For Students
The new respect for the short story was also evident in France, as Henry James observed, “when [in 1844 Prosper] Mérimée, with his handful of little stories, was elected to the French Academy.” As illustrated by “Columbia” (1841) or “Carmen” (1845), which gained additional fame as an opera, Mérimée’s stories are masterpieces of detached and dry observation, though the subject matter itself is often emotionally charged. Nineteenth-century France produced short stories as various as 19th-century America—although the impressionist tale was generally less common in France. (It is as if, not having an outstanding impressionist storyteller themselves, the French adopted Poe, ...(100 of 7300 words)