%0 Journal Article
%T Georges du Roy’s Divorce in Guy de Maupassant Novel Bel-Ami in the Context of French Divorce Legislation Changes in the Second Half of the 19th Century
%A Bańczyk, Alicja
%J Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis
%V 2021
%R 10.4467/20843933ST.21.014.14004
%N Volume 16, Issue 3
%P 197-210
%K Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant, law and literature, divorce in literature
%@ 1897-3035
%D 2021
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/studia-litteraria-uic/article/rozwod-georgesa-du-roy-w-bel-ami-guy-de-maupassanta-w-kontekscie-zmian-we-francuskim-ustawodawstwie-rozwodowym-drugiej-polowy-xix-wieku
%X Fitting into the current law and literature movement, the article focuses on the literary depiction of changes within divorce proceedings in nineteenth-century France based on Guy de Maupassant’s novel Bel-Ami. Written in 1885, the book depicts, in a highly realistic manner, fault-based divorce proceedings at the time of its creation. In the introduction, I briefly touch upon the evolution of the French divorce proceedings throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its final outcome: the legalisation of a dissolution of marriage in 1884. The article attempts to answer the question how that revolutionary change of the divorce law influenced the novel’s content and how Guy de Maupassant depicted the dissolution of marriage in his work, and to verify if this depiction reflects legal reality.