The Little Parish Church

The Little Parish Church

Author	Alphonse Daudet
Original title	La Petite Paroisse
Country	France
Language	French
Genre	Novel
Publication date	1895
Media type	Print (hard & paperback)

The Little Parish Church (French: La Petite Paroisse) is a novel written by the French author Alphonse Daudet. Serialized in the magazine L'Illustration from October 20, 1894 to January 26, 1895, The Little Parish Church was published in book form by Alphonse Lemerre in Paris. It was subtitled "conjugal habits". This subtitle is accompanied by the quotation "Jaloux n'a paix ne soir ne matinée". In 1901, the novel was adapted into a play by Léon Hennique.

Context and background

The Little Parish Church celebrates forgiveness and the forgetting of offenses. The novel is written as a reaction against the theories put in fashion by Alexandre Dumas, which conceded to the deceived husband the right to take justice into his own hands. This Little Parish, whose bell tower reappears at every turn of the story, is a chapel whose white façade borders the road from Corbeil to Draveil, probably inspired by the chapel of Sainte-Hélène in the hamlet of Champrosay (Seine-et-Oise), located near Alphonse Daudet's house where he lived from 1868 to 1897.

Synopsis

In a world mixed with peasants, servants, country gentlemen and Parisians on holiday, a woman runs away with a schoolboy who is a young prince, a dry and ferocious cherub. Abandoned in Quiberon, she attempt to commit suicide but simply hurts herself.

Cured and disgusted with adventures, she allows herself to be brought back to the marital home by her mother-in-law, and obtains there a half pardon, which, at the death of the seducer, becomes an almost complete pardon.

Translations into English

• The Little Parish Church (1899)
• The Little Parish Church (1900; translated by George Burnham Ives)

References

• Albalat, Antoine (1895). "Un Nouveau Livre d'Alphonse Daudet," La Nouvelle Revue, Vol. XCII, pp. 912–15.
• Delfour, Louis-Clodomir (1895). La Religion des Contemporains, Vol. 1. Paris: Lecène, Oudin et Cie.
• Fonsegrive, George (1896). Les livres et les idées, 1894-1895. Paris: Victor Lecoffre.
• Pellissier, Georges (1898). "La Femme Mariée et l'Adultère dans le Roman Français Moderne." In: Études de Littérature Contemporaine, Vol. 2. Paris: Perrin, pp. 89–121.
• Tyrrell, F. H. (1896). "Letters of Charles Alexis Dauvergne, Prince of Olmutz," The Calcutta Review , Vol. CII, No. 204, pp. 198–228.
• Vandérem, Fernand (1895). "Notes et Impressions autour de La Petite Paroisse," Revue Bleue, Vol. III, No. 5, pp. 156–58.

External links

• La Petite Paroisse at Internet Archive