Les Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique

"Les Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique" is a decadent and expressionist novel by the French writer Octave Mirbeau, published by Charpentier-Fasquelle in August of 1901.

Commentary

It's a collage of fifty cruel tales already published in the press over the previous fifteen years. So Mirbeau unsettles traditional novelistic conventions, transgressing the code of fictional credibility and maintaining indeterminacy of its genre affiliation.

The French society of the Third Republic is presented as a completely mad world, where everything is out of justice, order and reason.

Reference

* Robert Ziegler, « Naturalism as Paranoia in Octave Mirbeau », "French Forum", Spring 2002, vol. 27, n° 2, pp. 49-63.

External links

* [http://www.leboucher.com/pdf/mirbeau/x21jours/pdf Octave Mirbeau, "Les 21 jours d’un neurasthénique"] .
* [http://membres.lycos.fr/fabiensolda/darticles%20francais/PM-preface%2021%20jours.pdf Pierre Michel, Foreword] .
* [http://membres.lycos.fr/fabiensolda/darticles%20francais/Vareille-anticolonialisme.pdf Arnaud Vareille, « Un mode d’expression de l’anticolonialisme mirbellien - La logique du lieu dans "Les 21 jours d’un neurasthénique" »] .
* [http://membres.lycos.fr/magnadea/darticles%20etrangers/Ziegler-jeuxdemassacre.pdf Robert Ziegler, « Jeux de massacre »] .