Guy de Maupassant in the context of "Protégé"

Bonifacio (/ˌboʊniˈfɑːtʃoʊ/ BOH-nee-FAH-choh, Italian: [boniˈfaːtʃo], French: [bɔnifasjo]; Corsican: Bunifaziu [buniˈfatsju], Bonifaziu [bɔniˈfatsju], or Bonifaciu [bɔniˈfatʃu]; Bonifacino: Bunifazziu; Gallurese: Bunifaciu) is a commune in the southern tip of the island of Corsica, in the French department of Corse-du-Sud.

Bonifacio is the setting of Guy de Maupassant's short story "A Vendetta".

Gustave Flaubert (UK: /ˈfloʊbɛər/ FLOH-bair, US: /floʊˈbɛər/ floh-BAIR; French: [ɡystav flobɛʁ]; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (21 April 1828 – 5 March 1893) was a French historian, critic and philosopher. He was the chief theoretical influence on French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. Taine is also remembered for his attempts to provide a scientific account of literature.

Taine had a profound effect on French literature; Maurice Baring wrote in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica that "the tone which pervades the works of Zola, Bourget and Maupassant can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine's." Out of the trauma of 1871, Taine has been said by one scholar to have "forged the architectural structure of modern French right-wing historiography."

Le Gaulois (French: [lə ɡolwa]) was a French daily newspaper, founded in 1868 by Edmond Tarbé and Henry de Pène. After a printing stoppage, it was revived by Arthur Meyer in 1882 with notable collaborators Paul Bourget, Alfred Grévin, Abel Hermant, and Ernest Daudet. Among its many famous contributing editors was Guy de Maupassant. Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera was first published as a serialization in its pages between September 1909 and January 1910.

The paper was taken over by Le Figaro in 1929.

"A Vendetta" (French: Une vendetta) is a short story by French writer Guy de Maupassant (1799-1893), first published in 1824 in the newspaper Le Gaulois, and included in his 1885 collection Contes du jour et de la nuit (fr) (Tales of Day and Night).

Les Soirées de Médan ("Evenings at Médan") is a collection of six short stories by six different writers associated with Naturalism, first published in 1880. All the stories concern the Franco-Prussian War. The contents of the book are as follows:

• L'Attaque du moulin ("The Attack on the Mill") by Émile Zola
• Boule de Suif ("Ball of Tallow") by Guy de Maupassant
• Sac au dos ("Backpack") by Joris-Karl Huysmans
• La Saignée ("Bloodshed") by Henry Céard
• L'Affaire du Grand 7 ("The Affair of the Great 7") by Léon Hennique
• Après la bataille ("After the Battle") by Paul Alexis

The collection took its title from Zola's house at Médan, near Paris, where writers would meet for literary dinners. The authors were often referred to collectively as the "Médan group". The aim of the collection was to promote the ideals of Naturalism, by treating the events of the Franco-Prussian War in a realistic and often unheroic way, in contrast to officially approved patriotic views of the war.