Authors:
- Encapsulates over ten years of research on the topic, foregrounding the discussion of Balzac with other sociologists, writers, and historians during his time
- Provides a broad cultural context that will appeal to literary scholars, historians, sociologists, and scholars of French literature at-large
- Establishes Balzac’s vital importance not only during the nineteenth century but also for his continued influence on contemporary ideas.
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
Reviews
“Balzac, Literary Sociologist is a significant contribution to Balzac studies, especially for its fine-grained and richly erudite readings of an under-analyzed section of La Comédie humaine. The book artfully combines history, social science, and literary analysis to bring new clarity to Balzac’s view of provincial France and is destined to have broad appeal to expert researchers and novice undergraduates alike.” (Nineteenth-Century French Studies, ncfs-journal.org, Vol. 47 (1–2), 2018)
“This collection of essays devoted to La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s monumental corpus of interconnected novels and stories depicting French society in the first half of the 19th century, appears at an interesting cultural moment. … Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (W. Edwards, Choice, Vol. 55 (7), March, 2018)
“Balzac, Literary Sociologist, the most important English-language book on Balzac in years, has at last given this author the place he deserves as a social historian. This impressive study will be an eye-opener for generations of readers.” (Armine Kotin Mortimer, Professor Emerita, Research Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, and author of “For Love or for Money”)
“Stethoscope in hand, the eminent Balzacian Allan H. Pasco examines a radically changed France depicted throughout the Scènes de la vie de province. Balzac, a sociologist before the formal advent of sociology, examines French ‘private life’ in detail and diagnoses its profound uneasiness. With remarkable finesse, Pasco discerns in closely read texts the symptoms caused by the noxious atmosphere of the Restoration and July Monarchy, with which he composes a masterful clinical chart that allows peering into today's social problems.” (Anne-Marie Baron, President, Les Amis de Balzac, and author of “Balzac occulte: Alchimie, magnétisme, sociétés secretes”)
“Allan H. Pasco’s latest book is a fine, well-researched, eminently readable survey, The quality and originality of the individual chapters—on money, wasted youth, the Paris-provinces dichotomy and, refreshingly, Balzacian onomastics—are enhanced by being incorporated into a presentation of Balzac as a proto-sociologist. Highly recommended to students, academics, and readers of the nineteenth-century novel.” (Owen Heathcote, Honorary Visiting Reader in Modern French Studies, University of Bradford, UK, and author of “Balzac and Violence: Representing History, Space, Sexuality and Death in “La Comédie humaine””)
Authors and Affiliations
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Department of French and Italian, University of Kansas , McLouth, USA
Allan H. Pasco
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Balzac, Literary Sociologist
Authors: Allan H. Pasco
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39333-9
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) 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-81868-9Published: 16 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-39333-9Published: 04 October 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 290
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, European Literature, Comparative Literature