Showing results by author "ciesse" in All Categories

In "The Blonde Lady, being a record of the duel of wits between Arsène Lupin and the English detective" - original title "Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes" - the gentleman-burglar once more meets his enemy, the English detective Herlock Sholmes. If in the last story of "Arsène Lupin, gentleman-burglar" Sherlock Holmes arrives too late (the name was at a later date changed to Herlock Sholmes in reply to complaints and threats by Conan Doyle regarding copyrights), in the two stories that compose "The Blonde Lady" these two great intellects are bound in opposite directions. Where one ...

Ce n'était pas une petite tâche que de peindre les deux ou trois mille figures saillantes d'une époque, car telle est, en définitif, la somme des types que présente chaque génération et que La Comédie Humaine comportera. Ce nombre de figures, de caractères, cette multitude d'existences exigeaient des cadres, et, qu'on me pardonne cette expression, des galeries. De là, les divisions si naturelles, déjà connues, de mon ouvrage en Scènes de la vie privée, de province, parisienne, politique, militaire et de campagne. Dans ces six livres sont classées toutes les Etudes de moeurs qui ...

Cousin Pons is one of the final works in Balzac's long novel series titled The Human Comedy. It was published in 1847, along with Cousin Betty, as one of a complementary pair of novels, collectively titled Poor Relations. While Cousin Betty tells the story of a bitter woman who seeks revenge on her wealthier relations, in Cousin Pons, Balzac turns to the story of an timid, innocent man who is exploited and victimized by the wealthier members of his extended family.Balzac offers probing character portraits and an indictment of greed and materialism in this detailed portrait of mid-19th-century ...

Le Père Goriot est un roman d’Honoré de Balzac, écrit en 1834, dont la publication débute dans la Revue de Paris et qui paraît en 1835 en librairie. Il fait partie des Scènes de la vie privée de la Comédie humaine. Le Père Goriot établit les bases de ce qui deviendra un véritable édifice : la Comédie humaine, construction littéraire unique en son genre, avec des liens entre les volumes, des passerelles, des renvois. (Résumé par Wikipédia)Le Père Goriot (English: Father Goriot or Old Goriot) is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), ...

Ce n'était pas une petite tâche que de peindre les deux ou trois mille figures saillantes d'une époque, car telle est, en définitif, la somme des types que présente chaque génération et que La Comédie Humaine comportera. Ce nombre de figures, de caractères, cette multitude d'existences exigeaient des cadres, et, qu'on me pardonne cette expression, des galeries. De là, les divisions si naturelles, déjà connues, de mon ouvrage en Scènes de la vie privée, de province, parisienne, politique, militaire et de campagne. Dans ces six livres sont classées toutes les Études de mœurs qui...

The novella “The Ball at Sceaux” is part of Balzac’s great life work — the expansive fiction series titled “The Human Comedy.” The central character is Émilie de Fontaine, youngest daughter of a noble but impoverished family in post-revolutionary France. Her hapless father hopes to find her a good marriage, but Émilie, spoiled and willful, has repeatedly turned away suitors. She has a list of requirements for any prospective husband, one of which is that he must, of course, be “the son of a peer of France.” (The peerage was an elite aristocratic distinction.) She holds firm ...

Nouveau combat d'Arsène Lupin, en tant que Don Luis Perenna, « Les Dents du tigre » met en scène un ennemi sournois et manipulateur qui cherche à s'attribuer un fabuleux héritage américain, au prix de crimes en cascade sur le sol français.Amoureux tendre, qui risque tout pour sa bien-aimée, redresseur de torts juste et implacable mais aussi ironique, Arsène Lupin nous entraine dans ses aventures avec force et séduction.(Résumé par Bidou)

“Rise and Fall of César Birotteau” (1837) is part of Balzac’s great novel series titled “The Human Comedy.”The story is set in Paris, in the years following the restoration of the monarchy after the Napoleonic era. The masters of the old society — the aristocracy and the church — had been overtaken by a newly energized middle class, with its merchants, landlords, lawyers, and bankers. French society found itself in a new world of financial adventurism, floating on a sea of credit and speculation. César Birotteau, a good-hearted and harmless man, has worked his way up from ...

Colonel Chabert is a soldier, who goes missing during the Napoleonic wars, and then returns from the dead, most inconveniently for his wife, who has remarried and has gone up in the world. This novella by Balzac lays bare the venality of the French Restoration period. It has been filmed several times, most recently in the 1994 version, starring Gerard Depardieu. - Summary by Nicole Lee

“The Chouans” (1829) was the first novel published under Balzac’s own name (rather than a pen-name). It became the first book in the great work of his lifetime — the novel series titled “The Human Comedy.”Balzac was impressed by the writings of Sir Walter Scott. Scott made Scottish history come alive by creating fictions that used real history as backdrop. Balzac’s novel is set in 1799 — the year that Napoleon became First Consul of France. In the far west of France (i.e., Brittany), anti-revolutionary sentiment still simmered. The Chouans were a rustic guerrilla militia who ...

The short novel “Colonel Chabert” (1832) is part of Balzac’s great life work, the sprawling novel series titled “The Human Comedy.” Chabert, an officer in Napoleon’s army, is pronounced dead on the battlefield. His wife then inherits his estate and remarries. It turns out, however, that Chabert has in fact survived the war. When he regains his health, he returns to Paris and tries to take legal action to restore his position. This sets up a conflict between the old military virtues of honor and principle versus the avarice and amorality of society in post-Napoleonic France. - ...

Malgré l'avis de son père, Juliette épouse l'homme dont elle est follement amoureuse, un colonel de Napoléon à l'avenir prometteur. Les années passant, elle réalise que son père avait bien raison... Un gentilhomme anglais, qui s'est épris d'elle, parvient à gagner son coeur. Elle restera malgré tout vertueuse, causant ainsi, sans le vouloir, sa mort. Une nouvelle rencontre, M. de Vandenesse, changera drastiquement le cours de sa vie. Cela aura des conséquences bien funestes sur le bonheur de sa famille.In spite of her father's opinion that the man is unworthy of her, Juliette ...

Ce n'était pas une petite tâche que de peindre les deux ou trois mille figures saillantes d'une époque, car telle est, en définitif, la somme des types que présente chaque génération et que La Comédie Humaine comportera. Ce nombre de figures, de caractères, cette multitude d'existences exigeaient des cadres, et, qu'on me pardonne cette expression, des galeries. De là, les divisions si naturelles, déjà connues, de mon ouvrage en Scènes de la vie privée, de province, parisienne, politique, militaire et de campagne. Dans ces six livres sont classées toutes les Etudes de moeurs qui ...

Raccolta di rime attribuite a Lapo Gianni a cura di Ernesto Lamma, letterato italiano: Le ultime tre sezioni della raccolta sono definite di "incerta attribuzione" dal Lamma stesso. (Riassunto di Pier)

Ce n'était pas une petite tâche que de peindre les deux ou trois mille figures saillantes d'une époque, car telle est, en définitif, la somme des types que présente chaque génération et que La Comédie Humaine comportera. Ce nombre de figures, de caractères, cette multitude d'existences exigeaient des cadres, et, qu'on me pardonne cette expression, des galeries. De là, les divisions si naturelles, déjà connues, de mon ouvrage en Scènes de la vie privée, de province, parisienne, politique, militaire et de campagne. Dans ces six livres sont classées toutes les Études de moeurs qui...

The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran. One of Woolf's wittiest social satires.Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs. Dalloway.E. M. Forster described it as "... a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a ...

As usual, gentleman thief Arsène Lupin finds himself wrongfully accused of murder, and must find the real killer to clear his coloured name. (Summary by Cathy Barratt)

In three parts, this modern classic explores the life of an English family, the Ramsays, at their Scottish summer house both before and after The Great War. Difficult to categorize and including elements of feminist and psychological literature as well as stream of consciousness, Woolf's novel reads, at times, almost like a prose poem. At its heart, it examines what it means to be a woman and an artist at the start of the 20th century. (Summary by WendyKatzHiller)

The novel centres, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob [except for those times when we do indeed get Jacob's perspective]. Thus, although it could be said that the book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background, the narrative is constructed as a void in place of the central character, if indeed the novel can be said to have a 'protagonist' in conventional terms. Motifs of emptiness and absence haunt the novel and establish its elegiac ...

The Ramsey family, with house guests, visit the Isle of Skye at least twice. The plot is not at all the point though, as this is a book about how people think and feel and relate. There’s insight into the world of childhood thought and emotion, and a variety of views of adult cares and perceptions.I hope this doesn’t make it sound ‘difficult’, it doesn’t need to be – just let the sentences flow and make your own sense of the words. It’s perhaps as close as a novel can come to the highly individual experience of looking at a painting. … - Summary by Cori SamuelThis recording was...