高级英语第三单元 大仲马与三个火枪手

• Alexandre Dumas in 1855.
His Life Story and Achievements
Alexander Dumas was born on July 24, 1802, in the town of Villers-Cotterêts, some fifty miles from Paris. Following General Dumas's death in 1806 the family faced precarious financial circumstances. So in 1816, at the age of fourteen, Dumas began to work to suppor the family. Until 1827, after attending a British performance of Hamlet, that Dumas discovered a direction for his dramas. Then his dramas were born. Dumas achieved instant fame on February 11, 1829, with the triumphant opening of Henry III and His Court. It was regarded as the first French drama of the Romantic movement 。
Outline
• Alexander Dumas Brief introduction Life story and achievements His works Remarks and famous sayings • The Three Musketeers About the background Important characters Plot summary Influence on later works Four Adaptations
Non-fiction
• Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine (Great Dictionary of Cuisine) a combination of encyclopedia and cookbook • Travelling books:Impressions de voyage: En Suisse (Travel Impressions: In Switzerland, 1834) • Une Année à Florence (A Year in Florence, 1841) • De Paris à Cadix (From Paris to Cadiz, 1847) • Le Journal de Madame Giovanni (The Journal of Madame Giovanni, 1856)
Briefly involved as a republican partisan in the July Revolution of 1830, Dumas soon resumed playwriting and over the next decade turned out a number of historical melodramas that electrified audiences. Around 1840 Dumas embarked upon a series of historical romances inspired by both his love of French history and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. During this time, he created The Three Musketeers(1844)and Twenty Years After(1845).
adventure.
Alexander Dumas died penniless but cheerful on December 5, 1870, saying of death: 'I shall tell her a story, and she will be kind to me. '
Personal Life
Brife introduction to Alexander Dumas
• Born : 24 July 1802(1802-07-24) • Villers-Cotterêts, Aisne, France • Died : 5 December 1870(1870-1205) (aged 68) • Occupation: playwright and novelist • Nationality: French • Period : 1829–1870 • Literary movement: Romanticism and Historical fiction • Notable work(s): The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers
One hundred years later his biographer Andre Maurois paid him this tribute: 'Dumas was a hero out of Dumas. As strong as Porthos, as adroit as d'Artagnan, as generous as Edmond Dantes, this superb giant strode across the nineteenth century breaking down doors with his shoulder, sweeping women away in his arms, and earning fortunes only to squander them promptly in dissipation. For forty years he filled the newspapers with his prose, the stage with his dramas, the world with his clamor. Never did he know a moment of doubt or an instant of despair. He turned his own existence into the finest of his novels.'
His Works
• Works:
Fiction: the D'Artagnan Romances: • The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires, 1844) • Twenty Years After (Vingt après, 1845) • The Vicomte de Bragelonne • The Corsican Brothers (Les Frères Corses, 1844) • The Count of Monte Cristo • The Two Dianas the Valois romances • La Reine Margot (1845) • La Dame de Monsoreau (1846) • The Black Tulip (La Tulipe noire, 1850)
• On 1 February 1840 he married actress Ida Ferrier (born Marguerite-Joséphine Ferrand) (1811—1859) but continued with his numerous liaisons with other women, fathering at least four illegitimate children. One of those children, a son named after him, whose mother was Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay (1794—1868), a dressmaker, would follow in his footsteps, also becoming a successful novelist and playwright. Because of their same name and occupation, the father is often referred to as Alexander Dumas, père, and the son as Alexandre Dumas，fils.
Drama • Henri III et sa cour: (1829)the first of the great Romantic historical dramas • Antony (1831):considered the first nonhistorical Romantic drama. • La Tour de Nesle — (1832)another historical melodrama • Kean — 1836
In 1847, at the height of his fame, Dumas assumed the role of impresario. Hoping to reap huge profits, he inaugurated the new Theatre History as a vehicle for staging dramatizations of his historical novels. But later, Dumas's theater failed and he faced bankruptcy.
Over the next years he founded the newspaper Le Mousquetaire, for which he wrote much of the copy, as well as the literary weekly Le Monte Crisco, but his finances never recovered. The final decade of Dumas's life began with customary high