Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac (Book Analysis)

Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac (Book Analysis) PDF

Author: Bright Summaries

Publisher: BrightSummaries.com

Published: 2016-11-09

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 280628788X

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Unlock the more straightforward side of Cousin Bette with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac, which tells the story of a woman driven by jealousy to try and destroy her cousin’s family by any means possible. Along with her beautiful but malicious friend, Bette schemes to push the Hulot family into infidelity, betrayal and financial ruin. Cousin Bette stands out for its realism, with vivid descriptions of its cast of characters and a perceptive examination of the social changes taking place in 19th-century Paris. The novel is one of the Scenes of Parisian 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. Honoré de 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. Find out everything you need to know about Cousin Bette in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you in your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

A Passion in the Desert

A Passion in the Desert PDF

Author: Honore de Balzac

Publisher: The Floating Press

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 21

ISBN-13: 1776539214

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During Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, one French soldier becomes separated from his regiment and finds himself wandering lost in the desert. Just when he has given up all hope, he makes an unlikely friend. This highly allegorical short story gives readers an opportunity to ponder the nature of love and human relationships.

Cousin Bette

Cousin Bette PDF

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2004-12-02

Total Pages: 519

ISBN-13: 0141913592

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Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love with plans to marry Hortense, she becomes consumed by the desire to exact her revenge and dedicates herself to the destruction of the Hulot family, plotting their ruin with patient, silent malice. Cousin Bette is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. The culmination of the Comédie humaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of his greatest triumphs as a novelist.

Cousin Betty

Cousin Betty PDF

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-06-13

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13:

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"Cousin Betty," also known as "La Cousine Bette," is a novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th-century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman. Together with Valérie Marneffe, she plots the destruction of her extended family by seducing and tormenting a series of men.

Existential Monday

Existential Monday PDF

Author: Benjamin Fondane

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2016-05-17

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1590178998

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Benjamin Fondane—who was born and educated in Romania, moved as an adult to Paris, lived for a time in Buenos Aires, where he was close to Victoria Ocampo, Jorge Luis Borges’s friend and publisher, and died in Auschwitz—was an artist and thinker who found in every limit, in every border, “a torture and a spur.” Poet, critic, man of the theater, movie director, Fondane was the most daring of the existentialists, a metaphysical anarchist, affirming individual against those great abstractions that limit human freedom—the State, History, the Law, the Idea. Existential Monday, the first selection of his philosophical work to appear in English, includes four of Fondane's most thought-provoking and important texts, "Existential Monday and the Sunday of History," "Preface for the Present Moment," "Man Before History" (co-translated by Andrew Rubens), and "Boredom." Here Fondane, until now little-known except to specialists, emerges as one of the enduring French philosophers of the twentieth century.