• Ball at Sceaux, The by Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850)

  • By: ciesse
  • Podcast

Ball at Sceaux, The by Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850)

By: ciesse
  • Summary

  • 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 to this resolve, but events have a way of turning out surprisingly.

    Balzac was a master of irony and realism and his writings were hugely influential in the development of European fiction.
    - Summary by Bruce Pirie
    Copyright ciesse
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Episodes
  • Section 4
    Jan 20 2025
    40 mins
  • Section 3
    Jan 20 2025
    29 mins
  • Section 5
    Jan 20 2025
    26 mins

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