La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote

Par Honoré de Balzac

Une édition de référence de La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote d’Honoré de Balzac, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques.
« Un soir, elle fut frappée d’une pensée qui vint illuminer ses ténébreux chagrins comme un rayon céleste. Cette idée ne pouvait sourire qu’à un cœur aussi pur, aussi vertueux que l’était le sien. Elle résolut d’aller chez la duchesse de Carigliano, non pas pour lui redemander le cœur de son mari, mais pour s’y instruire des artifices qui le lui avaient enlevé ».

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Primento Digital
• Date de sortie: 1 janv. 2012
• ISBN: 9782806247711

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Regarded as one of the key figures of French and European literature, Balzac’s realist approach to writing would influence Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, and Karl Marx. With a precocious attitude and fierce intellect, Balzac struggled first in school and then in business before dedicating himself to the pursuit of writing as both an art and a profession. His distinctly industrious work routine—he spent hours each day writing furiously by hand and made extensive edits during the publication process—led to a prodigious output of dozens of novels, stories, plays, and novellas. La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s most famous work, is a sequence of 91 finished and 46 unfinished stories, novels, and essays with which he attempted to realistically and exhaustively portray every aspect of French society during the early-nineteenth century.

Avis sur La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote

[p_s_patrick · Évaluation : 4 sur 5 étoiles]

This is the first volume of Balzac's Comedie Humaine, consisting of the stories: "At the Sign of the Cat and Bracket", "The Ball at Sceaux", "The Purse", "The Vendetta", and "Madame Firmiani".In the preface and introduction to Balzac's Comedie Humaine that are included in this volume, he describes the purpose and scope of this project of linked novels as being a study on society, encompassing all social classes, professions, ages, and characters of people. This he does in the form of novels, which to go by those presented in this volume, are more the length of novellas, with 5 stories consisting of fewer than 300 pages. This is a nice length, allowing suffient room for Balzac to tell a compelling story in a moving and convincing manner, and to make of this a work of aesthetic value as well as an insightful study of the subtleties of human nature. The reader will not feel short-changed by the length of the story for two reasons: they are rich in detail, feeling, and beauty, and so can be reflected upon for a while after, and secondly, that the series consists of a large enough number of stories that the reader needn't go in want of something else to read, if the appetite is whetted.The novels in this series are grouped into several categories, including "Scenes from Parisian Life", "Scenes from Provincial Life", "Philosophical Studies", "Scenes from Political life", and quite a few many more. The stories in this volume are all "Scenes from Private Life", and revolve around love in and between the various social spheres. Some of these are tragic, and others resolve with happy ends. My favourite of those in this volume is "The Purse".

[smichaelwilson · Évaluation : 4 sur 5 étoiles]

The first story of the "Scenes from Private Life" section of Balzac's Human Comedy, At the Sign of the Cat and Racket examines the class, social, and economic divisions of 19th century France through the love story of a famous artist and the working class daughter of a drapery shop owner. Great attention is paid to the details of how these worlds interact and overlap. The cultural examination also delves into the "battle of the sexes" through the different marriages and relationships - all with their own flaws and highlights - between the characters in the story. Balzac's approach to the concept of love is complex and unflattering, providing a sober appraisal of typically romanticized situations.

[leslie398 · Évaluation : 4 sur 5 étoiles]

I think that it is possible that with a more modern translation, I might have given this novella 4*. Even so, I enjoyed Balzac's writing style and could easily understand how this was considered a "Scene from Private Life" as it is primarily concerned with the difficulties facing a young naive new wife when she and her husband begin to realize how different their background and ideas are.