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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
The Count of Monte Cristo is set in 19th century France, in the context of the political upheaval surrounding Napoleon's fall from power in 1814 and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy in which the House of Bourbon returned to power.
The story begins on the very day that Napoleon escaped from his first exile on the island of Elba in 1815, and the political conflict that leads to Dantès's exile is the one between the Bonapartists, who advocated on behalf of Napoleon and in favor of his return, and the Royalists, who staunchly supported a French Monarchy.
The novel unfolds over the ensuing decades in France, Italy, and the Mediterranean, although Dumas's ample use of frame stories and flashbacks for his characters means that sections of the story also unfold as far abroad as the territory of the Ottoman Empire—as with Haydée's flashback. The great many different set pieces—from the great cities of Marseilles and Paris to the country estates of French nobility to, of course, the island stronghold of Sinbad the Sailor on Monte Cristo itself—reflect the vast scope of a story that is itself a composite of many different individual episodes of adventure, thanks to its serial publication format.
At the very end of the novel, almost 30 years after Dantès's original promotion to Captain of the Pharaon, he decides to leave Europe and travel with Haydée into the East.
