Père Goriot

Le Pere Goriot (, "Old Goriot" or "Father Goriot") is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honore de Balzac (1799-1850). It is in the Scenes de la vie privee section of his novel sequence La Comedie humaine. It is set in Paris in 1819. It follows the lives of three characters: the elderly Goriot, a mysterious criminal named Vautrin and a naive law student named Eugene de Rastignac.
The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration. It brought major changes to French society. The struggle by individuals to reach a higher social status is a major theme in the book. Balzac analyzes through Goriot and others the nature of family and marriage that provides a pessimistic view of them.
Publication
In the first book edition, the novel had seven chapters:
In the first volume:
Une Pension bourgeoise (A Bourgeois Boarding House)
Les Deux Visites (The Two Visits)
L'Entree dans le Monde (The Entrance into the World)
In the second volume:
L'Entree dans le Monde (Suite) (The Entrance into the World (Continuation))
Trompe-la-Mort (Cheat-the-Death, Death-Dodger, or Dare-Devil)
Les Deux Filles (The Two Daughters)
La Mort du Pere (The Father's Death)
The character Eugene de Rastignac had appeared as an old man in Balzac's earlier philosophical fantasy novel La Peau de chagrin. While writing the first version of Le Pere Goriot, Balzac named the character "Massiac", but he decided to use the same character from La Peau de chagrin. Other characters were changed in a similar way.
Legacy
Le Pere Goriot is widely considered Balzac's essential novel. Its influence on French literature has been considerable, as shown by novelist Felicien Marceau's remark: "We are all children of Le Pere Goriot."
In his book Le Pere Goriot: Anatomy of a Troubled World, Martin Kanes calls it "the keystone of the Comedie humaine". It is the central text of Anthony Pugh's study Balzac's Recurring Characters. Entire chapters have been written about the detail of the Maison Vauquer.
Thus, says Balzac biographer Graham Robb, "Goriot is one of the novels of La Comedie humaine that can safely be read in English for what it is."
According to the editor of the Norton Critical Edition, Peter Brooks, the book is now seen as "the most endurable and popular of Balzac's myriad works" and a "classic of the [18th]-century European novel".
A well-known line of this book by Balzac is when Vautrin tells Eugene, "In that case I will make you an offer that no one would decline."
This has been reworked by Mario Puzo in the novel The Godfather (1969) and its movie adaptation (1972) as "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse".
It was ranked as the second most significant cinematic quote in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes (2005) by the American Film Institute.
Notes
References
Bibliography
Adamson, Donald: Old Goriot presented in Everyman Books, 1991.
Auerbach, Erich. Pere Goriot. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. . pp. 279-289.
Balzac, Honore de. "Author's Introduction". La Comedie humaine. The Human Comedy: Introductions and Appendix. 1842. Online at Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on 19 January 2008.
Balzac, Honore de. Father Goriot. The Works of Honore de Balzac. Vol. XIII. Philadelphia: Avil Publishing Company, 1901.
Balzac, Honore de. Pere Goriot. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. .
Baran, J. H. "Predators and parasites in Le Pere Goriot". Symposium. 47.1 (1993): 3-15. .
Barberis, Pierre. "The Discovery of Solitude". Pere Goriot. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. . pp. 304-314.
Bellos, David. Honore de Balzac: Old Goriot (Landmarks of World Literature). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. .
Other websites
Father Goriot at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
Le Pere Goriot, audio version
Le Pere Goriot (original version) with approx. 1000 English annotations at Tailored Texts
French novels
1830s books