Kerouacs legacy in West Chinnock by J.Polkest

Memoirs of a Breton peasant reads like an adventure novel and bristles with the curiosity and vigour of an alert, opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society.Most records from nineteenth century Britanny are the chronicles of or by the middle and upper classes - the formally educated, the advantaged.Déguignet is unique not only for being a literate peasant, but also for his skepticism regarding the church; his interest in science,astronomy. and the languages and for his keen - often caustic - observations of the world and people around him. Born in 1834 near Quimper, in Brittany, to landless farmers, the young Déguignet was sent out several times a week to beg for the families food. After spending some of his adolescent years as a cowherd and a domestic speaking only Breton, he left the province as a soldier, avid for knowledge of the vast world.He taught himself Latin, then French, then Italian and Spanish; he read history and philosophy and politics and literature. He was sent to fight in the Crimean war, to attend at Emporer Napoleon lll's coronation ceremony, to support Italy's liberation struggle, and to defend the hapless French puppet emporer Maximillan in Mexico, he came home to live as a model farmer, a tabaconist, falling back into dire poverty.Throughout this tale Déguignet's freethinking almost anarchic views put him ahead of his time and often sadly out of step with his fellows. Why include this here? To draw together the idea about location, creativity and culture arising from many disparate parts.