Balzac's Paris: The City as Human Comedy

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Synopsis
Exploring Paris arm in arm with Balzac, nineteenth-century France&’s most famous novelist and observerIn Balzac&’s vast Human Comedy, a body of ninety-one completed novels and stories, he endeavoured to create a complete picture of contemporary French society and manners. Within this work is a loving ode to Paris and an incomparable introduction to the first capital of the modern world.To this ageless city he makes a declaration of love in an accumulation of finely observed detail – the cafés, landmarks, avenues, parks – and captures the populace in countless meticulously drawn portraits: its lawyers, grisettes, journalists, concierges, usurers, salesmen, speculators.Balzac gathered the elements of this Paris by sauntering through it. &‘To saunter is a science,&’ he writes, &‘it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live.&’ Eric Hazan follows in Balzac&’s footsteps, criss-crossing the city in the novelist&’s outsize boots, running between printers, publishers, coffee merchants, mistresses and friends, stopping for a moment, struck by a detail that would be fixed in Balzac&’s photographic memory.More than a tour of the city, Balzac&’s Paris is an attempt to measure the soul of a city as recovered in its finest literature.
Copyright:
2018

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781839767289
Related ISBNs:
9781839767258
Publisher:
Verso Books
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
La Fabrique éditions
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Travel, Literature and Fiction, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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