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Le Rêve (novel)
Encyclopedia
Le rêve is the sixteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart
series by Émile Zola
.
The novel was published by Charpentier in October 1888 and translated into English
by Eliza E. Chase as The Dream in 1893 (reprinted in 2005). Other recent translations are by Michael Glencross (Peter Owen 2005) and Andrew Brown (Hesperus Press
2005).
The novel was dramatized as an opera
in four acts composed by Alfred Bruneau
, produced June 18, 1891, at the Opéra-Comique
to a libretto by Louis Gallet
.
The novel covers the years 1860–1869.
in the cathedral town of Beaumont, 30 leagues
from Paris
. Angélique is enthralled by the tales of the saint
s and martyr
s — particularly Saint Agnes
and Saint George
— as told in the Golden Legend
of Jacobus de Voragine
. Her dream is to be saved by a handsome prince and to live happily ever after, in the same way the virgin martyrs have their faiths tested on earth before being rescued and married to Jesus
in heaven.
Her dream of love and happiness is realized when she falls in love with Félicien d'Hautecœur, the last in an old family of knights, heroes, and nobles in the service of Christ
and of France
. His father, the present Monseignuer, objects to their marrying for reasons of his own, and Angélique refuses to elope with Félicien without the father's consent. The Monseignuer agrees at last upon realizing Angélique's purity, beauty, and innocence. Leaving the church after the wedding, Angélique kisses Félicien for the first time and dies, having reached the extreme limits of earthly happiness and ecstatic in the realization of her dream.
and environment worked on members of one family over the course of the Second French Empire
. All of the descendants of Adelaïde Fouque (Tante Dide), Angélique's great-grandmother, demonstrate what today would be called obsessive-compulsive
behaviors. Angélique is obsessed with the lives of the saints and with her dream of a princely marriage.
Furthermore, Angélique has a temper and experiences serious mood swings, becoming as passionate as any one of her relatives. Zola strongly implies that, without the upbringing by her adoptive parents and the influence of the cathedral and The Golden Legend, Angélique could easily have been fallen prey to her passions and ended up as a prostitute
(like her cousin
Nana
).
In Le docteur Pascal, Zola describes Angélique as being a blend of the characteristics of her parents to such a degree that no trace of them shows up in the child. Angélique's mother is Sidonie Rougon, who plays a significant (though brief) role in La curée
and appears briefly in L'œuvre
. (Angélique's father is unknown.) Sidonie is unfeeling and nearly inhuman, a cold, dry woman incapable of love. She is a professional procuress, involved in every shady calling, a seller of "anything and everything."
In Le docteur Pascal (set in 1872), Zola tells us that Sidonie has become the austere financial manager of a home for unwed mothers.
) (English
) (1931) (French
) (1921) (silent
) (French
)
Les Rougon-Macquart
Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire , it follows the life of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire and is an example of French...
series by Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
.
The novel was published by Charpentier in October 1888 and translated into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
by Eliza E. Chase as The Dream in 1893 (reprinted in 2005). Other recent translations are by Michael Glencross (Peter Owen 2005) and Andrew Brown (Hesperus Press
Hesperus Press
Hesperus Press is an independent publisher based in London, UK. It was founded in 2001 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, who went on to found Alma Books in 2005....
2005).
The novel was dramatized as an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
in four acts composed by Alfred Bruneau
Alfred Bruneau
Louis-Charles-Bonaventure-Alfred Bruneau was a French composer who played a key role in the introduction of realism in French opera....
, produced June 18, 1891, at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
to a libretto by Louis Gallet
Louis Gallet
Louis Gallet was an inexhaustible French writer of operatic libretti, plays, romances, memoirs, pamphlets, and innumerable articles, who is remembered above all for his adaptations of fiction—and Scripture— to provide librettos of cantatas and opera, notably by composers Georges...
.
The novel covers the years 1860–1869.
Plot summary
Le rêve is a simple tale of the orphan Angélique Marie (b. 1851), adopted by a husband-and-wife team of ecclesiastic embroiderersEmbroidery
Embroidery is the art or handicraft of decorating fabric or other materials with needle and thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as metal strips, pearls, beads, quills, and sequins....
in the cathedral town of Beaumont, 30 leagues
League (unit)
A league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league originally referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour...
from Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Angélique is enthralled by the tales of the saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
s and martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
s — particularly Saint Agnes
Saint Agnes
Agnes of Rome is a virgin–martyr, venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, and Lutheranism. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass...
and Saint George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
— as told in the Golden Legend
Golden Legend
The Golden Legend is a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that became a late medieval bestseller. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived, compared to twenty or so of its nearest rivals...
of Jacobus de Voragine
Jacobus de Voragine
Blessed Jacobus de Varagine or Voragine was an Italian chronicler and archbishop of Genoa. He was the author, or more accurately the compiler, of Legenda Aurea, the Golden Legend, a collection of the legendary lives of the greater saints of the medieval church that was one of the most popular...
. Her dream is to be saved by a handsome prince and to live happily ever after, in the same way the virgin martyrs have their faiths tested on earth before being rescued and married to Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
in heaven.
Her dream of love and happiness is realized when she falls in love with Félicien d'Hautecœur, the last in an old family of knights, heroes, and nobles in the service of Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
and of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. His father, the present Monseignuer, objects to their marrying for reasons of his own, and Angélique refuses to elope with Félicien without the father's consent. The Monseignuer agrees at last upon realizing Angélique's purity, beauty, and innocence. Leaving the church after the wedding, Angélique kisses Félicien for the first time and dies, having reached the extreme limits of earthly happiness and ecstatic in the realization of her dream.
Relation to the other Rougon-Macquart novels
Zola's plan for the Rougon-Macquart novels was to show how heredityHeredity
Heredity is the passing of traits to offspring . This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve...
and environment worked on members of one family over the course of the Second French Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
. All of the descendants of Adelaïde Fouque (Tante Dide), Angélique's great-grandmother, demonstrate what today would be called obsessive-compulsive
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Obsessive–compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions...
behaviors. Angélique is obsessed with the lives of the saints and with her dream of a princely marriage.
Furthermore, Angélique has a temper and experiences serious mood swings, becoming as passionate as any one of her relatives. Zola strongly implies that, without the upbringing by her adoptive parents and the influence of the cathedral and The Golden Legend, Angélique could easily have been fallen prey to her passions and ended up as a prostitute
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
(like her cousin
Cousin
In kinship terminology, a cousin is a relative with whom one shares one or more common ancestors. The term is rarely used when referring to a relative in one's immediate family where there is a more specific term . The term "blood relative" can be used synonymously and establishes the existence of...
Nana
Nana (novel)
Nana is a novel by the French naturalist author Émile Zola. Completed in 1880, Nana is the ninth installment in the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart series, the object of which was to tell "The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire", the subtitle of the series.-Origins:A year...
).
In Le docteur Pascal, Zola describes Angélique as being a blend of the characteristics of her parents to such a degree that no trace of them shows up in the child. Angélique's mother is Sidonie Rougon, who plays a significant (though brief) role in La curée
La Curée
La Curée is the second novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. It deals with property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy Nouveau riche of the Second French Empire, against the backdrop of Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the 1850s and...
and appears briefly in L'œuvre
L'Œuvre
L'œuvre is the fourteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was first serialized in the periodical Gil Blas beginning in December 1885 before being published in novel form by Charpentier in 1886....
. (Angélique's father is unknown.) Sidonie is unfeeling and nearly inhuman, a cold, dry woman incapable of love. She is a professional procuress, involved in every shady calling, a seller of "anything and everything."
In Le docteur Pascal (set in 1872), Zola tells us that Sidonie has become the austere financial manager of a home for unwed mothers.
Sources
- Brown, F. (1995). Zola: A life. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
- Zola, E. Le doctor Pascal, translated as Doctor Pascal by E.A. Vizetelly (1893).
- Zola, E. Le rêve, translated as The Dream by Andrew Brown (Hesperus PressHesperus PressHesperus Press is an independent publisher based in London, UK. It was founded in 2001 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, who went on to found Alma Books in 2005....
2005).
External links
(FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
) (English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
) (1931) (French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
) (1921) (silent
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
) (French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
)
- Site about the opera Le rêve by Bruneau (in FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
) Le Rêve, audio version