Novel
Jurgen
James Branch Cabell · 1919
Opening lines
It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, saying: In the old days lived a pawnbroker named Jurgen; but what his wife called him was very often much worse than that.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Jurgen, a pawnbroker of Poictesme and a poet in his youth, takes the devil's part before a monk who curses him; a black gentleman thanks him for it, and his shrewish wife vanishes. He sets out to look for her, urged on by her family more than by any wish of his own, and on the way he is given, for one year, his body of twenty-one with his head of forty-odd. He then passes through a series of worlds, the kingdom of Guenevere's father, Cockaigne, a Hell created to flatter the pride of his ancestors, a Heaven created for his grandmother, and courts everything he meets.
Context
The novel was published in September 1919 by Robert M. McBride. In January 1920, after a letter published in the press, the society headed by John S. Sumner had the plates and copies seized, and the publisher was prosecuted: the text contains no coarse word, but a series of double meanings. A protest committee brought together Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and Eugene O'Neill. On 19 October 1922, Judge Charles C. Nott acquitted, noting veiled and subtle suggestions. The affair made the book's fortune, and little else of its author was remembered.
Who it is for
A novel of medium length, written in an archaising language and full of learned allusions; the humour lies in the innuendo. No French translation found.
Prizes and reception
The trial of 1920 to 1922 made it a bookshop success and a textbook case of American censorship.
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