Quand les dieux buvaient

Catherine Dufour a laissé courir son imagination fertile pour pondre une mini série fantasy fantaisiste : Quand les dieux buvaient. Pour un peu compliquer le tout, la série compte 4 tomes. Au départ publiés en 4 livres différents, le livre de poche les a sortis en 2 à savoir :

- Blanche Neige et les lance-missiles qui comprend le tome 1, Blanche Neige et les lance-missiles et le tome 2, L'ivresse des providers

- Blanche Neige contre Merlin l'Enchanteur qui comprend le tome 3, Merlin l'ange chanteur et le tome 0 (oui oui), L'immortalité moins six minutes

A dire vrai, je me rend compte que pour le deuxième livre Blanche Neige est...inexistante. Passons, c'est plus "cohérent" et plus vendeur. parce que oui, au cas où je ne l'avais pas encore assez répété, moi et les Disney ne faisons qu'un. Je les adore. Alors quand je vois un livre qui a pour titre Blanche Neige et les lance-missiles, moi je prends !

Comme vous pouvez l'imaginer, ce livre est bourré de références aux contes, légendes et autres personnages mystiques. Mais pas seulement. C'est aussi un pur labyrinthe temporel. Je m'explique. Tome 1, nous voilà du temps où la Terre est plate, le personnel employé du Paradis des alcooliques à l'image de leur patron et c'est franchement le bazar. Tome 2, la Terre est ronde tout va bien, années 2000 et le grand méchant du 1 file des migraines au patron d'une multinationale façon Microsoft. On se balade dans les ordinateurs avec des fées et des ectoplasmes : ça change et c'est marrant. Tome 3, alors là ça se complique un peu puisque nous suivons un angelot et un archange (Merlin...) à travers des millénaires. Ces deux là vont s'aimer et se faire la guerre jusqu'à ce que les hommes habitent dans l'espace (rien que ça). Et le tome suivant, tome 0. Pour compliquer un rien la sauce, nous suivons les fées du tome 2 dans une quête façon Seigneur des Anneaux pour aboutir à la naissance des hommes. Pour être encore plus claire sur le tome 0, ce n'est pas vraiment "façon Seigneur des Anneaux" c'est plutôt : revivez le film à travers deux fées qui suivent les 4 hobbits. N'en déplaise, c'est quand même drôle.


Je suis presque sûre de vous avoir embrouillés.

Oublions le tome 0 pour le moment. Revenons au premier. Blanche Neige est tyran, et elle s'allie à un mec du purgatoire qui a une dent contre les dieux et veut mettre le tout à sa sauce. Ca, c'est pour les méchants. Du côté des gentils, nous suivrons Aurore des bois qui s'est réveillé, le chaperon rouge rebaptisée Vareuse-Tagueule, Peau d'âne et c'est Cendrillon qui attend que son Merlin de petit copain vienne la réveiller. Il y a quand même quelque chose que je n'ai pas compris avec ce merlin (cf tome 3). J'ai dû passer à côté de quelque chose dans ma lecture. Bref.
La suite, quelque fées ont survécus des millénaires planquées dans des arbres et l'une d'entre elles apparaît à une humaine qui l'aidera avec des fantômes surfant sur le Net à vaincre une nouvelle fois le méchant du tome 1 (encore lui!).
Tome 3, focus sur un angelot et un archange, archange qui se fera appelé Merlin et un peu Dracula aussi Nyarknyarknyark Tome très historique, on sent les recherches. Ca diffère énormément du premier livre ce qui fait que j'ai eu du mal à bien rentrer dedans. Ca vous donne un avant goût. J'aimerai bien en raconter plus mais je crois qu'alors la lecture en sera moins divertissante pour vous.
Et enfin, L'immortalité moins six minutes. Dès le début de la "quête" des fées on ne peut s'empêcher de littéralement voir le film de Peter Jackson. Elle s'en moque un peu, mais c'est parce qu'elle en est fan et ça se voit. C'est une bonne idée même si ça peut paraître "facile" comme intrigue (pourquoi s'embêter à créer des histoires si c'est pour reprendre un film me direz vous).


Bon eh bien il ne me reste plus qu'à espérer vous avoir donné envie de plonger dans les aventures diverses et variées d' Aurore des bois, Merlin, Pétrol'Kiwi, l'angelot ou encore la fille du Père Noël ! Parce que moi, j'ai été plus qu'enthousiasmé par ces histoires qui s'entremêlent avec brio.

Pride and Prejudice

Maybe the most popular of the six novels, Pride and Prejudice appears at first hand as a very complex story involving “too many characters” and even “being boring”, depending on opinions. It is absolutely NOT the case! The plot must be considered into the context of the 19^th century. It was initially entitled First Impressions. However after the publisher's rejection, Austen revised her manuscript to build up Pride and Prejudice as we know it today.

The novel is mainly about two sisters, Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and how they manage to reach happiness in life and love. One day, the Bennets' routine is agitated when they hear the news that the wealthy Charles Bingley - and Co.- moves in a neighbouring place, Netherfield Park. Mrs Bennet sees automatically an opportunity to marry one of her five daughters. Marriage and social expectations were rather an important subject matter in the 19^th century society, and especially to Mrs Bennet because of the entail. This was a law stating that land and money must go to a male heir. In other words, the five Bennet daughters would have nothing if their father died prematurely. When they all meet at a small ball, Charles and Jane are directly attracted to each other whereas the temporary tensions between Darcy - Bingley's closest friend - and Elizabeth begin. These tensions began when he rejected her when Bingley suggested him to dance with her. But you will see that the feelings of either Darcy and Elizabeth will change a lot as the story develops. Later, a man called Mr Collins, who is Mr Bennet's cousin and heir, visits the family and purposely wants to marry one of the five girls. He chooses Elizabeth, who refuses him. Out of pique he decides to marry Elizabeth's friend, Charlotte Lucas. From now on will begin states of frustration, love, deceptions and socially improper behaviours from which I leave details aside in order not to spoil your future reading of the book. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that in Jane Austen's novels, “all is well that ends well” as Shakespeare would have said.

Obviously both Darcy and Elizabeth express pride and prejudice throughout the novel, just as many characters do. Darcy is proud of his social class and is prejudiced against the Bennets' conduct. Elizabeth's pride is attacked when Darcy refuses to consider her at the first ball because of her social origins and she is prejudiced against his reserved and arrogant manners that she frankly dislikes. Her prejudice against him is even more amplified when she hears about his conflict with George Wickham, a militia officer encountered in their small village. But it is mostly their first impressions that matter (and remember how the novel was entitled firstly), impressions that will be revised while all the characters will know each other better.

To me the novel does not make a case for moral values, what you should think or not, what you should do or not. The most important feature is the way characters manage to fulfil their inmost desires. Pride and Prejudice is also a great description of the period, full of realism. One of Jane Austen's particularities was to examine what surrounded her, and thus we can find a certain verisimilitude in her novels. In addition to that, we can notice several instances of irony in the characters, in their behaviour but also in some dialogues conducted by Mr Bennet or Elizabeth for example. Hence the fact that dialogues are very important and reveal a lot about characterization. Speeches enable the reader to learn more about characters and it is a way for the reader to form his own opinion upon the situation, the characters' mind and their behaviour. We can see that this emphasis is shown right from the incipit as the novel begins with a dialogue. Moreover, Jane Austen often read her works to a restricted audience, hence the importance of the orality of her text.

This story, though deeply rooted in a specific period of History, keeps on captivating many readers throughout the centuries. Besides, if you want to see an adaptation, I eagerly recommend that you see the one made by the BBC in 1995, which remains the one and only faithful adaptation to the novel. [Colin Firth will always be my Mr Darcy!]

Jane Austen

Miss Austen now represents one of the greatest authors England has ever had. Like Shakespeare, the body of her work is constantly adapted, studied or admired. Not to mention that, these days, Jane Austen is quite a la mode. We do not have a great amount of details about her life. Most biographical information come from her own family circle, especially by the few letters her sister Cassandra left provided.

She was born on December 16, 1775 in Hampshire and had six brothers and one sister, her closest friend, Cassandra. Apart from a brief stay at Oxford in order for Jane and Cassandra to be educated, Jane stayed within the sphere of the family and learnt almost by herself, due to a lack of money. She loved reading and began writing at an early age. Her father was willing to let his daughters write – Jane's favourite pastime- or draw – which was Cassandra's. The former liked to entertain her own family with what she wrote, letting her now famously wit appear. In 1816, Jane Austen began to be ill. It seems that she ignored her illness at first and continued her habits but her health soon declined, she had great difficulties to walk or felt more and more tired. It kept going worse and she died eventually the following year, on July 18, 1817. Contemporary scientists and descriptions of her symptoms tend to either Addison's disease, a lymphoma or a bovine tuberculosis. She remained unmarried but nonetheless experienced the feelings she describes in her novels. She left us, readers, with a legacy made up of only six novels and a few unfinished writings. She began to write them around 1796, and yet they were published more later, from 1811 onwards. The first novel to be published was Sense & Sensibility and then in 1813 Pride & Prejudice came out. Her novels deal with women, their access to happiness in love, their part in society, and also their position when confronted with the law. However, they deal with morality, temper, sometimes with the influence of a place upon its inhabitants or they can mock the society and other pieces of writings.

Jane Austen enthralled many readers, and continues to do so. She has inspired many writers, and especially with Pride and Prejudice. Sequels or fictitious letters have been written by admirers and modern authors who wanted so much to see what could have been Elizabeth and Darcy's life after the end of the book that they imagined it. Or recently a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and a Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters came out riding on the wave of Jane Austen's popularity. As for me, I have them all, or almost...