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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: of French history stand out in bold relief upon his canvas. The
background in these life-like figures is, as it were, "sketched upon
the spot." After reading the Contes Drolatiques, one could almost find
one's way about the towns and villages of Touraine, unassisted by map
or guide. Not only is this book a work of art from its historical
information and topographical accuracy; its claims to that distinction
rest upon a broader foundation. Written in the nineteenth century in
imitation of the style of the sixteenth, it is a triumph of literary
archaeology. It is a model of that which it professes to imitate; the
production of a writer who, to accomplish it, must have been at once
historian, linguist, philosopher, archaeologist, and anatomist, and
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
