A new annotated translation of the keystone of Balzacs Comdie Humainea sweeping narrative of corrupted idealism in a cynical urban milieuLost Illusions is an essential text within Balzacs Comdie Humaine, his sprawling, interconnected fictional portrait of French society in the 1820s and 1830s comprising nearly one hundred novels and short stories. This novel, published in three parts between 1837 and 1843, tells the story of Lucien de Rubempr, a talented young poet who leaves behind a scandalous provincial life for the shallow, corrupt, and cynical vortex of modernity that was nineteenthcentury Pariswhere his artistic idealism slowly dissipates until he eventually decides to return home.Balzac poured many of his thematic preoccupations and narrative elaborations into Lost Illusions, from the contrast between life in the provinces and the allconsuming world of Paris to the idealism of poets, the commodification of art, the crushing burden of poverty and debt, and the triumphant cynicism of hack journalists and social climbers. The novel teems with characters, incidents, and settings, though perhaps none so vivid as its panoramic and despairing view of Paris as the nexus of modernitys cultural, social, and moral infection. For Balzac, no institution better illustrates the new reality than Parisian journalism amoral, hypocritical, brazen, dishonest, and murderous, he writes.In this new translation, Raymond N. MacKenzie brilliantly captures the tone of Balzacs incomparable...

Binding: Paperback;624 pages; Publisher: University of Minnesota Press; Classification: FC; Weight: 918 g; Dimensions: 153 x 229 x 43

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