【英文原著类】Droll Stories [V. 1](怪事1).pdf

THE FIRST TEN TALES
Droll Stories
HONORE DE BALZAC
1
THE FIRST TEN TALES
TRANSLATORS PREFACE
When, in March, 1832, the first volume of the now famous Contes
Drolatiques was published by Gosselin of Paris, Balzac, in a short preface,
written in the publisher's name, replied to those attacks which he
anticipated certain critics would make upon his hardy experiment. He
claimed for his book the protection of all those to whom literature was
dear, because it was a work of art--and a work of art, in the highest sense
of the word, it undoubtedly is. Like io, Rabelais, the Queen of
Navarre, Ariosto, and Verville, the great author of The edy
has painted an epoch. In the fresh and wonderful language of the Merry
Vicar Of Meudon, he has given us a marvellous picture of French life and
manners in the sixteenth century. The gallant knights and merry dames of
that eventful period 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 eenth 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 plish it, must have been at once historian, linguist, philosopher,
archaeologist, and anatomist, and each in no ordinary degree. In France,
his work has long been regarded as a classic--as a faithful picture of the
last days of the moyen age, when kings and princesses, brave gentlemen
and haughty ladies laughed openly at stories and jokes which are
considered disgraceful by their more fastidious descendants. In England
the difficulties o