Le Papillon / Narcís Oller; translated by Albert Savine; preface by Emile Zola. Paris: Nouvelle librarire parisienne, E. Giraud et Cie., 1886. 298 p. ; 19 cm.

Date: 1886

Archive: Municipal Archive of Barcelona

Document type: Textual

Reference code: CAT-AHCB-NO 1248

Link to the online document

Description: Le Papillon, the French edition of The Butterfly by Narcís Oller, was preceded by a letter-prologue from the father of naturalism, Émile Zola, who described this novel as “a study of slightly idealized characters and through a very accurate medium”. Originally published in 1882, it was Oller’s first major success and was translated into several languages. The author tries to find in this work the poetry that exists in the natural, thus producing a synthesis between his primitive romanticism and French naturalism. But in reality we are not dealing with a naturalistic novel, but rather a transition from one style to another, both in terms of narrative technique and content.
Narcís Oller (Valls 1846-Barcelona 1930) is the great referent of Catalan novels of the late 19th century. Already in his time he achieved great fame at European level, comparable to Àngel Guimerà and Jacint Verdaguer in their respective genres.
The AHCB copy belongs to Narcís Oller’s own library and bears his signature.

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