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Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France. While the deeds of 'The Thirteen' remain frequently... Read Full Overview

The criminal as superman: Balzac's fascination with crime as the obverse of society and because the criminal epitomizes the shapeshifting of modernism. There's also a heavily gothic element to these stories. Balzac distinguishes his novellas from 'traditional' gothic because... Read Full Overview

Honor? de Balzac (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright best known for a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Com?die humaine , which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon. Due to... Read Full Overview

The criminal as superman: Balzac's fascination with crime as the obverse of society and because the criminal epitomizes the shapeshifting of modernism. There's also a heavily gothic element to these stories. Balzac distinguishes his novellas from 'traditional' gothic because... Read Full Overview

In this gripping novel, Balzac explores the mysteries of secret societies and human nature. With a cast of complex characters and a plot full of twists and turns, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Marriage's expert translation captures the... Read Full Overview

Excerpt: ...a fancy, such a merest Duchess's whim as furnished a Lope or a Calderon with the plot of the Dog in the Manger. She would not suffer another woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of being his. Nature had given the Duchess every qualification... Read Full Overview

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original... Read Full Overview

The Histoire des Treize consists-or rather is built up-of three stories: Ferragus or the Rue Soly, La Duchesse de Langeais or Ne touchez-paz a la hache, and La Fille aux Yeux d'Or. To tell the truth, there is more power than taste throughout the Histoire des Treize, and perhaps... Read Full Overview