Download Free The Reappearing Characters In Balzacs Comedie Humaine Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Reappearing Characters In Balzacs Comedie Humaine and write the review.

"The purpose of this study is to fix the point of origin of Balzac's technique of reappearing character and to trace its development"--Preface
This book examines the phenomenon of the reappearance of characters in nineteenth-century French fiction. It approaches this from a hitherto unexplored perspective: that of the twin history of the aesthetic notion of originality and the legal notion of literary property. While the reappearance of characters in the works of canonical authors such as Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola is usually seen as a device which transforms the individual works of an author into a coherent whole, this book argues that the unprecedented systematisation of the reappearance of characters in the nineteenth century has to be seen within a wider cultural, economic, and legal context. While fictional characters are seen as original creations by their authors, from a legal point of view they are considered to be ‘ideas’ which are not protected and can be appropriated by anyone. By co-examining the reappearance of characters in the work of canonical authors and their reappearances in unauthorised appropriations, such as stage adaptations and sequels, this book discusses a series of issues that have shaped our understanding of authorship, originality, and property.
The Bureaucrats (Les Employes) stands out in Balzac's immense Human Comedy by concentrating precisely and penetratingly on a distinctive "modern" institution: France's state bureaucracy. Rabourdin, aided by his unscrupulous wife, attempts to reorganize and streamline the entire system. Rabourdin's plan will halve the government's size while doubling its revenue. When the plan is leaked, Rabourdin's rival—an utter incompetent—gains the overwhelming support of the frightened and desperate body of low-ranking functionaries. The novel contains the recognizable themes of Balzac's work: obsessive ambition, conspiracy and human pettiness, and a melodramatic struggle between the social good and the evils of folly and stupidity. It is also an unusual, dramatized analysis of a developing political institution and its role in shaping social class and mentality.
This is the first study of Balzac's work to examine theatre in La Comédie humaine both as a theme in itself and for its influence on Balzac's techniques and modes of presentation in his novels, and to demonstrate the symbiotic influence of novel and stage on Balzac's work as a playwright and novelist. It will be of interest not only to students of Balzac, but also to students of nineteenth-century theatre and history. The introduction gives an account of Balzac's experience of the theatre; the first three chapters examine the historicity of Balzac's portrayal of the theatre world and how this portrayal serves his wider narrative purpose; the two following chapters demonstrate how and why Balzac relies on the theatre to provide a rich tissue of metaphor and bank of expressive devices with which to communicate his critique of society; finally the work shows how Balzac succeeded in bringing to the stage the same scrutiny of the capitalist ethos which underpins La Comédie humaine. An index of references to playwrights, plays, actors and stage characters in La Comédie humaine is given in an appendix.
A new annotated translation of the keystone of Balzac’s Comédie Humaine—a sweeping narrative of corrupted idealism in a cynical urban milieu Lost Illusions is an essential text within Balzac’s Comédie Humaine, his sprawling, interconnected fictional portrait of French society in the 1820s and 1830s comprising nearly one hundred novels and short stories. This novel, published in three parts between 1837 and 1843, tells the story of Lucien de Rubempré, a talented young poet who leaves behind a scandalous provincial life for the shallow, corrupt, and cynical vortex of modernity that was nineteenth-century Paris—where his artistic idealism slowly dissipates until he eventually decides to return home. Balzac poured many of his thematic preoccupations and narrative elaborations into Lost Illusions, from the contrast between life in the provinces and the all-consuming world of Paris to the idealism of poets, the commodification of art, the crushing burden of poverty and debt, and the triumphant cynicism of hack journalists and social climbers. The novel teems with characters, incidents, and settings, though perhaps none so vivid as its panoramic and despairing view of Paris as the nexus of modernity’s cultural, social, and moral infection. For Balzac, no institution better illustrates the new reality than Parisian journalism: “amoral, hypocritical, brazen, dishonest, and murderous,” he writes. In this new translation, Raymond N. MacKenzie brilliantly captures the tone of Balzac’s incomparable prose—a style that is alternatingly impassioned, overheated, angry, moving, tender, wistful, digressive, chatty, intrusive, and hectoring. His informative annotations guide the modern reader through the labyrinth of Balzac’s allusions.
In this story, of a young man's romantic attachment to an older woman, the modern English reader can appreciate the accuracy, the artistry and the insight which Flaubert reconstructed in one masterpiece.
With the possible exception of Great Britain, France can justifiably lay claim to possess the richest literary history of any country in Western Europe. This book covers the authors and their works, literary movements, and philosophical and social developments that have had a direct impact on style or content, and major historical events such as the two world wars, the Franco-Prussian War, the Algerian War, or the events of May 1968 that are directly reflected in a substantial body of imaginative writing. Historical Dictionary of French Literature, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on individual writers and key texts, significant movements, groups, associations, and periodicals, and on the literary reactions to major national and international events such as revolutions and wars. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about French literature.
"The author explores this tradition in depth and defines it with a breadth of vision, a dynamic vigor and freedom rarely paralleled today....His method, flexible, generous, humane in the best sense of the word, eschews pedantry, dogma, useless theorizing and scholastic argumentation."--The New York Times Book Review. "I wish to make it clear that The Gates of Horn represents an outstanding critical accomplishment."--Saturday Review. In the Odyssey, Homer describes two gates of the imagination: one of ivory through which fictitious dreams pass, and the other of horn, through which nothing but the truth may pass. Realism is the type of literature that passes through the horn, and in this significant study of the genre Levin examines a major form of Realism--the French novel--and focuses on five of its masters--Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust. Now available in paperback, Levin's study is a veritable reconstruction of the artistic and intellectual life of a nation.
One of the founders of literary realism and the serial novel, Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a prolific writer who produced more than a hundred novels, plays and short stories during his career. With its dramatic plots and memorable characters, Balzac's fiction has enthralled generations of readers. 'La Comédie humaine', the vast collection of works in which he strove to document every aspect of nineteenth-century French society, has influenced writers from Flaubert, Zola and Proust to Dostoevsky and Oscar Wilde. This Companion provides a critical reappraisal of Balzac, combining studies of his major novels with guidance on the key narrative and thematic features of his writing. Twelve chapters by world-leading specialists encompass a wide spectrum of topics such as the representation of history, philosophy and religion, the plight of the struggling artist, gender and sexuality, and Balzac's depiction of the creative process itself.