Profession: écrivain (Domaine Etranger)

by Jack London, Francis Lacassin (Translation)

The edited volume aims to re-contextualize revolts in early modern Central and Southern Europe (Hungary, Croatia, Czech Lands, Austria, Germany, Italy) by adopting the interdisciplinary and comparative methods of social and cultural history. Instead of structural explanations like the model of state-building versus popular resistance, it wishes to put back the peasants themselves to the historical narratives of revolts. Peasants appear in the book as active agents fighting or bargaining for freedom, which was a practical issue for them. Nonetheless, the language of lord-peasant negotiation was that of religion, just as official punishments used Christian symbols. The approach of revolts as the events of collective violence also highlights the experiences and memories of participants. How did individuals and groups use remembering and forgetting as a means of forging an identity for themselves? Instead of the narratives of the powerful that became the normative stories of history, the perspective of the rebels uncovers the everyday faces of revolts more forcibly. Finally, contributors examine how later narrators used the rebels for their own purposes, in other words the subsequent representation of the revolts and their leaders in image, literature and historiography comes to the fore. The volume aims to overcome disciplinary boundaries by bringing together historians and scholars of related disciplines including the history of literature, the visual arts and anthropology. The central contention of the volume -- the cultural imprint of peasant revolts -- is fully addressed, thereby filling a conspicuous gap in the currently available literature.

400 pages, Paperback

Published January 18, 2016

About the author

John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.

London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal rights, workers’ rights and socialism. London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.

His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in Alaska and the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen".

Reviews

[Cecilebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Génial ! On y découvre l'engagement sans bornes de London pour la littérature. Le livre est divisé en plusieurs parties et réunit des lettres envoyées à des éditeurs ou rédacteurs en chef ou autres auteurs et des extraits d'articles écrits pour des magazines ou journaux. La première partie revient sur le regard de JL sur la profession d'écrivain, des enseignements qu'il a pu tirer de sa propre pratique (et des lettres savoureuses adressées à des rédacteurs en chef), des exemples de sa fameuse "philosophie de vie", la deuxième sur son regard sur l'oeuvre des autres (connus ou non), la troisième sur sa propre oeuvre (dont des réponses à des accusations de plagiat) et enfin, une dernière sur sa vision du cinéma et notamment sur des adaptations de ses romans. Des témoignages sublimes sur la nécessité de la sincérité en littérature, sur sa foi en l'Homme et des traces très précieuses de l'écrivain au travail.