Literature riddle

[skaternut]

Hi. I'm new and I just now signed up because I have a question. My comp. teacher is doing a scavenger hunt until the end of school where she gives us a question every week and we have to get them right to stay in the race. I don't know alot about literatue so I was hoping you guys could help me out with this weeks question.

Here's the question:

As a young man, this author would have opposed the ideals of the french revolution because he promoted non-violent protests. His serialized epic, published during the same decade as our own civil war, takes place during an invasion with fiery consequences. Who was the author, what was the original title of his text, and why did it change?

I did some research and I think its Tolstoy. He wrote War and peace, a serialized epice in the 1860s - same decade as the civil war and it was about the napoleonic war, which ties in to the French revolution thing. If i did my research right the original title was Vonya i mir. Now i just need to know why it changed. I thought it was because they translated it but that sounds too easy.
If anyone has any info, answers or finds any flaws in my research please let me know!!!!!!

Thanks for all you help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Quark]

Yeah, War and Peace is a good answer. It was written between 1863 and 1869, and Tolstoy was an advocate of non-violent change. Good job... Now what did you need me for?

[skaternut]

Yeah, War and Peace is a good answer. It was written between 1863 and 1869, and Tolstoy was an advocate of non-violent change. Good job... Now what did you need me for?

I needed to make sure that that was right and also to see if anyone knew why the original title of his text changed.

[Nick Rubashov]

I found this on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace), the name issue may just deal with a translation problem.


The Russian words for "peace" (pre-1918: "миръ" ) and "world" (pre-1918: "міръ", including "world" in the sense of "secular society"; see mir (social)) are homonyms and since the 1918 reforms have been spelled identically, which led to an urban legend in the Soviet Union saying that the original manuscript was called "Война и міръ" (so the novel's title would be correctly translated as "War and the World" or "War and Society").[1] However, Tolstoy himself translated the title into French as "La guerre et la paix" ("War and Peace"). The confusion has been promoted by the popular Soviet TV quiz show Chto? Gde? Kogda? (Что? Где? Когда? - What? Where? When?), which in 1982 presented as a correct answer the "society" variant, based on a 1913 edition of "War and Peace" with a misprint in a single page. This episode was repeated in 2000, which refuelled the legend.

In contrast, there is also a (unrelated) poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky called "Война и міръ" (i.e. "міръ" as "society"), written in 1916.

[Stassia]

Voyna I Mir (Russian) translates to War and Peace into English. I would know seeing as I am Russian. Well done though.

[PeterL]

It might be Jules Verne.

[kathycf]

I thought it might be A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Dickens published his twelfth novel, A Tale of Two Cities, in his own literary journal called All the Year Round in weekly installments from April to November of 1859. He got the germ of the idea for the novel from a play by Wilkie Collins called The Frozen Deep, in which he played the self-sacrificing hero. Dickens decided to transplant the emotive issue of self-sacrifice onto the time period of the French Revolution, and he modeled Sydney Carton after Collins's hero. To ensure that his novel would be as historically accurate as possible, Dickens pored over his friend Thomas Carlyle's classic history of the French Revolution.

A Tale of Two Cities is in part a historical novel, which sets it apart from Dickens's other work. Although Barnaby Rudge deals with the Gordon Riots in England, it discusses them only peripherally. In A Tale of Two Cities Dickens narrates aspects of a major historical event, the French Revolution. Because Dickens focuses on the effect of political upheaval more than on character development and wit, A Tale of Two Cities feels atypical among readers who know his other novels, and critics continue to debate its relative place in the English literary canon.
The American Civil war is generally considered to have started in 1861, so the dates are not exact, but still quite close.

[skaternut]

We got the answer today. It was the Tolstoy stuff. Also, the thing from wikipedia was right too. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!