La Comédie humaine

La Comédie humaine (French: [la kɔmedi ymɛn]; English: The Human Comedy) is Honoré de Balzac's 1829–48 multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration (1815–30) and the July Monarchy (1830–48).

La Comédie humaine consists of 91 finished works (stories, novels, or analytical essays) and 46 unfinished works (some of which exist only as titles). It does not include Balzac's five theatrical plays or his collection of humorous tales Les Cent Contes drolatiques (1832–37).

A pioneer of the modern novel, Balzac describes the totality of reality as he understood it, and shows aspects of life hitherto ignored in literature, because they were ugly or vulgar. He shows in its various forms the rise of capitalism and the omnipotence of money, leading to the disappearance of nobility and the dissolution of social ties. La Comédie Humaine refers to the medieval poem Divine Comedy. Balzac's world is grounded in sociology, not theology, where love and friendship are of prime importance and which highlights the complexity of people and the deep immorality of a social mechanism where the weak are crushed while the crooked banker and the venal politician triumph. A keen observer, Balzac created human types that are strikingly true. Some of his characters are so vivid that they have become archetypes, such as Rastignac, the ambitious young provincial, Grandet, the miserly domestic tyrant, or Father Goriot, the icon of fatherhood. He gives an important place to financiers and notaries, but also to the character of Vautrin, the outlaw with multiple identities.