Dover Publications

Droll Stories

Honore de Balzac

In stock
No reviews
2.250 KD inc. VAT
License
Table of contents
  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Table of Contents
  • Translator’s Preface
  • The First Ten Tales
  • Prologue
  • The Fair Imperia
  • The Venial Sin
  • How the goodman Bruyn took a wife
  • How the Seneschal struggled with his wife’s modesty
  • That which is only a venial sin
  • How and by whom the said child was procured
  • How the said love-sin was repented of and led to great mourning
  • The King’s Sweetheart
  • The Devil’s Heir
  • The Merry Jests of King Louis the Eleventh
  • The High Constable’s Wife
  • The Maid of Thilouse
  • The Brother-in-Arms
  • The Vicar of Azay-le-Rideau
  • The Reproach
  • Epilogue
  • The Second Ten Tales
  • Prologue
  • The Three Clerks of St. Nicholas
  • The Continence of King Francis the First
  • The Merry Tattle of the Nuns of Poissy
  • How the Chateau d’Azay Came To Be Built
  • The False Courtesan
  • The Danger of Being Too Innocent
  • The Dear Night of Love
  • The Sermon of the Merry Vicar of Meudon
  • The Succubus
  • Prologue
  • I. What the Succubus was
  • II. The proceedings taken relative to this female vampire
  • III. What the Succubus did to suck out the soul of the old Judge, and what came of the diabolical delectation
  • IV. How the Moorish woman of the Rue Chaude twisted about so briskly, that with great difficulty was she burned and cooked alive, to the great loss of the infernal regions
  • Despair in Love
  • Epilogue
  • The Third Ten Tales
  • Prologue
  • Perseverance in Love
  • Concerning a Provost Who Did Not Recognise Things
  • About the Monk Amador, Who Was a Glorious Abbot of Turpenay
  • Bertha the Penitent
  • I. How Bertha remained a Maiden in the Married State
  • II. How Bertha behaved, knowing the Business of Love
  • III. Horrible chastisement of Bertha and expiation of the same, who died pardoned
  • How the Pretty Maid of Portillon Convinced Her Judge
  • In Which It Is Demonstrated That. Fortune Is Always Feminine
  • Concerning a Poor Man Who Was Called Le Vieux par-Chemins
  • Odd Sayings of Three Pilgrims
  • Innocence
  • The Fair Imperia Married
  • I. How Madame Imperia was caught in the very net she was accustomed to spread for her love-birds
  • II. How this Marriage ended
  • Epilogue
Book details
  • Vendor Dover Publications
  • SKU 9780486799384
  • ISBN-13 9780486799384
  • Author Honore de Balzac
  • Category Fiction
  • Subject Classics

Do you have questions about this book?

Ask an expert!

Description eBook delivery & access Reviews
Balzac's Contes Drolatiques, published in three installments in the 1830s, offers a lively and lusty portrait of sixteenth-century French life and manners. These thirty stories in the tradition of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Rabelais were claimed by the author to have originated in manuscripts from the abbeys of Touraine. Abounding in episodes of good-humored licentiousness, the tales scandalized Balzac's contemporaries and continue to delight modern readers. French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a founder of realism in European literature. An inspiration to Proust, Dickens, Faulkner, Dostoyevsky, and countless others, Balzac wrote works that were hailed for their multifaceted characters and exquisite attention to detail. This edition's excellent translation was the first to make Contes Drolatiques available to English-speaking readers.