# Contes cruels

By Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, comte de.

"Contes cruels" by comte de Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam is a collection of 28 short stories published in 1883. These tales satirize the bourgeois materialism and narrow-mindedness of the era, contrasting superficial characters with spiritual idealists. Villiers employs dark irony and sometimes fantastic elements to critique his contemporaries' greed, foolishness, and obsessive rationalism. The stories share a common thread of cruelty, revealing human flaws without pretense while maintaining a tragic poetry that reflects the author's aristocratic idealism and devotion to beauty. (Summary by Project Gutenberg, written by machine.)

- Language: French
- Subjects: Short stories, French; French fiction -- 19th century

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From Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the United States.