La Comédie humaine
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Revision as of 08:54, 13 December 2008
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La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's (1799 – 1850) multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories naturalistically depicting French society.
The "Avant-propos"
In 1842, Balzac wrote a preface (an "Avant-propos") to the whole ensemble in which he explained his method and the collection's structure. This preface consists of the following:
Motivated by the work of biologists Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Georges Cuvier and most importantly Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Balzac explains that he seeks to understand "social species" in the way a biologist would analyse "zoological species", and to accomplish this he intends to describe the interrelations of men, women and things. The importance of the woman is underlined by Balzac's contention that, while a biologist may gloss over the differences between a male and female lion, "in Society the woman is not simply the female of the man".
Balzac then gives an extensive list of writers and works that influenced him, including Walter Scott, François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes.
He then describes his writerly role as a "secretary" who is transcribing society's "history"; moreover, he posits that he is interested in something that no previous historian has attempted: a history of "moeurs" (customs, manners and morals). He also notes his desire to go behind the surface of events, to show the reasons and causes for social phenomena. Balzac then professes his belief in two profound truths -- Religion and Monarchy -- and his concern for understanding the individual in the context of his Family.
In the last half of his preface, Balzac explains the "Comédie humaine"'s different parts (which he compares to "frames" and "galeries"), and which are more or less the final form of the collection (see below).
Todo
- Its relation to Sex and the City, recurring characters, moral lesson in each episode.
