Is 'les miserables' plural?

Hello, I'm struggling with my grammar book which is supposed to be easy.

1. /Dans/ quel pays est-ce que tu iras? J'irai en Russie.

I don't understand why preposition for a country is suddenly 'dans'..

2. Dans quelle region est-ce qu'ils habitent? En Provence.

Even it's not about their origin, do you still use 'dans'? not 'à' ?

And finally really confusing one.

3. En 1862, <Les Miserables> sont publies par Victor Hugo.

I thought because 'les miserables' is one work, a proper noun, it won't be considered plural..

So, if the title is a plural word, then it is considered plural?

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Permalink Reply by Erwan on February 2, 2011 at 1:04pm

Hello,

1. and 2. It's the same reason than in English with "In which". We said In which country...

3. In most of the case, it's in singular. With the plural form, it should refer to the different volumes of "Les Misérables".

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Permalink Reply by Mihyun Lee on February 10, 2011 at 1:50pm

I never imagined that 'in which' concept has something to do with this.

Thank you so much, Erwan.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 2, 2011 at 4:20pm

Usually in a case like (3) the work would be treated as singular. If you're in any doubt, though, you can always dodge the issue by writing e.g.:

L'oeuvre Les Misérables a été publiée par Victor Hugo

L'émission Les Nouvelles pour rire a été diffusée le...

etc.

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Permalink Reply by Mihyun Lee on February 10, 2011 at 1:51pm

Ah, thank you for the tip :)

I can't trust my grammar book now on..

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 10, 2011 at 7:37pm

It's possible that your grammar book tells you to make the verb (and any adjectives) agree with the first "content" word of the title. Some authors apparently write e.g.:

Les affaires sont les affaires sont au répertoire de la Comédie Française.

(Example cited by Thomas, Dictionnaire des difficultés de la langue française (1970); no attribution given.

However, if you look at the Wikipedia entry, for example, you'll find:

Les affaires sont les affaires est une comédie en trois actes...

I think this is the usual usage nowadays. Colin (2002), Dictionnaire des difficultés du français, comments that the agreement may or may not be made, but doesn't give any judgement as to which is more common.

Thomas (a largely prescriptive work) goes into great length about various "rules" for agreement with titles. The fact that he felt the need to do so was probably already a sign that such rules didn't generally match actual usage. Not all of his "examples" are attributed to actual publications (though there is an example from Le Monde).

I would generally just stick to making titles masculine singular, or introduce an actual word such as "oeuvre", as I illustrated above.