Balzac, Literary Sociologist

Melding the fields of literature, sociology, and history, this book develops analyses of the ten novels in Balzac's Scènes de la vie de province . Following the order of the novels projected in La Comédie humaine , Allan H. Pasco investigates how Balzac used art as a tool of social inquiry to obtain startlingly accurate insights into the relationships that defined his turbulent society. His repeated claim to be an "historian of manners" was more than an empty boast. Though Balzac was first and f