Everyone agrees that Balzac is a realistic writer, but what do we actually mean when we say that? This book examines the richness and variety of Balzac’s approaches to realism, employing several different interpretive methods. Taking love and money as the “Prime Movers” of the world of La Comédie humaine, twenty-one chapters provide detailed analyses of the many strategies by which the writing forges the powerful impression of reality, the construction we famously think of as Balzacian realism. Each chapter sets the methods and aims of its analysis, with particular attention to the language that conveys the sense of reality. Plots, devices, or interpretive systems (including genealogies) function as images or reflections of how the novels make their meanings. The analyses converge on the central point: how did Balzac invent realism? No less than this fundamental question lies behind the interpretations this book provides, a question to which the conclusion provides a full answer. A major book in English devoted entirely to Balzac was overdue. Here is the American voice of Balzac studies, an engaging, insightful, and revealing excursion among the masterworks of one of the most important authors of all time. 

For Love or for Money: Balzac’s Rhetorical Realism

Literature & Fiction

Mortimer, Armine Kotin

History & Criticism

Ohio State University Press

<p><div> <div>Everyone agrees that Balzac is a realistic writer, but what do we actually mean when we say that? This book examines the richness and variety of Balzac's approaches to realism, employing several different interpretive methods. Taking love and money as the "Prime Movers" of the world of <i>La Comédie humaine,</i> twenty-one chapters provide detailed analyses of the many strategies by which the writing forges the powerful impression of reality, the construction we famously think of as Balzacian realism. Each chapter sets the methods and aims of its analysis, with particular attention to the language that conveys the sense of reality. Plots, devices, or interpretive systems (including genealogies) function as images or reflections of how the novels make their meanings. The analyses converge on the central point: how did Balzac invent realism? No less than this fundamental question lies behind the interpretations this book provides, a question to which the conclusion provides a full answer.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>A major book in English devoted entirely to Balzac was overdue. Here is the American voice of Balzac studies, an engaging, insightful, and revealing excursion among the masterworks of one of the most important authors of all time.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> </div></p>

For Love or for Money: Balzac's Rhetorical Realism

<p>Rich in informative and provocative suggestions for interpreting all of Barthes's texts, this unique work proposes a comprehensive commentary on Barthes's brilliant, programmatic book, The Pleasure of the Text. Fully explained intertexts illustrate the theory of intertextuality and clarify the book's most enigmatic and complex concepts. Also included are corrections of the serious errors in the English translation. The introduction assesses the importance of The Pleasure of the Text in Barthes's evolution and defines intertextuality and other key Barthesian notions such as écriture; a bibliography and index complete this valuable and most unusual study. Students and professors alike will find it indispensable.</p>

The Gentlest Law (American University Studies)

Peter Lang Publishing

<p>In seven highly autobiographical French novels from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fiction brings to real life a simple resolution. These novels plot to kill a female character based on a woman in the author's life, a person who was still alive when the novel was published.<br>Because these novels both depend on and radically diverge from autobiographical reality, they are uniquely instructive about the nature of fiction itself. Reading the life stories in relation to the plots, Mortimer brings into sharp critical focus plot, plotting, and the plotable. Always interesting, often revealing, this probing analysis of a special type of autobiographical fiction, with its distinctive treatment of real and fictionalized women, will stimulate and entertain the reader.</p>

Plotting to Kill (Writing About Women)

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

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Books by Mortimer, Armine Kotin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mortimer, Armine Kotin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

For Love or for Money: Balzac’s Rhetorical Realism

For Love or for Money: Balzac's Rhetorical Realism

For Love or for Money: Balzac's Rhetorical Realism

The Gentlest Law (American University Studies)

Plotting to Kill (Writing About Women)