Memoirs Of A Breton Peasant

(Paperback)

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A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of a Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigour of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. 19th century Brittany was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages and backwards by most French standards. Formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Deguignet is unique as a literate Breton peasant.

Reviews

"What makes it gripping reading is not only that it offers a rare view of 19th-century French society from the bottom up; it is also written from the perspective of a lifetimes experience. He both suffers and celebrates his suffering as the price of his nonconformity. A fascinating account." Alan Riding, New York Times Book Review

"Linda Asher has now given Dguignet a splendidly faithful English voice: pugnacious, tetchy and opinionated." David Coward, London Review of Books

"Never a dull moment in his company. Must be read."Le Telegramme

Author Bio

Born in 1834 near Quimper, in Brittany, to landless farmers, the young JEAN-MARIE D GUIGNET was sent out several times a week to beg for the family's food. After spending some of his adolescent years as a cowherd and a domestic speaking only Breton, he left the province as a soldier, avid for knowledge of the vast world. He taught himself Latin, then French, then Italian and Spanish; he read history and philosophy and politics and literature. He was sent to fight in the Crimean war, to attend at Emperor Napoleon III's coronation ceremonies, to support Italy's liberation struggle, and to defend the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico; he came home to live as a model farmer, a tobacconist, falling back into dire poverty. From the Hardcover edition.