Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists written by Michael Bell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-14 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of 25 major European novelists from Cervantes to Kundera, highlighting their contributions to the genre.

Download or read book The Misfit of the Family written by Michael Lucey and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-25 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In more than ninety novels and novellas, Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) created a universe teeming with over two thousand characters. The Misfit of the Family reveals how Balzac, in imagining the dense, vividly rendered social world of his novels, used his writing as a powerful means to understand and analyze—as well as represent—a range of forms of sexuality. Moving away from the many psychoanalytic approaches to the novelist's work, Michael Lucey contends that in order to grasp the full complexity with which sexuality was understood by Balzac, it is necessary to appreciate how he conceived of its relation to family, history, economics, law, and all the many structures within which sexualities take form. The Misfit of the Family is a compelling argument that Balzac must be taken seriously as a major inventor and purveyor of new tools for analyzing connections between the sexual and the social. Lucey’s account of the novelist’s deployment of "sexual misfits" to impel a wide range of his most canonical works—Cousin Pons, Cousin Bette, Eugenie Grandet, Lost Illusions, The Girl with the Golden Eyes—demonstrates how even the flexible umbrella term "queer" barely covers the enormous diversity of erotic and social behaviors of his characters. Lucey draws on the thinking of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu and engages the work of critics of nineteenth-century French fiction, including Naomi Schor, D. A. Miller, Franco Moretti, and others. His reflections on Proust as Balzac’s most cannily attentive reader suggest how the lines of social and erotic force he locates in Balzac’s work continued to manifest themselves in twentieth-century writing and society.

Download or read book Balzac s Lives written by Peter Brooks and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Thirteen written by Honore de Balzac and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2014-06-01 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series of three novellas is unified by an overarching motif: in all three tales, a mysterious secret society known as The Thirteen is at work behind the scenes. The men in the group have pledged eternal loyalty to each other, and if any member ever finds himself in peril, it is the sworn duty of the others to come to his aid. Honore de Balzac uses this premise as a device to explore a wide range of topics, including clashes between different classes of society, doomed romances, and intrigue driven by greed.

Download or read book La Com die Humaine written by Honoré de Balzac and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Esther Happy written by Honoré de Balzac and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2021-04-10 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Esther Happy" is one of the four parts of the serial novel, "The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans (also known as, "A Harlot High and Low,") a novel by French novelist Honoré de Balzac. Lucien de Rubempré and Carlos Herrera (Vautrin) have made a pact, in which Lucien will arrive at success in Paris if he agrees to follow Vautrin's instructions blindly. Esther van Gobseck throws a wrench into Vautrin's best-laid plans, however, because Lucien falls in love with her and she with him. One night, however, the incredibly rich banker Baron de Nucingen spots Esther and falls deeply in love with her. When Vautrin realizes that Nucingen's obsession is with Esther, he decides to use her power as a tool to help advance Lucien by extrapolating the maximum amount of money from the Baron as possible. Something that will result in a series of tragic results...

Download or read book The Fatal Skin written by Honoré de Balzac and published by Signet Classics. This book was released on 1949 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in early 19th-century Paris, it 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. Bent on killing himself by throwing himself into the Seine after losing his shirt at the gaming tables, Raphael de Valentin, the romanticised, doomed young hero of Balzac's early novel, 'La Peau de chagrin' (1831), turns into an antiques shop to while away the hours till darkness (when he can be sure not to be rescued). There he finds himself in an emporium of civilisation's treasures, from all over the world and in every marvellous material, executed to the highest degree of human art. Eventually, the eerie, wizened keeper appears and shows Valentin the magic skin which gives the novel its title. It's the hide of a wild ass and, like the ring of the Nibelungen, has the power to grant its owner every wish. But in return it will take possession of Valentin, body and soul. Every time it performs, it will shrink and Valentin's life will shorten in accord.

Download or read book Mercadet A Comedy In Three Acts written by Honore de Balzac and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: Mercadet: A Comedy In Three Acts by Honore de Balzac

Download or read book Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau written by Honoré de Balzac and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Colonel Chabert written by Honoré de Balzac and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hero of the Napoleonic Wars, supposedly killed in battle, returns after a long convalescence to find his wife remarried and his pension gone. Colonel Chabert hires a lawyer to obtain justice, but the lawyer is playing a double game--unknown to the colonel he is working for the wife.

Download or read book Balzac written by Frederick Lawton and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The 30 Year Old Woman written by Honore De Balzac and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-04-07 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How even a desired and socially brilliant marriage can lead a young girl to misfortune. How a young mother resists an adulterous passion, but sinks into grief. How a young woman in all the splendour of her maturity rediscovers the taste for love and then finds herself punished in the tragic fate of her own children. That's the plot of the novel.

Download or read book A Passion in the Desert written by Honoré de Balzac and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Passion in the Desert (1830) is a short story by French author Honoré de Balzac. Written as part of his La Comédie humaine sequence, A Passion in the Desert is a frequently anthologized work of short fiction that explores humanity’s relationship with nature as well as the effects of conquest and colonization. The story was loosely adapted into a 1997 feature film and remains one of Balzac’s most acclaimed works. The story’s frame narrative begins after a man and woman attend a menagerie in Paris. The woman is horrified by what she has seen: a man working with a tamed hyena as though it were human. Her companion, the story’s narrator, reveals his experience in these matters, and agrees to tell her a tale reported to him by a crippled veteran of Napoleon’s conquests. This soldier, he explains, was captured by Ottoman forces during the emperor’s campaign in Egypt. Managing to escape, he fled across the desert on horseback toward the safety of the Nile. When his horse died from exhaustion, he continued on foot and discovered, in the damp protection of a cave, a sleeping panther. Terrified at first, he slowly came to an understanding with the creature, learning to live at her side without angering her or falling prey to her animal hunger. One day, however, emerging from the cave to admire an eagle in flight, he is struck with the feeling that the panther had become jealous, and devises a plan to escape her inevitable wrath. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Honoré de Balzac’s A Passion in the Desert is a classic of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Download or read book Honor de Balzac in Twenty five Volumes written by Honoré de Balzac and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Woman of Thirty written by Honoré de Balzac and published by Lindhardt og Ringhof. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont is a tall, slender and very handsome man in his early thirties. When young Julie lays her eyes on Victor, she is fascinated by the charming man. Julie’s father, however, is not so thrilled about Victor – he thinks Julie has fallen in love with her own daydream. Julie ignores her father’s comments, and Victor and Julie end up marrying – but the marriage is not anything like Julie expected it to be. Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French writer. He was born in Tours, but moved to Paris when he was a teenager. The best known works of his include ‘Father Goriot’ and ‘Cousin Bette’. Balzac’s writing style is realistic, and he also wrote plays. Besides writing he worked as a journalist and critic.

Download or read book The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature written by Brian Nelson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging, highly accessible and informative introduction to French literature from the Middle Ages to the present.

Download or read book The Physiology of Marriage and Pierre Grassou written by Honore De Balzac and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the husband who can now sleep quietly beside his young and pretty consort, after learning that at least three bachelors are on the lookout to rob him; that, if they have not already encroached upon his property, they regard his bride as their legitimate prey, who, sooner or later, will fall victim to them, whether by force, by ruse, or by her own free will, and that it is impossible that, some day, they will not be victorious!-from "Meditation IV: On the Virtuous Woman""I am not deep," Honor de Balzac is reported have quipped, "but very wide." His satiric width is on full display in The Physiology of Marriage, a sociological essay on matrimony masquerading as a novel... or is it a novel masquerading as a sociological essay on matrimony? Bold and cynical-or so his contemporaries perceived-this 1829 work is startling modern in its spirit and approach, a dryly witty expose of the underlying tensions of the enduring battle of the sexes.Also in this volume: Balzac's short tale "Pierre Grassou," an 1840 story about a terrible painter who uses marriage to the daughter of a wealthy art collector as a stepping stone to success.French writer HONOR DE BALZAC (1799-1850) is generally credited with the invention of realism in fiction, and his novels are considered among the greatest ever written in any language. His grand La Com die Humaine consists of a vast array of novels and short stories depicting French society of his time, among them Louis Lambert (1832), Les Illusions perdues (1837), and La Cousine Bette (1847).