Jurgen

A Comedy of Justice

James Branch Cabell

• Publisher: Start Classics
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781627937986
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

James Branch Cabell's career was short-lived - his works fit neatly within the 1920s literary escapist culture and then quickly declined in popularity as the author veered away from the fantasy niche. In his heyday, Cabell garnered praise from several of his contemporaries such as H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. Lewis even acknowledged Cabell's successful "Jurgen" in his 1930 Nobel Prize address. "Jurgen" is certainly Cabell's most famous novel, published in 1919, and it tells the story of a middle-aged man on a journey through fantastic realms, where he meets and seduces beautiful women of fiction and myth - including the Devil's wife. The book garnered attention as it was charged with obscenity in a case that reached the New York Supreme Court. Cabell and his publisher won the case, and the author was deemed a literary avant garde, who tested conventional social boundaries and opposed the forces of puritanical repression.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Foreword
• 1. Why Jurgen Did the Manly Thing
• 2. Assumption of a Noted Garment
• 3. The Garden between Dawn and Sunrise
• 4. The Dorothy Who Did Not Understand
• 5. Requirements of Bread and Butter
• 6. Showing that Sereda Is Feminine
• 7. Of Compromises on a Wednesday
• 8. Old Toys and a New Shadow
• 9. The Orthodox Rescue of Guenevere
• 10. Pitiful Disguises of Thragnar
• 11. Appearance of the Duke of Logreus
• 12. Excursus of Yolande's Undoing
• 13. Philosophy of Gogyrvan Gawr
• 14. Preliminary Tactics of Duke Jurgen
• 15. Of Compromises in Glathion
• 16. Divers Imbroglios of King Smoit
• 17. About a Cock That Crowed Too Soon
• 18. Why Merlin Talked in Twilight
• 19. The Brown Man with Queer Feet
• 20. Efficacy of Prayer
• 21. How Anaïtis Voyaged
• 22. As to a Veil They Broke
• 23. Shortcomings of Prince Jurgen
• 24. Of Compromises in Cocaigne
• 25. Cantraps of the Master Philologist
• 26. In Time's Hour-Glass
• 27. Vexatious Estate of Queen Helen
• 28. Of Compromises in Leukê
• 29. Concerning Horvendile's Nonsense
• 30. Economics of King Jurgen
• 31. The Fall of Pseudopolis
• 32. Sundry Devices of the Philistines
• 33. Farewell to Chloris
• 34. How Emperor Jurgen Fared Infernally
• 35. What Grandfather Satan Reported
• 36. Why Coth was Contradicted
• 37. Invention of the Lovely Vampire
• 38. As to Applauded Precedents
• 39. Of Compromises in Hell
• 40. The Ascension of Pope Jurgen
• 41. Of Compromises in Heaven
• 42. Twelve That are Fretted Hourly
• 43. Postures before a Shadow
• 44. In the Manager's Office
• 45. The Faith of Guenevere
• 46. The Desire of Anaïtis
• 47. The Vision of Helen
• 48. Candid Opinions of Dame Lisa
• 49. Of the Compromise with Koshchei
• 50. The Moment That Did Not Count