Droll Stories — Volume 3

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

3.6

Word count: 301K words
Chapters: 31

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.Droll Stories — Volume 3 by Honoré de BalzacAuthor: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Aug 23, 2004

Editor's review

Droll Stories — Volume 3 is the third volume of Balzac's collection of short tales set in Renaissance France, continuing the rollicking, satirical manner of the first two volumes. Drawing on old jests and folk anecdotes, these stories use exaggeration, irony and a somewhat coarse humour to depict monks, nobles, townsfolk and amorous affairs, exposing human greed, vanity and desire. Beneath the jokes, Balzac is in effect laying the groundwork for the social chronicle of La Comédie humaine, and readers can discern the prototypes of character types that appear in his later serious works. This volume is an English translation with an archaic style and long sentences, suited to readers interested in French literature, the satirical tradition and narrative history. Read it as a side wing of Balzac's oeuvre, not as a moral lesson.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary readers interested in Balzac and the La Comédie humaine project
Readers who enjoy satirical, humorous short tales and folk-story style
Students and enthusiasts of French literature or European narrative traditions
Readers curious about how a nineteenth-century author reworked old stories

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting serious moral lessons or warm-hearted stories
Beginning readers unaccustomed to archaic English and long sentences
Readers sensitive to sexual content and coarse humour

Reading tips

Read the opening story first to get a feel for the narrator's tone and devices, then dip into the rest as interest dictates.
Note recurring character types and satirical themes, to compare with La Comédie humaine.
Don't stop to look up every obscure allusion; follow the story first and fill in background later.
Read one or two tales at a time to avoid stylistic fatigue from continuous reading.

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.

FAQ

Is this a serious work by Balzac?

No. It belongs to Balzac's humorous collections based on old jests, with an exaggerated, satirical and sometimes coarse style, different from serious novels such as Le Père Goriot, though it can be seen as another facet of his depiction of manners.

Can I read Volume 3 without having read the first two volumes?

Yes. The tales are largely independent; the volumes are mainly an editorial sequence and do not form a continuous plot. Reading Volume 3 directly will not hinder comprehension, though you will miss the narrative style established in the earlier volumes.

How difficult is the English?

This is an early English translation with long sentences and some period vocabulary and phrasing, which poses a challenge to readers used to modern English. Focus on following the plot rather than weighing every word.

Comments

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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.