The Belly of Paris

The Belly of Paris
Author: Émile Zola
Publisher: Good Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2023-12-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris) is the third novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart, first published in 1873. It is a novel of the teeming life which surrounds the great central markets of Paris. The book was originally translated into English by Henry Vizetelly and published in 1888 under the title Fat and Thin. After Vizetelly's imprisonment for obscene libel the novel was one of those revised and expurgated by his son, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart. She has become prosperous, and with prosperity her selfishness has increased. Her brother-in-law Florent had escaped from penal servitude in Cayenne and lived for a short time in her house, but she became tired of his presence and ultimately denounced him to the police. Émile Zola (1840 – 1902) was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

Eugénie Grandet

Eugénie Grandet
Author: Honoré de Balzac
Publisher: Dutton Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1973
Genre:
ISBN: 9780460001694

Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's great Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel. Eugenie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age. Book jacket.

The Physiology of Marriage and Pierre Grassou

The Physiology of Marriage and Pierre Grassou
Author: Honore De Balzac
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2005-12-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1596057092

Who is the husband who can now sleep quietly beside his young and pretty consort, after learning that at least three bachelors are on the lookout to rob him; that, if they have not already encroached upon his property, they regard his bride as their legitimate prey, who, sooner or later, will fall victim to them, whether by force, by ruse, or by her own free will, and that it is impossible that, some day, they will not be victorious!-from "Meditation IV: On the Virtuous Woman""I am not deep," Honor de Balzac is reported have quipped, "but very wide." His satiric width is on full display in The Physiology of Marriage, a sociological essay on matrimony masquerading as a novel... or is it a novel masquerading as a sociological essay on matrimony? Bold and cynical-or so his contemporaries perceived-this 1829 work is startling modern in its spirit and approach, a dryly witty expose of the underlying tensions of the enduring battle of the sexes.Also in this volume: Balzac's short tale "Pierre Grassou," an 1840 story about a terrible painter who uses marriage to the daughter of a wealthy art collector as a stepping stone to success.French writer HONOR DE BALZAC (1799-1850) is generally credited with the invention of realism in fiction, and his novels are considered among the greatest ever written in any language. His grand La Com die Humaine consists of a vast array of novels and short stories depicting French society of his time, among them Louis Lambert (1832), Les Illusions perdues (1837), and La Cousine Bette (1847).