Strait is the Gate (Modern Classics) - Softcover

Gide, Andre; Bussy, Dorothy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140008810 ISBN 13: 9780140008814

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1973

Synopsis

Strait is the Gate, first published in 1909 in France as La Porte etroite, is a novel about the failure of love in the face of the narrowness of the moral philosophy of Protestantism.

André Gide (1869-1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947. Gide's career spanned from the Symbolist movement to the advent of anticolonialism in-between the two World Wars. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, without at the same time betraying one's values... --- "For Gide was very different from the picture most people had of him. He was the very reverse of an aesthete, and, as a writer, had nothing in common with the doctrine of art for art's sake. He was a man deeply involved in a specific struggle, a specific fight, who never wrote a line which he did not think was of service to the cause he had at heart." (Francois Mauriac)

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Review

Tale by Andre Gide, published in 1909 as La Porte etroite. It is one of the first of his works to treat the problems of human relationships. The work contrasts the yearning toward asceticism and self-sacrifice with the need for sensual exploration as a young woman struggles with conflicting feelings about the man who wants to marry her. Gide designated Strait Is the Gate as a recit, which he defined as a consciously stark but basically ironic tale narrated by, and told from the viewpoint of, a single character. --The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140008810
• ISBN 13: 9780140008814
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128