Balzac (French Edition)

His sardonic humour saves his more pessimistic stories from being uniformly dark, and he had a real gift for comedy.

Balzac is regarded as the creator of realism in the novel. He is also acknowledged as having helped to establish the technique of the traditional novel, in which consequent and logically determined events are narrated by an all-seeing observer the omniscient narrator and characters are coherently presented. He was bent on illustrating the relation between cause and effect , between social background and character.

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Stendhal and Balzac, on the other hand, admit no dreams and present life in a grim nakedness without poetic drapery. Dostoyevsky did not have to toil long in obscurity. No sooner had he written his first novella, Bednyye lyudi ; Poor Folk , than he…. Benassis is a compassionate and conscientious physician who ministers to the psychological and…. Background and early life influence on Dostoyevsky In Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

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A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage. It gave rise to the French expression " Rastignac ", a social climber willing to use any means to better his situation.

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By one estimate, almost three-quarters of Parisians did not make the — francs a year required for a minimal standard of living. Individuals willing to adapt themselves to the rules of this new society could sometimes ascend into its upper echelons from modest backgrounds, much to the distaste of the established wealthy class. In he published Les Chouans , the first novel to which he signed his own name; this was followed by Louis Lambert , Le Colonel Chabert , and La Peau de chagrin One of these aspects which fascinated Balzac was the life of crime.

Balzac met Vidocq in April , and used him as a model for a character named Vautrin he was planning for an upcoming novel. In the summer of Balzac began to work on a tragic story about a father who is rejected by his daughters. His journal records several undated lines about the plot: It was released as a novel in March by the publishing house of Werdet, who also published the second edition in May. A much-revised third edition was published in by Charpentier. Other characters were changed in a similar fashion. It was his first structured use of recurring characters, a practice whose depth and rigor came to characterize his novels.

The old man is ridiculed frequently by the other boarders, who soon learn that he has bankrupted himself to support his two well-married daughters. Rastignac, who moved to Paris from the south of France, becomes attracted to the upper class. Rastignac endears himself to one of Goriot's daughters, Delphine, after extracting money from his own already-poor family. Vautrin, meanwhile, tries to convince Rastignac to pursue an unmarried woman named Victorine, whose family fortune is blocked only by her brother.

He offers to clear the way for Rastignac by having the brother killed in a duel. Rastignac refuses to go along with the plot, balking at the idea of having someone killed to acquire their wealth, but he takes note of Vautrin's machinations. This is a lesson in the harsh realities of high society. Before long, the boarders learn that police are seeking Vautrin, revealed to be a master criminal nicknamed Trompe-la-Mort "Cheater of Death". Vautrin arranges for a friend to kill Victorine's brother, in the meantime, and is captured by the police.

Goriot, supportive of Rastignac's interest in his daughter and furious with her husband's tyrannical control over her, finds himself unable to help.

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When his other daughter, Anastasie, informs him that she has been selling off her husband's family jewelry to pay her lover's debts, the old man is overcome with grief at his own impotence and suffers a stroke. Delphine does not visit Goriot as he lies on his deathbed, and Anastasie arrives too late, only once he has lost consciousness. Before dying, Goriot rages about their disrespect toward him. His funeral is attended only by Rastignac, a servant named Christophe, and two paid mourners.

Goriot's daughters, rather than being present at the funeral, send their empty coaches, each bearing their families' respective coat of arms. After the short ceremony, Rastignac turns to face Paris as the lights of evening begin to appear. He sets out to dine with Delphine de Nucingen and declares to the city: In Cooper's representations of Native Americans , Balzac saw a human barbarism that survived through attempts at civilization. Scott was also a profound influence on Balzac, particularly in his use of real historical events as the backdrop for his novels. Although the novel is often referred to as "a mystery", [18] it is not an example of whodunit or detective fiction.

Instead, the central puzzles are the origins of suffering and the motivations of unusual behavior. Characters appear in fragments, with brief scenes providing small clues about their identity. As an everyman , he is initially repulsed by the gruesome realities beneath society's gilded surfaces; eventually, however, he embraces them.

In some ways this mirrors Balzac's own social education, reflecting the distaste he acquired for the law after studying it for three years.

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Rastignac's appearance shows, for the first time in Balzac's fiction, a novel-length backstory that illuminates and develops a returning character. It enabled a depth of characterization that went beyond simple narration or dialogue. Detective novelist Arthur Conan Doyle said that he never tried to read Balzac, because he "did not know where to begin". Balzac uses meticulous, abundant detail to describe the Maison Vauquer, its inhabitants, and the world around them; this technique gave rise to his title as the father of the realist novel. At the start of the novel, Balzac declares in English: The Charter of granted by King Louis XVIII had established a "legal country" which allowed only a small group of the nation's most wealthy men to vote.

We learn to discard other forms of visual entertainment and opt for our own internal vision of this phenomenal genius' work to pass the time in awe, for his style, his composition, his craft as a novelist are all enthralling. From fifteen to twenty minutes of reading every other day, it's easy to make time if only to remain with the author's creation two to three hours at a time, longing for more each time. I have not read all of Balzac's works, probably more like 5, as they were required reading in grad school.

Therefore, I cannot definitively answer to the narrative voice, or to the levels of sexual content or violence, but my answers are to the books I have read. He's a challenging read, but the struggle one might have in getting through one of his novels in French - his style, highly detailed scene description, vocabulary and grammar levels - all come together to make an amazing work of literature. When I saw I could get his complete works for so little for my Kindle, I couldn't pass it up.

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One person found this helpful. This edition is beautifully edited --as important books were printed in France in the early 's. That is the reason why I gave it only 4 stars. Armando Brons, Caracas, Venezuela. However she did it it would have been easier if she had had a Kindle and this wonderful work, but it was This great classic is a bit overwhelming, but it is possible to get great pleasure by just wending one's way through it -- wandering through a fascinating world.

I love classic authors, and Honore de Balzac does not let me down. And I especially love "complete works" of classic authors. If you aren't aware, the book is in its original French language. I threw this Kindle fish back into the Kindle sea. It has no italics, which means you can't tell when Balzac is giving you quotes within quotes, when he is marking a word as slang, or when he is indicating for example that Baron de Nucingen is speaking in his usual heavy German accent.

There's a fair share of typos, too, but the lack of italics is decisive; it's as bad as if three percent of the text were missing. I don,t know if I 'll have time to finish all of the works! See all 34 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.

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