Lecture 13. Realism and critical realism

Major Authors and Works in France
Stendhal (1783-1842)
Stendhal is the pen name of Marie Henri Beyle, who was born in Grenoble, where he had an unhappy childhood. As a great admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte, he served in Napoleon’ s army and participated in several campaigns of the Napoleonic wars. He lived in Italy from 1814 to 1821 and served as French consul from 1830 to 1841. As a critic, he was noted for quoting, “A novel is a mirror walking along the road.” As a novelist, nevertheless, he was in fact partly romantic and partly realistic. His most famous novel, The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir, 1830) is about a villainous opportunist, Julien Sorel, who, in order to advance himself in power and glory, exchanges his red military garb for the black cloak of a priest after the Bourbon restoration, carries on schemed love affairs with two women, and finally
comes to a scandalous, tragic end on the scaffold.

Balzac (1799-1850)
Honoré de Balzac was born into a middle-class family at Tours. He attended the Sorbonne and there acquired his passionate interest in literature. He was often in debt but his financial condition was somewhat improved by the substantial revenues his books brought him. He was astoundingly prolific. He wrote over 90 novels and tales and called the whole body of his work The Human Comedy (La Comé die Humaine), which contains more than 2,000 characters depicted with accuracy and massive detail. Considered “the father of modern realism,” Balzac is actually both romantic and realistic like Stendhal. Juxtaposed with his objective method of treatment are the romantic qualities of melodramatic plots and violent passions in
scenes of private, provincial, Parisian, country, political, and military life. Among his best-known novels are Eugé nie Grandet (1833) and Father Goriot (Le Pè re Goriot, 1834). In the former, Fé lix Grandet destroys with his greed and tyranny the romance of his daughter Eugé nie with her cousin Charles and condemns her to a joyless, futile existence. In the latter, Goriot has a consuming passion for his two ungrateful daughters, who are ashamed of their father ’ s bourgeois manners after they are married to wealthy men, but expect their father to extricate them from financial difficulties. Readers of this novel are most impressed with the last scene in which the two daughters only send empty coaches to the funeral of Goriot, who, after sacrificing his last silver plate and depriving himself of everything (including his
self-respect) for his daughters, dies of apoplexy.