George Sand

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2020

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of the most popular writers in Europe in C19th, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876) who wrote under the name George Sand. When she wrote her first novel under that name, she referred to herself as a man. This was in Indiana (1832), which had the main character breaking away from her unhappy marriage. It made an immediate impact as it overturned the social conventions of the time and it drew on her own early marriage to an older man, Casimir Dudevant. Once Sand's identity was widely known, her works became extremely popular in French and in translation, particularly her rural novels, outselling Hugo and Balzac in Britain, perhaps buoyed by an interest in her personal life, as well as by her ideas on the rights and education of women and strength of her writing.

With

Belinda Jack Fellow and Tutor in French at Christ Church, University of Oxford

Angela Ryan Senior Lecturer in French at University College Cork

And

Nigel Harkness Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of French at Newcastle University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:48.6	enjoy the programs.
0:49.6	Hello Georgesand 1804 to 1876 was one of the most popular and celebrated
0:55.3	French novelists in the 19th century and she defied conventions. She wrote on
0:59.8	a man she could dress like a man and she lived with the freedom that only men had in France and she wished
1:05.3	other women could share her freedom. If her characters respected each other as
1:09.6	equals they could overcome differences in age, wealth or class and find happiness in love.
1:14.4	If not, they faced the misery she'd escaped in her own marriage and which she saw in so many others.
1:19.7	We'd me to discuss George Sonde are Angela Ryan, senior lecturer in French at University College
1:25.2	Cork, Nigel Hartners, Provost Chancellor for Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor
1:30.3	of French and Newcastle University, Melinda Jack fellow and tutor in
	...

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