View source for Gil Blas

{{Short description|Picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage}}
{{about|the novel|the periodical|Gil Blas (periodical)|the 1751 play|Gil Blas (play)}}
{{more citations needed|date=January 2011}}
{{use dmy dates|date=April 2024}}
{{Infobox book
| name           = Gil Blas
| title_orig     = Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
| translator     = 
| image          = GilBlasdeSantillane3.jpg
| caption  = 
| author         = [[Alain-René Lesage]]
| country        = France
| language       = French
| genre          = [[Picaresque novel|Picaresque]]
| publisher      = Pierre Ribou
| pub_date       = [[1715 in literature|1715]]–[[1735 in literature|1735]]
}}
'''''Gil Blas''''' ({{langx|fr|'''L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane'''}} {{IPA|fr|listwaʁ də ʒil blɑ də sɑ̃tijan|}}) is a [[picaresque novel]] by [[Alain-René Lesage]] published between [[1715 in literature|1715]] and [[1735 in literature|1735]]. It was highly popular, and was translated several times into English, most notably by [[Tobias Smollett]] in 1748 as ''The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane''.

==Plot summary==
Gil Blas is born in misery to a stablehand and a chambermaid of [[Santillana del Mar|Santillana]] in [[Cantabria]], and is educated by his uncle. He leaves [[Oviedo]] at the age of seventeen to attend the [[University of Salamanca]]. His bright future is suddenly interrupted when he is forced to help robbers along the route and is faced with jail.

[[File:GilBlas1761TP.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Frontispiece and title page of a 1761 English translation of ''The Adventures of Gil Blas'']]
He becomes a valet and, over the course of several years, is able to observe many different classes of society, both lay and clerical. Because of his occupation, he meets many disreputable people and is able to adjust to many situations, thanks to his adaptability and quick wit.

He finally finds himself at the [[royal court]] as a favorite of the king and secretary to the prime minister. Working his way up through hard work and intelligence, Gil is able to retire to a castle to enjoy a fortune and a hard-earned honest life.
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==Characters in ''Gil Blas''==
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==Major themes==
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==Literary significance and reception==
''Gil Blas'' is related to Lesage's play ''[[Turcaret]]'' (1709). In both works, Lesage uses witty valets in the service of thieving masters, women of questionable morals, cuckolded yet happy husbands, gourmands, ridiculous poets, false savants, and dangerously ignorant doctors to make his point. Each class and each occupation becomes an archetype.

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==Allusions and references==
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=== References and allusions in other works===
[[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] mentions reading ''Gil Blas'' in his ''[[Confessions (Rousseau)|Confessions]]'' (Book IV, 1731–1732), saying it came highly recommended by Mademoiselle du Chatelet who "had a taste for that kind of moral observation which leads to the knowledge of mankind". Rousseau commented that "I read this performance with pleasure, but my judgment was not yet ripe enough to relish that sort of reading".

''Gil Blas'' is mentioned in [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]'s novel ''[[Nausea (novel)|Nausea]]''. The central character is showing the Autodidact some photos. One of them is of Santillana. The Autodidact responds by asking "the Santillana of Gil Blas?"

''Gil Blas'' is referred to by [[Jonathan Swift]] in his satirical ''Directions to Servants'', dated 1731, with recommendations for the servants of rich masters to take the most advantage and have the least trouble in their daily tasks. In the chapter aimed at the "House Steward and Land Steward", Swift specifically instructs the reader to look up what Gil Blas has to say on the matter, as a more qualified source thus acknowledged.

The 1751 play ''[[Gil Blas (play)|Gil Blas]]'' by the British writer [[Edward Moore (dramatist)|Edward Moore]] was performed at the [[Theatre Royal, Drury Lane]] with [[David Garrick]] in the title role.

[[Vasily Narezhny]] imitated Lesage in his 1814 novel ''A Russian Gil Blas'' ({{langx|ru|Российский Жильблаз|italic=yes}}).

{{ill|Friedrich Korn|de}}'s novel ''Der jüdische Gil Blas'' (''The Jewish Gil Blas'') was published in 1834.<ref>{{cite book|author=Friedrich Korn|author-link=:de:Friedrich Korn|url=http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/419103|title=Der jüdische Gil Blas|via=[[Aron Freimann|Freimann]] Collection, [[Goethe University Frankfurt]]|year=1834|language=de}}</ref>

''Gil Blas'' is alluded to in [[Leopold von Sacher-Masoch]]'s ''[[Venus in Furs]]''. The character Wanda von Dunajew ascribes the cause of her own free thinking to an early introduction to classical works; these include ''Gil Blas'', which she read at the age of ten.

''Gil Blas'' is referred to in [[Honoré de Balzac]]'s ''[[Facino Cane (short story)|Facino Cane]]''. The protagonist promises to spare the narrator "tales of adventures worthy of Gil Blas".

In [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes]]'s ''[[The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table]]'' (1857), the Autocrat begins Section IX with the famous quote from Lesage's Preface: "''Aqui esta encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcia''": "Here is enclosed the soul of the lawyer Pedro Garcia". This signals that his own readers, like the two bachelors of Salamanca who discover Garcia's gravestone, will need to "fix on the moral concealed" beneath the surface of his recollections if they are to receive any benefit from them.

In a letter to [[William Dean Howells]] (July 5, 1875), [[Mark Twain]] tells of just completing the manuscript for ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (written in the third person) and deciding against taking Tom into adulthood: to do so, he says, "would be fatal ... in any shape but autobiographically – like Gil Blas". Scholar Walter Blair in ''Mark Twain and Huck Finn'' (1960) thus concludes that Twain's new novel, ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', which, picaresque-like, "would run its protagonist 'through life', had to be written in the first person; ''Gil Blas'' was the model".

In his plan for the novel ''The Life of a Great Sinner'', [[Fyodor Dostoevsky|Dostoevsky]] notes that the [[concision]] of this work will at times mirror that of ''Gil Blas''. Gil Blas is also mentioned in chapter III of Dostoyevsky's ''A Gentle Creature'', in which the narrator asks, "Why, didn't she tell me that amusing story about Gil Blas and the Archbishop of Granada herself the day before yesterday? We were discussing books. She was telling me about the books she had been reading that winter, and it was then that she told me about the scene from ''Gil Blas''."

In ''A Rogue's Life'' by [[Wilkie Collins]] the rogue declares, "I am as even-tempered a rogue as you have met with anywhere since the days of Gil Blas."

[[Edgar Allan Poe]] considered it among "the finest narratives in the world".<ref>[https://www.eapoe.org/works/stedwood/sw0701.htm Cooper's Wyandotte], ''The Works of Edgar Allan Poe'', New York: Stone and Kimball, vol. VII, 1895, pp. 3–18</ref> Also he mentions the archbishop in ''Gil Blas'' in the short story "[[The Angel of the Odd]]": the angel makes a low bow and departs, wishing, in the language of the archbishop, {{lang|fr|beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus de bon sens}}. (A little happiness and a lot more common sense.)

[[Italo Calvino|Italo Calvino's]] main character in ''[[The Baron in the Trees]]'' reads the book and lends it to a brigand.

''Gil Blas'' is mentioned in [[Thomas Flanagan (writer)|Thomas Flanagan]]'s 1979 novel ''The Year of the French'', in which poet Owen MacCarthy mentions having it with him "on [his] ramblings, years ago". Flanagan uses the book to connect the poor Irish citizens and their French allies in the [[Irish Rebellion of 1798]], illustrating that the Irish may not all be as simple as Arthur Vincent Broome, the loyalist narrator, presumes. This allusion to ''Gil Blas'' also connects the somewhat roguish MacCarthy to the picaresque protagonist Gil Blas.

Chapter 7 of ''[[David Copperfield]]'', by Charles Dickens, relates the story of Gil Blas to Steerforth and Traddles. Poor Traddles' teeth chatter and are overheard by the brutish head master Creakle who goes on to "handsomely flog" Traddles "for disorderly conduct".

[[Charles Dickens]], in ''American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy''," invokes "the mysterious master of Gil Blas" in reference to a pig in New York City.

One of [[Thomas Edison]]'s closest early friends, Milton F. Adams, was referred to as a modern Gil Blas for his life of travel and dissolution as a "tramp operator", roaming from place to place and as far away as Peru as an itinerant [[telegraph operator]].<ref>From chapter IV In the biography ''Edison His Life and Inventions'' by Frank Dyer and Thomas Martin.</ref>

In ''[[The House of the Seven Gables]]'' [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], in his description of Holgrave (chapter XII), says "A romance on the plan of Gil Blas, adapted to American society and manners, would cease to be a romance." His implication is that the normal experiences of a young American, such as Holgrave, are so extraordinary in comparison with those of Gil Blas, that they make the latter's adventures seem ordinary. Hawthorne then writes, "The experience of many individuals among us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal the vicissitudes of the Spaniard's earlier life; while their ultimate success ... may be incomparably higher than any that a novelist would imagine for a hero."

According to [[Vincent Cronin]]'s biography, the first thing that the 15-year-old [[Napoleon]] did on arriving in Paris was to buy a copy of ''Gil Blas''.

In ''[[Two Years Before the Mast]]'' by [[Richard Henry Dana Jr.]], the author describes the passengers aboard his ship the ''Alert'', as it sailed along the California coast in 1836 from Monterey to Santa Barbara. The author writes: "Among our passengers was a young man who was the best representation of a decayed gentleman I had ever seen. He reminded me much of some of the characters in Gil Blas."<ref>Chapter XXVII (p. 232 of [[Harvard Classics]] edition)</ref> Describing Don Juan Bandiniand, he writes: "He was of the aristocracy of the country, his family being of pure Spanish blood, and once of great importance in Mexico ... Don Juan had with him a retainer, who was as much like many of the characters in Gil Blas as his master. He called himself a private secretary, though there was no writing for him to do, and he lived in the steerage with the carpenter and sailmaker."

In the novel ''Confessions of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas'' by [[Charles Lever]], the eponymous hero of the title states he has not only read ''Gil Blas'', but also knows it almost by heart.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lever |first=Charles James |author-link=Charles Lever
|title=Confessions of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas
|chapter=A First Step on Life's Ladder
|publisher=Little, Brown, and Company |publication-place=Boston
|publication-date=1913 |orig-date=1849
|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32060
}}</ref>

''Gil Blas'' was the name of a nationalist Brazilian literary journal in 1920, reflecting the Gallic leanings of Brazil's literary scene in the early 20th century and the resonance of the picaresque character in Brazilian culture.

In the fantasy novel ''[[Silverlock]]'' by [[John Myers Myers]], the character Lucius Gil Jones is a composite of Lucius in ''[[The Golden Ass]]'' by [[Apuleius]], Gil Blas, and Tom Jones in ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling]]'' by [[Henry Fielding]].

In ''The Social History of Bourbon'' (1963), [[Gerald Carson (writer)|Gerald Carson]] notes that the education of young men in [[Antebellum South|antebellum]] Kentucky meant they "read law with the local judge, studied medicine at the Louisville Medical Institute, wrote stilted verses in the neoclassical fashion, read ''Gil Blas'' and books on surveying, farming, and distilling".<ref>{{cite book|author=Gerald Carson|author-link=Gerald Carson (writer)|title=The Social History of Bourbon: An Unhurried Account of Our Star Spangled American Drink|page=55|publisher=Dodd, Mead|year=1963|isbn=9788400072599}}</ref>

In his 1954 novel ''[[A Fable]]'', [[William Faulkner]] has General of Division Gragnon obsessively reading ''Gil Blas'' during his house arrest after his front-line division mutinies. A member of his staff had died protecting a car with prominent visitors by forcing them to stop short of where an incoming shell landed. When he was arrested, Gragnon remembered this officer telling him about ''Gil Blas'' and located the book among his effects.

In his preface to ''[[The Ambassadors]]'', [[Henry James]] mentions the narration methods of ''Gil Blas'' and ''David Copperfield'' as alternatives to the narrative technique he himself used in ''The Ambassadors''.

[[Washington Irving]]'s ''A Tour on the Prairies'' includes a section describing a wanderer on the American prairie frontier, whom he refers to as a "Gil Blas of the frontier".<ref>{{cite book|author=[[Washington Irving]]|title=A Tour on the Prairies|location=Paris|publisher=Baudry's European Library|year=1835|url=https://archive.org/details/atouronprairies02irvigoog/page/n19|via=[[Internet Archive]]|page=7}}</ref>

[[Thomas Jefferson]] included ''Gil Blas'' in his list of recommendations to Robert Skipwith of books for a general personal library.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jefferson|first=Thomas|author-link=Thomas Jefferson|title=A Virginia Gentleman's Library|date=1952|chapter=Letter written August 3, 1771|publisher=Colonial Williamsburg|location=Williamsburg, Virginia|page=14|url=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0056}}</ref>

According to [[Arthur Schopenhauer|Schopenhauer]], it is one of the few novels showing "what is really going on in the world".<ref>[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11945/pg11945-images.html ''The Essays of Arthur Schopenahuer''] {{page number needed|date=August 2024}}</ref>

In ''O homem que sabia javanês'',<ref>{{cite web |url=https://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/O_homem_que_sabia_javan%C3%AAs |title=O homem que sabia javanês |language=pt |via=[[Wikisource]] |date=2022-07-18 |access-date=2022-08-04}}</ref> a short story by [[Lima Barreto]], written in 1911 and published by ''Gazeta da Tarde'', an allusion is made between the characters of Castelo and Gil Blas.

In chapter 5 of his ''Education of a Wandering Man'', [[Louis L'Amour]] describes his "good fortune" in finding an abandoned copy of ''Gil Blas'' in a laundry room. He later reads it by firelight in the camp where he worked skinning dead cattle "not once but twice, on the plains of West Texas."

In the 1892 novel ''Ask Mama'' published by Bradbury, Agnew & Co. the mule of Gil Blas is referred to when, referring to his horses, "as a buyer he [Major Yammerton] made them out to be all faults, as a seller when they suddenly seemed to become the paragons of perfection".

==Operatic adaptations==
An episode from ''Gil Blas'' was the basis of two separate French operas in the 1790s, both with the same title: ''[[La caverne]]'' (1793) by [[Jean-François Le Sueur|Le Sueur]] and ''[[La caverne (Méhul)|La caverne]]'' by [[Étienne Méhul|Méhul]] (1795).

''Gil Blas'' was the title of a five-act farcical opera by [[John Hamilton Reynolds]] adapting Lesage's novel, perhaps assisted by [[Thomas Hood]], and first performed on 1 August 1822. It was famously five hours long on its first night at the [[Royal Strand Theatre]] on the [[Strand, London|Strand]], and was then cut to three acts and the title changed to ''The Youthful Days of Gil Blas''. According to Reynolds's biographer, Leonidas M. Jones, no text of the play survives.<ref>Leonidas M. Jones, ''The Life of John Hamilton Reynolds'' (University of New England Press, 1984), p. 243.</ref>

{{ill|Théophile Semet|fr}} composed a comic opera on ''Gil Blas'' in five acts (1860).<ref>{{IMSLP|work=Gil-Blas (Semet, Théophile)|cname=''Gil-Blas'' (Théophile Semet)}}</ref> [[Alphons Czibulka]] composed ''Gil Blas von Santillana'', with libretto by [[F. Zell]] and [[Moritz West]]. It was first performed in 1889.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://musicaltheatreguide.com/composers/czibulka/alphons_czibilka.htm|title = Alphons Czibulka – Guide to Musical Theatre – Operetta}}</ref>

==Film adaptation==
In 1956 the film ''[[The Adventures of Gil Blas]]'' was released. A French-Spanish co-production it was directed by [[René Jolivet]] and [[Ricardo Muñoz Suay]] and starred [[Georges Marchal]] as Gil Blas.

==Other adaptations==

[[Lionel Stevenson]] identified [[Robert Browning]] as the translator of one English translation of ''Gil Blas'' which featured a partial [[interlinear gloss|word-by-word interlinear translation]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Stevenson |first=Lionel |author-link=Lionel Stevenson |date=1927 |title=A French Text-Book by Robert Browning |journal=[[Modern Language Notes]]|volume=42 |issue=5 |pages=299–305 |doi=10.2307/2914383 |jstor=2914383}}</ref>

==Publication history==
*''Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane'', Books 1–6 (1715)
*''Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane'', Books 7–9 (1724)
*''Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane'', Books 10–12 (1735)
*''Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane'', London, M. M. Lackington, Allen & Co 1798, 4 volumes

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/alain-rene-lesage/gil-blas/tobias-smollett}}
* {{librivox book | title=The Adventures of Gil Blas de Santillane| author=lesage}}
* [https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/view_as/grid/search/keyword:gil-blas Paintings about ''Gil Blas''] displayed at British public galleries

{{Alain-René Lesage}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1715 novels]]
[[Category:1724 novels]]
[[Category:1735 novels]]
[[Category:18th-century French novels]]
[[Category:French picaresque novels]]
[[Category:French novels adapted into operas]]
[[Category:Literary characters introduced in 1715|Blas, Gil]]
[[Category:Works by Alain-René Lesage]]