“Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are. ”This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein’s erudite and witty book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honoré de Balzac’s The Human Comedy. Balzac uses them as a connecting thread in his novels, showing how food can evoke character, atmosphere, class, and social climbing more suggestively than money, appearances, and other more conventional trappings. Full of surprises and insights, Balzac’s Omelet invites you to taste anew Balzac’s genius as a writer and his deep understanding of the human condition, its ambitions, its flaws, and its cravings.

George Saintsbury was an English critic, literary historian, editor, and teacher. He is regarded as a highly influential critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His biography and critique of Balzac written in 1901 is thus considered an influential and important account.

First published in 1990, this book was the first comprehensive study of Balzac’s relationship to music, blending past scholarship with new perspectives to formulate an inclusive account. It begins by examining the contacts and experiences that shaped the musical side of Balzac’s life. These left valuable and lasting impressions which often found their way into his writings, where he recorded a myriad of critical and musicological opinions — assessed primarily in relation to Gambara and Massimilla Doni. These discussions prepare the way for an analysis of Balzac two major musical persuasions: religious music and Beethoven. This book will be of interest to students of literature and music.

An NYRB Classics Original Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now. The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys’s essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of André Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon. Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time.

This engaging book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, Ann Jefferson examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. She traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. Jefferson considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. She then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. She shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and she discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. Rich in narrative detail, Genius in France brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.

This fascinating new book explores the world of portraiture from a number of vantage points, and asks key questions about its nature. How has portraiture changed over the centuries? How have portraits represented their subjects, and how have they been interpreted? Issues of identity, modernity, and gender are considered within a cultural and historical context. Shearer West uncovers much intriguing detail about a genre that has often been seen as purely representational, featuring examples from African tribes to Renaissance princes, and from 'stars' such as David and Victoria Beckham to ordinary people. In the process, she shows us how to communicate with the past in an exciting new way.

This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: The Human Comedy: Scenes From Private Life: At the Sign of the Cat and Racket The Ball at Sceaux The Purse Vendetta Madame Firmiani A Second Home Domestic Peace Paz Study of a Woman Another Study of Woman The Grand Breteche Albert Savarus Letters of Two Brides A Daughter of Eve A Woman of Thirty The Deserted Woman La Grenadiere The Message Gobseck The Marriage Contract A Start in Life Modeste Mignon Beatrix Honorine Colonel Chabert The Atheist's Mass The Commission in Lunacy Pierre Grassou Scenes From Provincial Life Ursule Mirouet Eugenie Grandet Pierrette The Vicar of Tours The Two Brothers The Illustrious Gaudissart The Muse of the Department Eve and David Scenes From Parisian Life Scenes from a Courtesan's Life A Prince of Bohemia A Man of Business Gaudissart II Unconscious Comedians Ferragus The Duchesse de Langeais The Girl with the Golden Eyes Father Goriot Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan Bureaucracy Sarrasine Facino Cane Cousin Betty Cousin Pons The Lesser Bourgeoisie Scenes From Political Life An Historical Mystery An Episode Under the Terror The Brotherhood of Consolation Z. Marcas The Deputy of Arcis Scenes From Military Life The Chouans A Passion in the Desert Scenes From Country Life The Country Doctor Juana Farewell The Recruit El Verdugo A Drama on the Seashore The Red Inn The Elixir of Life Maitre Cornelius Catherine de' Medici Louis Lambert The Exiles Seraphita Short Stories The Napoleon of the People Droll Stories Plays Vautrin The Resources of Quinola Paméla Giraud The Stepmother Mercadet Analytical Studies The Physiology of Marriage Petty Troubles of Married Life Letters to Madame Hanska The Complete Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine ...