"Ett löfte om lycka"

In this essay, I explore an innovative theme in the interfaces between theology, gender studies, aesthetic theory, and literary studies. More specifically, my aim is to shed light on fundamental theological conflicts underlying the immensely complex subject of the elevated status of "the beautiful woman" as image and idea in Western society. This will be implemented through a close reading of the influential short story of French nineteenth-century novelist Honoré de Balzac, Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece), from 1831. By virtue of this theologically informed reading, important facets of modern Western society's fantasy of the beautiful woman come to the fore. The essay discloses how this fantasy has far-reaching tentacles and ramifications, by which the beautiful female becomes identified with beauty per se, with art, nature, the divine, and even with life itself. Balzac's short story presents the reader with a strong statement of the scopophilic tendency of Western visual arts, but in its final peripeteia it also provides us with the tools to bring forth a contrary reading, and a direct confrontation with the traditional understanding of the task of the painter.

Honoré de Balzac’s Treatise on Modern Stimulants: An Annotated Translation

<p>Honoré de Balzac is most often celebrated for his realist fiction, but what is less well-known is that he also had philosophical aspirations, and published numerous analytical works which have largely been overlooked by French-English translators. One such work, Traité des excitants modernes, traces the societal impact of five commonly-used stimulants: tea, sugar, coffee, alcohol, tobacco. It was first published in 1839 as an appendix to the cornerstone gastronomic work, Physiologie du goût, by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The translation, “Treatise on Modern Stimulants,” will give readers a rare insight into life in Balzac’s Paris in the 1800s, a city which was undergoing a revolution culturally, politically and within the scientific fields. Balzac’s treatise is delicately balanced between science and satire, and includes anecdotes about the author overindulging in coffee, cigarettes and alcohol. Further, it sketches out Balzac’s beliefs about the impact of diet on reproduction, and he cites stimulants as one of the causes of degeneration and decline in France. The accompanying commentary examines the context of the work, and presents new ideas about the way in which the essay was written and why. Importantly, it also discusses the challenges of translating a historical work and explores whether translation can bridge the divide between generations, disciplines and cultures.</p>

Honoré de Balzac’s Treatise on Modern Stimulants: An Annotated Translation

<p>Honoré de Balzac is most often celebrated for his realist fiction, but what is less well-known is that he also had philosophical aspirations, and published numerous analytical works which have largely been overlooked by French-English translators. One such work, Traité des excitants modernes, traces the societal impact of five commonly-used stimulants: tea, sugar, coffee, alcohol, tobacco. It was first published in 1839 as an appendix to the cornerstone gastronomic work, Physiologie du goût, by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The translation, “Treatise on Modern Stimulants,” will give readers a rare insight into life in Balzac’s Paris in the 1800s, a city which was undergoing a revolution culturally, politically and within the scientific fields. Balzac’s treatise is delicately balanced between science and satire, and includes anecdotes about the author overindulging in coffee, cigarettes and alcohol. Further, it sketches out Balzac’s beliefs about the impact of diet on reproduction, and he cites stimulants as one of the causes of degeneration and decline in France. The accompanying commentary examines the context of the work, and presents new ideas about the way in which the essay was written and why. Importantly, it also discusses the challenges of translating a historical work and explores whether translation can bridge the divide between generations, disciplines and cultures.</p>

Semantic and morphological characteristics of a noun as a subject in the modern French language

The present study considers the problem of the relationship between semantics and morphology of nouns in the syntactic function of the subject in the modern French literary language. This work aims to answer the questions of whether the syntactic function is not indifferent to the semantic nature of the noun and whether any noun can be used in the function of the subject. The text fragments taken from the works of classic French writers Honore de Balzac, Emile Zola, André Maurois, François Moryac, etc. have been investigated. The total length of the analyzed texts taken in equal portions of 100 phrases per work was 85,000 tokens. The general methodological principles of this study are the provisions on the dialectical connection between language and thinking, on the one hand, and language and reality, on the other. The findings show that the choice of grammatical forms of a noun in these syntactic functions is not random and it is determined by the patterns of thought formation, which reflects the objective situation.