Honore de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac became a distinguished writer for his method of describing reality, embracing a detailed penetration of humanity and environment. His work has had a stunning impact on the modern novel, not just in France but in other parts of Europe and the United States as well.
This title examines the major works of Honoré de Balzac through full-length critical essays by expert literary critics. In addition, this title features a short biography on Honoré de Balzac, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.

The Country Doctor

One fascinating aspect of this novel is the depiction of cretinism, which was endemic at the time in the region of France about which Balzac wrote. Balzac did not describe the cretins as having goiter or neck enlargement, even though the relationship between thyroid size and cretinism was already known in the medical literature by the early 1830s. Dr. Benassis evidently thought that the "stagnant air" created conditions favorable to the spread of cretinism. By removing the cretins, he thought they would minimize the further spread of "this physical and mental contagion."

Eugenie Grandet - Honore de Balzac

Eugénie Grandet (1833) is a novel by Honoré de Balzac about miserliness, and how it is bequeathed from the father to the daughter, Eugénie, through her unsatisfying love attachment with her cousin. As is usual with Balzac, all the characters in the novel are fully realized. Balzac conceived his grand project, The Human Comedy, while writing Eugénie Grandet and incorporated it into the Comedie by revising the names of some of the characters in the second edition.

Unabridged AudioBook - Literary Classics

A cynical and panoramic view of 19th century Paris.

REUPLOAD NEEDED

This text argues that melodrama is a crucial mode of expression in modern literature. After studying stage melodrama as a dominant popular form in the 1800s, the author looks at Balzac and Henry James, to show how these "realist" novelists created fiction using rhetoric and excess of melodrama.