Champfleury


Champfleury:

see Husson, JulesHusson or Fleury, Jules
, 1821–89, French novelist who wrote under the name Champfleury
. Considered a pioneer of French realism, Champfleury was an avid collector of French art and artifacts and
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Champfleury

 

(also Fleury, pen name of Jules-François-Félix Husson). Born Sept. 10, 1821, in Laon, Aisne Department; died Dec. 6, 1889, in Sevres, Hauts-de-Seine Department. French writer.

Champfleury studied at a college (a locally financed or privately owned secondary school) in Laon. In the mid-1840’s he began contributing to magazines. His Chien-Caillou (1847) and other collections of short stories and sketches depicted the life of Parisian Bohemians.

A circle of writers formed around Champfleury; their hypercritical work was labeled “realism” by their literary opponents. Champfleury adopted the term, applying it to his own aesthetic theories, which combined tenets of realism with ideas close to those of naturalism and of “art for art’s sake.” He considered the portrayal of the lower classes of society to be the chief task of literature. Champfleury embodied his aesthetic views in such novels as The Sufferings of Schoolmaster Delteil (1853) and The Bourgeois of Molencharat (1855).

WORKS

In Russian translation:
”Iz knigi Realizm.” In the collection Literaturnye manifesty frantsuzskikh realistov. [Leningrad, 1935.]

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1956.
Reizov, B. G. Frantsuzskii roman XIX v. Moscow, 1969.