Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac (Book Analysis) E-Book

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• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 30

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Unlock the more straightforward side of Colonel Chabert with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac, which follows the titular character’s struggle to adapt to life in France after he was for years presumed dead. Chabert, a former war hero and a man of integrity, finds that there is no place for him in France’s new society, which is ruled by greed, selfishness and injustice, and is callously manipulated by his conniving ex-wife. The novel is one of the Scenes of Private Life in Balzac’s The Human Comedy, a hugely ambitious series of around 90 novels and novellas which aimed to depict the entirety of 19th-century French society. Balzac was one of France’s most prolific and influential writers, and his work played a major part in laying the groundwork for the modern realist novel.

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This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:
• A complete plot summary
• Character studies
• Key themes and symbols
• Questions for further reflection

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Leseprobe

Honoré de Balzac

French writer

Born in Tours in 1799.Died in Paris in 1850.Notable works:The Chouans (1829), novelEugénie Grandet (1833), novelFather Goriot (1835), novel

Honoré de Balzac was one of the major French writers of the 19th century. As a young man, he found his way into the world of the Parisian aristocracy, where he became a fixture in the years that followed. However, he was soon ruined by various disastrous business ventures and his excessive lifestyle: literary writing, which he undertook passionately and diligently, became his only way of paying off his debts.

He was an ambitious man and embarked on a monumental work, La Comédie Humaine (“The Human Comedy”), which features more than 90 novels and which aimed to draw a complete portrait of the society of his time, so vast that it could compete with the official records. The most famous novels in the series include Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Father Goriot (1835).

Balzac is considered to be one of the founding fathers of the modern realist novel.

Colonel Chabert

A gripping intrigue

Genre: novellaReference edition: De Balzac, H. (2015) Colonel Chabert. Trans. Marriage, C. and Bell, E. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.1st edition: 1832Themes: honour, war, revenge, marriage, money

Although Colonel Chabert first appeared in 1832, the definitive version of the novel was not published until 1844. It forms part of the Scènes de la vie privée (“Scenes from Private Life”) of Balzac’s Comédie humaine, and tells the story of Hyacinthe Chabert, a former colonel in Napoleon’s (Emperor of the French, 1769-1821) army, as he struggles to recover his honour, his property and his wife after being presumed dead.

This struggle serves as a pretext for the author to recount the terrible actions inspired by the union of love and money, in a world which constantly shifts between the poverty of Chabert and the wealth of his wife.

Summary

The return of Colonel Chabert

The story opens in a Parisian lawyer’s office, where the clerks are working in a relaxed atmosphere. As they are joking around, they see an old man come to their door. This wretched-looking visitor asks to speak to the clerks’ master, a M. Derville. However, the clerks tell him that M. Derville is a very busy man and only comes by the office at night: the old man will have to return at around 1 o’clock in the morning if he wants to see him.