Balzac's Shorter Fictions
Balzac's Shorter Fictions

Author: Tim Farrant

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2002-02-14

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0191541427

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Balzac's reputation is as a novelist. But short stories make up over half La Comédie humaine, besides scores of other tales and articles. Short forms appear early in Balzac's output, and shape his work throughout his career. Balzac's Shorter Fictions looks at the whole of this corpus, at the nature of short fiction, and at how Balzac's novels developed from his stories - at the links between literary genesis and genre. It explores the roles of short fiction in Balzac's creation, its part in producing effects of virtuality and perspective, and reflects ultimately on the relationship between brevity and length in La Comédie humaine. This, the first complete English-language study of Balzac's work for over forty years, synthesizes recent research on Balzac's practice within the context of modern thought on the author. It is an indispensable book for students and scholars of Balzac, and for all those interested in prose fiction.

Contes Choisis
Contes Choisis

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 1999-07-02

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0486408957

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Considered a founder of the realistic school of fiction, prolific French novelist Honor� de Balzac (1799-1850) wrote in meticulous detail, depicting ordinary and undistinguished lives in tales that nevertheless abounded in melodramatic plots and violent passions. This convenient dual-language volume includes six of Balzac's most highly regarded short stories: "An Episode During the Terror," a deftly told tale contrasting material poverty with spiritual riches; "A Passion in the Desert," inspired by Balzac's interest in the Near East and his fascination with Napoleon; "The Revolutionary Conscript," a critique of provincial life; "The Forsaken Woman," an intriguing study of female psychology and a how-to seduction manual; "The Unknown Masterpiece," which focuses on the conflict between an artist's commitment to his work and his relationship with the woman who loves him; and "Facino Cane," a tale of a destitute blind man's dreams of restoring his former wealth and power. Stanley Appelbaum has provided excellent, line-for-line English translations of the text, as well as an informative introduction and notes related to each story. This superb selection of tales by one of the world's great writers of fiction is sure to delight students and devotees of French language and literature.

An Episode Under the Terror
An Episode Under the Terror

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 8726668181

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A short story ushering the reader into the violent and horrifying events that took place during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. The tale follows an old ex-Carmelite nun who is hiding from Robespierre with abject fear of what tomorrow may bring. Oozing with mystery and suspense, Balzac's allegorical prose is at its very finest here. The French author who, along with Flaubert, is widely regarded to be one of the founding fathers of realism in European fiction. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for his collection of novels and plays, collectively called 'The Human Comedy'. His detailed observation of humanity and realistic depiction of society makes him one of the earliest representatives of realism in Europe. He was a master-creator of complex characters that often found themselves in ambiguous moral dilemmas.

Balzac's Lives
Balzac's Lives

Author: Peter Brooks

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1681374501

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Enter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way. Balzac, more than anyone, invented the nineteenth-century novel, and Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac had invented the nineteenth century. But it was above all through the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters that Balzac dreamed up and made flesh—entrepreneurs, bankers, inventors, industrialists, poets, artists, bohemians of both sexes, journalists, aristocrats, politicians, prostitutes—that he brought to life the dynamic forces of an era that ushered in our own. Peter Brooks’s Balzac’s Lives is a vivid and searching portrait of a great novelist as revealed through the fictional lives he imagined.

The Magic Skin
The Magic Skin

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2018-09-27

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9781727357745

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The Magic Skin (La Peau de chagrin) is set in early 19th-century Paris and tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. Although the novel uses fantastic elements, its main focus is a realistic portrayal of the excesses of bourgeois materialism. Balzac's renowned attention to detail is used to describe a gambling house, an antique shop, a royal banquet, and other locales. He also includes details from his own life as a struggling writer, placing the main character in a home similar to the one he occupied at the start of his literary career. The central theme of La Peau de chagrin is the conflict between desire and longevity. The magic skin represents the owner's life-force, which is depleted through every expression of will, especially when it is employed for the acquisition of power. Ignoring a caution from the shopkeeper who offers him the skin, the protagonist greedily surrounds himself with wealth, only to find himself miserable and decrepit at the story's end. (source: Wikipedia)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Author: Sijie Dai

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 037541309X

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An enchanting literary debut—already an international best-seller. At the height of Mao’s infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for “re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violin—as well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor. But it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed. From within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling.

The Recruit
The Recruit

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 22

ISBN-13: 8726668939

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"The Recruit" is a short story from Balzac’s "Philosophical studies", set during the horrors of the Reign of Terror. An aristocratic mother is desperately awaiting the return of her only son and heir. Focusing on the small-town talk and gossip, Balzac’s story is a melodramatic and hopeful episode on his literary journey. The author becomes the historian and narrator of the situation, creating a memorable and vivid narrative, rich in character portrayal and human emotions. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for his collection of novels and plays, collectively called "The Human Comedy". His detailed observation of humanity and realistic depiction of society makes his one of the earliest representatives of realism in Europe. He was a master-creator of complex characters that often found themselves in ambiguous moral dilemmas.

The Cambridge Companion to Balzac
The Cambridge Companion to Balzac

Author: Owen Heathcote

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-02-02

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1107066476

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Leading specialists shed new light on key narrative and thematic features of the writings of Honoré de Balzac.

Balzac's Omelette
Balzac's Omelette

Author: Anka Muhlstein

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2012-02-14

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1590514742

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“Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are. ”This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein’s erudite and witty book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honoré de Balzac’s The Human Comedy. Balzac uses them as a connecting thread in his novels, showing how food can evoke character, atmosphere, class, and social climbing more suggestively than money, appearances, and other more conventional trappings. Full of surprises and insights, Balzac’s Omelet invites you to taste anew Balzac’s genius as a writer and his deep understanding of the human condition, its ambitions, its flaws, and its cravings.