A thousand and one nonsense. Tales that will put you to sleep. A work in a very modern style.
Marguerite Waknine| N° d'inventaire | 23673 |
| Format | 16 x 21 |
| Détails | 54 p., notebook. |
| Publication | Angoulême, 2019 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9791094565520 |
When he died in 1792, at the age of 72, guillotined for his stance against the French Revolution, Jacques Cazotte had lived through the so-called Age of Enlightenment. But this was a truly unusual journey. Employed in the naval administration, Cazotte, to fulfill his duties, would sail several times to Martinique. Then, returning from these perilous journeys, ill and almost blind, he retired in 1759 and found refuge near Épernay, in Champagne. This strange character (whom Gérard de Nerval ranked among his Illuminati), advisor to the king, mayor of the small village of Pierry, follower of the exalted theses of the Martinists, is still known to us because of a literary work, of which only one title now emerges: The Devil in Love, an exceptional work, admired by Jorge Luis Borges, and which rightly makes Cazotte one of the precursors of French fantastic literature. This work, however, cannot be reduced to this single title, far from it. Abundant and varied, it includes at least playful and moral works, an adventure novel:
l'Ollivier; a collection of tales in the style of a Continuation of the Thousand and One Nights; and parodic tales like The Cat's Paw, a crazy tale, and especially these Thousand and One Nonsenses, humorously published in 1742 in Baillons, at l'Endormi, in the image of the Snorer, as indicated in the first edition. For the pleasure and wonder of the reader, these Thousand and One Nonsenses have the art of presenting themselves as a story told at a cracking pace, where, in the company of more or less respectable Fairies, improbable situations are encountered, to the point of even being able to come across, among others, an inhabitant of the moon fallen to earth and living furniture, endowed with speech. A way of reaching there, very certainly and in a unique manner, the heights of the most astonishing imagination.
When he died in 1792, at the age of 72, guillotined for his stance against the French Revolution, Jacques Cazotte had lived through the so-called Age of Enlightenment. But this was a truly unusual journey. Employed in the naval administration, Cazotte, to fulfill his duties, would sail several times to Martinique. Then, returning from these perilous journeys, ill and almost blind, he retired in 1759 and found refuge near Épernay, in Champagne. This strange character (whom Gérard de Nerval ranked among his Illuminati), advisor to the king, mayor of the small village of Pierry, follower of the exalted theses of the Martinists, is still known to us because of a literary work, of which only one title now emerges: The Devil in Love, an exceptional work, admired by Jorge Luis Borges, and which rightly makes Cazotte one of the precursors of French fantastic literature. This work, however, cannot be reduced to this single title, far from it. Abundant and varied, it includes at least playful and moral works, an adventure novel:
l'Ollivier; a collection of tales in the style of a Continuation of the Thousand and One Nights; and parodic tales like The Cat's Paw, a crazy tale, and especially these Thousand and One Nonsenses, humorously published in 1742 in Baillons, at l'Endormi, in the image of the Snorer, as indicated in the first edition. For the pleasure and wonder of the reader, these Thousand and One Nonsenses have the art of presenting themselves as a story told at a cracking pace, where, in the company of more or less respectable Fairies, improbable situations are encountered, to the point of even being able to come across, among others, an inhabitant of the moon fallen to earth and living furniture, endowed with speech. A way of reaching there, very certainly and in a unique manner, the heights of the most astonishing imagination.