett moves to Atlanta to stay with her sister-in-law and Ashley’s wife, Melanie Wilkes and Melanie's Aunt Pittypat. Melanie grows to love Scarlett like a sister; however, Scarlett is very self-centered and resents Melanie. Scarlett meets Rhett Butler again while in Atlanta; he is attentive to her and she uses him (and his money) when it is convenient. Rhett has a bad reputation and is "not received" in polite society. Ashley is able to come home for Christmas from the war and stay with the ladies. At the end of his stay, Scarlett promises him that she will keep Melanie safe. With the help of Rhett and her personal slave, Prissy, Scarlett delivers Melanie's child Beau in the middle of a battle and leads Melanie, the baby and Prissy to safety back at Tara. The Civil War is ending and the northern army is marching through Georgia laying waste to the country. Upon her arrival, Scarlett hears the news of the death of her beloved mother, Ellen, of typhoid. Scarlett stays at Tara Plantation and tries to keep it solvent and care for its inhabitants.
Part four
Scarlett hears that Tara is about to be charged an enormous amount of tax by the new corrupt local government which she cannot pay. She decides to go to Atlanta and charm Rhett into paying the bill. After offering herself to Rhett as his mistress and being refused, however, Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy, who has enough money to pay the tax on Tara. Frank is the fiancé of Scarlett's sister Suellen so she deceives him into thinking that Suellen is engaged to someone else in Clayton County.
With money borrowed from and then repaid to Rhett, Scarlett buys two timber mills and proceeds to make them very profitable. Her actions are considered very inappropriate for a woman by Atlanta society. As she travels home from it one night, she is attacked. Frank, Ashley, and many other men in the newly formed Ku Klux Klan avenge her attack. In the fight, Frank is killed.
A few months later Scarlett marries Rhett, who has become very rich by dubious means during the War.
Part five
Scarlett and Rhett start to enjoy their new life together. They have a child named Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler, who becomes Rhett’s pride and joy. They live happily until Scarlett’s old infatuation with Ashley takes over. When Bonnie is killed in a riding accident Scarlett in the first flush of grief tells Rhett that she blames him. Rhett is heartbroken over the death of his beloved daughter. He drinks heavily and finally decides, after the death of Melanie Wilkes, to leave Scarlett forever. However, Scarlett realizes that she loves Rhett and never truly loved Ashley, but merely an idea of him. She confesses this to Rhett, but he is adamant. The book ends on an ambiguous note, as she decided to return to the familiarity of her beloved Tara, where she will find a way to win Rhett back: "Tomorrow is another day!".
Characters
Butler family
* Rhett Butler – Scarlett's love interest and third husband, often publicly shunned for scandalous behavior, sometimes accepted for his charm. He is financially a very shrewd man and initially appears to love Scarlett dearly.
* Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler – Scarlett and Rhett's pretty, beloved daughter.
Wilkes family
* Ashley Wilkes – The gallant Ashley married his unglamourous cousin, Melanie, because she represented all that he loved and wanted in life, that is, the quiet and happy life of a Southern gentleman of the "Twelve Oaks" plantation. Ashley Wilkes marries Melanie Hamilton as an arranged marriage between the Wilkes-Hamilton families; in which the marriage of cousins (which Ashley and Melanie are) is the practice; when necessary to preserve the blood line and social position of the family. As such, Wilkes is not, in the strictest sense, brought to marriage by love, money, or sexual infatuation; but by a sense of duty to preserve the socio-economic status quo of a world which he personally enjoys and agrees with; and believes this marriage will support and sustain.
Wilkes becomes a soldier for the Confederate cause though he personally would have freed the slaves his father owned had the war not erupted, or at least that is what he claimed. Although many of his friends and relations were killed in the Civil War, Ashley survived to see its brutal aftermath. He remains the object of Scarlett's daydream of infatuated devotion, even throughout her three marriages. She is simply obsessed with unobtainable Ashley. Believing that she was in love with him, Scarlett imagined Ashley to be the "perfect man", leaving her unable to love another.
* Melanie Hamilton Wilkes – Ashley's wife and cousin, her character is that of the genuinely humble, serene and gracious Southern woman. As the story unfolds, Melanie becomes progressively physically weaker, first by childbirth, then the effects of war, and ultimately illness. She had her own unique inner spirit of perseverance, as did Scarlett. Melanie loved Ashley, Beau, and Scarlett unwaveringly, and dutifully supported the Confederate cause, revealing the naivete of her character.
* Beau Wilkes – Melanie's and Ashley's lovable son.
* India Wilkes – Ashley's sister. Almost engaged to Stuart Tarleton, she bitterly hates Scarlett for stealing his attention before he is killed at Gettysburg. Lives with Aunt Pittypat after Melanie kicks her out for accusing Scarlett and Ashley of infidelity.
* Honey Wilkes – another sister of India and Ashley. Originally hoped to marry Charles Hamilton until Scarlett marries him; following the war, she marries a man from Mississippi, and moves to his home state with him.
* John Wilkes – Owner of Twelve Oaks Plantation and patriarch of the Wilkes family. Killed during the Civil War.
O'Hara family
* Scarlett O'Hara – The wilful protagonist of the novel, whose travails the novel follows throughout war and reconstruction. She marries Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy and Rhett Butler, all the time wishing she was married to Ashley Wilkes instead. She has three children, one from each husband: Wade Hampton Hamilton (son to Charles Hamilton), Ella Lorena Kennedy (daughter to Frank Kennedy) and Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler (deceased daughter to Rhett Butler).
* Gerald O'Hara – Scarlett's impetuous Irish father.
* Suellen O'Hara – Scarlett's selfish sister.
* Carreen O'Hara – Scarlett's timid, religious sister who, in the end of the story, joins a convent.
* Ellen O'Hara – Scarlett's gracious mother, of French ancestry.
Other characters
* Mammy – Scarlett's nurse from birth; a slave. Cited by Rhett as "the real head of the household." She has a no-nonsense attitude and is outspoken and opinionated. She chastises Scarlett often. She is extremely loyal to the O'Haras, especially Scarlett, whom she cares for like a daughter.
* Prissy – A young slave girl who features in Scarlett's life. She is portrayed as flighty and silly.
* Pork – The O'Hara family's butler, favored by Gerald.
* Dilcey – Pork's wife, a strong, outspoken slave woman of mixed Indian and Black decent, Prissy's mother.
* Charles Hamilton – Melanie's brother, Scarlett's first husband, shy and loving.
* Frank Kennedy – Suellen's former beau, Scarlett's second husband, an older man who only wants peace and quiet. He originally asks for Suellen's hand in marriage, but Scarlett steals him to save Tara. He is portrayed as a pushover who will do anything to appease Scarlett.
* Belle Watling – a brothel madam and prostitute; Rhett is her friend. She is portrayed as a kind-hearted country woman and a loyal confederate. At one point she states she has nursing experience.
* Archie – an ex-convict and former Confederate soldier who is taken in by Melanie. Has a strong disliking for all women, especially Scarlett. The only woman he respects is Melanie.
* Jonas Wilkerson – former overseer of Tara, father of Emmie Slattery's illegitimate baby. After being dismissed because of the aforementioned he eventually becomes employed by the Freedmen's Bureau, where he abuses his position to get back at the O'Haras and becomes rich.
* Emmie Slattery – later wife of Jonas Wilkerson, whom Scarlett blames for her mother's death.
* Will Benteen – Confederate soldier who seeks refuge at Tara and stays on to help with the plantation, in love with Carreen but marries Suellen to stay on Tara, and repair her reputation. He is portrayed as very perceptive and lost half of his leg in the war.
* Aunt Pittypat Hamilton – Charles and Melanie's vaporish aunt who lives in Atlanta.
* Uncle Peter – Aunt Pittypat's houseman and driver, he is extremely loyal to Pittypat.
Setting
* Tara Plantation – The O'Hara home and plantation
* Twelve Oaks – The Wilkes' plantation.
* Peachtree Street – location of Aunt Pittypat's home in Atlanta
The novel opens in April 1861 and ends in the early autumn of 1873.
Politics
The book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war (some of that aspect was missing from the 1939 film). The novel showed considerable historical research. According to her biography, Mitchell herself was ten years old before she learned that the South had lost the war. Mitchell's sweeping narrative of war and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.
An episode in the book dealt with the early Ku Klux Klan. In the immediate aftermath of the War, Scarlett is assaulted by poor Southerners living in shanties, whereupon her former black slave Big Sam saves her life. In response, Scarlett's male friends attempt to make a retaliatory nighttime raid on the encampment. Northern soldiers try to stop the attacks, and Rhett helps Ashley, who is shot, to get help through his prostitute friend Belle. Scarlett's husband Frank is killed. This raid is presented sympathetically as being necessary and justified, while the law-enforcement officers trying to catch the perpetrators are depicted as oppressive Northern occupiers.
Although the Klan is not mentioned in that scene (though Rhett tells Archie to burn the "robes"), the book notes that Scarlett finds the Klan abominable. She believed the men should all just stay at home (she wanted both to be petted for her ordeal and to give the hated Yankees no more reason to tighten martial law, which is bad for her businesses). Rhett is also mentioned to be no great lover of the Klan. At one point, he said that if it were necessary, he would join in an effort to join "society". The novel never explicitly states whether this drastic step was necessary in his view. The local chapter later breaks up under the pressure from Rhett and Ashley.
Scarlett expresses views that were common of the era. Some examples:
* "How stupid negroes were! They never thought of anything unless they were told." — Scarlett thinks to herself, after returning to Tara after the fall of Atlanta.
* "How dared they laugh, the black apes!...She'd like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down...What devils the Yankees were to set them free!" — Scarlett again thinking to herself, seeing free blacks after the war.
* However, she is kind to Pork, her father's trusted manservant. He tells Scarlett that if she were as nice to white people as she is to black, a lot more people would like her.
* She almost loses her temper when the Yankee women say they would never have a black nurse in their house and talk about Uncle Peter, Aunt Pittypat's beloved and loyal servant, as if he were a mule. Scarlett informs them that Uncle Peter is a member of the family, which bewilders the Yankee women and leads them to misinterpret the situation.
* It was mentioned that only one slave was ever whipped at Tara, and that was a stablehand who didn't brush Gerald's horse. The only time Scarlett hit a slave was when Prissy was hysterical.
* Scarlett at one point criticized Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, saying no one treated their slaves that badly.
Inspirations
As several elements of Gone with the Wind have parallels with Margaret Mitchell's own life, her experiences may have provided some inspiration for the story in context. Mitchell's understanding of life and hardship during the American Civil War, for example, came from elderly relatives and neighbors passing war stories to her generation.
While Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with the Wind characters were not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities to some of the people in Mitchell's own life as well as to individuals she knew or she heard of. Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, was born in 1845; she was the daughter of an Irish immigrant, who owned a large plantation on Tara Road in Clayton County, south of Atlanta, and who married an American woman named Ellen, and had several children, all daughters.
Many researchers believe that the physical brutality and low regard for women exhibited by Rhett Butler was based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw. She divorced him after she learned he was a bootlegger amid rumors of abuse and infidelity. Some believe he was patterned on the life of George Trenholm.
After a stay at the plantation called The Woodlands, and later Barnsley Gardens, Mitchell may have gotten the inspiration for the dashing scoundrel from Sir Godfrey Barnsley of Adairsville, Georgia.
Belle Watling was based on Lexington, Kentucky, madam Belle Brezing.
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt may have been an inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Roosevelt biographer David McCullough discovered that Mitchell, as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Baker, then 87. In that interview, she described Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace, and intelligence in detail. The similarities between Martha and the Scarlett character are striking.
Reception
The sales of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the summer of 1936, at the virtually unprecedented price of three dollars, reached about one million by the end of December. Favorable critics found in the novel and its success an implicit rejection of what one reviewer dismissed as "all the thousands of technical tricks our novelists have been playing with for the past twenty years," while from the ramparts of the critical establishment almost universally male reviewers lamented the book's literary mediocrity and labeled it mere "entertainment." [citation needed]
Symbolism
Over the past years, the novel Gone with the Wind has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes. For example, Scarlett has been characterized as a heroic figure struggling and attempting to twist life to suit her own personal wishes in society. The land is considered a source of strength, as in the plantation Tara, whose name is almost certainly drawn from the Hill of Tara in Ireland, a mysterious and poorly-understood archeological site that has traditionally been connected to the temporal and/or spiritual authority of the ancient Irish kings. It also represents the permanence of the land in a rapid changing world. Scarlett’s beautiful, perky hats take part of the symbolism as well. They show her feminine side and how she wants nothing more than to be the most attractive woman and the center of attention.
Sequels
Although Mitchell refused to write a sequel to Gone With The Wind, Mitchell's estate authorised Alexandra Ripley to write the novel Scarlett in 1991.
Author Pat Conroy was approached to write a follow-up, but the project was ultimately abandoned.
In 2000, the copyright holders attempted to suppress publication of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, a book that retold the story from the point of view of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied the plaintiffs an injunction against publication in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), on the basis that the book was parody protected by the First Amendment. The parties subsequently settled out of court to allow the book to be published. After its release, the book became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2002, the copyright holders blocked distribution of an unauthorised sequel published in the U.S, The Winds of Tara by Katherine Pinotti, alleging copyright infringement. The story follows Scarlett as she returns to Tara where a family issue threatens Tara and the family's reputation. In it Scarlett shows just how far she will go to protect her family and her home. The book was immediately removed from bookstores by publisher Xlibris. The book sold in excess of 2,000 copies within 2 weeks before being removed. More recently, in 2008, Australian publisher Fontaine Press re-published "The Winds of Tara" exclusively for their domestic market, avoiding U.S. copyright restrictions.
A second sequel was released in November 2007. The story covers the same time period as Gone with the Wind and is told from Rhett Butler’s perspective – although it begins years before and ends after. Written by Donald McCaig, this novel is titled Rhett Butler's People (2007).
Adaptations
Gone With The Wind has been adapted several times for stage and screen, most famously in the 1939 film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.
On stage it has been adapted as a musical Scarlett (premiering in 1972). The musical opened in the West End followed by a pre-Broadway tryout in 1973 (with Lesley Ann Warren as Scarlett). The book was again adapted as a musical called Gone With The Wind which premiered at the New London Theatre in 2008 in a production directed by Trevor Nunn.
The Japanese Takarazuka Revue has also adapted the novel into a musical with the same name. The first performance was in 1977, performed by the Moon Troupe. It has been performed several times since by the group, the most recent being in 2004 (performed by the Cosmos Troupe).
There has also been a French musical Autant en Emporte le Vent, based on the book.
Awards
The novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. The book was also adapted during the 1970s into a stage musical Scarlett; there is also a 2008 new musical stage adaptation in London's West End titled Gone With The Wind. It is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime. It took her seven years to write the book and a further eight months to check the thousands of historical and social references. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. Over the years, the novel has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes.
Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是美國著名小說傢馬剋·吐溫的代表作，發表於1876年。小說主人公湯姆·索亞天真活潑，富於幻想和冒險，不堪忍受束縛個性，枯燥乏味的生活，幻想幹一番英雄事業。小說通過主人公的冒險經歷，對美國虛偽庸俗的社會習俗、偽善的宗教儀式和刻板陳腐的學校教育進行了諷刺和批判，以歡快的筆調描寫了少年兒童自由活潑的心靈。《湯姆·索亞歷險記》以其濃厚的深具地方特色的幽默和對人物敏銳觀察，一躍成為最偉大的兒童文學作品，也是一首美國“黃金時代”的田園牧歌。與《湯姆·索亞歷險記》的姊妹篇是《哈剋貝利·費恩歷險記》。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-作品概述
《湯姆·索耶歷險記》是《哈剋貝裏·費恩歷險記》的姊姐篇。《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是19世紀美國文學中一部偉大的批判現實主義作品，深刻地批判了資産階級庸俗、保守、貪婪、虛偽的階級本性和美國教育制度的腐敗；它出色的塑造了兩個敢於反抗時弊、追求自由的兒童的藝術形象，為現實主義文學的人物塑造增添了新的方面。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》構思精細，故事情節麯折有趣，語言簡練生動，人物刻畫生動逼真，尤其是心理描寫有獨到之處。它把人物的心理活動滲入到故事情節中去，伴隨故事的發展，並通過人物自己的語言、行動和動作，細膩深入地描繪出人物的復雜心理及其變化過程，從而揭示出人物內心世界的秘密，突出人物的性格特徵。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是一部真切地反映了兒童充滿童趣的生活的小說。馬剋·吐溫寫作時取材於自己兒時在故鄉漢尼拔小鎮上的所見所聞、親身經歷的人和事。所以令人感覺十分真實有趣，孩子們或許能在書中的人物身上找到與自己相似的地方，而大人們也能在書中拾到些自己童年時的味道。所以，這是一本老少皆宜的書。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-內容介紹
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》故事發生在19世紀上半葉密西西比河畔的一個普通小鎮上。湯姆·索亞是個調皮的孩子，他和同父異母的弟弟希得一起接受姨媽波莉的監護。他總是能想出各種各樣的惡作劇，讓波莉姨媽無可奈何，而他也總能想盡辦法來躲避懲罰。一天，湯姆見到了可愛的姑娘蓓姬·撒切爾，她是撒切爾法官的女兒。
湯姆一見到她就對她展開了攻勢。而他的愛似乎也得到了回應。鎮上有一個孩子叫哈剋貝利·費恩。他的父親總是酗酒，父母一直打架，因此他跑出來自己生活。他看起來和文明社會格格不入，大人們都不喜歡他，可湯姆和他卻是好朋友。有一天他們約好晚上一起去墓地，卻看到了意想不到的一幕。他們看到魯濱遜醫生、惡棍英喬·瓊和喝得醉醺醺的莫夫·波特。
在他們混亂的廝打中，印第安·喬把醫生殺死了，然後又嫁禍於被打昏的波特身上。湯姆和哈剋被嚇壞了，立了血誓决不泄密。波特被捕以後，湯姆十分內疚，經常去看望他。此時的湯姆事事不順，貝基生了他的氣，不再理睬他，波莉姨媽也總是呵斥他，他覺得沒有人關心他。於是，湯姆、哈剋和村上的另一個孩子一起乘小船去了一個海島。可沒過多久，他們便發現村裏的人們以為他們淹死了，正在搜尋他們的屍體。湯姆晚上悄悄回到了姨媽傢，發現波莉姨媽正在為他的“死”悲痛欲絶。湯姆覺得十分慚愧。最終，他們三個人在村民們為他們舉行葬禮的時候回來了。
夏天來臨時，湯姆便感到更加不安，因為法官將對波特的罪行作出判决。湯姆終於戰勝了恐懼與自私，指出了印第安·喬就是殺人兇手。可兇手還是逃走了。後來，湯姆又想出了一個主意：尋找寶藏。湯姆和哈剋偶然發現了印第安·喬和他的一大筆不義之財。但他們卻不知道他把錢藏在哪裏了。在貝基和同學們外出野餐時，哈剋得知印第安·喬要去加害道格拉斯寡婦，因為她的丈夫曾經送他進過監獄。
幸虧哈剋及時報信纔避免了一場悲劇的發生，可印第安·喬再一次逃之夭夭。此時，湯姆和貝基在野餐時走進了一個山洞，因為洞太深而找不到回來的路，被睏在裏面。他們在山洞裏再一次遇見了印第安·喬。村民費盡周折救出湯姆和貝基之後封死了山洞。後來湯姆告知村民印第安·喬還在裏面。當他們找到他時，他已經死在山洞裏了。惡人得到了應有的報應。
後來，湯姆經過分析，判定寶藏已經被印第安人喬藏到岩洞中了。於是他和哈剋偷偷地潛入到岩洞中，並根據他們偷聽到的關於“二號十字架”的描述一個刻有小小十字架的大石頭，並找到了一個寶箱，裏面有一萬兩千餘元！發現寶藏的他們成了大富翁。 從此以後，湯姆和哈剋變成了小鎮上的“風雲人物”，不僅走到哪兒都會受到歡迎，而且他們倆的小傳還登在了鎮報。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-小說人物
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》主人公湯姆有着敢於探險、追求自由、做錯事後敢於承認錯誤、承認缺點的優秀性格特點。湯姆是個聰明愛動又調皮搗蛋的孩子，在他身上集中體現了智慧、計謀、正義、勇敢乃至領導等諸多才能。他是一個多重角色的集合，足智多謀，富於同情心，對現實環境持反感態度，一心要衝出桎梏，去當緑林好漢，過行俠仗義的生活。
小說塑造的湯姆·索亞是個有理想有抱負同時也有煩惱的形象，他有血有肉，栩栩如生，給讀者留下了深刻的印象。在姨媽眼裏，他是個頑童，調皮搗蛋，可是她卻一次又一次地被他的“足智多謀”給軟化了。
湯姆是主人公，關於他，梗概中有簡單的概括──“淘氣的機靈鬼”“鎮上孩子的頭兒”“在小夥伴眼中無所不能”。我們看看湯姆在山洞裏回來後的表現：因為他身體虛弱，渾身沒有一點力氣，所以“躺在沙發上”。儘管如此，他講得還是那樣眉飛色舞，“同時還誇張地吹噓一番”，可見他的淘氣和歷險後心裏獲得的極大滿足──人們把他們回來看作奇跡，他也覺得自己成了真正的英雄！這是可愛極了。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-小說評價
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是美國著名小說傢馬剋·吐溫的代表作，發表於1876年。小說通過主人公的冒險經歷，對美國虛偽庸俗的社會習俗，偽善的宗教儀式和刻板陳腐的學校教育進行了諷刺和批判，以歡快的筆調描寫了少年兒童自由活潑的心靈。《湯姆·索亞歷險記》以其濃厚的深具地方特色的幽默和對人物敏銳觀察，一躍成為最偉大的兒童文學作品，也是一首美國“黃金時代”的田園牧歌。
《湯姆索亞歷險記》一書對自然景色的描繪與對人物的刻畫十分細緻逼真、充滿幽默詼諧的描述。對作者自己家乡風景的描寫尤其包飽深情，人物更是清晰生動、呼之欲出。但是，作者又以天真淳樸的故事主人公，揭示幻想和現在之間的矛盾。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》體現了馬剋·吐溫擅長講故事的傑出技巧和機智幽默的藝術風格。書中對自然景色的描繪和對人物的刻畫十分細緻逼真，充滿幽默詼諧的描述，而在幽默背後貫穿着他對美國當時社會生活的嚴肅看法和鮮明立場。對家乡風光的描寫尤其飽含深情，人物更是寫得清晰生動，呼之欲出。整個故事的敘述十分自然流暢，想您一定會喜歡這個已經講述了一百多年的動人故事。
在這部作品中，兒童的靈動活潑和周圍現實生活的陳腐刻板形成了鮮明的對照。故事嚮人們展示了一些社會弊病和黑暗現實，揭示了宗教的虛偽性，無情地嘲諷了庸俗的小市民習氣。作品問世以來，一直受到讀者的喜愛，成為一部世界名著。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是一部真切地反映了兒童充滿童趣的生活的小說。馬剋·吐溫寫作時取材於自己兒時在故鄉——漢尼拔小鎮上的所見所聞、親身經歷的人和事。所以令人感覺十分真實有趣，孩子們或許能在書中的人物身上找到與自己相似的地方，而大人們也能在書中拾到些自己童年時的味道。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-作者簡介
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》馬剋·吐溫
馬剋·吐溫(Mark Twain．1835～1910)，美國批判現實主義文學的奠基人，美國著名小說傢，馬剋·吐溫是筆名。他原名是塞繆·朗荷恩·剋列門斯，1835年11月30日出生於密西西比河畔小城漢尼拔一個貧窮的律師家庭。他名字的含義是：水深十二英尺，輪船可以安全通過。
馬剋·吐溫是美國批判現實主義文學的奠基人，世界公認的短篇小說大師，被譽為“美國文學中的林肯”。父親是一名鄉村律師，傢中生活拮据。12歲時父親去世，他開始自謀生計，年輕時當過報童、印刷所學徒、 排字工、密西西比河水手、淘金工人和舵手，所以他的創作具有堅實的生活基礎。26歲時，他當上了記者，並采用馬剋·吐溫這個筆名發表作品。
他的創作大致可分為三個時期：早期作品表現了對美國民主所存的幻想，以短篇為主，幽默與諷刺結合，批判不足，作品有《競選州長》、《高爾斯的朋友再度出洋》、《百萬英鎊》等；中期以長篇小說為主，諷刺性加強，重要作品有《湯姆·索亞歷險記》、《哈剋貝利·費恩歷險記》等；後期作品則由幽默諷刺轉到憤怒的揭發、譴責、甚至有悲觀的情緒，主要作品有《遊記》等。他擅長使用幽默和諷刺，針砭時弊，毫不留情。他的作品對後來的美國文學産生了巨大深遠的影響。人們普遍認為馬剋·吐溫是美國文學史上的一大里程碑。
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.
Plot summary
The imaginative and mischievous twelve-year-old boy named Thomas Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly, his half-brother, Sid, also known as Sidney, and cousin Mary, in the Mississippi River town of St Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him a large marble for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two Disciples were David and Goliath
Tom falls in love with Rebecca "Becky" Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him. Their love is ruined when she learns that Tom has been engaged to another girl before: Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a “cure” for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr Robinson by a part-Native American “half-breed”, Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away in the process dropping the previously obtained marble, and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom's anxiety and guilt begin to grow. Tom, Huck and their friend Joe Harper run away to an island on the Mississippi, in order to "become pirates". While frolicking around and enjoying their new-found freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.
Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky's favour after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has torn. Soon Muff Potter's trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window. Tom and Huck witness him finding a box of gold with his partner, a Spaniard, and Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal's Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero.
Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. At the sight of Tom, Injun Joe flees. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky's father, Judge Thatcher seals up the main entrance with an iron door. After a week Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves causing him to die. Injun Joe's partner accidentally drowns trying to escape.
A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave via the new entrance Tom has found and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom's robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.
Publication history
The first publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was by Chatto and Windus, in England in June 1876 (it was listed as "ready" on June 10 and was reviewed on June 24 in the literary publication The Atheneum), and in the U.S. by subscription only in December 1876. Twain and other U.S. authors used initial publication in England fairly often, since otherwise it was impossible to obtain a copyright in the British Commonwealth. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay between the London and U.S. editions extended much beyond what Twain envisioned, or desired. This led to widespread piracy of the work - notably a July 1876 pirated edition in Canada obtained by many American readers - and, Twain believed, to a significant loss of his royalties.
When the work did appear in the U.S., it was sold by subscription only. In this distribution method, book agents across the country took orders for the book prior to publication and then delivered the book when available. It was only with subsequent editions that the book became available retail shops.
In dictations for his autobiography, Twain claimed Tom Sawyer "must have been" the first book whose manuscript was typed on a typewriter. However, typewriter historian Darryl Rehr has concluded that Twain's first typed manuscript was Life on the Mississippi.
Adaptations
The story of Tom Sawyer has been filmed or animated multiple times since its initial publication. Some of the film adaptations of Twain's novel include:
* A 1907 silent version released by the Paramount studio
* A 1917 silent version directed by William Desmond Taylor, starring Jack Pickford as Tom
* A 1930 version directed by John Cromwell, starring Jackie Coogan as Tom
* In 1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was filmed in Technicolor by the Selznick Studio. It starred Tommy Kelly as Tom and was directed by Norman Taurog. Most notable was the cave sequence designed by William Cameron Menzies.
* A 1947 Soviet Union version, directed by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky
* A 1960 US television serial, also shown on British television
* A 1968 French/German made-for-television miniseries, directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner, starring Roland Demongeot as Tom and Marc Di Napoli as Huck
* The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968) was a half-hour live-action/animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions
* A 1973 musical version with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, starring Johnny Whitaker as Tom and a young Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. A TV movie version sponsored by Dr. Pepper was released that same year. It starred Buddy Ebsen as Muff Potter and was filmed in Upper Canada Village.
* Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (1979 TV series)
* The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (anime) (1980), a Japanese anime TV series by Nippon Animation, part of the World Masterpiece Theater; aired in the United States on HBO
* [[Приключения Тома Сойера и Гекльберри Финна (фильм)The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1981), another Soviet Union version directed by Stanislav Govorukhin.
* A 1984 Canadian claymation version produced by Hal Roach studios
* Tom and Huck (1995), starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck Finn
* A 1995 episode for the PBS Wishbone TV series "A Tail in Twain".
* The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer
* A 2000 animated adaptation, featuring the characters as anthropomorphic animals with an all-star voice cast, including country singers Rhett Akins (as Tom), Mark Wills (as Huck Finn), Lee Ann Womack, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. as well as Betty White as Aunt Polly
* Tom Sawyer appears as a United States Secret Service agent in the 2003 movie based on comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
* This book was featured in an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents
Stage musicals: In 1956 'We're From Missouri', a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with book, music and lyrics by Tom Boyd, was presented by the students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1960, Boyd's musical version (re-titled Tom Sawyer) was presented professionally at Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, England, and in 1961 toured provincial theatres in England.Tom Boyd's musical of TOM SAWYER was produced again in April and June 2010 in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Another musical adaptation is Mississippi Melody, a musical by Jack Hylton.
Theatrical Adaptation: In April 2010, The Hartford Stage presented a theatrical adaptation entitled Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as part of a centennial observation of Mark Twain's passing.
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-作品概述
《湯姆·索耶歷險記》是《哈剋貝裏·費恩歷險記》的姊姐篇。《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是19世紀美國文學中一部偉大的批判現實主義作品，深刻地批判了資産階級庸俗、保守、貪婪、虛偽的階級本性和美國教育制度的腐敗；它出色的塑造了兩個敢於反抗時弊、追求自由的兒童的藝術形象，為現實主義文學的人物塑造增添了新的方面。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》構思精細，故事情節麯折有趣，語言簡練生動，人物刻畫生動逼真，尤其是心理描寫有獨到之處。它把人物的心理活動滲入到故事情節中去，伴隨故事的發展，並通過人物自己的語言、行動和動作，細膩深入地描繪出人物的復雜心理及其變化過程，從而揭示出人物內心世界的秘密，突出人物的性格特徵。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是一部真切地反映了兒童充滿童趣的生活的小說。馬剋·吐溫寫作時取材於自己兒時在故鄉漢尼拔小鎮上的所見所聞、親身經歷的人和事。所以令人感覺十分真實有趣，孩子們或許能在書中的人物身上找到與自己相似的地方，而大人們也能在書中拾到些自己童年時的味道。所以，這是一本老少皆宜的書。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-內容介紹
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》故事發生在19世紀上半葉密西西比河畔的一個普通小鎮上。湯姆·索亞是個調皮的孩子，他和同父異母的弟弟希得一起接受姨媽波莉的監護。他總是能想出各種各樣的惡作劇，讓波莉姨媽無可奈何，而他也總能想盡辦法來躲避懲罰。一天，湯姆見到了可愛的姑娘蓓姬·撒切爾，她是撒切爾法官的女兒。
湯姆一見到她就對她展開了攻勢。而他的愛似乎也得到了回應。鎮上有一個孩子叫哈剋貝利·費恩。他的父親總是酗酒，父母一直打架，因此他跑出來自己生活。他看起來和文明社會格格不入，大人們都不喜歡他，可湯姆和他卻是好朋友。有一天他們約好晚上一起去墓地，卻看到了意想不到的一幕。他們看到魯濱遜醫生、惡棍英喬·瓊和喝得醉醺醺的莫夫·波特。
在他們混亂的廝打中，印第安·喬把醫生殺死了，然後又嫁禍於被打昏的波特身上。湯姆和哈剋被嚇壞了，立了血誓决不泄密。波特被捕以後，湯姆十分內疚，經常去看望他。此時的湯姆事事不順，貝基生了他的氣，不再理睬他，波莉姨媽也總是呵斥他，他覺得沒有人關心他。於是，湯姆、哈剋和村上的另一個孩子一起乘小船去了一個海島。可沒過多久，他們便發現村裏的人們以為他們淹死了，正在搜尋他們的屍體。湯姆晚上悄悄回到了姨媽傢，發現波莉姨媽正在為他的“死”悲痛欲絶。湯姆覺得十分慚愧。最終，他們三個人在村民們為他們舉行葬禮的時候回來了。
夏天來臨時，湯姆便感到更加不安，因為法官將對波特的罪行作出判决。湯姆終於戰勝了恐懼與自私，指出了印第安·喬就是殺人兇手。可兇手還是逃走了。後來，湯姆又想出了一個主意：尋找寶藏。湯姆和哈剋偶然發現了印第安·喬和他的一大筆不義之財。但他們卻不知道他把錢藏在哪裏了。在貝基和同學們外出野餐時，哈剋得知印第安·喬要去加害道格拉斯寡婦，因為她的丈夫曾經送他進過監獄。
幸虧哈剋及時報信纔避免了一場悲劇的發生，可印第安·喬再一次逃之夭夭。此時，湯姆和貝基在野餐時走進了一個山洞，因為洞太深而找不到回來的路，被睏在裏面。他們在山洞裏再一次遇見了印第安·喬。村民費盡周折救出湯姆和貝基之後封死了山洞。後來湯姆告知村民印第安·喬還在裏面。當他們找到他時，他已經死在山洞裏了。惡人得到了應有的報應。
後來，湯姆經過分析，判定寶藏已經被印第安人喬藏到岩洞中了。於是他和哈剋偷偷地潛入到岩洞中，並根據他們偷聽到的關於“二號十字架”的描述一個刻有小小十字架的大石頭，並找到了一個寶箱，裏面有一萬兩千餘元！發現寶藏的他們成了大富翁。 從此以後，湯姆和哈剋變成了小鎮上的“風雲人物”，不僅走到哪兒都會受到歡迎，而且他們倆的小傳還登在了鎮報。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-小說人物
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》主人公湯姆有着敢於探險、追求自由、做錯事後敢於承認錯誤、承認缺點的優秀性格特點。湯姆是個聰明愛動又調皮搗蛋的孩子，在他身上集中體現了智慧、計謀、正義、勇敢乃至領導等諸多才能。他是一個多重角色的集合，足智多謀，富於同情心，對現實環境持反感態度，一心要衝出桎梏，去當緑林好漢，過行俠仗義的生活。
小說塑造的湯姆·索亞是個有理想有抱負同時也有煩惱的形象，他有血有肉，栩栩如生，給讀者留下了深刻的印象。在姨媽眼裏，他是個頑童，調皮搗蛋，可是她卻一次又一次地被他的“足智多謀”給軟化了。
湯姆是主人公，關於他，梗概中有簡單的概括──“淘氣的機靈鬼”“鎮上孩子的頭兒”“在小夥伴眼中無所不能”。我們看看湯姆在山洞裏回來後的表現：因為他身體虛弱，渾身沒有一點力氣，所以“躺在沙發上”。儘管如此，他講得還是那樣眉飛色舞，“同時還誇張地吹噓一番”，可見他的淘氣和歷險後心裏獲得的極大滿足──人們把他們回來看作奇跡，他也覺得自己成了真正的英雄！這是可愛極了。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-小說評價
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是美國著名小說傢馬剋·吐溫的代表作，發表於1876年。小說通過主人公的冒險經歷，對美國虛偽庸俗的社會習俗，偽善的宗教儀式和刻板陳腐的學校教育進行了諷刺和批判，以歡快的筆調描寫了少年兒童自由活潑的心靈。《湯姆·索亞歷險記》以其濃厚的深具地方特色的幽默和對人物敏銳觀察，一躍成為最偉大的兒童文學作品，也是一首美國“黃金時代”的田園牧歌。
《湯姆索亞歷險記》一書對自然景色的描繪與對人物的刻畫十分細緻逼真、充滿幽默詼諧的描述。對作者自己家乡風景的描寫尤其包飽深情，人物更是清晰生動、呼之欲出。但是，作者又以天真淳樸的故事主人公，揭示幻想和現在之間的矛盾。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》體現了馬剋·吐溫擅長講故事的傑出技巧和機智幽默的藝術風格。書中對自然景色的描繪和對人物的刻畫十分細緻逼真，充滿幽默詼諧的描述，而在幽默背後貫穿着他對美國當時社會生活的嚴肅看法和鮮明立場。對家乡風光的描寫尤其飽含深情，人物更是寫得清晰生動，呼之欲出。整個故事的敘述十分自然流暢，想您一定會喜歡這個已經講述了一百多年的動人故事。
在這部作品中，兒童的靈動活潑和周圍現實生活的陳腐刻板形成了鮮明的對照。故事嚮人們展示了一些社會弊病和黑暗現實，揭示了宗教的虛偽性，無情地嘲諷了庸俗的小市民習氣。作品問世以來，一直受到讀者的喜愛，成為一部世界名著。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》是一部真切地反映了兒童充滿童趣的生活的小說。馬剋·吐溫寫作時取材於自己兒時在故鄉——漢尼拔小鎮上的所見所聞、親身經歷的人和事。所以令人感覺十分真實有趣，孩子們或許能在書中的人物身上找到與自己相似的地方，而大人們也能在書中拾到些自己童年時的味道。
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》-作者簡介
《湯姆·索亞歷險記》馬剋·吐溫
馬剋·吐溫(Mark Twain．1835～1910)，美國批判現實主義文學的奠基人，美國著名小說傢，馬剋·吐溫是筆名。他原名是塞繆·朗荷恩·剋列門斯，1835年11月30日出生於密西西比河畔小城漢尼拔一個貧窮的律師家庭。他名字的含義是：水深十二英尺，輪船可以安全通過。
馬剋·吐溫是美國批判現實主義文學的奠基人，世界公認的短篇小說大師，被譽為“美國文學中的林肯”。父親是一名鄉村律師，傢中生活拮据。12歲時父親去世，他開始自謀生計，年輕時當過報童、印刷所學徒、 排字工、密西西比河水手、淘金工人和舵手，所以他的創作具有堅實的生活基礎。26歲時，他當上了記者，並采用馬剋·吐溫這個筆名發表作品。
他的創作大致可分為三個時期：早期作品表現了對美國民主所存的幻想，以短篇為主，幽默與諷刺結合，批判不足，作品有《競選州長》、《高爾斯的朋友再度出洋》、《百萬英鎊》等；中期以長篇小說為主，諷刺性加強，重要作品有《湯姆·索亞歷險記》、《哈剋貝利·費恩歷險記》等；後期作品則由幽默諷刺轉到憤怒的揭發、譴責、甚至有悲觀的情緒，主要作品有《遊記》等。他擅長使用幽默和諷刺，針砭時弊，毫不留情。他的作品對後來的美國文學産生了巨大深遠的影響。人們普遍認為馬剋·吐溫是美國文學史上的一大里程碑。
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.
Plot summary
The imaginative and mischievous twelve-year-old boy named Thomas Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly, his half-brother, Sid, also known as Sidney, and cousin Mary, in the Mississippi River town of St Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him a large marble for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two Disciples were David and Goliath
Tom falls in love with Rebecca "Becky" Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him. Their love is ruined when she learns that Tom has been engaged to another girl before: Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a “cure” for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr Robinson by a part-Native American “half-breed”, Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away in the process dropping the previously obtained marble, and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom's anxiety and guilt begin to grow. Tom, Huck and their friend Joe Harper run away to an island on the Mississippi, in order to "become pirates". While frolicking around and enjoying their new-found freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.
Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky's favour after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has torn. Soon Muff Potter's trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window. Tom and Huck witness him finding a box of gold with his partner, a Spaniard, and Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal's Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero.
Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. At the sight of Tom, Injun Joe flees. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky's father, Judge Thatcher seals up the main entrance with an iron door. After a week Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves causing him to die. Injun Joe's partner accidentally drowns trying to escape.
A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave via the new entrance Tom has found and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom's robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.
Publication history
The first publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was by Chatto and Windus, in England in June 1876 (it was listed as "ready" on June 10 and was reviewed on June 24 in the literary publication The Atheneum), and in the U.S. by subscription only in December 1876. Twain and other U.S. authors used initial publication in England fairly often, since otherwise it was impossible to obtain a copyright in the British Commonwealth. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay between the London and U.S. editions extended much beyond what Twain envisioned, or desired. This led to widespread piracy of the work - notably a July 1876 pirated edition in Canada obtained by many American readers - and, Twain believed, to a significant loss of his royalties.
When the work did appear in the U.S., it was sold by subscription only. In this distribution method, book agents across the country took orders for the book prior to publication and then delivered the book when available. It was only with subsequent editions that the book became available retail shops.
In dictations for his autobiography, Twain claimed Tom Sawyer "must have been" the first book whose manuscript was typed on a typewriter. However, typewriter historian Darryl Rehr has concluded that Twain's first typed manuscript was Life on the Mississippi.
Adaptations
The story of Tom Sawyer has been filmed or animated multiple times since its initial publication. Some of the film adaptations of Twain's novel include:
* A 1907 silent version released by the Paramount studio
* A 1917 silent version directed by William Desmond Taylor, starring Jack Pickford as Tom
* A 1930 version directed by John Cromwell, starring Jackie Coogan as Tom
* In 1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was filmed in Technicolor by the Selznick Studio. It starred Tommy Kelly as Tom and was directed by Norman Taurog. Most notable was the cave sequence designed by William Cameron Menzies.
* A 1947 Soviet Union version, directed by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky
* A 1960 US television serial, also shown on British television
* A 1968 French/German made-for-television miniseries, directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner, starring Roland Demongeot as Tom and Marc Di Napoli as Huck
* The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968) was a half-hour live-action/animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions
* A 1973 musical version with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, starring Johnny Whitaker as Tom and a young Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. A TV movie version sponsored by Dr. Pepper was released that same year. It starred Buddy Ebsen as Muff Potter and was filmed in Upper Canada Village.
* Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (1979 TV series)
* The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (anime) (1980), a Japanese anime TV series by Nippon Animation, part of the World Masterpiece Theater; aired in the United States on HBO
* [[Приключения Тома Сойера и Гекльберри Финна (фильм)The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1981), another Soviet Union version directed by Stanislav Govorukhin.
* A 1984 Canadian claymation version produced by Hal Roach studios
* Tom and Huck (1995), starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck Finn
* A 1995 episode for the PBS Wishbone TV series "A Tail in Twain".
* The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer
* A 2000 animated adaptation, featuring the characters as anthropomorphic animals with an all-star voice cast, including country singers Rhett Akins (as Tom), Mark Wills (as Huck Finn), Lee Ann Womack, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. as well as Betty White as Aunt Polly
* Tom Sawyer appears as a United States Secret Service agent in the 2003 movie based on comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
* This book was featured in an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents
Stage musicals: In 1956 'We're From Missouri', a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with book, music and lyrics by Tom Boyd, was presented by the students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1960, Boyd's musical version (re-titled Tom Sawyer) was presented professionally at Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, England, and in 1961 toured provincial theatres in England.Tom Boyd's musical of TOM SAWYER was produced again in April and June 2010 in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Another musical adaptation is Mississippi Melody, a musical by Jack Hylton.
Theatrical Adaptation: In April 2010, The Hartford Stage presented a theatrical adaptation entitled Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as part of a centennial observation of Mark Twain's passing.
《追憶似水年華》（一譯為《追憶逝水年華》）這部被譽為二十世紀最重要的文學作品之一的長篇巨着，以其出色的對心靈追索的描寫和卓越的意識流技巧而風靡世界，並奠定了它在當代世界文學中的地位。
多捲集長篇巨着《追憶逝水年華》是法國作傢馬塞爾.普魯斯特(1871-1922)的代表作，全書共七部，十五捲，從1905年開始創作，至作者逝世前全部完成。小說的第一部《通往斯萬傢的路》於1913年問世，但反應冷淡，一些有名的出版社都不願出版，作者便自費印行。後來《通往斯萬傢的路》逐漸獲得文藝界的贊賞。於是，各大出版社竟相與普魯斯特簽訂合同，以求取得出版這部多捲集的其餘幾部作品的權利。不久，第一次世界大戰爆發，出版工作被擱置下來。戰爭結束後，小說的第二部《在花枝招展的少女們身旁》於1919年出版，獲龔古爾文學奬，普魯斯特名聲大振。此後，小說的第三部《蓋爾芒傢》和第四部《索多姆和郭穆爾》相繼於1921和1922年出版，最後三部《女囚犯》(1923)，《逃亡者》(1925)，和《昔日再現》(1927) 則是普魯斯特逝世後纔出版的。
目錄
第一部 在斯萬傢那邊
追憶似水年華追憶似水年華
>第一捲 貢布雷
>>第一章
>>第二章
>第二捲 斯萬之戀
>第三捲 地名：那個姓氏
第二部 在少女們身旁
>第一捲 斯萬夫人周圍
>第二捲 地名：地方
第三部 蓋爾芒特傢那邊
>第一捲
>第二捲
>>第一章
>>第二章
第四部
>第一捲
>第二捲
>>第一章
>>第二章
>>第三章
>>第四章
第五部 女囚
第六部 女逃亡者
第七部 重現的時光
《追憶逝水年華》是一部與傳統小說不同的長篇小說。全書以敘述者“我”為主體，將其所見所聞所思所感融合一體，既有對社會生活，人情世態的真實描寫，又是一份作者自我追求，自我認識的內心經歷的記錄。除敘事以外，還包含有大量的感想和議論。整部作品沒有中心人物，沒有完整的故事，沒有波瀾起伏，貫穿始終的情節綫索。它大體以敘述者的生活經歷和內心活動為軸心，穿插描寫了大量的人物事件，猶如一棵枝丫交錯的大樹，可以說是在一部主要小說上派生着許多獨立成篇的其他小說，也可以說是一部交織着好幾個主題麯的巨大交響樂。
小說中的敘述者“我”是一個傢境富裕而又體弱多病的青年，從小對書畫有特殊的愛好，曾經嘗試過文學創作，沒有成功。他經常出入巴黎的上層社會，頻繁往來於各茶會，舞會，招待會及其它時髦的社交場合，並鐘情於猶太富商的女兒吉爾伯特，但不久就失戀了。此外，他還到過家乡貢柏萊小住，到過海濱勝地巴培剋療養。他結識了另一位少女阿爾伯蒂，發現阿爾伯蒂患同性戀，便决心娶她為妻，以糾正她的變態心理。他把阿爾伯蒂禁閉在自己傢中，阿爾伯蒂卻設法逃跑，於是，他多方打聽她，尋找她，後來得知阿爾伯蒂騎馬摔死。在悲痛中他認識到自己的稟賦是寫作，他所經歷的悲歡苦樂正是文學創作的材料，衹有文學創作才能把昔日失去的東西找回來。
在小說中，敘述者“我”的生活經歷並不占全書的主要篇幅。作者通過故事套故事，故事與故事交叉重迭的方法，描寫了衆多的人物事件，展示了一幅19世紀與20世紀之交法國上流社會的生活圖景。這裏有姿色迷人，談吐高雅而又無聊庸俗的蓋爾芒夫人，有道德墮落，行為仇惡的變性人查琉斯男爵，有縱情聲色的浪蕩公子斯萬等等。此外，小說還描寫了一些於上流社會有關聯的作傢，藝術傢，他們大都生前落魄失意，而作品卻永世長存。小說還描寫了一些下層的勞動者。《追憶逝水年華》這部長篇巨着通過上千個人物的活動，冷靜，真實，細緻地再現了法國上流社會的生活習俗，人情世態。因此有些西方評論傢把它與巴爾紮剋的《人間喜劇》相提並論，稱之為“風流喜劇”。
《追憶逝水年華》是一部有獨特風格的長篇小說，他不僅再現了客觀世界，同時也展現了敘述者的主觀世界，記錄了敘述者對客觀世界的內心感受。作者感興趣的不是敘述故事，交代情節和刻畫人物形象，而是抒發自己對某一問題的感想和分析。例如，敘述者參加了蓋爾芒公爵傢的一次晚宴，這使他長期以來對貴族的種種幻想頓時破滅，他意識到過去對他有魅力的衹是名稱，而不是真實的世界。整部作品對外部世界的描述同敘述者對它的感受，思考，分析渾然一體，又互相引發，互相充實，從而形成了物從我出，物中有我，物我合一的藝術境界。
《追憶逝水年華》這部長篇，除了第一部中關於斯萬的戀愛故事采用第三人稱描寫手法外，其餘都是通過第一人稱敘述出來的，敘述者“我”的回憶是貫穿全書的重要藝術表現方式。小說開捲，“我”從床上醒來，在夢幻般的狀態中千思百想集於心頭。這時，由於一杯茶和一塊點心的觸發，使他回憶起小時候在姑媽萊奧妮傢生活的情景。這不僅引出了敘述者的家庭身世和個人經歷，還引出了蓋爾芒和斯萬兩大傢族，引出了形形色色的人物事件，整部小說的內容就是通過敘述者的回憶嚮縱深發掘，逐步推進，最後完整地呈現出來。
《追憶逝水年華》共7部，15捲，其中包括《在斯旺傢那邊》（1913）、《在少女們身旁》（1919）、《蓋爾芒特傢那邊》（1921）、《索多姆與戈摩爾》（1922）和作者死後出版的《女囚》、《女逃亡者》和《重現的時光》。第一部《在斯旺傢那邊》，沒有得到文藝界的認可，第二部《在少女們身旁》（1919），獲龔古爾文學奬，從此名聲大振。
《追憶逝水年華》是一部巴爾紮剋《人間喜劇》那樣“規模宏大”的作品。小說的敘述者“我”是一個富於才華，喜愛文學藝術而又體弱多病的富傢子弟。作品透過主人公的追憶，表現了作者對家庭、童年和初戀時感情的懷念，對庸俗事物的厭惡，同時也反映了19世紀末20世紀初所謂“黃金時代”的法國巴黎上流社會的種種人情世態。
小說故事套故事，人物事件衆多。一方面是遵循法國舊傳統習慣的聖·日耳曼貴族、蓋爾芒特傢族的公爵和公爵夫人、蓋爾芒特親王和王妃、公爵的兄弟等。另一方面是新的資産階級暴發戶和活躍在沙竜裏的幫閑人物：斯旺及其情婦、交際花奧黛特、富裕而有文化教養的凡爾杜蘭夫婦、外交官、醫生、藝術傢等。兩個對立的社會，原來並不融洽，資産階級很難跨進古老貴族的門廳。但是隨着時間的推移和復雜的聯姻關係，鴻溝逐漸被打破。斯旺死後，奧黛特成了蓋爾芒特公爵的情婦。凡爾杜蘭太太過去不被貴族傢所接納，現在成了親王夫人。作者在貴族閉塞和悠閑的世外桃源中窺視到了衰敗景象，從大資産階級庸俗狂妄中看到了一種畸形社會的畫面。雖然作者在描繪這種種畫面時，並沒有用尖銳的譴責之詞，但從他筆鋒轉嚮下層人民時所表現出的好感中，又能體味到他的褒貶之意。那個在上層人傢服務多年的老女僕弗朗索瓦茲，雖然滿口鄉下土話，腦子裏有不少迷信和禁忌，但她勤勞、純樸，有着鄉下人的聰明機智，是作者最喜愛的人物之一。小說除了描寫上流社會的生活外，還涉及到文學、繪畫、音樂、建築，以及第一次世界大戰等諸多方面的內容。
《追憶逝水年華》是一部回憶錄式的自傳體小說，但沒有傳統回憶錄那樣對往事有條理的整理和分析，而是通過一個“非常神經質和過分受溺愛的孩子”對自己“緩慢成長過程”的追憶，漸漸地“意識”到自己周圍人們的“存在”。作者衹是捕捉自己心頭留下並時時浮現在腦際的印象，然後加以展現。對他來說，事情發生的先後沒有意義，現實從回憶中形成，通過回憶，既認識到現實世界，也認識到“自我”的存在。兒時早晨起來喝熱茶時一塊俗名叫“瑪德萊娜”的甜糕點泡在茶裏，邊喝邊吃點心所感到的樂處，在最後一捲《重現的時光》重提時，“今”與“昔”的回憶已同時出現在作者腦海裏。通過回憶，他解除了“時間”的束縛，獲得了過去、現在的重疊和交叉，形成了特殊的回憶結構。
作品的敘述角度明顯區別於傳統小說。作者說：“在我們幼小時，我覺得聖書上任何人物和命運都沒有像諾亞那樣悲慘，他因洪水泛濫，不得不在方舟裏度過四十天，後來，我時常臥病，迫不得已成年纍月地呆在方舟裏過活。這時我纔明白，儘管諾亞方舟緊閉着，茫茫黑夜鎮住大地，但是諾亞從方舟裏看世界是再透徹不過了。”作者也不是站在事物的外部觀察世界，而是將客觀世界溶入內心，然後再表現出來。他通過對內心世界的探索來發現外部世界，從意識洪流中認識外部世界的價值。作品的人稱也有異於傳統小說。作品中的“我”並不是傳統小說中的第一人稱，他衹是一個穿針引綫的人物，通過“我”的觀察、感受引出其他人物和繪成絢麗多姿的畫面。普魯斯特雖然是現代派作傢，但他的語言風格深受蒙田、塞維尼夫人和聖·西蒙等法國古典作傢的影響，有着曠達、高雅、細膩、婉轉的特點。
法國著名傳記文學家兼評論傢A·莫羅亞（1885—1967）在1954年巴黎伽裏瑪出版社出版的《七星叢書》本的《追憶逝水年華》序言中寫道：“一九○○年至一九五○年這五十年中，除了《追憶逝水年華》之外，沒有別的值得永志不忘的小說巨著。不僅由於普魯斯特的作品和巴爾紮剋的作品一樣篇帙浩繁，因為也有人寫過十五捲甚至二十捲的巨型小說，而且有時也寫得文采動人，然而他們並不給我們發現 ‘新大陸’或包羅萬象的感覺。這些作傢滿足於挖掘早已為人所知的‘礦脈’，而馬塞爾·普魯斯特則發現了新的‘礦藏’。”這也是強調《追憶逝水年華》的藝術優點就在於一個“新”字。然而藝術發展的客觀規律並不在於單純的創新，也不在於為創新而創新，更不在於對於傳統的優秀藝術傳統采取虛無主義的態度，從零開始的創新。創新是藝術的靈魂，然而創新絶不是輕而易舉的，絶不是盲目的幻想。《追憶逝水年華》的創新是在傳統的優秀藝術基礎上的發展。
法國詩人P·瓦萊裏（1871—1945）和著名評論傢、教授A·蒂博岱（1874—1936）都在他們的評論中誇奬《追憶逝水年華》的藝術風格繼承了法國文學的優秀傳統。紀德和蒂博岱都提到普魯斯特和十六世紀的偉大散文作傢蒙田（1533—1592）在文風的曠達和高雅方面，似乎有一脈相承之妙。還有別的評論傢甚至特意提到普魯斯特受法國著名的回憶錄作傢聖·西蒙（1675—1755）的影響。
《追憶逝水年華》的作者逐漸構思這部小說大致在上世紀末年和本世紀初年。一九○七年他下定决心要創作這部小說，一九○八年他開始動筆，到一九二二年他去世前夕，匆匆寫完最後一捲《重現的時光》。普魯斯特創作《追憶逝水年華》的十餘年間，完全禁閉在鬥室中，與世隔絶。他全部精力與時間集中在回憶與寫作上，毫不關心世事，所以第一次世界大戰以及它對法國人民生活的強烈影響，在《追憶逝水年華》中幾乎毫無反映。這部小說中反映的巴黎是十九世紀八、九十年代的巴黎。十九世紀末葉是法蘭西資本主義逐漸由壟斷資本進入帝國主義的過程。二十世紀初年，法國資本主義已經達到最高階段，即帝國主義階段。在這時期，法國社會出現了物質生活方面的極大繁榮。1900年巴黎舉辦震動全球的“世界博覽會”，就表現出烜赫一時的繁榮景象。凡此種種，都沒有引起在鬥室中埋頭寫作的普魯斯特註意。由此可見，就其所反映的社會生活而言，《追憶逝水年華》是十九世紀末年的小說，是反映臨近巨大的變革與轉折點時刻的法國社會的小說，因此可以說也是一部反映舊時代的小說。《似水年華》是法國傳統小說藝術的最後一顆碩果，最後一朵奇葩，最後一座偉大的里程碑。
The novel as we know it began seriously to take shape in 1909, and work continued for the remainder of Proust's life, broken off only by his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The main overarching structure was in place at an early stage, and the novel is effectively complete as a work of art and a literary cosmos, but Proust kept adding new material through his final years while editing one time after another for print; the final three volumes actually contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which only existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) himself after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it, or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. In his work, Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities.
Initial publication
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
Vol. French titles Published English titles
1 Du côté de chez Swann 1913 Swann's Way
The Way by Swann's
2 À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs 1919 Within a Budding Grove
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
3 Le Côté de Guermantes
(published in two volumes) 1920/21 The Guermantes Way
4 Sodome et Gomorrhe
(published in two volumes) 1921/22 Cities of the Plain
Sodom and Gomorrah
5 La Prisonnière 1923 The Captive
The Prisoner
6 La Fugitive
Albertine disparue 1925 The Fugitive
The Sweet Cheat Gone
Albertine Gone
7 Le Temps retrouvé 1927 The Past Recaptured
Time Regained
Finding Time Again
Volume 1: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: Le Côté de Guermantes originally appeared as Le Côté de Guermantes I (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: The first forty pages of Sodome et Gomorrhe initially appeared at the end of Le Côté de Guermantes II (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 942), the remainder appearing as Sodome et Gomorrhe I (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: La Prisonnière (1923), first volume of the section of the novel known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: La Fugitive or Albertine disparue (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Much of Le Temps retrouvé (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Themes
A la Recherche made a decisive break with the 19th century realist and plot-driven novel, populated by people of action and people representing different social and cultural groups or moral issues. Although parts of the novel could be read as an exploration of snobbism, deceit, jealousy, and suffering and although it contains a multitude of realistic details, the focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution, but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of the experience that will serve as the foundation for the novel itself. The leading characters of the first volume (the narrator as a boy and Swann) are, by the standards of 19th century novels of any kind, remarkably introspective and non-prone to decisive actions, or to trigger such actions from other leading characters; to many readers at the time, reared on Balzac, Hugo, and Tolstoy, they would not function as centers of a well-defined plot. And while there is a rich array of symbolism in the work, it is rarely defined through any explicit "keys" leading to moral, romantic or philosophical ideas. The significance of what is happening is often placed within the memory or in the inner contemplation of what is described. This focus on the relationship between experience, memory and writing, and the radical de-emphasizing of the outward plot, have become staples of the modern novel but were almost unheard of in 1913.
The role of memory is central to the novel, introduced with the famous madeleine episode in the first section of the novel, and in the last volume, Time Regained, a flashback similar to that caused by the madeleine is the beginning of the resolution of the story. Throughout the work many similar instances of involuntary memory, triggered by sensory experiences such as sights, sounds, smells, and so on, conjure important memories for the narrator, and sometimes return attention to an earlier episode of the novel. Although Proust wrote contemporaneously with Sigmund Freud, with there being many points of similarity between their thought on the structures and mechanisms of the human mind, neither author read a word of the other's work (Bragg). Gilles Deleuze, by contrast, believed that the main focus of Proust was not memory and the past but the narrator's learning the use of "signs" to understand—and communicate—ultimate reality, and thereby becoming an artist. While Proust was bitterly aware of the experience of loss and exclusion - loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship, and innocent joy, which are dramatized in the novel through recurrent jealousy, betrayal and the death of loved persons - his response to this, formulated after he had discovered Ruskin, was that the work of art can recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction, at least in our minds: thus art triumphs over the destructive power of time. This element of his artistic philosophy is clearly inherited from romantic platonism, but Proust crosses it with a new intensity in describing jealousy, desire and self-doubt. (on that matter see the last quatrain of Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne": "Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will Devour you with kisses, That I have kept the form and the divine essence Of my decomposed love!")
The nature of art is another recurring topic in the novel, and is often explored at great length. Proust sets forth a theory of art in which we are all capable of producing art, if by this we mean taking the experiences of life and transforming them in a way that shows understanding and maturity. Writing, painting and music are also discussed at great length. Morel the violinist, for example, is examined to give an example of a certain type of "artistic" character, along with other fictional artists, namely the novelist Bergotte and painter Elstir.
Homosexuality is another major theme, particularly in later volumes, most notably in Sodom and Gomorrah, the first part of which consists of a detailed account of a sexual encounter between two of the novel's male characters. Though the narrator himself is heterosexual, he invariably suspects his lovers of liaisons with other women, in a repetition of the suspicions held by Charles Swann in the first volume, with regards to his mistress and eventual wife, Odette. Several characters are forthrightly homosexual, like the Baron de Charlus, while others, such as the narrator's good friend Robert de Saint-Loup, are only later revealed to be far more closeted.
There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust's own sexual inclination has on understanding these aspects of the novel. Although many of Proust's close family and friends suspected that he was homosexual, Proust never openly admitted this. It was only after Proust's death that André Gide, in his publication of correspondence between himself and Proust, made public Proust's homosexuality. The true nature of Proust's intimate relations with such individuals as Alfred Agostinelli and Reynaldo Hahn are well documented, though Proust was not "out and proud," except perhaps in close knit social circles. In 1949, the critic Justin O'Brien published an article in the PMLA called "Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust's Transposition of Sexes" which proposed that some female characters are best understood as actually referring to young men. Strip off the feminine ending of the names of the Narrator's lovers—Albertine, Gilberte, Andrée—and one has their masculine counterpart. This theory has become known as the "transposition of sexes theory" in Proust criticism, which in turn has been challenged in Epistemology of the Closet (1992) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Critical reception
In Search of Lost Time is considered the definitive Modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomsbury Group. "Oh if I could write like that!" marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922 (2:525). Proust's influence on Evelyn Waugh is manifest in A Handful of Dust (1934) in which Waugh entitles Chapter 1 "Du Cote de Chez Beaver" and Chapter 6 "Du Cote de Chez Tod." More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century." Vladimir Nabokov, in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, "Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time." J. Peder Zane's book The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, collates 125 "top 10 greatest books of all time" lists by prominent living writers; In Search of Lost Time places eighth. In the 1960s, Swedish literary critic Bengt Holmqvist dubbed the novel "at once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the 'nouveau roman'", indicating the sixties vogue of new, experimental French prose but also, by extension, other post-war attempts to fuse different planes of location, temporality and fragmented consciousness within the same novel.
Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The Modern Library, based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust's novel in the English-speaking world has increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by Edmund White and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, by Alain de Botton and Phyllis Rose. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, now has three chapters: at The Mercantile Library of New York City, the Mechanic's Institute Library in San Francisco, and the Boston Athenæum Library. The French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, frequently refers to Swann's Way to help elucidate his own ideas.
Main characters
Proust - Personnages
Main characters - Family tree
The Narrator's household
* The narrator: A sensitive young man who wishes to become a writer, whose identity is explicitly kept vague. In volume 5, The Prisoner, he addresses the reader thus: "Now she began to speak; her first words were 'darling' or 'my darling,' followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would produce 'darling Marcel' or 'my darling Marcel.'" (Proust, 64)
* Bathilde Amédée: The narrator's grandmother. Her life and death greatly influence her daughter and grandson.
* Françoise: The narrator's faithful, stubborn maid.
The Guermantes
* Palamède de Guermantes (Baron de Charlus): An aristocratic, decadent aesthete with many antisocial habits.
* Oriane de Guermantes (Duchesse de Guermantes): The toast of Paris' high society. She lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain.
* Robert de Saint-Loup: An army officer and the narrator's best friend. Despite his patrician birth (he is the nephew of M. de Guermantes) and affluent lifestyle, Saint-Loup has no great fortune of his own until he marries Gilberte.
The Swanns
* Charles Swann: A friend of the narrator's family. His political views on the Dreyfus Affair and marriage to Odette ostracize him from much of high society.
* Odette de Crécy: A beautiful Parisian courtesan. Odette is also referred to as Mme Swann, the woman in pink/white, and in the final volume, Mme de Forcheville.
* Gilberte Swann: The daughter of Swann and Odette. She takes the name of her adopted father, M. de Forcheville, after Swann's death, and then becomes Mme de Saint-Loup following her marriage to Robert de Saint-Loup, which joins Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way.
Artists
* Elstir: A famous painter whose renditions of sea and sky echo the novel's theme of the mutability of human life.
* Bergotte: A well-known writer whose works the narrator has admired since childhood.
* Vinteuil: An obscure musician who gains posthumous recognition for composing a beautiful, evocative sonata.
* Berma
Others
* Charles Morel: The son of a former servant of the narrator's uncle and a gifted violinist. He profits greatly from the patronage of the Baron de Charlus and later Robert de Saint-Loup.
* Albertine Simonet: A privileged orphan of average beauty and intelligence. The narrator's romance with her is the subject of much of the novel.
* Sidonie Verdurin: A poseur who rises to the top of society through inheritance, marriage, and sheer single-mindedness. Often referred to simply as Mme. Verdurin.
Publication in English
The first six volumes were first translated into English by the Scotsman C. K. Scott Moncrieff between 1922 and his death in 1930 under the title Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30; this was the first translation of the Recherche into another language. The final volume, Le Temps retrouvé, was initially published in English in the UK as Time Regained (1931), translated by Stephen Hudson (a pseudonym of Sydney Schiff), and in the US as The Past Recaptured (1932) in a translation by Frederick Blossom. Although cordial with Scott Moncrieff, Proust grudgingly remarked in a letter that Remembrance eliminated the correspondence between Temps perdu and Temps retrouvé (Painter, 352). Terence Kilmartin revised the Scott Moncrieff translation in 1981, using the new French edition of 1954. An additional revision by D.J. Enright - that is, a revision of a revision - was published by the Modern Library in 1992. It is based on the latest and most authoritative French text (1987–89), and rendered the title of the novel more literally as In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of In Search of Lost Time by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven different translators, one Australian, one American, and the others English. Based on the authoritative French text (of 1987-98), it was published in six volumes in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002. The first four (those which under American copyright law are in the public domain) have since been published in the US under the Viking imprint and in paperback under the Penguin Classics imprint. The remaining volumes are scheduled to come out in 2018.
Both the Modern Library and Penguin translations provide a detailed plot synopsis at the end of each volume. The last volume of the Modern Library edition, Time Regained, also includes Kilmartin's "A Guide to Proust," an index of the novel's characters, persons, places, and themes. The Modern Library volumes include a handful of endnotes, and alternative versions of some of the novel's famous episodes. The Penguin volumes each provide an extensive set of brief, non-scholarly endnotes that help identify cultural references perhaps unfamiliar to contemporary English readers. Reviews which discuss the merits of both translations can be found online at the Observer, the Telegraph, The New York Review of Books (subscription only), The New York Times, TempsPerdu.com, and Reading Proust.
English-language translations in print
* In Search of Lost Time (General Editor: Christopher Prendergast), translated by Lydia Davis, Mark Treharne, James Grieve, John Sturrock, Carol Clark, Peter Collier, & Ian Patterson. London: Allen Lane, 2002 (6 vols). Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89), except The Fugitive, which is based on the 1954 definitive French edition. The first four volumes have been published in New York by Viking, 2003–2004, but the Copyright Term Extension Act will delay the rest of the project until 2018.
o (Volume titles: The Way by Swann's (in the U.S., Swann's Way) ISBN 0-14-243796-4; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower ISBN 0-14-303907-5; The Guermantes Way ISBN 0-14-303922-9; Sodom and Gomorrah ISBN 0-14-303931-8; The Prisoner; and The Fugitive — Finding Time Again.)
* In Search of Lost Time, translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). Revised by D.J. Enright. London: Chatto and Windus, New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89). ISBN 0-8129-6964-2
o (Volume titles: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove — The Guermantes Way — Sodom and Gomorrah — The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
* A Search for Lost Time: Swann's Way, translated by James Grieve. Canberra: Australian National University, 1982 ISBN 0-7081-1317-6
* Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). New York: Random House, 1981 (3 vols). ISBN 0-394-71243-9
o (Published in three volumes: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way — Cities of the Plain; The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
Adaptations
Print
* The Proust Screenplay, a film adaptation by Harold Pinter published in 1978 (never filmed).
* Remembrance of Things Past, Part One: Combray; Part Two: Within a Budding Grove, vol.1; Part Three: Within a Budding Grove, vol.2; and Part Four: Un amour de Swann, vol.1 are graphic novel adaptations by Stéphane Heuet.
* Albertine, a novel based on a rewriting of Albertine by Jacqueline Rose. Vintage UK, 2002.
Screen
* Swann in Love (Un Amour de Swann), a 1984 film by Volker Schlöndorff starring Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti.
* Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé), a 1999 film by Raul Ruiz starring Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, and John Malkovich.
* La Captive, a 2000 film by Chantal Akerman.
* Quartetto Basileus (1982) uses segments from Sodom and Gomorrah and Time Regained. Le Intermittenze del cuore (2003) concerns a director working on a movie about Proust's life. Both from Italian director Fabio Capri.
Stage
* A Waste of Time, by Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald. A 4 hour long adaptation with a huge cast. Dir. by Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1980, revived 1981 plus European tour.
* Remembrance of Things Past, by Harold Pinter and Di Trevis, based on Pinter's The Proust Screenplay. Dir. by Trevis (who had acted in A Waste of Time - see above) at the Royal National Theatre in 2000.
* Eleven Rooms of Proust, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. A series of 11 vignettes from In Search of Lost Time, staged throughout an abandoned factory in Chicago.
* My Life With Albertine, a 2003 Off-Broadway musical with book by Richard Nelson, music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and lyrics by both.
Radio
* In Search of Lost Time dramatised by Michael Butt for the The Classic Serial, broadcast between February 6, 2005 and March 13, 2005. Starring James Wilby, it condensed the entire series into six episodes. Although considerably shortened, it received excellent reviews .
多捲集長篇巨着《追憶逝水年華》是法國作傢馬塞爾.普魯斯特(1871-1922)的代表作，全書共七部，十五捲，從1905年開始創作，至作者逝世前全部完成。小說的第一部《通往斯萬傢的路》於1913年問世，但反應冷淡，一些有名的出版社都不願出版，作者便自費印行。後來《通往斯萬傢的路》逐漸獲得文藝界的贊賞。於是，各大出版社竟相與普魯斯特簽訂合同，以求取得出版這部多捲集的其餘幾部作品的權利。不久，第一次世界大戰爆發，出版工作被擱置下來。戰爭結束後，小說的第二部《在花枝招展的少女們身旁》於1919年出版，獲龔古爾文學奬，普魯斯特名聲大振。此後，小說的第三部《蓋爾芒傢》和第四部《索多姆和郭穆爾》相繼於1921和1922年出版，最後三部《女囚犯》(1923)，《逃亡者》(1925)，和《昔日再現》(1927) 則是普魯斯特逝世後纔出版的。
目錄
第一部 在斯萬傢那邊
追憶似水年華追憶似水年華
>第一捲 貢布雷
>>第一章
>>第二章
>第二捲 斯萬之戀
>第三捲 地名：那個姓氏
第二部 在少女們身旁
>第一捲 斯萬夫人周圍
>第二捲 地名：地方
第三部 蓋爾芒特傢那邊
>第一捲
>第二捲
>>第一章
>>第二章
第四部
>第一捲
>第二捲
>>第一章
>>第二章
>>第三章
>>第四章
第五部 女囚
第六部 女逃亡者
第七部 重現的時光
《追憶逝水年華》是一部與傳統小說不同的長篇小說。全書以敘述者“我”為主體，將其所見所聞所思所感融合一體，既有對社會生活，人情世態的真實描寫，又是一份作者自我追求，自我認識的內心經歷的記錄。除敘事以外，還包含有大量的感想和議論。整部作品沒有中心人物，沒有完整的故事，沒有波瀾起伏，貫穿始終的情節綫索。它大體以敘述者的生活經歷和內心活動為軸心，穿插描寫了大量的人物事件，猶如一棵枝丫交錯的大樹，可以說是在一部主要小說上派生着許多獨立成篇的其他小說，也可以說是一部交織着好幾個主題麯的巨大交響樂。
小說中的敘述者“我”是一個傢境富裕而又體弱多病的青年，從小對書畫有特殊的愛好，曾經嘗試過文學創作，沒有成功。他經常出入巴黎的上層社會，頻繁往來於各茶會，舞會，招待會及其它時髦的社交場合，並鐘情於猶太富商的女兒吉爾伯特，但不久就失戀了。此外，他還到過家乡貢柏萊小住，到過海濱勝地巴培剋療養。他結識了另一位少女阿爾伯蒂，發現阿爾伯蒂患同性戀，便决心娶她為妻，以糾正她的變態心理。他把阿爾伯蒂禁閉在自己傢中，阿爾伯蒂卻設法逃跑，於是，他多方打聽她，尋找她，後來得知阿爾伯蒂騎馬摔死。在悲痛中他認識到自己的稟賦是寫作，他所經歷的悲歡苦樂正是文學創作的材料，衹有文學創作才能把昔日失去的東西找回來。
在小說中，敘述者“我”的生活經歷並不占全書的主要篇幅。作者通過故事套故事，故事與故事交叉重迭的方法，描寫了衆多的人物事件，展示了一幅19世紀與20世紀之交法國上流社會的生活圖景。這裏有姿色迷人，談吐高雅而又無聊庸俗的蓋爾芒夫人，有道德墮落，行為仇惡的變性人查琉斯男爵，有縱情聲色的浪蕩公子斯萬等等。此外，小說還描寫了一些於上流社會有關聯的作傢，藝術傢，他們大都生前落魄失意，而作品卻永世長存。小說還描寫了一些下層的勞動者。《追憶逝水年華》這部長篇巨着通過上千個人物的活動，冷靜，真實，細緻地再現了法國上流社會的生活習俗，人情世態。因此有些西方評論傢把它與巴爾紮剋的《人間喜劇》相提並論，稱之為“風流喜劇”。
《追憶逝水年華》是一部有獨特風格的長篇小說，他不僅再現了客觀世界，同時也展現了敘述者的主觀世界，記錄了敘述者對客觀世界的內心感受。作者感興趣的不是敘述故事，交代情節和刻畫人物形象，而是抒發自己對某一問題的感想和分析。例如，敘述者參加了蓋爾芒公爵傢的一次晚宴，這使他長期以來對貴族的種種幻想頓時破滅，他意識到過去對他有魅力的衹是名稱，而不是真實的世界。整部作品對外部世界的描述同敘述者對它的感受，思考，分析渾然一體，又互相引發，互相充實，從而形成了物從我出，物中有我，物我合一的藝術境界。
《追憶逝水年華》這部長篇，除了第一部中關於斯萬的戀愛故事采用第三人稱描寫手法外，其餘都是通過第一人稱敘述出來的，敘述者“我”的回憶是貫穿全書的重要藝術表現方式。小說開捲，“我”從床上醒來，在夢幻般的狀態中千思百想集於心頭。這時，由於一杯茶和一塊點心的觸發，使他回憶起小時候在姑媽萊奧妮傢生活的情景。這不僅引出了敘述者的家庭身世和個人經歷，還引出了蓋爾芒和斯萬兩大傢族，引出了形形色色的人物事件，整部小說的內容就是通過敘述者的回憶嚮縱深發掘，逐步推進，最後完整地呈現出來。
《追憶逝水年華》共7部，15捲，其中包括《在斯旺傢那邊》（1913）、《在少女們身旁》（1919）、《蓋爾芒特傢那邊》（1921）、《索多姆與戈摩爾》（1922）和作者死後出版的《女囚》、《女逃亡者》和《重現的時光》。第一部《在斯旺傢那邊》，沒有得到文藝界的認可，第二部《在少女們身旁》（1919），獲龔古爾文學奬，從此名聲大振。
《追憶逝水年華》是一部巴爾紮剋《人間喜劇》那樣“規模宏大”的作品。小說的敘述者“我”是一個富於才華，喜愛文學藝術而又體弱多病的富傢子弟。作品透過主人公的追憶，表現了作者對家庭、童年和初戀時感情的懷念，對庸俗事物的厭惡，同時也反映了19世紀末20世紀初所謂“黃金時代”的法國巴黎上流社會的種種人情世態。
小說故事套故事，人物事件衆多。一方面是遵循法國舊傳統習慣的聖·日耳曼貴族、蓋爾芒特傢族的公爵和公爵夫人、蓋爾芒特親王和王妃、公爵的兄弟等。另一方面是新的資産階級暴發戶和活躍在沙竜裏的幫閑人物：斯旺及其情婦、交際花奧黛特、富裕而有文化教養的凡爾杜蘭夫婦、外交官、醫生、藝術傢等。兩個對立的社會，原來並不融洽，資産階級很難跨進古老貴族的門廳。但是隨着時間的推移和復雜的聯姻關係，鴻溝逐漸被打破。斯旺死後，奧黛特成了蓋爾芒特公爵的情婦。凡爾杜蘭太太過去不被貴族傢所接納，現在成了親王夫人。作者在貴族閉塞和悠閑的世外桃源中窺視到了衰敗景象，從大資産階級庸俗狂妄中看到了一種畸形社會的畫面。雖然作者在描繪這種種畫面時，並沒有用尖銳的譴責之詞，但從他筆鋒轉嚮下層人民時所表現出的好感中，又能體味到他的褒貶之意。那個在上層人傢服務多年的老女僕弗朗索瓦茲，雖然滿口鄉下土話，腦子裏有不少迷信和禁忌，但她勤勞、純樸，有着鄉下人的聰明機智，是作者最喜愛的人物之一。小說除了描寫上流社會的生活外，還涉及到文學、繪畫、音樂、建築，以及第一次世界大戰等諸多方面的內容。
《追憶逝水年華》是一部回憶錄式的自傳體小說，但沒有傳統回憶錄那樣對往事有條理的整理和分析，而是通過一個“非常神經質和過分受溺愛的孩子”對自己“緩慢成長過程”的追憶，漸漸地“意識”到自己周圍人們的“存在”。作者衹是捕捉自己心頭留下並時時浮現在腦際的印象，然後加以展現。對他來說，事情發生的先後沒有意義，現實從回憶中形成，通過回憶，既認識到現實世界，也認識到“自我”的存在。兒時早晨起來喝熱茶時一塊俗名叫“瑪德萊娜”的甜糕點泡在茶裏，邊喝邊吃點心所感到的樂處，在最後一捲《重現的時光》重提時，“今”與“昔”的回憶已同時出現在作者腦海裏。通過回憶，他解除了“時間”的束縛，獲得了過去、現在的重疊和交叉，形成了特殊的回憶結構。
作品的敘述角度明顯區別於傳統小說。作者說：“在我們幼小時，我覺得聖書上任何人物和命運都沒有像諾亞那樣悲慘，他因洪水泛濫，不得不在方舟裏度過四十天，後來，我時常臥病，迫不得已成年纍月地呆在方舟裏過活。這時我纔明白，儘管諾亞方舟緊閉着，茫茫黑夜鎮住大地，但是諾亞從方舟裏看世界是再透徹不過了。”作者也不是站在事物的外部觀察世界，而是將客觀世界溶入內心，然後再表現出來。他通過對內心世界的探索來發現外部世界，從意識洪流中認識外部世界的價值。作品的人稱也有異於傳統小說。作品中的“我”並不是傳統小說中的第一人稱，他衹是一個穿針引綫的人物，通過“我”的觀察、感受引出其他人物和繪成絢麗多姿的畫面。普魯斯特雖然是現代派作傢，但他的語言風格深受蒙田、塞維尼夫人和聖·西蒙等法國古典作傢的影響，有着曠達、高雅、細膩、婉轉的特點。
法國著名傳記文學家兼評論傢A·莫羅亞（1885—1967）在1954年巴黎伽裏瑪出版社出版的《七星叢書》本的《追憶逝水年華》序言中寫道：“一九○○年至一九五○年這五十年中，除了《追憶逝水年華》之外，沒有別的值得永志不忘的小說巨著。不僅由於普魯斯特的作品和巴爾紮剋的作品一樣篇帙浩繁，因為也有人寫過十五捲甚至二十捲的巨型小說，而且有時也寫得文采動人，然而他們並不給我們發現 ‘新大陸’或包羅萬象的感覺。這些作傢滿足於挖掘早已為人所知的‘礦脈’，而馬塞爾·普魯斯特則發現了新的‘礦藏’。”這也是強調《追憶逝水年華》的藝術優點就在於一個“新”字。然而藝術發展的客觀規律並不在於單純的創新，也不在於為創新而創新，更不在於對於傳統的優秀藝術傳統采取虛無主義的態度，從零開始的創新。創新是藝術的靈魂，然而創新絶不是輕而易舉的，絶不是盲目的幻想。《追憶逝水年華》的創新是在傳統的優秀藝術基礎上的發展。
法國詩人P·瓦萊裏（1871—1945）和著名評論傢、教授A·蒂博岱（1874—1936）都在他們的評論中誇奬《追憶逝水年華》的藝術風格繼承了法國文學的優秀傳統。紀德和蒂博岱都提到普魯斯特和十六世紀的偉大散文作傢蒙田（1533—1592）在文風的曠達和高雅方面，似乎有一脈相承之妙。還有別的評論傢甚至特意提到普魯斯特受法國著名的回憶錄作傢聖·西蒙（1675—1755）的影響。
《追憶逝水年華》的作者逐漸構思這部小說大致在上世紀末年和本世紀初年。一九○七年他下定决心要創作這部小說，一九○八年他開始動筆，到一九二二年他去世前夕，匆匆寫完最後一捲《重現的時光》。普魯斯特創作《追憶逝水年華》的十餘年間，完全禁閉在鬥室中，與世隔絶。他全部精力與時間集中在回憶與寫作上，毫不關心世事，所以第一次世界大戰以及它對法國人民生活的強烈影響，在《追憶逝水年華》中幾乎毫無反映。這部小說中反映的巴黎是十九世紀八、九十年代的巴黎。十九世紀末葉是法蘭西資本主義逐漸由壟斷資本進入帝國主義的過程。二十世紀初年，法國資本主義已經達到最高階段，即帝國主義階段。在這時期，法國社會出現了物質生活方面的極大繁榮。1900年巴黎舉辦震動全球的“世界博覽會”，就表現出烜赫一時的繁榮景象。凡此種種，都沒有引起在鬥室中埋頭寫作的普魯斯特註意。由此可見，就其所反映的社會生活而言，《追憶逝水年華》是十九世紀末年的小說，是反映臨近巨大的變革與轉折點時刻的法國社會的小說，因此可以說也是一部反映舊時代的小說。《似水年華》是法國傳統小說藝術的最後一顆碩果，最後一朵奇葩，最後一座偉大的里程碑。
The novel as we know it began seriously to take shape in 1909, and work continued for the remainder of Proust's life, broken off only by his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The main overarching structure was in place at an early stage, and the novel is effectively complete as a work of art and a literary cosmos, but Proust kept adding new material through his final years while editing one time after another for print; the final three volumes actually contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which only existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) himself after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it, or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. In his work, Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities.
Initial publication
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
Vol. French titles Published English titles
1 Du côté de chez Swann 1913 Swann's Way
The Way by Swann's
2 À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs 1919 Within a Budding Grove
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
3 Le Côté de Guermantes
(published in two volumes) 1920/21 The Guermantes Way
4 Sodome et Gomorrhe
(published in two volumes) 1921/22 Cities of the Plain
Sodom and Gomorrah
5 La Prisonnière 1923 The Captive
The Prisoner
6 La Fugitive
Albertine disparue 1925 The Fugitive
The Sweet Cheat Gone
Albertine Gone
7 Le Temps retrouvé 1927 The Past Recaptured
Time Regained
Finding Time Again
Volume 1: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: Le Côté de Guermantes originally appeared as Le Côté de Guermantes I (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: The first forty pages of Sodome et Gomorrhe initially appeared at the end of Le Côté de Guermantes II (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 942), the remainder appearing as Sodome et Gomorrhe I (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: La Prisonnière (1923), first volume of the section of the novel known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: La Fugitive or Albertine disparue (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Much of Le Temps retrouvé (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Themes
A la Recherche made a decisive break with the 19th century realist and plot-driven novel, populated by people of action and people representing different social and cultural groups or moral issues. Although parts of the novel could be read as an exploration of snobbism, deceit, jealousy, and suffering and although it contains a multitude of realistic details, the focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution, but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of the experience that will serve as the foundation for the novel itself. The leading characters of the first volume (the narrator as a boy and Swann) are, by the standards of 19th century novels of any kind, remarkably introspective and non-prone to decisive actions, or to trigger such actions from other leading characters; to many readers at the time, reared on Balzac, Hugo, and Tolstoy, they would not function as centers of a well-defined plot. And while there is a rich array of symbolism in the work, it is rarely defined through any explicit "keys" leading to moral, romantic or philosophical ideas. The significance of what is happening is often placed within the memory or in the inner contemplation of what is described. This focus on the relationship between experience, memory and writing, and the radical de-emphasizing of the outward plot, have become staples of the modern novel but were almost unheard of in 1913.
The role of memory is central to the novel, introduced with the famous madeleine episode in the first section of the novel, and in the last volume, Time Regained, a flashback similar to that caused by the madeleine is the beginning of the resolution of the story. Throughout the work many similar instances of involuntary memory, triggered by sensory experiences such as sights, sounds, smells, and so on, conjure important memories for the narrator, and sometimes return attention to an earlier episode of the novel. Although Proust wrote contemporaneously with Sigmund Freud, with there being many points of similarity between their thought on the structures and mechanisms of the human mind, neither author read a word of the other's work (Bragg). Gilles Deleuze, by contrast, believed that the main focus of Proust was not memory and the past but the narrator's learning the use of "signs" to understand—and communicate—ultimate reality, and thereby becoming an artist. While Proust was bitterly aware of the experience of loss and exclusion - loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship, and innocent joy, which are dramatized in the novel through recurrent jealousy, betrayal and the death of loved persons - his response to this, formulated after he had discovered Ruskin, was that the work of art can recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction, at least in our minds: thus art triumphs over the destructive power of time. This element of his artistic philosophy is clearly inherited from romantic platonism, but Proust crosses it with a new intensity in describing jealousy, desire and self-doubt. (on that matter see the last quatrain of Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne": "Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will Devour you with kisses, That I have kept the form and the divine essence Of my decomposed love!")
The nature of art is another recurring topic in the novel, and is often explored at great length. Proust sets forth a theory of art in which we are all capable of producing art, if by this we mean taking the experiences of life and transforming them in a way that shows understanding and maturity. Writing, painting and music are also discussed at great length. Morel the violinist, for example, is examined to give an example of a certain type of "artistic" character, along with other fictional artists, namely the novelist Bergotte and painter Elstir.
Homosexuality is another major theme, particularly in later volumes, most notably in Sodom and Gomorrah, the first part of which consists of a detailed account of a sexual encounter between two of the novel's male characters. Though the narrator himself is heterosexual, he invariably suspects his lovers of liaisons with other women, in a repetition of the suspicions held by Charles Swann in the first volume, with regards to his mistress and eventual wife, Odette. Several characters are forthrightly homosexual, like the Baron de Charlus, while others, such as the narrator's good friend Robert de Saint-Loup, are only later revealed to be far more closeted.
There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust's own sexual inclination has on understanding these aspects of the novel. Although many of Proust's close family and friends suspected that he was homosexual, Proust never openly admitted this. It was only after Proust's death that André Gide, in his publication of correspondence between himself and Proust, made public Proust's homosexuality. The true nature of Proust's intimate relations with such individuals as Alfred Agostinelli and Reynaldo Hahn are well documented, though Proust was not "out and proud," except perhaps in close knit social circles. In 1949, the critic Justin O'Brien published an article in the PMLA called "Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust's Transposition of Sexes" which proposed that some female characters are best understood as actually referring to young men. Strip off the feminine ending of the names of the Narrator's lovers—Albertine, Gilberte, Andrée—and one has their masculine counterpart. This theory has become known as the "transposition of sexes theory" in Proust criticism, which in turn has been challenged in Epistemology of the Closet (1992) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Critical reception
In Search of Lost Time is considered the definitive Modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomsbury Group. "Oh if I could write like that!" marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922 (2:525). Proust's influence on Evelyn Waugh is manifest in A Handful of Dust (1934) in which Waugh entitles Chapter 1 "Du Cote de Chez Beaver" and Chapter 6 "Du Cote de Chez Tod." More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century." Vladimir Nabokov, in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, "Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time." J. Peder Zane's book The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, collates 125 "top 10 greatest books of all time" lists by prominent living writers; In Search of Lost Time places eighth. In the 1960s, Swedish literary critic Bengt Holmqvist dubbed the novel "at once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the 'nouveau roman'", indicating the sixties vogue of new, experimental French prose but also, by extension, other post-war attempts to fuse different planes of location, temporality and fragmented consciousness within the same novel.
Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The Modern Library, based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust's novel in the English-speaking world has increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by Edmund White and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, by Alain de Botton and Phyllis Rose. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, now has three chapters: at The Mercantile Library of New York City, the Mechanic's Institute Library in San Francisco, and the Boston Athenæum Library. The French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, frequently refers to Swann's Way to help elucidate his own ideas.
Main characters
Proust - Personnages
Main characters - Family tree
The Narrator's household
* The narrator: A sensitive young man who wishes to become a writer, whose identity is explicitly kept vague. In volume 5, The Prisoner, he addresses the reader thus: "Now she began to speak; her first words were 'darling' or 'my darling,' followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would produce 'darling Marcel' or 'my darling Marcel.'" (Proust, 64)
* Bathilde Amédée: The narrator's grandmother. Her life and death greatly influence her daughter and grandson.
* Françoise: The narrator's faithful, stubborn maid.
The Guermantes
* Palamède de Guermantes (Baron de Charlus): An aristocratic, decadent aesthete with many antisocial habits.
* Oriane de Guermantes (Duchesse de Guermantes): The toast of Paris' high society. She lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain.
* Robert de Saint-Loup: An army officer and the narrator's best friend. Despite his patrician birth (he is the nephew of M. de Guermantes) and affluent lifestyle, Saint-Loup has no great fortune of his own until he marries Gilberte.
The Swanns
* Charles Swann: A friend of the narrator's family. His political views on the Dreyfus Affair and marriage to Odette ostracize him from much of high society.
* Odette de Crécy: A beautiful Parisian courtesan. Odette is also referred to as Mme Swann, the woman in pink/white, and in the final volume, Mme de Forcheville.
* Gilberte Swann: The daughter of Swann and Odette. She takes the name of her adopted father, M. de Forcheville, after Swann's death, and then becomes Mme de Saint-Loup following her marriage to Robert de Saint-Loup, which joins Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way.
Artists
* Elstir: A famous painter whose renditions of sea and sky echo the novel's theme of the mutability of human life.
* Bergotte: A well-known writer whose works the narrator has admired since childhood.
* Vinteuil: An obscure musician who gains posthumous recognition for composing a beautiful, evocative sonata.
* Berma
Others
* Charles Morel: The son of a former servant of the narrator's uncle and a gifted violinist. He profits greatly from the patronage of the Baron de Charlus and later Robert de Saint-Loup.
* Albertine Simonet: A privileged orphan of average beauty and intelligence. The narrator's romance with her is the subject of much of the novel.
* Sidonie Verdurin: A poseur who rises to the top of society through inheritance, marriage, and sheer single-mindedness. Often referred to simply as Mme. Verdurin.
Publication in English
The first six volumes were first translated into English by the Scotsman C. K. Scott Moncrieff between 1922 and his death in 1930 under the title Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30; this was the first translation of the Recherche into another language. The final volume, Le Temps retrouvé, was initially published in English in the UK as Time Regained (1931), translated by Stephen Hudson (a pseudonym of Sydney Schiff), and in the US as The Past Recaptured (1932) in a translation by Frederick Blossom. Although cordial with Scott Moncrieff, Proust grudgingly remarked in a letter that Remembrance eliminated the correspondence between Temps perdu and Temps retrouvé (Painter, 352). Terence Kilmartin revised the Scott Moncrieff translation in 1981, using the new French edition of 1954. An additional revision by D.J. Enright - that is, a revision of a revision - was published by the Modern Library in 1992. It is based on the latest and most authoritative French text (1987–89), and rendered the title of the novel more literally as In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of In Search of Lost Time by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven different translators, one Australian, one American, and the others English. Based on the authoritative French text (of 1987-98), it was published in six volumes in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002. The first four (those which under American copyright law are in the public domain) have since been published in the US under the Viking imprint and in paperback under the Penguin Classics imprint. The remaining volumes are scheduled to come out in 2018.
Both the Modern Library and Penguin translations provide a detailed plot synopsis at the end of each volume. The last volume of the Modern Library edition, Time Regained, also includes Kilmartin's "A Guide to Proust," an index of the novel's characters, persons, places, and themes. The Modern Library volumes include a handful of endnotes, and alternative versions of some of the novel's famous episodes. The Penguin volumes each provide an extensive set of brief, non-scholarly endnotes that help identify cultural references perhaps unfamiliar to contemporary English readers. Reviews which discuss the merits of both translations can be found online at the Observer, the Telegraph, The New York Review of Books (subscription only), The New York Times, TempsPerdu.com, and Reading Proust.
English-language translations in print
* In Search of Lost Time (General Editor: Christopher Prendergast), translated by Lydia Davis, Mark Treharne, James Grieve, John Sturrock, Carol Clark, Peter Collier, & Ian Patterson. London: Allen Lane, 2002 (6 vols). Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89), except The Fugitive, which is based on the 1954 definitive French edition. The first four volumes have been published in New York by Viking, 2003–2004, but the Copyright Term Extension Act will delay the rest of the project until 2018.
o (Volume titles: The Way by Swann's (in the U.S., Swann's Way) ISBN 0-14-243796-4; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower ISBN 0-14-303907-5; The Guermantes Way ISBN 0-14-303922-9; Sodom and Gomorrah ISBN 0-14-303931-8; The Prisoner; and The Fugitive — Finding Time Again.)
* In Search of Lost Time, translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). Revised by D.J. Enright. London: Chatto and Windus, New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89). ISBN 0-8129-6964-2
o (Volume titles: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove — The Guermantes Way — Sodom and Gomorrah — The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
* A Search for Lost Time: Swann's Way, translated by James Grieve. Canberra: Australian National University, 1982 ISBN 0-7081-1317-6
* Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). New York: Random House, 1981 (3 vols). ISBN 0-394-71243-9
o (Published in three volumes: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way — Cities of the Plain; The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
Adaptations
* The Proust Screenplay, a film adaptation by Harold Pinter published in 1978 (never filmed).
* Remembrance of Things Past, Part One: Combray; Part Two: Within a Budding Grove, vol.1; Part Three: Within a Budding Grove, vol.2; and Part Four: Un amour de Swann, vol.1 are graphic novel adaptations by Stéphane Heuet.
* Albertine, a novel based on a rewriting of Albertine by Jacqueline Rose. Vintage UK, 2002.
Screen
* Swann in Love (Un Amour de Swann), a 1984 film by Volker Schlöndorff starring Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti.
* Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé), a 1999 film by Raul Ruiz starring Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, and John Malkovich.
* La Captive, a 2000 film by Chantal Akerman.
* Quartetto Basileus (1982) uses segments from Sodom and Gomorrah and Time Regained. Le Intermittenze del cuore (2003) concerns a director working on a movie about Proust's life. Both from Italian director Fabio Capri.
Stage
* A Waste of Time, by Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald. A 4 hour long adaptation with a huge cast. Dir. by Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1980, revived 1981 plus European tour.
* Remembrance of Things Past, by Harold Pinter and Di Trevis, based on Pinter's The Proust Screenplay. Dir. by Trevis (who had acted in A Waste of Time - see above) at the Royal National Theatre in 2000.
* Eleven Rooms of Proust, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. A series of 11 vignettes from In Search of Lost Time, staged throughout an abandoned factory in Chicago.
* My Life With Albertine, a 2003 Off-Broadway musical with book by Richard Nelson, music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and lyrics by both.
Radio
* In Search of Lost Time dramatised by Michael Butt for the The Classic Serial, broadcast between February 6, 2005 and March 13, 2005. Starring James Wilby, it condensed the entire series into six episodes. Although considerably shortened, it received excellent reviews .
《紅與黑》 Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) 1830 by Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle, 1783 – 1842)
《紅與黑》是法國作傢司湯達創作的一部長篇小說，現在，已經被世界公認為文學史上的經典。《紅與黑》是法國批判現實主義的第一部傑出作品。作者被譽為法國以至整個歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人之一。
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品
《紅與黑》-作品簡介
《紅與黑》是法國作傢司湯達創作的一部長篇小說，現在，已經被世界公認為文學史上的經典。《紅與黑》是法國批判現實主義的第一部傑出作品。作者被譽為法國以至整個歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人之一。
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品。小說圍繞主人公於連個人奮鬥的經歷與最終失敗，尤其是他的兩次愛情的描寫，廣泛地展現了“19世紀初30年間壓在法國人民頭上的歷屆政府所帶來的社會風氣”，強烈地抨擊了復闢王朝時期貴族的反動，教會的黑暗和資産階級新貴的卑鄙庸俗，利欲熏心。因此小說雖以於連的愛情生活作為主綫，但畢竟不是愛情小說，而是一部“政治小說”。
《紅與黑》-內容簡介
小說主人公於連,是一個木匠的兒子,年輕英俊,意志堅強,精明能幹,從小就希望藉助個人的努力與奮鬥躋身上流社會。
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
在法國與瑞士接壤的維立葉爾城，座落在山坡上，美麗的杜伯河繞城而過，河岸上矗立着許多鋸木廠。 市長德瑞那是個出身貴族，在扣上挂滿勳章的人。
他五十歲左右，他的房子有全城最漂亮的花園，他的妻子是最有錢而又最漂亮的妻子，但他才智不足， “他衹能辦到嚴格地收討他人的欠債，當他自己欠人傢的債時，他愈遲還愈好”。在這座城市還有一個重要人物，是貧民寄養所所長——哇列諾先生。他花了一萬到一萬兩千法郎纔弄到這個職位，他體格強壯棕紅色的臉，黑而精粗的小鬍子，在別人眼中他是個美男子，連市長都懼他三分。但市長為了顯示自己高人一等，决心請一個家庭教師。
木匠索黑爾的兒子於連，由於精通拉丁文，被選作市長傢的家庭教師。他約十八九歲，長得文弱清秀，兩衹又大又黑的眼睛。在寧靜時，眼中射出火一般的光輝，又象是熟思和探尋的樣子，但一瞬間，又流露出可怕的仇恨，由於他整天抱着書本不放，不願做力氣活，因而遭到全家的嫌棄與怨恨，經常被父親和兩個哥哥毒打。他小時瘋狂地崇拜拿破倫，渴望像拿破侖那樣身佩長劍，做世界的主人。認為拿破侖“由一個既卑微又窮睏的下級軍官，衹靠他身佩的長劍，便做了世界上的主人”。但後來他又想當神甫，因為“如今我們眼見四十歲左右的神父能拿到十萬法郎的薪俸。這就是說他們能拿到十萬法郎，三倍於拿破侖當時手下的著名的大將的收入。”於是，他投拜在神甫西朗的門下，鑽研起神學來。他仗着驚人的好記性把一本拉丁文《聖經》全背下來，這事轟動了全城。
市長的年輕漂亮的妻子是在修道院長大的，對像她丈夫那樣庸俗粗魯的男人，打心底裏感到厭惡。由於沒有愛情，她把心思全放在教養3 個孩子身上。她認為男人“除了金錢、權勢、勳章的貪欲以外，對於一切都是麻木不仁”。最初，她把於連想象為一個滿面污垢的鄉下佬，誰知見面時卻大出她的意料：面前這個年輕人竟是這樣白皙，眼睛又這樣溫柔動人。以為他“實際上是一個少女”故意假扮男裝。她對於連産生好感，甚至覺得“衹有在這個少年教士的心裏，纔有慷慨、高尚、仁愛”。瑞那夫人的女僕愛麗沙也愛上了於連，愛麗沙得到了一筆遺産，要西郎神父轉達她對於連的愛慕，於連拒絶了女僕愛麗沙的愛情。瑞那夫人得知此事心裏異常高興，一股幸福的流泉瀉落在她的心海裏，她發覺自己對他産生了一種從未有過的一種感情。
夏天市長一傢搬到凡尼鎮鄉下花園別墅居住，晚上乘涼的時候，全家聚在一株菩提樹下，於連無意間觸到了瑞那夫人的手，她一下子縮回去了，於連以為瑞那夫人看不起他，便决心必須握住這衹手。第二天晚上他果然做了，瑞那夫人的手被於連偷偷地緊握着，滿足了他的自尊心。瑞那夫人被愛情與道德責任折騰得一夜未合眼。她决定用冷淡的態度去對待於連。可是當於連不在傢時，她又忍不住對他的思念。而於連也變得更大膽，他在心裏暗想：“我應該再進一步，務必要在這個女人身上達到目的纔好。如果我以後發了財，有人恥笑我當家庭教師低賤，我就讓大傢瞭解，是愛情使我接受這位置的”。
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
深夜2 點闖進了她的房裏。開始，她對於連的無禮行為很生氣，但當她看到“他兩眼充滿眼淚”時，便同情起他來。她暗想，如果在10年前能愛上於連該多好。不過，在於連的心裏則完全沒有這種想法，他的愛完全是出於一種野心，一種因占有欲而産生的狂熱。他那樣貧窮，能夠得到這麽高貴、這麽美麗的婦人，已經是上天的恩賜了。
不久，皇帝駕臨維立葉爾，在瑞那夫人的安排下，於連被聘當上了儀仗隊隊員，使他有在公衆面前大出風頭的機會。迎駕期間，於連作為陪祭教士參加瞻拜聖骸典禮。之後，他對木爾侯爵的侄子、年輕的安倍主教十分崇敬。心想，安倍主教如此年輕就有顯赫的地位，而且倍受女人的青睞，暗下决心“寧願受宗教的製裁，也要達到令美人羨慕的境界”。
瑞那夫人心愛的兒子病危，她認為這是上帝對自己不道德行為的一種懲罰，她陷入了可怕的懺悔裏。這時，愛麗沙又把夫人的事暗中告訴了哇列諾先生，他早先曾貪戀瑞那夫人的美色碰了一鼻子灰，便趁機給市長寫了一封告密信。但市長擔心如果把妻子趕出傢門，自己將失去一大筆遺産，而且也有損於自己的名譽，采取 “衹懷疑而不證實”的辦法。但在這座城市裏，街談巷議對瑞那夫人和於連卻越來越不利。一次愛麗沙嚮西朗神父懺悔時，又談出於連與瑞那夫人的秘密關係。關心於連的神父要他到省城貝尚鬆神學院進修。告別後的第三天夜裏，於連又冒險趕回維立葉爾，與瑞那夫人見面，此時的瑞那夫人由於思念的痛苦，已憔悴得不像人樣了。
貝尚鬆是法國一座古城，城墻高大。初到神學院，那門上的鐵十字架，修士的黑色道袍，和他們麻木不仁的面孔都使於連感到恐怖。院長彼拉神父是西郎神父的老相識，因此對於連特別關照。他對於連說： “嘻笑就是虛偽的舞臺”。
在321個學生中，絶大部分是平庸的青年，由此於連自信會迅速獲得成功。他悄悄對自己說：“在拿破侖統治下，我會是個軍曹，在未來的神父當中，我將是個主教。”由於學習成績名列前茅，院長竟讓他當新舊約全書課程的輔導教師。
但神學院是個偽善的地方，他很快就墮入了憂鬱之中。彼拉院長受到排擠辭職不幹了，並介紹於連為木爾侯爵的秘書。彼拉神父專門給他介紹侯爵一傢他說 “你要十分註意，一個象我們這種行業的人，衹有靠這些大人先生們纔有前途……在這樣一個社會裏，如果你得不到人傢的尊敬，你的不幸是註定的了”。
侯爵瘦削而矮小，有一對十分靈活的眼睛，頭上帶有金色假發。他是個極端保皇黨人，法國大革命時，他逃亡國外，王朝復闢後，他在朝中取得了顯赫的地位。於連每天的工作就是為他抄寫稿件和公文，侯爵對於連十分滿意，派他去管理自己兩個省的田莊，還負責自己與貝尚鬆代理主教福力列之間的訴訟通訊，後又派他到倫敦去搞外交，贈給他一枚十字勳章，這使於連感到獲得了極大的成功。
於連在貴族社會的熏陶下，很快學會了巴黎上流社會的藝術，成了一個花花公子，甚至在木爾小姐的眼裏，他也已脫了外省青年的土氣。木爾小姐名叫瑪特兒，是一個有金慄色頭髮，體態勻稱，非常秀麗的姑娘，但“這雙眼睛透露出一種內心可怕的冷酷”。她讀過許多浪漫主義愛情小說，並被3 世紀前一段傢史所激動：她的祖先木爾是皇后瑪嘉瑞特的情夫，被國王處死後，皇后嚮劊子手買下了他的頭，在深夜裏親自把它埋葬在蒙馬特山腳下。她十分崇拜皇后的這種為愛情而敢冒大不韙的精神，她的名字瑪特兒就是皇后的愛稱。
起初，於連並不愛瑪特兒那清高傲慢的性格，但想到“她卻能夠把社會上的好地位帶給她丈夫”時，便熱烈地追求起她來。瑪特兒也知道於連出身低微，但她懷着一種“我敢於戀愛一個社會地位離我那樣搖遠的人，已算是偉大和勇敢了”的浪漫主義感情，因此，她在花園裏主動輓着於連的胳膊，還主動給他寫信宣佈愛情。為了考驗於連的膽量，她要於連在明亮的月光下用梯子爬到她的房間去。於連照樣做了，當晚她就委身於他了，過後瑪特兒很快就後悔了 。
一次，他們在圖書室相遇，她邊哭邊對於連說：“我恨我委身於第一個來到的人”於連感到痛苦，他摘下挂在墻上的一把古劍要殺死她，瑪特兒一點都不害怕反而驕傲地走到於連面前，她認為於連愛她已經愛到要殺了她的程度，便又與他好起來。夜裏於連再次爬進她的房間，她請求於連做她的“主人”，自己將永遠做他的奴隸，表示要永遠服從他。可是，衹要於連稍許表露出愛慕的意思，她又轉為憤怒，毫不掩飾的侮辱他，並公開宣佈不再愛他。
因為於連的記憶力很好，木爾侯爵讓他列席一次保王黨人的秘密會議，會上有政府首相、紅衣主教、將軍。會後，木爾侯爵讓於連把記在心裏的會議記錄冒着生命危險帶到國外去。在驛站換馬時，差點被敵方殺害，幸好他機警地逃脫了，與外國使節接上了頭，然後留在那等回信。在那兒他遇到俄國柯哈莎夫王子，他是個情場老手，於連便把自己的愛情苦惱講給他聽，他建議於連假裝去追求另一個女性，以達到降伏瑪特兒的目的，並把自己的五十三封情書交給她，“把這些信轉抄一份寄給你所選定的女性，這個女性必須是瞧你不起的對方的熟人。”
於連回到巴黎後，將這些情書一封封寄給元帥夫人，元帥夫人受了感動，給於連回信，瑪特兒再也忍耐不住了，跪倒在於連的腳下，求他愛她，於連的虛榮心得到極大的滿足，“看呀！這個驕傲的女人，居然躺在我的腳下了！”。不久，瑪特兒發現自己懷孕了，她寫信告訴父親，要他原諒於連，並成全他們的婚事。侯爵在愛女堅持下，一再讓步。先是給了他們一份田産，準備讓他們結婚後搬到田莊去住。隨後，又給於連寄去一張驃騎兵中尉的委任狀，授予貴族稱號。
於連在驃騎兵駐地穿上軍官製服，陶醉在個人野心滿足的快樂中，“由於恩寵，剛剛纔作了二天的中尉，他已經在盤算好至遲有象過去的大將軍一樣，在三十歲上，就能做到司令，那麽到二十三歲，就應該在中尉以上。他衹想到他的榮譽和他的兒子。”這時，他突然收到了瑪特兒寄來的急信。信中說：一切都完了。於連急忙回去，原來瑞那夫人給木爾侯爵寫信揭露了他們原先的關係。這時惱羞成怒的於連立即跳上去維拉葉爾的馬車，買了一支手槍，隨即趕到教堂，嚮正在禱告的瑞那夫人連發兩槍，夫人當場中槍倒地。 於連因開槍殺人被捕了。
入獄後，他頭腦冷靜下來，對自己行為感到悔恨和恥辱。他意識到野心已經破滅，但死對他並不可怕。瑞那夫人受了槍傷並沒有死。稍愈後，她買通獄吏，免得於連受虐待。於連知道後痛哭流涕。瑪特兒也從巴黎趕來探監，為營救於連四處奔走，於連對此並不感動，衹覺得憤怒。公審的時候，於連當衆宣稱他不祈求任何人的恩賜，他說：“我决不是被我的同階級的人審判，我在陪審官的席上，沒有看見一個富有的農民，而衹是些令人氣憤的資産階級的人。”結果法庭宣佈於連犯了蓄謀殺人罪，判處死刑。 瑞那夫人不顧一切前去探監。
於連這纔知道，她給侯爵的那封信，是由聽她懺悔的教士起草並強迫她寫的。於連和瑞那夫人彼此饒恕了，他拒絶上訴，也拒絶做臨終禱告，以示對封建貴族階級專製的抗議。
在一個晴和的日子裏，於連走上了斷頭臺。瑪特兒買下了他的頭顱，按照她敬仰的瑪嘉瑞特皇后的方式，親自埋葬了自己情人的頭顱。至於瑞那夫人，在於連死後的第三天，抱吻着她的兒子，也離開了人間。
《紅與黑》-作品賞析
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品。小說圍繞主人公於連個人奮鬥的經歷與最終失敗，尤其是他的兩次愛情的描寫，廣泛地展現了“19世紀初30年間壓在法國人民頭上的歷屆政府所帶來的社會風氣”，強烈地抨擊了復闢王朝時期貴族的反動，教會的黑暗和資産階級新貴的卑鄙庸俗，利欲熏心。因此小說雖以於連的愛情生活作為主綫，但畢竟不是愛情小說，而是一部“政治小說”。
司湯達是善於從愛情中反映重大社會問題的文學大師。於連的兩次愛情都與時代風雲緊密相連，這是當時階級角逐的一種表現形式，他對德·雷納爾夫人後來的確也産生了真正的感情，但開始是出於小市民對權貴的報復心理。因此，於連第一次占有德· 雷納爾夫人的手的時候，他感到的並不是愛情的幸福，而是拿破侖式的野心的勝利，是“狂歡”和“喜悅”，是報復心理的滿足。
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
如果說於連對德·雷納爾夫人的追求還有某些真摯情感的話，那麽於連對瑪蒂爾德小姐的愛情則純屬政治上的角逐，瑪蒂爾德既有貴族少女的傲慢、任性的氣質，又受到法國大革命的深刻影響。她認為，如果再有一次大革命，主宰社會的必定是像於連這樣富於朝氣的平民青年。同於連結成伉儷，既富於浪漫氣息，又找到了有力的靠山。而於連則認為與瑪蒂爾德小姐結婚可以爬上高位，青雲直上，因此不惜去騙取她的愛情。
但是，於連的兩次愛情最終還是失敗了。這是因為在復闢時期，封建勢力嚮市民階層猖狂反撲。於連不是統治階級圈子裏的人，那個階級决不會容忍於連那樣的人實現其宏願。
《紅與黑》在典型環境典型性格的塑造、勻稱的藝術結構和白描手法的運用上都有突出的成就，而司湯達所以被評論傢稱為“現代小說之父”則是因為他在《紅與黑》中表現了卓越的心理描寫天才。現實主義作傢都強調細節的真實，但司湯達與巴爾紮剋不一樣，他着重刻畫的不是客觀環境，而是人物內心活動的細緻和逼真，作者常常三言兩語就把人物行動、周圍環境交代過去，而對其內心的活動則洋洋灑灑，不惜筆墨，愛情心理描寫更是絲絲入扣，動人心弦。作者在於連得知德·雷納爾夫人寫揭發信到槍殺她這段情節上僅用了三頁，而與瑪蒂爾德的愛情卻花了上百頁的篇幅細緻描寫。德·雷納爾夫人墮入情網時的那種喜悅、痛苦、懺悔而又不甘放棄幸福的復雜心理的展現，也令人拍案叫絶。
《紅與黑》-書評
紅與黑這部小說的故事據悉是采自1828年2月29日《法院新聞》所登載一個死刑案件。在拿破侖帝國時代，紅與黑代表着“軍隊”與“教會”，是有野心的法國青年發展的兩個管道（一說是輪盤上的紅色與黑色）。
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品。小說圍繞主人公於連個人奮鬥的經歷與最終失敗，尤其是他的兩次愛情的描寫，廣泛地展現了“19世紀初30年間壓在法國人民頭上的歷屆政府所帶來的社會風氣”，強烈地抨擊了復闢王朝時期貴族的反動，教會的黑暗和資産階級新貴的卑鄙庸俗，利欲熏心。因此小說雖以於連的愛情生活作為主綫，但畢竟不是愛情小說，而是一部“政治小說”。
司湯達是善於從愛情中反映重大社會問題的文學大師。於連的兩次愛情都與時代風雲緊密相連，這是當時階級角逐的一種表現形式，他對德· 雷納爾夫人後來的確也産生了真正的感情，但開始是出於小市民對權貴的報復心理。因此，於連第一次占有德·雷納爾夫人的手的時候，他感到的並不是愛情的幸福，而是拿破侖式的野心的勝利，是“狂歡”和“喜悅”，是報復心理的滿足。
如果說於連對德·雷納爾夫人的追求還有某些真摯情感的話，那麽於連對瑪蒂爾德小姐的愛情則純屬政治上的角逐，瑪蒂爾德既有貴族少女的傲慢、任性的氣質，又受到法國大革命的深刻影響。她認為，如果再有一次大革命，主宰社會的必定是像於連這樣富於朝氣的平民青年。同於連結成伉儷，既富於浪漫氣息，又找到了有力的靠山。而於連則認為與瑪蒂爾德小姐結婚可以爬上高位，青雲直上，因此不惜去騙取她的愛情。
但是，於連的兩次愛情最終還是失敗了。這是因為在復闢時期，封建勢力嚮市民階層猖狂反撲。於連不是統治階級圈子裏的人，那個階級决不會容忍於連那樣的人實現其宏願。
《紅與黑》在典型環境典型性格的塑造、勻稱的藝術結構和白描手法的運用上都有突出的成就，而司湯達所以被評論傢稱為“現代小說之父”則是因為他在《紅與黑》中表現了卓越的心理描寫天才。
《紅與黑》-歷史影響
.《紅與黑》
靈魂的哲學詩
於連是１９世紀歐洲文學中一係列反叛資本主義社會的英雄人物的"始祖"
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
法國批判現實主義文學的奠基之作_
１９世紀卓越的政治小說
現代小說之父的經典著作
１９世紀歐洲文學史中第一部批判現實主義傑作
美國作傢海明威開列的必讀書
被英國小說傢毛姆認為是真正的傑作的文學書
１９８６年法國《讀書》雜志推薦的理想藏書?
《紅與黑》是法國現實主義作傢司湯達的代表作，自１８３０年問世以來，贏得了世界各國一代又一代讀者的心，特別為年輕人所喜愛。作品所塑造的"少年野心傢"於連是一個具有高度典型意義的人物形象，已成為個人奮鬥的野心傢的代名詞。
小說發表後，當時的社會流傳"不讀《紅與黑》，就無法在政界混"的諺語，而本書則被許多國傢列為禁書。《紅與黑》在心理深度的挖掘上遠遠超出了同時代作傢所能及的層次。它開創了後世"意識流小說"、"心理小說"的先河。後來者競相仿效這種"司湯達文體"，使小說創作"嚮內轉"，發展到重心理刻畫、重情緒抒發的現代形態。人們因此稱司湯達為"現代小說之父"。《紅與黑》在今天仍被公認為歐洲文學皇冠上一枚最為璀璨精緻的藝術寶石，是文學史上描寫政治黑暗最經典的著作之一，１００多年來，被譯成多種文字廣為流傳，並被多次改編為戲劇、電影。
司湯達的《紅與黑》已顯示了２０世紀小說的方向，進入這本書中，我們就會感受到衹有第一流的心理小說傢才能給予的震撼，因為它帶給我們的是更富真實感的精神內涵。
--美國教授 費迪曼
《紅與黑》是我平生最受益的書籍。
--法國傑出小說傢 紀德
司湯達的《紅與黑》中的於連是１９世紀歐洲文學中一係列反叛資本社會主義的英雄人物的"始祖"。
--高爾基
《紅與黑》在心理深度的挖掘上遠遠超出了同時代作傢所能及的層次。小說以深刻細膩的筆調充分展示了主人公的心靈空間，廣泛運用了獨白和自由聯想等多種藝術手法挖掘出了於連深層意識的活動，並開創了後世"意識流小說"、"心理小說"的先河，是一首"靈魂的哲學詩"。
--《外國文學史》
《紅與黑》在文學史上影響深遠，法國有專門研究司湯達和《紅與黑》的學問--"司湯達學"和"紅學"，還有專門研究該書的"司湯達俱樂部"。
-- 《法國文學史》
疑慮和矛盾中的於連
無疑，《紅與黑》是一部充滿着魅力的作品。西方關於研究司湯達的作品數量足以與中國研究《紅樓夢》的"紅學"等量齊觀。的確，作為法國批判現實主義文學的奠基之作，《紅與黑》中對於１９世紀上半期法國風起雲涌的各方鬥爭和矛盾都展現得頗為深遠，貴族、大小資産階級、教會人士一個個的粉墨登場，潛伏在表象下的實力的交戰刻畫了當時整個社會的腐朽和虛偽。而在我看來，《紅與黑》之所以如此經久不衰，都絶不僅僅在於該作品所體現出的政治和社會意義。記得藍棣之老師曾經說過，一部現實主義作品大大不同於記錄社會的高級文件，文學的意義也絶不僅在於記錄，我想，是《紅與黑》中主人公於連充滿着無限矛盾與反差的各種思想和行為，更足以讓每位讀者看得目瞪口呆卻又如癡如醉，足以讓每一位研究者分析成千次上萬次。
我們隨便從中挑一段來讀，便很容易看出於連的極端細膩和敏感。在市長傢做家庭教師時，於連已經通過出色地背誦拉丁文《聖約》贏得了德·瑞納一傢上下颳目相看，更憑着他清秀的長相、少年的自尊打動了德·瑞納夫人的芳心。而於連卻出於一種奇怪的自尊和一定要證明點什麽的心理，望着她，仿佛她是個仇敵，他正要上前和她决鬥交鋒……
就是這樣，這個怪異的於連牢牢抓住了讀者們的心。於連的敏感和細膩、倔強是天生的，他還擁有着超群的記憶力，而他的高傲和自尊、崇拜權勢則是後天環境的賦予。於連確實是十分自我的，在他的心目中，尊嚴被提到了一個至高無上的地位，他可以放棄輕而易舉就能到手的錢財，因為他需要的是別人的尊重。但他對於"自尊"的理想和追求又最終把他引嚮了歧途。
於連雖然有着民主的思想和英雄主義的熱情，但當他得到了拉莫爾公爵的賞識時，他卻逐步地嚮貴族勢力妥協了，這時的於連仿佛衹知道為拉莫爾公爵的一場政治陰謀走足報信。在他的個人奮鬥歷程中，他經歷着一次次的反抗和妥協。他是機智聰明的，然而在很多方面，我們衹能說他是天真而無知的，比起整個社會中精心鑽營的人們來，他是無力的，也是無助的。
左拉在《論司湯達》中是這樣寫的："他（司湯達）停留在一種抽象的意願裏，他要人這種生物不包括在自然裏，而是靠在一邊站着，然後宣告衹有心靈是高貴的"。左拉覺得於連是"完全裝配好的智慧和情感的機器"，"純粹在思辯中産生的創造物"，他"專在推理上下功夫"，主張自然主義的左拉認為司湯達在創作中帶有觀念學者和邏輯學者的身份，於連似乎衹是永遠在心理活動，外界的事務，哪管它春夏與秋鼕，能對於連産生震動的永遠都衹是他的想像中別人對他的輕衊與尊重。這不也正說明了作者對於連心理上入木三分的刻畫嗎？
《紅與黑》中於連的心理在疑慮和矛盾中掙紮，對於人物的思索是一個極大的寶庫，采之不竭，魅力無窮！
《紅與黑》-人物分析
———《紅與黑》中於連人物形象分析
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
於連是世界名著《紅與黑》中的主人公。對其形象分析,在文學理論界有種種評說,可謂衆說紛紜,莫衷一是。有人認
為, 他虛偽、陰險,踩着女人的肩膀嚮上爬,是一個地地道道的陰謀傢、野心傢。也有人認為他是當時反對封建權貴的勇士,資産階級個人奮鬥的典型代表。更有人認為他是拿破侖時代的悲劇英雄。
《紅與黑》是法國 19世紀傑出的批判現實主義作傢司湯達(1783-1842)的代表作。其副題是“一八三○年紀事”。在這部小說中,作者以法國波旁王朝復闢時代為背景,以平民知識分子於連·索黑爾與貴族資産階級上層社會頑強麯折的鬥爭為主綫,着重描寫了他從18歲到德·瑞那市長傢當家庭教師開始,到23歲因槍傷市長夫人而被送上斷頭臺為止短短5年間的生活歷程。
於連出生在小城維立葉爾郊區的一個鋸木廠家庭。他幼時身材瘦弱,在傢中被看成是“不會掙錢”的“不中用” 的人,常遭父兄打駡和奚落。卑賤的出身又使他常常受到社會的歧視。少年時期的於連聰明好學,意志堅強,精力充沛。他接受了啓蒙思想傢的自由平等觀念和無神論思想,並在一位拿破侖時代老軍醫的影響下,崇拜拿破侖,幻想着通過“入軍界、穿軍裝、走一條‘紅’的道路”來建功立業、飛黃騰達。然而,在他14歲那年,波旁王朝復闢了,平民可以平步青雲的拿破侖時代過去了。於連不得不選擇“黑”的道路,幻想進入修道院,穿起教士黑袍,以便將來成為一名“年俸十萬法朗的大主教”。18歲時,於連到維立葉爾市長德·瑞那傢中擔任家庭教師,而市長衹將他看成拿工錢的奴僕。自尊心受到傷害的於連,便以追求市長夫人來報復市長。他與市長夫人的關係暴露後,被迫進入了貝尚鬆神學院,投奔了院長彼拉,當上了神學院的講師。後因教會內部的派係鬥爭,彼拉院長被排擠出神學院,於連衹得隨彼拉來巴黎,當上了極端保皇黨領袖德·拉·木爾侯爵的的私人秘書。他因沉靜、聰明和善於諂媚,得到了木爾侯爵的器重,以淵博的學識與優雅的氣質,又贏得了侯爵女兒瑪特兒小姐的愛慕。儘管不愛瑪特兒,但他為了抓住這塊實現野心的跳板,竟使用詭計占有了她。得知女兒已經懷孕後, 侯爵不得不同意這門婚姻。於連為此獲得一個騎士稱號、一份田産和一個驃騎兵中尉的軍銜。此時的於連又開始做起了“三十歲當司令”的美夢。他變成了一個封建貴族階
級的忠實奴僕,在保皇黨策劃的政治陰謀中為主子效力,冒着生命危險為侯爵傳遞情報。正當他躊躇滿志時,貴族階級與反動教會狼狽為姦,誘使市長夫人寫了揭發於連的告密信,致使侯爵取消他與瑪特兒的婚約。於連美夢破滅,盛怒之下槍傷了德·瑞那夫人,被判處死刑。在獄中,於連終於明白:像他這樣出身卑賤的人,在等級森嚴的封建制度中是不可能通過個人奮鬥而飛黃騰達的。他拒絶上訴,坦然走上了斷頭臺。
於連的性格是復雜的,並隨周圍環境的變化而不斷發生演變。時代的變遷,不堪受辱的內心,受人歧視的社會地位以
及嚮上爬而不能如願的憤怒,形成了於連自尊、懷疑、敏感和積極反抗的性格。他時刻牢記着自己與上層社會之間的地位不同、階級不同、觀念不同,對生活持以懷疑的態度,用他那異常敏銳的目光觀察周圍的一切,尋找歧視他、傷害他的敵人,搜索自己受辱的蛛絲馬跡。他不甘屈服,不甘忍受時代和上層社會的撥弄,用拿破侖的英雄主義武裝自己,為維護自己的個性而奮起反抗,時刻處於凜然不可侵犯的戰鬥狀態,與整個社會作戰。“在這個奇異的年輕人心裏,差不多時時刻刻都有暴風雨”。他憎恨做奴僕,要求與上流社會的人平起平坐,以保持自己的尊嚴。當父親要他去德·瑞那市長傢當家庭教師時,一貫敢怒而不敢言的於連卻以“我不願意做奴僕”表示拒絶。老索黑爾說這不是做奴僕,於連當即要加以證實:“到他傢裏,我同誰一塊吃飯呢?”可見於連把這個問題看得很重。然而,正是這種自尊心理使他贏得了尊敬、友誼和愛情。而當他最初出現在市長大人府邸的大門時,顯然還是個質樸幼稚、天良未泯的年輕鄉下人。也就在這裏,他目睹種種社會貧富不均現象而十分氣憤,但更為自己寄人籬下的屈辱地位而痛惜不已,於是就對市長及其一傢人産生了本能的輕衊和憎惡之感。雖然他淵博的知識和驚人的記憶力贏得了市長一傢的好感,但他在這裏感受到的“僅僅是他對已經插身進來的上流社會的仇恨和恐懼”。
於連驕矜自持,自視甚高,這種自尊心理一旦面臨惡言劣語、霸道行徑的襲擊,就使其隱藏着的仇恨心理爆發出來並大
膽反擊。即使在愛情這樣的人類最細微的感情方面,於連感到的往往不是幸福,而是自尊心滿足後的喜悅和驕傲,並把這種勝利看作是拿破侖式的勝利。在我們看來,這似乎不可思議,卻恰恰體現出於連是以全部精力來反抗上層社會的。
在德·瑞那市長傢,於連是為了報復市長大人對自己的輕衊,粉碎他的驕傲心理,而帶着戰鬥的情緒走進市長夫人的
房間的。即使在與德·瑞那夫人進行熱戀時,於連的這種仇恨心理和反抗也從未停止過。他始終把愛情看成是他對貴族階級的報復和爭取自由平等的願望。這一點,也在於連和瑪特兒侯爵小姐的交往中得到了充分體現。他敢於輕視傲慢的瑪特兒小姐,並曾這樣想:“我知道保持我的自尊心, 我沒有嚮她說我愛她。”當他收到瑪特兒小姐的愛情告白信時,首先想到的是他終於戰勝了情敵柯西樂侯爵,可以平等地與木爾侯爵坐在同一條凳子上。他立刻自豪地得出結論:“侯爵和我的價值,已經過去了,結果是汝拉山的窮木匠占據了重要的一面。”這哪裏是什麽談情說愛,簡直就是一場鬥爭,而鬥爭的目標便是貴族階級的榮譽和地位。正如於連自己所說的那樣:“在這場尚在準備的戰鬥裏,身世的驕傲,像一座高山,是她和我當中的軍事陣地,這高山,便是我進攻的目標。”由此看來,於連並不僅僅把她們作為女人去“占有”,而是當作一個階級去“徵服”的。他占有她們不在於肉感,而在於滿足他那平民的、要求尊嚴的靈魂。這在一定程度上反映了當時法國殘酷的階級鬥爭現實,也反映了於連在愛情方面的反抗精神。
於連的雄心壯志中不可避免地含有出於個人野心的成分。在維立葉爾市,這種野心往往被反抗、報復和維護個人尊
嚴的思想所衝淡;在貝尚鬆神學院,他為偽裝自己而刻苦學習,博得院長和大主教的歡心,自信不久就能當上主教,野心
萌發,在偽善的道路上邁上一大步。而在巴黎,自擔任木爾侯爵的私人秘書以來,他地位驟變,環境巨變,在都市風氣嚴重腐蝕下,虛榮心惡性膨脹,個人的雄心壯志開始嚮個人野心逐步轉化。
進入巴黎時,於連的心情是矛盾復雜的。一方面,他憎恨巴黎的一切,認為“巴黎是陰謀偽善的中心”;另一方面,他又
因“終於要在偉大的事業的舞臺上顯露身手”而高興。在他的內心深處經歷了一場又一場真誠與虛偽、自尊與虛榮的激烈搏鬥之後,他鄙視上層社會的紈絝子弟,卻又欣賞他們的“文雅有禮”,逐漸陶醉在上流社會的美女、音樂和鮮花之中。他十分仇視侯爵巧取豪奪、大發橫財的行徑,但當領悟到侯爵有意識把自己栽培成“一個上流社會的人”時,卻又甘心為侯爵效力。在維立葉爾,於連從未曾想過“怎樣去奉承人,怎樣去替人傢說話”,到巴黎後,他卻在野心的驅使下,為了替極端無恥的“老蠢材”謀取美差,竟利用職權之便擠走了正直的葛斯先生。事後,他良心復現,對自己的惡行驚嘆不已。但隨機又為自己辯解道:“如果我想成功的話,我還要做許多不公道的事情。”然而,即使在墮落的過程中,於連依然在某種程度上保持了平民的自尊,個人反抗未盡泯滅。他在侯爵面前的從不卑躬屈膝,以及在侯爵的責駡傷害了他的尊嚴時的傲然離去,使得老姦巨猾的侯爵深感這個平民青年的“性格的根本處有可怕的地方”。他的這種自尊是“貧民骨氣”的一種表現,任何情況下凜然不可侵犯。正如彼拉神甫和瑪特兒小姐所說,於
連雖出身低微,但意氣高傲, 心中燃燒神聖的火焰。他最不能容忍“別人的輕視”。自尊,是他個人奮鬥中用以自衛的唯一武器。
從於連的整個奮鬥過程來看,他為實現自己的幻想,靠的是自己出衆的才能和頑強奮鬥,而不是他人的施捨。對他來
講,最重要的是個人的榮譽和尊嚴。他所追求的是靠自己的力量贏得的。他曾先後拒絶市長夫人、木爾侯爵的錢財,靠着他的高傲和才能,徵服了市長夫人和侯爵女兒。在咪列諾的豪華的客廳裏,他曾想如果把這裏劫來的財産分一半給他,他也不會要。與德·瑞那夫人分別時,這位夫人要將數千法郎送給他,他憤怒地拒絶了。他對德·瑞那夫人說:“你是否願意使我們的愛情變為可憎的回憶?”他不需憐憫,也不容玷污愛情,而希望像拿破侖那樣靠個人的力量和奮鬥來取得功名。他爭的是骨氣而非虛榮。正是為了雄心和骨氣,他纔給自己規定了反抗上層社會的責任。但是,我們必須承認於連的奮鬥和抗爭“是除了個人尊嚴和出路而別無他想的個人英雄主義”,所以,我們不能說他是個野心傢。在作者筆下,他的“野心”,衹不過是一個小人物敢於在復闢時代對現實表示不滿和反抗,敢於在才智、勇氣和人格上壓倒包括大資産階級在內的上層社會;“敢於在大事業舞臺上顯身手”。為自己贏得和拿破侖一樣的命運,作者聲稱於連是“野心傢”即表達了對復闢時代的不滿,也隱晦地贊美了於連的反抗精神。
然而,於連的奮鬥反抗註定是以悲劇而告終。於連是王朝復闢時代受壓抑的小資産階級青年的典型,其反抗是基於
社會對他的壓製和他個人的野心。他追念大革命時代,因為像他這樣有才幹的青年會有數不清的機會可以大顯身手。可是,在這個扼殺一切生機的王朝復闢時代,他衹能扮演“一個逆叛的平民的悲慘角色”,成了與“整個社會作戰的不幸的人”。他憎惡教會的虛偽卑鄙,蔑視貴族的“合法的權威”,鄙夷資産階級的“污穢財富”。於是他對復闢社會進行了報復性的絶望的反抗。雖在一定程度上反映了人民對復闢社會的抗議情緒,但由於其是孤軍奮戰,缺少明確的政治理想和目標,所以必然遭到失敗。另外,於連的奮鬥和抗爭傷害了大貴族、大資産階級的利益。他們根本不准許出身低賤的於連跨進他們的營壘。最後貴族和教會勾結,設下圈套,逼德·瑞那夫人寫告密信揭發於連,斷送了他飛黃騰達的前程,致使於連槍傷市長夫人而被推上斷頭臺,落得身首異處的悲慘下場。於連的悲劇,是一個出身低微的知識分子在一定條件下,才能無從發揮、野心不能實現的悲劇。
於連死時年僅23歲。他熱愛自由和生命,但為了不在貴族面前失去平民的尊嚴,他拒絶上訴。當德·瑞那市長提出
上訴時,於連被激怒了。他叫道:“我不願對死刑上訴,即使你用毒藥、刀子、手槍、火炭或任何另外一種方法,終結一個危害你的生命,我也不對死刑上訴。”這種硬漢,為了保持尊嚴,為了不成為上流社會恥笑和侮辱的對象,寧可失去愛情、生命, 真可謂不乏英雄氣概。
在那個黑暗的復闢年代,於連作為一個平民知識分子為了爭得自己的社會地位,嚮貴族資産階級所作的反抗與鬥爭
精神是應該給以肯定的。他那難以折服的骨氣,無疑在當時具有進步意義。這也正是我們同情他的根本原因。
總之,無論從時代背景、主題、藝術構思,還是從於連性格形成發展的全過程着眼,於連都不是野心傢,而是資産階級個人奮鬥的典型代表,是悲劇英雄。儘管他有出自野心的功利打算,但平民的自尊和對統治階級的本能反抗始終是他的主導方面。雖然這種個人英雄主義不可取,但我們不應該用現代的尺度去苛求一個特殊時代的人。在一個半世紀前封建復闢時代的法國,個人英雄主義思潮在一定程度上反映了廣大人民,特別是中小資産階級不滿現實,要求改變地位的願望客觀上對反動統治階級起到了一定的衝擊作用。
The novel’s composite full title, Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siécle (The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century), indicates its two-fold literary purpose, a psychological portrait of the romantic protagonist, Julien Sorel, and an analytic, sociological satire of the French social order under the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30). In English, Le Rouge et le Noir is variously translated as Red and Black, Scarlet and Black, and The Red and the Black, without the sub-title.
Background
Occurring from September 1826 until July 1831, Le Rouge et le Noir is the Bildungsroman of Julien Sorel, the intelligent, ambitious, protagonist from a poor family, who fails to understand much about the ways of the world he sets to conquer. He harbours many romantic illusions, becoming mostly a pawn in the political machinations of the ruthless influential people about him. The adventures of the flawed hero satirize French nineteenth-century society, especially the hypocrisy and materialism of the aristocracy and members of the Roman Catholic Church in foretelling the coming radical changes that will depose them from French society.
The first volume’s epigraph is attributed to Danton: “La vérité, l’âpre vérité” (“The truth, the harsh truth”), which is fictional, like most of the chapter epigraphs. The first chapter of each volume repeats the title Le Rouge et le Noir and the Chronique de 1830 sub-title. The novel’s title denotes the contrasting uniforms of the Army and the Church. Early in the story, Julien Sorel realistically observes that under the Bourbon restoration it is impossible for a man of his plebian social class to distinguish himself in the army (as he might have done under Napoleon), hence only a Church career offers social advancement and glory.
In some editions, the first book ("Livre premier", ending after Chapter XXX) concludes with the quotation: “To the Happy Few”, a dedication variously interpreted to mean either the few readers who could understand Stendhal’s writing; or a Shakespearean allusion to Henry V (1599); or a sardonic reference to the well-born of society (viz. Canto 11 Don Juan, 1821, by Byron)l or to those living per “Beylisme”: personal happiness being the purpose of existence — accordingly, every action taken to achieve that is permissible — hence Julien’s expediency with people — wherein “La force d’ame” (“Force of the soul”) is the most important virtue, realised as courage, resolution, and moral energy. (It seems most French editions do not have this quote, for unclear reasons; as is well-known, it appears also at the end of "La Chartreuse de Parme").
Plot
In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class.
Book I presents the ambitious son of a carpenter in the (fictional) Verrières village, in Franche-Comté, France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army, than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chénal, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Despite appearing to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value, and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people.
He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had romantic designs upon him. The abbé Chénal orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard (of the Jansenist faction more hated that the Jesuit faction in the diocese), likes Julien, and becomes his protector. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, the abbé Pirard leaves the seminary, yet first rescues Julien from the persecution he would have suffered as his protégé, by recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist.
Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the élite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success.
The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a political letter (that he has memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted, by an unsatisfying love affair, thus he only learns the message by rote, but not its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, the plebeian Julien Sorel risks his life in secret service to the right-wing monarchists he most opposes; to himself, Julien rationalises such action as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects.
Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (he won her over aristocrat suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour proffered to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy.
Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination, and his affection for him, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind upon receiving the reply to a character-reference-letter he wrote to the abbé Chénal, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; however, the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women.
On learning the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels to his home village of Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives. Despite the efforts of Mathilde, Madame de Rênal, and the priests devoted to him since his early life, Julien Sorel is determined to die — because the materialist society of Bourbon Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility possessing neither money nor social connections.
Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Despite her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty.
Moreover, when Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, that resurrects his intemperate love for her — lain dormant throughout his Parisian time and his passion for Mathilde, who visits him during the final days of his life. Afterwards, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished, sixteenth-century French tale of Queen Margot visiting her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. In the nineteenth century, Mathilde de la Mole so treated Julien Sorel’s severed head, making a shrine of his tomb, in the Italian fashion.
Structure and themes
Le Rouge et le Noir occurs in the latter years of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30) and the days of the 1830 July Revolution that established the Kingdom of the French (1830–48). Julien Sorel’s worldly ambitions are motivated by the emotional tensions, between his idealistic Republicanism (especially nostalgic allegiance to Napoleon), and the realistic politics of counter-revolutionary conspiracy, by Jesuit-supported legitimists, notably the Marquis de la Mole, whom Julien serves, for personal gain. Presuming a knowledgeable reader, the novelist Stendhal only alludes to the historical background of Le Rouge et le Noir — yet did sub-title it Chronique de 1830 (“Chronicle of 1830”). Moreover, the reader wishing an exposé of the same historical background might wish to read Lucien Leuwen (1834), Stendhal’s un-finished novel, posthumously published in 1894.
Stendhal repeatedly questions the possibility, and the desirability, of “sincerity”, because most of the characters, especially Julien Sorel, are acutely aware of having to play a role to gain social approval. In that nineteenth-century context, the word “hypocrisy” denoted the affectation of high religious sentiment; in The Red and the Black it connotes the contradiction between thinking and feeling.
In Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, 1961, (Deceit, Desire and the Novel) philosopher and critic René Girard identifies in Le Rouge et le Noir the triangular structure he denominates as “mimetic desire”, which reveals how a person’s desire for another is always mediated by a third party, i.e. one desires a person only when he or she is desired by someone else. Girard’s proposition accounts for the perversity of the Mathilde–Julien relationship, especially when he begins courting the widow Mme de Fervaques, to pique Mathilde’s jealousy, but also Julien’s fascination with and membership to the high society he simultaneously desires and despises; to wit, in achieving said literary effect, Stendhal wrote the epigraphs — literary, poetic, historic quotations — that he attributed to others.
Literary and critical significance
The novel marks the beginning of realism.
André Gide said that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the twentieth century. In Stendhal’s time, prose novels included dialogue and omniscient narrator descriptions; his great contribution to literary technique was describing the psychologies (feelings, thoughts, inner monologues) of the characters, resultantly he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (1948), the protagonist Hugo Barine suggests pseudonyms for himself, including “Julien Sorel”, whom he resembles.
Joyce Carol Oates stated in the Afterword to her novel them that she originally titled the manuscript Love and Money as a nod to classic 19th century novels, among them, The Red and The Black "whose class-conscious hero Julien Sorel is less idealistic, greedier, and crueler than Jules Wendell but is cleary his spiritual kinsman".
Translations
Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siècle (1830) was first translated to English circa 1900; the best-known translation, The Red and the Black (1926), by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrief, has been, like his other translations, characterised as one of his “fine, spirited renderings, not entirely accurate on minor points of meaning . . . Scott Moncrieff’s versions have not really been superseded”. The version by Robert M. Adams, for the Norton Critical Editions series, also is highly regarded; it “is more colloquial; his edition includes an informative section on backgrounds and sources, and excerpts from critical studies”. About Burton Raffel’s 2006 translation for the Modern Library, an anonymous Amazon.com reviewer said it is “actually a vulgar, anachronistic retelling of Stendhal’s novel. I recall abandoning it in disgust when the main character refers to his life as a total ‘blast’ ”. MTV was obviously very popular in 1838 [sic] France”. In its stead, that reviewer recommends C. K. Scott-Moncrieff’s translation, revised by scholar Ann Jefferson, (Everyman paperback, ISBN 0460876430).
Film adaptations
* Der geheime Kurier (The Secret Courier) is a silent 1928 German film by Gennaro Righelli, featuring Ivan Mosjoukine, Lil Dagover, and Valeria Blanka.
* Il Corriere del re (The Courier of the King) is a black-and-white 1947 Italian film adaptation of the story also directed by Gennaro Righelli. It features Rossano Brazzi, Valentina Cortese, and Irasema Dilián.
* Another film adaptation of the novel was released in 1954, directed by Claude Autant-Lara. It stars Gerard Philipe, Antonella Lualdi and Danielle Darrieux. It won the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics award for the best film of the year.
* Le Rouge et le Noir is a 1961 French made-for-TV film version directed by Pierre Cardinal, with Robert Etcheverry, Micheline Presle, Marie Laforêt, and Jean-Roger Caussimon.
* A BBC TV mini-series in five episodes The Scarlet and the Black, was made in 1965, starring John Stride, June Tobin, and Karin Fernald.
* Krasnoe i chyornoe (Red and Black) is a 1976 Soviet film version, directed by Sergei Gerasimov, with Nikolai Yeryomenko Ml, Natalya Bondarchuk, and Natalya Belokhvostikova.
* Another BBC TV mini-series called The Scarlet and the Black was first broadcast in 1993, starring Ewan McGregor, Rachel Weisz and Stratford Johns as the Abbe Pirard. A notable addition to the plot was the spirit of Napoleon (Christopher Fulford) who advises Sorel (McGregor) through his rise and fall.
* A made-for-TV film version of the novel called The Red and the Black was first broadcast in 1997 by Koch Lorber Films, starring Kim Rossi Stuart, Carole Bouquet and Judith Godrèche; it was directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe. This version is available on DVD.
《紅與黑》是法國作傢司湯達創作的一部長篇小說，現在，已經被世界公認為文學史上的經典。《紅與黑》是法國批判現實主義的第一部傑出作品。作者被譽為法國以至整個歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人之一。
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品
《紅與黑》-作品簡介
《紅與黑》是法國作傢司湯達創作的一部長篇小說，現在，已經被世界公認為文學史上的經典。《紅與黑》是法國批判現實主義的第一部傑出作品。作者被譽為法國以至整個歐洲批判現實主義文學的奠基人之一。
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品。小說圍繞主人公於連個人奮鬥的經歷與最終失敗，尤其是他的兩次愛情的描寫，廣泛地展現了“19世紀初30年間壓在法國人民頭上的歷屆政府所帶來的社會風氣”，強烈地抨擊了復闢王朝時期貴族的反動，教會的黑暗和資産階級新貴的卑鄙庸俗，利欲熏心。因此小說雖以於連的愛情生活作為主綫，但畢竟不是愛情小說，而是一部“政治小說”。
《紅與黑》-內容簡介
小說主人公於連,是一個木匠的兒子,年輕英俊,意志堅強,精明能幹,從小就希望藉助個人的努力與奮鬥躋身上流社會。
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
在法國與瑞士接壤的維立葉爾城，座落在山坡上，美麗的杜伯河繞城而過，河岸上矗立着許多鋸木廠。 市長德瑞那是個出身貴族，在扣上挂滿勳章的人。
他五十歲左右，他的房子有全城最漂亮的花園，他的妻子是最有錢而又最漂亮的妻子，但他才智不足， “他衹能辦到嚴格地收討他人的欠債，當他自己欠人傢的債時，他愈遲還愈好”。在這座城市還有一個重要人物，是貧民寄養所所長——哇列諾先生。他花了一萬到一萬兩千法郎纔弄到這個職位，他體格強壯棕紅色的臉，黑而精粗的小鬍子，在別人眼中他是個美男子，連市長都懼他三分。但市長為了顯示自己高人一等，决心請一個家庭教師。
木匠索黑爾的兒子於連，由於精通拉丁文，被選作市長傢的家庭教師。他約十八九歲，長得文弱清秀，兩衹又大又黑的眼睛。在寧靜時，眼中射出火一般的光輝，又象是熟思和探尋的樣子，但一瞬間，又流露出可怕的仇恨，由於他整天抱着書本不放，不願做力氣活，因而遭到全家的嫌棄與怨恨，經常被父親和兩個哥哥毒打。他小時瘋狂地崇拜拿破倫，渴望像拿破侖那樣身佩長劍，做世界的主人。認為拿破侖“由一個既卑微又窮睏的下級軍官，衹靠他身佩的長劍，便做了世界上的主人”。但後來他又想當神甫，因為“如今我們眼見四十歲左右的神父能拿到十萬法郎的薪俸。這就是說他們能拿到十萬法郎，三倍於拿破侖當時手下的著名的大將的收入。”於是，他投拜在神甫西朗的門下，鑽研起神學來。他仗着驚人的好記性把一本拉丁文《聖經》全背下來，這事轟動了全城。
市長的年輕漂亮的妻子是在修道院長大的，對像她丈夫那樣庸俗粗魯的男人，打心底裏感到厭惡。由於沒有愛情，她把心思全放在教養3 個孩子身上。她認為男人“除了金錢、權勢、勳章的貪欲以外，對於一切都是麻木不仁”。最初，她把於連想象為一個滿面污垢的鄉下佬，誰知見面時卻大出她的意料：面前這個年輕人竟是這樣白皙，眼睛又這樣溫柔動人。以為他“實際上是一個少女”故意假扮男裝。她對於連産生好感，甚至覺得“衹有在這個少年教士的心裏，纔有慷慨、高尚、仁愛”。瑞那夫人的女僕愛麗沙也愛上了於連，愛麗沙得到了一筆遺産，要西郎神父轉達她對於連的愛慕，於連拒絶了女僕愛麗沙的愛情。瑞那夫人得知此事心裏異常高興，一股幸福的流泉瀉落在她的心海裏，她發覺自己對他産生了一種從未有過的一種感情。
夏天市長一傢搬到凡尼鎮鄉下花園別墅居住，晚上乘涼的時候，全家聚在一株菩提樹下，於連無意間觸到了瑞那夫人的手，她一下子縮回去了，於連以為瑞那夫人看不起他，便决心必須握住這衹手。第二天晚上他果然做了，瑞那夫人的手被於連偷偷地緊握着，滿足了他的自尊心。瑞那夫人被愛情與道德責任折騰得一夜未合眼。她决定用冷淡的態度去對待於連。可是當於連不在傢時，她又忍不住對他的思念。而於連也變得更大膽，他在心裏暗想：“我應該再進一步，務必要在這個女人身上達到目的纔好。如果我以後發了財，有人恥笑我當家庭教師低賤，我就讓大傢瞭解，是愛情使我接受這位置的”。
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
深夜2 點闖進了她的房裏。開始，她對於連的無禮行為很生氣，但當她看到“他兩眼充滿眼淚”時，便同情起他來。她暗想，如果在10年前能愛上於連該多好。不過，在於連的心裏則完全沒有這種想法，他的愛完全是出於一種野心，一種因占有欲而産生的狂熱。他那樣貧窮，能夠得到這麽高貴、這麽美麗的婦人，已經是上天的恩賜了。
不久，皇帝駕臨維立葉爾，在瑞那夫人的安排下，於連被聘當上了儀仗隊隊員，使他有在公衆面前大出風頭的機會。迎駕期間，於連作為陪祭教士參加瞻拜聖骸典禮。之後，他對木爾侯爵的侄子、年輕的安倍主教十分崇敬。心想，安倍主教如此年輕就有顯赫的地位，而且倍受女人的青睞，暗下决心“寧願受宗教的製裁，也要達到令美人羨慕的境界”。
瑞那夫人心愛的兒子病危，她認為這是上帝對自己不道德行為的一種懲罰，她陷入了可怕的懺悔裏。這時，愛麗沙又把夫人的事暗中告訴了哇列諾先生，他早先曾貪戀瑞那夫人的美色碰了一鼻子灰，便趁機給市長寫了一封告密信。但市長擔心如果把妻子趕出傢門，自己將失去一大筆遺産，而且也有損於自己的名譽，采取 “衹懷疑而不證實”的辦法。但在這座城市裏，街談巷議對瑞那夫人和於連卻越來越不利。一次愛麗沙嚮西朗神父懺悔時，又談出於連與瑞那夫人的秘密關係。關心於連的神父要他到省城貝尚鬆神學院進修。告別後的第三天夜裏，於連又冒險趕回維立葉爾，與瑞那夫人見面，此時的瑞那夫人由於思念的痛苦，已憔悴得不像人樣了。
貝尚鬆是法國一座古城，城墻高大。初到神學院，那門上的鐵十字架，修士的黑色道袍，和他們麻木不仁的面孔都使於連感到恐怖。院長彼拉神父是西郎神父的老相識，因此對於連特別關照。他對於連說： “嘻笑就是虛偽的舞臺”。
在321個學生中，絶大部分是平庸的青年，由此於連自信會迅速獲得成功。他悄悄對自己說：“在拿破侖統治下，我會是個軍曹，在未來的神父當中，我將是個主教。”由於學習成績名列前茅，院長竟讓他當新舊約全書課程的輔導教師。
但神學院是個偽善的地方，他很快就墮入了憂鬱之中。彼拉院長受到排擠辭職不幹了，並介紹於連為木爾侯爵的秘書。彼拉神父專門給他介紹侯爵一傢他說 “你要十分註意，一個象我們這種行業的人，衹有靠這些大人先生們纔有前途……在這樣一個社會裏，如果你得不到人傢的尊敬，你的不幸是註定的了”。
侯爵瘦削而矮小，有一對十分靈活的眼睛，頭上帶有金色假發。他是個極端保皇黨人，法國大革命時，他逃亡國外，王朝復闢後，他在朝中取得了顯赫的地位。於連每天的工作就是為他抄寫稿件和公文，侯爵對於連十分滿意，派他去管理自己兩個省的田莊，還負責自己與貝尚鬆代理主教福力列之間的訴訟通訊，後又派他到倫敦去搞外交，贈給他一枚十字勳章，這使於連感到獲得了極大的成功。
於連在貴族社會的熏陶下，很快學會了巴黎上流社會的藝術，成了一個花花公子，甚至在木爾小姐的眼裏，他也已脫了外省青年的土氣。木爾小姐名叫瑪特兒，是一個有金慄色頭髮，體態勻稱，非常秀麗的姑娘，但“這雙眼睛透露出一種內心可怕的冷酷”。她讀過許多浪漫主義愛情小說，並被3 世紀前一段傢史所激動：她的祖先木爾是皇后瑪嘉瑞特的情夫，被國王處死後，皇后嚮劊子手買下了他的頭，在深夜裏親自把它埋葬在蒙馬特山腳下。她十分崇拜皇后的這種為愛情而敢冒大不韙的精神，她的名字瑪特兒就是皇后的愛稱。
起初，於連並不愛瑪特兒那清高傲慢的性格，但想到“她卻能夠把社會上的好地位帶給她丈夫”時，便熱烈地追求起她來。瑪特兒也知道於連出身低微，但她懷着一種“我敢於戀愛一個社會地位離我那樣搖遠的人，已算是偉大和勇敢了”的浪漫主義感情，因此，她在花園裏主動輓着於連的胳膊，還主動給他寫信宣佈愛情。為了考驗於連的膽量，她要於連在明亮的月光下用梯子爬到她的房間去。於連照樣做了，當晚她就委身於他了，過後瑪特兒很快就後悔了 。
一次，他們在圖書室相遇，她邊哭邊對於連說：“我恨我委身於第一個來到的人”於連感到痛苦，他摘下挂在墻上的一把古劍要殺死她，瑪特兒一點都不害怕反而驕傲地走到於連面前，她認為於連愛她已經愛到要殺了她的程度，便又與他好起來。夜裏於連再次爬進她的房間，她請求於連做她的“主人”，自己將永遠做他的奴隸，表示要永遠服從他。可是，衹要於連稍許表露出愛慕的意思，她又轉為憤怒，毫不掩飾的侮辱他，並公開宣佈不再愛他。
因為於連的記憶力很好，木爾侯爵讓他列席一次保王黨人的秘密會議，會上有政府首相、紅衣主教、將軍。會後，木爾侯爵讓於連把記在心裏的會議記錄冒着生命危險帶到國外去。在驛站換馬時，差點被敵方殺害，幸好他機警地逃脫了，與外國使節接上了頭，然後留在那等回信。在那兒他遇到俄國柯哈莎夫王子，他是個情場老手，於連便把自己的愛情苦惱講給他聽，他建議於連假裝去追求另一個女性，以達到降伏瑪特兒的目的，並把自己的五十三封情書交給她，“把這些信轉抄一份寄給你所選定的女性，這個女性必須是瞧你不起的對方的熟人。”
於連回到巴黎後，將這些情書一封封寄給元帥夫人，元帥夫人受了感動，給於連回信，瑪特兒再也忍耐不住了，跪倒在於連的腳下，求他愛她，於連的虛榮心得到極大的滿足，“看呀！這個驕傲的女人，居然躺在我的腳下了！”。不久，瑪特兒發現自己懷孕了，她寫信告訴父親，要他原諒於連，並成全他們的婚事。侯爵在愛女堅持下，一再讓步。先是給了他們一份田産，準備讓他們結婚後搬到田莊去住。隨後，又給於連寄去一張驃騎兵中尉的委任狀，授予貴族稱號。
於連在驃騎兵駐地穿上軍官製服，陶醉在個人野心滿足的快樂中，“由於恩寵，剛剛纔作了二天的中尉，他已經在盤算好至遲有象過去的大將軍一樣，在三十歲上，就能做到司令，那麽到二十三歲，就應該在中尉以上。他衹想到他的榮譽和他的兒子。”這時，他突然收到了瑪特兒寄來的急信。信中說：一切都完了。於連急忙回去，原來瑞那夫人給木爾侯爵寫信揭露了他們原先的關係。這時惱羞成怒的於連立即跳上去維拉葉爾的馬車，買了一支手槍，隨即趕到教堂，嚮正在禱告的瑞那夫人連發兩槍，夫人當場中槍倒地。 於連因開槍殺人被捕了。
入獄後，他頭腦冷靜下來，對自己行為感到悔恨和恥辱。他意識到野心已經破滅，但死對他並不可怕。瑞那夫人受了槍傷並沒有死。稍愈後，她買通獄吏，免得於連受虐待。於連知道後痛哭流涕。瑪特兒也從巴黎趕來探監，為營救於連四處奔走，於連對此並不感動，衹覺得憤怒。公審的時候，於連當衆宣稱他不祈求任何人的恩賜，他說：“我决不是被我的同階級的人審判，我在陪審官的席上，沒有看見一個富有的農民，而衹是些令人氣憤的資産階級的人。”結果法庭宣佈於連犯了蓄謀殺人罪，判處死刑。 瑞那夫人不顧一切前去探監。
於連這纔知道，她給侯爵的那封信，是由聽她懺悔的教士起草並強迫她寫的。於連和瑞那夫人彼此饒恕了，他拒絶上訴，也拒絶做臨終禱告，以示對封建貴族階級專製的抗議。
在一個晴和的日子裏，於連走上了斷頭臺。瑪特兒買下了他的頭顱，按照她敬仰的瑪嘉瑞特皇后的方式，親自埋葬了自己情人的頭顱。至於瑞那夫人，在於連死後的第三天，抱吻着她的兒子，也離開了人間。
《紅與黑》-作品賞析
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品。小說圍繞主人公於連個人奮鬥的經歷與最終失敗，尤其是他的兩次愛情的描寫，廣泛地展現了“19世紀初30年間壓在法國人民頭上的歷屆政府所帶來的社會風氣”，強烈地抨擊了復闢王朝時期貴族的反動，教會的黑暗和資産階級新貴的卑鄙庸俗，利欲熏心。因此小說雖以於連的愛情生活作為主綫，但畢竟不是愛情小說，而是一部“政治小說”。
司湯達是善於從愛情中反映重大社會問題的文學大師。於連的兩次愛情都與時代風雲緊密相連，這是當時階級角逐的一種表現形式，他對德·雷納爾夫人後來的確也産生了真正的感情，但開始是出於小市民對權貴的報復心理。因此，於連第一次占有德· 雷納爾夫人的手的時候，他感到的並不是愛情的幸福，而是拿破侖式的野心的勝利，是“狂歡”和“喜悅”，是報復心理的滿足。
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
如果說於連對德·雷納爾夫人的追求還有某些真摯情感的話，那麽於連對瑪蒂爾德小姐的愛情則純屬政治上的角逐，瑪蒂爾德既有貴族少女的傲慢、任性的氣質，又受到法國大革命的深刻影響。她認為，如果再有一次大革命，主宰社會的必定是像於連這樣富於朝氣的平民青年。同於連結成伉儷，既富於浪漫氣息，又找到了有力的靠山。而於連則認為與瑪蒂爾德小姐結婚可以爬上高位，青雲直上，因此不惜去騙取她的愛情。
但是，於連的兩次愛情最終還是失敗了。這是因為在復闢時期，封建勢力嚮市民階層猖狂反撲。於連不是統治階級圈子裏的人，那個階級决不會容忍於連那樣的人實現其宏願。
《紅與黑》在典型環境典型性格的塑造、勻稱的藝術結構和白描手法的運用上都有突出的成就，而司湯達所以被評論傢稱為“現代小說之父”則是因為他在《紅與黑》中表現了卓越的心理描寫天才。現實主義作傢都強調細節的真實，但司湯達與巴爾紮剋不一樣，他着重刻畫的不是客觀環境，而是人物內心活動的細緻和逼真，作者常常三言兩語就把人物行動、周圍環境交代過去，而對其內心的活動則洋洋灑灑，不惜筆墨，愛情心理描寫更是絲絲入扣，動人心弦。作者在於連得知德·雷納爾夫人寫揭發信到槍殺她這段情節上僅用了三頁，而與瑪蒂爾德的愛情卻花了上百頁的篇幅細緻描寫。德·雷納爾夫人墮入情網時的那種喜悅、痛苦、懺悔而又不甘放棄幸福的復雜心理的展現，也令人拍案叫絶。
《紅與黑》-書評
紅與黑這部小說的故事據悉是采自1828年2月29日《法院新聞》所登載一個死刑案件。在拿破侖帝國時代，紅與黑代表着“軍隊”與“教會”，是有野心的法國青年發展的兩個管道（一說是輪盤上的紅色與黑色）。
《紅與黑》是19世紀歐洲批判現實主義的奠基作品。小說圍繞主人公於連個人奮鬥的經歷與最終失敗，尤其是他的兩次愛情的描寫，廣泛地展現了“19世紀初30年間壓在法國人民頭上的歷屆政府所帶來的社會風氣”，強烈地抨擊了復闢王朝時期貴族的反動，教會的黑暗和資産階級新貴的卑鄙庸俗，利欲熏心。因此小說雖以於連的愛情生活作為主綫，但畢竟不是愛情小說，而是一部“政治小說”。
司湯達是善於從愛情中反映重大社會問題的文學大師。於連的兩次愛情都與時代風雲緊密相連，這是當時階級角逐的一種表現形式，他對德· 雷納爾夫人後來的確也産生了真正的感情，但開始是出於小市民對權貴的報復心理。因此，於連第一次占有德·雷納爾夫人的手的時候，他感到的並不是愛情的幸福，而是拿破侖式的野心的勝利，是“狂歡”和“喜悅”，是報復心理的滿足。
如果說於連對德·雷納爾夫人的追求還有某些真摯情感的話，那麽於連對瑪蒂爾德小姐的愛情則純屬政治上的角逐，瑪蒂爾德既有貴族少女的傲慢、任性的氣質，又受到法國大革命的深刻影響。她認為，如果再有一次大革命，主宰社會的必定是像於連這樣富於朝氣的平民青年。同於連結成伉儷，既富於浪漫氣息，又找到了有力的靠山。而於連則認為與瑪蒂爾德小姐結婚可以爬上高位，青雲直上，因此不惜去騙取她的愛情。
但是，於連的兩次愛情最終還是失敗了。這是因為在復闢時期，封建勢力嚮市民階層猖狂反撲。於連不是統治階級圈子裏的人，那個階級决不會容忍於連那樣的人實現其宏願。
《紅與黑》在典型環境典型性格的塑造、勻稱的藝術結構和白描手法的運用上都有突出的成就，而司湯達所以被評論傢稱為“現代小說之父”則是因為他在《紅與黑》中表現了卓越的心理描寫天才。
《紅與黑》-歷史影響
.《紅與黑》
靈魂的哲學詩
於連是１９世紀歐洲文學中一係列反叛資本主義社會的英雄人物的"始祖"
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
法國批判現實主義文學的奠基之作_
１９世紀卓越的政治小說
現代小說之父的經典著作
１９世紀歐洲文學史中第一部批判現實主義傑作
美國作傢海明威開列的必讀書
被英國小說傢毛姆認為是真正的傑作的文學書
１９８６年法國《讀書》雜志推薦的理想藏書?
《紅與黑》是法國現實主義作傢司湯達的代表作，自１８３０年問世以來，贏得了世界各國一代又一代讀者的心，特別為年輕人所喜愛。作品所塑造的"少年野心傢"於連是一個具有高度典型意義的人物形象，已成為個人奮鬥的野心傢的代名詞。
小說發表後，當時的社會流傳"不讀《紅與黑》，就無法在政界混"的諺語，而本書則被許多國傢列為禁書。《紅與黑》在心理深度的挖掘上遠遠超出了同時代作傢所能及的層次。它開創了後世"意識流小說"、"心理小說"的先河。後來者競相仿效這種"司湯達文體"，使小說創作"嚮內轉"，發展到重心理刻畫、重情緒抒發的現代形態。人們因此稱司湯達為"現代小說之父"。《紅與黑》在今天仍被公認為歐洲文學皇冠上一枚最為璀璨精緻的藝術寶石，是文學史上描寫政治黑暗最經典的著作之一，１００多年來，被譯成多種文字廣為流傳，並被多次改編為戲劇、電影。
司湯達的《紅與黑》已顯示了２０世紀小說的方向，進入這本書中，我們就會感受到衹有第一流的心理小說傢才能給予的震撼，因為它帶給我們的是更富真實感的精神內涵。
--美國教授 費迪曼
《紅與黑》是我平生最受益的書籍。
--法國傑出小說傢 紀德
司湯達的《紅與黑》中的於連是１９世紀歐洲文學中一係列反叛資本社會主義的英雄人物的"始祖"。
--高爾基
《紅與黑》在心理深度的挖掘上遠遠超出了同時代作傢所能及的層次。小說以深刻細膩的筆調充分展示了主人公的心靈空間，廣泛運用了獨白和自由聯想等多種藝術手法挖掘出了於連深層意識的活動，並開創了後世"意識流小說"、"心理小說"的先河，是一首"靈魂的哲學詩"。
--《外國文學史》
《紅與黑》在文學史上影響深遠，法國有專門研究司湯達和《紅與黑》的學問--"司湯達學"和"紅學"，還有專門研究該書的"司湯達俱樂部"。
-- 《法國文學史》
疑慮和矛盾中的於連
無疑，《紅與黑》是一部充滿着魅力的作品。西方關於研究司湯達的作品數量足以與中國研究《紅樓夢》的"紅學"等量齊觀。的確，作為法國批判現實主義文學的奠基之作，《紅與黑》中對於１９世紀上半期法國風起雲涌的各方鬥爭和矛盾都展現得頗為深遠，貴族、大小資産階級、教會人士一個個的粉墨登場，潛伏在表象下的實力的交戰刻畫了當時整個社會的腐朽和虛偽。而在我看來，《紅與黑》之所以如此經久不衰，都絶不僅僅在於該作品所體現出的政治和社會意義。記得藍棣之老師曾經說過，一部現實主義作品大大不同於記錄社會的高級文件，文學的意義也絶不僅在於記錄，我想，是《紅與黑》中主人公於連充滿着無限矛盾與反差的各種思想和行為，更足以讓每位讀者看得目瞪口呆卻又如癡如醉，足以讓每一位研究者分析成千次上萬次。
我們隨便從中挑一段來讀，便很容易看出於連的極端細膩和敏感。在市長傢做家庭教師時，於連已經通過出色地背誦拉丁文《聖約》贏得了德·瑞納一傢上下颳目相看，更憑着他清秀的長相、少年的自尊打動了德·瑞納夫人的芳心。而於連卻出於一種奇怪的自尊和一定要證明點什麽的心理，望着她，仿佛她是個仇敵，他正要上前和她决鬥交鋒……
就是這樣，這個怪異的於連牢牢抓住了讀者們的心。於連的敏感和細膩、倔強是天生的，他還擁有着超群的記憶力，而他的高傲和自尊、崇拜權勢則是後天環境的賦予。於連確實是十分自我的，在他的心目中，尊嚴被提到了一個至高無上的地位，他可以放棄輕而易舉就能到手的錢財，因為他需要的是別人的尊重。但他對於"自尊"的理想和追求又最終把他引嚮了歧途。
於連雖然有着民主的思想和英雄主義的熱情，但當他得到了拉莫爾公爵的賞識時，他卻逐步地嚮貴族勢力妥協了，這時的於連仿佛衹知道為拉莫爾公爵的一場政治陰謀走足報信。在他的個人奮鬥歷程中，他經歷着一次次的反抗和妥協。他是機智聰明的，然而在很多方面，我們衹能說他是天真而無知的，比起整個社會中精心鑽營的人們來，他是無力的，也是無助的。
左拉在《論司湯達》中是這樣寫的："他（司湯達）停留在一種抽象的意願裏，他要人這種生物不包括在自然裏，而是靠在一邊站着，然後宣告衹有心靈是高貴的"。左拉覺得於連是"完全裝配好的智慧和情感的機器"，"純粹在思辯中産生的創造物"，他"專在推理上下功夫"，主張自然主義的左拉認為司湯達在創作中帶有觀念學者和邏輯學者的身份，於連似乎衹是永遠在心理活動，外界的事務，哪管它春夏與秋鼕，能對於連産生震動的永遠都衹是他的想像中別人對他的輕衊與尊重。這不也正說明了作者對於連心理上入木三分的刻畫嗎？
《紅與黑》中於連的心理在疑慮和矛盾中掙紮，對於人物的思索是一個極大的寶庫，采之不竭，魅力無窮！
《紅與黑》-人物分析
———《紅與黑》中於連人物形象分析
《紅與黑》《紅與黑》
於連是世界名著《紅與黑》中的主人公。對其形象分析,在文學理論界有種種評說,可謂衆說紛紜,莫衷一是。有人認
為, 他虛偽、陰險,踩着女人的肩膀嚮上爬,是一個地地道道的陰謀傢、野心傢。也有人認為他是當時反對封建權貴的勇士,資産階級個人奮鬥的典型代表。更有人認為他是拿破侖時代的悲劇英雄。
《紅與黑》是法國 19世紀傑出的批判現實主義作傢司湯達(1783-1842)的代表作。其副題是“一八三○年紀事”。在這部小說中,作者以法國波旁王朝復闢時代為背景,以平民知識分子於連·索黑爾與貴族資産階級上層社會頑強麯折的鬥爭為主綫,着重描寫了他從18歲到德·瑞那市長傢當家庭教師開始,到23歲因槍傷市長夫人而被送上斷頭臺為止短短5年間的生活歷程。
於連出生在小城維立葉爾郊區的一個鋸木廠家庭。他幼時身材瘦弱,在傢中被看成是“不會掙錢”的“不中用” 的人,常遭父兄打駡和奚落。卑賤的出身又使他常常受到社會的歧視。少年時期的於連聰明好學,意志堅強,精力充沛。他接受了啓蒙思想傢的自由平等觀念和無神論思想,並在一位拿破侖時代老軍醫的影響下,崇拜拿破侖,幻想着通過“入軍界、穿軍裝、走一條‘紅’的道路”來建功立業、飛黃騰達。然而,在他14歲那年,波旁王朝復闢了,平民可以平步青雲的拿破侖時代過去了。於連不得不選擇“黑”的道路,幻想進入修道院,穿起教士黑袍,以便將來成為一名“年俸十萬法朗的大主教”。18歲時,於連到維立葉爾市長德·瑞那傢中擔任家庭教師,而市長衹將他看成拿工錢的奴僕。自尊心受到傷害的於連,便以追求市長夫人來報復市長。他與市長夫人的關係暴露後,被迫進入了貝尚鬆神學院,投奔了院長彼拉,當上了神學院的講師。後因教會內部的派係鬥爭,彼拉院長被排擠出神學院,於連衹得隨彼拉來巴黎,當上了極端保皇黨領袖德·拉·木爾侯爵的的私人秘書。他因沉靜、聰明和善於諂媚,得到了木爾侯爵的器重,以淵博的學識與優雅的氣質,又贏得了侯爵女兒瑪特兒小姐的愛慕。儘管不愛瑪特兒,但他為了抓住這塊實現野心的跳板,竟使用詭計占有了她。得知女兒已經懷孕後, 侯爵不得不同意這門婚姻。於連為此獲得一個騎士稱號、一份田産和一個驃騎兵中尉的軍銜。此時的於連又開始做起了“三十歲當司令”的美夢。他變成了一個封建貴族階
級的忠實奴僕,在保皇黨策劃的政治陰謀中為主子效力,冒着生命危險為侯爵傳遞情報。正當他躊躇滿志時,貴族階級與反動教會狼狽為姦,誘使市長夫人寫了揭發於連的告密信,致使侯爵取消他與瑪特兒的婚約。於連美夢破滅,盛怒之下槍傷了德·瑞那夫人,被判處死刑。在獄中,於連終於明白:像他這樣出身卑賤的人,在等級森嚴的封建制度中是不可能通過個人奮鬥而飛黃騰達的。他拒絶上訴,坦然走上了斷頭臺。
於連的性格是復雜的,並隨周圍環境的變化而不斷發生演變。時代的變遷,不堪受辱的內心,受人歧視的社會地位以
及嚮上爬而不能如願的憤怒,形成了於連自尊、懷疑、敏感和積極反抗的性格。他時刻牢記着自己與上層社會之間的地位不同、階級不同、觀念不同,對生活持以懷疑的態度,用他那異常敏銳的目光觀察周圍的一切,尋找歧視他、傷害他的敵人,搜索自己受辱的蛛絲馬跡。他不甘屈服,不甘忍受時代和上層社會的撥弄,用拿破侖的英雄主義武裝自己,為維護自己的個性而奮起反抗,時刻處於凜然不可侵犯的戰鬥狀態,與整個社會作戰。“在這個奇異的年輕人心裏,差不多時時刻刻都有暴風雨”。他憎恨做奴僕,要求與上流社會的人平起平坐,以保持自己的尊嚴。當父親要他去德·瑞那市長傢當家庭教師時,一貫敢怒而不敢言的於連卻以“我不願意做奴僕”表示拒絶。老索黑爾說這不是做奴僕,於連當即要加以證實:“到他傢裏,我同誰一塊吃飯呢?”可見於連把這個問題看得很重。然而,正是這種自尊心理使他贏得了尊敬、友誼和愛情。而當他最初出現在市長大人府邸的大門時,顯然還是個質樸幼稚、天良未泯的年輕鄉下人。也就在這裏,他目睹種種社會貧富不均現象而十分氣憤,但更為自己寄人籬下的屈辱地位而痛惜不已,於是就對市長及其一傢人産生了本能的輕衊和憎惡之感。雖然他淵博的知識和驚人的記憶力贏得了市長一傢的好感,但他在這裏感受到的“僅僅是他對已經插身進來的上流社會的仇恨和恐懼”。
於連驕矜自持,自視甚高,這種自尊心理一旦面臨惡言劣語、霸道行徑的襲擊,就使其隱藏着的仇恨心理爆發出來並大
膽反擊。即使在愛情這樣的人類最細微的感情方面,於連感到的往往不是幸福,而是自尊心滿足後的喜悅和驕傲,並把這種勝利看作是拿破侖式的勝利。在我們看來,這似乎不可思議,卻恰恰體現出於連是以全部精力來反抗上層社會的。
在德·瑞那市長傢,於連是為了報復市長大人對自己的輕衊,粉碎他的驕傲心理,而帶着戰鬥的情緒走進市長夫人的
房間的。即使在與德·瑞那夫人進行熱戀時,於連的這種仇恨心理和反抗也從未停止過。他始終把愛情看成是他對貴族階級的報復和爭取自由平等的願望。這一點,也在於連和瑪特兒侯爵小姐的交往中得到了充分體現。他敢於輕視傲慢的瑪特兒小姐,並曾這樣想:“我知道保持我的自尊心, 我沒有嚮她說我愛她。”當他收到瑪特兒小姐的愛情告白信時,首先想到的是他終於戰勝了情敵柯西樂侯爵,可以平等地與木爾侯爵坐在同一條凳子上。他立刻自豪地得出結論:“侯爵和我的價值,已經過去了,結果是汝拉山的窮木匠占據了重要的一面。”這哪裏是什麽談情說愛,簡直就是一場鬥爭,而鬥爭的目標便是貴族階級的榮譽和地位。正如於連自己所說的那樣:“在這場尚在準備的戰鬥裏,身世的驕傲,像一座高山,是她和我當中的軍事陣地,這高山,便是我進攻的目標。”由此看來,於連並不僅僅把她們作為女人去“占有”,而是當作一個階級去“徵服”的。他占有她們不在於肉感,而在於滿足他那平民的、要求尊嚴的靈魂。這在一定程度上反映了當時法國殘酷的階級鬥爭現實,也反映了於連在愛情方面的反抗精神。
於連的雄心壯志中不可避免地含有出於個人野心的成分。在維立葉爾市,這種野心往往被反抗、報復和維護個人尊
嚴的思想所衝淡;在貝尚鬆神學院,他為偽裝自己而刻苦學習,博得院長和大主教的歡心,自信不久就能當上主教,野心
萌發,在偽善的道路上邁上一大步。而在巴黎,自擔任木爾侯爵的私人秘書以來,他地位驟變,環境巨變,在都市風氣嚴重腐蝕下,虛榮心惡性膨脹,個人的雄心壯志開始嚮個人野心逐步轉化。
進入巴黎時,於連的心情是矛盾復雜的。一方面,他憎恨巴黎的一切,認為“巴黎是陰謀偽善的中心”;另一方面,他又
因“終於要在偉大的事業的舞臺上顯露身手”而高興。在他的內心深處經歷了一場又一場真誠與虛偽、自尊與虛榮的激烈搏鬥之後,他鄙視上層社會的紈絝子弟,卻又欣賞他們的“文雅有禮”,逐漸陶醉在上流社會的美女、音樂和鮮花之中。他十分仇視侯爵巧取豪奪、大發橫財的行徑,但當領悟到侯爵有意識把自己栽培成“一個上流社會的人”時,卻又甘心為侯爵效力。在維立葉爾,於連從未曾想過“怎樣去奉承人,怎樣去替人傢說話”,到巴黎後,他卻在野心的驅使下,為了替極端無恥的“老蠢材”謀取美差,竟利用職權之便擠走了正直的葛斯先生。事後,他良心復現,對自己的惡行驚嘆不已。但隨機又為自己辯解道:“如果我想成功的話,我還要做許多不公道的事情。”然而,即使在墮落的過程中,於連依然在某種程度上保持了平民的自尊,個人反抗未盡泯滅。他在侯爵面前的從不卑躬屈膝,以及在侯爵的責駡傷害了他的尊嚴時的傲然離去,使得老姦巨猾的侯爵深感這個平民青年的“性格的根本處有可怕的地方”。他的這種自尊是“貧民骨氣”的一種表現,任何情況下凜然不可侵犯。正如彼拉神甫和瑪特兒小姐所說,於
連雖出身低微,但意氣高傲, 心中燃燒神聖的火焰。他最不能容忍“別人的輕視”。自尊,是他個人奮鬥中用以自衛的唯一武器。
從於連的整個奮鬥過程來看,他為實現自己的幻想,靠的是自己出衆的才能和頑強奮鬥,而不是他人的施捨。對他來
講,最重要的是個人的榮譽和尊嚴。他所追求的是靠自己的力量贏得的。他曾先後拒絶市長夫人、木爾侯爵的錢財,靠着他的高傲和才能,徵服了市長夫人和侯爵女兒。在咪列諾的豪華的客廳裏,他曾想如果把這裏劫來的財産分一半給他,他也不會要。與德·瑞那夫人分別時,這位夫人要將數千法郎送給他,他憤怒地拒絶了。他對德·瑞那夫人說:“你是否願意使我們的愛情變為可憎的回憶?”他不需憐憫,也不容玷污愛情,而希望像拿破侖那樣靠個人的力量和奮鬥來取得功名。他爭的是骨氣而非虛榮。正是為了雄心和骨氣,他纔給自己規定了反抗上層社會的責任。但是,我們必須承認於連的奮鬥和抗爭“是除了個人尊嚴和出路而別無他想的個人英雄主義”,所以,我們不能說他是個野心傢。在作者筆下,他的“野心”,衹不過是一個小人物敢於在復闢時代對現實表示不滿和反抗,敢於在才智、勇氣和人格上壓倒包括大資産階級在內的上層社會;“敢於在大事業舞臺上顯身手”。為自己贏得和拿破侖一樣的命運,作者聲稱於連是“野心傢”即表達了對復闢時代的不滿,也隱晦地贊美了於連的反抗精神。
然而,於連的奮鬥反抗註定是以悲劇而告終。於連是王朝復闢時代受壓抑的小資産階級青年的典型,其反抗是基於
社會對他的壓製和他個人的野心。他追念大革命時代,因為像他這樣有才幹的青年會有數不清的機會可以大顯身手。可是,在這個扼殺一切生機的王朝復闢時代,他衹能扮演“一個逆叛的平民的悲慘角色”,成了與“整個社會作戰的不幸的人”。他憎惡教會的虛偽卑鄙,蔑視貴族的“合法的權威”,鄙夷資産階級的“污穢財富”。於是他對復闢社會進行了報復性的絶望的反抗。雖在一定程度上反映了人民對復闢社會的抗議情緒,但由於其是孤軍奮戰,缺少明確的政治理想和目標,所以必然遭到失敗。另外,於連的奮鬥和抗爭傷害了大貴族、大資産階級的利益。他們根本不准許出身低賤的於連跨進他們的營壘。最後貴族和教會勾結,設下圈套,逼德·瑞那夫人寫告密信揭發於連,斷送了他飛黃騰達的前程,致使於連槍傷市長夫人而被推上斷頭臺,落得身首異處的悲慘下場。於連的悲劇,是一個出身低微的知識分子在一定條件下,才能無從發揮、野心不能實現的悲劇。
於連死時年僅23歲。他熱愛自由和生命,但為了不在貴族面前失去平民的尊嚴,他拒絶上訴。當德·瑞那市長提出
上訴時,於連被激怒了。他叫道:“我不願對死刑上訴,即使你用毒藥、刀子、手槍、火炭或任何另外一種方法,終結一個危害你的生命,我也不對死刑上訴。”這種硬漢,為了保持尊嚴,為了不成為上流社會恥笑和侮辱的對象,寧可失去愛情、生命, 真可謂不乏英雄氣概。
在那個黑暗的復闢年代,於連作為一個平民知識分子為了爭得自己的社會地位,嚮貴族資産階級所作的反抗與鬥爭
精神是應該給以肯定的。他那難以折服的骨氣,無疑在當時具有進步意義。這也正是我們同情他的根本原因。
總之,無論從時代背景、主題、藝術構思,還是從於連性格形成發展的全過程着眼,於連都不是野心傢,而是資産階級個人奮鬥的典型代表,是悲劇英雄。儘管他有出自野心的功利打算,但平民的自尊和對統治階級的本能反抗始終是他的主導方面。雖然這種個人英雄主義不可取,但我們不應該用現代的尺度去苛求一個特殊時代的人。在一個半世紀前封建復闢時代的法國,個人英雄主義思潮在一定程度上反映了廣大人民,特別是中小資産階級不滿現實,要求改變地位的願望客觀上對反動統治階級起到了一定的衝擊作用。
The novel’s composite full title, Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siécle (The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century), indicates its two-fold literary purpose, a psychological portrait of the romantic protagonist, Julien Sorel, and an analytic, sociological satire of the French social order under the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30). In English, Le Rouge et le Noir is variously translated as Red and Black, Scarlet and Black, and The Red and the Black, without the sub-title.
Background
Occurring from September 1826 until July 1831, Le Rouge et le Noir is the Bildungsroman of Julien Sorel, the intelligent, ambitious, protagonist from a poor family, who fails to understand much about the ways of the world he sets to conquer. He harbours many romantic illusions, becoming mostly a pawn in the political machinations of the ruthless influential people about him. The adventures of the flawed hero satirize French nineteenth-century society, especially the hypocrisy and materialism of the aristocracy and members of the Roman Catholic Church in foretelling the coming radical changes that will depose them from French society.
The first volume’s epigraph is attributed to Danton: “La vérité, l’âpre vérité” (“The truth, the harsh truth”), which is fictional, like most of the chapter epigraphs. The first chapter of each volume repeats the title Le Rouge et le Noir and the Chronique de 1830 sub-title. The novel’s title denotes the contrasting uniforms of the Army and the Church. Early in the story, Julien Sorel realistically observes that under the Bourbon restoration it is impossible for a man of his plebian social class to distinguish himself in the army (as he might have done under Napoleon), hence only a Church career offers social advancement and glory.
In some editions, the first book ("Livre premier", ending after Chapter XXX) concludes with the quotation: “To the Happy Few”, a dedication variously interpreted to mean either the few readers who could understand Stendhal’s writing; or a Shakespearean allusion to Henry V (1599); or a sardonic reference to the well-born of society (viz. Canto 11 Don Juan, 1821, by Byron)l or to those living per “Beylisme”: personal happiness being the purpose of existence — accordingly, every action taken to achieve that is permissible — hence Julien’s expediency with people — wherein “La force d’ame” (“Force of the soul”) is the most important virtue, realised as courage, resolution, and moral energy. (It seems most French editions do not have this quote, for unclear reasons; as is well-known, it appears also at the end of "La Chartreuse de Parme").
Plot
In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class.
Book I presents the ambitious son of a carpenter in the (fictional) Verrières village, in Franche-Comté, France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army, than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chénal, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Despite appearing to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value, and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people.
He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had romantic designs upon him. The abbé Chénal orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard (of the Jansenist faction more hated that the Jesuit faction in the diocese), likes Julien, and becomes his protector. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, the abbé Pirard leaves the seminary, yet first rescues Julien from the persecution he would have suffered as his protégé, by recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist.
Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the élite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success.
The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a political letter (that he has memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted, by an unsatisfying love affair, thus he only learns the message by rote, but not its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, the plebeian Julien Sorel risks his life in secret service to the right-wing monarchists he most opposes; to himself, Julien rationalises such action as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects.
Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (he won her over aristocrat suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour proffered to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy.
Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination, and his affection for him, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind upon receiving the reply to a character-reference-letter he wrote to the abbé Chénal, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; however, the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women.
On learning the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels to his home village of Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives. Despite the efforts of Mathilde, Madame de Rênal, and the priests devoted to him since his early life, Julien Sorel is determined to die — because the materialist society of Bourbon Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility possessing neither money nor social connections.
Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Despite her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty.
Moreover, when Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, that resurrects his intemperate love for her — lain dormant throughout his Parisian time and his passion for Mathilde, who visits him during the final days of his life. Afterwards, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished, sixteenth-century French tale of Queen Margot visiting her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. In the nineteenth century, Mathilde de la Mole so treated Julien Sorel’s severed head, making a shrine of his tomb, in the Italian fashion.
Structure and themes
Le Rouge et le Noir occurs in the latter years of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30) and the days of the 1830 July Revolution that established the Kingdom of the French (1830–48). Julien Sorel’s worldly ambitions are motivated by the emotional tensions, between his idealistic Republicanism (especially nostalgic allegiance to Napoleon), and the realistic politics of counter-revolutionary conspiracy, by Jesuit-supported legitimists, notably the Marquis de la Mole, whom Julien serves, for personal gain. Presuming a knowledgeable reader, the novelist Stendhal only alludes to the historical background of Le Rouge et le Noir — yet did sub-title it Chronique de 1830 (“Chronicle of 1830”). Moreover, the reader wishing an exposé of the same historical background might wish to read Lucien Leuwen (1834), Stendhal’s un-finished novel, posthumously published in 1894.
Stendhal repeatedly questions the possibility, and the desirability, of “sincerity”, because most of the characters, especially Julien Sorel, are acutely aware of having to play a role to gain social approval. In that nineteenth-century context, the word “hypocrisy” denoted the affectation of high religious sentiment; in The Red and the Black it connotes the contradiction between thinking and feeling.
In Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, 1961, (Deceit, Desire and the Novel) philosopher and critic René Girard identifies in Le Rouge et le Noir the triangular structure he denominates as “mimetic desire”, which reveals how a person’s desire for another is always mediated by a third party, i.e. one desires a person only when he or she is desired by someone else. Girard’s proposition accounts for the perversity of the Mathilde–Julien relationship, especially when he begins courting the widow Mme de Fervaques, to pique Mathilde’s jealousy, but also Julien’s fascination with and membership to the high society he simultaneously desires and despises; to wit, in achieving said literary effect, Stendhal wrote the epigraphs — literary, poetic, historic quotations — that he attributed to others.
Literary and critical significance
The novel marks the beginning of realism.
André Gide said that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the twentieth century. In Stendhal’s time, prose novels included dialogue and omniscient narrator descriptions; his great contribution to literary technique was describing the psychologies (feelings, thoughts, inner monologues) of the characters, resultantly he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (1948), the protagonist Hugo Barine suggests pseudonyms for himself, including “Julien Sorel”, whom he resembles.
Joyce Carol Oates stated in the Afterword to her novel them that she originally titled the manuscript Love and Money as a nod to classic 19th century novels, among them, The Red and The Black "whose class-conscious hero Julien Sorel is less idealistic, greedier, and crueler than Jules Wendell but is cleary his spiritual kinsman".
Translations
Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siècle (1830) was first translated to English circa 1900; the best-known translation, The Red and the Black (1926), by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrief, has been, like his other translations, characterised as one of his “fine, spirited renderings, not entirely accurate on minor points of meaning . . . Scott Moncrieff’s versions have not really been superseded”. The version by Robert M. Adams, for the Norton Critical Editions series, also is highly regarded; it “is more colloquial; his edition includes an informative section on backgrounds and sources, and excerpts from critical studies”. About Burton Raffel’s 2006 translation for the Modern Library, an anonymous Amazon.com reviewer said it is “actually a vulgar, anachronistic retelling of Stendhal’s novel. I recall abandoning it in disgust when the main character refers to his life as a total ‘blast’ ”. MTV was obviously very popular in 1838 [sic] France”. In its stead, that reviewer recommends C. K. Scott-Moncrieff’s translation, revised by scholar Ann Jefferson, (Everyman paperback, ISBN 0460876430).
Film adaptations
* Der geheime Kurier (The Secret Courier) is a silent 1928 German film by Gennaro Righelli, featuring Ivan Mosjoukine, Lil Dagover, and Valeria Blanka.
* Il Corriere del re (The Courier of the King) is a black-and-white 1947 Italian film adaptation of the story also directed by Gennaro Righelli. It features Rossano Brazzi, Valentina Cortese, and Irasema Dilián.
* Another film adaptation of the novel was released in 1954, directed by Claude Autant-Lara. It stars Gerard Philipe, Antonella Lualdi and Danielle Darrieux. It won the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics award for the best film of the year.
* Le Rouge et le Noir is a 1961 French made-for-TV film version directed by Pierre Cardinal, with Robert Etcheverry, Micheline Presle, Marie Laforêt, and Jean-Roger Caussimon.
* A BBC TV mini-series in five episodes The Scarlet and the Black, was made in 1965, starring John Stride, June Tobin, and Karin Fernald.
* Krasnoe i chyornoe (Red and Black) is a 1976 Soviet film version, directed by Sergei Gerasimov, with Nikolai Yeryomenko Ml, Natalya Bondarchuk, and Natalya Belokhvostikova.
* Another BBC TV mini-series called The Scarlet and the Black was first broadcast in 1993, starring Ewan McGregor, Rachel Weisz and Stratford Johns as the Abbe Pirard. A notable addition to the plot was the spirit of Napoleon (Christopher Fulford) who advises Sorel (McGregor) through his rise and fall.
* A made-for-TV film version of the novel called The Red and the Black was first broadcast in 1997 by Koch Lorber Films, starring Kim Rossi Stuart, Carole Bouquet and Judith Godrèche; it was directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe. This version is available on DVD.
《父與子》是俄國著名作傢屠格涅夫的代表作。《父與子》完成於1860年8月至1861年 8月，經多次修改後，於1862年在《俄羅斯導報》上。
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
《父與子》是俄國著名作傢屠格涅夫的代表作。《父與子》完成於1860年8月至1861年8月，經多次修改後，於1862年在《俄羅斯導報》上。
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
《父與子》-人物特點
《父與子》的中心人物是平民知識分子巴紮洛夫。巴紮洛夫是平民知識分子的典型，是“新人”的形象，他性格的突出特徵是具有鮮明的革命色彩，這表現在：
1、他激烈地否定現存制度。巴紮洛夫的否定有其歷史的合理性。這裏首先是歷史進步的需要，其次纔是革命者的版面認識和過激情緒。作傢對巴紮洛夫的這種精神特質雖不欣賞，但卻作了真實的描述。
2、蔑視貴族階級。這是平民覺醒的一個重要特徵。巴紮洛夫確信真理在自己手中，確信自己是時代英雄，有權蔑視貴族階級。他對於巴威爾的憤怒挑戰始終從容對待，而且常常擺出一付不屑一顧的態度。在論辯中，在决鬥裏，他老師崇高的勝利者。最後巴威爾也不得不承認自己的光榮已成往事。
3、以平民身份自豪，跟人民保持着密切的關係。巴紮洛夫已經不同於巴西斯托夫，他不再是優秀貴族分子的追隨者，他已經意識到，平民優於貴族。這是平民勢力興起的又一個重要標志。同時，屠格涅夫也表現了巴紮洛夫的知識分子的生活方式使他和人民隔膜起來的情形。一個農民評論巴紮洛夫說：“當然啦，他是一位少爺，他能懂得什麽呢？”這樣的描述也是很深刻的，它揭示了巴紮洛夫高於普通農民和脫離人民的一面，在當時的平民知識分子中，這也是一種典型的現象。這正是後來的民粹主義運動失敗的重要原因之一。
巴紮羅夫是精神上的強者。他充滿自信，生氣勃勃，具有銳利的批判眼光。他和阿爾卡狄傢的僕人們和睦相處，並不妨礙他批判老百姓的落後迷信。他的精神力量和批判鋒芒集中表現在他與巴威爾的論戰上。兩人初次相見，就在感覺上互不相容，進而展露出思想觀點上的針鋒相對。巴紮羅夫以他特有的簡潔、粗魯的話語對巴威爾以強有力的反擊。頗有咄咄逼人之勢。他决不屈從權威，具有自主的人格和評判標準，體現了年青一代獨立思考的處世態度和初生牛犢不怕虎的鬥爭精神，當然，也帶有年輕人從不成熟走嚮成熟的過程中的可能産生的偏頗和極端。但他還是以毋庸置疑的精神優勢壓倒了對手。巴紮羅夫吻費涅奇卡，在巴威爾看來，是嚴重地侵犯了貴族的權利，也是他們之間對立觀點的繼續發展。决鬥暴露了巴威爾的偏狹、虛弱和做作，顯示了巴紮羅夫的豁達、鎮定和自信，雙方精神力量的強弱在此得到進一步的揭示。
巴紮羅夫是行動的巨人，他抨擊貴族的泛泛空談，自己首先從小事做起。他具有實踐能力，註重自然科學研究。他的行動有價值取捨標準：“凡是我們認為有用的事情，我們就依據它行動。”他的行動目標很明確——為未來打掃地盤。他敢於行動的勇氣在一定程度上也表現在對待愛情的態度上。他曾惱怒自己也産生那樣浪漫的情感，但在愛情之火燃燒起來的時候他卻决不回避躲閃。
屠格涅夫寫出了在否定愛情的巴紮羅夫內心，愛情是如何萌芽、發展的，寫得真實可信。但是作傢讓巴紮羅夫在愛情受挫後一蹶不振，重蹈了巴威爾在戀愛上的覆轍，那句對巴威爾的尖刻評價“雄性生物”猶如一記耳光反打在巴紮羅夫自己的臉上。這並不是說，不能寫他的失戀痛苦，英雄也有兒女情長的一面。但屠格涅夫卻讓他的主人公一味消沉下去，不能自拔，直至死亡。這不能不是對巴紮羅夫的麯解。那個在貴族莊園所嚮披靡的勇士竟無力使自己最終擺脫消極悲觀的情緒，人物性格的整體性因此受到損害。作傢把巴紮羅夫臨終前期待阿金左娃的一吻這幕寫得極為動人，然而他的銳氣，他的憤恨，他的精神威力，他的堅強意志也在這女人敷衍式的一吻中消溶殆盡。
這種違反人物性格發展邏輯的矛盾變化，與作傢的思想傾嚮不無聯繫。屠格涅夫對巴紮羅夫所代表的平民知識分子有一種情不自禁的嚮往，他欽佩他們的個人品質和犧牲精神，但並不贊成他們的社會政治主張。這位溫和的自由主義貴族作傢害怕暴力革命，不希望他們的事業取得成功。他認為他們的觀點必然導致他們成為悲劇人物，因此他安排了巴紮羅夫的失戀、悲觀乃至最後死亡。巴紮羅夫性格上的不一致正好折射出作傢對民主主義者的矛盾態度。
阿爾卡狄這個人物在小說中有特殊的意義。就年齡來說，他屬於子輩，也曾追隨過巴紮羅夫；但就思想意識來說，他是父輩的子弟，因此巴紮羅夫稱他為“溫柔的自由主義少爺”。在剛剛到來的新觀念和遲遲不肯退去的舊觀念相互爭鬥的時候，青年人憑藉他們的敏感、勇氣和朝氣等生理、心理因素有可能更傾心於新觀念，然而子輩並不是先進思想的當然代表者，進化論的觀念在社會思想鬥爭中並不具有絶對普遍性，更何況其中也不乏有獵奇求新的表面追求。因此，屠格涅夫所表現的不全是生理、心理意義上兩代人的代溝，更滲透着不同社會陣營之間政治思想的分歧，從而揭示出當時俄國民主主義對貴族自由主義的勝利。
《父與子》-中心思想
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
《父與子》-作者簡介
伊凡·謝爾蓋耶維奇·屠格涅夫（俄語：Иван Сергеевич Тургенев；英語：Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev，公歷1818年11月9日－1883年9月3日，合儒略歷1818年10月28日－1883年8月22日）俄國現實主義小說傢、詩人和劇作傢。
俄國19世紀批判現實主義作傢、詩人和劇作傢，出生於世襲貴族之傢，生於俄國奧廖爾省奧廖爾一個舊式富裕家庭，父親是一個騎兵團團長，十六歲的時候父親去世。屠格涅夫的媽媽脾氣很不好，經常打駡自己的孩子。1833年進莫斯科大學文學係，一年後轉入彼得堡大學哲學係語文專業，畢業後到德國柏林大學攻讀哲學、歷史和希臘與拉丁文。屠格涅夫進入莫斯科大學學習一年，隨後轉入聖彼得堡大學學習經典著作，俄國文學和哲學。1838年前往柏林大學學習黑格爾哲學。在歐洲屠格涅夫見到了更加現代化的社會制度，被視為“歐化”的知識分子，主張俄國學習西方，廢除包括農奴製在內的封建制度。
屠格涅夫是 19 世紀俄國有世界 聲譽的現實主義藝術大師。他的小說不僅迅速及時地反映了當時的俄國社會現實 ，而且善於通過生動的情節和恰當的言語、行動，通過對大自然情境交融的描述，塑造出許多栩栩如生的人物形象。他的語言簡潔、樸質、精確、優美，為俄羅斯語言的規範化作出了重要貢獻。中國早在1917年就開始翻譯介紹屠格涅夫的小說，現在幾乎他所有的主要作品都有了中譯本，一些名作還有多種譯本。早期寫詩（《帕拉莎》《地主》等）。1847～1852年發表《獵人筆記》，揭露農奴主的殘暴，農奴的悲慘生活，因此被放逐。在監禁中寫成中篇小說《木木》，對農奴製表示抗議。以後又發表長篇小說《羅亭》（1856年）、《貴族之傢》（1859年），中篇小說《阿霞》《多餘人的日記》等，描寫貴族地主出身的知識分子好發議論而缺少鬥爭精神的性格。在長篇小說《前夜》（1860年）中，塑造出保加利亞革命者英沙羅夫的形象。後來發表長篇小說《父與子》，刻畫貴族自由主義者同平民知識分子之間的思想衝突。後期長篇小說《煙》（1867年）和《處女地》（1877年），否定貴族反動派和貴族自由主義者，批評不徹底的民粹派，但流露悲觀情緒。此外，還寫有劇本《村居一月》和散文詩等。
屠格涅夫是一位有獨特藝術風格的作傢，他既擅長細膩的心理描寫，又長於抒情。小說結構嚴整，情節緊湊，人物形象生動，尤其善於細緻雕琢女性藝術形象，而他對旖旎的大自然的描寫也充滿詩情畫意。
《父與子》-作品賞析
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
巴紮羅夫是精神上的強者。他充滿自信，生氣勃勃，具有銳利的批判眼光。他和阿爾卡狄傢的僕人們和睦相處，並不妨礙他批判老百姓的落後迷信。他的精神力量和批判鋒芒集中表現在他與巴威爾的論戰上。兩人初次相見，就在感覺上互不相容，進而展露出思想觀點上的針鋒相對。巴紮羅夫以他特有的簡潔、粗魯的話語對巴威爾以強有力的反擊。頗有咄咄逼人之勢。他决不屈從權威，具有自主的人格和評判標準，體現了年青一代獨立思考的處世態度和初生牛犢不怕虎的鬥爭精神，當然，也帶有年輕人從不成熟走嚮成熟的過程中的可能産生的偏頗和極端。但他還是以毋庸置疑的精神優勢壓倒了對手。巴紮羅夫吻費涅奇卡，在巴威爾看來，是嚴重地侵犯了貴族的權利，也是他們之間對立觀點的繼續發展。决鬥暴露了巴威爾的偏狹、虛弱和做作，顯示了巴紮羅夫的豁達、鎮定和自信，雙方精神力量的強弱在此得到進一步的揭示。
巴紮羅夫是行動的巨人，他抨擊貴族的泛泛空談，自己首先從小事做起。他具有實踐能力，註重自然科學研究。他的行動有價值取捨標準：“凡是我們認為有用的事情，我們就依據它行動。”他的行動目標很明確——為未來打掃地盤。他敢於行動的勇氣在一定程度上也表現在對待愛情的態度上。他曾惱怒自己也産生那樣浪漫的情感，但在愛情之火燃燒起來的時候他卻决不回避躲閃。
屠格涅夫寫出了在否定愛情的巴紮羅夫內心，愛情是如何萌芽、發展的，寫得真實可信。但是作傢讓巴紮羅夫在愛情受挫後一蹶不振，重蹈了巴威爾在戀愛上的覆轍，那句對巴威爾的尖刻評價“雄性生物”猶如一記耳光反打在巴紮羅夫自己的臉上。這並不是說，不能寫他的失戀痛苦，英雄也有兒女情長的一面。但屠格涅夫卻讓他的主人公一味消沉下去，不能自拔，直至死亡。這不能不是對巴紮羅夫的麯解。那個在貴族莊園所嚮披靡的勇士竟無力使自己最終擺脫消極悲觀的情緒，人物性格的整體性因此受到損害。作傢把巴紮羅夫臨終前期待阿金左娃的一吻這幕寫得極為動人，然而他的銳氣，他的憤恨，他的精神威力，他的堅強意志也在這女人敷衍式的一吻中消溶殆盡。
《父與子》《父與子》
這種違反人物性格發展邏輯的矛盾變化，與作傢的思想傾嚮不無聯繫。屠格涅夫對巴紮羅夫所代表的平民知識分子有一種情不自禁的嚮往，他欽佩他們的個人品質和犧牲精神，但並不贊成他們的社會政治主張。這位溫和的自由主義貴族作傢害怕暴力革命，不希望他們的事業取得成功。他認為他們的觀點必然導致他們成為悲劇人物，因此他安排了巴紮羅夫的失戀、悲觀乃至最後死亡。巴紮羅夫性格上的不一致正好折射出作傢對民主主義者的矛盾態度。
阿爾卡狄這個人物在小說中有特殊的意義。就年齡來說，他屬於子輩，也曾追隨過巴紮羅夫；但就思想意識來說，他是父輩的子弟，因此巴紮羅夫稱他為“溫柔的自由主義少爺”。在剛剛到來的新觀念和遲遲不肯退去的舊觀念相互爭鬥的時候，青年人憑藉他們的敏感、勇氣和朝氣等生理、心理因素有可能更傾心於新觀念，然而子輩並不是先進思想的當然代表者，進化論的觀念在社會思想鬥爭中並不具有絶對普遍性，更何況其中也不乏有獵奇求新的表面追求。因此，屠格涅夫所表現的不全是生理、心理意義上兩代人的代溝，更滲透着不同社會陣營之間政治思想的分歧，從而揭示出當時俄國民主主義對貴族自由主義的勝利。
《父與子》是屠格涅夫的代表作。巴紮羅夫身上儘管有瑕疵，但他仍以不同凡響的藝術個性給人以鮮明的印象，在俄國文學史上他是第一個俄國“新人”形象，率先傳達出平民知識分子已成為生活主角的時代信息。
《父與子》-創作背景
屠格涅夫從《巴拉莎》（一八四三），《地主》（一八四六）等詩篇開始文學生涯。他的《獵人筆記》（一八四七——五二）的發表曾當作俄國文學生活中的一件大事。這一篇篇特寫，以俄國中部地區的自然景色為襯托，廣泛地描繪了莊園地主和農民的生活，深刻揭露了地主表面上文明仁慈、實際上醜惡殘暴的本性，全書充滿對含垢受辱、備受欺凌的勞動人民的同情。當時的進步思想界稱它是對農奴製的“一陣猛烈炮火”，是一部 “點燃火種的書”。一八五二年屠格涅夫因撰文悼念果戈理逝世，實質上則因其《獵人筆記》的社會思想傾嚮而被捕，送往斯巴斯科耶——魯托維諾夫村軟禁。軟禁期間他寫了中篇《木木》，以滿腔仇恨對農奴製進行控訴。五十至六十年代是他創作最旺盛的時期，適逢俄國社會運動逐步高漲，他及時地反映了社會生活的方方面面。長篇《羅亭》（一八五六），《貴族之傢》（一八五九），中篇《阿霞》（一八五八），《多餘人的日記》（一八五○）展示了貴族知識分子言語脫離行動，理論脫離實踐的一些典型特徵。長篇《前夜》（一八六○）則反映俄國農奴製垮臺前夕在俄國出現的進步社會思潮。在屠格涅夫創作中占有中心地位的長篇《父與子》（一八六二）刻畫了兩種社會勢力——民主主義者和自由派貴族間的思想衝突。
屠格涅夫文筆婉麗，結構巧妙，語言清新簡潔，深得讀者喜愛。其作品很早就有人譯介，譯介者有老一代知名作傢，也有我的同時代人。屠格涅夫創作《父與子》的那些年月，農奴主已不再可能。
《父與子》《父與子》
但屠格涅夫是個深沉的現實主義作傢，他必然把歷史的重大客觀事件置於視界之內，把再現生活作為無可推卸的責職，去塑造符合時代的典型。《父與子》中的巴紮羅夫可說是十九世紀六十年代俄國民。
巴紮羅夫不屈從任何權威，不把任何準則當作信仰，即使這準則是多麽受到尊重。赫爾岑把巴紮羅夫的這種虛無主義歸結為“完全、徹底襬脫了一切現成概念和陳規舊俗”。杜勃羅留波夫進一步認同：“新人——他是唯心主義哲學的反對者，因為唯心主義哲學把準則看成高於樸素的生活真理。”巴紮羅夫對藉抽象法得出的科學概念確無好感：“指的是什麽科學？泛泛的科學嗎？科學一如手藝，有具體的門類，而泛泛的科學是不存在的。”在此他衹承認具體的科學，而把“泛泛的科學”即哲學徹底否定了。他把哲學看成是 “浪漫主義”哲學，腐朽，鬍說八道，與浪漫主義是等同概念。曼恩由此認為巴紮羅夫的思辯“從黑格爾的 Allgemeinneit總體中得到瞭解放”。巴紮羅夫認為人的行為不由抽象的、必須遵循的準則，而是由現實生活决定的：“總的說來，準則是沒有的，……衹有感覺。一切都取决於感覺。”巴紮羅夫對基爾薩諾夫所奉準則的抗議也就是民主主義者對唯心觀的抗議。那時平民中的民主主義者按杜勃留波夫說法“不但懂得，而且親身感受到，世上絶對的東西是沒有的，一切事物衹有它的相對意義”，因此他們斷然“擺脫開絶對理念而去接近現實生活，用他們的現實觀替代一切抽象概念”。把小說《父與子》中發生的事件限定在一八五九年自有其。
此書獲全國優秀暢銷書奬，不朽的傑作，永遠的暢銷書！
連環漫畫《父與子》是德國幽默大師埃·奧·卜勞恩的不朽傑作。作品中一個個生動幽默的小故事都是來自於漫畫傢在生活中的真實感受，父與子實際上就是卡勞恩與兒子剋裏斯蒂安的真實寫照。一幅幅小巧精湛的畫面閃爍着智慧之光，無言地流瀉出純真的赤子之情與融融天倫之樂，永遠地震撼着人們的心靈。 早在20世紀30年代《父與子》便傳入我國，但在這本《父與子》全集之前國內最多衹出現過150個《父與子》的小故事，1988年我國在德意志聯邦人和國駐華大使及領事的幫助下成功地編成了這本《父與子》全集後，十幾年中這本畫册重印了數十萬，深受讀者喜愛，1994年還被評為全國優秀暢銷書。
非常難得的是國內的許多出版社對我們這個《父與子》全集的版本十分感償趣，經常愉快地藉用這個版本。例如，山東的黃河出版社竟全盤翻印了我們的《父與子》全集，而成都的天地出版社藉用的這個版本（此外還藉了我編的許多其他的畫册）不到兩年竟銷了10萬册。說真的，我真為此感到高興，因為模仿是最真誠的恭維，這些年輕的編輯畢竟是真心實意的追隨者！不過我們的《父與子》全集到底是原版，細看畢竟不同，不是嗎？
【編輯點評】
德國著名漫畫傢埃· 奧·卜勞恩的連環漫畫《父與子》譽滿天下、風靡世界。《父與子》所塑造的善良、正直、寬容的藝術形象，充滿着智慧之光，流露出純真的父子之情，深深地打動了千百萬讀者的心，從而使卜勞恩成為海恩裏希·霍夫曼和威廉·布施之後的又一巨匠，《父與子》被人們譽為德國幽默的象徵，受到人們一致高度的贊揚，聲譽遠遠地越出了國界。
《父與子》-影視信息
劇情簡介
俄國名導蘇古諾夫（Aleksandr Sokurov）執導。這部電影是描述一對父子之間，既濃烈特殊又撲朔迷離的情感，極具爭議性和震撼力。
父親與兒子長年生活在同一屋檐下，仿佛與世隔絶般沉浸在他們自己的世界中，被回憶和日常儀式所填滿。有時他們看起來就像兄弟，有時甚至像一對戀人。
《父與子》《父與子》
兒子亞力剋斯走上了一條和父親一樣的道路，進入了軍校。他喜歡體育運動，還有了女朋友。但是情人之間卻總有點隔閡，女友似乎在暗暗嫉妒亞力剋斯與父親的親密關係。
儘管亞力剋斯心裏明白所有的兒子總有一天終將離開父親，開始自己的生活，他的內心仍然充滿矛盾。
亞力剋斯的父親也清楚他或許應該去另一座城市找一份更好的工作，或者娶一位新太太。但是，誰又能減輕亞力剋斯夢魘中的痛苦呢？
從來沒有哪對父與子之間的愛如他們這般深厚。
蘇古諾夫親情三部麯係列電影的第二部，備受好評的《母與子》之姊妹篇。
本片的拍攝地點，是2003年正好建城三百周年的俄羅斯名城，如詩如畫的聖彼得堡所拍攝，極具詩意且唯美。
Historical context and notes
The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the "first Bolshevik", for his nihilism and rejection of the old order.
Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the "sons") and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality.
Fathers and Sons might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian Literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, is sometimes referred to as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova and Fenichka. This prominent theme of character duality and deep psychological insight would exert an influence on most of the great Russian novels to come, most obviously echoed in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
The novel is also the first Russian work to gain prominence in the Western world, eventually gaining the approval of well established novelists Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James.
Major characters
* Yevgeny Vasil'evich Bazarov - A nihilist, a student of science, and is training to be a doctor. As a nihilist he is a mentor to Arkady, and a challenger to the liberal ideas of the Kirsanov brothers and the traditional Russian Orthodox feelings of his own parents.
* Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov - A recent graduate of St. Petersburg University and friend of Bazarov. He is also a nihilist, although his belief seems to stem from his admiration of Bazarov rather than his own conviction.
* Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov - A landlord, a liberal democrat, Arkady’s father.
* Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov - Nikolai’s brother and a bourgeois with aristocratic pretensions, who prides himself on his refinement but like his brother is reform minded. Although he is reluctantly tolerant of the nihilism, he cannot help hating Bazarov.
* Vasily Ivanovich Bazarov - Bazarov’s father, a retired army surgeon, and a small countryside land/serf holder. Educated and enlightened, he nonetheless feels, like many of the characters, that rural isolation has left him out of touch with modern ideas. He thus retains a loyalty to traditionalist ways, manifested particularly in devotion to God and to his son Yevgeny.
* Arina Vlas'evna Bazarova - Bazarov’s mother. A very traditional woman of the 15th c. Moscovy style aristocracy: a pious follower of Orthodox Christianity, woven with folk tales and falsehoods. She loves her son deeply, but is also terrified of him and his rejection of all beliefs.
* Anna Sergeevna Odintsova - A wealthy widow who entertains the nihilist friends at her estate. Bazarov declares his love for her, but she is unable to reciprocate, both out of fear for the emotional chaos it could bring and an inability to recognize her own sentiments as love itself. Bazarov's love is a challenge to his nihilist ideal of rejection of all established order.
* Katerina (Katya) Sergeevna Lokteva - A character similar to Arkady and the younger sister of Anna. She lives comfortably with her sister but lacks confidence, finding it hard to escape Anna Sergeevna's shadow. This shyness makes her and Arkady’s love slow to realize itself.
* Fedosya (Fenichka) Nikolayevna - The daughter of Nikolai’s housekeeper, with whom he has fallen in love and fathered a child out of wedlock. The implied obstacles to their marriage are difference in class, and perhaps Nikolai's previous marriage - the burden of 'traditionalist' values.
* Viktor Sitnikov - A pompous and somewhat stupid friend of Bazarov who joins populist ideals and groups.
* Avdotya Nikitishna or Evdoksya Kukshina - An emancipated woman who lives in the town of X. Kukshina is independent but rather eccentric and incapable as a proto-feminist despite her potential.
Themes
Transgression and redemption
Bazarov (the prototypical nihilist) argues with Pavel Kirsanov (the prototypical liberal of the 1840s generation) about the nature of nihilism and usefulness to Russia in an episode which personifies the struggle between the fathers (i.e., the liberals of the 1840s) and their nihilist "sons". "Aristocratism, liberalism, progress, principles," Bazarov says. "Just think, how many foreign…and useless words!"
Bazarov tells Pavel that he will abandon nihilism when Pavel can show him "…a single institution of contemporary life, either in the family or in the social sphere, that doesn’t deserve absolute and merciless rejection." But despite this utter scorn for all things associated with traditional Russia, Bazarov still believes that there is a purpose and a value in applied science.
Human emotion and love as redemption
Bazarov's nihilism falls apart in the face of human emotions, specifically his love for Anna Odintsova. His nihilism does not account for the pain that his unrequited love causes him, and this introduces a despair that he is not capable of contending with.
Bazarov returns to his family after Odintsova rejects him. Bazarov complains to Arkady that "…they, that is, my parents, are occupied, and don't worry in the least about their own insignificance; they don't give a damn about it… While I…I feel only boredom and anger." His theory's inability to account for his emotions frustrates him and he sinks deep into boredom and ennui.
And then there is the enigmatic Anna Odintsova, a beautiful young woman of lowly origin. By virtue of having married well and been widowed young, she has inherited an exceedingly comfortable and insular life on a palatial country estate. In a letter written the same year the novel was published, Turgenev revealed that he conceived of Anna as “the representative of our idle, dreaming, curious and cold epicurean young ladies, our female nobility.” And yet, as with Bazarov, Turgenev’s fictional creation takes on a life of its own, superseding the author’s intellectual scheme to become a complex and perplexing figure.
Apparently content at the outset with her unattached life, Anna finds herself increasingly attracted to the blunt, unorthodox, highly intelligent Bazarov. She proceeds almost unwittingly to emotionally seduce the self-declared womanizer, luring him step by step in a pair of riveting, back-to-back passages to reveal his love. In the intimacy of her study, Anna confesses that she is very “unhappy,” that she has no desire to “go on,” that she longs for a “strong attachment” that is “all or nothing. A life for a life. You take mine, you give up yours, without regrets, without turning back.”
And yet, a moment after Bazarov capitulates and confesses his love, Odintsova rejects him brutally. Afterward, she is tortured, alternately blaming and excusing herself while fearing she may have thrown away a chance for genuine love. Finally she decides, “No. God knows where it might have led; one mustn’t fool around with this kind of thing.”
Conversely, Turgenev shows us Arkady and Nikolai's traditional happiness in marriage and estate management as the solution to Bazarov's cosmic despair and Anna's life of loveless comfort. (Arkady marries Anna Odintsova's sister Katya, though he was also originally in love with Anna). The height of the conflict between Bazarov and the older generation comes when Bazarov wounds Pavel in a duel. Finally, Turgenev also refutes Bazarov's "insignificance principle", i.e., the nihilist idea that life is utterly insignificant and that nothing remains after death: after leaving and then returning again to his parents, Bazarov dies of typhus. The final passage of the book portrays Bazarov's parents visiting his grave.
They walk with a heavy step, supporting each other; when they approach the railing, they fall on their knees and remain there for a long time, weeping bitterly, gazing attentively at the headstone under which their son lies buried: they exchange a few words, brush the dust off the stone, move a branch of the pine tree, and pray once again; they can’t forsake this place where they seem to feel closer to their son, to their memories of him… Can it really be that their prayers and tears are futile? Can it really be that love, sacred, devoted love is not all powerful? Oh, no!
Their love causes them to remember Bazarov: he has transcended death, but only through the love of other people. Fyodor Dostoevsky, who read Fathers and Sons and apparently appreciated Bazarov as a character, explores a similar theme with Raskolnikov's religious redemption (via the love of Christ) in Crime and Punishment.
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
《父與子》是俄國著名作傢屠格涅夫的代表作。《父與子》完成於1860年8月至1861年8月，經多次修改後，於1862年在《俄羅斯導報》上。
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
《父與子》-人物特點
《父與子》的中心人物是平民知識分子巴紮洛夫。巴紮洛夫是平民知識分子的典型，是“新人”的形象，他性格的突出特徵是具有鮮明的革命色彩，這表現在：
1、他激烈地否定現存制度。巴紮洛夫的否定有其歷史的合理性。這裏首先是歷史進步的需要，其次纔是革命者的版面認識和過激情緒。作傢對巴紮洛夫的這種精神特質雖不欣賞，但卻作了真實的描述。
2、蔑視貴族階級。這是平民覺醒的一個重要特徵。巴紮洛夫確信真理在自己手中，確信自己是時代英雄，有權蔑視貴族階級。他對於巴威爾的憤怒挑戰始終從容對待，而且常常擺出一付不屑一顧的態度。在論辯中，在决鬥裏，他老師崇高的勝利者。最後巴威爾也不得不承認自己的光榮已成往事。
3、以平民身份自豪，跟人民保持着密切的關係。巴紮洛夫已經不同於巴西斯托夫，他不再是優秀貴族分子的追隨者，他已經意識到，平民優於貴族。這是平民勢力興起的又一個重要標志。同時，屠格涅夫也表現了巴紮洛夫的知識分子的生活方式使他和人民隔膜起來的情形。一個農民評論巴紮洛夫說：“當然啦，他是一位少爺，他能懂得什麽呢？”這樣的描述也是很深刻的，它揭示了巴紮洛夫高於普通農民和脫離人民的一面，在當時的平民知識分子中，這也是一種典型的現象。這正是後來的民粹主義運動失敗的重要原因之一。
巴紮羅夫是精神上的強者。他充滿自信，生氣勃勃，具有銳利的批判眼光。他和阿爾卡狄傢的僕人們和睦相處，並不妨礙他批判老百姓的落後迷信。他的精神力量和批判鋒芒集中表現在他與巴威爾的論戰上。兩人初次相見，就在感覺上互不相容，進而展露出思想觀點上的針鋒相對。巴紮羅夫以他特有的簡潔、粗魯的話語對巴威爾以強有力的反擊。頗有咄咄逼人之勢。他决不屈從權威，具有自主的人格和評判標準，體現了年青一代獨立思考的處世態度和初生牛犢不怕虎的鬥爭精神，當然，也帶有年輕人從不成熟走嚮成熟的過程中的可能産生的偏頗和極端。但他還是以毋庸置疑的精神優勢壓倒了對手。巴紮羅夫吻費涅奇卡，在巴威爾看來，是嚴重地侵犯了貴族的權利，也是他們之間對立觀點的繼續發展。决鬥暴露了巴威爾的偏狹、虛弱和做作，顯示了巴紮羅夫的豁達、鎮定和自信，雙方精神力量的強弱在此得到進一步的揭示。
巴紮羅夫是行動的巨人，他抨擊貴族的泛泛空談，自己首先從小事做起。他具有實踐能力，註重自然科學研究。他的行動有價值取捨標準：“凡是我們認為有用的事情，我們就依據它行動。”他的行動目標很明確——為未來打掃地盤。他敢於行動的勇氣在一定程度上也表現在對待愛情的態度上。他曾惱怒自己也産生那樣浪漫的情感，但在愛情之火燃燒起來的時候他卻决不回避躲閃。
屠格涅夫寫出了在否定愛情的巴紮羅夫內心，愛情是如何萌芽、發展的，寫得真實可信。但是作傢讓巴紮羅夫在愛情受挫後一蹶不振，重蹈了巴威爾在戀愛上的覆轍，那句對巴威爾的尖刻評價“雄性生物”猶如一記耳光反打在巴紮羅夫自己的臉上。這並不是說，不能寫他的失戀痛苦，英雄也有兒女情長的一面。但屠格涅夫卻讓他的主人公一味消沉下去，不能自拔，直至死亡。這不能不是對巴紮羅夫的麯解。那個在貴族莊園所嚮披靡的勇士竟無力使自己最終擺脫消極悲觀的情緒，人物性格的整體性因此受到損害。作傢把巴紮羅夫臨終前期待阿金左娃的一吻這幕寫得極為動人，然而他的銳氣，他的憤恨，他的精神威力，他的堅強意志也在這女人敷衍式的一吻中消溶殆盡。
這種違反人物性格發展邏輯的矛盾變化，與作傢的思想傾嚮不無聯繫。屠格涅夫對巴紮羅夫所代表的平民知識分子有一種情不自禁的嚮往，他欽佩他們的個人品質和犧牲精神，但並不贊成他們的社會政治主張。這位溫和的自由主義貴族作傢害怕暴力革命，不希望他們的事業取得成功。他認為他們的觀點必然導致他們成為悲劇人物，因此他安排了巴紮羅夫的失戀、悲觀乃至最後死亡。巴紮羅夫性格上的不一致正好折射出作傢對民主主義者的矛盾態度。
阿爾卡狄這個人物在小說中有特殊的意義。就年齡來說，他屬於子輩，也曾追隨過巴紮羅夫；但就思想意識來說，他是父輩的子弟，因此巴紮羅夫稱他為“溫柔的自由主義少爺”。在剛剛到來的新觀念和遲遲不肯退去的舊觀念相互爭鬥的時候，青年人憑藉他們的敏感、勇氣和朝氣等生理、心理因素有可能更傾心於新觀念，然而子輩並不是先進思想的當然代表者，進化論的觀念在社會思想鬥爭中並不具有絶對普遍性，更何況其中也不乏有獵奇求新的表面追求。因此，屠格涅夫所表現的不全是生理、心理意義上兩代人的代溝，更滲透着不同社會陣營之間政治思想的分歧，從而揭示出當時俄國民主主義對貴族自由主義的勝利。
《父與子》-中心思想
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
《父與子》-作者簡介
伊凡·謝爾蓋耶維奇·屠格涅夫（俄語：Иван Сергеевич Тургенев；英語：Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev，公歷1818年11月9日－1883年9月3日，合儒略歷1818年10月28日－1883年8月22日）俄國現實主義小說傢、詩人和劇作傢。
俄國19世紀批判現實主義作傢、詩人和劇作傢，出生於世襲貴族之傢，生於俄國奧廖爾省奧廖爾一個舊式富裕家庭，父親是一個騎兵團團長，十六歲的時候父親去世。屠格涅夫的媽媽脾氣很不好，經常打駡自己的孩子。1833年進莫斯科大學文學係，一年後轉入彼得堡大學哲學係語文專業，畢業後到德國柏林大學攻讀哲學、歷史和希臘與拉丁文。屠格涅夫進入莫斯科大學學習一年，隨後轉入聖彼得堡大學學習經典著作，俄國文學和哲學。1838年前往柏林大學學習黑格爾哲學。在歐洲屠格涅夫見到了更加現代化的社會制度，被視為“歐化”的知識分子，主張俄國學習西方，廢除包括農奴製在內的封建制度。
屠格涅夫是 19 世紀俄國有世界 聲譽的現實主義藝術大師。他的小說不僅迅速及時地反映了當時的俄國社會現實 ，而且善於通過生動的情節和恰當的言語、行動，通過對大自然情境交融的描述，塑造出許多栩栩如生的人物形象。他的語言簡潔、樸質、精確、優美，為俄羅斯語言的規範化作出了重要貢獻。中國早在1917年就開始翻譯介紹屠格涅夫的小說，現在幾乎他所有的主要作品都有了中譯本，一些名作還有多種譯本。早期寫詩（《帕拉莎》《地主》等）。1847～1852年發表《獵人筆記》，揭露農奴主的殘暴，農奴的悲慘生活，因此被放逐。在監禁中寫成中篇小說《木木》，對農奴製表示抗議。以後又發表長篇小說《羅亭》（1856年）、《貴族之傢》（1859年），中篇小說《阿霞》《多餘人的日記》等，描寫貴族地主出身的知識分子好發議論而缺少鬥爭精神的性格。在長篇小說《前夜》（1860年）中，塑造出保加利亞革命者英沙羅夫的形象。後來發表長篇小說《父與子》，刻畫貴族自由主義者同平民知識分子之間的思想衝突。後期長篇小說《煙》（1867年）和《處女地》（1877年），否定貴族反動派和貴族自由主義者，批評不徹底的民粹派，但流露悲觀情緒。此外，還寫有劇本《村居一月》和散文詩等。
屠格涅夫是一位有獨特藝術風格的作傢，他既擅長細膩的心理描寫，又長於抒情。小說結構嚴整，情節緊湊，人物形象生動，尤其善於細緻雕琢女性藝術形象，而他對旖旎的大自然的描寫也充滿詩情畫意。
《父與子》-作品賞析
《父與子》描寫的是父輩與子輩衝突的主題。這一衝突在屠格涅夫筆下着上了時代的色彩。巴紮羅夫代表了19世紀60年代的年輕一代——激進的平民知識分子。而巴威爾和尼古拉則代表了保守的自由主義貴族的老一代人。當然，在對待年輕人的態度上，父輩中的人們態度各有不同，尼古拉比較溫和，希望理解子輩，想跟上時代，衹是不太成功。巴威爾則固執已見，信奉貴族自由主義，對年輕人的反叛耿耿於懷。父與子的衝突在廣義上表現為巴威爾和巴紮羅夫之間的對立，由此，在巴紮羅夫身上塑造了時代“新人”的形象。
巴紮羅夫是精神上的強者。他充滿自信，生氣勃勃，具有銳利的批判眼光。他和阿爾卡狄傢的僕人們和睦相處，並不妨礙他批判老百姓的落後迷信。他的精神力量和批判鋒芒集中表現在他與巴威爾的論戰上。兩人初次相見，就在感覺上互不相容，進而展露出思想觀點上的針鋒相對。巴紮羅夫以他特有的簡潔、粗魯的話語對巴威爾以強有力的反擊。頗有咄咄逼人之勢。他决不屈從權威，具有自主的人格和評判標準，體現了年青一代獨立思考的處世態度和初生牛犢不怕虎的鬥爭精神，當然，也帶有年輕人從不成熟走嚮成熟的過程中的可能産生的偏頗和極端。但他還是以毋庸置疑的精神優勢壓倒了對手。巴紮羅夫吻費涅奇卡，在巴威爾看來，是嚴重地侵犯了貴族的權利，也是他們之間對立觀點的繼續發展。决鬥暴露了巴威爾的偏狹、虛弱和做作，顯示了巴紮羅夫的豁達、鎮定和自信，雙方精神力量的強弱在此得到進一步的揭示。
巴紮羅夫是行動的巨人，他抨擊貴族的泛泛空談，自己首先從小事做起。他具有實踐能力，註重自然科學研究。他的行動有價值取捨標準：“凡是我們認為有用的事情，我們就依據它行動。”他的行動目標很明確——為未來打掃地盤。他敢於行動的勇氣在一定程度上也表現在對待愛情的態度上。他曾惱怒自己也産生那樣浪漫的情感，但在愛情之火燃燒起來的時候他卻决不回避躲閃。
屠格涅夫寫出了在否定愛情的巴紮羅夫內心，愛情是如何萌芽、發展的，寫得真實可信。但是作傢讓巴紮羅夫在愛情受挫後一蹶不振，重蹈了巴威爾在戀愛上的覆轍，那句對巴威爾的尖刻評價“雄性生物”猶如一記耳光反打在巴紮羅夫自己的臉上。這並不是說，不能寫他的失戀痛苦，英雄也有兒女情長的一面。但屠格涅夫卻讓他的主人公一味消沉下去，不能自拔，直至死亡。這不能不是對巴紮羅夫的麯解。那個在貴族莊園所嚮披靡的勇士竟無力使自己最終擺脫消極悲觀的情緒，人物性格的整體性因此受到損害。作傢把巴紮羅夫臨終前期待阿金左娃的一吻這幕寫得極為動人，然而他的銳氣，他的憤恨，他的精神威力，他的堅強意志也在這女人敷衍式的一吻中消溶殆盡。
《父與子》《父與子》
這種違反人物性格發展邏輯的矛盾變化，與作傢的思想傾嚮不無聯繫。屠格涅夫對巴紮羅夫所代表的平民知識分子有一種情不自禁的嚮往，他欽佩他們的個人品質和犧牲精神，但並不贊成他們的社會政治主張。這位溫和的自由主義貴族作傢害怕暴力革命，不希望他們的事業取得成功。他認為他們的觀點必然導致他們成為悲劇人物，因此他安排了巴紮羅夫的失戀、悲觀乃至最後死亡。巴紮羅夫性格上的不一致正好折射出作傢對民主主義者的矛盾態度。
阿爾卡狄這個人物在小說中有特殊的意義。就年齡來說，他屬於子輩，也曾追隨過巴紮羅夫；但就思想意識來說，他是父輩的子弟，因此巴紮羅夫稱他為“溫柔的自由主義少爺”。在剛剛到來的新觀念和遲遲不肯退去的舊觀念相互爭鬥的時候，青年人憑藉他們的敏感、勇氣和朝氣等生理、心理因素有可能更傾心於新觀念，然而子輩並不是先進思想的當然代表者，進化論的觀念在社會思想鬥爭中並不具有絶對普遍性，更何況其中也不乏有獵奇求新的表面追求。因此，屠格涅夫所表現的不全是生理、心理意義上兩代人的代溝，更滲透着不同社會陣營之間政治思想的分歧，從而揭示出當時俄國民主主義對貴族自由主義的勝利。
《父與子》是屠格涅夫的代表作。巴紮羅夫身上儘管有瑕疵，但他仍以不同凡響的藝術個性給人以鮮明的印象，在俄國文學史上他是第一個俄國“新人”形象，率先傳達出平民知識分子已成為生活主角的時代信息。
《父與子》-創作背景
屠格涅夫從《巴拉莎》（一八四三），《地主》（一八四六）等詩篇開始文學生涯。他的《獵人筆記》（一八四七——五二）的發表曾當作俄國文學生活中的一件大事。這一篇篇特寫，以俄國中部地區的自然景色為襯托，廣泛地描繪了莊園地主和農民的生活，深刻揭露了地主表面上文明仁慈、實際上醜惡殘暴的本性，全書充滿對含垢受辱、備受欺凌的勞動人民的同情。當時的進步思想界稱它是對農奴製的“一陣猛烈炮火”，是一部 “點燃火種的書”。一八五二年屠格涅夫因撰文悼念果戈理逝世，實質上則因其《獵人筆記》的社會思想傾嚮而被捕，送往斯巴斯科耶——魯托維諾夫村軟禁。軟禁期間他寫了中篇《木木》，以滿腔仇恨對農奴製進行控訴。五十至六十年代是他創作最旺盛的時期，適逢俄國社會運動逐步高漲，他及時地反映了社會生活的方方面面。長篇《羅亭》（一八五六），《貴族之傢》（一八五九），中篇《阿霞》（一八五八），《多餘人的日記》（一八五○）展示了貴族知識分子言語脫離行動，理論脫離實踐的一些典型特徵。長篇《前夜》（一八六○）則反映俄國農奴製垮臺前夕在俄國出現的進步社會思潮。在屠格涅夫創作中占有中心地位的長篇《父與子》（一八六二）刻畫了兩種社會勢力——民主主義者和自由派貴族間的思想衝突。
屠格涅夫文筆婉麗，結構巧妙，語言清新簡潔，深得讀者喜愛。其作品很早就有人譯介，譯介者有老一代知名作傢，也有我的同時代人。屠格涅夫創作《父與子》的那些年月，農奴主已不再可能。
《父與子》《父與子》
但屠格涅夫是個深沉的現實主義作傢，他必然把歷史的重大客觀事件置於視界之內，把再現生活作為無可推卸的責職，去塑造符合時代的典型。《父與子》中的巴紮羅夫可說是十九世紀六十年代俄國民。
巴紮羅夫不屈從任何權威，不把任何準則當作信仰，即使這準則是多麽受到尊重。赫爾岑把巴紮羅夫的這種虛無主義歸結為“完全、徹底襬脫了一切現成概念和陳規舊俗”。杜勃羅留波夫進一步認同：“新人——他是唯心主義哲學的反對者，因為唯心主義哲學把準則看成高於樸素的生活真理。”巴紮羅夫對藉抽象法得出的科學概念確無好感：“指的是什麽科學？泛泛的科學嗎？科學一如手藝，有具體的門類，而泛泛的科學是不存在的。”在此他衹承認具體的科學，而把“泛泛的科學”即哲學徹底否定了。他把哲學看成是 “浪漫主義”哲學，腐朽，鬍說八道，與浪漫主義是等同概念。曼恩由此認為巴紮羅夫的思辯“從黑格爾的 Allgemeinneit總體中得到瞭解放”。巴紮羅夫認為人的行為不由抽象的、必須遵循的準則，而是由現實生活决定的：“總的說來，準則是沒有的，……衹有感覺。一切都取决於感覺。”巴紮羅夫對基爾薩諾夫所奉準則的抗議也就是民主主義者對唯心觀的抗議。那時平民中的民主主義者按杜勃留波夫說法“不但懂得，而且親身感受到，世上絶對的東西是沒有的，一切事物衹有它的相對意義”，因此他們斷然“擺脫開絶對理念而去接近現實生活，用他們的現實觀替代一切抽象概念”。把小說《父與子》中發生的事件限定在一八五九年自有其。
此書獲全國優秀暢銷書奬，不朽的傑作，永遠的暢銷書！
連環漫畫《父與子》是德國幽默大師埃·奧·卜勞恩的不朽傑作。作品中一個個生動幽默的小故事都是來自於漫畫傢在生活中的真實感受，父與子實際上就是卡勞恩與兒子剋裏斯蒂安的真實寫照。一幅幅小巧精湛的畫面閃爍着智慧之光，無言地流瀉出純真的赤子之情與融融天倫之樂，永遠地震撼着人們的心靈。 早在20世紀30年代《父與子》便傳入我國，但在這本《父與子》全集之前國內最多衹出現過150個《父與子》的小故事，1988年我國在德意志聯邦人和國駐華大使及領事的幫助下成功地編成了這本《父與子》全集後，十幾年中這本畫册重印了數十萬，深受讀者喜愛，1994年還被評為全國優秀暢銷書。
非常難得的是國內的許多出版社對我們這個《父與子》全集的版本十分感償趣，經常愉快地藉用這個版本。例如，山東的黃河出版社竟全盤翻印了我們的《父與子》全集，而成都的天地出版社藉用的這個版本（此外還藉了我編的許多其他的畫册）不到兩年竟銷了10萬册。說真的，我真為此感到高興，因為模仿是最真誠的恭維，這些年輕的編輯畢竟是真心實意的追隨者！不過我們的《父與子》全集到底是原版，細看畢竟不同，不是嗎？
【編輯點評】
德國著名漫畫傢埃· 奧·卜勞恩的連環漫畫《父與子》譽滿天下、風靡世界。《父與子》所塑造的善良、正直、寬容的藝術形象，充滿着智慧之光，流露出純真的父子之情，深深地打動了千百萬讀者的心，從而使卜勞恩成為海恩裏希·霍夫曼和威廉·布施之後的又一巨匠，《父與子》被人們譽為德國幽默的象徵，受到人們一致高度的贊揚，聲譽遠遠地越出了國界。
《父與子》-影視信息
劇情簡介
俄國名導蘇古諾夫（Aleksandr Sokurov）執導。這部電影是描述一對父子之間，既濃烈特殊又撲朔迷離的情感，極具爭議性和震撼力。
父親與兒子長年生活在同一屋檐下，仿佛與世隔絶般沉浸在他們自己的世界中，被回憶和日常儀式所填滿。有時他們看起來就像兄弟，有時甚至像一對戀人。
《父與子》《父與子》
兒子亞力剋斯走上了一條和父親一樣的道路，進入了軍校。他喜歡體育運動，還有了女朋友。但是情人之間卻總有點隔閡，女友似乎在暗暗嫉妒亞力剋斯與父親的親密關係。
儘管亞力剋斯心裏明白所有的兒子總有一天終將離開父親，開始自己的生活，他的內心仍然充滿矛盾。
亞力剋斯的父親也清楚他或許應該去另一座城市找一份更好的工作，或者娶一位新太太。但是，誰又能減輕亞力剋斯夢魘中的痛苦呢？
從來沒有哪對父與子之間的愛如他們這般深厚。
蘇古諾夫親情三部麯係列電影的第二部，備受好評的《母與子》之姊妹篇。
本片的拍攝地點，是2003年正好建城三百周年的俄羅斯名城，如詩如畫的聖彼得堡所拍攝，極具詩意且唯美。
Historical context and notes
The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the "first Bolshevik", for his nihilism and rejection of the old order.
Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the "sons") and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality.
Fathers and Sons might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian Literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, is sometimes referred to as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova and Fenichka. This prominent theme of character duality and deep psychological insight would exert an influence on most of the great Russian novels to come, most obviously echoed in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
The novel is also the first Russian work to gain prominence in the Western world, eventually gaining the approval of well established novelists Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James.
Major characters
* Yevgeny Vasil'evich Bazarov - A nihilist, a student of science, and is training to be a doctor. As a nihilist he is a mentor to Arkady, and a challenger to the liberal ideas of the Kirsanov brothers and the traditional Russian Orthodox feelings of his own parents.
* Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov - A recent graduate of St. Petersburg University and friend of Bazarov. He is also a nihilist, although his belief seems to stem from his admiration of Bazarov rather than his own conviction.
* Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov - A landlord, a liberal democrat, Arkady’s father.
* Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov - Nikolai’s brother and a bourgeois with aristocratic pretensions, who prides himself on his refinement but like his brother is reform minded. Although he is reluctantly tolerant of the nihilism, he cannot help hating Bazarov.
* Vasily Ivanovich Bazarov - Bazarov’s father, a retired army surgeon, and a small countryside land/serf holder. Educated and enlightened, he nonetheless feels, like many of the characters, that rural isolation has left him out of touch with modern ideas. He thus retains a loyalty to traditionalist ways, manifested particularly in devotion to God and to his son Yevgeny.
* Arina Vlas'evna Bazarova - Bazarov’s mother. A very traditional woman of the 15th c. Moscovy style aristocracy: a pious follower of Orthodox Christianity, woven with folk tales and falsehoods. She loves her son deeply, but is also terrified of him and his rejection of all beliefs.
* Anna Sergeevna Odintsova - A wealthy widow who entertains the nihilist friends at her estate. Bazarov declares his love for her, but she is unable to reciprocate, both out of fear for the emotional chaos it could bring and an inability to recognize her own sentiments as love itself. Bazarov's love is a challenge to his nihilist ideal of rejection of all established order.
* Katerina (Katya) Sergeevna Lokteva - A character similar to Arkady and the younger sister of Anna. She lives comfortably with her sister but lacks confidence, finding it hard to escape Anna Sergeevna's shadow. This shyness makes her and Arkady’s love slow to realize itself.
* Fedosya (Fenichka) Nikolayevna - The daughter of Nikolai’s housekeeper, with whom he has fallen in love and fathered a child out of wedlock. The implied obstacles to their marriage are difference in class, and perhaps Nikolai's previous marriage - the burden of 'traditionalist' values.
* Viktor Sitnikov - A pompous and somewhat stupid friend of Bazarov who joins populist ideals and groups.
* Avdotya Nikitishna or Evdoksya Kukshina - An emancipated woman who lives in the town of X. Kukshina is independent but rather eccentric and incapable as a proto-feminist despite her potential.
Themes
Transgression and redemption
Bazarov (the prototypical nihilist) argues with Pavel Kirsanov (the prototypical liberal of the 1840s generation) about the nature of nihilism and usefulness to Russia in an episode which personifies the struggle between the fathers (i.e., the liberals of the 1840s) and their nihilist "sons". "Aristocratism, liberalism, progress, principles," Bazarov says. "Just think, how many foreign…and useless words!"
Bazarov tells Pavel that he will abandon nihilism when Pavel can show him "…a single institution of contemporary life, either in the family or in the social sphere, that doesn’t deserve absolute and merciless rejection." But despite this utter scorn for all things associated with traditional Russia, Bazarov still believes that there is a purpose and a value in applied science.
Human emotion and love as redemption
Bazarov's nihilism falls apart in the face of human emotions, specifically his love for Anna Odintsova. His nihilism does not account for the pain that his unrequited love causes him, and this introduces a despair that he is not capable of contending with.
Bazarov returns to his family after Odintsova rejects him. Bazarov complains to Arkady that "…they, that is, my parents, are occupied, and don't worry in the least about their own insignificance; they don't give a damn about it… While I…I feel only boredom and anger." His theory's inability to account for his emotions frustrates him and he sinks deep into boredom and ennui.
And then there is the enigmatic Anna Odintsova, a beautiful young woman of lowly origin. By virtue of having married well and been widowed young, she has inherited an exceedingly comfortable and insular life on a palatial country estate. In a letter written the same year the novel was published, Turgenev revealed that he conceived of Anna as “the representative of our idle, dreaming, curious and cold epicurean young ladies, our female nobility.” And yet, as with Bazarov, Turgenev’s fictional creation takes on a life of its own, superseding the author’s intellectual scheme to become a complex and perplexing figure.
Apparently content at the outset with her unattached life, Anna finds herself increasingly attracted to the blunt, unorthodox, highly intelligent Bazarov. She proceeds almost unwittingly to emotionally seduce the self-declared womanizer, luring him step by step in a pair of riveting, back-to-back passages to reveal his love. In the intimacy of her study, Anna confesses that she is very “unhappy,” that she has no desire to “go on,” that she longs for a “strong attachment” that is “all or nothing. A life for a life. You take mine, you give up yours, without regrets, without turning back.”
And yet, a moment after Bazarov capitulates and confesses his love, Odintsova rejects him brutally. Afterward, she is tortured, alternately blaming and excusing herself while fearing she may have thrown away a chance for genuine love. Finally she decides, “No. God knows where it might have led; one mustn’t fool around with this kind of thing.”
Conversely, Turgenev shows us Arkady and Nikolai's traditional happiness in marriage and estate management as the solution to Bazarov's cosmic despair and Anna's life of loveless comfort. (Arkady marries Anna Odintsova's sister Katya, though he was also originally in love with Anna). The height of the conflict between Bazarov and the older generation comes when Bazarov wounds Pavel in a duel. Finally, Turgenev also refutes Bazarov's "insignificance principle", i.e., the nihilist idea that life is utterly insignificant and that nothing remains after death: after leaving and then returning again to his parents, Bazarov dies of typhus. The final passage of the book portrays Bazarov's parents visiting his grave.
They walk with a heavy step, supporting each other; when they approach the railing, they fall on their knees and remain there for a long time, weeping bitterly, gazing attentively at the headstone under which their son lies buried: they exchange a few words, brush the dust off the stone, move a branch of the pine tree, and pray once again; they can’t forsake this place where they seem to feel closer to their son, to their memories of him… Can it really be that their prayers and tears are futile? Can it really be that love, sacred, devoted love is not all powerful? Oh, no!
Their love causes them to remember Bazarov: he has transcended death, but only through the love of other people. Fyodor Dostoevsky, who read Fathers and Sons and apparently appreciated Bazarov as a character, explores a similar theme with Raskolnikov's religious redemption (via the love of Christ) in Crime and Punishment.
作傢因不朽的作品而不朽，作品因永生的人物而永生。雨果和《巴黎聖母院》就是這樣。
雄偉壯麗的巴黎聖母院,這座世界上最莊嚴、最完美、最富麗堂皇的哥特式建築，雖然已經歷了八百餘年的風雨滄桑，但其非凡的氣勢和精美的雕飾仍舊豐韻猶存，令人嘆為觀止。
整個巴黎聖母院的建築雖然錯落參差，但卻莊嚴、和諧，倔傲與靈秀巧妙搭配，渾然一體，在宏大和巍峨的主體造型中透出一種莊嚴的神聖感和神秘的奇幻性。整個建築分為3層，從正面看，最下一層是一座尖形拱門，中間一層是3扇碩大的窗子，第三層是一簇排列有序的美麗的欄桿，欄桿上面是兩座尖頂的鐘樓，各高達69米。南鐘樓懸一巨鐘，重達13噸；北鐘樓則匠心獨運地特設了一個187級的樓梯。在兩座鐘樓的中間偏後位置上，半崢嶸半畏葸地露出一個高達90米的尖塔。這鐘樓和尖塔與分置於底層拱門旁的諸多聖經人物雕像、中層窗子旁的亞當、夏娃的雕塑像，以及那扇由37塊玻璃組成的圓形巨窗前面所雕刻的“聖處女像”配合在一起，顯得高深迷離，神秘莫測。
巴黎聖母院不僅建築時間早，而且建築時間長，從1163年動工，到1250年完成，並在14世紀和17世紀分別進行過兩次重大修復。它的建設，幾乎牽動了全巴黎、全法國人的心。據說，南塔樓上那13噸重的巨鐘，在鑄料中所加入的大量金、銀成分，就是用當時巴黎的婦女們慷慨而虔誠地捐獻出來的金銀首飾熔成的。另外，巴黎聖母院所在的位置為巴黎的核心，巴黎的先民高盧———羅馬人，最早就是在這裏建立了巴黎的城市雛形，所以至今計算巴黎到法國全國各地的里程都是以巴黎聖母院為起點的。
儘管巴黎聖母院以其建築宏偉、歷史悠久、雕塑精美、地理位置重要而贏得了永久的光輝和不衰的聲譽，但真正為這座建築物增色敷彩、投光註煌的，還當首推維剋多·雨果的長篇小說《巴黎聖母院》。由於這部長篇小說所涵負的積極的思想意義、深刻的社會內容和對理想與正義的不懈追求與憧憬，而使巴黎聖母院遠遠超越了它作為“建築”和“教堂”的意義，而賦有了全新的社會價值和思想內涵，成為人們心目中革新與保守、拓進與妥協、正義與邪惡、美奐與醜窳進行抗爭並戰而勝之的試金石與分水嶺，成為嚮上精神的聖地和先進思想的熔爐，成為一種對生活和未來的美好的象徵和積極的嚮往。
的確，雨果和他的《巴黎聖母院》為這座聲名遠播的建築平添了無限的活力與魅力，舉凡來到這裏的人，無不懷着對作傢人格形象與精神旗幟的景仰與尊崇。《巴黎聖母院》之所以能夠為巴黎聖母院構築筋骨、鑄造靈魂，使其成為道義與良知的象徵，成為純潔與善良的所在，成為信仰與追求的寄托，成為對“惡”的鞭撻和對“美”的謳歌的形象化的見證，就因為雨果是一個非凡的作傢。他的非凡，主要表現在積極、熱情、頑強、堅韌，對國傢、民族和人民充滿了責任心，一往無前地投入社會變革，用無限的真誠和坦率，明辨是非和支持正義，不顧一切地追求真理。儘管《巴黎聖母院》是雨果青年時期的作品，創作這部長篇小說的時候，雨果還沒有經過在根西島上被流放18年的“煉獄”，他的思想的深刻性還遠不如寫作《悲慘世界》、《九三年》等作品時那樣爐火純青。但即使這樣，《巴黎聖母院》仍舊是現實主義文學創作的一次巨大和極富創新意義的突破。外貌醜陋但內心善良的敲鐘人卡西莫多和美麗的吉卜賽女郎艾絲米拉達已成為不朽的文學形象，而它所代表的社會意義和思想意義，則使巴黎聖母院成為一部永遠耐人尋味和含義無窮的書。
Hugo began to write Hunchback in 1829. The agreement with his original publisher, Gosselin, was that the book would be finished that same year. However, Hugo was constantly delayed due to the demands of other projects. By the summer of 1830, Gosselin demanded the book to be completed by February 1831. And so beginning in September 1830, Hugo worked non-stop on the project; he bought a new bottle of ink, a woollen cloak, [citation needed] and cloistered himself in his room refusing to leave his house (except for nightly visits to the cathedral). The book was finished six months later.
Synopsis
The story dates back to January 6, 1482 in Paris, France, the day of the 'Festival of Fools' in Paris. Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of Notre Dame, is introduced by his crowning as Pope of Fools.
Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men but especially those of Quasimodo and his adopted father, Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Frollo is torn between his lust and the rules of the church. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her and then abandons him when he is caught and whipped and ordered to be tied down in the heat. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, offers the hunchback water. It saves her, for she captures the heart of Quasimodo.
Esmeralda is later charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo attempted to kill in jealousy, and is sentenced to death by hanging. Crazy with frustrated lust, Frollo has her condemned to death when she refuses to be his. As she is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre Dame and carries her off to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary. Clopin rallies the Truands (criminals of Paris) to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda. The King, seeing the chaos, vetoes the law of sanctuary and commands his troops to take Esmeralda out and kill her. When Quasimodo sees the Truands, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is hanged. Quasimodo pushes him from the heights of Notre Dame to his death. Quasimodo then goes to a mass grave, lies next to her corpse, crawls off to Esmeralda's tomb with his arms around her body and eventually dies of starvation. Two years later, excavationists find the skeletons of Esmeralda with a broken neck and Quasimodo locked in an embrace.
Characters
Major
* Quasimodo, the titular protagonist of the story. He is a barely verbal hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame. Ringing the church bells has made him deaf. When he was a hideous and abandoned baby, he was adopted by Claude Frollo. Quasimodo's life within the confines of the cathedral and his only two outlets—ringing the bells and his love and devotion for Frollo—are described. He ventures outside the Cathedral rarely, since people despise and shun him for his appearance. The notable occasions when he does leave are his taking part in the Festival of Fools—during which he is elected Fools'-Pope due to his perfect hideousness—and his subsequent attempt to kidnap Esmeralda, his rescue of Esmeralda from the gallows, his attempt to bring Phoebus to Esmeralda, and his final abandonment of the cathedral at the end of the novel. It is revealed in the story that the baby Quasimodo was left by the Gypsies in place of Esmeralda, whom they abducted.
* Esmeralda, the protagonist of the story. She is a beautiful young barefoot Gypsy dancer, innocent, close to nature, and naturally compassionate and kind. She is the center of the human drama within the story. A popular focus of the citizens' attentions, she experiences their changeable attitudes, being first adored as an entertainer, then hated as a witch, before being lauded again for her dramatic rescue by Quasimodo; when the King finally decides to put her to death, he does so in the belief that the Parisian mob want her dead. She is loved by both Quasimodo and Claude Frollo, but falls deeply in love with Captain Phoebus, a handsome military man who only has a passing infatuation with her and whom she believes will protect her. She is the only character to show the hunchback a moment of human kindness: as he is being whipped for punishment and jeered by a horrid rabble, she approaches the public stock and gives him a drink of water. Because of this, he falls fiercely in love with her, even though she is too disgusted by his ugliness even to let him kiss her hand.
* Claude Frollo is the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Despite his celibacy vows as a priest, he finds himself madly in love with Esmeralda. He nearly murders Phoebus in a jealous rage from seeing Phoebus on top of Esmeralda. He is killed when Quasimodo pushes him off the cathedral. His dour attitude and his alchemical experiments scared and alienated him from the Parisians, who believed him a sorcerer, and so he lived without family, save for Quasimodo and his spoiled brother Jehan. He serves as the novel's main antagonist.
* Pierre Gringoire is a struggling poet. He mistakenly finds his way into the "Court of Miracles", the secret lair of the Gypsies. In order to preserve the secrecy, Gringoire must either be killed by hanging, or marry a Gypsy. Although Esmeralda does not love him, and in fact believes him a coward rather than a true man (he, unlike Phoebus, failed in his attempt to rescue her from Quasimodo), she takes pity on his plight and marries him—although, much to his disappointment, she refuses to let him touch her.
* Phoebus de Chateaupers is the Captain of the King's Archers. After he saves Esmeralda from abduction, she becomes infatuated with him, and he is intrigued by her. He is already betrothed, but just wants to lie with her. As he continues talking to and kissing her, Frollo comes from behind and stabs him. Esmeralda faints and upon waking up, finds that she has been framed with killing him. After the events of the novel, he suffers the 'tragedy' of marriage to the beautiful but spiteful Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier.
* Clopin Trouillefou is the King of Truands. He rallies the Court of Miracles to rescue Esmeralda from Notre Dame after the idea is suggested by Gringoire. He is eventually killed during the attack by the King's soldiers.
Minor
* Djali (pronounced like "Jolly") is Esmeralda's pet goat. She performs tricks such as writing the word "Phoebus" in moveable letter-blocks, and tapping the number of beats to indicate the month and hour of the day. These tricks delight the citizens at first, but later horrify them, causing them to believe Esmeralda is a witch.
* Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier is a beautiful and wealthy socialite engaged to Phoebus. Phoebus's attentions to Esmeralda make her insecure and jealous, and she and her friends respond by treating Esmeralda with contempt and spite. Fleur-de-Lys later neglects to inform Phoebus that Esmeralda has not been executed, which serves to deprive the pair of any further contact. Phoebus and Fleur-de-Lys marry at the end of the novel.
* Jehan Frollo is Claude Frollo's over-indulged, scallywag younger brother. He is a troublemaker and a student at the university. He is dependent on his brother for money, which he then proceeds to squander on alcohol. Quasimodo kills him during the attack on the cathedral.
* Sister Gudule, formerly named Paquette la Chantefleurie, is an anchorite, who lives in seclusion in an exposed cell in central Paris. She is tormented by the loss of her daughter Agnes, whom she believes to have been cannibalised by Gypsies as a baby, and devotes her life to mourning her. Her long-lost daughter turns out to be Esmeralda.
* Louis XI is the King of France. Appears briefly when he is brought the news of the rioting at Notre Dame.
* Tristan l'Hermite is a friend of King Louis XI. He leads the band that goes to capture Esmeralda.
* Henriet Cousin is the city executioner.
* Florian Barbedienne is the judge who sentences Quasimodo to be tortured. He is also deaf.
* Jacques Charmolue gets Esmeralda to falsely confess to killing Phoebus. He then has her executed.
Major themes
The original French title, Notre-Dame de Paris (the formal title of the Cathedral) indicates that the Cathedral itself is the most significant aspect of the novel, both the main setting and the focus of the story's themes. Nearly every event in the novel takes place in the cathedral, atop the cathedral or can be witnessed by a character standing within or atop the cathedral. The Cathedral had fallen into disrepair at the time of writing, which Hugo wanted to point out. The book portrays the Gothic era as one of extremes of architecture, passion, and religion. The theme of determinism (fate and destiny) is explored as well as revolution and social strife. The severe distinction of the social classes is shown by the relationships of Quasimodo and Esmeralda with higher-caste people in the book. Hugo is also very concerned with justice, and description of religious fanaticism.
The main theme as said in the Disney's adpatation is "Who is the Monster and who is the Man?????"
Architecture
Architecture is a major concern of Hugo's in Notre-Dame de Paris, not just as embodied in the cathedral itself, but as representing throughout Paris and the rest of Europe an artistic genre which, Hugo argued, was about to disappear with the arrival of the printing press. Claude Frollo's portentous phrase, ‘Ceci tuera cela’ ("This will kill that", as he looks from a printed book to the cathedral building), sums up this thesis, which is expounded on in Book V, chapter 2. Hugo writes that ‘quiconque naissait poète se faisait architecte’ ("whoever is born a poet becomes an architect"), arguing that while the written word was heavily censored and difficult to reproduce, architecture was extremely prominent and enjoyed considerable freedom.
Il existe à cette époque, pour la pensée écrite en pierre, un privilége tout-à-fait comparable à notre liberté actuelle de la presse. C'est la liberté de l'architecture.
There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture.
—Book V, Chapter 2
With the recent introduction of the printing press, it became possible to reproduce one's ideas much more easily on paper, and Hugo considered this period to represent the last flowering of architecture as a great artistic form. As with many of his books, Hugo was interested in a time which seemed to him to be on the cusp between two types of society.
Literary significance and reception
The enormous popularity of the book in France spurred the nascent historical preservation movement in that country and strongly encouraged Gothic revival architecture. Ultimately it led to major renovations at Notre-Dame in the 19th century led by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Much of the cathedral's present appearance is a result of this renovation.
Allusions and references
Allusions to actual history, geography and current science
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo makes frequent reference to the architecture of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
He also mentions the invention of the printing press, when the bookmaker near the beginning of the work speaks of "the German pest."
Victor Hugo lived a few homes away from Victor of Aveyron, the first well-documented feral child, although the inspiration for Quasimodo's character is not directly linked to him.
Allusions in other works
The name Quasimodo has become synonymous with "a courageous heart beneath a grotesque exterior."
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
To date, all of the film and TV adaptations have strayed somewhat from the original plot, some going as far as to give it a happy ending. The 1956 film is one of the only ones to end exactly like the novel, although it changes other parts of the story. Unlike most adaptations, the Disney version has the ending that's inspired by an opera created by Hugo himself.
Film
* Esmeralda (1905 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911 film)
* The Darling of Paris (1917 film)
* Esmeralda (1922 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
* The Hunchback (1997 film)
* Quasimodo d'El Paris (1999 film)
* Saeed Khan Rangeela a Pakistani comedian turned director made a movie named Kubra Aashiq in 1973 inspired from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, with himself in the lead role of Quasimodo. However it did not fulfill the expectations of the audience and literary circles also did not appreciate it.
Television
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1966 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1986 film)
Theatre
* In 1977, an adaptation by Ken Hill was commissioned and staged by the National Theatre in London.
Music
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Alec R. Costandinos and the Syncophonic Orchestra from 1977, a lush orchestral disco 28 minute epic re-telling the tale of Quasimodo and Esmeralda.
Musical theatre
* Opera "La Esmeralda", by Louise Bertin (1836), libretto by Victor Hugo.
* Opera "Esmeralda", by Arthur Goring Thomas (1883) based on the Victor Hugo novel.
* Opera Esmeralda, by Dargomyzhsky (1847), also based on the same Victor Hugo novel.
* "Notre Dame", romantic Opera in two acts, text after Victor Hugo by Franz Schmidt and Leopold Wilk; composed: 1902-4, 1st perf.: Vienna 1914
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), an Off Broadway musical with music by Byron Janis, lyrics by Hal Hackady and book by Anthony Scully
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), a dramatic sung-through musical with book and lyrics by Gary Sullivan and music by John Trent Wallace. After a production at the Mermaid Theatre in London it was published by Samuel French Ltd in 1997 and has received several UK productions as well as productions in New Zealand and Australia. In 2010 it was re-written as a conventional musical, with the new title Notre Dame.
* In 1999, "Notre Dame de Paris (musical)" opened in Paris and became an instant success. It is considered the most successful adaptation of any novel except for "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables." It was also adapted for the stage by Nicholas DeBaubien.
* From 1999 to 2002, the Disney film was adapted into a darker, more Gothic musical production called Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (translated in English as The Bellringer of Notre Dame), re-written and directed by James Lapine and produced by the Disney theatrical branch, in Berlin, Germany. A cast recording was also recorded in German. There has been discussion of an American revival of the musical.
* A rock musical version was released in Seattle, Washington in 1998 titled "Hunchback" with music and script by C. Rainey Lewis.
* A musical version, scored by Dennis DeYoung, will open in Chicago at the Bailiwick Reperatory in the summer of 2008
Ballet
* Notre-Dame de Paris A ballet choreographed by Roland Petit. First performed in 1965 at the Paris Opera.
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1998) – choreography and direction by Michael Pink and original music score by Philip Feeney. Currently in the repertoire of Milwaukee Ballet, Boston Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Colorado Ballet.
* Ringaren i Notre Dame (Swedish for The Bellringer of Notre Dame; 2009) – choreography by Pär Isberg and original music score by Stefan Nilsson. Its first performance was on 3 April 2009, by the Royal Swedish Ballet at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm.
Radio
The book was twice adapted and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as its Classic Serial:
* in 5 parts from 6 January to 3 February 1989, with Jack Klaff as Quasimodo
* in 2 parts on 30 November and 7 December 2008, with deaf actor David Bower playing Quasimodo.
Translation history
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has been translated into English many times. Translations are often reprinted by various publisher imprints. Some translations have been revised over time.
* 1833. Translated by Frederic Shoberl as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Later revisions.
* 1833. Translated by William Hazlitt as Notre Dame: A Tale of the Ancien Regime. Later revisions.
* 1888. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood as Notre-Dame de Paris.
* 1895. Translated by M.W. Artois et al., part of the 28-vol The Novels of Victor Hugo, re-printed in the 20th century under other titles.
* 1964. Translated by Walter J. Cobb. In multiple editions, see for example Signet Classics ISBN 0451527887, Pub date 10 April 2001, paperback.
* 1978. Translated by John Sturrock. In multiple editions, see for example Penguin Classics ISBN 0140443533, Pub date 26 October 1978, paperback.
* 1993. Translated by Alban J. Krailsheim as Notre-Dame de Paris. See Oxford World's Classics ISBN 978-0199555802
* 2002. Revised translation by Catherine Liu of an anonymous 19th century translation. See Modern Library Classics ISBN 0679642579, Pub date 8 October 2002.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Quotations
* A description of Quasimodo upon his election as the fool's pope: "We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose- that horse-shoe mouth- that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart- of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress- of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant- of that forked chin- and, above all, of the expression spread over all this-that expression of mingled malice, amazement and sadness." (p. 62)
* On the connection between architecture and culture: "When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door." (p. 184)
* Quasimodo's reaction to Esmeralda's gift of a drink of water while he is being heckled on the pillory: "Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, was seen to roll a big tear, which fell slowly down that deformed visage so long contracted by despair. Perhaps it was the first that the unfortunate creature had ever shed." (p. 322)
* Quasimodo, explaining why he won't enter Esmeralda's cell: "The owl goes not into the nest of the lark." (p. 502)
* After Esmeralda's execution: "Quasimodo then lifted his eye to look upon the Gypsy girl, whose body, suspended from the gibbet, he beheld quivering afar, under its white robes, in the last struggles of death; then again he dropped it upon the archdeacon, stretched a shapeless mass at the foot of the tower, and he said with a sob that heaved his deep breast to the bottom, 'Oh-all that I've ever loved!'"
雄偉壯麗的巴黎聖母院,這座世界上最莊嚴、最完美、最富麗堂皇的哥特式建築，雖然已經歷了八百餘年的風雨滄桑，但其非凡的氣勢和精美的雕飾仍舊豐韻猶存，令人嘆為觀止。
整個巴黎聖母院的建築雖然錯落參差，但卻莊嚴、和諧，倔傲與靈秀巧妙搭配，渾然一體，在宏大和巍峨的主體造型中透出一種莊嚴的神聖感和神秘的奇幻性。整個建築分為3層，從正面看，最下一層是一座尖形拱門，中間一層是3扇碩大的窗子，第三層是一簇排列有序的美麗的欄桿，欄桿上面是兩座尖頂的鐘樓，各高達69米。南鐘樓懸一巨鐘，重達13噸；北鐘樓則匠心獨運地特設了一個187級的樓梯。在兩座鐘樓的中間偏後位置上，半崢嶸半畏葸地露出一個高達90米的尖塔。這鐘樓和尖塔與分置於底層拱門旁的諸多聖經人物雕像、中層窗子旁的亞當、夏娃的雕塑像，以及那扇由37塊玻璃組成的圓形巨窗前面所雕刻的“聖處女像”配合在一起，顯得高深迷離，神秘莫測。
巴黎聖母院不僅建築時間早，而且建築時間長，從1163年動工，到1250年完成，並在14世紀和17世紀分別進行過兩次重大修復。它的建設，幾乎牽動了全巴黎、全法國人的心。據說，南塔樓上那13噸重的巨鐘，在鑄料中所加入的大量金、銀成分，就是用當時巴黎的婦女們慷慨而虔誠地捐獻出來的金銀首飾熔成的。另外，巴黎聖母院所在的位置為巴黎的核心，巴黎的先民高盧———羅馬人，最早就是在這裏建立了巴黎的城市雛形，所以至今計算巴黎到法國全國各地的里程都是以巴黎聖母院為起點的。
儘管巴黎聖母院以其建築宏偉、歷史悠久、雕塑精美、地理位置重要而贏得了永久的光輝和不衰的聲譽，但真正為這座建築物增色敷彩、投光註煌的，還當首推維剋多·雨果的長篇小說《巴黎聖母院》。由於這部長篇小說所涵負的積極的思想意義、深刻的社會內容和對理想與正義的不懈追求與憧憬，而使巴黎聖母院遠遠超越了它作為“建築”和“教堂”的意義，而賦有了全新的社會價值和思想內涵，成為人們心目中革新與保守、拓進與妥協、正義與邪惡、美奐與醜窳進行抗爭並戰而勝之的試金石與分水嶺，成為嚮上精神的聖地和先進思想的熔爐，成為一種對生活和未來的美好的象徵和積極的嚮往。
的確，雨果和他的《巴黎聖母院》為這座聲名遠播的建築平添了無限的活力與魅力，舉凡來到這裏的人，無不懷着對作傢人格形象與精神旗幟的景仰與尊崇。《巴黎聖母院》之所以能夠為巴黎聖母院構築筋骨、鑄造靈魂，使其成為道義與良知的象徵，成為純潔與善良的所在，成為信仰與追求的寄托，成為對“惡”的鞭撻和對“美”的謳歌的形象化的見證，就因為雨果是一個非凡的作傢。他的非凡，主要表現在積極、熱情、頑強、堅韌，對國傢、民族和人民充滿了責任心，一往無前地投入社會變革，用無限的真誠和坦率，明辨是非和支持正義，不顧一切地追求真理。儘管《巴黎聖母院》是雨果青年時期的作品，創作這部長篇小說的時候，雨果還沒有經過在根西島上被流放18年的“煉獄”，他的思想的深刻性還遠不如寫作《悲慘世界》、《九三年》等作品時那樣爐火純青。但即使這樣，《巴黎聖母院》仍舊是現實主義文學創作的一次巨大和極富創新意義的突破。外貌醜陋但內心善良的敲鐘人卡西莫多和美麗的吉卜賽女郎艾絲米拉達已成為不朽的文學形象，而它所代表的社會意義和思想意義，則使巴黎聖母院成為一部永遠耐人尋味和含義無窮的書。
Hugo began to write Hunchback in 1829. The agreement with his original publisher, Gosselin, was that the book would be finished that same year. However, Hugo was constantly delayed due to the demands of other projects. By the summer of 1830, Gosselin demanded the book to be completed by February 1831. And so beginning in September 1830, Hugo worked non-stop on the project; he bought a new bottle of ink, a woollen cloak, [citation needed] and cloistered himself in his room refusing to leave his house (except for nightly visits to the cathedral). The book was finished six months later.
Synopsis
The story dates back to January 6, 1482 in Paris, France, the day of the 'Festival of Fools' in Paris. Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of Notre Dame, is introduced by his crowning as Pope of Fools.
Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men but especially those of Quasimodo and his adopted father, Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Frollo is torn between his lust and the rules of the church. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her and then abandons him when he is caught and whipped and ordered to be tied down in the heat. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, offers the hunchback water. It saves her, for she captures the heart of Quasimodo.
Esmeralda is later charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo attempted to kill in jealousy, and is sentenced to death by hanging. Crazy with frustrated lust, Frollo has her condemned to death when she refuses to be his. As she is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre Dame and carries her off to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary. Clopin rallies the Truands (criminals of Paris) to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda. The King, seeing the chaos, vetoes the law of sanctuary and commands his troops to take Esmeralda out and kill her. When Quasimodo sees the Truands, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is hanged. Quasimodo pushes him from the heights of Notre Dame to his death. Quasimodo then goes to a mass grave, lies next to her corpse, crawls off to Esmeralda's tomb with his arms around her body and eventually dies of starvation. Two years later, excavationists find the skeletons of Esmeralda with a broken neck and Quasimodo locked in an embrace.
Characters
Major
* Quasimodo, the titular protagonist of the story. He is a barely verbal hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame. Ringing the church bells has made him deaf. When he was a hideous and abandoned baby, he was adopted by Claude Frollo. Quasimodo's life within the confines of the cathedral and his only two outlets—ringing the bells and his love and devotion for Frollo—are described. He ventures outside the Cathedral rarely, since people despise and shun him for his appearance. The notable occasions when he does leave are his taking part in the Festival of Fools—during which he is elected Fools'-Pope due to his perfect hideousness—and his subsequent attempt to kidnap Esmeralda, his rescue of Esmeralda from the gallows, his attempt to bring Phoebus to Esmeralda, and his final abandonment of the cathedral at the end of the novel. It is revealed in the story that the baby Quasimodo was left by the Gypsies in place of Esmeralda, whom they abducted.
* Esmeralda, the protagonist of the story. She is a beautiful young barefoot Gypsy dancer, innocent, close to nature, and naturally compassionate and kind. She is the center of the human drama within the story. A popular focus of the citizens' attentions, she experiences their changeable attitudes, being first adored as an entertainer, then hated as a witch, before being lauded again for her dramatic rescue by Quasimodo; when the King finally decides to put her to death, he does so in the belief that the Parisian mob want her dead. She is loved by both Quasimodo and Claude Frollo, but falls deeply in love with Captain Phoebus, a handsome military man who only has a passing infatuation with her and whom she believes will protect her. She is the only character to show the hunchback a moment of human kindness: as he is being whipped for punishment and jeered by a horrid rabble, she approaches the public stock and gives him a drink of water. Because of this, he falls fiercely in love with her, even though she is too disgusted by his ugliness even to let him kiss her hand.
* Claude Frollo is the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Despite his celibacy vows as a priest, he finds himself madly in love with Esmeralda. He nearly murders Phoebus in a jealous rage from seeing Phoebus on top of Esmeralda. He is killed when Quasimodo pushes him off the cathedral. His dour attitude and his alchemical experiments scared and alienated him from the Parisians, who believed him a sorcerer, and so he lived without family, save for Quasimodo and his spoiled brother Jehan. He serves as the novel's main antagonist.
* Pierre Gringoire is a struggling poet. He mistakenly finds his way into the "Court of Miracles", the secret lair of the Gypsies. In order to preserve the secrecy, Gringoire must either be killed by hanging, or marry a Gypsy. Although Esmeralda does not love him, and in fact believes him a coward rather than a true man (he, unlike Phoebus, failed in his attempt to rescue her from Quasimodo), she takes pity on his plight and marries him—although, much to his disappointment, she refuses to let him touch her.
* Phoebus de Chateaupers is the Captain of the King's Archers. After he saves Esmeralda from abduction, she becomes infatuated with him, and he is intrigued by her. He is already betrothed, but just wants to lie with her. As he continues talking to and kissing her, Frollo comes from behind and stabs him. Esmeralda faints and upon waking up, finds that she has been framed with killing him. After the events of the novel, he suffers the 'tragedy' of marriage to the beautiful but spiteful Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier.
* Clopin Trouillefou is the King of Truands. He rallies the Court of Miracles to rescue Esmeralda from Notre Dame after the idea is suggested by Gringoire. He is eventually killed during the attack by the King's soldiers.
Minor
* Djali (pronounced like "Jolly") is Esmeralda's pet goat. She performs tricks such as writing the word "Phoebus" in moveable letter-blocks, and tapping the number of beats to indicate the month and hour of the day. These tricks delight the citizens at first, but later horrify them, causing them to believe Esmeralda is a witch.
* Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier is a beautiful and wealthy socialite engaged to Phoebus. Phoebus's attentions to Esmeralda make her insecure and jealous, and she and her friends respond by treating Esmeralda with contempt and spite. Fleur-de-Lys later neglects to inform Phoebus that Esmeralda has not been executed, which serves to deprive the pair of any further contact. Phoebus and Fleur-de-Lys marry at the end of the novel.
* Jehan Frollo is Claude Frollo's over-indulged, scallywag younger brother. He is a troublemaker and a student at the university. He is dependent on his brother for money, which he then proceeds to squander on alcohol. Quasimodo kills him during the attack on the cathedral.
* Sister Gudule, formerly named Paquette la Chantefleurie, is an anchorite, who lives in seclusion in an exposed cell in central Paris. She is tormented by the loss of her daughter Agnes, whom she believes to have been cannibalised by Gypsies as a baby, and devotes her life to mourning her. Her long-lost daughter turns out to be Esmeralda.
* Louis XI is the King of France. Appears briefly when he is brought the news of the rioting at Notre Dame.
* Tristan l'Hermite is a friend of King Louis XI. He leads the band that goes to capture Esmeralda.
* Henriet Cousin is the city executioner.
* Florian Barbedienne is the judge who sentences Quasimodo to be tortured. He is also deaf.
* Jacques Charmolue gets Esmeralda to falsely confess to killing Phoebus. He then has her executed.
Major themes
The original French title, Notre-Dame de Paris (the formal title of the Cathedral) indicates that the Cathedral itself is the most significant aspect of the novel, both the main setting and the focus of the story's themes. Nearly every event in the novel takes place in the cathedral, atop the cathedral or can be witnessed by a character standing within or atop the cathedral. The Cathedral had fallen into disrepair at the time of writing, which Hugo wanted to point out. The book portrays the Gothic era as one of extremes of architecture, passion, and religion. The theme of determinism (fate and destiny) is explored as well as revolution and social strife. The severe distinction of the social classes is shown by the relationships of Quasimodo and Esmeralda with higher-caste people in the book. Hugo is also very concerned with justice, and description of religious fanaticism.
The main theme as said in the Disney's adpatation is "Who is the Monster and who is the Man?????"
Architecture
Architecture is a major concern of Hugo's in Notre-Dame de Paris, not just as embodied in the cathedral itself, but as representing throughout Paris and the rest of Europe an artistic genre which, Hugo argued, was about to disappear with the arrival of the printing press. Claude Frollo's portentous phrase, ‘Ceci tuera cela’ ("This will kill that", as he looks from a printed book to the cathedral building), sums up this thesis, which is expounded on in Book V, chapter 2. Hugo writes that ‘quiconque naissait poète se faisait architecte’ ("whoever is born a poet becomes an architect"), arguing that while the written word was heavily censored and difficult to reproduce, architecture was extremely prominent and enjoyed considerable freedom.
Il existe à cette époque, pour la pensée écrite en pierre, un privilége tout-à-fait comparable à notre liberté actuelle de la presse. C'est la liberté de l'architecture.
There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture.
—Book V, Chapter 2
With the recent introduction of the printing press, it became possible to reproduce one's ideas much more easily on paper, and Hugo considered this period to represent the last flowering of architecture as a great artistic form. As with many of his books, Hugo was interested in a time which seemed to him to be on the cusp between two types of society.
Literary significance and reception
The enormous popularity of the book in France spurred the nascent historical preservation movement in that country and strongly encouraged Gothic revival architecture. Ultimately it led to major renovations at Notre-Dame in the 19th century led by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Much of the cathedral's present appearance is a result of this renovation.
Allusions and references
Allusions to actual history, geography and current science
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo makes frequent reference to the architecture of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
He also mentions the invention of the printing press, when the bookmaker near the beginning of the work speaks of "the German pest."
Victor Hugo lived a few homes away from Victor of Aveyron, the first well-documented feral child, although the inspiration for Quasimodo's character is not directly linked to him.
Allusions in other works
The name Quasimodo has become synonymous with "a courageous heart beneath a grotesque exterior."
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
To date, all of the film and TV adaptations have strayed somewhat from the original plot, some going as far as to give it a happy ending. The 1956 film is one of the only ones to end exactly like the novel, although it changes other parts of the story. Unlike most adaptations, the Disney version has the ending that's inspired by an opera created by Hugo himself.
Film
* Esmeralda (1905 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911 film)
* The Darling of Paris (1917 film)
* Esmeralda (1922 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
* The Hunchback (1997 film)
* Quasimodo d'El Paris (1999 film)
* Saeed Khan Rangeela a Pakistani comedian turned director made a movie named Kubra Aashiq in 1973 inspired from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, with himself in the lead role of Quasimodo. However it did not fulfill the expectations of the audience and literary circles also did not appreciate it.
Television
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1966 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1986 film)
Theatre
* In 1977, an adaptation by Ken Hill was commissioned and staged by the National Theatre in London.
Music
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Alec R. Costandinos and the Syncophonic Orchestra from 1977, a lush orchestral disco 28 minute epic re-telling the tale of Quasimodo and Esmeralda.
Musical theatre
* Opera "La Esmeralda", by Louise Bertin (1836), libretto by Victor Hugo.
* Opera "Esmeralda", by Arthur Goring Thomas (1883) based on the Victor Hugo novel.
* Opera Esmeralda, by Dargomyzhsky (1847), also based on the same Victor Hugo novel.
* "Notre Dame", romantic Opera in two acts, text after Victor Hugo by Franz Schmidt and Leopold Wilk; composed: 1902-4, 1st perf.: Vienna 1914
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), an Off Broadway musical with music by Byron Janis, lyrics by Hal Hackady and book by Anthony Scully
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), a dramatic sung-through musical with book and lyrics by Gary Sullivan and music by John Trent Wallace. After a production at the Mermaid Theatre in London it was published by Samuel French Ltd in 1997 and has received several UK productions as well as productions in New Zealand and Australia. In 2010 it was re-written as a conventional musical, with the new title Notre Dame.
* In 1999, "Notre Dame de Paris (musical)" opened in Paris and became an instant success. It is considered the most successful adaptation of any novel except for "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables." It was also adapted for the stage by Nicholas DeBaubien.
* From 1999 to 2002, the Disney film was adapted into a darker, more Gothic musical production called Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (translated in English as The Bellringer of Notre Dame), re-written and directed by James Lapine and produced by the Disney theatrical branch, in Berlin, Germany. A cast recording was also recorded in German. There has been discussion of an American revival of the musical.
* A rock musical version was released in Seattle, Washington in 1998 titled "Hunchback" with music and script by C. Rainey Lewis.
* A musical version, scored by Dennis DeYoung, will open in Chicago at the Bailiwick Reperatory in the summer of 2008
Ballet
* Notre-Dame de Paris A ballet choreographed by Roland Petit. First performed in 1965 at the Paris Opera.
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1998) – choreography and direction by Michael Pink and original music score by Philip Feeney. Currently in the repertoire of Milwaukee Ballet, Boston Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Colorado Ballet.
* Ringaren i Notre Dame (Swedish for The Bellringer of Notre Dame; 2009) – choreography by Pär Isberg and original music score by Stefan Nilsson. Its first performance was on 3 April 2009, by the Royal Swedish Ballet at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm.
Radio
The book was twice adapted and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as its Classic Serial:
* in 5 parts from 6 January to 3 February 1989, with Jack Klaff as Quasimodo
* in 2 parts on 30 November and 7 December 2008, with deaf actor David Bower playing Quasimodo.
Translation history
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has been translated into English many times. Translations are often reprinted by various publisher imprints. Some translations have been revised over time.
* 1833. Translated by Frederic Shoberl as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Later revisions.
* 1833. Translated by William Hazlitt as Notre Dame: A Tale of the Ancien Regime. Later revisions.
* 1888. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood as Notre-Dame de Paris.
* 1895. Translated by M.W. Artois et al., part of the 28-vol The Novels of Victor Hugo, re-printed in the 20th century under other titles.
* 1964. Translated by Walter J. Cobb. In multiple editions, see for example Signet Classics ISBN 0451527887, Pub date 10 April 2001, paperback.
* 1978. Translated by John Sturrock. In multiple editions, see for example Penguin Classics ISBN 0140443533, Pub date 26 October 1978, paperback.
* 1993. Translated by Alban J. Krailsheim as Notre-Dame de Paris. See Oxford World's Classics ISBN 978-0199555802
* 2002. Revised translation by Catherine Liu of an anonymous 19th century translation. See Modern Library Classics ISBN 0679642579, Pub date 8 October 2002.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Quotations
* A description of Quasimodo upon his election as the fool's pope: "We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose- that horse-shoe mouth- that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart- of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress- of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant- of that forked chin- and, above all, of the expression spread over all this-that expression of mingled malice, amazement and sadness." (p. 62)
* On the connection between architecture and culture: "When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door." (p. 184)
* Quasimodo's reaction to Esmeralda's gift of a drink of water while he is being heckled on the pillory: "Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, was seen to roll a big tear, which fell slowly down that deformed visage so long contracted by despair. Perhaps it was the first that the unfortunate creature had ever shed." (p. 322)
* Quasimodo, explaining why he won't enter Esmeralda's cell: "The owl goes not into the nest of the lark." (p. 502)
* After Esmeralda's execution: "Quasimodo then lifted his eye to look upon the Gypsy girl, whose body, suspended from the gibbet, he beheld quivering afar, under its white robes, in the last struggles of death; then again he dropped it upon the archdeacon, stretched a shapeless mass at the foot of the tower, and he said with a sob that heaved his deep breast to the bottom, 'Oh-all that I've ever loved!'"
《源氏物語》可分為兩大部分：前44回寫源氏極享榮華，伴隨着感情糾葛的一生。這是作品的中心內容。10回寫源氏之子薫(實為三公主和柏木大將的私生子)與宇治山莊女子之間錯綜的愛情故事。小說歷經4代天皇、跨越70多個年頭，登場人物數以百計，僅主要人物就有幾十人之多。
故事開始於桐壺帝在位的時候。出身低微的更衣，獨得桐壺帝的寵愛。後此更衣生下一位皇子，其他嬪妃，尤其是弘徽殿女禦也愈加忌恨。更衣不堪凌辱折磨，生子不到3年，便悒鬱而亡。小皇子沒有強大的外戚做靠山，很難在宮中立足。桐壺帝不得已將其降為臣籍，賜姓源氏。源氏不僅貌美驚人，而且才華橫溢。12歲行冠禮後，娶當權的左大臣之女葵姬為妻，但葵姬不遂源氏的意。於是源氏追求桐壺帝續娶的女禦藤壺，據說女禦酷肖源氏生母。不久，兩人發生亂倫關係，生下一子，後來即位稱冷泉帝。源氏到處偷香竊玉，強行占有了伊豫介的後妻空蟬，還嚮比他大7歲的嬸母六條妃子求歡，並同時輾轉在花散裏、末摘花等衆女子之間。當他劫持一位不明身分的弱女子夕顔去荒屋幽會時，這女子不幸暴亡，源氏為此大病一場，病愈進香時遇到一個酷似自己日思夜想而不得相見的藤壺的女孩，得知她是藤壺女禦的侄女，名叫紫姬，就趁紫姬熟睡把她帶回傢中，收為養女，朝夕相伴，以寄托對藤壺的思慕。幾年後紫姬出落得亭亭玉立，高貴優雅，纔藝超衆，十分可人。源氏便把她據為己有。葵姬因六條妃子生魂附體過世後，紫姬被扶為正夫人。
桐壺帝退位以後，右大臣弘徽殿女禦的兒子登上皇位（朱雀帝），源氏及嶽父左大臣一派從此失勢。恰巧源氏與右大臣女兒朧月夜偷情之事敗露，源氏自覺噩運臨頭，便遠離京城，到荒涼少人的須磨、明石隱居。為排遣寂寞，與明石道人的女兒明石姬結合，後生一女，被選入宮中做了皇后。
由於天降異兆，朱雀帝又重病在身，朝政不穩。源氏奉召回京輔佐朝廷。不久，朱雀帝讓位給冷泉帝。源氏升任太政大臣，源氏及左大臣一門恢復了往日的繁華氣派。源氏建造了集四季景物為一體、蔚為壯觀的六條院寓所，將昔日戀人統統接到院裏來住。源氏近40歲時，將朱雀帝之女三公主納為正妻，紫姬終因心力交瘁，病臥在床。早已凱覦三公主美貌的頭中將之子柏木趁源氏探病的機會，與三公主幽會，被源氏發現。柏木懼悔交加，一病不起，英年夭折。三公主生下容貌與柏木毫無二緻的私生子薫後，落發為尼。源氏深感自己和藤壺亂倫之罪的報應臨頭，心如死灰。恰巧紫姬不久又逝，源氏失去了精神支柱，了斷塵緣，隱遁出傢。幾年後死去。
源氏之子薫生性嚴謹。20歲來到宇治山莊愛上了莊主八親王的大女公子，不料遭到拒絶。大女公子病故後，他尋回外貌酷肖大女公子的八親王的私生女浮舟，填補心靈的空白。可是有人深夜闖入浮舟臥房，假冒薫的聲音，占有了浮舟。當浮舟意識到自己一身事二主後，毅然跳水自盡，被人救起後削發出傢。儘管薫一往情深，多次捎信，以求一見，但終未了此心願。
《源氏物語》-作者簡介
作者紫式部，本姓藤原，原名不詳。因其長兄任式部丞，故稱為藤式部，這是宮裏女官中的一種時尚，她們往往以父兄的官銜為名，以示身份；後來她寫成《源氏物語》，書中女主人公紫姬為世人傳誦，遂又稱作紫式部。作者生卒年月也無法詳考，大約是生於九七八年，歿於一○一五年。紫式部出身中層貴族，是書香門第的纔女，曾祖父、祖父、伯父和兄長都是有名的歌人，父親兼長漢詩、和歌，對中國古典文學頗有研究。作者自幼隨父學習漢詩，熟讀中國古代文獻，特別是對白居易的詩有較深的造詣。
此外，她還十分熟悉音樂和佛經。不幸傢道中落，她嫁給了一個比她年長二十多歲的地方官藤原宣孝，婚後不久，丈夫去世，她過着孤苦的孀居生活。後來應當時統治者藤原道長之召，入宮充當一條彰子皇后的女官，給彰子講解《日本書紀》和白居易的詩作，有機會直接接觸宮廷的生活，對婦女的不幸和宮廷的內幕有了全面的瞭解，對貴族階級的沒落傾嚮也有所感受。這些都為她的創作提供了藝術構思的廣阔天地和堅實的生活基礎。
《源氏物語》-作品主題
長篇寫實小說《源氏物語》浸潤着濃厚的佛教色彩，透過光源氏身世、用世、玩世、超世之苦，映射出“四大皆空”的佛學觀念。但它並不是一部宣傳宗教教義的宗教性文學作品，它思想上的真正價值在於展示了平安王朝的宮廷豪華奢侈、腐朽淫亂的生活，反映了貴族階級人與人之間爭權奪勢、互相傾軋的人際關係，暴露了貴族社會門第為重、男尊女卑的不平等的社會現象。這就從客觀上預示了舊貴族階級必然崩潰、滅亡的趨勢。因此，具有一定的認識價值和思想意義。
藝術成就《源氏物語》藝術上最大的成功之處是塑造了源氏及衆多女性形象，並通過這些形象反映了物哀、幽情等審美意嚮。
《源氏物語》-寫作背景
《源氏物語》産生的時代，是藤原道長執政下平安王朝貴族社會全盛時期。這個時期，平安京的上層貴族恣意享樂，表面上一派太平盛世，實際上卻充滿着極其復雜而尖銳的矛盾。藤原利用纍代是皇室外戚，實行攝關政治①，由其一族壟斷了所有的高官顯職，擴大了自己的莊園，而且同族之間又展開權利之爭；皇室貴族則依靠大寺院，設置上皇 “院政”，以對抗藤源氏的勢力；至於中下層貴族，雖有才能也得不到晉身之階，他們紛紛到地方去別尋出路，地方貴族勢力迅速擡頭；加上莊園百姓的反抗，使這些矛盾更加激化，甚至爆發了多次武裝叛亂。整個貴族社會危機四起，已經到了盛極而衰的轉折時期。
《源氏物語》正是以這段歷史為背景，通過主人公源氏的生活經歷和愛情故事，描寫了當時貴族社會的腐敗政治和淫逸生活，以典型的藝術形象，真實地反映了這個時代的面貌和特徵。
首先，作者敏銳地覺察到王朝貴族社會的種種矛盾，特別是貴族內部爭權奪利的鬥爭。作品中以弘徽殿女禦（地位最高的妃子）及其父右大臣為代表的皇室外戚一派政治勢力，同以源氏及其嶽父左大臣為代表的皇室一派政治勢力之間的較量，正是這種矛盾和鬥爭的反映，是主人公源氏生活的時代環境，而且决定着他一生的命運。源氏是桐壺天皇同更衣（次於女禦的妃子）所生的小皇子，母子深得天皇的寵愛，弘徽殿出於妒忌，更怕天皇册立源氏為皇太子，於是逼死更衣，打擊源氏及其一派，促使天皇將源氏降為臣籍。在天皇讓位給弘徽殿所生的朱雀天皇之後，右大臣掌政，源氏便完全失勢；弘徽殿一派進而抓住源氏與右大臣的女兒朧月夜偷情的把柄，逼使源氏離開宮廷，把他流放到須磨、明石。
後來朝政日非，朱雀天皇身罹重病，為收拾殘局纔不顧弘徽殿的堅决反對，召源氏回京，恢復他的官爵。冷泉天皇繼位以後，知道源氏是他的生父，就倍加禮遇，後源氏官至太政大臣，獨攬朝綱。但是，貴族統治階級內部的鬥爭並沒有停息，源氏與左大臣之子圍繞為冷泉天皇立後一事又産生了新的矛盾。
作者在書中表白：“作者女流之輩，不敢侈談天下大事。”所以作品對政治鬥爭的反映，多采用側寫的手法，少有具體深入的描寫，然而，我們仍能清晰地看出上層貴族之間的互相傾軋、權力之爭是貫穿全書的一條主綫，主人公的榮辱沉浮都與之密不可分。總之，《源氏物語》隱蔽式地折射了這個階級走嚮滅亡的必然趨勢，可以堪稱為一幅歷史畫捲。
《源氏物語》-作品評價
源氏生為皇子卻不得不降為臣籍，空有濟世之才卻無心仕途，酷愛紫姬卻不斷沾花拈草，一世風流卻落得剃度為僧的結局。他的一生伴隨着許多的矛盾和煩惱，其中最折磨他的是與藤壺亂倫的罪孽感和背叛紫姬的深深自責。他的靈魂與肉欲始終在鬥爭中苦苦掙紮，結果又總是欲望壓倒理智，從而陷入更深的心靈衝突之中。源氏最終棄傢出走，面壁嚮佛，正是這種心靈衝突導致的結果。作者大寫特寫源氏生活中無法擺脫的矛盾造成的苦悶及精神上接連不斷的碰撞造成的無奈，意在說明人生的苦痛和悲哀，顯露了作者以哀動人、以悲感人的美學觀。
“物哀”的審美意嚮除以源氏掙紮的一生反映出來外，還通過作品中所有與源氏命運連在一起的女性的不幸得到進一步的強化。在紫式部筆下，這些女子個個容貌姣好，聰明伶俐，性情可人，然而個個都是有命無運之人。
紫姬是作者着意刻畫的理想淑女形象，她氣質優雅，藝壓群芳，性格婉約，通情達理。深得源氏鐘愛，被公認為最幸福的女人。可是即便是這位十全十美的女人，也有着難以言說的苦楚—— 因源氏用情不專而引起的嫉妒，所以正值盛年，日漸衰弱，香消玉殞。
《源氏物語》中的女性命運衹有3種選擇，要麽走入墳墓一了百了，要麽落發為尼斬斷塵緣，要麽獨守空閨雖生猶死。這些女性的多災多難的命運和源氏一生經歷一樣，反映了紫式部感物而哀的審美特徵。
物哀的審美意嚮，主要來自“人生無常”、“四大皆空”等佛學觀，在她看來人生不過是欲海橫流，欲海也便是苦海，擺脫欲海的最佳途徑，就是皈依佛門。紫式部在這裏無意識地宣傳了無欲之說，表現了她在佛教思想影響下的人生觀、世界觀。這種佛教宿命思想從一定意義上削弱了作品主題的深刻性。
《源氏物語》是世界文學史上最早的一部長篇寫實小說，作品流露出明顯的現實主義傾嚮，被認為代表了日本古典現實主義文學的最高峰，給後世作傢的創作提供了藝術典範。它所創立的物哀等美學傳統，一直被後世作傢繼承和發展，成為日本文學民族化的一大因素。
在《源氏物語》中，作者雖然主要描寫源氏的愛情生活，但又不是單純地描寫愛情，而是通過源氏的戀愛、婚姻，揭示一夫多妻製下婦女的悲慘命運。在貴族社會裏，男女婚嫁往往是同政治利益聯繫在一起的，是政治鬥爭的手段，婦女成了政治交易的工具。在這方面，紫式部作了大膽的描寫。左大臣把自己的女兒葵姬許配給源氏，是為了加強自己的聲勢，朱雀天皇在源氏四十歲得勢之時，將年方十六歲的女兒三公主嫁給源氏，也是出於政治上的考慮，就連政敵右大臣發現源氏和自己的女兒朧月夜偷情，也擬將她許配給源氏，以圖分化源氏一派。地方貴族明石道人和常陸介，一個為了求得富貴，強迫自己的女兒嫁給源氏；一個為了混上高官，將自己的女兒許給了左近少將，而左近少將娶他的女兒，則是為了利用常陸介的財力。作者筆下的衆多婦女形象，有身份高貴的，也有身世低賤的，但她們的處境都是一樣，不僅成了貴族政治鬥爭的工具，也成了貴族男人手中的玩物，一夫多妻製的犧牲品。
小說着墨最多的是源氏及其上下三代人對婦女的摧殘。源氏的父皇玩弄了更衣，由於她出身寒微，在宮中備受冷落，最後屈死於權力鬥爭之中。源氏依仗自己的權勢，糟蹋了不少婦女：半夜闖進地方官夫人空蟬的居室玷污了這個有夫之婦；踐踏了出身低賤的夕顔的愛情，使她抑鬱而死；看見繼母藤壺肖似自己的母親，由思慕進而與她通姦；闖入傢道中落的摘末花的內室調戲她，發現她長相醜陋，又加以奚落。此外，他對紫姬、明石姬等許多不同身份的女子，也都大體如此。在後十回裏出現的源氏繼承人董君（他名義上是源氏和三公主之子，實際上是三公主同源氏的妻舅之子柏木私通所生）繼承了祖、父兩輩人荒淫的傳統，摧殘了孤苦伶仃的弱女浮舟，又怕事情敗露，把她棄置在荒涼的宇治山莊。
紫式部的創作不可避免地有其歷史和階級的局限性。她既不滿當時的社會現實，哀嘆貴族階級的沒落，卻又無法徹底否定這個社會和這個階級；她既感到“這個惡濁可嘆的末世……總是越來越壞”，可又未能自覺認識貴族階級滅亡的歷史必然性，以她在觸及貴族腐敗政治的時候，一方面譴責了弘徽殿一派政治野心和獨斷專行，另一方面又襢護源氏一派，並企圖將源氏理想化，作為自己政治上的希望和寄托，對源氏政治生命的完結不勝其悲。書中第四十一回衹有題目《雲隱》而無正文，以這種奇特的表現手法來暗喻源氏的結局，正透露了作者的哀惋心情。另外在寫到婦女命運的時候，她一方面對她們寄予深切的同情，另一方面又把源氏寫成一個有始有終的婦女的庇護者，竭力美化源氏，在一定程度上對源氏表示同情與肯定。此外，作品中還充滿了貴族階級的美學情趣、佛教的因果報應思想，以及虛空感傷的情調。
《源氏物語》在藝術上也是一部有很大成就的作品，它開闢了日本物語文學的新道路，使日本古典現實主義文學達到一個新的高峰。
《源氏物語》問世以來，已經過去近千年了。儘管它在結構上顯得有些龐雜、冗長，相同場面和心理描寫重複過多，有損於作品的藝術完美性，但它畢竟是一部思想性和藝術性都很高的日本古典文學作品，在今天仍保持着它的藝術生命力，對日本文學繼續産生着影響。
故事開始於桐壺帝在位的時候。出身低微的更衣，獨得桐壺帝的寵愛。後此更衣生下一位皇子，其他嬪妃，尤其是弘徽殿女禦也愈加忌恨。更衣不堪凌辱折磨，生子不到3年，便悒鬱而亡。小皇子沒有強大的外戚做靠山，很難在宮中立足。桐壺帝不得已將其降為臣籍，賜姓源氏。源氏不僅貌美驚人，而且才華橫溢。12歲行冠禮後，娶當權的左大臣之女葵姬為妻，但葵姬不遂源氏的意。於是源氏追求桐壺帝續娶的女禦藤壺，據說女禦酷肖源氏生母。不久，兩人發生亂倫關係，生下一子，後來即位稱冷泉帝。源氏到處偷香竊玉，強行占有了伊豫介的後妻空蟬，還嚮比他大7歲的嬸母六條妃子求歡，並同時輾轉在花散裏、末摘花等衆女子之間。當他劫持一位不明身分的弱女子夕顔去荒屋幽會時，這女子不幸暴亡，源氏為此大病一場，病愈進香時遇到一個酷似自己日思夜想而不得相見的藤壺的女孩，得知她是藤壺女禦的侄女，名叫紫姬，就趁紫姬熟睡把她帶回傢中，收為養女，朝夕相伴，以寄托對藤壺的思慕。幾年後紫姬出落得亭亭玉立，高貴優雅，纔藝超衆，十分可人。源氏便把她據為己有。葵姬因六條妃子生魂附體過世後，紫姬被扶為正夫人。
桐壺帝退位以後，右大臣弘徽殿女禦的兒子登上皇位（朱雀帝），源氏及嶽父左大臣一派從此失勢。恰巧源氏與右大臣女兒朧月夜偷情之事敗露，源氏自覺噩運臨頭，便遠離京城，到荒涼少人的須磨、明石隱居。為排遣寂寞，與明石道人的女兒明石姬結合，後生一女，被選入宮中做了皇后。
由於天降異兆，朱雀帝又重病在身，朝政不穩。源氏奉召回京輔佐朝廷。不久，朱雀帝讓位給冷泉帝。源氏升任太政大臣，源氏及左大臣一門恢復了往日的繁華氣派。源氏建造了集四季景物為一體、蔚為壯觀的六條院寓所，將昔日戀人統統接到院裏來住。源氏近40歲時，將朱雀帝之女三公主納為正妻，紫姬終因心力交瘁，病臥在床。早已凱覦三公主美貌的頭中將之子柏木趁源氏探病的機會，與三公主幽會，被源氏發現。柏木懼悔交加，一病不起，英年夭折。三公主生下容貌與柏木毫無二緻的私生子薫後，落發為尼。源氏深感自己和藤壺亂倫之罪的報應臨頭，心如死灰。恰巧紫姬不久又逝，源氏失去了精神支柱，了斷塵緣，隱遁出傢。幾年後死去。
源氏之子薫生性嚴謹。20歲來到宇治山莊愛上了莊主八親王的大女公子，不料遭到拒絶。大女公子病故後，他尋回外貌酷肖大女公子的八親王的私生女浮舟，填補心靈的空白。可是有人深夜闖入浮舟臥房，假冒薫的聲音，占有了浮舟。當浮舟意識到自己一身事二主後，毅然跳水自盡，被人救起後削發出傢。儘管薫一往情深，多次捎信，以求一見，但終未了此心願。
《源氏物語》-作者簡介
作者紫式部，本姓藤原，原名不詳。因其長兄任式部丞，故稱為藤式部，這是宮裏女官中的一種時尚，她們往往以父兄的官銜為名，以示身份；後來她寫成《源氏物語》，書中女主人公紫姬為世人傳誦，遂又稱作紫式部。作者生卒年月也無法詳考，大約是生於九七八年，歿於一○一五年。紫式部出身中層貴族，是書香門第的纔女，曾祖父、祖父、伯父和兄長都是有名的歌人，父親兼長漢詩、和歌，對中國古典文學頗有研究。作者自幼隨父學習漢詩，熟讀中國古代文獻，特別是對白居易的詩有較深的造詣。
此外，她還十分熟悉音樂和佛經。不幸傢道中落，她嫁給了一個比她年長二十多歲的地方官藤原宣孝，婚後不久，丈夫去世，她過着孤苦的孀居生活。後來應當時統治者藤原道長之召，入宮充當一條彰子皇后的女官，給彰子講解《日本書紀》和白居易的詩作，有機會直接接觸宮廷的生活，對婦女的不幸和宮廷的內幕有了全面的瞭解，對貴族階級的沒落傾嚮也有所感受。這些都為她的創作提供了藝術構思的廣阔天地和堅實的生活基礎。
《源氏物語》-作品主題
長篇寫實小說《源氏物語》浸潤着濃厚的佛教色彩，透過光源氏身世、用世、玩世、超世之苦，映射出“四大皆空”的佛學觀念。但它並不是一部宣傳宗教教義的宗教性文學作品，它思想上的真正價值在於展示了平安王朝的宮廷豪華奢侈、腐朽淫亂的生活，反映了貴族階級人與人之間爭權奪勢、互相傾軋的人際關係，暴露了貴族社會門第為重、男尊女卑的不平等的社會現象。這就從客觀上預示了舊貴族階級必然崩潰、滅亡的趨勢。因此，具有一定的認識價值和思想意義。
藝術成就《源氏物語》藝術上最大的成功之處是塑造了源氏及衆多女性形象，並通過這些形象反映了物哀、幽情等審美意嚮。
《源氏物語》-寫作背景
《源氏物語》産生的時代，是藤原道長執政下平安王朝貴族社會全盛時期。這個時期，平安京的上層貴族恣意享樂，表面上一派太平盛世，實際上卻充滿着極其復雜而尖銳的矛盾。藤原利用纍代是皇室外戚，實行攝關政治①，由其一族壟斷了所有的高官顯職，擴大了自己的莊園，而且同族之間又展開權利之爭；皇室貴族則依靠大寺院，設置上皇 “院政”，以對抗藤源氏的勢力；至於中下層貴族，雖有才能也得不到晉身之階，他們紛紛到地方去別尋出路，地方貴族勢力迅速擡頭；加上莊園百姓的反抗，使這些矛盾更加激化，甚至爆發了多次武裝叛亂。整個貴族社會危機四起，已經到了盛極而衰的轉折時期。
《源氏物語》正是以這段歷史為背景，通過主人公源氏的生活經歷和愛情故事，描寫了當時貴族社會的腐敗政治和淫逸生活，以典型的藝術形象，真實地反映了這個時代的面貌和特徵。
首先，作者敏銳地覺察到王朝貴族社會的種種矛盾，特別是貴族內部爭權奪利的鬥爭。作品中以弘徽殿女禦（地位最高的妃子）及其父右大臣為代表的皇室外戚一派政治勢力，同以源氏及其嶽父左大臣為代表的皇室一派政治勢力之間的較量，正是這種矛盾和鬥爭的反映，是主人公源氏生活的時代環境，而且决定着他一生的命運。源氏是桐壺天皇同更衣（次於女禦的妃子）所生的小皇子，母子深得天皇的寵愛，弘徽殿出於妒忌，更怕天皇册立源氏為皇太子，於是逼死更衣，打擊源氏及其一派，促使天皇將源氏降為臣籍。在天皇讓位給弘徽殿所生的朱雀天皇之後，右大臣掌政，源氏便完全失勢；弘徽殿一派進而抓住源氏與右大臣的女兒朧月夜偷情的把柄，逼使源氏離開宮廷，把他流放到須磨、明石。
後來朝政日非，朱雀天皇身罹重病，為收拾殘局纔不顧弘徽殿的堅决反對，召源氏回京，恢復他的官爵。冷泉天皇繼位以後，知道源氏是他的生父，就倍加禮遇，後源氏官至太政大臣，獨攬朝綱。但是，貴族統治階級內部的鬥爭並沒有停息，源氏與左大臣之子圍繞為冷泉天皇立後一事又産生了新的矛盾。
作者在書中表白：“作者女流之輩，不敢侈談天下大事。”所以作品對政治鬥爭的反映，多采用側寫的手法，少有具體深入的描寫，然而，我們仍能清晰地看出上層貴族之間的互相傾軋、權力之爭是貫穿全書的一條主綫，主人公的榮辱沉浮都與之密不可分。總之，《源氏物語》隱蔽式地折射了這個階級走嚮滅亡的必然趨勢，可以堪稱為一幅歷史畫捲。
《源氏物語》-作品評價
源氏生為皇子卻不得不降為臣籍，空有濟世之才卻無心仕途，酷愛紫姬卻不斷沾花拈草，一世風流卻落得剃度為僧的結局。他的一生伴隨着許多的矛盾和煩惱，其中最折磨他的是與藤壺亂倫的罪孽感和背叛紫姬的深深自責。他的靈魂與肉欲始終在鬥爭中苦苦掙紮，結果又總是欲望壓倒理智，從而陷入更深的心靈衝突之中。源氏最終棄傢出走，面壁嚮佛，正是這種心靈衝突導致的結果。作者大寫特寫源氏生活中無法擺脫的矛盾造成的苦悶及精神上接連不斷的碰撞造成的無奈，意在說明人生的苦痛和悲哀，顯露了作者以哀動人、以悲感人的美學觀。
“物哀”的審美意嚮除以源氏掙紮的一生反映出來外，還通過作品中所有與源氏命運連在一起的女性的不幸得到進一步的強化。在紫式部筆下，這些女子個個容貌姣好，聰明伶俐，性情可人，然而個個都是有命無運之人。
紫姬是作者着意刻畫的理想淑女形象，她氣質優雅，藝壓群芳，性格婉約，通情達理。深得源氏鐘愛，被公認為最幸福的女人。可是即便是這位十全十美的女人，也有着難以言說的苦楚—— 因源氏用情不專而引起的嫉妒，所以正值盛年，日漸衰弱，香消玉殞。
《源氏物語》中的女性命運衹有3種選擇，要麽走入墳墓一了百了，要麽落發為尼斬斷塵緣，要麽獨守空閨雖生猶死。這些女性的多災多難的命運和源氏一生經歷一樣，反映了紫式部感物而哀的審美特徵。
物哀的審美意嚮，主要來自“人生無常”、“四大皆空”等佛學觀，在她看來人生不過是欲海橫流，欲海也便是苦海，擺脫欲海的最佳途徑，就是皈依佛門。紫式部在這裏無意識地宣傳了無欲之說，表現了她在佛教思想影響下的人生觀、世界觀。這種佛教宿命思想從一定意義上削弱了作品主題的深刻性。
《源氏物語》是世界文學史上最早的一部長篇寫實小說，作品流露出明顯的現實主義傾嚮，被認為代表了日本古典現實主義文學的最高峰，給後世作傢的創作提供了藝術典範。它所創立的物哀等美學傳統，一直被後世作傢繼承和發展，成為日本文學民族化的一大因素。
在《源氏物語》中，作者雖然主要描寫源氏的愛情生活，但又不是單純地描寫愛情，而是通過源氏的戀愛、婚姻，揭示一夫多妻製下婦女的悲慘命運。在貴族社會裏，男女婚嫁往往是同政治利益聯繫在一起的，是政治鬥爭的手段，婦女成了政治交易的工具。在這方面，紫式部作了大膽的描寫。左大臣把自己的女兒葵姬許配給源氏，是為了加強自己的聲勢，朱雀天皇在源氏四十歲得勢之時，將年方十六歲的女兒三公主嫁給源氏，也是出於政治上的考慮，就連政敵右大臣發現源氏和自己的女兒朧月夜偷情，也擬將她許配給源氏，以圖分化源氏一派。地方貴族明石道人和常陸介，一個為了求得富貴，強迫自己的女兒嫁給源氏；一個為了混上高官，將自己的女兒許給了左近少將，而左近少將娶他的女兒，則是為了利用常陸介的財力。作者筆下的衆多婦女形象，有身份高貴的，也有身世低賤的，但她們的處境都是一樣，不僅成了貴族政治鬥爭的工具，也成了貴族男人手中的玩物，一夫多妻製的犧牲品。
小說着墨最多的是源氏及其上下三代人對婦女的摧殘。源氏的父皇玩弄了更衣，由於她出身寒微，在宮中備受冷落，最後屈死於權力鬥爭之中。源氏依仗自己的權勢，糟蹋了不少婦女：半夜闖進地方官夫人空蟬的居室玷污了這個有夫之婦；踐踏了出身低賤的夕顔的愛情，使她抑鬱而死；看見繼母藤壺肖似自己的母親，由思慕進而與她通姦；闖入傢道中落的摘末花的內室調戲她，發現她長相醜陋，又加以奚落。此外，他對紫姬、明石姬等許多不同身份的女子，也都大體如此。在後十回裏出現的源氏繼承人董君（他名義上是源氏和三公主之子，實際上是三公主同源氏的妻舅之子柏木私通所生）繼承了祖、父兩輩人荒淫的傳統，摧殘了孤苦伶仃的弱女浮舟，又怕事情敗露，把她棄置在荒涼的宇治山莊。
紫式部的創作不可避免地有其歷史和階級的局限性。她既不滿當時的社會現實，哀嘆貴族階級的沒落，卻又無法徹底否定這個社會和這個階級；她既感到“這個惡濁可嘆的末世……總是越來越壞”，可又未能自覺認識貴族階級滅亡的歷史必然性，以她在觸及貴族腐敗政治的時候，一方面譴責了弘徽殿一派政治野心和獨斷專行，另一方面又襢護源氏一派，並企圖將源氏理想化，作為自己政治上的希望和寄托，對源氏政治生命的完結不勝其悲。書中第四十一回衹有題目《雲隱》而無正文，以這種奇特的表現手法來暗喻源氏的結局，正透露了作者的哀惋心情。另外在寫到婦女命運的時候，她一方面對她們寄予深切的同情，另一方面又把源氏寫成一個有始有終的婦女的庇護者，竭力美化源氏，在一定程度上對源氏表示同情與肯定。此外，作品中還充滿了貴族階級的美學情趣、佛教的因果報應思想，以及虛空感傷的情調。
《源氏物語》在藝術上也是一部有很大成就的作品，它開闢了日本物語文學的新道路，使日本古典現實主義文學達到一個新的高峰。
《源氏物語》問世以來，已經過去近千年了。儘管它在結構上顯得有些龐雜、冗長，相同場面和心理描寫重複過多，有損於作品的藝術完美性，但它畢竟是一部思想性和藝術性都很高的日本古典文學作品，在今天仍保持着它的藝術生命力，對日本文學繼續産生着影響。
静静的顿河 哥薩剋，古俄羅斯族貴族的奴僕逃跑以後，在別的地方繁衍發展起來的群體
頓河悲歌
我們光榮的土地不是用犁來翻耕……
我們的土地用馬蹄來翻耕，
光榮的土地上種的是哥薩剋的頭顱，
靜靜的頓河到處裝點着年輕的寡婦，
我們的父親，靜靜的頓河上到處是孤兒，
靜靜的頓河的滾滾的波濤是爹娘的眼淚。
噢噫，靜靜的頓河，我們的父親！
噢噫，靜靜的頓河，你的流水為什麽這樣渾？
啊呀，我靜靜的頓河的流水怎麽能不渾！
寒泉從我靜靜的頓河的河底嚮外奔流，
銀白色的魚兒把我靜靜的頓河攪渾。
——哥薩剋古歌
《靜靜的頓河》是蘇聯著名作傢肖洛霍夫的一部力作。此書共分為四部，從1928年開始直至1940年，共用了12年的時間纔創作完成。肖洛霍夫這部處女作一經問世，立刻受到國內外的矚目，被人稱作“令人驚奇的佳作”，“蘇聯文學還沒有遇到同它相比的小說”。此書於1941年獲斯大林奬金，1965年肖洛霍夫因此書獲諾貝爾文學奬，成為第一位獲此殊榮的蘇聯作傢。
肖洛霍夫（1905～1986）從小熱愛讀書，年輕時參加了革命，創作《靜靜的頓河》之時，他年僅23歲。如此年輕和並未受過良好教育的肖洛霍夫是否有能力寫出這樣一部捲帙浩繁的宏篇巨著呢？這曾經引起許多人的質疑，並引發了一場文壇公案，有人指出肖洛霍夫純屬抄襲，並提及一位無名作傢。面對這些責問，當時年僅20多歲的肖洛霍夫有口難辯，又不知什麽原因竟拿不出手稿，最後還是斯大林親自出面為其解圍。1991年，肖洛霍夫20年代末寫此書的兩部手稿被發現，當局召集專傢進行筆跡鑒定，確係出自肖洛霍夫的手筆，這段公案纔終於了結。繼《靜靜的頓河》之後，肖洛霍夫陸續發表了《被開墾的處女地》、《一個人的遭遇》等作品，確立了他在世界文壇上的不朽地位。
《靜靜的頓河》描繪了1912年至1922年間兩次革命（二月革命、十月革命）和兩次戰爭（第一次世界大戰，蘇聯國內戰爭）中的重大歷史事件和頓河兩岸哥薩剋人在這10年中的動蕩生活，廣泛地反映了哥薩剋獨特的風土人情，哥薩剋各個階層的變化、廣大哥薩剋在復雜的歷史轉折關頭所經歷的麯折道路，以及捲入歷史事件強大旋渦中的主人公葛利高裏的悲劇命運。
這部小說場景宏偉，畫面生動；氣勢雄渾的戰爭和革命場面與細膩的日常生活場面相互轉換，風景描寫與人物心理變化彼此襯托；衆多人物及其命運在歷史事件的錯綜復雜中得到了深刻表現。正如肖洛霍夫寫給高爾基的信中所言，他在《靜靜的頓河》中所寫的“都是嚴酷的真實”，這一點是其最大的成就之一。本書另一成就是塑造了葛利高裏的復雜形象。小說整個復雜而麯折的故事以他生氣勃勃的登場開始，以他的痛苦、孤寂的下場結束。小說全部重大而多方面的內容都是通過他坎坷、艱難和最後毀滅的一生經歷而聯結成一個有機整體。他的形象得到小說裏最多方面深入細緻的描寫，在他身上傾註着作者的全部思想和藝術激情。
小說的藝術成就也是很突出的。結構是龐大復雜的，但它大而嚴謹、雜而不亂。整部長篇小說共分四部八捲，由於作者的精心安排，情節的發展騰挪跌宕，故事演變麯折自然，頭緒紛繁而綫條分明，形成一個有機的整體，小說時空轉換闊大，具有一種特別豪邁的氣魄。對於整個故事情節的描繪，最明顯特點是真實事件與藝術虛構的結合。同時采用粗獷濃烈和深微細膩交替使用的手法，真實再現俄國歷史大轉變時期時代的脈搏。《靜靜的頓河》的故事敘述，引用了許多民歌民謠，以很大篇幅描繪不斷變幻的自然風光，極具鄉土風情，同時達到烘托人物的目的。語言清新明快，技巧多樣，實為不可多得的佳作。
這部長篇小說從1928年發表以來，曾經得到斯大林的青睞，這也是肖洛霍夫在大肅反期間保全性命的主要原因，它還受到過高爾基和羅曼·羅蘭、魯迅、小林多喜二和海明威等世界知名作傢的高度贊揚。當此書被譯成德文在德國發行後，印數竟超過了德語作傢雷馬剋的《西綫無戰事》。它先後被翻譯成世界上幾乎所有的主要語言，而且一版再版，暢銷全球，是當代世界文學中流傳最廣泛、讀者最多的名著之一。它的影響已是世界性的。
《靜靜的頓河》就其內容和主題的深刻性，它的囊括現實的廣度和揭示生活過程的深度，它的刻劃各種不同人物性格的生動性和發掘主人公內心世界的深刻性，以及多方面綜合運用語言藝術的技巧，都不愧是一部既磅礴壯觀又委婉細膩、扣人心弦的史詩性長篇小說。
內容梗概
麥列霍夫一傢生活在帝俄時期頓河流域的韃靼村裏，這傢的小兒子葛利高裏愛上了鄰居傢斯捷潘的妻子阿剋西尼亞。阿剋西尼亞長期受到丈夫的虐待，便乘斯捷潘在軍隊服役期間，與葛利高裏有了私情。葛利高裏的父親為了避免醜事外揚，安排了他與村中一位姑娘娜塔利亞結了婚。但葛利高裏並不愛她，不久公開與阿剋西尼亞同居，成了村中一件醜聞。
葛利高裏的父親羞愧難當，痛打了兒子。葛利高裏一怒之下離傢出走，他和阿剋西尼亞跑到村外富戶李斯特尼茲基傢中幫工。這段時間，阿剋西尼亞生了個女兒。不久，葛利高裏應徵入伍。
娜塔利亞見丈夫對自己毫無感情，痛苦得想要自盡。但經麥列霍夫傢百般勸慰，她終於平靜下來。葛利高裏第一次休假回傢，發現阿剋西尼亞和地主傢當軍官的少爺尤金勾搭成姦。不巧的是他們的女兒不幸死去。葛利高裏怒火中燒。他找到尤金打了一架，又痛打了阿剋西尼亞一頓。然後回到自己傢中，請求娜塔利亞的原諒。兩人言歸於好。休假結束時，娜塔利亞已懷了孕，不久便生了一男一女雙胞胎。
葛利高裏在軍隊中勇敢殺敵，因此被授予十字勳章，成了村中第一個騎士。在部隊中他遇見了哥哥彼得羅和情敵斯捷潘。斯捷潘屢次想加害葛利高裏，但無法下手。葛利高裏反而在一次戰鬥中救了斯捷潘一命。兩人恩怨抵銷。
這時政局發生了動蕩。布爾什維剋在軍隊中鼓吹革命，這很快吸引了衆多的士兵。由於艱苦、思鄉，在第一次世界大戰中疲於奔命的士兵們已處於瓦解狀態。不久，剋倫斯基臨時政府取代了沙皇。接着十月革命爆發，蘇维埃政權建立。很快，不甘心失敗的反革命武裝捲土重來。國內戰爭爆發了。一嚮以酷愛自由著稱的哥薩剋民族情緒異常強烈，要求建立一個頓河流域自治政府，許多人加入了反革命武裝。而更多的人則組織起來與白軍作戰。許多葛利高裏的朋友為革命先後獻出了生命。葛利高裏也成為紅軍中的一名軍官。不久，波得捷爾珂夫任頓河地區領導人。他率領軍民嚮白軍發起攻擊。葛利高裏看到波得捷爾珂夫殘害被俘的哥薩剋軍官並處死全部俘虜，他深為不滿，於是離開隊伍回到了家乡。
葛利高裏回到村中後，便傳來紅軍要打來的消息。村民們都準備逃離，葛利高裏卻不願意。接着傳來的是紅軍燒殺搶掠的消息，這引起人們極大恐慌。村民組織了軍隊以作反抗。葛利高裏拒絶了村民要他作頭目的要求，彼得羅成了頭目。在白軍反撲下，革命軍潰敗。葛利高裏遇上了被俘的原紅軍上級，並怒斥他殘殺白軍戰俘的往事。
1918年時，頓河哥薩剋地區成了革命與反革命爭奪的戰場。韃靼村中有人倒嚮白軍，有人倒嚮紅軍。葛利高裏和彼得羅都已成為白軍頭目。彼得羅心狠手辣，是一個徹底的反革命。葛利高裏卻在憂鬱中度日。他不願濫殺無辜，衹想在兵荒馬亂中保全自己的生命。他無意參與什麽主義之爭，衹想早日和平。
叛亂仍在繼續。這時，尤金回到了家乡。他在戰爭中失去了一條胳膊，回來後便與一個女人結了婚。他以前的情婦阿剋西尼亞仍在等着他。可是尤金結婚之後再也不願意和她來往了。他們親熱一陣之後他便給了她一些錢讓她走。阿剋西尼亞倍受打擊。
葛利高裏厭倦了戰爭，他返回了韃靼村，紅色政權已接管了村子。他現在對阿剋西尼亞已沒有絲毫戀情了，而對娜塔利亞漸生好感。紅軍鞏固統治後便開始肅清異己。葛利高裏被列入首批名單。他聽到風聲，連夜逃走了。
隨着政治監禁和處决不斷增加，哥薩剋人不堪忍受紅軍濫殺無辜而揭竿而起，叛亂在較短時間內就獲得了成功，彼得羅很快成為指揮官。他下手毒辣，對紅軍毫不留情，在後來一次戰鬥中，他被紅軍俘虜並打死。
葛利高裏在叛軍中升任師長。彼得羅之死使他變得殘酷無情，殺人如麻。但他對老弱病殘從不濫殺。由於一個團的紅軍開了小差，韃靼村被叛軍占領，紅軍領導人均被處死。達裏婭親手為彼得羅報了仇。
葛利高裏回傢度假，嫂子達裏婭試圖與他調情被他拒絶。葛利高裏已對打仗和縱欲厭倦了，但他仍懷念着阿剋西尼亞。娜塔利亞對他逐漸冷淡。他决定返回部隊。走之前，他在頓河邊遇上了阿剋西尼亞。兩人相視許久，又燃起了愛情的火花。
到了1919年，蘇维埃政權意識到自己面臨的艱巨任務。大批紅軍派了過來並擊退了叛軍。叛軍帶着大批難民渡過了頓河並擋住了紅軍的進攻。
紅軍又接管了韃靼村，所有富戶的房子均被縱火燒掉。娜塔利亞因患傷寒留在村中。身為師長的葛利高裏雖然戰事不斷，仍抽出時間派人接來了阿剋西尼亞。兩人又恢復了往日的親熱。
白軍又打回來了，紅軍被趕走了。這時叛亂分子被編成一支正規軍。葛利高裏因為沒受過什麽教育，降任為騎士中隊長。白軍還派出討伐隊屠殺那些曾幫過紅軍的人，這使韃靼村又陷入恐怖之中。這時，達裏婭已染上梅毒而投河自盡。娜塔利亞也在做墮胎手術時大出血而死。
由於紅軍不斷加強攻勢以及哥薩剋部隊士兵開小差現象日益繁多，白軍節節敗退。葛利高裏和阿剋西尼亞也試圖逃走，但因阿剋西尼亞患病而未成行。她後來自己返回了韃靼村。葛利高裏則加入了紅軍，在與波蘭人戰鬥中表現十分勇敢。
不久，葛利高裏回到了家乡。當局聽到消息，立刻派人來抓他。他又逃走了，並加入了從紅軍中叛變出來的弗明的部隊。弗明想要組織起哥薩剋人反抗共産黨課稅徵糧。但叛亂很快被鎮壓。反抗者都被打死了，衹有葛利高裏回到村中。葛利高裏再次出逃時帶上了阿剋西尼亞，可是她卻被一支追擊而來的紅軍巡邏隊打死。葛利高裏扔掉了武器，回到了傢中。現在他所擁有的衹有自己的兒子了。他不願再失去這世上唯一的親人了。
頓河悲歌
我們光榮的土地不是用犁來翻耕……
我們的土地用馬蹄來翻耕，
光榮的土地上種的是哥薩剋的頭顱，
靜靜的頓河到處裝點着年輕的寡婦，
我們的父親，靜靜的頓河上到處是孤兒，
靜靜的頓河的滾滾的波濤是爹娘的眼淚。
噢噫，靜靜的頓河，我們的父親！
噢噫，靜靜的頓河，你的流水為什麽這樣渾？
啊呀，我靜靜的頓河的流水怎麽能不渾！
寒泉從我靜靜的頓河的河底嚮外奔流，
銀白色的魚兒把我靜靜的頓河攪渾。
——哥薩剋古歌
《靜靜的頓河》是蘇聯著名作傢肖洛霍夫的一部力作。此書共分為四部，從1928年開始直至1940年，共用了12年的時間纔創作完成。肖洛霍夫這部處女作一經問世，立刻受到國內外的矚目，被人稱作“令人驚奇的佳作”，“蘇聯文學還沒有遇到同它相比的小說”。此書於1941年獲斯大林奬金，1965年肖洛霍夫因此書獲諾貝爾文學奬，成為第一位獲此殊榮的蘇聯作傢。
肖洛霍夫（1905～1986）從小熱愛讀書，年輕時參加了革命，創作《靜靜的頓河》之時，他年僅23歲。如此年輕和並未受過良好教育的肖洛霍夫是否有能力寫出這樣一部捲帙浩繁的宏篇巨著呢？這曾經引起許多人的質疑，並引發了一場文壇公案，有人指出肖洛霍夫純屬抄襲，並提及一位無名作傢。面對這些責問，當時年僅20多歲的肖洛霍夫有口難辯，又不知什麽原因竟拿不出手稿，最後還是斯大林親自出面為其解圍。1991年，肖洛霍夫20年代末寫此書的兩部手稿被發現，當局召集專傢進行筆跡鑒定，確係出自肖洛霍夫的手筆，這段公案纔終於了結。繼《靜靜的頓河》之後，肖洛霍夫陸續發表了《被開墾的處女地》、《一個人的遭遇》等作品，確立了他在世界文壇上的不朽地位。
《靜靜的頓河》描繪了1912年至1922年間兩次革命（二月革命、十月革命）和兩次戰爭（第一次世界大戰，蘇聯國內戰爭）中的重大歷史事件和頓河兩岸哥薩剋人在這10年中的動蕩生活，廣泛地反映了哥薩剋獨特的風土人情，哥薩剋各個階層的變化、廣大哥薩剋在復雜的歷史轉折關頭所經歷的麯折道路，以及捲入歷史事件強大旋渦中的主人公葛利高裏的悲劇命運。
這部小說場景宏偉，畫面生動；氣勢雄渾的戰爭和革命場面與細膩的日常生活場面相互轉換，風景描寫與人物心理變化彼此襯托；衆多人物及其命運在歷史事件的錯綜復雜中得到了深刻表現。正如肖洛霍夫寫給高爾基的信中所言，他在《靜靜的頓河》中所寫的“都是嚴酷的真實”，這一點是其最大的成就之一。本書另一成就是塑造了葛利高裏的復雜形象。小說整個復雜而麯折的故事以他生氣勃勃的登場開始，以他的痛苦、孤寂的下場結束。小說全部重大而多方面的內容都是通過他坎坷、艱難和最後毀滅的一生經歷而聯結成一個有機整體。他的形象得到小說裏最多方面深入細緻的描寫，在他身上傾註着作者的全部思想和藝術激情。
小說的藝術成就也是很突出的。結構是龐大復雜的，但它大而嚴謹、雜而不亂。整部長篇小說共分四部八捲，由於作者的精心安排，情節的發展騰挪跌宕，故事演變麯折自然，頭緒紛繁而綫條分明，形成一個有機的整體，小說時空轉換闊大，具有一種特別豪邁的氣魄。對於整個故事情節的描繪，最明顯特點是真實事件與藝術虛構的結合。同時采用粗獷濃烈和深微細膩交替使用的手法，真實再現俄國歷史大轉變時期時代的脈搏。《靜靜的頓河》的故事敘述，引用了許多民歌民謠，以很大篇幅描繪不斷變幻的自然風光，極具鄉土風情，同時達到烘托人物的目的。語言清新明快，技巧多樣，實為不可多得的佳作。
這部長篇小說從1928年發表以來，曾經得到斯大林的青睞，這也是肖洛霍夫在大肅反期間保全性命的主要原因，它還受到過高爾基和羅曼·羅蘭、魯迅、小林多喜二和海明威等世界知名作傢的高度贊揚。當此書被譯成德文在德國發行後，印數竟超過了德語作傢雷馬剋的《西綫無戰事》。它先後被翻譯成世界上幾乎所有的主要語言，而且一版再版，暢銷全球，是當代世界文學中流傳最廣泛、讀者最多的名著之一。它的影響已是世界性的。
《靜靜的頓河》就其內容和主題的深刻性，它的囊括現實的廣度和揭示生活過程的深度，它的刻劃各種不同人物性格的生動性和發掘主人公內心世界的深刻性，以及多方面綜合運用語言藝術的技巧，都不愧是一部既磅礴壯觀又委婉細膩、扣人心弦的史詩性長篇小說。
內容梗概
麥列霍夫一傢生活在帝俄時期頓河流域的韃靼村裏，這傢的小兒子葛利高裏愛上了鄰居傢斯捷潘的妻子阿剋西尼亞。阿剋西尼亞長期受到丈夫的虐待，便乘斯捷潘在軍隊服役期間，與葛利高裏有了私情。葛利高裏的父親為了避免醜事外揚，安排了他與村中一位姑娘娜塔利亞結了婚。但葛利高裏並不愛她，不久公開與阿剋西尼亞同居，成了村中一件醜聞。
葛利高裏的父親羞愧難當，痛打了兒子。葛利高裏一怒之下離傢出走，他和阿剋西尼亞跑到村外富戶李斯特尼茲基傢中幫工。這段時間，阿剋西尼亞生了個女兒。不久，葛利高裏應徵入伍。
娜塔利亞見丈夫對自己毫無感情，痛苦得想要自盡。但經麥列霍夫傢百般勸慰，她終於平靜下來。葛利高裏第一次休假回傢，發現阿剋西尼亞和地主傢當軍官的少爺尤金勾搭成姦。不巧的是他們的女兒不幸死去。葛利高裏怒火中燒。他找到尤金打了一架，又痛打了阿剋西尼亞一頓。然後回到自己傢中，請求娜塔利亞的原諒。兩人言歸於好。休假結束時，娜塔利亞已懷了孕，不久便生了一男一女雙胞胎。
葛利高裏在軍隊中勇敢殺敵，因此被授予十字勳章，成了村中第一個騎士。在部隊中他遇見了哥哥彼得羅和情敵斯捷潘。斯捷潘屢次想加害葛利高裏，但無法下手。葛利高裏反而在一次戰鬥中救了斯捷潘一命。兩人恩怨抵銷。
這時政局發生了動蕩。布爾什維剋在軍隊中鼓吹革命，這很快吸引了衆多的士兵。由於艱苦、思鄉，在第一次世界大戰中疲於奔命的士兵們已處於瓦解狀態。不久，剋倫斯基臨時政府取代了沙皇。接着十月革命爆發，蘇维埃政權建立。很快，不甘心失敗的反革命武裝捲土重來。國內戰爭爆發了。一嚮以酷愛自由著稱的哥薩剋民族情緒異常強烈，要求建立一個頓河流域自治政府，許多人加入了反革命武裝。而更多的人則組織起來與白軍作戰。許多葛利高裏的朋友為革命先後獻出了生命。葛利高裏也成為紅軍中的一名軍官。不久，波得捷爾珂夫任頓河地區領導人。他率領軍民嚮白軍發起攻擊。葛利高裏看到波得捷爾珂夫殘害被俘的哥薩剋軍官並處死全部俘虜，他深為不滿，於是離開隊伍回到了家乡。
葛利高裏回到村中後，便傳來紅軍要打來的消息。村民們都準備逃離，葛利高裏卻不願意。接着傳來的是紅軍燒殺搶掠的消息，這引起人們極大恐慌。村民組織了軍隊以作反抗。葛利高裏拒絶了村民要他作頭目的要求，彼得羅成了頭目。在白軍反撲下，革命軍潰敗。葛利高裏遇上了被俘的原紅軍上級，並怒斥他殘殺白軍戰俘的往事。
1918年時，頓河哥薩剋地區成了革命與反革命爭奪的戰場。韃靼村中有人倒嚮白軍，有人倒嚮紅軍。葛利高裏和彼得羅都已成為白軍頭目。彼得羅心狠手辣，是一個徹底的反革命。葛利高裏卻在憂鬱中度日。他不願濫殺無辜，衹想在兵荒馬亂中保全自己的生命。他無意參與什麽主義之爭，衹想早日和平。
叛亂仍在繼續。這時，尤金回到了家乡。他在戰爭中失去了一條胳膊，回來後便與一個女人結了婚。他以前的情婦阿剋西尼亞仍在等着他。可是尤金結婚之後再也不願意和她來往了。他們親熱一陣之後他便給了她一些錢讓她走。阿剋西尼亞倍受打擊。
葛利高裏厭倦了戰爭，他返回了韃靼村，紅色政權已接管了村子。他現在對阿剋西尼亞已沒有絲毫戀情了，而對娜塔利亞漸生好感。紅軍鞏固統治後便開始肅清異己。葛利高裏被列入首批名單。他聽到風聲，連夜逃走了。
隨着政治監禁和處决不斷增加，哥薩剋人不堪忍受紅軍濫殺無辜而揭竿而起，叛亂在較短時間內就獲得了成功，彼得羅很快成為指揮官。他下手毒辣，對紅軍毫不留情，在後來一次戰鬥中，他被紅軍俘虜並打死。
葛利高裏在叛軍中升任師長。彼得羅之死使他變得殘酷無情，殺人如麻。但他對老弱病殘從不濫殺。由於一個團的紅軍開了小差，韃靼村被叛軍占領，紅軍領導人均被處死。達裏婭親手為彼得羅報了仇。
葛利高裏回傢度假，嫂子達裏婭試圖與他調情被他拒絶。葛利高裏已對打仗和縱欲厭倦了，但他仍懷念着阿剋西尼亞。娜塔利亞對他逐漸冷淡。他决定返回部隊。走之前，他在頓河邊遇上了阿剋西尼亞。兩人相視許久，又燃起了愛情的火花。
到了1919年，蘇维埃政權意識到自己面臨的艱巨任務。大批紅軍派了過來並擊退了叛軍。叛軍帶着大批難民渡過了頓河並擋住了紅軍的進攻。
紅軍又接管了韃靼村，所有富戶的房子均被縱火燒掉。娜塔利亞因患傷寒留在村中。身為師長的葛利高裏雖然戰事不斷，仍抽出時間派人接來了阿剋西尼亞。兩人又恢復了往日的親熱。
白軍又打回來了，紅軍被趕走了。這時叛亂分子被編成一支正規軍。葛利高裏因為沒受過什麽教育，降任為騎士中隊長。白軍還派出討伐隊屠殺那些曾幫過紅軍的人，這使韃靼村又陷入恐怖之中。這時，達裏婭已染上梅毒而投河自盡。娜塔利亞也在做墮胎手術時大出血而死。
由於紅軍不斷加強攻勢以及哥薩剋部隊士兵開小差現象日益繁多，白軍節節敗退。葛利高裏和阿剋西尼亞也試圖逃走，但因阿剋西尼亞患病而未成行。她後來自己返回了韃靼村。葛利高裏則加入了紅軍，在與波蘭人戰鬥中表現十分勇敢。
不久，葛利高裏回到了家乡。當局聽到消息，立刻派人來抓他。他又逃走了，並加入了從紅軍中叛變出來的弗明的部隊。弗明想要組織起哥薩剋人反抗共産黨課稅徵糧。但叛亂很快被鎮壓。反抗者都被打死了，衹有葛利高裏回到村中。葛利高裏再次出逃時帶上了阿剋西尼亞，可是她卻被一支追擊而來的紅軍巡邏隊打死。葛利高裏扔掉了武器，回到了傢中。現在他所擁有的衹有自己的兒子了。他不願再失去這世上唯一的親人了。
是愛爾蘭意識流文學作傢詹姆斯·喬伊斯（James Joyce）於1922年出版的長篇小說。小說以時間為順序，描述了主人公，苦悶彷徨的都柏林小市民，廣告推銷員利奧波德·布盧姆（Leopold Bloom）於1904年6月16日一晝夜之內在都柏林的種種日常經歷。喬伊斯選擇這一天來描寫，是因為這一天是他和他的妻子諾拉·巴納剋爾（Nora Barnacle）首次約會的日子。小說的題目來源於希臘神話中的英雄奧德修斯（Odysseus，拉丁名為尤利西斯），而《尤利西斯》的章節和內容也經常表現出和荷馬史詩《奧德賽》內容的平行對應關係。利奧波德·布盧姆是奧德修斯現代的反英雄的翻版，他的妻子摩莉·布盧姆（Molly Bloom）則對應了奧德修斯的妻子帕涅羅佩（Penelope），青年學生斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯（Stephen Dedalus，也是喬伊斯早期作品《一個青年藝術傢的畫像》主人公，以喬伊斯本人為原型）對應奧德修斯的兒子忒勒瑪科斯（Telemachus）。喬伊斯將布盧姆在都柏林街頭的一日遊蕩比作奧德修斯的海外十年漂泊，同時刻畫了他不忠誠的妻子摩莉以及斯蒂芬尋找精神上的父親的心理。小說大量運用細節描寫和意識流手法構建了一個交錯凌亂的時空，語言上形成了一種獨特的風格。《尤利西斯》是意識流小說的代表作，並被譽為20世紀一百部最佳英文小說之首，每年的6月16日已經被紀念為“布盧姆日”。
創作背景
喬伊斯使用了奧德修斯的羅馬名“尤利西斯”據說是由於他從英國散文傢查爾斯·蘭姆的兒童作品《尤利西斯的歷險》最先接觸了奧德賽的故事。他曾評論認為奧德修斯是文學史上涵蓋意義最廣泛的人物形象，並試圖以尤利西斯的歷險為主題寫一篇短篇小說發表在《都柏林人》中，並最終從1914年起開始創作長篇小說。
《尤利西斯》中的人物形象與喬伊斯的其他作品一樣，大多有其生活原型。喬伊斯本人出生於一個經濟狀況良好的天主教家庭，但後來由於愛爾蘭民權運動領袖帕內爾的倒臺以及父親酗酒等原因傢道中落，喬伊斯也選擇放棄天主教信仰。1902年喬伊斯離傢前往巴黎學習醫學，1903年母親病危趕回都柏林，臨終床前喬伊斯和弟弟斯坦尼洛斯·喬伊斯卻出於對天主教的叛逆堅持不肯下跪。後來喬伊斯把這一經歷寫入《尤利西斯》第一章並加以渲染。1904年起喬伊斯再次離傢，並結識了一個年輕的醫科大學生、詩人奧列佛·聖約翰·戈加蒂。儘管並不是很信任他，喬伊斯依然被他的才華所吸引，後來戈加蒂成為《尤利西斯》中“壯鹿”馬利根的原型。戈加蒂在都柏林灣租了一幢愛爾蘭抵抗拿破侖·波拿巴進攻時建造的圓形石堡，想要用來作為根據地發起將愛爾蘭文藝古希臘化的文化運動，喬伊斯在邀請下也住進石堡。但兩人時常發生摩擦，其後戈加蒂的一個英國牛津朋友也搬進石堡，他愛好蓋爾語，並給自己起了一個蓋爾人的名字，他成為喬伊斯書中海因斯的原型。一天夜裏他做惡夢夢見被黑豹追趕，半夢半醒之間竟然抓起手槍扣動扳機，險些擊中喬伊斯。驚醒的喬伊斯决定立刻離開石堡不再回來，儘管當時是半夜，後來喬伊斯將這段經歷也寫入《尤利西斯》第一章中。後來喬伊斯在一傢妓院喝醉，遇上了蠻不講理的憲兵（第十五章中的憲兵卡爾和憲兵康普頓）發生爭吵並動手，幸好被他父親的朋友亨特先生遇見解救。喬伊斯於是産生靈感，想要為亨特先生寫一篇在都柏林的歷險，於是亨特先生成為布盧姆的原型。其他重要的原型包括：西蒙·迪達勒斯（斯蒂芬的父親，以喬伊斯的父親為原型），摩莉（以喬伊斯的妻子諾拉為原型）。
出版史
1897年 【15歲】 喬伊斯獲愛爾蘭最佳作文奬
1914年 【32歲】 先後被20多個出版商“非文學原因”拒絶的《都柏林人》出版在葉芝，龐得幫助下，《一個青年藝術傢畫像》連載
1921年 【39】 《尤利西斯》第一版1000册預訂，顧客名單中有葉芝，龐得， 紀德 ，海明威
1927年 德譯本出版
1929年 法譯本出版
1932年 日譯本出版
1933年 美國版出版
1935年 從未讀過此書的周立波全面批判《尤利西斯》【主人公名字錯】
1964年 讀過此書的袁可嘉批判《尤利西斯》
1984年 周立波批判文章再次發表
1994年 蕭乾夫婦中譯本出版
1995年 美國人金堤中譯本出版
《尤利西斯》寫於1914年至1921年間，1918年起開始分章節在一傢名為《The Little Review》的美國雜志連載，直到1920年連載到第十三章《瑙西卡》時因包含有大量描寫主角行手淫的情節被美國有關部門指控為淫穢。1921年《尤利西斯》在美國和英國遭禁，但其後（1922年）在愛好現代主義文學的西爾維亞·畢奇小姐的幫助下，《尤利西斯》得以在法蘭西共和國巴黎的莎士比亞書屋首次完整出版。然而直到20世紀30年代初《尤利西斯》在美國、英國、愛爾蘭等國仍然被列為禁書。 在W·B·葉芝和T·S·艾略特等多位歐美知名作傢的支持下，1933年12月6日紐約南區地方法庭的約翰·烏爾賽法官宣判《尤利西斯》儘管包含性描寫但並非色情作品，從而並不淫穢。次年1月《尤利西斯》在美國由蘭登書屋出版。
小說結構
《尤利西斯》全書共分為三部分十八章，表面上每章內容晦澀凌亂，實則內部結構與荷馬的《奧德賽》有密切聯繫。每一章節都有其獨特的寫作技巧，並對應一個《奧德賽》的故事主題，角色和情節也和《奧德賽》有不同層次的對應。《尤利西斯》在The Little Review連載期間，每章都加上了下表中的標題。但據說出於避免使讀者過於關註這些對應關係的考慮，喬伊斯並未將標題等提示性內容在其後正式出版的書中寫明。
喬伊斯本人於1920年在書信中評論此書為：
它是一部關於兩個民族（以色列-愛爾蘭）的史詩，同時是一個周遊人體器官的旅行，也是一個發生在一天（一生）之間的小故事……它也是一種百科全書。
作品情節、結局或其他相關
忒勒瑪基亞
忒勒瑪基亞（The Telemachia）是以青年學生斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯的活動為主綫的部分，對應着忒勒瑪科斯開始對父親奧德修斯的尋找。時間跨度為上午八點到上午十一點。
忒勒瑪科斯
時間：8:00
場景：圓形石堡
器官：無
學科：神學
顔色：白色、金色
象徵物：繼承人
技巧：敘事（年輕的）
對應：忒勒馬科斯，哈姆雷特-斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯；安提諾奧斯-壯鹿馬利根；門托爾-送奶女工
《奧德賽》：《奧德賽》以衆神會議作為開篇，宙斯决定准許奧德修斯返回故鄉。而此時在伊薩卡，奧德修斯的兒子忒勒瑪科斯和妻子帕涅羅佩無法忍受以傲慢的安提諾奧斯為首的求婚者們的騷擾。在雅典娜的幫助下，忒勒瑪科斯開始踏上尋父之旅。
《尤利西斯》：《尤利西斯》以描述位於愛爾蘭島東岸的都柏林灣的一座圓形石堡裏的三個年輕人：“壯鹿”馬利根（一個冷漠、言辭尖刻且狂躁的醫科學生）、斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯（《一個青年藝術傢的畫像》中的年輕作傢）和海因斯（一個喜好賣弄蓋爾語的英國牛津人）的清晨活動作為開篇。斯蒂芬昨夜被海因斯的惡夢和其後歇斯底裏地開槍所驚嚇，精神很低落；而馬利根又開始對斯蒂芬拒絶在他母親去世前下跪說三道四。早餐時一個老婦人來送牛奶，海因斯嚮她賣弄似的和馬利根講起了愛爾蘭語，後來又嚮斯蒂芬詢問他關於哈姆雷特的理論，但斯蒂芬拒絶了，於是他們兩人他們談論起一些政治和文學的話題。同時本章藉馬利根之口點明了斯蒂芬尋找精神上的父親這一主題。三人離開石堡前馬利根嚮斯蒂芬索要了鑰匙，斯蒂芬感到自己在這裏的地位遭到了篡奪，决定從此離開石堡。
奈斯托
時間：10:00
場景：私立男校
器官：無
學科：歷史
顔色：棕色
象徵物：馬
技巧：教理問答（個人的）
對應：奈斯托-戴汐；奈斯托的幼子-薩金特；海倫-奧謝夫人
《奧德賽》：忒勒瑪科斯遇見了好心（但無聊的）長老奈斯托，除了知道奧德修斯的返傢很睏難之外，他一無所知。
《尤利西斯》：斯蒂芬到達學校，給一群男孩們教授歷史和英文，但他們並不把他的努力當回事，而他試圖給他們猜古怪的謎語，卻始終無法調動起他們的情緒。他在放學後為一個孩子補習算術，之後面見了校長戴汐先生。領取工資時戴汐先生和他討論了歷史問題，並想藉助他與報社編輯的“泛泛之交”把信登在報上，斯蒂芬並不情願地接受了委托。本章在斯蒂芬對戴汐先生的排猶傾嚮的默默不贊同中結束。
普洛透斯
時間：11:00
場景：桑迪芒特海灘
器官：無
學科：語言學
顔色：緑色
象徵物：潮水
技巧：內心獨白（男性的）
對應：普洛透斯-物質的最初形態；墨涅拉奧斯-凱文·埃根
《奧德賽》：忒勒瑪科斯見到了斯巴達王墨涅拉奧斯，得知可以從變化多端的老滑頭海神普洛透斯那裏獲得信息。普洛透斯嚮忒勒瑪科斯告知了埃阿斯和阿伽門農的死，以及奧德修斯被女仙卡呂普索束縛在她的海島。
《尤利西斯》：斯蒂芬漫步在海邊，沉思着他所見到的和聯想到的，形成綿延不斷的意識流。他回想起自己在巴黎的時光，以及自己芬尼亞會的好友凱文·埃根，還有一些性的主題。
奧德賽
奧德賽（The Odyssey）是以普通的都柏林小市民利奧波德·布盧姆的活動為主綫的部分，結束於布盧姆與迪達勒斯的相遇，對應着奧德修斯在海外的漂泊。時間跨度為上午八點到午夜十二點。
卡呂普索
時間：8:00
場景：布盧姆傢
器官：腎髒
學科：經濟學
顔色：橙色
象徵物：寧芙
技巧：敘事（成熟的）
對應：卡呂普索-寧芙沐浴圖；回憶-德魯加茨肉鋪；伊薩卡-錫安
《奧德賽》：奧德修斯出場時，在卡呂普索的海島（有傳說在直布羅陀附近）上不情願地做着她的情人已經七年。雅典娜請求宙斯放奧德修斯回傢，於是宙斯派赫爾墨斯嚮卡呂普索說明情況。卡呂普索最終同意協助奧德修斯返回傢園。
《尤利西斯》：布盧姆出場時正在傢裏，位於都柏林西北城區的埃爾剋斯大街7號，為他和他妻子（以及他的貓）準備早餐。我們同時得知他喜好吃羊腰子等動物的內臟。布盧姆走到樓上，看到妻子還躺在那張床上，想起那是從直布羅陀運來的老古董。然後他出門到德魯加茨肉鋪買了一個豬腰子，並對街上看到的女人們展開聯想。回到傢時他發現有兩封新信和一張明信片，其中寫給摩莉的一封來自摩莉的經紀人（兼情人）“一把火”鮑伊蘭，他正籌劃着一場邀請摩莉參加的巡回演出，另一封是布盧姆在照相館工作的十五歲的女兒米莉寫給他的感謝信。他然後給摩莉送上早餐，盯起挂在墻上的寧芙沐浴圖看。本章最後在布盧姆聽到喬治教堂的鐘聲，並想到即將參加好友帕特裏剋·迪格南的葬禮而産生的感慨中結束，
食忘憂果的種族
時間：10:00
場景：布盧姆在都柏林的遊蕩
器官：生殖器
學科：植物學、化學
顔色：無
象徵物：聖餐
技巧：自戀情結
對應：食忘憂果的種族-拉車的馬、領聖餐者、士兵、太監、入浴者、板球觀衆
陰間
時間：11:00
場景：靈車
器官：心髒
學科：宗教
顔色：白色、黑色
象徵物：看門人
技巧：夢魘
對應：冥界的四條河流-多德河、愛爾蘭大運河、皇傢運河、利菲河；西西弗斯-馬丁·坎寧安；剋爾伯羅斯-科菲神父；哈迪斯-看門人；海格力斯-丹尼爾·奧康奈爾；埃爾潘諾-狄格南；阿伽門農-帕內爾；埃阿斯-門頓
埃俄羅斯
時間：12:00
場景：報社
器官：肺
學科：修辭學
顔色：紅色
象徵物：三段論
技巧：編輯
對應：埃俄羅斯-科勞福德；亂倫-新聞；浮島-新聞界
萊斯特呂恭人
時間：13:00
場景：酒館
器官：食道
學科：建築學
顔色：無
象徵物：警官
技巧：腸胃的蠕動
對應：安提菲斯-饑餓；誘餌-食物；萊斯特呂恭人-牙齒
斯庫拉和卡律布狄斯
時間：14:00
場景：國立圖書館
器官：腦
學科：文學
顔色：無
象徵物：倫敦斯特拉特福德
技巧：辯證法
對應：岩石-亞裏士多德、教條、斯特拉特福德；漩渦-柏拉圖、神秘主義、倫敦；尤利西斯-蘇格拉底、耶穌、莎士比亞
遊動山崖
時間：15:00
場景：都柏林街道
器官：血
學科：機械學
顔色：無
象徵物：市民
技巧：迷宮
對應：博斯普魯斯海峽-利菲河；歐洲海岸-總督；亞洲海岸-康尼神父；遊岩-市民
塞壬
時間：16:00
場景：音樂沙竜
器官：耳
學科：音樂
顔色：無
象徵物：女招待員
技巧：賦格麯
對應：塞壬-女招待員；海島-酒吧
獨眼巨人
時間：17:00
場景：小酒館
器官：肌肉
學科：政治學
顔色：無
象徵物：芬尼亞會
技巧：巨人癥
對應：無人-俺；長樹枝-雪茄；挑戰-神化
瑙西卡
時間：20:00
場景：桑迪芒特海灘和附近的岩石
器官：眼睛、鼻子
學科：繪畫
顔色：灰色、藍色
象徵物：處女
技巧：腫脹、消腫
對應：費阿刻斯人-海洋之星瑪利亞；瑙西卡-格蒂
《奧德賽》：奧德修斯離開卡呂普索的島後，遭波塞鼕襲擊被衝到費阿刻斯人居住海灘的河口附近。他在躲藏中被恰巧到河邊洗衣的費阿刻斯公主瑙西卡和她的侍女們吵醒。他鑽出來，把一個球交還給其中一個玩球的侍女，並贊美了瑙西卡的美貌，乞求她能幫助他，而瑙西卡答應了。
《尤利西斯》：錫茜·凱弗裏，她的雙胞胎兄弟和她的朋友伊棣·博德曼，還有坐得稍遠一點的格蒂·麥剋道爾，在桑迪芒特海灘上乘涼。格蒂對那些吵鬧衹會添亂的男孩子以及她那些有點庸俗的朋友們很不耐煩。她做着很詳細的白日夢，包括她浪漫的想望還有精神抗爭。雙胞胎兄弟把球踢到了也在海灘上的布盧姆腳下，於是格蒂也把他編織到自己的思緒裏。（但讀者很難分清楚哪些是格蒂的意識流而哪些又是布盧姆的意識流。）煙火表演開始了，她的朋友們沿着海灘跑着，衹有格蒂安靜地坐在布盧姆不遠處，嚮後仰去看煙火，而她正讓布盧姆窺視到她的裙子內。布盧姆在她離開時發現她是一個瘸子，並且在她“展示”時行了手淫。單獨一人的布盧姆的意識逐漸沿着女人、婚姻、嗅覺流動。他想為格蒂寫一個關於他自己的故事，還想起了他的孩子們，還有格蒂。
太陽神牛
時間：22:00
場景：國立婦産醫院
器官：子宮
學科：內科學
顔色：白色
象徵物：母親
技巧：胚胎發育
對應：特裏納剋裏亞島-醫院；太陽神的女兒-護士；太陽神-霍恩；牛-多産；罪行-欺騙
喀耳刻
時間：24:00
場景：紅燈區的妓院
器官：運動係統
學科：魔術
顔色：無
象徵物：妓女
技巧：幻覺
對應：喀耳刻-貝拉
回歸
回歸（The Nostos）是布盧姆和迪達勒斯共同活動的部分，最後以各自回傢結束，對應着奧德修斯的回歸。時間跨度從凌晨一點開始，而結束時間不十分明確。
歐邁俄斯
時間：1:00
場景：馬車夫棚
器官：神經
學科：航海
顔色：無
象徵物：水手
技巧：敘事（老年的）
對應：歐邁俄斯-“剝山羊皮”；尤利西斯-水手；墨蘭提奧斯-庫裏
伊薩卡
時間：2:00
場景：布盧姆傢
器官：骨骼
學科：自然科學
顔色：無
象徵物：彗星
技巧：教理問答
對應：安提諾奧斯-壯鹿馬利根；歐律瑪科斯-一把火鮑伊蘭；弓-理性；求婚者-躊躇
帕涅羅佩
時間：不明
場景：床上
器官：肉體
學科：無
顔色：無
象徵物：大地
技巧：內心獨白（女性的）
對應：帕涅羅佩-大地；網-運動
主要人物表
利奧波德·布盧姆：以替都柏林《自由人報》拉廣告為業。其父魯道爾夫·維 拉格是匈牙利裔猶太人，遷移到愛爾蘭後改姓布盧姆。他化名“亨利·弗羅爾”， 與瑪莎·剋利弗德秘密通信。
瑪莉恩·布盧姆：利奧波德之妻。其父特威迪（已故）曾在西班牙南端的英國要塞直布羅陀服役。因此，她生長在該地。她在都柏林是個小有名氣的歌手，藝名 叫“特威迪夫人”。
斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯：喬伊斯的自傳體長篇小說《藝術傢年輕時的寫照》中的主 人公。他畢業於剋朗戈伍斯森林公學和皇傢大學，目前在迪希校長創辦的一傢私立 學校任教。在圖書館發表關於莎士比亞的議論。
西蒙·迪達勒斯：斯蒂芬之父。年前喪妻，傢境睏難。
布萊澤斯·博伊蘭：瑪莉恩之情夫。正在籌劃一次巡回歌唱演出，瑪莉恩也在被邀之列。
勃剋·穆利根：醫科學生，與海恩斯一道住進了斯蒂芬所租的圓塔。
海恩斯：英國人，畢業於牛津大學。為了研究凱爾特文學而來到愛爾蘭。
米莉：布盧姆與瑪莉恩之獨女，十五歲。在韋斯特米思郡穆林加爾市的一傢照相館工作。
帕狄·迪格納穆：已故。生前曾在律師約翰·亨利·門頓的事務所工作，因酗被開除，患病而死。
馬丁·坎寧翰：布盧姆之友，在都柏林堡任職（英國殖民統治機構）。他是個心地善良的人，多方照顧迪格納穆的遺族，包括募集捐款。
布林夫人：原名喬西·鮑威爾，其夫丹尼斯·布林患有神經病。婚前她愛過布盧姆，一直不忘舊情。
裏奇·古爾丁：斯蒂芬的舅舅，布盧姆之友。在科利斯一沃德律師事務所任會計師。他與內弟西蒙·迪達勒斯已絶交。
約翰·康米神父：方濟各·沙勿略教堂的教長，耶穌會會長。斯蒂芬在剋朗戈伍斯森林公學就讀時，他曾任該校校長。
邁爾斯·剋勞福德：《電訊晚報》的主編。
傑剋·麥剋休：大學教授，學者，經常為《電訊晚報》寫社論。
本傑明·多拉德：本地一名歌手。他在替嚮呂便·傑藉過高利貸的考利神父奔走，以便寬限幾天還債日期。
弗萊明大媽：經常到布盧姆傢來做傢務的女人。
魯迪：布盧姆與瑪莉恩的獨子，生於一八九四年，衹活了十一天便夭折。
C·P·麥科伊：布盧姆的熟人，在都柏林市的屍體收容所做驗屍官助手。其妻是個無名歌手。
班塔姆·萊昂斯：布盧姆的熟人，熱衷於賽馬。上午在街上與布盧姆相遇，聽布盧姆說起“丟掉”，就想把賭註押在同名的馬身上。後又接受利內翰的勸告，變 了卦。結果，還是“丟掉”獲勝了。
科尼·凱萊赫：奧尼爾殯儀館的經理，負責為迪格納穆料理葬事。
傑剋·鮑爾：供職於都柏林堡內的皇傢愛爾蘭警察總署。
呂使·傑：放高利貸的。有一次他兒子跳進了利菲河，被一位船夫救了起來。他卻衹給了船夫兩先令。
湯姆·剋甫：布盧姆之友，茶葉等商品的推銷員。
內德·蘭伯特：𠔌物商，其庫房原是聖瑪麗亞修道院的會議廳。
休·C·洛夫神父：他是薩林斯鎮聖邁剋爾教堂的本堂神父，為了寫一本關於菲茨傑拉德傢族的書，到蘭伯特的庫房來參觀。他在都柏林擁有一所房子，出租給 考利神父。
考利神父：本·多拉德和西蒙·迪達勒斯之友。因還不起嚮呂便·傑藉的高利貸，狼狽不堪。
喬（約瑟夫）·麥卡西·海國斯：布盧姆的同事，也替《自由人報》拉廣告。
紅穆雷：約翰·穆雷的綽號，《自由人報》的職員。
約瑟夫·帕特利剋·南尼蒂：在愛爾蘭出生的意大利人，《自由人報》社排字房工長。他又是英國議會下院議員兼都柏林市政委員。
傑·傑·奧莫洛伊：原為律師，後來患了肺病，落魄潦倒。
利內翰：《體育》報的賽馬欄記者，曾調戲摩莉。
奧馬登·伯剋：斯蒂芬之友，新聞記者。
弗林：綽號叫“大鼻子”，布盧姆之友。
喬治·威廉·拉塞爾：筆名A·E·，愛爾蘭詩人。他是當時仍健在的愛爾蘭文藝復興運動的指導者之一，任《愛爾蘭傢園報》主編。
托馬斯·威廉·利斯特：公誼會教徒，愛爾蘭國立圖書館館長。
約翰·埃格林頓：原名威廉·阿剋柏特裏剋·馬吉，愛爾蘭文藝復興運動中的批評傢，曾在圖書館與斯蒂芬辯論。
理查德·歐文·貝斯特：愛爾蘭國立圖書館副館長。
約翰·米林頓·辛格：愛爾蘭文藝復興運動的領導人之一，詩劇傢，是斯蒂芬的熟人。
喬治·穆爾：愛爾蘭小說傢，斯蒂芬的熟人。
格雷戈裏夫人：愛爾蘭劇作傢。原名伊薩貝拉·奧古斯塔·佩爾斯。她於一八九二年喪夫後，開始文學生涯，一九0四年任阿貝劇院經理。她是斯蒂芬的熟人。
阿瑟·格裏菲思：愛爾蘭政治傢，原在都柏林當排字工人。一八九九年創辦以爭取愛爾蘭民族獨立為主旨的周刊《愛爾蘭人聯合報》。他是布盧姆的熟人。
查理·斯圖爾特·巴涅爾：十九世紀末愛爾蘭自治運動和民族主義領袖，已故。布盧姆和他有一面之緣。
約翰·霍華德·巴涅爾：查理·巴涅爾之弟。都柏林市政典禮官兼典當商代理 人。
拉裏·奧羅剋：布盧姆傢附近的一傢酒店的老闆。
凱蒂·迪達勒斯}
布棣·迪達勒斯}斯蒂芬的幼妹尚在上學。
瑪吉·迪達勒斯：斯蒂芬之妹。她從修女處討些豌豆，替妹妹們煮湯吃。
迪麗·迪達勒斯：斯蒂芬之妹，長得最像長兄。她在街上嚮父親西蒙要了點錢，花一便士買了一本《法語初級讀本》。
盲青年：布盧姆曾攙着他走過馬路，神經失常的卡什爾·法雷爾卻差點兒把他撞倒。他到奧蒙德酒吧去，調了鋼琴的音。
湯姆·羅赤福德：他以兜售賽馬賭券為業，並熱衷於發明機器。他曾搭救過一 名因中毒而昏迷過去的下水道工人。
高個兒約翰·範寧：都柏林市副行政長官，綽號“高個兒”。
帕特裏剋·阿洛伊修斯·迪格納穆：帕狄·迪格納穆的遺孤中最年長的一個。
約翰·懷斯·諾蘭：布盧姆之友，關心迪格納穆的遺孤，並對馬丁·坎寧翰說，布盧姆為遺孤捐了五先令。
莉迪亞·杜絲：奧蒙德飯店的金發女侍。
米娜·肯尼迪：奧蒙德飯店的褐發女侍。
阿爾夫雷德·柏根：都柏林行政司法副長官助理，綽號叫“小個兒阿爾夫”。
威廉·亨勃爾·達德利伯爵：愛爾蘭總督。
“市民”：原名邁剋爾·丘薩剋。他是蓋爾體育協會創辦者，自稱“市民丘薩剋”，因而得名。
格蒂·麥剋道維爾：瘸腿美少女。
西茜·卡弗裏：格蒂的女友，性情活潑。
伊迪·博德曼：格蒂的女友，性格矯情。
湯米·卡弗裏} 西茵的雙胞胎弟弟，時年四歲。
傑基·卡弗裏}
雷吉·懷利：格蒂的男友，高中學生。
安德魯·霍恩博士：霍利斯街國立婦産醫院院長。
卡倫小姐：國立婦産醫院護士。
米娜·博福伊太太：瑪莉恩的女友，夜裏在醫院生一男嬰，係難産。
亞歷剋·班農：醫科學生，米莉的男友。
迪剋森：實習大夫，布盧姆被蜂蜇傷後，曾由他包紮。斯蒂芬之友。
文森特·林奇：醫科學生。他與女友在籬笆後面幽會時，給路過的康米神父（母校的老校長）撞見了。
弗蘭剋·科斯特洛：醫科學生，因嗜酒如命，綽號叫潘趣（酒名）
威廉·馬登：醫科學生。
J．剋羅瑟斯：醫科學生。
貝洛·科恩夫人：妓院老鴇。
瑪麗·德裏斯科爾：布盧姆夫婦過去的女僕。
耶爾弗頓·巴裏夫人}
貝林厄姆夫人 } ：都柏林上流社會淑女。
默雯·塔爾博伊貴婦人}
佐伊、基蒂、弗洛莉：妓女
士兵卡爾、士兵康捨頓：英國兵，把斯蒂芬擊倒。
科利：斯蒂芬之友，因生活沒有着落，嚮斯蒂芬借錢。
岡穆利：西蒙的舊友，後淪為市政府雇用的守夜人。
馬爾維中尉：摩莉在直布羅陀時期的初戀對象。
“剝山羊皮”：馬車夫棚的老闆。
故事梗概
青年詩人斯蒂芬因母親病危，從巴黎返回都柏林。母親彌留之際用白瓷鉢盛着緑色的膽汁，眼睛緊盯着他，迫使他下跪皈依宗教，他大聲嚷道：“媽媽，就讓我照這樣活下去吧！”。斯蒂芬因此一直沉浸在悲哀與懊惱之中。喪母後，又因父親成天酗酒從傢中跑了出來，租了一座圓形炮塔，靠教書謀生。醫科學生勃剋·穆利根與英國人海恩斯也搬來同住。
海恩斯和斯芬一起去海邊遊泳，談起信仰問題，斯蒂芬說：“你會在我身上看到一個可怕的自由思想的典型。但我又是兩個主人的奴僕：一個英國人（維多利亞女王）,一個意大利人（羅馬教皇）。 ”
斯蒂芬來到位於都柏林海濱的學校去上歷史課，他被校長叫到辦公室領薪水，校長開導他要註意攢錢，要懂得金錢的重要，並給他一篇文章，讓他找個報社發表。斯蒂芬離開始學校後，來到海灘，望着洶涌的大海他浮想聯篇，他把校長那篇原稿的空白處撕下來，將自己的問題胡亂地記在上面。
布盧姆是匈牙利裔猶太人，正為報紙承攬廣告，他出去買了一副腰子。回傢後，給還未起床的妻子莫莉端去早餐。莫莉是個小有名氣的歌手，但生活不檢點，好招蜂引蝶，她正準備下午與情人博依蘭約會。布盧姆整天為此事煩惱，但在掙錢比自己多的老婆面前又擡不起頭來。
上午10點，布盧姆化名弗洛爾，與一名叫瑪落的女打字員交換情書。他是通過在報紙廣告招聘女助手而跟瑪落通起信來的。他到郵局取了瑪落的回信，拐進無人的墻邊看信，看完信不禁飄飄然起來。走到大橋底下，他把信撕成碎片丟了，然後到教堂去做彌撒。
11點，布盧姆乘馬車去墓地參加迪格納穆的葬禮。布盧姆突然看見博伊蘭瀟灑的身影，他想除了魅力之外，他妻子還能從他身上看到什麽呢？“魅力”是都柏林最壞的傢夥，博伊蘭卻憑它活得很快樂。靈柩下葬後，他仍在墳叢中徜徉，“兩側是悲痛的天使，十字架、斷裂的圓柱、墳塋、仰望天空做禱告的石像。”他回想起夭折的兒子和自殺的父親，他對死亡進行反思，他認為人死後埋在地下行不通，最好火葬或海葬。他又想到自己不過是一個廣告經紀人，一個漂泊流浪的猶太人。布盧姆心中無限凄涼，甚至想到死亡，但馬上又自我解嘲，回到現實中來。
中午，布盧姆到《自由報》去嚮主編說明自己攬來的廣告圖案，隨後又趕到《電訊晚報》報館，碰巧斯蒂芬也在這兒，他想嚮該報推薦校長的文章。主編卻對文稿嗤之以鼻，斯蒂芬悻悻而出。想到剛領了薪水，就請大傢去喝酒。半路上布盧姆在一座紀念碑旁看見西蒙的女兒（斯蒂芬的妹妹）在拍賣行外準備賣舊傢具，頓生感慨：西蒙共有15個孩子，按照教義禁止節制生育，現在這些孩子連傢帶産都吃個精光。
下午1 點，布盧姆走進一傢廉價的小飯館，這裏既髒且亂，人們在狼吞虎咽，醜態百出，吃相十分難看。於是他換了傢高級一點的飯館，在那遇到熟人弗林，弗林問他妻子巡回演出的經紀人是誰，這使他想起下午4 點妻子要與博依蘭約會，心裏頓感煩燥不安，一口氣喝下一杯酒。從飯店出來走到圖書館前面時，看到情敵博依蘭迎面走來，便趕緊躲進圖書館裏。
下午2 點，斯蒂芬在圖書館裏對評論傢和學者發表關於莎士比亞的議論。布盧姆為躲避博依蘭來到這，但他並沒有捲進這場討論，巧妙地躲過去了。他穿行在大街小巷，看見形形色色的人們正在忙碌着，教會會長康米神父正在接受人們的致敬，一位獨腿的水兵求他施捨，他衹給他一個祝福就走了，而他卻非常高興地與議員的妻子告別，並懇請她代嚮議員致意。一群老人正在為剛去世的迪格納穆的孩子們募捐，布盧姆馬上捐了5 先令，而總督副秘書長和副行政長官卻一毛不拔。愛爾蘭總督正攜夫人及隨從浩浩蕩蕩而來，洛夫神父想從總督手裏弄到肥缺嚮他恭恭敬敬地鞠了一躬，西蒙為了掩蓋沒有扣好褲子而將帽子放在胸前，總督以為他是敬禮。斯蒂芬碰到衣衫襤褸的妹妹，想如何幫她，可自己還命運難卜；窮睏的考利神父欠了高利貸，正四處托人求債主再寬限兩天；發了財的洛夫神父已扣壓了他的財産逼他交房租。
下午5 點，布盧姆約一個朋友在酒吧見面。一個無賴大肆攻擊猶太人，身為猶太人的布盧姆實在忍無可忍，他反駁道：“門德爾鬆是猶太人，還有卡爾·馬剋思、斯賓諾莎。救世主耶穌也是個猶太人……你的天主也跟我的一樣，也是個猶太人。”無賴氣得抓起一隻餅幹罐就往布盧姆身上扔，但未能擊中。布盧姆和朋友趕忙逃之夭夭。
晚上8 點，夏日的黃昏籠罩着世界，在遙遠的西邊，太陽沉落了。少女格蒂到圓形炮塔附近的海灘乘涼，她凝視遠方，沉湎在冥想之中。布盧姆坐在不遠的地方，深深地為格蒂的美貌所吸引。格蒂意識到布盧姆在註視着她，她想：也許嫁給這麽一個中年紳士倒也挺好。二人的目光不期而遇，她覺得他的眼神猶如烈火，將自己從頭燒到腳，她恨不得朝他伸出雙臂讓他過來，並將他的嘴唇觸到自己白皙的前額，面對這雙年輕天真的眼睛，布盧姆早已神不守捨了。格蒂離開海灘時，布盧姆纔發現她原來是個瘸子，不禁失聲嘆道：“可憐的姑娘”。
晚上10點，布盧姆到婦産醫院去探望難産的麥娜夫人。斯蒂芬和一群醫學院的學生在那裏高談闊論，個個喝得酩酊大醉，布盧姆開始為斯蒂芬擔心。斯蒂芬說還要請大傢到酒店喝酒，就離開了醫院。布盧姆也趕了去，一路上他的眼前出現了許多幻象。
他幻想着在一傢妓院裏達到高潮，後來他又榮升為市長，還當了愛爾蘭國王，隨後遭到群衆的攻擊被驅逐出境。布盧姆擺脫幻想後，到妓院去找斯蒂芬，斯蒂芬醉酒掄起手杖擊碎了妓院的燈，來到街上鬍說一通，兩個英國兵認為他對國王不敬，將他打得昏死過去。布盧姆産生錯覺把斯蒂芬當成自己那夭折的兒子，就將斯蒂芬攙扶起來帶回傢。在道德衰微、家庭分裂、傳統觀念淪喪的大千世界裏，布盧姆和斯蒂芬精神上遭受挫折、內心充滿動蕩，他們終於在彼此身上找到了各自精神上所缺乏的東西。斯蒂芬找到了父親，布盧姆找到了兒子。
天蒙蒙亮時，斯蒂芬告辭而去。布盧姆走進臥室後，發現室內的擺設略有變動，幻想着莫莉與博依蘭幽會的情景，他推測與妻子發生關係的决不止博依蘭一個人，還有原市長等熟人，他琢磨了半響妻子與這些情人究竟幹了些什麽，轉念一想，他覺得這件事也不能全怪莫莉，自己沒有滿足她對夫妻生活的要求，他願意再做一次努力。
莫莉處於半睡半醒之中，在莫莉的夢中出現有丈夫布盧姆、博依蘭、初戀情人和丈夫剛剛說過的斯蒂芬，她又開始幻想和這位年輕人談情說愛了。她朦朧地感到一種母性的滿足和對一個青年男子的衝動。不過，她想得最多的還是丈夫，想到10年來夫妻生活的冷漠，想到他的許多可笑的事情，她覺得他還是個有教養，有禮貌，有豐富知識，有藝術修養的人，實在是個難得的好丈夫，她决心再給他一次機會。
相關評論
初閱《尤利西斯》，始於那句流傳甚廣的100個人中沒有10個人能讀完《尤利西斯》。
《尤利西斯》是愛爾蘭著名的現代派小說傢喬伊斯的著作，喬伊斯曾入都柏林大學專攻現代語言學，後赴歐洲大陸。喬伊斯的第一部短篇小說集是《都柏林人》，後又寫自傳體中篇小說《青年藝術傢的肖像》。
文學界對於《尤利西斯》的評價，我覺得就如兩個磁極。一些評論將《尤利西斯》的身價擡得很高，覺得它“是一部曠世奇作”；另一些評論又將它貶得很低，覺得它“粗俗不堪入目”。
而我始終是以一種膜拜的態度看待《尤利西斯》的，它是一部太能夠顯示文學功底的著作。《尤利西斯》洋洋灑灑一百萬字，卻衹是描述了十八個小時的事情，我無法想象作者需要怎樣的觀察和想象，才能寫出這樣一部獨特的著作。況，書中的出場人物並不多，衹有布盧姆，斯蒂芬和莫莉三位主要人物。
《尤利西斯》的成功之處，在於對人物內心的細緻刻畫。喬伊斯以他驚人的文學功底，用一百萬字講述了三個人物在十八個小時內的活動。《尤利西斯》雖篇幅巨大，但毫無贅言，喬伊斯以他對人生和生活的認識和細膩的洞察力，描寫了主人公的行動，語言和細微心理變化。《尤利西斯》中對內心活動的描寫出神入化，三位主人公的每個細微的思想變化，都清晰真切地呈現在了讀者面前。諸如說《尤利西斯》的第三章，喬伊斯用整整一章的篇幅刻畫了喬伊斯的心理活動。
《尤利西斯》的第一主人公佈盧姆是一位匈牙利裔的猶太人，他在都柏林的報社做廣告推銷員。布盧姆這一形象的價值超越了固有的身份，喬伊斯用自己深刻的社會經驗和紮實的文學功底，把千千萬萬的愛爾蘭市民都集中到了布盧姆身上。布盧姆的經歷和性情，也恰恰屬於諸多愛爾蘭市民。
布盧姆的生活抱經滄桑，他幼子夭折，妻子不貞，自己常自欺欺人地在名存實亡的愛情中掙紮彷徨。布盧姆人到中年卻一無所成，面對比自己薪水高幾倍的莫莉，他自卑並且不自信。但布盧姆另一方面又自恃清高，甚至不願與吃相不雅觀的顧客在一個飯館用餐。布盧姆熱心血性，狹義地幫助醉酒的斯蒂芬。但另一方面，他也有着貪婪委瑣的欲望，甚至曾試圖欺侮一名海灘邊的殘廢少女。
布盧姆苦悶彷徨，充滿矛盾。他對現實迷茫但又充滿希望，無奈但又期待奇跡。布盧姆失去了精神的支柱和進取的目的，生活和事業都遭受了沉重的打擊。布盧姆的頽廢，正反映了二十世紀初愛爾蘭市民的孤獨，迷茫和絶望。
喬伊斯將他十六年對於生活和社會的理解，都全部濃縮到了《尤利西斯》中，同時它又是一部價值超越了社會現實的著作，並且上升到了哲學的深度。
《奧德修記》聞名全世，被公認為是人類歷史上一部偉大的史詩。而喬伊斯，他以過人的悟性寫下了一部當代題材的《奧德修記》。《尤利西斯》每一章的內容，都采取了與《奧德修記》平行的結構，喬伊斯獨具匠心，巧妙構思，使整部《尤利西斯》的結構與寓意都和《奧德修記》相照應。喬伊斯從史詩的深度申時現代生活，賦予了《尤利西斯》哲學的內涵。
一個作傢的文學功底達到一定程度時，他的著作往往會滲透進哲學，諸如說《紅樓夢》。《紅樓夢》中的經典名言“假作真時真亦假，無為有處有還無”以及“赤條條來去無牽挂”，還有“好一似食鳥各投林，落了片白茫茫大地真幹淨”。這些都是作者對人生，對世界的哲學思考。
喬伊斯和曹雪芹同樣地將對社會的感性認識上升到了理性思考，《尤利西斯》和《紅樓夢》之所以是兩部小說而又不僅僅是小說，也正在此。
曹雪芹著《紅樓夢》是“字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常”，而喬伊斯著《尤利西斯》，用了十六年構思觀察，七年專著寫作。但，越是民族的文化，往往就難以是世界的文化。從此角度來說，《尤利西斯》和《紅樓夢》有着相似的悲哀。
《紅樓夢》無疑是一部登峰造極的偉大著作，曹雪芹在《紅樓夢》中對中國古典文化的融合，已經達到了海納百川的程度。《紅樓夢》雖不過是部小說，卻包含了幾乎所有的中國古典文化精粹：詩詞，麯賦，樂府，楹聯，謎語，八股，請柬，祭文，奏章，書信，菜譜，帳單，藥方，占卜，星相，`````《紅樓夢》被世界公認是中國古典著作的最高峰，二月河前輩評價《紅樓夢》時說，“《紅樓夢》的成就，不僅是空前的，在某種意義上說，它也是絶後的。”
可正應了物極必反的原理，這樣的一部偉大巨著，雖被世界公認卻未被世界喜愛。誠然，《紅樓夢》在世界書榜中位列第八位，壓過了歐美大批舉世聞名的著作，然而正如多數民族文化經典一樣，《紅樓夢》未成為世界普遍的文化。
《紅樓夢》被譯為幾十種語言在世界各國發行，在歐美國傢也建有紅學研究會，可美國一位女記者曾直言不諱地說，她身邊的朋友更多的是把《紅樓夢》作為一本必讀書目，而並非是出於喜歡。西歐的調查報告也清楚地表明，《紅樓夢》在民間遠不如《三國演義》，《封神榜》，甚至《金瓶梅》受歡迎。紅樓夢在國外，更多的是被知識分子當作名著來瀏覽。
《尤利西斯》於一九二二年二月二日出版，它是喬伊斯十六年構思七年寫作的成果，可出版後它長期被禁止在英美發行，直至一九三三年纔重新流通。
《尤利西斯》出版後同樣不為世人接受，上市後即在文學界引起了巨大的爭議。弗吉尼亞伍爾夫斥責此書“粗俗不堪入目”，當時一些作傢甚至毫不客氣地把喬伊斯的簽名贈閱本退還。衹有艾略特等少數有慧眼的作傢，意識到了《尤利西斯》的價值，竭力為它辯解。清華大學决定將《尤利西斯》列為必讀書目時，同樣引起了教育界和文學界的諸多反對。
每思及此，我就不禁感慨。《尤利西斯》可以是一部世界名著，也可以是一部曠世奇作，但它難以在全世界的讀者中都受到歡迎。
喬伊斯和曹雪芹寫出了這樣的兩部著作——《尤利西斯》和《紅樓夢》，這究竟是他們的偉大，還是他們的悲哀``````
本作品為1998年全球讀者投票評選二十世紀小說類第一名。
譯者：蕭乾 文潔若
譯者序
第一章 第二章 第三章
第四章 第五章 第六章
第七章 第八章 第九章
第十章 第十一章 第十二章
第十三章 第十四章 第十五章
第十六章 第十七章 第十八章
(尤利西斯)與(奧德修紀)(對照) (尤利西斯·喬伊斯大事記) 主要人物表
譯後記
Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle). The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.
Ulysses contains approximately 265,000 words from a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses), divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
創作背景
喬伊斯使用了奧德修斯的羅馬名“尤利西斯”據說是由於他從英國散文傢查爾斯·蘭姆的兒童作品《尤利西斯的歷險》最先接觸了奧德賽的故事。他曾評論認為奧德修斯是文學史上涵蓋意義最廣泛的人物形象，並試圖以尤利西斯的歷險為主題寫一篇短篇小說發表在《都柏林人》中，並最終從1914年起開始創作長篇小說。
《尤利西斯》中的人物形象與喬伊斯的其他作品一樣，大多有其生活原型。喬伊斯本人出生於一個經濟狀況良好的天主教家庭，但後來由於愛爾蘭民權運動領袖帕內爾的倒臺以及父親酗酒等原因傢道中落，喬伊斯也選擇放棄天主教信仰。1902年喬伊斯離傢前往巴黎學習醫學，1903年母親病危趕回都柏林，臨終床前喬伊斯和弟弟斯坦尼洛斯·喬伊斯卻出於對天主教的叛逆堅持不肯下跪。後來喬伊斯把這一經歷寫入《尤利西斯》第一章並加以渲染。1904年起喬伊斯再次離傢，並結識了一個年輕的醫科大學生、詩人奧列佛·聖約翰·戈加蒂。儘管並不是很信任他，喬伊斯依然被他的才華所吸引，後來戈加蒂成為《尤利西斯》中“壯鹿”馬利根的原型。戈加蒂在都柏林灣租了一幢愛爾蘭抵抗拿破侖·波拿巴進攻時建造的圓形石堡，想要用來作為根據地發起將愛爾蘭文藝古希臘化的文化運動，喬伊斯在邀請下也住進石堡。但兩人時常發生摩擦，其後戈加蒂的一個英國牛津朋友也搬進石堡，他愛好蓋爾語，並給自己起了一個蓋爾人的名字，他成為喬伊斯書中海因斯的原型。一天夜裏他做惡夢夢見被黑豹追趕，半夢半醒之間竟然抓起手槍扣動扳機，險些擊中喬伊斯。驚醒的喬伊斯决定立刻離開石堡不再回來，儘管當時是半夜，後來喬伊斯將這段經歷也寫入《尤利西斯》第一章中。後來喬伊斯在一傢妓院喝醉，遇上了蠻不講理的憲兵（第十五章中的憲兵卡爾和憲兵康普頓）發生爭吵並動手，幸好被他父親的朋友亨特先生遇見解救。喬伊斯於是産生靈感，想要為亨特先生寫一篇在都柏林的歷險，於是亨特先生成為布盧姆的原型。其他重要的原型包括：西蒙·迪達勒斯（斯蒂芬的父親，以喬伊斯的父親為原型），摩莉（以喬伊斯的妻子諾拉為原型）。
出版史
1897年 【15歲】 喬伊斯獲愛爾蘭最佳作文奬
1914年 【32歲】 先後被20多個出版商“非文學原因”拒絶的《都柏林人》出版在葉芝，龐得幫助下，《一個青年藝術傢畫像》連載
1921年 【39】 《尤利西斯》第一版1000册預訂，顧客名單中有葉芝，龐得， 紀德 ，海明威
1927年 德譯本出版
1929年 法譯本出版
1932年 日譯本出版
1933年 美國版出版
1935年 從未讀過此書的周立波全面批判《尤利西斯》【主人公名字錯】
1964年 讀過此書的袁可嘉批判《尤利西斯》
1984年 周立波批判文章再次發表
1994年 蕭乾夫婦中譯本出版
1995年 美國人金堤中譯本出版
《尤利西斯》寫於1914年至1921年間，1918年起開始分章節在一傢名為《The Little Review》的美國雜志連載，直到1920年連載到第十三章《瑙西卡》時因包含有大量描寫主角行手淫的情節被美國有關部門指控為淫穢。1921年《尤利西斯》在美國和英國遭禁，但其後（1922年）在愛好現代主義文學的西爾維亞·畢奇小姐的幫助下，《尤利西斯》得以在法蘭西共和國巴黎的莎士比亞書屋首次完整出版。然而直到20世紀30年代初《尤利西斯》在美國、英國、愛爾蘭等國仍然被列為禁書。 在W·B·葉芝和T·S·艾略特等多位歐美知名作傢的支持下，1933年12月6日紐約南區地方法庭的約翰·烏爾賽法官宣判《尤利西斯》儘管包含性描寫但並非色情作品，從而並不淫穢。次年1月《尤利西斯》在美國由蘭登書屋出版。
小說結構
《尤利西斯》全書共分為三部分十八章，表面上每章內容晦澀凌亂，實則內部結構與荷馬的《奧德賽》有密切聯繫。每一章節都有其獨特的寫作技巧，並對應一個《奧德賽》的故事主題，角色和情節也和《奧德賽》有不同層次的對應。《尤利西斯》在The Little Review連載期間，每章都加上了下表中的標題。但據說出於避免使讀者過於關註這些對應關係的考慮，喬伊斯並未將標題等提示性內容在其後正式出版的書中寫明。
喬伊斯本人於1920年在書信中評論此書為：
它是一部關於兩個民族（以色列-愛爾蘭）的史詩，同時是一個周遊人體器官的旅行，也是一個發生在一天（一生）之間的小故事……它也是一種百科全書。
作品情節、結局或其他相關
忒勒瑪基亞
忒勒瑪基亞（The Telemachia）是以青年學生斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯的活動為主綫的部分，對應着忒勒瑪科斯開始對父親奧德修斯的尋找。時間跨度為上午八點到上午十一點。
忒勒瑪科斯
時間：8:00
場景：圓形石堡
器官：無
學科：神學
顔色：白色、金色
象徵物：繼承人
技巧：敘事（年輕的）
對應：忒勒馬科斯，哈姆雷特-斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯；安提諾奧斯-壯鹿馬利根；門托爾-送奶女工
《奧德賽》：《奧德賽》以衆神會議作為開篇，宙斯决定准許奧德修斯返回故鄉。而此時在伊薩卡，奧德修斯的兒子忒勒瑪科斯和妻子帕涅羅佩無法忍受以傲慢的安提諾奧斯為首的求婚者們的騷擾。在雅典娜的幫助下，忒勒瑪科斯開始踏上尋父之旅。
《尤利西斯》：《尤利西斯》以描述位於愛爾蘭島東岸的都柏林灣的一座圓形石堡裏的三個年輕人：“壯鹿”馬利根（一個冷漠、言辭尖刻且狂躁的醫科學生）、斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯（《一個青年藝術傢的畫像》中的年輕作傢）和海因斯（一個喜好賣弄蓋爾語的英國牛津人）的清晨活動作為開篇。斯蒂芬昨夜被海因斯的惡夢和其後歇斯底裏地開槍所驚嚇，精神很低落；而馬利根又開始對斯蒂芬拒絶在他母親去世前下跪說三道四。早餐時一個老婦人來送牛奶，海因斯嚮她賣弄似的和馬利根講起了愛爾蘭語，後來又嚮斯蒂芬詢問他關於哈姆雷特的理論，但斯蒂芬拒絶了，於是他們兩人他們談論起一些政治和文學的話題。同時本章藉馬利根之口點明了斯蒂芬尋找精神上的父親這一主題。三人離開石堡前馬利根嚮斯蒂芬索要了鑰匙，斯蒂芬感到自己在這裏的地位遭到了篡奪，决定從此離開石堡。
奈斯托
時間：10:00
場景：私立男校
器官：無
學科：歷史
顔色：棕色
象徵物：馬
技巧：教理問答（個人的）
對應：奈斯托-戴汐；奈斯托的幼子-薩金特；海倫-奧謝夫人
《奧德賽》：忒勒瑪科斯遇見了好心（但無聊的）長老奈斯托，除了知道奧德修斯的返傢很睏難之外，他一無所知。
《尤利西斯》：斯蒂芬到達學校，給一群男孩們教授歷史和英文，但他們並不把他的努力當回事，而他試圖給他們猜古怪的謎語，卻始終無法調動起他們的情緒。他在放學後為一個孩子補習算術，之後面見了校長戴汐先生。領取工資時戴汐先生和他討論了歷史問題，並想藉助他與報社編輯的“泛泛之交”把信登在報上，斯蒂芬並不情願地接受了委托。本章在斯蒂芬對戴汐先生的排猶傾嚮的默默不贊同中結束。
普洛透斯
時間：11:00
場景：桑迪芒特海灘
器官：無
學科：語言學
顔色：緑色
象徵物：潮水
技巧：內心獨白（男性的）
對應：普洛透斯-物質的最初形態；墨涅拉奧斯-凱文·埃根
《奧德賽》：忒勒瑪科斯見到了斯巴達王墨涅拉奧斯，得知可以從變化多端的老滑頭海神普洛透斯那裏獲得信息。普洛透斯嚮忒勒瑪科斯告知了埃阿斯和阿伽門農的死，以及奧德修斯被女仙卡呂普索束縛在她的海島。
《尤利西斯》：斯蒂芬漫步在海邊，沉思着他所見到的和聯想到的，形成綿延不斷的意識流。他回想起自己在巴黎的時光，以及自己芬尼亞會的好友凱文·埃根，還有一些性的主題。
奧德賽
奧德賽（The Odyssey）是以普通的都柏林小市民利奧波德·布盧姆的活動為主綫的部分，結束於布盧姆與迪達勒斯的相遇，對應着奧德修斯在海外的漂泊。時間跨度為上午八點到午夜十二點。
卡呂普索
時間：8:00
場景：布盧姆傢
器官：腎髒
學科：經濟學
顔色：橙色
象徵物：寧芙
技巧：敘事（成熟的）
對應：卡呂普索-寧芙沐浴圖；回憶-德魯加茨肉鋪；伊薩卡-錫安
《奧德賽》：奧德修斯出場時，在卡呂普索的海島（有傳說在直布羅陀附近）上不情願地做着她的情人已經七年。雅典娜請求宙斯放奧德修斯回傢，於是宙斯派赫爾墨斯嚮卡呂普索說明情況。卡呂普索最終同意協助奧德修斯返回傢園。
《尤利西斯》：布盧姆出場時正在傢裏，位於都柏林西北城區的埃爾剋斯大街7號，為他和他妻子（以及他的貓）準備早餐。我們同時得知他喜好吃羊腰子等動物的內臟。布盧姆走到樓上，看到妻子還躺在那張床上，想起那是從直布羅陀運來的老古董。然後他出門到德魯加茨肉鋪買了一個豬腰子，並對街上看到的女人們展開聯想。回到傢時他發現有兩封新信和一張明信片，其中寫給摩莉的一封來自摩莉的經紀人（兼情人）“一把火”鮑伊蘭，他正籌劃着一場邀請摩莉參加的巡回演出，另一封是布盧姆在照相館工作的十五歲的女兒米莉寫給他的感謝信。他然後給摩莉送上早餐，盯起挂在墻上的寧芙沐浴圖看。本章最後在布盧姆聽到喬治教堂的鐘聲，並想到即將參加好友帕特裏剋·迪格南的葬禮而産生的感慨中結束，
食忘憂果的種族
時間：10:00
場景：布盧姆在都柏林的遊蕩
器官：生殖器
學科：植物學、化學
顔色：無
象徵物：聖餐
技巧：自戀情結
對應：食忘憂果的種族-拉車的馬、領聖餐者、士兵、太監、入浴者、板球觀衆
陰間
時間：11:00
場景：靈車
器官：心髒
學科：宗教
顔色：白色、黑色
象徵物：看門人
技巧：夢魘
對應：冥界的四條河流-多德河、愛爾蘭大運河、皇傢運河、利菲河；西西弗斯-馬丁·坎寧安；剋爾伯羅斯-科菲神父；哈迪斯-看門人；海格力斯-丹尼爾·奧康奈爾；埃爾潘諾-狄格南；阿伽門農-帕內爾；埃阿斯-門頓
埃俄羅斯
時間：12:00
場景：報社
器官：肺
學科：修辭學
顔色：紅色
象徵物：三段論
技巧：編輯
對應：埃俄羅斯-科勞福德；亂倫-新聞；浮島-新聞界
萊斯特呂恭人
時間：13:00
場景：酒館
器官：食道
學科：建築學
顔色：無
象徵物：警官
技巧：腸胃的蠕動
對應：安提菲斯-饑餓；誘餌-食物；萊斯特呂恭人-牙齒
斯庫拉和卡律布狄斯
時間：14:00
場景：國立圖書館
器官：腦
學科：文學
顔色：無
象徵物：倫敦斯特拉特福德
技巧：辯證法
對應：岩石-亞裏士多德、教條、斯特拉特福德；漩渦-柏拉圖、神秘主義、倫敦；尤利西斯-蘇格拉底、耶穌、莎士比亞
遊動山崖
時間：15:00
場景：都柏林街道
器官：血
學科：機械學
顔色：無
象徵物：市民
技巧：迷宮
對應：博斯普魯斯海峽-利菲河；歐洲海岸-總督；亞洲海岸-康尼神父；遊岩-市民
塞壬
時間：16:00
場景：音樂沙竜
器官：耳
學科：音樂
顔色：無
象徵物：女招待員
技巧：賦格麯
對應：塞壬-女招待員；海島-酒吧
獨眼巨人
時間：17:00
場景：小酒館
器官：肌肉
學科：政治學
顔色：無
象徵物：芬尼亞會
技巧：巨人癥
對應：無人-俺；長樹枝-雪茄；挑戰-神化
瑙西卡
時間：20:00
場景：桑迪芒特海灘和附近的岩石
器官：眼睛、鼻子
學科：繪畫
顔色：灰色、藍色
象徵物：處女
技巧：腫脹、消腫
對應：費阿刻斯人-海洋之星瑪利亞；瑙西卡-格蒂
《奧德賽》：奧德修斯離開卡呂普索的島後，遭波塞鼕襲擊被衝到費阿刻斯人居住海灘的河口附近。他在躲藏中被恰巧到河邊洗衣的費阿刻斯公主瑙西卡和她的侍女們吵醒。他鑽出來，把一個球交還給其中一個玩球的侍女，並贊美了瑙西卡的美貌，乞求她能幫助他，而瑙西卡答應了。
《尤利西斯》：錫茜·凱弗裏，她的雙胞胎兄弟和她的朋友伊棣·博德曼，還有坐得稍遠一點的格蒂·麥剋道爾，在桑迪芒特海灘上乘涼。格蒂對那些吵鬧衹會添亂的男孩子以及她那些有點庸俗的朋友們很不耐煩。她做着很詳細的白日夢，包括她浪漫的想望還有精神抗爭。雙胞胎兄弟把球踢到了也在海灘上的布盧姆腳下，於是格蒂也把他編織到自己的思緒裏。（但讀者很難分清楚哪些是格蒂的意識流而哪些又是布盧姆的意識流。）煙火表演開始了，她的朋友們沿着海灘跑着，衹有格蒂安靜地坐在布盧姆不遠處，嚮後仰去看煙火，而她正讓布盧姆窺視到她的裙子內。布盧姆在她離開時發現她是一個瘸子，並且在她“展示”時行了手淫。單獨一人的布盧姆的意識逐漸沿着女人、婚姻、嗅覺流動。他想為格蒂寫一個關於他自己的故事，還想起了他的孩子們，還有格蒂。
太陽神牛
時間：22:00
場景：國立婦産醫院
器官：子宮
學科：內科學
顔色：白色
象徵物：母親
技巧：胚胎發育
對應：特裏納剋裏亞島-醫院；太陽神的女兒-護士；太陽神-霍恩；牛-多産；罪行-欺騙
喀耳刻
時間：24:00
場景：紅燈區的妓院
器官：運動係統
學科：魔術
顔色：無
象徵物：妓女
技巧：幻覺
對應：喀耳刻-貝拉
回歸
回歸（The Nostos）是布盧姆和迪達勒斯共同活動的部分，最後以各自回傢結束，對應着奧德修斯的回歸。時間跨度從凌晨一點開始，而結束時間不十分明確。
歐邁俄斯
時間：1:00
場景：馬車夫棚
器官：神經
學科：航海
顔色：無
象徵物：水手
技巧：敘事（老年的）
對應：歐邁俄斯-“剝山羊皮”；尤利西斯-水手；墨蘭提奧斯-庫裏
伊薩卡
時間：2:00
場景：布盧姆傢
器官：骨骼
學科：自然科學
顔色：無
象徵物：彗星
技巧：教理問答
對應：安提諾奧斯-壯鹿馬利根；歐律瑪科斯-一把火鮑伊蘭；弓-理性；求婚者-躊躇
帕涅羅佩
時間：不明
場景：床上
器官：肉體
學科：無
顔色：無
象徵物：大地
技巧：內心獨白（女性的）
對應：帕涅羅佩-大地；網-運動
主要人物表
利奧波德·布盧姆：以替都柏林《自由人報》拉廣告為業。其父魯道爾夫·維 拉格是匈牙利裔猶太人，遷移到愛爾蘭後改姓布盧姆。他化名“亨利·弗羅爾”， 與瑪莎·剋利弗德秘密通信。
瑪莉恩·布盧姆：利奧波德之妻。其父特威迪（已故）曾在西班牙南端的英國要塞直布羅陀服役。因此，她生長在該地。她在都柏林是個小有名氣的歌手，藝名 叫“特威迪夫人”。
斯蒂芬·迪達勒斯：喬伊斯的自傳體長篇小說《藝術傢年輕時的寫照》中的主 人公。他畢業於剋朗戈伍斯森林公學和皇傢大學，目前在迪希校長創辦的一傢私立 學校任教。在圖書館發表關於莎士比亞的議論。
西蒙·迪達勒斯：斯蒂芬之父。年前喪妻，傢境睏難。
布萊澤斯·博伊蘭：瑪莉恩之情夫。正在籌劃一次巡回歌唱演出，瑪莉恩也在被邀之列。
勃剋·穆利根：醫科學生，與海恩斯一道住進了斯蒂芬所租的圓塔。
海恩斯：英國人，畢業於牛津大學。為了研究凱爾特文學而來到愛爾蘭。
米莉：布盧姆與瑪莉恩之獨女，十五歲。在韋斯特米思郡穆林加爾市的一傢照相館工作。
帕狄·迪格納穆：已故。生前曾在律師約翰·亨利·門頓的事務所工作，因酗被開除，患病而死。
馬丁·坎寧翰：布盧姆之友，在都柏林堡任職（英國殖民統治機構）。他是個心地善良的人，多方照顧迪格納穆的遺族，包括募集捐款。
布林夫人：原名喬西·鮑威爾，其夫丹尼斯·布林患有神經病。婚前她愛過布盧姆，一直不忘舊情。
裏奇·古爾丁：斯蒂芬的舅舅，布盧姆之友。在科利斯一沃德律師事務所任會計師。他與內弟西蒙·迪達勒斯已絶交。
約翰·康米神父：方濟各·沙勿略教堂的教長，耶穌會會長。斯蒂芬在剋朗戈伍斯森林公學就讀時，他曾任該校校長。
邁爾斯·剋勞福德：《電訊晚報》的主編。
傑剋·麥剋休：大學教授，學者，經常為《電訊晚報》寫社論。
本傑明·多拉德：本地一名歌手。他在替嚮呂便·傑藉過高利貸的考利神父奔走，以便寬限幾天還債日期。
弗萊明大媽：經常到布盧姆傢來做傢務的女人。
魯迪：布盧姆與瑪莉恩的獨子，生於一八九四年，衹活了十一天便夭折。
C·P·麥科伊：布盧姆的熟人，在都柏林市的屍體收容所做驗屍官助手。其妻是個無名歌手。
班塔姆·萊昂斯：布盧姆的熟人，熱衷於賽馬。上午在街上與布盧姆相遇，聽布盧姆說起“丟掉”，就想把賭註押在同名的馬身上。後又接受利內翰的勸告，變 了卦。結果，還是“丟掉”獲勝了。
科尼·凱萊赫：奧尼爾殯儀館的經理，負責為迪格納穆料理葬事。
傑剋·鮑爾：供職於都柏林堡內的皇傢愛爾蘭警察總署。
呂使·傑：放高利貸的。有一次他兒子跳進了利菲河，被一位船夫救了起來。他卻衹給了船夫兩先令。
湯姆·剋甫：布盧姆之友，茶葉等商品的推銷員。
內德·蘭伯特：𠔌物商，其庫房原是聖瑪麗亞修道院的會議廳。
休·C·洛夫神父：他是薩林斯鎮聖邁剋爾教堂的本堂神父，為了寫一本關於菲茨傑拉德傢族的書，到蘭伯特的庫房來參觀。他在都柏林擁有一所房子，出租給 考利神父。
考利神父：本·多拉德和西蒙·迪達勒斯之友。因還不起嚮呂便·傑藉的高利貸，狼狽不堪。
喬（約瑟夫）·麥卡西·海國斯：布盧姆的同事，也替《自由人報》拉廣告。
紅穆雷：約翰·穆雷的綽號，《自由人報》的職員。
約瑟夫·帕特利剋·南尼蒂：在愛爾蘭出生的意大利人，《自由人報》社排字房工長。他又是英國議會下院議員兼都柏林市政委員。
傑·傑·奧莫洛伊：原為律師，後來患了肺病，落魄潦倒。
利內翰：《體育》報的賽馬欄記者，曾調戲摩莉。
奧馬登·伯剋：斯蒂芬之友，新聞記者。
弗林：綽號叫“大鼻子”，布盧姆之友。
喬治·威廉·拉塞爾：筆名A·E·，愛爾蘭詩人。他是當時仍健在的愛爾蘭文藝復興運動的指導者之一，任《愛爾蘭傢園報》主編。
托馬斯·威廉·利斯特：公誼會教徒，愛爾蘭國立圖書館館長。
約翰·埃格林頓：原名威廉·阿剋柏特裏剋·馬吉，愛爾蘭文藝復興運動中的批評傢，曾在圖書館與斯蒂芬辯論。
理查德·歐文·貝斯特：愛爾蘭國立圖書館副館長。
約翰·米林頓·辛格：愛爾蘭文藝復興運動的領導人之一，詩劇傢，是斯蒂芬的熟人。
喬治·穆爾：愛爾蘭小說傢，斯蒂芬的熟人。
格雷戈裏夫人：愛爾蘭劇作傢。原名伊薩貝拉·奧古斯塔·佩爾斯。她於一八九二年喪夫後，開始文學生涯，一九0四年任阿貝劇院經理。她是斯蒂芬的熟人。
阿瑟·格裏菲思：愛爾蘭政治傢，原在都柏林當排字工人。一八九九年創辦以爭取愛爾蘭民族獨立為主旨的周刊《愛爾蘭人聯合報》。他是布盧姆的熟人。
查理·斯圖爾特·巴涅爾：十九世紀末愛爾蘭自治運動和民族主義領袖，已故。布盧姆和他有一面之緣。
約翰·霍華德·巴涅爾：查理·巴涅爾之弟。都柏林市政典禮官兼典當商代理 人。
拉裏·奧羅剋：布盧姆傢附近的一傢酒店的老闆。
凱蒂·迪達勒斯}
布棣·迪達勒斯}斯蒂芬的幼妹尚在上學。
瑪吉·迪達勒斯：斯蒂芬之妹。她從修女處討些豌豆，替妹妹們煮湯吃。
迪麗·迪達勒斯：斯蒂芬之妹，長得最像長兄。她在街上嚮父親西蒙要了點錢，花一便士買了一本《法語初級讀本》。
盲青年：布盧姆曾攙着他走過馬路，神經失常的卡什爾·法雷爾卻差點兒把他撞倒。他到奧蒙德酒吧去，調了鋼琴的音。
湯姆·羅赤福德：他以兜售賽馬賭券為業，並熱衷於發明機器。他曾搭救過一 名因中毒而昏迷過去的下水道工人。
高個兒約翰·範寧：都柏林市副行政長官，綽號“高個兒”。
帕特裏剋·阿洛伊修斯·迪格納穆：帕狄·迪格納穆的遺孤中最年長的一個。
約翰·懷斯·諾蘭：布盧姆之友，關心迪格納穆的遺孤，並對馬丁·坎寧翰說，布盧姆為遺孤捐了五先令。
莉迪亞·杜絲：奧蒙德飯店的金發女侍。
米娜·肯尼迪：奧蒙德飯店的褐發女侍。
阿爾夫雷德·柏根：都柏林行政司法副長官助理，綽號叫“小個兒阿爾夫”。
威廉·亨勃爾·達德利伯爵：愛爾蘭總督。
“市民”：原名邁剋爾·丘薩剋。他是蓋爾體育協會創辦者，自稱“市民丘薩剋”，因而得名。
格蒂·麥剋道維爾：瘸腿美少女。
西茜·卡弗裏：格蒂的女友，性情活潑。
伊迪·博德曼：格蒂的女友，性格矯情。
湯米·卡弗裏} 西茵的雙胞胎弟弟，時年四歲。
傑基·卡弗裏}
雷吉·懷利：格蒂的男友，高中學生。
安德魯·霍恩博士：霍利斯街國立婦産醫院院長。
卡倫小姐：國立婦産醫院護士。
米娜·博福伊太太：瑪莉恩的女友，夜裏在醫院生一男嬰，係難産。
亞歷剋·班農：醫科學生，米莉的男友。
迪剋森：實習大夫，布盧姆被蜂蜇傷後，曾由他包紮。斯蒂芬之友。
文森特·林奇：醫科學生。他與女友在籬笆後面幽會時，給路過的康米神父（母校的老校長）撞見了。
弗蘭剋·科斯特洛：醫科學生，因嗜酒如命，綽號叫潘趣（酒名）
威廉·馬登：醫科學生。
J．剋羅瑟斯：醫科學生。
貝洛·科恩夫人：妓院老鴇。
瑪麗·德裏斯科爾：布盧姆夫婦過去的女僕。
耶爾弗頓·巴裏夫人}
貝林厄姆夫人 } ：都柏林上流社會淑女。
默雯·塔爾博伊貴婦人}
佐伊、基蒂、弗洛莉：妓女
士兵卡爾、士兵康捨頓：英國兵，把斯蒂芬擊倒。
科利：斯蒂芬之友，因生活沒有着落，嚮斯蒂芬借錢。
岡穆利：西蒙的舊友，後淪為市政府雇用的守夜人。
馬爾維中尉：摩莉在直布羅陀時期的初戀對象。
“剝山羊皮”：馬車夫棚的老闆。
故事梗概
青年詩人斯蒂芬因母親病危，從巴黎返回都柏林。母親彌留之際用白瓷鉢盛着緑色的膽汁，眼睛緊盯着他，迫使他下跪皈依宗教，他大聲嚷道：“媽媽，就讓我照這樣活下去吧！”。斯蒂芬因此一直沉浸在悲哀與懊惱之中。喪母後，又因父親成天酗酒從傢中跑了出來，租了一座圓形炮塔，靠教書謀生。醫科學生勃剋·穆利根與英國人海恩斯也搬來同住。
海恩斯和斯芬一起去海邊遊泳，談起信仰問題，斯蒂芬說：“你會在我身上看到一個可怕的自由思想的典型。但我又是兩個主人的奴僕：一個英國人（維多利亞女王）,一個意大利人（羅馬教皇）。 ”
斯蒂芬來到位於都柏林海濱的學校去上歷史課，他被校長叫到辦公室領薪水，校長開導他要註意攢錢，要懂得金錢的重要，並給他一篇文章，讓他找個報社發表。斯蒂芬離開始學校後，來到海灘，望着洶涌的大海他浮想聯篇，他把校長那篇原稿的空白處撕下來，將自己的問題胡亂地記在上面。
布盧姆是匈牙利裔猶太人，正為報紙承攬廣告，他出去買了一副腰子。回傢後，給還未起床的妻子莫莉端去早餐。莫莉是個小有名氣的歌手，但生活不檢點，好招蜂引蝶，她正準備下午與情人博依蘭約會。布盧姆整天為此事煩惱，但在掙錢比自己多的老婆面前又擡不起頭來。
上午10點，布盧姆化名弗洛爾，與一名叫瑪落的女打字員交換情書。他是通過在報紙廣告招聘女助手而跟瑪落通起信來的。他到郵局取了瑪落的回信，拐進無人的墻邊看信，看完信不禁飄飄然起來。走到大橋底下，他把信撕成碎片丟了，然後到教堂去做彌撒。
11點，布盧姆乘馬車去墓地參加迪格納穆的葬禮。布盧姆突然看見博伊蘭瀟灑的身影，他想除了魅力之外，他妻子還能從他身上看到什麽呢？“魅力”是都柏林最壞的傢夥，博伊蘭卻憑它活得很快樂。靈柩下葬後，他仍在墳叢中徜徉，“兩側是悲痛的天使，十字架、斷裂的圓柱、墳塋、仰望天空做禱告的石像。”他回想起夭折的兒子和自殺的父親，他對死亡進行反思，他認為人死後埋在地下行不通，最好火葬或海葬。他又想到自己不過是一個廣告經紀人，一個漂泊流浪的猶太人。布盧姆心中無限凄涼，甚至想到死亡，但馬上又自我解嘲，回到現實中來。
中午，布盧姆到《自由報》去嚮主編說明自己攬來的廣告圖案，隨後又趕到《電訊晚報》報館，碰巧斯蒂芬也在這兒，他想嚮該報推薦校長的文章。主編卻對文稿嗤之以鼻，斯蒂芬悻悻而出。想到剛領了薪水，就請大傢去喝酒。半路上布盧姆在一座紀念碑旁看見西蒙的女兒（斯蒂芬的妹妹）在拍賣行外準備賣舊傢具，頓生感慨：西蒙共有15個孩子，按照教義禁止節制生育，現在這些孩子連傢帶産都吃個精光。
下午1 點，布盧姆走進一傢廉價的小飯館，這裏既髒且亂，人們在狼吞虎咽，醜態百出，吃相十分難看。於是他換了傢高級一點的飯館，在那遇到熟人弗林，弗林問他妻子巡回演出的經紀人是誰，這使他想起下午4 點妻子要與博依蘭約會，心裏頓感煩燥不安，一口氣喝下一杯酒。從飯店出來走到圖書館前面時，看到情敵博依蘭迎面走來，便趕緊躲進圖書館裏。
下午2 點，斯蒂芬在圖書館裏對評論傢和學者發表關於莎士比亞的議論。布盧姆為躲避博依蘭來到這，但他並沒有捲進這場討論，巧妙地躲過去了。他穿行在大街小巷，看見形形色色的人們正在忙碌着，教會會長康米神父正在接受人們的致敬，一位獨腿的水兵求他施捨，他衹給他一個祝福就走了，而他卻非常高興地與議員的妻子告別，並懇請她代嚮議員致意。一群老人正在為剛去世的迪格納穆的孩子們募捐，布盧姆馬上捐了5 先令，而總督副秘書長和副行政長官卻一毛不拔。愛爾蘭總督正攜夫人及隨從浩浩蕩蕩而來，洛夫神父想從總督手裏弄到肥缺嚮他恭恭敬敬地鞠了一躬，西蒙為了掩蓋沒有扣好褲子而將帽子放在胸前，總督以為他是敬禮。斯蒂芬碰到衣衫襤褸的妹妹，想如何幫她，可自己還命運難卜；窮睏的考利神父欠了高利貸，正四處托人求債主再寬限兩天；發了財的洛夫神父已扣壓了他的財産逼他交房租。
下午5 點，布盧姆約一個朋友在酒吧見面。一個無賴大肆攻擊猶太人，身為猶太人的布盧姆實在忍無可忍，他反駁道：“門德爾鬆是猶太人，還有卡爾·馬剋思、斯賓諾莎。救世主耶穌也是個猶太人……你的天主也跟我的一樣，也是個猶太人。”無賴氣得抓起一隻餅幹罐就往布盧姆身上扔，但未能擊中。布盧姆和朋友趕忙逃之夭夭。
晚上8 點，夏日的黃昏籠罩着世界，在遙遠的西邊，太陽沉落了。少女格蒂到圓形炮塔附近的海灘乘涼，她凝視遠方，沉湎在冥想之中。布盧姆坐在不遠的地方，深深地為格蒂的美貌所吸引。格蒂意識到布盧姆在註視着她，她想：也許嫁給這麽一個中年紳士倒也挺好。二人的目光不期而遇，她覺得他的眼神猶如烈火，將自己從頭燒到腳，她恨不得朝他伸出雙臂讓他過來，並將他的嘴唇觸到自己白皙的前額，面對這雙年輕天真的眼睛，布盧姆早已神不守捨了。格蒂離開海灘時，布盧姆纔發現她原來是個瘸子，不禁失聲嘆道：“可憐的姑娘”。
晚上10點，布盧姆到婦産醫院去探望難産的麥娜夫人。斯蒂芬和一群醫學院的學生在那裏高談闊論，個個喝得酩酊大醉，布盧姆開始為斯蒂芬擔心。斯蒂芬說還要請大傢到酒店喝酒，就離開了醫院。布盧姆也趕了去，一路上他的眼前出現了許多幻象。
他幻想着在一傢妓院裏達到高潮，後來他又榮升為市長，還當了愛爾蘭國王，隨後遭到群衆的攻擊被驅逐出境。布盧姆擺脫幻想後，到妓院去找斯蒂芬，斯蒂芬醉酒掄起手杖擊碎了妓院的燈，來到街上鬍說一通，兩個英國兵認為他對國王不敬，將他打得昏死過去。布盧姆産生錯覺把斯蒂芬當成自己那夭折的兒子，就將斯蒂芬攙扶起來帶回傢。在道德衰微、家庭分裂、傳統觀念淪喪的大千世界裏，布盧姆和斯蒂芬精神上遭受挫折、內心充滿動蕩，他們終於在彼此身上找到了各自精神上所缺乏的東西。斯蒂芬找到了父親，布盧姆找到了兒子。
天蒙蒙亮時，斯蒂芬告辭而去。布盧姆走進臥室後，發現室內的擺設略有變動，幻想着莫莉與博依蘭幽會的情景，他推測與妻子發生關係的决不止博依蘭一個人，還有原市長等熟人，他琢磨了半響妻子與這些情人究竟幹了些什麽，轉念一想，他覺得這件事也不能全怪莫莉，自己沒有滿足她對夫妻生活的要求，他願意再做一次努力。
莫莉處於半睡半醒之中，在莫莉的夢中出現有丈夫布盧姆、博依蘭、初戀情人和丈夫剛剛說過的斯蒂芬，她又開始幻想和這位年輕人談情說愛了。她朦朧地感到一種母性的滿足和對一個青年男子的衝動。不過，她想得最多的還是丈夫，想到10年來夫妻生活的冷漠，想到他的許多可笑的事情，她覺得他還是個有教養，有禮貌，有豐富知識，有藝術修養的人，實在是個難得的好丈夫，她决心再給他一次機會。
相關評論
初閱《尤利西斯》，始於那句流傳甚廣的100個人中沒有10個人能讀完《尤利西斯》。
《尤利西斯》是愛爾蘭著名的現代派小說傢喬伊斯的著作，喬伊斯曾入都柏林大學專攻現代語言學，後赴歐洲大陸。喬伊斯的第一部短篇小說集是《都柏林人》，後又寫自傳體中篇小說《青年藝術傢的肖像》。
文學界對於《尤利西斯》的評價，我覺得就如兩個磁極。一些評論將《尤利西斯》的身價擡得很高，覺得它“是一部曠世奇作”；另一些評論又將它貶得很低，覺得它“粗俗不堪入目”。
而我始終是以一種膜拜的態度看待《尤利西斯》的，它是一部太能夠顯示文學功底的著作。《尤利西斯》洋洋灑灑一百萬字，卻衹是描述了十八個小時的事情，我無法想象作者需要怎樣的觀察和想象，才能寫出這樣一部獨特的著作。況，書中的出場人物並不多，衹有布盧姆，斯蒂芬和莫莉三位主要人物。
《尤利西斯》的成功之處，在於對人物內心的細緻刻畫。喬伊斯以他驚人的文學功底，用一百萬字講述了三個人物在十八個小時內的活動。《尤利西斯》雖篇幅巨大，但毫無贅言，喬伊斯以他對人生和生活的認識和細膩的洞察力，描寫了主人公的行動，語言和細微心理變化。《尤利西斯》中對內心活動的描寫出神入化，三位主人公的每個細微的思想變化，都清晰真切地呈現在了讀者面前。諸如說《尤利西斯》的第三章，喬伊斯用整整一章的篇幅刻畫了喬伊斯的心理活動。
《尤利西斯》的第一主人公佈盧姆是一位匈牙利裔的猶太人，他在都柏林的報社做廣告推銷員。布盧姆這一形象的價值超越了固有的身份，喬伊斯用自己深刻的社會經驗和紮實的文學功底，把千千萬萬的愛爾蘭市民都集中到了布盧姆身上。布盧姆的經歷和性情，也恰恰屬於諸多愛爾蘭市民。
布盧姆的生活抱經滄桑，他幼子夭折，妻子不貞，自己常自欺欺人地在名存實亡的愛情中掙紮彷徨。布盧姆人到中年卻一無所成，面對比自己薪水高幾倍的莫莉，他自卑並且不自信。但布盧姆另一方面又自恃清高，甚至不願與吃相不雅觀的顧客在一個飯館用餐。布盧姆熱心血性，狹義地幫助醉酒的斯蒂芬。但另一方面，他也有着貪婪委瑣的欲望，甚至曾試圖欺侮一名海灘邊的殘廢少女。
布盧姆苦悶彷徨，充滿矛盾。他對現實迷茫但又充滿希望，無奈但又期待奇跡。布盧姆失去了精神的支柱和進取的目的，生活和事業都遭受了沉重的打擊。布盧姆的頽廢，正反映了二十世紀初愛爾蘭市民的孤獨，迷茫和絶望。
喬伊斯將他十六年對於生活和社會的理解，都全部濃縮到了《尤利西斯》中，同時它又是一部價值超越了社會現實的著作，並且上升到了哲學的深度。
《奧德修記》聞名全世，被公認為是人類歷史上一部偉大的史詩。而喬伊斯，他以過人的悟性寫下了一部當代題材的《奧德修記》。《尤利西斯》每一章的內容，都采取了與《奧德修記》平行的結構，喬伊斯獨具匠心，巧妙構思，使整部《尤利西斯》的結構與寓意都和《奧德修記》相照應。喬伊斯從史詩的深度申時現代生活，賦予了《尤利西斯》哲學的內涵。
一個作傢的文學功底達到一定程度時，他的著作往往會滲透進哲學，諸如說《紅樓夢》。《紅樓夢》中的經典名言“假作真時真亦假，無為有處有還無”以及“赤條條來去無牽挂”，還有“好一似食鳥各投林，落了片白茫茫大地真幹淨”。這些都是作者對人生，對世界的哲學思考。
喬伊斯和曹雪芹同樣地將對社會的感性認識上升到了理性思考，《尤利西斯》和《紅樓夢》之所以是兩部小說而又不僅僅是小說，也正在此。
曹雪芹著《紅樓夢》是“字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常”，而喬伊斯著《尤利西斯》，用了十六年構思觀察，七年專著寫作。但，越是民族的文化，往往就難以是世界的文化。從此角度來說，《尤利西斯》和《紅樓夢》有着相似的悲哀。
《紅樓夢》無疑是一部登峰造極的偉大著作，曹雪芹在《紅樓夢》中對中國古典文化的融合，已經達到了海納百川的程度。《紅樓夢》雖不過是部小說，卻包含了幾乎所有的中國古典文化精粹：詩詞，麯賦，樂府，楹聯，謎語，八股，請柬，祭文，奏章，書信，菜譜，帳單，藥方，占卜，星相，`````《紅樓夢》被世界公認是中國古典著作的最高峰，二月河前輩評價《紅樓夢》時說，“《紅樓夢》的成就，不僅是空前的，在某種意義上說，它也是絶後的。”
可正應了物極必反的原理，這樣的一部偉大巨著，雖被世界公認卻未被世界喜愛。誠然，《紅樓夢》在世界書榜中位列第八位，壓過了歐美大批舉世聞名的著作，然而正如多數民族文化經典一樣，《紅樓夢》未成為世界普遍的文化。
《紅樓夢》被譯為幾十種語言在世界各國發行，在歐美國傢也建有紅學研究會，可美國一位女記者曾直言不諱地說，她身邊的朋友更多的是把《紅樓夢》作為一本必讀書目，而並非是出於喜歡。西歐的調查報告也清楚地表明，《紅樓夢》在民間遠不如《三國演義》，《封神榜》，甚至《金瓶梅》受歡迎。紅樓夢在國外，更多的是被知識分子當作名著來瀏覽。
《尤利西斯》於一九二二年二月二日出版，它是喬伊斯十六年構思七年寫作的成果，可出版後它長期被禁止在英美發行，直至一九三三年纔重新流通。
《尤利西斯》出版後同樣不為世人接受，上市後即在文學界引起了巨大的爭議。弗吉尼亞伍爾夫斥責此書“粗俗不堪入目”，當時一些作傢甚至毫不客氣地把喬伊斯的簽名贈閱本退還。衹有艾略特等少數有慧眼的作傢，意識到了《尤利西斯》的價值，竭力為它辯解。清華大學决定將《尤利西斯》列為必讀書目時，同樣引起了教育界和文學界的諸多反對。
每思及此，我就不禁感慨。《尤利西斯》可以是一部世界名著，也可以是一部曠世奇作，但它難以在全世界的讀者中都受到歡迎。
喬伊斯和曹雪芹寫出了這樣的兩部著作——《尤利西斯》和《紅樓夢》，這究竟是他們的偉大，還是他們的悲哀``````
本作品為1998年全球讀者投票評選二十世紀小說類第一名。
譯者：蕭乾 文潔若
譯者序
第一章 第二章 第三章
第四章 第五章 第六章
第七章 第八章 第九章
第十章 第十一章 第十二章
第十三章 第十四章 第十五章
第十六章 第十七章 第十八章
(尤利西斯)與(奧德修紀)(對照) (尤利西斯·喬伊斯大事記) 主要人物表
譯後記
Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle). The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.
Ulysses contains approximately 265,000 words from a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses), divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.