For Love or for Money: Balzac's Rhetorical Realism - Couverture souple

Mortimer, Armine Kotin

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0814256678 ISBN 13 : 9780814256671

Editeur : Ohio State University Press, 2020

Synopsis

Everyone agrees that Balzac is a realistic writer, but what do we actually mean when we say that? This book examines the richness and variety of Balzac’s approaches to realism, employing several different interpretive methods. Taking love and money as the “Prime Movers” of the world of La Comédie humaine, twenty-one chapters provide detailed analyses of the many strategies by which the writing forges the powerful impression of reality, the construction we famously think of as Balzacian realism. Each chapter sets the methods and aims of its analysis, with particular attention to the language that conveys the sense of reality. Plots, devices, or interpretive systems (including genealogies) function as images or reflections of how the novels make their meanings. The analyses converge on the central point: how did Balzac invent realism? No less than this fundamental question lies behind the interpretations this book provides, a question to which the conclusion provides a full answer.

A major book in English devoted entirely to Balzac was overdue. Here is the American voice of Balzac studies, an engaging, insightful, and revealing excursion among the masterworks of one of the most important authors of all time.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Armine Kotin Mortimer is professor emeritus in the Department of French at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Ohio State University Press
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0814256678
• ISBN 13: 9780814256671
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 346
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible