User:Yottie/Honoré de Balzac
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Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French writer. He wrote novels and plays. His most important work is La Comédie Humaine. It is is a sequence of short stories and novels. It is about life in France after Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1815.
Honoré de Balzac | |
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Born | Honoré Balssa (1799-05-20)20 May 1799 Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France |
Died | 18 August 1850(1850-08-18) (aged 51) Paris, France |
Resting place | Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris |
Occupation | Writer, critic, journalist, printer |
Nationality | French |
Alma mater | University of Paris |
Period | 19th century |
Genre | Novel, dramaturgy, essay |
Literary movement | Realism |
Notable works |
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Notable awards | – Légion d'honneur |
Years active | 1829–1850 |
Spouse | Ewelina Hańska (m. 1850) (née Contessa Rzewuska) |
Signature |
Balzac uses a lot of detail. He represents society faithfully. For this reason, many people say he was a founder of realism in European literature.[1] He is famous for his characters (the people in his books) because they have very detailed lives. Even the less important characters are complex. They are very much like real humans. They are morally ambiguous (not clear). Balzac also talks about objects with a lot of detail. He sets many of his stories in the city of Paris, in France. He often talks about the city like a person. He was important for other writers, such as Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James. He was also important for philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Balzac is still important for writers today. He influenced the way they wrote. Many people have made Balzac's books into movies.
Balzac liked to read when he was young. He liked to think on his own. He found difficult the teaching style of his grammar school. His stubborn nature caused trouble throughout his life. It also frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was an apprentice in a law office. However, he stopped studying because he thought it was inhumane (cruel) and boring. Before he became a writer, he tried to be a publisher, a printer, a businessman, a critic, and a politician. He was not successful in these jobs. La Comédie Humaine represents the difficulties he has had in life. It has scenes from his own life.
Balzac had health problems all of his life. This is maybe because he had to write for a long time every day. He often had problems with his family because of money and personal problems. He lost friends because of bad comments about his work. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska. She was a Polish aristocrat. He had loved her for a long time before the wedding. He died in Paris in 1850, five months after the wedding.