| Balzac and Violence: Representing History, Space, Sexuality and Death in La Comédie Humaine Contributor(s): Howells, Robin (Editor), Kearns, James (Editor), Heathcote, Owen (Author) |
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ISBN: 3039105515 ISBN-13: 9783039105519 Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publis OUR PRICE: $86.31 Product Type: Paperback Published: April 2009 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - French - Social Science | Women's Studies |
| Dewey: 843.7 |
| LCCN: 2009009502 |
| Series: French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries |
| Physical Information: 294 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - French - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Violence is one of the main themes in the novels of Honor de Balzac. Executions, murders, savagery and death accompany the conspiracies and the turbulence that characterise his post-Revolutionary times, from the Terror to the Napoleonic campaigns and then to the upheavals of 1830 and 1848. Despite the importance of violence in Balzac, this is the first book-length study of the topic. The book begins by tracing the links between violence and Balzac's approach to the novel, not merely in terms of violent content, but, equally importantly, in terms of the form associated with that content. Form and content combine to perpetuate and naturalise violence and suffering. After charting examples of this combination in one of Balzac's earliest fictions, the book moves on to the links between violence and history (Catherine de M dicis; the Terror), between violence and place (from his native Touraine to sickness in Paris), and between violence and gender/sexuality. It also examines the representation of violence in the form of spoken or written death. Throughout the analysis, the book asks the following question: do Balzac's novels reinforce or counteract the literary text's apparent love-affair with violence? |