Overview
- Treads new ground as the only single-authored book to pair Rohmer with Rivette with the purpose of exploring their commitments to Balzac
- Challenges and revises common assumptions on the French New Wave’s approach to tradition and innovation by exploring the rich and multi-faceted legacy of The Human Comedy
- Boosts our knowledge of Rohmer and Rivette’s film criticism by making overlooked articles known to Anglophone readers through exclusive French to English translations
- Introduces some of Balzac’s most notable novels to Anglophone readers, cinephiles and Francophiles in an original and interdisciplinary fashion
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture (PSADVC)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book examines the theoretical affiliations between the most notable proponent of literary realism, Honoré de Balzac, and two understated but key representatives of the French New Wave, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette. It argues that their film criticism, which gradually led to the establishment of a common aesthetic vision of cinema (the “politique des auteurs”), owes more to Balzac and the nineteenth-century novel than to any intellectual trend of the immediate post-war period. By considering the films of Rohmer and Rivette as an extension of their writings (essays, film reviews, scriptwriting, novels and interviews), this volume analyses the changing and sometimes opposed ways in which they applied Balzacian principles and themes to their cinematic practice. Essentially, it understands the exchange between art forms, past traditions and contemporaneous currents as the overlooked yet common thread that links these three authors, through their own re-appropriations of classical and romantic aesthetics in their explorations of modern French society. In doing so, this study provides further nuance to the “conservative” versus “progressist” rupture that is generally assumed between the two directors, and offers an innovative reading of The Human Comedy in the light of post-war ideas on authorship, film adaptation, classicism and modernism.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr Zahra Tavassoli Zea is an independent researcher. She specialises in the nineteenth-century literary and artistic legacies in post-war French cinema.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Balzac Reframed
Book Subtitle: The Classical and Modern Faces of Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette
Authors: Zahra Tavassoli Zea
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30615-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-30614-4Published: 26 November 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-30617-5Published: 26 November 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-30615-1Published: 14 November 2019
Series ISSN: 2634-629X
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6303
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 230
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Adaptation Studies