Aleksandras Diuma

Introduction……………..3

2. The aim of Project Work…………4

3. The Project Work “Alexander Dumas”…….5

a) Biographical Links…………5

b) About His Novels………….7

c) Author’s Preface…………7

d) History Of Dumas’s Musketeers……..9

e) The Count of Monte Cristo……..10

f) Off The Shelf ………….10

4. Conclusions………………l1

Alexander Dumas (1802-1870) was one of the most famous French writers of the 19th century. Dumas is best known for historical adventure novels like The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both written within the space of two years, 1844-45, and which belong to the ffoundation works of popular culture. He was among the first, along with Honore de Balzac and EugХne Sue, who fully used the possibilities of roman feuilleton, the serial novel. Duma is credited with revitalizing the historical novel in France, although his abilities as a writer were under dispute from the beginning. Dumas’ works are fast-paced adventure tales that blend history and fiction, but on the other hand, the are entangled, melodramatic, and actually not faithful to the historical facts.

Dumas’s life sometimes seemed as action-packed as his novels; he participated in three revolutions, courted countless women and dueled when his honor was insulted. Luckily for his fans, the lavish chateau he built outside Paris, always open to starving artists, tthe families of mistresses, and even strangers, has recently been restored and opened to the public.

More importantly, the timeless works he created are still being made available in bookstores and revisited on cinema screens.

In the world there are a lot of writers. One of them wrote fantastic books, other romantic, adventure or other books.

I think that the most interesting are adventure books for me. I like to read them very much.

So, one of adventure books writer is Alexander Dumas. And that’s why my favourite writer is Dumas.

As a playwright Dumas made his breakthrough with „Henri III et Sa Cour“ (1829), produced by the Comedie Francaise. It gained a huge success and DDumas went on to write additional plays, of which „La Tour de Nesle“ (1832, „The Tower of Nesle“) is considered the greatest masterpiece of French melodrama. He wrote constantly, producing a steady stream of plays, novels, and short stories.

So I think it is very good that I decided to write project work about that writer. I would scent out a lot of new things about him.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Biographical Links:

Alexander Dumas was born on July 24, 1802 in VVillers-Cotterêts 40 km NE of Paris. His birth certificate names him Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie.

His grandfather was the Marquis Antoine-Alexander Davy de la Pailleterie and his grandmother was Marie-Céssette Dumas, a black slave from Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (now part of Haiti). She gave birth to Thomas-Alexander and died when he was young. When they eventually returned to Paris, his grandfather did not approve of his father enlisting the army under the name of Davy de la Pailleterie, so he enlisted as Thomas-Alexander Dumas.

Thomas-Alexander worked his way to the

title of General under Napoleon Bonaparte.

Alexander grew up in Villers-Cotterêts, and traveled to Paris when he was twenty. By twenty-five, he had his first success as a

playwright. Duma has written many interesting anecdotes about these years in Mes Mémoires.

Many people do not realize that Dumas became famous not for his novels, but for his plays.

Dumas wrote hundreds of plays, novels and travel diaries. He wrote several children’s stories, and a culinary dictionary. He started several magazines and wrote in them weekly. He was one of the most prolific writers ever, and did not shy away from collaborating with others or rewriting older stories.

His most successful nnovels are not deep, but contain marvelous adventures and actions, and bigger-than-life characters. He wrote many historical novels where he took great liberty with the truth in order to achieve a good story, but never claimed that they were historically accurate.

His son, Alexander Dumas fils, wrote several important novels including La Dame aux Camélias, the basis of Verdi’s opera La Traviata.

After many years of writing, traveling, and carousing, after he had made and lost several fortunes, Dumas died in Puys, near Dieppe, on December 5, 1870.

Dumas’ role in the development of the historical novel owes much to a coincidence. The lifting of press censorship in the 1830s gave rise to a rapid spread of newspapers. Editors began to lure readers by entertaining serial novels. Everybody read them, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie, young and old, men and women. Dumas’ first true serial novel was Le Capitaine Paul (1838, Captain Paul), a quick rewrite of a play.

Dumas lived as adventurously as the heroes of his books. He took part in the revolution of July 1830, caught cholera during the epidemic of 1832, and traveled in Italy to recuperate. He married his mistress Ida Ferrier, an actress, in 11840, but he soon separated after having spent her entire dowry. With the money earned from his writings, he built a fantastic Chateau Monte Cristo on the outskirts of Paris. In 1851 Dumas escaped his creditors – his country house, the Chateau de Monte Cristo. Dumas spent two years in exile in Brussels (1855-57), and then returned to Paris. In 1858 he traveled to Russia and in1860 he went to Italy, where he supported Garibaldi and Italy’s struggle for independence (1860-64). He then remained in Naples as a keeper of the museums for four years. After his return to France his debts continued to mount.

Called as „the king of Paris“, Dumas earned fortunes and spent them right away on friends, art, and mistresses. Dumas died of a stroke on December 5, 1870, at Puys, near Dieppe. His son Alexander Dumas fils, became a writer, dramatist, and moralist, who never accepted his father’s lifestyle.

Dumas did not generally define himself as a black man, and there is not much evidence that he encountered overt racism during his life. However, his works were popular among the 19th-century African-Americans, partly because in The Count of Monte-Cristo, the falsely imprisoned Edmond DantХs,

may be read as a parable of emancipation. In a shorter work, Georges (1843, George), Dumas examined the question of race and colonialism. The main character, a half-French mulatto,

leaves Mauritius to be educated in France, and returns

to avenge him for the affronts he had suffered as a boy.

About His Novels:

The action-packed novels of 19th-century French author Alexandre Dumas continue to intrigue millions of readers around the world, 150 years after their creation. The stories have been ttranslated into almost a hundred languages, and the most famous, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, have inspired more than 100 of the 200 films based on Dumas’s works. Few people know, however, that the author was the grandson of a Haitian slave, or that Dumas’s mulatto father rose rapidly through the ranks of the French Army to become a legendary general by the age of 31.

Though the general died young, leaving his son without aan inheritance, Dumas overcame poverty, the lack of formal education, and the constant wear and tear of 19th-century racism to become one of the world’s most popular writers. By the time Dumas was 35, he had laid the foundations of bbourgeois drama, helped stage a Romantic revolution in theater, and helped create a new kind of Romantic novel.

Oxford University Press offers the entire set, unabridged, in five volumes as part of its World Classics series:

The Three Musketeers, ISBN 0192827510

Twenty Years After, ISBN 0192830740

The Vicomte de Bragelonne, ISBN 0192823906

Louise de la Vallière, ISBN 0192823892

The Man in the Iron Mask, ISBN 0192827529

Author’s Preface

In which it is proved that, notwithstanding their names’ ending in OS and IS, the heroes of the story which we are about to have the honor to relate to our readers have nothing mythological about them.

A short time ago, while making researches in the Royal Library for my History oof Louis XIV, I stumbled by chance upon the Memoirs of M. D’Artagnan, printed–as were most of the works of that period, in which authors could not tell the truth without the risk of a residence, more or less long, in the Bastille–at Amsterdam, by Pierre Rouge. The title attracted me; I took them home with me, with the permission of the guardian, and devoured them.

It is not my intention here to enter into an analysis of this curious wwork; ...