The Bohemians : a novel / Anne Gedeon Lafitte, Marquis de Pelleport ; translated by Vivian Folkenflik ; with an introduction by Robert Darnton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

La Fitte, Anne-Gedeon, marquis de Pellepore, 1755?-1810?

Contributor:

Folkenflik, Vivian.

Standardized Title:

Bohémiens. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bohemianism--France--History--18th century--Fiction.

Bohemianism.

Libertines (French philosophers)--Fiction.

Libertines (French philosophers).

Physical Description:

xlviii, 193 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

While the marquis de Sade was drafting The 120 Days of Sodom in the Bastille, another libertine marquis in a nearby cell was also writing a novel-one equally outrageous, full of sex and slander, and more revealing for what it had to say about the conditions of writers and writing itself. Yet Sade's neighbor, the marquis de Pelleport, is almost completely unknown today, and his novel, Les Bohémiens, has nearly vanished. Only a half dozen copies are available in libraries throughout the world. This edition, the first in English, opens a window into the world of garret poets, literary adventurers, down-and-out philosophers, and Grub Street hacks writing in the waning days of the Ancien Régime.The Bohemians tells the tale of a troupe of vagabond writer-philosophers and their sexual partners, wandering through the countryside of Champagne accompanied by a donkey loaded with their many unpublished manuscripts. They live off the land-for the most part by stealing chickens from peasants. They deliver endless philosophic harangues, one more absurd than the other, bawl and brawl like schoolchildren, copulate with each other, and pause only to gobble up whatever they can poach from the barnyards along their route.Full of lively prose, parody, dialogue, double entendre, humor, outrageous incidents, social commentary, and obscenity, The Bohemians is a tour de force. As Robert Darnton writes in his introduction to the book, it spans several genres and can be read simultaneously as a picaresque novel, a roman à clef, a collection of essays, a libertine tract, and an autobiography. Rediscovered by Darnton and brought gloriously back to life in Vivian Folkenflik's translation, The Bohemians at last takes its place as a major work of eighteenth-century libertinism.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction / Darnton, Robert

Translator's Note

Main Characters

Chapter One: The Legislator Bissot Renounces Chicanery in Favor of Philosophy

Chapter Two: The Two Brothers Wander on the Plains of Champagne

Chapter Three: Supper Better Than Dinner

Chapter Four: Who Were These People Supping Under the Stars on the Plains of Champagne?

Chapter Five: Reveille; The Troupe Marches Forward; Unremarkable Adventures

Chapter Six: Cock-Crow

Chapter Seven: After Which, Try to Say There Are No Ghosts . . .

Chapter Eight: The Denouement

Chapter Nine: Nocturnal Adventures That Deserve to See the Light of Day, and Worthy of an Academician's Pen

Chapter Ten: The Terrible Effects of Causes

Chapter Eleven: Uncivil Dissertations

Chapter Twelve: Parallel of Mendicant and Proprietary Monks

Chapter Thirteen: Various Projects Highly Important to the Public Weal

Chapter Fourteen: On Hospitality

Chapter Fifteen: Morning Matins at the Charterhouse

Chapter Sixteen: Panegyric of the Clergy

Chapter Seventeen: A Mouse with Only One Hole Is Easy to Take

Chapter Eighteen: How Lungiet Was Interrupted by a Miracle

Chapter Nineteen: Which Will Not Be Long

Chapter Twenty: A Pilgrim's Narrative

Chapter Twenty-One: Continuation of the Pilgrim's Narrative

Notes

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

1-283-89041-0

0-8122-0370-4

OCLC:

794700663