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Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self- Invention

Stendhal and Balzac
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A History of Modern French Literature
This chapter is in the book A History of Modern French Literature
� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self- InventionStendhal and BalzacAleksandar StevićAt the end of Honoré de Balzac’s Le père Goriot (Père Goriot, 1835) the novel’s hero, Eugène de Rastignac, stands at the summit of the Père Lachaise cemetery on the outskirts of Paris, gazing at the city that lies below. An ambitious but impoverished nobleman from the provinces, Eugène had arrived in the capital to study law. Instead, over the course of some three hundred pages, he is treated to a very different kind of education, learning about the intricate rules that govern aris-tocratic salons and witnessing the steady stream of petty intrigues, personal betrayals, and elaborate conspiracies that permeate fashion-able society. In a word, he has learned what it takes to succeed in Paris. And just now, Rastignac has witnessed a particularly sordid epi-sode of Parisian life, the funeral of the novel’s eponymous hero, Jean-Joachim Goriot.Once a wealthy industrialist, Goriot has died a desolate old man, his fortune drained to provide a comfortable future for his two daugh-ters who have now forgotten him. Having secured their places at the heart of the fashionable world by marrying wealthy noblemen, Del-phine de Nucingen and Anastasie de Restaud ignore their father even in death, leaving it to Rastignac, a penniless student, to arrange his funeral. While this melodramatic finale clearly suggests that the at-tainment of wealth and fame in Paris is an exercise in heartless indif-ference and shameless egotism, it nonetheless fails to dissuade the young provincial from attempting precisely such a feat. Now that he knows the stakes, now that he has seen the depravity, the intrigues,
© 2017 Princeton University Press, Princeton

� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self- InventionStendhal and BalzacAleksandar StevićAt the end of Honoré de Balzac’s Le père Goriot (Père Goriot, 1835) the novel’s hero, Eugène de Rastignac, stands at the summit of the Père Lachaise cemetery on the outskirts of Paris, gazing at the city that lies below. An ambitious but impoverished nobleman from the provinces, Eugène had arrived in the capital to study law. Instead, over the course of some three hundred pages, he is treated to a very different kind of education, learning about the intricate rules that govern aris-tocratic salons and witnessing the steady stream of petty intrigues, personal betrayals, and elaborate conspiracies that permeate fashion-able society. In a word, he has learned what it takes to succeed in Paris. And just now, Rastignac has witnessed a particularly sordid epi-sode of Parisian life, the funeral of the novel’s eponymous hero, Jean-Joachim Goriot.Once a wealthy industrialist, Goriot has died a desolate old man, his fortune drained to provide a comfortable future for his two daugh-ters who have now forgotten him. Having secured their places at the heart of the fashionable world by marrying wealthy noblemen, Del-phine de Nucingen and Anastasie de Restaud ignore their father even in death, leaving it to Rastignac, a penniless student, to arrange his funeral. While this melodramatic finale clearly suggests that the at-tainment of wealth and fame in Paris is an exercise in heartless indif-ference and shameless egotism, it nonetheless fails to dissuade the young provincial from attempting precisely such a feat. Now that he knows the stakes, now that he has seen the depravity, the intrigues,
© 2017 Princeton University Press, Princeton

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of Contributors ix
  4. Introduction (1) 1
  5. Introduction (2) 20
  6. Erasmus and the “First Renaissance” in France 47
  7. Rabelais and the Low Road to Modernity 71
  8. Marguerite de Navarre 91
  9. Ronsard 113
  10. Du Bellay and La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse 137
  11. Montaigne 155
  12. Molière, Theater, and Modernity 171
  13. Racine, Phèdre, and the French Classical Stage 190
  14. Lafayette 212
  15. From Moralists to Libertines 229
  16. Travel Narratives in the Seventeenth Century 250
  17. The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns 269
  18. Voltaire’s Candide 291
  19. Disclosures of the Boudoir 312
  20. Women’s Voices in Enlightenment France 330
  21. Comedy in the Age of Reason 351
  22. Diderot, Le neveu de Rameau, and the Figure of the Philosophe in Eighteenth- Century Paris 371
  23. Rousseau’s First Person 393
  24. Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self- Invention 414
  25. Hugo and Romantic Drama 436
  26. Flaubert and Madame Bovary 451
  27. Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud 470
  28. Mallarmé and Poetry 495
  29. Becoming Proust in Time 514
  30. Céline/Malraux 534
  31. Breton, Char, and Modern French Poetry 554
  32. Césaire 575
  33. Sartre’s La nausée and the Modern Novel 595
  34. Beckett’s French Contexts 615
  35. Djebar and the Birth of “Francophone” Literature 634
  36. Acknowledgments 653
  37. Index 655
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400885046-022

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of Contributors ix
  4. Introduction (1) 1
  5. Introduction (2) 20
  6. Erasmus and the “First Renaissance” in France 47
  7. Rabelais and the Low Road to Modernity 71
  8. Marguerite de Navarre 91
  9. Ronsard 113
  10. Du Bellay and La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse 137
  11. Montaigne 155
  12. Molière, Theater, and Modernity 171
  13. Racine, Phèdre, and the French Classical Stage 190
  14. Lafayette 212
  15. From Moralists to Libertines 229
  16. Travel Narratives in the Seventeenth Century 250
  17. The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns 269
  18. Voltaire’s Candide 291
  19. Disclosures of the Boudoir 312
  20. Women’s Voices in Enlightenment France 330
  21. Comedy in the Age of Reason 351
  22. Diderot, Le neveu de Rameau, and the Figure of the Philosophe in Eighteenth- Century Paris 371
  23. Rousseau’s First Person 393
  24. Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self- Invention 414
  25. Hugo and Romantic Drama 436
  26. Flaubert and Madame Bovary 451
  27. Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud 470
  28. Mallarmé and Poetry 495
  29. Becoming Proust in Time 514
  30. Céline/Malraux 534
  31. Breton, Char, and Modern French Poetry 554
  32. Césaire 575
  33. Sartre’s La nausée and the Modern Novel 595
  34. Beckett’s French Contexts 615
  35. Djebar and the Birth of “Francophone” Literature 634
  36. Acknowledgments 653
  37. Index 655
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