UA Will Host French Lecturer Who Will Recount Life of George Sand

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – French specialist, Dr. Damien Zanone, from the University Stendhal in Grenoble, France, will give a lecture on Dec. 11 at 1 p.m. in the Anderson Room of the Ferguson Center on The University of Alabama campus.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Zanone is a specialist on George Sand and is the editor of two autobiographical volumes called “Histoire de ma vie” (Paris: Flammarion, 2001).

Zanone’s lecture will be held in French, although he will take questions in English. This lecture will be of particular interest to those interested in 19th century French literature, culture and society, as well as in feminism and autobiography.

Sand was born in Paris and became a French romantic writer who was noted for her numerous romances with such prominent figures as Alfred de Musset and Frédéric Chopin. Widespread critical attention accompanied the publication of most of Sand’s novels including “INDIANA,” a story, published in 1832, of a naive, love-starved woman abused by her much older husband and deceived by a selfish seducer. Sand’s works influenced among others Fedor Dostoevskii, Lev (Leo) Tolstoi, Gustave Flaubert, and Marcel Proust. In 1842, the English critic George Henry Lewes wrote that Sand was “’the most remarkable writer of the present century.”