Guy de Maupassant, Sur l'eau [Afloat]

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Maupassant's Travel Writing:

Sur l'eau

[

Afloat

],

Au soleil

[

Under the Sun

] and

La Vie errante

[

The Wandering Life

]

Nineteenth-century French writers (Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Nerval, Flaubert in his letters) had frequently used a Mediterranean journey as material for a travel narrative. Always keen to maximise the profit from his writings, Maupassant exploited the journeys he made – for pleasure or for medical reasons as well as on journalistic missions – notably those to the Mediterranean: the South of France, Italy and Sicily, North Africa. These provided material for newspaper articles, later reworked in book form. The final book version is often misleadingly presented: Sur l'eau (the most extreme case) claims to be a day-by-day record of “what I saw and what I thought” made by

1636 words

Citation: Cogman, Peter. "Sur l'eau". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 May 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12359, accessed 19 March 2024.]

12359 Sur l'eau 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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