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Nineteenth Century French Studies 30.3 & 4 (2002) 412-414



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Book Review

Maupassant's Boule de suif and the Tales of the Franco-Prussian War


Weatherilt, Michael. Maupassant's Boule de suif and the Tales of the Franco-Prussian War. Wrexham, Wales: Bridge Books, 2001. Pp. 71. ISBN 1-872424-93-7

As any reader of Western literature can attest, war has proven to be a fertile terrain for the literary imagination. In his new book, Michael Weatherilt assays Maupassant's place among the countless authors who have cultivated this field by assigning prominence to warfare in their works. Linking Maupassant to a continuum which stretches from Homer to Hemingway, Weatherilt devotes the introduction of his study to a rumination on war's relationship to literature. His conclusions in this opening section reflect the methodology that he will employ in subsequent chapters of the book. Eschewing poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, or other theoretical [End Page 412] methods to expound the connection between violence and writing, Weatherilt focuses on war narrative as an empirical study of brutality. The introduction produces mainly broad generalizations on the nature of war: "Although the face of warfare has changed over the centuries, all wars have a common factor in that they are essentially about people" (8); "War, as all situations of stress, brings out the best and the worst in man" (9). Nonetheless, this line of investigation leads to some promising hypotheses on the æstheticism of war narrative. Suggesting that beauty might most aptly be defined as a confrontation between the human condition and the desire to verbalize its meaning - "Æsthetic beauty arises from a writer's attempts to express what is essentially inexpressible" (10) - Weatherilt refers to Jean Kaempfer's recent work on war narrative as a potential means of linking the æsthetic principles of such figures as Gautier and Baudelaire to Maupassant. Some readers may be disap-pointed, however, with the cursory fashion in which the author deals with this topic as well as the somewhat reductive conclusion at which he arrives: "The overwhelming lesson that emerges from war literature is that wars should be avoided at all costs because of the suffering and destruction that they cause" (11).

The seven chapters into which the book is divided are rather varied in topic. Each consists of a brief essay on some aspect of Maupassant's life or work. The book's first chapter, titled "Maupassant and the Franco-Prussian War," considers Maupassant's place both as author and soldier in the war. Maupassant is represented here as a chronicler and critic of the French military's inadequacy. Chapter 5, titled "The Franco-Prussian War and the Question of Patriotism," reprises this topic, asserting Maupassant's disdain for officers and professional soldiers in general. These chapters are too brief to explore adequately the questions suggested in their titles, although they do provide some insight into how Maupassant's work might relate to the war narratives written by many of his contemporaries. Weatherilt declares the superiority of Maupassant's work to the souvenirs de guerre that, despite their popularity, lacked literary merit. Once again, Weatherilt's conclusion that Maupassant's primary intent in writing these tales consists in showing "that he was keenly aware of the shortcomings of the French army and of many of his compatriots during the Prussian occupation" (14) might appear overly reductive to some readers. One might also question the degree of significance that he assigns to Maupassant's lack of involvement in hand-to-hand fighting. Weatherilt cites this factor as explanation of the author's decision to concentrate "on events that take place far from the front"(15). Given Maupassant's preoccupation with and sophisticated treatment of concerns that have only recently come under narratological scrutiny, it might seem logical to give some consideration to the staging and narration of these dramas in terms of the complicated interplay between implied author, narrator(s), and characters that Maupassant engages in most of his tales. The analysis here eliminates problematic questions of narrative coherence - who sees...

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