Abstract
Balzac and Paris. The subject suggests itself. Or rather, Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) himself ensured that such a topic would have an ongoing status for as long as he was read, not least by categorising as Scènes de la vie parisienne (Scenes of Parisian Life) many of the interconnected novels and other writings in his multi-volume treatment of French society, La Comédie humaine. Several of his most intense narratives that are mainly or even entirely set in Paris were nonetheless classified by Balzac under a different category, Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes of Private Life), including two to be discussed below, Le Père Goriot (Old Goriot) and Le Colonel Chabert. La vie privée was Balzac’s category for writings that dealt with intense family relations, especially narratives of tragic consequence, whether set in the great city or provincially.
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White, J. (2016). Balzac: A Socio-Material Archaeology of Paris. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54911-2_9
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