The Cathedral

✍ Scribed by Joris-Karl Huysmans

• Book ID: 100603594
• Publisher: Dedalus/Hippocrene
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 242 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

The Cathedral (French: La Cathédrale) (1898) is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. It is the third of Huysmans' books to feature the character Durtal, a thinly disguised portrait of the author. He had already featured the character of Durtal in Là-bas and En route, which recounted his conversion to Catholicism. La Cathédrale continues the story. After his retreat at a Trappist monastery, Durtal moves to the city of Chartres, renowned for its cathedral. Huysmans describes the building in great detail.

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Review

"Crafted with painstaking attentiuon 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

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)