Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the ...
More
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.Less
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter studies Balzac's Louis Lambert (1832), in which the character of Lambert is a (possibly) mentally ill genius who retreats into a world to which only his erstwhile fiancée has access. ...
More
This chapter studies Balzac's Louis Lambert (1832), in which the character of Lambert is a (possibly) mentally ill genius who retreats into a world to which only his erstwhile fiancée has access. Through his writings Balzac attempts to examine and portray a certain topic on the matter of geniuses: the essential role played by women in their survival. Louis Lambert ends with the destruction of the main character, a male genius who nonetheless exemplifies all Balzac's own ideas about genius, and is also its most complete and elaborate theorist. Once again, fiction's interest in its failure may reveal more about genius than success. And that failure is also accompanied—still with considerable ambiguity—by the female presence that Balzac argued also deserved recognition as the essential helpmeet of genius.Less
This chapter studies Balzac's Louis Lambert (1832), in which the character of Lambert is a (possibly) mentally ill genius who retreats into a world to which only his erstwhile fiancée has access. Through his writings Balzac attempts to examine and portray a certain topic on the matter of geniuses: the essential role played by women in their survival. Louis Lambert ends with the destruction of the main character, a male genius who nonetheless exemplifies all Balzac's own ideas about genius, and is also its most complete and elaborate theorist. Once again, fiction's interest in its failure may reveal more about genius than success. And that failure is also accompanied—still with considerable ambiguity—by the female presence that Balzac argued also deserved recognition as the essential helpmeet of genius.
Lawrence R. Schehr
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231355
- eISBN:
- 9780823241095
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823231355.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book focuses on the ways in which a number of French literary narratives written in the realist tradition show a dynamic balance between the desire of the author/narrator to present a ...
More
This book focuses on the ways in which a number of French literary narratives written in the realist tradition show a dynamic balance between the desire of the author/narrator to present a verisimilar world and the need for aesthetic balance. While the works studied — narratives by Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Colette, Proust, and Sartre — range over the course of a century, from 1835 to 1938, they share a perspective on the relations between and the need to engage questions of realist verisimilitude and narrative interest and aesthetics. The book discusses some of the subversive paths taken in realism and, specifically, in canonical narratives solidly anchored in the tradition. The goal here is to analyze these realist texts, regardless of the narrative mode chosen, in order to see the deviations and detours from realism, mostly for aesthetic ends.Less
This book focuses on the ways in which a number of French literary narratives written in the realist tradition show a dynamic balance between the desire of the author/narrator to present a verisimilar world and the need for aesthetic balance. While the works studied — narratives by Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Colette, Proust, and Sartre — range over the course of a century, from 1835 to 1938, they share a perspective on the relations between and the need to engage questions of realist verisimilitude and narrative interest and aesthetics. The book discusses some of the subversive paths taken in realism and, specifically, in canonical narratives solidly anchored in the tradition. The goal here is to analyze these realist texts, regardless of the narrative mode chosen, in order to see the deviations and detours from realism, mostly for aesthetic ends.
Sophie Ratcliffe
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199239870
- eISBN:
- 9780191716799
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199239870.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter examines Beckett's allusions to The Tempest, shedding light on his views on the idea of sympathy. Opposing Nussbaum's perception of Beckett's writing as a ‘critique of emotion’, Chapter ...
More
This chapter examines Beckett's allusions to The Tempest, shedding light on his views on the idea of sympathy. Opposing Nussbaum's perception of Beckett's writing as a ‘critique of emotion’, Chapter 4 demonstrates that Beckett critiques the ways in which emotional formulae can be constructed by works of fiction. Tracing echoes of Browning's ‘Caliban Upon Setebos’ in Beckett's How It Is, this chapter goes on to demonstrate that Beckett's allusions to Shakespeare and Browning are a parodic critique of object-centred ideas of reading, thus extending our sense of the ethical aspects of his work.Less
This chapter examines Beckett's allusions to The Tempest, shedding light on his views on the idea of sympathy. Opposing Nussbaum's perception of Beckett's writing as a ‘critique of emotion’, Chapter 4 demonstrates that Beckett critiques the ways in which emotional formulae can be constructed by works of fiction. Tracing echoes of Browning's ‘Caliban Upon Setebos’ in Beckett's How It Is, this chapter goes on to demonstrate that Beckett's allusions to Shakespeare and Browning are a parodic critique of object-centred ideas of reading, thus extending our sense of the ethical aspects of his work.
Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While ...
More
This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While there had long been other works on manners—courtesy manuals, conduct books, etc.—the etiquette book differed from what came before because it made its case for of good form without offering the reader a stable ethical ideal. In the absence of shared social or cultural ends, the mistake emerges as an object that is at once reliable and disturbing. Then, in the context readings of eating peas with your knife in Thackeray and pointing at people in Balzac, the chapter develops a psychoanalytically inflected theory of the social mistake both in general and in relation to the particular form of the nineteenth-century novel.Less
This chapter begins by looking at the social mistake in relation both to the novel and to the rather sudden appearance of the etiquette book in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. While there had long been other works on manners—courtesy manuals, conduct books, etc.—the etiquette book differed from what came before because it made its case for of good form without offering the reader a stable ethical ideal. In the absence of shared social or cultural ends, the mistake emerges as an object that is at once reliable and disturbing. Then, in the context readings of eating peas with your knife in Thackeray and pointing at people in Balzac, the chapter develops a psychoanalytically inflected theory of the social mistake both in general and in relation to the particular form of the nineteenth-century novel.
Lawrence R. Schehr
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231355
- eISBN:
- 9780823241095
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823231355.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
To move from the retrospective and nostalgic view of the Restoration that is Balzac's to the world leading to the Second World War that is Sartre's is to cover a bit over a century of tumultuous ...
More
To move from the retrospective and nostalgic view of the Restoration that is Balzac's to the world leading to the Second World War that is Sartre's is to cover a bit over a century of tumultuous change, industrial and economic revolution, and social evolution in mores, class structure, and demographics to an extent that the West had never before seen. While verisimilitude remains the anchor of all of these works, analyses of each of them show disruptions strengthen and deepen the narrative. Though all of these authors transform evolutions, still there are no authors the same.Less
To move from the retrospective and nostalgic view of the Restoration that is Balzac's to the world leading to the Second World War that is Sartre's is to cover a bit over a century of tumultuous change, industrial and economic revolution, and social evolution in mores, class structure, and demographics to an extent that the West had never before seen. While verisimilitude remains the anchor of all of these works, analyses of each of them show disruptions strengthen and deepen the narrative. Though all of these authors transform evolutions, still there are no authors the same.
Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226243238
- eISBN:
- 9780226243276
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226243276.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
French cuisine is such a staple in our understanding of fine food that we forget the accidents of history that led to its creation. This book brings these “accidents” to the surface, illuminating the ...
More
French cuisine is such a staple in our understanding of fine food that we forget the accidents of history that led to its creation. This book brings these “accidents” to the surface, illuminating the magic of French cuisine and the mystery behind its historical development. The book explains how the food of France became French cuisine. This culinary journey begins with Ancien Régime cookbooks and ends with twenty-first-century cooking programs. It takes us from Carême, the “inventor” of modern French cuisine in the early nineteenth century, to top chefs today, such as Daniel Boulud and Jacques Pépin. Not a history of French cuisine, this book focuses on the people, places, and institutions that have made this cuisine what it is today: a privileged vehicle for national identity, a model of cultural ascendancy, and a pivotal site where practice and performance intersect. With sources as various as the novels of Balzac and Proust, interviews with contemporary chefs such as David Bouley and Charlie Trotter, and the film Babette's Feast, the book maps the cultural field that structures culinary affairs in France and then exports its crucial ingredients. What's more, well beyond food, the intricate connections between cuisine and country, between local practice and national identity, illuminate the concept of culture itself.Less
French cuisine is such a staple in our understanding of fine food that we forget the accidents of history that led to its creation. This book brings these “accidents” to the surface, illuminating the magic of French cuisine and the mystery behind its historical development. The book explains how the food of France became French cuisine. This culinary journey begins with Ancien Régime cookbooks and ends with twenty-first-century cooking programs. It takes us from Carême, the “inventor” of modern French cuisine in the early nineteenth century, to top chefs today, such as Daniel Boulud and Jacques Pépin. Not a history of French cuisine, this book focuses on the people, places, and institutions that have made this cuisine what it is today: a privileged vehicle for national identity, a model of cultural ascendancy, and a pivotal site where practice and performance intersect. With sources as various as the novels of Balzac and Proust, interviews with contemporary chefs such as David Bouley and Charlie Trotter, and the film Babette's Feast, the book maps the cultural field that structures culinary affairs in France and then exports its crucial ingredients. What's more, well beyond food, the intricate connections between cuisine and country, between local practice and national identity, illuminate the concept of culture itself.
Eric Hayot
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195377965
- eISBN:
- 9780199869435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377965.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, Asian History
Beginning with an overview of the Western sympathetic revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, this chapter lays out a series of instances in which China makes its appearance inside moral ...
More
Beginning with an overview of the Western sympathetic revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, this chapter lays out a series of instances in which China makes its appearance inside moral philosophy, focusing mostly on works by Adam Smith and Honoré de Balzac. It introduces the book's two major theoretical keywords, the “ecliptic” and the “example-effect,” and considers them in relation to the history of moral philosophy and the “Asian values debate” on human rights.Less
Beginning with an overview of the Western sympathetic revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, this chapter lays out a series of instances in which China makes its appearance inside moral philosophy, focusing mostly on works by Adam Smith and Honoré de Balzac. It introduces the book's two major theoretical keywords, the “ecliptic” and the “example-effect,” and considers them in relation to the history of moral philosophy and the “Asian values debate” on human rights.
John Haydock
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781942954231
- eISBN:
- 9781786944153
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954231.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The romances of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor, are usually examined from some setting almost exclusively American. European or other planetary contexts are subordinated ...
More
The romances of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor, are usually examined from some setting almost exclusively American. European or other planetary contexts are subordinated to local considerations. But while this isolated approach plays well in an arena constructed on American exclusiveness, it does not express the reality of the literary processes swirling around Melville in the middle of the nineteenth century. A series of expanding literary and technological networks was active that made his writing part of a global complex. Honoré de Balzac, popular French writer and creator of realism in the novel, was also in the web of these same networks, both preceding and at the height of Melville’s creativity. Because they engaged in similar intentions, there developed an almost inevitable attraction that brought their works together. Until recently, however, Balzac has not been recognized as a significant influence on Melville during his most creative period. Over the last decade, scholars began to explore literary networks by new methodologies, and the criticism developed out of these strategies pertains usually to modernist, postcolonial, contemporary situations. Remarkably, however, the intertextuality of Melville with Balzac is quite exactly a casebook study in transcultural comparativism. Looking at Melville’s innovative environment reveals meaningful results where the networks take on significant roles equivalent to what have been traditionally classed as genetic contacts. Intervisionary Network explores a range of these connections and reveals that Melville was dependent on Balzac and his universal vision in much of his prose writing.Less
The romances of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor, are usually examined from some setting almost exclusively American. European or other planetary contexts are subordinated to local considerations. But while this isolated approach plays well in an arena constructed on American exclusiveness, it does not express the reality of the literary processes swirling around Melville in the middle of the nineteenth century. A series of expanding literary and technological networks was active that made his writing part of a global complex. Honoré de Balzac, popular French writer and creator of realism in the novel, was also in the web of these same networks, both preceding and at the height of Melville’s creativity. Because they engaged in similar intentions, there developed an almost inevitable attraction that brought their works together. Until recently, however, Balzac has not been recognized as a significant influence on Melville during his most creative period. Over the last decade, scholars began to explore literary networks by new methodologies, and the criticism developed out of these strategies pertains usually to modernist, postcolonial, contemporary situations. Remarkably, however, the intertextuality of Melville with Balzac is quite exactly a casebook study in transcultural comparativism. Looking at Melville’s innovative environment reveals meaningful results where the networks take on significant roles equivalent to what have been traditionally classed as genetic contacts. Intervisionary Network explores a range of these connections and reveals that Melville was dependent on Balzac and his universal vision in much of his prose writing.
Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748692606
- eISBN:
- 9781474444651
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748692606.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chabrol's cinema, which started (with) the Nouvelle Vague, is generally associated with a type of psychological thriller, set in the French provinces and marked by a fascination with evil, incest, ...
More
Chabrol's cinema, which started (with) the Nouvelle Vague, is generally associated with a type of psychological thriller, set in the French provinces and marked by a fascination with evil, incest, fragmented families, and inscrutable female characters. This first reappraisal of his filmography (1958-2009) seeks to explore a brand new Chabrol, influenced not only by the usual suspects (Renoir, Lang and Hitchcock) but, more intriguingly, by Kubrick (in Le Boucher) and also, more conceptually and beyond film, by Balzac (the œuvre as mosaic) and Magritte (the œuvre as trompe-l’œil). An aesthetic of opacity is brought to the fore, which deconstructs the apparent clarity and ‘comfort’ of the genre film. Chabrol's films, are indeed both deceptively-accessible and deeply reflexive, to the point of opacity. His ‘crystal-images’ (Deleuze) and unstable, fantastic/Gothic spaces or heterotopias (Foucault), ultimately encourage the viewer to reflect on the relationship between illusion and ‘reality’, the process of theatricalisation and the status of the film image. Case studies include a detailed analysis of some of his latest, little studied films (La Fleur du mal; La Demoiselle d’honneur; La Fille coupée en deux and Bellamy). Through the critical fortunes of the adjective ‘Chabrolean’, the book also provides a survey of Chabrol’s lasting influence and legacy on the contemporary French thriller (with specific reference to Anne Fontaine and Denis Dercourt).Less
Chabrol's cinema, which started (with) the Nouvelle Vague, is generally associated with a type of psychological thriller, set in the French provinces and marked by a fascination with evil, incest, fragmented families, and inscrutable female characters. This first reappraisal of his filmography (1958-2009) seeks to explore a brand new Chabrol, influenced not only by the usual suspects (Renoir, Lang and Hitchcock) but, more intriguingly, by Kubrick (in Le Boucher) and also, more conceptually and beyond film, by Balzac (the œuvre as mosaic) and Magritte (the œuvre as trompe-l’œil). An aesthetic of opacity is brought to the fore, which deconstructs the apparent clarity and ‘comfort’ of the genre film. Chabrol's films, are indeed both deceptively-accessible and deeply reflexive, to the point of opacity. His ‘crystal-images’ (Deleuze) and unstable, fantastic/Gothic spaces or heterotopias (Foucault), ultimately encourage the viewer to reflect on the relationship between illusion and ‘reality’, the process of theatricalisation and the status of the film image. Case studies include a detailed analysis of some of his latest, little studied films (La Fleur du mal; La Demoiselle d’honneur; La Fille coupée en deux and Bellamy). Through the critical fortunes of the adjective ‘Chabrolean’, the book also provides a survey of Chabrol’s lasting influence and legacy on the contemporary French thriller (with specific reference to Anne Fontaine and Denis Dercourt).
Tony James
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151883
- eISBN:
- 9780191672873
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151883.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, European Literature
The word ‘extase’ is linked with ‘phenomena of sleep’ for two other writers who use this phrase: Charles Nodier and Honore de Balzac. In 1831, Nodier published an article entitled ‘De quelques ...
More
The word ‘extase’ is linked with ‘phenomena of sleep’ for two other writers who use this phrase: Charles Nodier and Honore de Balzac. In 1831, Nodier published an article entitled ‘De quelques phénomènes du sommeil’; the following year, in Balzac's novel Louis Lambert, the same phrase occurs in connection with an apparently precognitive dream. Though very different from each other, both writers attribute an importance to the link between dreams and madness and creativity. This chapter first explores Nodier's article and then examines briefly two of his fictional works, Smarra and La Fee aux miettes, which explore dreams and madness. Beginning with Louis Lambert, the chapter then shows how Balzac linked madness with what he saw as a relation of substitution, or incompatibility, between artistic creativity and sexuality. Finally, the chapter shows how the idea of sleep being connected with magnetism formed part of the plot in Ursule Mirouët.Less
The word ‘extase’ is linked with ‘phenomena of sleep’ for two other writers who use this phrase: Charles Nodier and Honore de Balzac. In 1831, Nodier published an article entitled ‘De quelques phénomènes du sommeil’; the following year, in Balzac's novel Louis Lambert, the same phrase occurs in connection with an apparently precognitive dream. Though very different from each other, both writers attribute an importance to the link between dreams and madness and creativity. This chapter first explores Nodier's article and then examines briefly two of his fictional works, Smarra and La Fee aux miettes, which explore dreams and madness. Beginning with Louis Lambert, the chapter then shows how Balzac linked madness with what he saw as a relation of substitution, or incompatibility, between artistic creativity and sexuality. Finally, the chapter shows how the idea of sleep being connected with magnetism formed part of the plot in Ursule Mirouët.
Tony James
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151883
- eISBN:
- 9780191672873
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151883.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, European Literature
This chapter shows that the use of the new word ‘hallucination’ by Hugo and Balzac, is far from merely ornamental. The contexts in which it occurs bear a weight of conceptual and narrative meaning. ...
More
This chapter shows that the use of the new word ‘hallucination’ by Hugo and Balzac, is far from merely ornamental. The contexts in which it occurs bear a weight of conceptual and narrative meaning. Although there are differences, a common feature, conceptually, is for the word to represent some kind of threshold, some kind of hesitation between alternatives: for Raphaël (and for the narrator) between supernatural and rational, for Gringoire between dreaming and the real, existence and non-existence, and for the narrator of Frollo's vision between reason and madness (‘il se trouva presque fou’).Less
This chapter shows that the use of the new word ‘hallucination’ by Hugo and Balzac, is far from merely ornamental. The contexts in which it occurs bear a weight of conceptual and narrative meaning. Although there are differences, a common feature, conceptually, is for the word to represent some kind of threshold, some kind of hesitation between alternatives: for Raphaël (and for the narrator) between supernatural and rational, for Gringoire between dreaming and the real, existence and non-existence, and for the narrator of Frollo's vision between reason and madness (‘il se trouva presque fou’).
Tim Farrant
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198151975
- eISBN:
- 9780191710247
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151975.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Balzac's reputation is as a novelist. But short stories make up over half La Comédie humaine, in addition to scores of other tales and articles. Short forms appear early in Balzac's output, and shape ...
More
Balzac's reputation is as a novelist. But short stories make up over half La Comédie humaine, in addition to scores of other tales and articles. Short forms appear early in Balzac's output, and shape his work throughout his career. This book 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.Less
Balzac's reputation is as a novelist. But short stories make up over half La Comédie humaine, in addition to scores of other tales and articles. Short forms appear early in Balzac's output, and shape his work throughout his career. This book 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.
Richard Bolster
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300082463
- eISBN:
- 9780300137682
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300082463.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
Talented and resolutely independent, Marie d'Agoult (1805–76) was one of the most remarkable women of her time. Abandoning her privileged position in society, she eloped with her great love, the ...
More
Talented and resolutely independent, Marie d'Agoult (1805–76) was one of the most remarkable women of her time. Abandoning her privileged position in society, she eloped with her great love, the pianist and composer Franz Liszt, and later won fame as a writer under the penname Daniel Stern. She published fiction, articles on literature, music, art, and politics, and a history of the revolution of 1848, and she was an eloquent advocate for democracy, the eradication of poverty, and the emancipation of women. Drawing on her memoirs, letters, and other unpublished writings, this biography sets Marie d'Agoult's eventful life against a backdrop of dramatic political change in France. Courted by many important figures of her day, she married a nobleman and became a member of the court of Charles X. Her passion for music eventually brought her into contact with Liszt, with whom she moved to Italy and had three children. After their idealistic romance degenerated into disenchantment, d'Agoult returned to Paris, began her writing career, and established a salon for artists, reformers, and freethinkers. The book explains how George Sand became d'Agoult's friend and then betrayed her by giving Balzac information about her affair with Liszt, which he used in his novel Béatrix. The book concludes with a moving account of d'Agoult's last years.Less
Talented and resolutely independent, Marie d'Agoult (1805–76) was one of the most remarkable women of her time. Abandoning her privileged position in society, she eloped with her great love, the pianist and composer Franz Liszt, and later won fame as a writer under the penname Daniel Stern. She published fiction, articles on literature, music, art, and politics, and a history of the revolution of 1848, and she was an eloquent advocate for democracy, the eradication of poverty, and the emancipation of women. Drawing on her memoirs, letters, and other unpublished writings, this biography sets Marie d'Agoult's eventful life against a backdrop of dramatic political change in France. Courted by many important figures of her day, she married a nobleman and became a member of the court of Charles X. Her passion for music eventually brought her into contact with Liszt, with whom she moved to Italy and had three children. After their idealistic romance degenerated into disenchantment, d'Agoult returned to Paris, began her writing career, and established a salon for artists, reformers, and freethinkers. The book explains how George Sand became d'Agoult's friend and then betrayed her by giving Balzac information about her affair with Liszt, which he used in his novel Béatrix. The book concludes with a moving account of d'Agoult's last years.
Cave Terence
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151630
- eISBN:
- 9780191672781
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151630.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on Balzac's Le Colonel Chabert and Dickens' Hard Times. Le Colonel Chabert provides a cogent illustration of what can happen to fables of recognition under the pressure of a ...
More
This chapter focuses on Balzac's Le Colonel Chabert and Dickens' Hard Times. Le Colonel Chabert provides a cogent illustration of what can happen to fables of recognition under the pressure of a catastrophic severance. It is as if Odysseus had returned, almost unrecognizable, after his death had been legally confirmed, to find Penelope remarried and his goods expropriated. Le Colonel Chabert is the story of recognition denied and suppressed. Its plot, read as a recognition plot, takes the form of a parenthesis. Hard Times offers itself most overtly to be read as a tract, a product of mid-19th-century social concern; in consequence, it demonstrates particularly well the kinds of strain that are generated by the superimposition of ‘realist’ projects on the plots of recognition, the ways in which those plots persist and regroup themselves.Less
This chapter focuses on Balzac's Le Colonel Chabert and Dickens' Hard Times. Le Colonel Chabert provides a cogent illustration of what can happen to fables of recognition under the pressure of a catastrophic severance. It is as if Odysseus had returned, almost unrecognizable, after his death had been legally confirmed, to find Penelope remarried and his goods expropriated. Le Colonel Chabert is the story of recognition denied and suppressed. Its plot, read as a recognition plot, takes the form of a parenthesis. Hard Times offers itself most overtly to be read as a tract, a product of mid-19th-century social concern; in consequence, it demonstrates particularly well the kinds of strain that are generated by the superimposition of ‘realist’ projects on the plots of recognition, the ways in which those plots persist and regroup themselves.
Terence Cave
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199604807
- eISBN:
- 9780191731624
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604807.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter opens with novels by Mme de Staël and George Sand featuring women singers, together with a thematic opposition between north and south. Xavier Marmier’s description of Mignon as a ...
More
This chapter opens with novels by Mme de Staël and George Sand featuring women singers, together with a thematic opposition between north and south. Xavier Marmier’s description of Mignon as a fragile, ethereal being is then shown to inaugurate a popular image which is typecast in Ary Scheffer’s widely distributed pictures, perpetuated in Saint-Germain’s sentimental Catholic novel Mignon, and endorsed in Ambroise Thomas’s enormously successful opera. Mid-century lyric poetry (Nerval and Baudelaire) also carries an important memory of Mignon. The Mignon craze that swept through French culture of the late nineteenth century is traced through popular dramas and novels; however, a strand of parody apparent in Balzac’s Modeste Mignon is seen to recur in Zola’s Nana, and Mignon’s name is associated with corruption and sexual abjection in a number of fictions of this era.Less
This chapter opens with novels by Mme de Staël and George Sand featuring women singers, together with a thematic opposition between north and south. Xavier Marmier’s description of Mignon as a fragile, ethereal being is then shown to inaugurate a popular image which is typecast in Ary Scheffer’s widely distributed pictures, perpetuated in Saint-Germain’s sentimental Catholic novel Mignon, and endorsed in Ambroise Thomas’s enormously successful opera. Mid-century lyric poetry (Nerval and Baudelaire) also carries an important memory of Mignon. The Mignon craze that swept through French culture of the late nineteenth century is traced through popular dramas and novels; however, a strand of parody apparent in Balzac’s Modeste Mignon is seen to recur in Zola’s Nana, and Mignon’s name is associated with corruption and sexual abjection in a number of fictions of this era.
TIM FARRANT
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198151975
- eISBN:
- 9780191710247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151975.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter shows how the period between 1835 and the beginning of 1838 lays the foundations of long and major works: the first parts of Illusions perdues and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes; ...
More
This chapter shows how the period between 1835 and the beginning of 1838 lays the foundations of long and major works: the first parts of Illusions perdues and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes; Le Secret des Ruggieri (F: La Confidence des Ruggieri), which became the central section of Sur Catherine de Médicis; Le Lys dans la vallée and La Vieille Fille. And it sees the demise of the Contes drolatiques, with the publication of the third and last completed dixain in December 1837 — which the passage just quoted reduces to an immense graffito, scarcely a year after they themselves were the monument ( LH i. 49). The first stories of this period, Melmoth réconcilié and La Fille aux yeux d'or, both published in 1835, are unfinished business from the folie du conte; whilst in 1836, Balzac's purchase of, and considerable contribution to, the Chronique de Paris create what look like gap-fillers, a series of brief ‘monographies’ which flesh out recurring or secondary characters: La Messe de l'athée, Facino Cane, L'Interdiction. Only La Confidence des Ruggieri (1836) and Gambara (1837) return to the more substantive and philosophical concerns which, from Balzac's earliest career, lay at the heart of his stories.Less
This chapter shows how the period between 1835 and the beginning of 1838 lays the foundations of long and major works: the first parts of Illusions perdues and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes; Le Secret des Ruggieri (F: La Confidence des Ruggieri), which became the central section of Sur Catherine de Médicis; Le Lys dans la vallée and La Vieille Fille. And it sees the demise of the Contes drolatiques, with the publication of the third and last completed dixain in December 1837 — which the passage just quoted reduces to an immense graffito, scarcely a year after they themselves were the monument ( LH i. 49). The first stories of this period, Melmoth réconcilié and La Fille aux yeux d'or, both published in 1835, are unfinished business from the folie du conte; whilst in 1836, Balzac's purchase of, and considerable contribution to, the Chronique de Paris create what look like gap-fillers, a series of brief ‘monographies’ which flesh out recurring or secondary characters: La Messe de l'athée, Facino Cane, L'Interdiction. Only La Confidence des Ruggieri (1836) and Gambara (1837) return to the more substantive and philosophical concerns which, from Balzac's earliest career, lay at the heart of his stories.
TIM FARRANT
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198151975
- eISBN:
- 9780191710247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151975.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter shows that between 1838 and 1841, Balzac published nine brief but no less central stories of La Com é die humaine. Virtually all these texts were first conceived, and, in the case of La ...
More
This chapter shows that between 1838 and 1841, Balzac published nine brief but no less central stories of La Com é die humaine. Virtually all these texts were first conceived, and, in the case of La Torpille, first published, as short fiction. This, the nucleus of what is now part one of Splendeurs et misères, was originally briefer than La Maison Nucingen, as were, in their initial conception or realization, many of Balzac’s longest novels. And virtually all spring from a common source in the early 1830s, at the height of Balzac’s story-writing career, reformulating for the present common themes of creation, invention, and commerce.Less
This chapter shows that between 1838 and 1841, Balzac published nine brief but no less central stories of La Com é die humaine. Virtually all these texts were first conceived, and, in the case of La Torpille, first published, as short fiction. This, the nucleus of what is now part one of Splendeurs et misères, was originally briefer than La Maison Nucingen, as were, in their initial conception or realization, many of Balzac’s longest novels. And virtually all spring from a common source in the early 1830s, at the height of Balzac’s story-writing career, reformulating for the present common themes of creation, invention, and commerce.
TIM FARRANT
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198151975
- eISBN:
- 9780191710247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151975.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter shows that Balzac's reputation as a novelist was cemented by works such as Béatrix, Un grand homme de province à Paris, Le Curé de Village in 1839; Pierrette in 1940. Yet, by 1839, ...
More
This chapter shows that Balzac's reputation as a novelist was cemented by works such as Béatrix, Un grand homme de province à Paris, Le Curé de Village in 1839; Pierrette in 1940. Yet, by 1839, publishing was once again in crisis, and as important as these novels, and more numerous, is a counterpoint of shorter fictions — not only the six stories included in La Comédie humaine, but also series of articles (Petites Misères de la vie conjugale, 1839–40, and those given to the collective publication Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, 1839–40), as well as his 1840 contributions to his second ill-fated venture into newspaper ownership, the Revue parisienne, together with other brief publications. Alongside came frequent but generally unsuccessful forays into theatre: L'École des ménages, refused by the Comédie française in 1839, and Vautrin, more successful but immediately censored. If his output had a common genetic source, its generic outcomes were more diverse: the cause was coherent, its effects ever more fragmented. Without shorter works, the central aesthetic of Balzac's opus would have been inoperable — as is suggested by his determinant theoretical statement in this period, the preface to Une fille d' Eve.Less
This chapter shows that Balzac's reputation as a novelist was cemented by works such as Béatrix, Un grand homme de province à Paris, Le Curé de Village in 1839; Pierrette in 1940. Yet, by 1839, publishing was once again in crisis, and as important as these novels, and more numerous, is a counterpoint of shorter fictions — not only the six stories included in La Comédie humaine, but also series of articles (Petites Misères de la vie conjugale, 1839–40, and those given to the collective publication Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, 1839–40), as well as his 1840 contributions to his second ill-fated venture into newspaper ownership, the Revue parisienne, together with other brief publications. Alongside came frequent but generally unsuccessful forays into theatre: L'École des ménages, refused by the Comédie française in 1839, and Vautrin, more successful but immediately censored. If his output had a common genetic source, its generic outcomes were more diverse: the cause was coherent, its effects ever more fragmented. Without shorter works, the central aesthetic of Balzac's opus would have been inoperable — as is suggested by his determinant theoretical statement in this period, the preface to Une fille d' Eve.
TIM FARRANT
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198151975
- eISBN:
- 9780191710247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151975.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter shows that Balzac’s shorter fictions in the period 1838–1841 embody manifold tensions: between the individual and the type, the centrifugal and the centripetal, between the cohesion and ...
More
This chapter shows that Balzac’s shorter fictions in the period 1838–1841 embody manifold tensions: between the individual and the type, the centrifugal and the centripetal, between the cohesion and self-containedness of single narratives, and that of the creation as a whole. Such dichotomies, fostered by the modes of production and publication of Balzac’s creation post-1840, answer those between univocal morality, and plurivocal relativism brought by narrative fragmentation and prolongation in serialized works, and by the use of recurring characters. The year 1842 was to see the inauguration of La Comédie humaine: within its overarching and ostensibly single and unifying structure, these conflicting yet complementary characteristics were to be laid out. The mosaic was to become a monument. Or rather, a monumental mosaic.Less
This chapter shows that Balzac’s shorter fictions in the period 1838–1841 embody manifold tensions: between the individual and the type, the centrifugal and the centripetal, between the cohesion and self-containedness of single narratives, and that of the creation as a whole. Such dichotomies, fostered by the modes of production and publication of Balzac’s creation post-1840, answer those between univocal morality, and plurivocal relativism brought by narrative fragmentation and prolongation in serialized works, and by the use of recurring characters. The year 1842 was to see the inauguration of La Comédie humaine: within its overarching and ostensibly single and unifying structure, these conflicting yet complementary characteristics were to be laid out. The mosaic was to become a monument. Or rather, a monumental mosaic.
