Alexandre Dumas was born on July 24, 1802, to Thomas Alexandre Dumas and Marie-Louise Labouret. He was born in the town of Villers-Cotterets, France during his father’s retirement from the European Army. A few years after Alexandre’s birth, his father died, which left his mother to care for him and send him to school on her own. Due to his mother’s lack of funds, Dumas dropped out of school to take a writing job. This was the beginning of his literary career Dumas’ love for literature flourished in 1822, when he moved to Paris. He worked with others in starting his playwright career with the production of “Henry III and His Courts”. As he gained fame for his plays, he also began experimenting with other forms of writing, such as novels and
French authors and playwrights have been acclaimed worldwide for their dynamic prose, complex situations, and unpredictable endings. The same praises hold true for Edmond Eugene Alexis Rostand. Born of Provencal ancestry on April 1, 1868, Rostand was well-learned, as evidenced by his extensive childhood education as a student of the lycee of Marseille. His father was a prominent member of the Marseille Academy. As a direct result of this high influence, Rostand concluded his studies at the College Stanislas in Paris. He studied, under the direction of the then-renowned Professor Rene Doumic, the works of those creme de la creme authors held in high esteem -- Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, and William Shakespeare. His interactions with both Spanish and French cultures helped augment his success as a dramatic poet. Furthermore, Rostand assisted Emile Zola in supporting Captain Dreyfus, who was unjustly convicted of treason (Kahr 186).
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois had a poor but relatively happy New England childhood. While still in high school he began his long writing career by serving as a correspondent for newspapers in New York and in Springfield, Massachusetts.
“The “F Word”” is a great story of Firoozeh Dumas who opens a wide window about the problems and struggles of immigrants in America. Firoozeh Dumas was born in Iran, and she moved back and forth between her native country and America. She finally stabilized her life in California with her family at the age of eleven. She attended the University of California at Berkeley and got married with a Frenchman over there. Firoozeh Dumas is an amazing writer that is well known by many fantastic writings such as “Funny in Farsi,” “Laughing without an Accent,” and “The “F Word”.” “The “F Word”” is one of her best short stories that deeply expresses the problems as well as the struggles of immigrants in the United States. That is her own story, her own
Mark Twain also known as Samuel Clemens. He was born in Florida, Missouri on Nov 30,1835, the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens. Several years later, in 1839, the family moved to nearby Hannibal, where Clemens spent his boyhood years. Clemens boyhood dream was to become a steamboatman on the river. Clemens' newspaper career began while still a boy in Hannibal. In 1848, a year after his father death, he was apprentice to printer Joseph Ament, who published the Missouri Courier. Did tragedy make Samuel Clemens (Cox Clinton).
Alexandre Dumas had many influences. One of Dumas’ most notable books, The Count of Monte Cristo , for instance had many influences. One of Dumas greatest influences in his writing is Shakespeare. Dumas had been a fan of Shakespearean writing, and it shows in his style and ideas. Being influential, Dumas used some of Shakespeare’s ideas in his own stories.
Friedrich Durrenmatt was born on January 5, 1921 in Konolfingen Switzerland, and died on the 14th of December 1990. He was the son of a protestant politician and his grandfather was a conservative politician. At age 20 Durrenmatt began began studies in philosophy, German language and literature at the University of Zurich in 1941, but moved to the University of Bern after one semester. Two years after starting college he decided to become an author and a dramatist and dropped his academic career. Even though Durrenmatt opted for pursuing a writing career he never...
A book or a theatrical play can become the means through which writers can express their thoughts and convey their messages to society. In ancient times, Greek tragedies were a clever way for writers to judge the political world of the time, and make society reflect back on its own behavior and way of acting. Throughout the years, the form of a theatrical play underwent many changes that allowed the writers to express themselves more freely, without being limited to the strict rules of form and structure of a Greek tragedy. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit is a story that is set in the modern era of post-war Europe. A woman, whose life, through an ugly series of events, is ruined, returns to her hometown to get revenge for the misery
To begin, Pasteur 's early life. He was born in Dole France, on December 27, 1822. His parents were Jean-Joseph Pasteur and Jeanne-Etiennette Roqui. He began primary school in 1831, and was mostly interested
Legacies and reputations are built on consistency. The two outlive an individual, and make him or her popular from one generation to the next. Without the portraiture and paintings of Pierre-Alfred Dedreux, nobody would find anything fascinating to say about the French painter. Today, little is known about Dreux who was born in 1810. However, his works of art including the "Napoleon III” horse riding portraiture prove that the painter loved his work. Painters in the late 17th century never knew the amount of money their original works would be earning today. Since the paintings are rare, and the state protects most of them in various museums, a glimpse on Dreux's work remains an opportunity of a lifetime. The celebrated painter learned the
On February 26, 1802, Victor Marie Hugo was born, the third son to parents Léopold Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet in Besançon, France. His father was a general under Napoleon, allowing for travel to both Italy and Spain during Hugo’s childhood. These locations served as inspiration for some of his poems found in Les Orientales and Les Contemplations (Frey).
Alexandre Dumas, père, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870 was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure and packed with action which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Some of his most notable works include novels such as The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne that were originally serialized and even though only a few of his books were made into movies, it doesn't change the fact that he is considered by many as one of the greatest novelists of all-time.
Maupassant’s talent for writing came to be as a surprise, for after deliberately being expelled from a seminary school at Yvetot and being sent to Rounen Lycée, he then proved himself to be a great scholar indulging...
First of all, he re-defined terms ‘text’ and ‘work’, interchanging their traditional meaning, so to speak. According to his explanation, a work is a material object that can be seen and “held in the hand”, whereas a text is “a process of demonstration (…) held in language” (157). In the theory of intertextuality, a text can be compared to a fabric woven with quotations, allusions from numerous literary and cultural sources, and it ought to be considered as “a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” (146). What comes with such an approach is also a new role of a writer. The title of Barthes' essay, The Death of the Author, expresses openly this new literary reality. It is the end of a God-like powers attributed previously to poets and writers, who can no longer be perceived as unique. An author is not an independent creator inspired by some divine forces to design worlds of his own words. The process of writing involves borrowing and mingling texts of both predecessors and contemporaries. Hence all texts are to be recognized as imitations. Work of a writer resembles an echo chamber in which borrowed vocabulary awaits to be repeated and assembled. What lies within author's reach is only the ability to “mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them” (146). In this
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian author, one of the greatest authors of all time. Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnya Polyana, in Tula Province, the fourth of five children. His parents died when he was young, and he was brought up by relatives. In 1844 Tolstoy started to study law and oriental languages at Kazan University, but he never earned a degree. Dissatisfied with the standard of education, he returned in the middle of his studies back to Yasnaya Polyana, and then spent much of his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
‘The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with the feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and constitutes of a simultaneous order...no poet or artist has a complete meaning alone’ (40)