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Aeries and Muck: Illusions perdues
Illusions perdues develops Balzac’s view of “Aeries and Muck” in a society controlled by money. It tells the story of the close friends David, who invents a new kind of paper, and Lucien, who has considerable ta...
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Introduction
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in France were fraught with turmoil, and the populace was riven with insecurity, anguish, and fear. Writers repeatedly mention “the instability of everything!...
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A “Divine” Comedy: Eugénie Grandet
“The ‘Divine’ Comedy” of Eugénie Grandet exploits some of the results of the decisions to strip the church of all material property, if not all of its spiritual authority. Revolutionary dechristianization had inf...
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The Tangible and the Intangible: Le Curé de Tours
“The Tangible and the Intangible” turns to Le Curé de Tours. It tells the pitiable story of a country priest, who is incapable of divining the forces moving against him and thus loses the meager but tangible joys...
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Nascent Capitalism: “L’Illustre Gaudissart”
“L’Illustre Gaudissart” uses comedy to make significant points about “Nascent Capitalism.” The beneficent changes of the Industrial Revolution required the involvement of the entire society. Gaudissart is sent...
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Empty Wombs: La Vieille Fille
La Vieille Fille focuses on “Empty Wombs” in the creation of this superb, comic novel. It plays on the declining capacities of the upper middle class, the feckless stumbles of phantom-like aristocrats, and the c...
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Restoration Boneyard: Le Cabinet des Antiques
“Restoration Boneyard: Le Cabinet des antiques” illustrates the graveyard of France’s nobility. Making use of the timeworn device of the “roman à clé,” Balzac focuses on the old-line aristocracy buried in the pro...
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Conclusion
In the “Conclusion,” Balzac, the proto-sociologist, used plots and several thousand believable characters to provide warp and woof for his sociological insights that describe society in detail. As themes coale...
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Through the Glass Darkly: Ursule Mirouët
In Ursule Mirouët, the reader traipses “Through the Glass Darkly” into the Scenes from Provincial Life. The novel begins with the vision of Levrault-Minoret, a malevolent giant, who unsuccessfully attempts to pro...
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The Gerontocracy and Youth: Pierrette
“The Gerontocracy and Youth” opens with Pierrette’s implicit promise of a joyous tale of young love, as Balzac exploits mock heroic in a desolate account of the abuse of the nation’s young by the elderly. Youth w...
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The Dying Patriarchy: La Rabouilleuse
“The Dying Patriarchy” turns to Balzac’s exploitation of La Rabouilleuse’s innovative narration to unveil the dire reality of a society dominated by the bourgeoisie, where virtue is unimportant, where only money ...
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A Provincial Muse: La Muse du département
“A Provincial Muse, La Muse du department” signals Balzac’s effective treatment of both religious apostasy and marital adultery to castigate journalism and vilify financially backward provincials. The novelist ex...
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Conclusion
In the past, novelists regularly exploited formats and techniques borrowed from other genres—whether from collected correspondence, memoirs, diaries, or other generic traditions. Eventually, in every instance, .....
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Making Short Long: Short Story Cycles
It is easy to assume that the history of fiction begins in the earliest days of civilization. Human beings tell stories, after all. That is how we reiterate our meaning, how we understand reality, and how we a...
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Trinitarian Unity
To say that the popular and critical reception of Flaubert’s La tentation de saint Antoine (1874) was mixed, as its appreciation continues to be, is to be generous. One has to wonder about the real stature of Fla...
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The Long and Short of the Novel
The novel genre is appropriately named. Novelty rejuvenates it. As Grossvogel pointed out, however, “[T]he need for renewal is … constant.”1 When a technique has been exploited so often that readers expect whatev...
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Remaking the Novel
To define the novel as a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary is by no means to set the genre in concrete, for the novel, though not living, is a changing form and cannot be immobilized. The...
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Proust’s Reader
There are several things besides the pleasure of experiencing a masterpiece that should be noted on reading Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Most obviously, there is the asyndeton or absence of connectives...
