Zoé Oldenbourg
Template:Family name hatnoteTemplate:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Script error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Zoé Oldenbourg (Template:Langx; 31 March 1916[1] – 8 November 2002)[2] was a Russian-born French popular historian and novelist who specialized in medieval French history, in particular the Crusades and Cathars.
Life
She was born in Petrograd, Russia into a family of scholars and historians. Her father Sergei was a journalist and historian, her mother Ada Starynkevich was a mathematician, and her grandfather Sergei was the permanent secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.[3] Her early childhood was spent among the privations of the Russian revolutionary period and the first years of communism. Her father fled the country and established himself as a journalist in Paris.
With her family, she emigrated to Paris in 1925 at the age of nine and graduated from the Template:Ill in 1934 with her Script error: No such module "Lang". diploma. She went on to study at the Sorbonne and then she studied painting at the Académie Ranson. In 1938 she spent a year in England[4] and studied theology. During World War II she supported herself by hand-painting scarves.
She was encouraged by her father to write and she completed her first work, a novel, Argile et cendres in 1946. Although she wrote her first works in Russian, as an adult she wrote almost exclusively in French.[5]
She married Heinric Idalovici in 1948[6] and had two children, Olaf and Marie-Agathe.[7]
Work
She combined a high level of scholarship with a deep feeling for the Middle Ages in her historical novels. Her first novel, The World is Not Enough, offered a panoramic view of the twelfth century. Her second, The Cornerstone, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in America. Other works include The Awakened, The Chains of Love, Massacre at Montsegur, Destiny of Fire, Cities of the Flesh, and Catherine the Great, a Literary Guild selection. In The Crusades, Zoe Oldenbourg returned to writing about the Middle Ages.[8]
Awards
She won the Prix Femina for her 1953 novel La Pierre angulaire.
Works
Fiction
- Argile et cendres (1946), published in English as The World is Not Enough (translated by Willard A. Trask).
- La Pierre angulaire (1953), published in English as The Corner-stone (translated by Edward Hyams).
- Réveillés de la vie (1956), published in English as The Awakened (translated by Edward Hyams).
- Les Irréductibles (1958), published in English as The Chains of Love (translated by Michael Bullock).
- Les Brûlés (1960), published in English as Destiny of Fire (translated by Peter Green).
- Les Cités charnelles, ou L'Histoire de Roger de Montbrun (1961), published in English as Cities of the Flesh, or The Story of Roger de Montbrun (translated by Anne Carter).
- Catherine de Russie (1966), published in English as Catherine the Great (translated by Anne Carter).
- La Joie des pauvres (1970), published in English as The Heirs of the Kingdom (translated by Anne Carter).
- La Joie-souffrance (1980).
- Le Procès du rêve (1982).
- Les Amours égarées (1987).
- Déguisements (1989), short stories.
Non-fiction
- Le Bûcher de Montségur, 16 mars 1244 (1959), published in English as Massacre at Montségur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade (translated by Peter Green).
- Les Croisades (1965), published in English as The Crusades (translated by Anne Carter).
- Saint Bernard (1970), includes a selection of texts on Saint Bernard by Abélard, Pierre le Vénérable, Geoffroi de Clairvaux, Bérenger de Poitiers and Bossuet.
- L'Épopée des cathédrales (1972).
- Que vous a donc fait Israël ? (1974).
- Visages d'un autoportrait (1977), autobiography.
- Que nous est Hécube ?, ou Un plaidoyer pour l'humain (1984).
Plays
- L'Évêque et la vieille dame, ou La Belle-mère de Peytavi Borsier, pièce en dix tableaux et un prologue (1983).
- Aliénor, pièce en quatre tableaux (1992).
References
<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />
- ↑ Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century: O to Z, Volume 3 (F. Ungar, 1971: Template:ISBN), p. 11.
- ↑ Histoires littéraires: Revue trimestrielle consacrée à la littérature française des XIXème et XXème siècles 4/13-14 (2003): 124.
- ↑ Christiane P. Makward and Madeleine Cottenet-Hage, Dictionnaire littéraire des femmes de langue française (KARTHALA Editions, 1996: Template:ISBN), p. 448.
- ↑ Dictionnaire littéraire... October 2010
- ↑ Lucille Frackman Becker, Twentieth-Century French Women Novelists (Twayne Publishers, 1989: Template:ISBN), p. 55.
- ↑ Cf. Wilson, p.936
- ↑ European Biographical Directory, vol. 2 (Editions Database, 1991), p. 1627.
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Further reading
- Steinberg, Theodore L., "The Use and Abuse of Medieval History: Four Contemporary Novelists and the First Crusade", Studies in Medievalism, II.1 (Fall 1982), pp. 77–93.
- Wilson, Katharina M., (editor), An Encyclopedia of continental women writers, New York : Garland Pub., 1991. Template:ISBN. Cf. entry for Zoé Oldenbourg, Volume 1, pp.935–937.
