The Human Comedy - Volume 06. Scenes of Provincial Life - Part 02

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.6
Word count
1.2M words
Chapters
121

Tags

Foreign Language Books Foreign Literature Social ObservationPortrait GalleryMoney and DesireRealismProvincial LifeFrench Society

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.La Comédie humaine - Volume 06. Scènes de la vie de Province - Tome 02 by BalzacAuthor: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 6, 2016

Editor's review

This is the second part of "Scenes of Provincial Life" in Volume 06 of Balzac's La Comédie humaine, one installment in a long series, with the original text in French. For Chinese readers, its value lies not in the completeness of a single story but in how it reveals Balzac's construction of the overall map of La Comédie humaine: the provincial scenes mirror the Paris scenes, together sketching the customs and human nature of nineteenth-century French society. This volume suits readers who have already read representative works such as Le Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet and wish to deepen their engagement with the original texts systematically, as well as French learners seeking literary reading material. The Project Gutenberg edition is convenient for searching and cross-referencing, but lacks translation notes and background introductions, so readers must supply the historical context themselves. It is best positioned within a complete reading plan rather than treated as a standalone introduction.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First read the general preface and classification notes of La Comédie humaine to clarify this volume's place within "Scenes of Provincial Life."
  2. Read it alongside other pieces in the same volume and the Paris scenes, noting characters who reappear across works.
  3. Prepare reference works on nineteenth-century French history and place names, consulting them while reading to reduce background obstacles.
  4. For the French original, read a chapter through first without worrying about full comprehension, then return to the details, avoiding being slowed by long sentences.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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  6. 6
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FAQ

Can I read this volume directly without having read other volumes of La Comédie humaine? You can read it, but your understanding will be diminished. This volume belongs to a series, and its characters and themes often echo other volumes. It is advisable to first read one or two of Balzac's representative works to understand his style and character system before approaching this volume.
Is this edition a Chinese translation? No. This edition is an electronic book of the French original released by Project Gutenberg, without Chinese translation or notes. Chinese readers with insufficient French may wish to read it alongside a Chinese translation, or first read the Chinese version to become familiar with the content.
The electronic edition lacks annotations. How can I supplement the background while reading? You can draw on reference works on nineteenth-century French social and literary history, as well as materials such as character dictionaries for La Comédie humaine, consulting place names, institutions, and character relationships as you read. You may also refer to the prefaces and footnotes of Chinese translations to fill the gap left by the original edition's lack of annotations.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850 Author

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French novelist best known for his vast series La Comédie humaine. The library holds 143 of his works, including Father Goriot, Lost Illusions, Eugénie Grandet, and several volumes of La Comédie humaine. His writing is distinguished by dense detail, a large cast of characters, and an intricate social network, often linking separate works through recurring figures to portray nineteenth-century French society. He excelled at depicting the power of desire, ambition, and money through precise settings and strong narrative tension, and he exerted a lasting influence on later realist fiction. Beyond the broad outline of his life, public information is limited, so this note focuses on the themes and style of his works.