The Cathedral

by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Overview

Fiction. "The Cathedral" is a reissue of a classic novel of spiritual awakening by the author of Against Nature. "Crafted with painstaking attention to detail, the novel is both an account of a conversion and a detailed examination of the language of medieval art. So thorough is Huysman's description of the cathedral that the book has even been sold as a guide to the building" (Dr. Penelope Woolf). The voice of the main character, Durtal, is as "wicked, witty, (and) self-lacerating ... (as that of) as that of a contemporary scholar with a bad case of mystical anomie" (Elizabeth Young, City Limits).

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000777732
Publisher:	B&R Samizdat Express
Publication date:	02/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	827 KB

About the Author

Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (1848 - 1907 in Paris) was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans. He is most famous for the novel À rebours (1884, published in English as Against the Grain or Against Nature). He supported himself by a 30-year career in the French civil service. Huysmans' work is considered remarkable for its idiosyncratic use of the French language, large vocabulary, descriptions, satirical wit and far-ranging erudition. First considered part of Naturalism, he became associated with the decadent movement with his publication of À rebours. His work expressed his deep pessimism, which had led him to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. In later years, his novels reflected his study of Catholicism, religious conversion and becoming an oblate. He discussed the iconography of Christian architecture at length in La cathédrale (1898), set at Chartres and with its cathedral as the focus of the book.