Aux jardins enchantés de Cornouaille by François Ménez
"Aux jardins enchantés de Cornouaille" by François Ménez is a collection of regional essays and travel sketches written in the early 20th century. The work paints a vivid, affectionate portrait of Brittany’s Cornouaille, countering gloomy clichés with scenes of color, festivity, and everyday vigor, while weaving history, folklore, geography, and social observation into an evocative cultural panorama. It lingers on landscapes, local costumes, subregional identities, and the life of towns—especially Quimper—highlighting how
character and place shape one another. The opening of the work overturns the somber stereotypes of Brittany popularized by major writers, then celebrates Cornouaille’s renewal: its brighter agriculture, thriving fishing ports, and a joyful, sociable people. Ménez revels in color and movement—ajoncs and bruyères, chapels and rivers, costumes and coiffes—and maps the region’s distinct “pays” (glazik, bigouden, capiste, duik, Poher), sketching their contrasting temperaments. A brief travel vignette along the Blavet leads into a long, nostalgic portrait of Quimper: its river-crossroads geography, centripetal role among varied populations, and partial separation from the Bigouden world. He surveys Quimper’s past from Roman traces and medieval walls through sieges and civic prudence, then turns to the Odet valley’s gentle climate and ring of manors and gardens. An eighteenth‑century tableau follows—salons, letters, music, and lighthearted society around Anne de Pompery—set against the declining clout of bishops, freethinking canons, and lax convents. The section closes on the bourgeois economy (textiles, faience, trade), popular amusements, and the city’s enduring moderation in politics and religion, more attached to order and pleasure than to extremes. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Ménez, François, 1887-1945 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 27024651 |
| Title | Aux jardins enchantés de Cornouaille |
| Original Publication | Paris: Plon, 1927 |
| Credits | Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Language | French |
| LoC Class | DC: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: France, Andorra, Monaco |
| Subject | Brittany (France) -- Description and travel |
| Subject | Ménez, François, 1887-1945 -- Travel -- France -- Cornouaille |
| Subject | Cornouaille (France) -- Civilization |
| Subject | Cornouaille (France) -- Description and travel |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77936 |
| Release Date | Feb 14, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 218 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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