A certain Brother Olivier Maillard’s sermon is recalled by a Capuchin monk, who describes it as “macaronic“. If macaroni is a pasta made without eggs, then what kind of text or speech could this be? One without a binding element such as proforms and antecedents? That could prove […]
Louise Minturn continues to read past entries in her diary, specifically those of nine days previous, detailing her second encounter with Harry Larchmont. As in the first three chapters Gunter uses an historical event on a particular day to background action. At midnight March 11th, a storm known […]
France is of course not the only nation to have fought wars, harboured grudges and perpetuated stereotypical slurs against those whom we in Australia call the “Poms”. I needn’t even mention the Scots. Despite connections with the Royal Family, Germans have of course also had a somewhat difficult […]
A refreshing and dramatic change in the narrative treatment. Our narrator has disappeared into the history he has related for readers. Now Gunter uses the form of diary extracts as a literary device to introduce a new pivotal character: Miss Louise Minturn. Rather than the story continuing to […]
While the previous chapter was about boasting, this one, ‘The Miracle of the Magpie’, which plays in the town of Le Puy-en-Velay in the beautiful Auvergne district of France, seems to be all about mocking. Mocking the beliefs of people “elbowing their way” to the place where they […]
In her letter Jesse does not describe or elaborate on her dire predicament. It is only following the arrival of Larchmont’s brother, Harry, back in Paris for all to be revealed in personal dialogue between the two. Given the generous insights of our narrator, our good readers may […]
Perhaps a word of warning about this story by Anatole France from the year 1909. The ending in particular might offend, so be prepared to make an allowance for attitudes in it being 112 years old—the original French chanson de geste eight centuries earlier than that. The story, […]
Commencing soon and continuing week-about with Archibald Clavering Gunter’s Baron Montez of Panama and Paris, we present an introduction to the work of the great Nobel Prize winning poet and novelist, Anatole France (1844-1924). For The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche (1908), France cast back into historical mists […]
Although this chapter begins in 1880, it spans the years to 1887. The Baron Montez, Larchmont and his ward, Jessie, arrive in Paris at the centre of a glorious time which in the future will be known as the ‘Belle Epoque’. Imagine wide boulevards where bunches of flowers […]
Twenty-five years after the closing events of the last chapter, Panama is still our setting, though the focus has shifted from the Panama Railroad to a new major engineering challenge: The Panama Canal. The year is 1880 and Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and developer of the Suez […]
Furin Chime 