|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
On a coach ride between towns, a callow young man gets caught up in
a round of tale-telling with his fellow passengers and ends up
committing an indiscretion that will take a lifetime to undo . . .
In the town of Besancon, a cloistered young girl reads a romance
penned by a mysterious newcomer and schemes to take the place of
the story's real-life inspiration: a beautiful Italian duchess . .
. Two lovers stand in defiance of the age-old feud that has
decimated their families: a vendetta that even Napoleon Bonaparte
himself may be powerless to stop . . . Beginning again in life,
whether in one's profession, or, to a lesser extent, for the
purpose of concealing one's identity, is the theme that unifies the
three stories (A Start in Life, Albert Savarus, and The Vendetta)
in this volume of The Human Comedy. Left unfinished at the time of
Balzac's death, La Comedie Humaine is a vast literary undertaking
composed of some hundred short stories, novellas, and novels set in
the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars during the Bourbon Restoration
and the July Monarchy. Throughout, Balzac utilizes nineteenth
century French society to examine humanity and the human experience
with all its attendant virtues, vices, and peculiarities. The third
volume of Noumena Press's Human Comedy features detailed background
information on each of the stories, 27 illustrations, more than 60
pages of annotations, and two appendices that contain "Journey by
Coucou" by Laure Surville (Balzac's sister) and "Mateo Falcone" by
Prosper Merimee--stories that were the inspiration for Balzac's A
Start in Life and The Vendetta, respectively. "Journey by Coucou"
appears in English translation here for the first time. Honore de
Balzac (1799-1850) was one of France's most prolific and
influential authors. In his lifetime, he worked as a legal clerk,
publisher, printer, businessman, and even ran for political office.
Failing in all these endeavors, he was nonetheless able to make use
of these experiences in his writing to create some of the most
memorable stories and characters in French literature.
|
Obermann (Paperback)
Aetienne Pivert de Senancour; Translated by J. Anthony Barnes; Edited by R.J. Allinson
|
R567
Discovery Miles 5 670
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
Obermann, first published in 1804, is the best known work of French
writer Etienne Pivert de Senancour. Usually described as an
epistolary novel, the letters that constitute this volume are much
closer to being a series of interlinked essays. Supposedly written
by the melancholy recluse Obermann, whom critics have generally
seen as a thinly disguised stand-in for Senancour himself, the
letters contain the emotional outpourings of a man forever
searching the depths of his innermost self in the hopes of
overcoming his despair and finding a place for himself in the
world, yet never quite succeeding. The letters cover a multitude of
topics such as the hypocritical morals of the time, the failings of
religion, the poor treatment of women in society, and the futility
of existence. But while these writings are always overshadowed by
an inescapable sense of brooding and pessimism, there are also
passages that contain striking descriptions of Obermann's Alpine
refuge that are almost mystical in their sense of union with
nature. The work is similar in some respects to Rousseau's Reveries
of the Solitary Walker, his Confessions, the Essays of Montaigne,
and even to Thoreau's Walden, yet it is wholly original in its
form, and there is nothing else quite like it in the history of
French literature. Though virtually unknown in America and largely
forgotten in France, Obermann should nonetheless be seen as an
essential text of early Romanticism whose rightful place is next to
Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther and Chateaubriand's Rene.
. . . the chance meeting of a renowned painter and a mysterious
girl blossoms into love, but when their ensuing courtship is marred
by the disappearance of a purse full of money, their newfound
happiness threatens to unravel . . . to the north of Paris in the
port city of Le Havre, a drama of love and deception unfolds when
the last and fiercely guarded daughter of a once prosperous family
falls in love with the verses of a famous poet, but is this great
man of letters with whom she enters into an impassioned
correspondence really the person she believes him to be? . . . The
theme of reality versus illusion, particularly in matters of love,
dominates the two works of this second volume (The Purse and
Modeste Mignon) of Balzac's magnum opus. Left unfinished at the
time of the writer's death, La Comedie Humaine is a vast literary
undertaking composed of some hundred short stories, novellas, and
novels set in the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars during the Bourbon
Restoration and the July Monarchy. Throughout, Balzac utilizes
nineteenth century French society to examine humanity and the human
experience with all its attendant virtues, vices, and
peculiarities.
In an idealized memory of childhood, a young boy's awareness of the
world around him blossoms-an awareness of beauty and wonder, but
also of death . . . the meeting of a mysterious stranger and a
fanciful young woman results in the auspicious birth of a child
with the soul of a poet . . . a submissive youth from a venerable
family goes off to school and befriends a kindred spirit, but when
war breaks out the two join the army and make a fateful decision
that will forever change the course of their lives . . . Walter
Horatio Pater (1839-1894) was an English essayist, art critic, and
academic best remembered for his Studies in the History of the
Renaissance (1873), a book at the forefront of the aesthetic
movement which advocated "art for art's sake" and considered a
successful life to "burn always with this hard, gemlike flame."
Pater also wrote a series of what he termed "Imaginary Portraits,"
a type of literary vignette of his own devising that masterfully
blended elements of biography, prose poem, and short story. While
most of the Portraits take the form of historical recreations, the
three collected in this edition (The Child in the House, An English
Poet, and Emerald Uthwart) are contemporary to Pater's own time and
are perhaps the most autobiographical. Previously appearing in the
posthumous Miscellaneous Studies, The Child in the House and
Emerald Uthwart are better served thematically in a separate
volume. They are reprinted here along with An English Poet, a
nearly forgotten, unfinished, and unpublished Portrait of Pater's
that appears in book form for the first time. With regard to their
influence, there is evidence to suggest that the Imaginary
Portraits, especially The Child in the House, greatly inspired
Proust in his writing of In Search of Lost Time.
|
|