Realism & Balzac

The questions below are posed by Professor Katherine L. Elkins in her Modern Scholar course, "Giants of French Literature: Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, and Camus." The answers are my own.

 1. Why are [Balzac's] novels often called realist?

I'll discuss what makes Pere Goriot a realist novel, as I have not had the good fortune of reading any other Balzac novels as of yet. To start with, I'll attempt to define "realism". The Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory by Penguin Reference defines realism in literature as "the portrayal of life with fidelity. It is thus not concerned with idealization, with rendering things as beautiful when they are not, or in any way presenting them in any guise as they are not..." This portion of the definition comes after the author's opinion that the term realism is "often ambivalent and equivocal..." and "... is a term with many now feel we could do without". Balzac is often credited as one of the first "realist" novelist. This is largely in part because he wrote about the "common people" and not just the aristocrats in France, as most previous authors had done. The sense of realism is also displayed in Pere Goriot through its characters as not one of them was free from flaws, either in the eyes of the other characters, or the narrator. Even in today's literature (despite the Dictionary's argument that we can do without the term realism), we are often presented with infalliable characters unlike any person we would meet in reality. The characters in Pere Goriot were not like that. They were real, complete with misgivings. Even the main characters, the ones you'd most want to bond with throughout the novel, had obvious problems.



 Cuddon, J.A., Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, Penguin Books, 1998 ISBN: 0-140-51363-9

Eklins, Katherine, Giants of French Literature: Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, and Camus, Recorded Books

Art of Reading by Joseph Luzzi

The questions come from Modern Scholar's Art of Reading by Joseph Luzzi. The responses are my own:

Lecture 1 - A Fig Tree of One’s Own: The Worlds of Reading

Why can one refer to literature as a human “diary,” and what can it reveal that other
forms of artistic expression cannot?

a written record of life’s inner workings and mysteries, reanimated by the contact
between the reader and the page.

- not only what people are thinking, but how they process their thoughts
- art shows a moment in time, not a stream of consciousness, no development
- longer than a song

Professor Luzzi states that literature can be referred to as a human “diary” because it is a written record of life’s inner workings and mysteries, reanimated by the contact between the reader and the page. Another important distinction between literature and other art forms is the timeframe in which they refer to. Art and photography can depict a love, desire, fear, or concern of its creator, but it can’t depict the process in which the artist came to their conclusions. A piece of art does not develop whereas literature can show not only the emotion of the writer at the time, but the stream of consciousness that moved the writer to their current state.

The contact between the reader and the page plays off this development. While a photograph can certainly illustrate the intangible that the artist is trying to convey, the lack of development does not allow the user of the image, to recognize flaws or nuances in the artist’s thinking.

The ideas expressed in literature, like ideas formed in real life, are based on experiences with past events, moods, surroundings, mindsets that can be blatantly expressed in literature. Other art forms lack this ability, and cannot revel the inner workings of a person’s mind.

2. What is the role of reading in St. Augustine’s famous Christian conversion, as described in his Confessions (397–398 AD), and what does it say about the power of literature to change our lives?

St. Augustine in his Christian conversion was struggling with his inability to give up early desires, particularly lust. During a very emotional moment, St. Augustine heard a child’s voice chant “pick up and read”. Taking this as a sign from above, St. Augustine, at that very moment, read the first passage in the Bible. The passage was the encouragement he needed to no longer fear his inability to give up pleasures of the flesh, and he moved forward with his conversion to Christianity and celibacy.

In this way, literature changed St. Augustine’s life. It pulled him from the depths of despair and help me achieve something he was afraid he could not do.

3. What would you add to my list of four “common qualities” to good reading,
and why?

Professor Luzzi cites four common qualities to good reading. They include:
Passport to alternate worlds
Marriage of form and content
Humanity’s Diary
A fig tree of one’s own


I could add two more to this list. Good reading should also be about pleasure and education. If one doesn’t feel any pleasure from reading a particular book or from reading books at all (after a worthy attempt), there are other activities that would better suit the person then the pursuit of reading. As for education, Mortimer Alder talks about the “Great Conversation” that has taken place for ages through literature. While education can take on many forms, capitalizing on the centuries of knowledge, observations, and discoveries of writers of great works gives the reader an edge in the pursuit of knowledge. Reading classic literature makes an individual part of this Great Conversation and allows them to intelligently apply their learning to new experiences.

Order here->