Le Pere Goriot

by Honore de Balzac

Overview

About the Series: Each Norton Critical Edition includes an authoritative text, contextual and source materials, and a wide range of interpretations-from contemporary perspectives to the most current critical theory-as well as a bibliography and, in most cases, a chronology of the author's life and work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9782080712998
Publisher:	Garnier-Flammarion
Publication date:	01/01/1995
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

Table of Contents

1	Private Lodgings	7
2	Afternoon Calls	59
3	Entry into Society	95
4	Trompe-la-Mort	151
5	The Two Daughters	215
6	Death of a Father	251
	Afterword	277
	Selected Bibliography	285

What People are Saying About This

John Lyons

This is a terrific rendering of a perennial favorite. Raffel gives us all the lively, dramatic, and colorful Balzac style—I didn't think this could be done in English. It doesn't read at all like a translation—I was caught up completely with the feeling of direct contact with the Parisian life—but Raffel remains faithful to the finest detail.
—(John Lyons, University of Virginia)

Editorial Reviews

Best known for his epic series, La Comedie humaine, Balzac dabbled in the theater. Sadly always debt-ridden, he found playwriting did not pay nearly as much or as quickly as novel writing, so he abandoned the stage. At his death in 1850, the incredibly prolific writer--La Comedie humaine consists of 91 stories and novels--left only five complete plays. Of these, "Mercadet", which wasn't produced in Balzac's lifetime, is the best known, mostly because Samuel Beckett may have based his ever-absent Godot on a minor character in "Mercadet" named Godeau. This obscurity is a shame because "Mercadet" is a charming, likable, if rather light, comedy. True, its plot sounds like a bad sitcom episode: manipulative, money-mad financier Mercadet spins an ever more complicated net of lies to separate investors from their money and gets tangled in the web himself. The play is redeemed, however, by Balzac's gift for creating interesting, original, multilayered characters. In this edition, Robert Cornthwaite's translation is graceful and witty enough to make even the most time-worn plot twists seem fresh.

Jack Helbig

Review - French Scene parisienne, roman de decheance, l'intrigue du pere Goriot tiendrait en deux lignes : un brave homme, une pension bourgeoise, deux filles qui le depouillent. Mais c'est aussi la cle de voute de son cycle romanesque que livre ici Balzac. En systematisant pour la premiere fois le retour de ses personnages, l'auteur se joue des codes et revele les destins croises du jeune Rastignac et de Bianchon, les malheurs de la vicomtesse de Beauseant, ou le secret de Vautrin... Un coup de maitre qui fait du Pere Goriot un chef-d'oeuvre aux innombrables lectures. L'apparat critique de Pierre-Georges Castex accompagne le lecteur dans ce roman-carrefour a double fond, et aide a retracer l'histoire complexe de son edition.

From the Publisher