Talk:La Peau de chagrin

criticisms

Criticisms:

There's an awful lot of general information about Balzac's career here, which I would think would belong in the main page on Balzac.

The material that's actually about the novel is somewhat lost in information about the role of the novel in Balzac's career.

The first version of this page included a quotation from the novel to explain it's theme. Why was the quotation deleted?

-- Doom (talk) 06:53, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Doom. I feel that the background on Balzac is very significant here – much of it relates to the autobiographical elements of the novel, and I believe it's important to know where he was in his life when he wrote Peau.

I don't really agree that the information about the novel's contents are lost in the info about B's career. Most of the article is dedicated to the style and themes of the book; only the Background and Reception/legacy sections are about the larger context (which, again, are vital to understanding the book in the grand scheme of things). I followed the same pattern in Le Père Goriot and Louis Lambert (novel), both of which have been recently Featured.

As for the extended quotation from the shopkeeper, it appears in a trimmed format in the section Vouloir, pouvoir, and savoir. I didn't feel that the entire quotation was needed, when samples provide sufficient insight – and I really feel that explanation is needed more with regard to that section.

Thanks again for your feedback! – Scartol • Tok 11:43, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think to a large extent this page has become an episode in the Life of Balzac, rather than a page about the book... I might suggest thinking about a reorganization of the material, keeping information about theme/synopsis and so on up top, and pushing the "Background" down, a little further into the background.

Ah yes, I see what you've done with the shopkeeper quote -- I usually like to let to just let the authors speak for themselves, but I have to say I like the way you interject bits about the original french and other translations. -- Doom (talk) 22:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I did an edit on the intro (aka lede) to show what I mean -- I just moved the second paragraph down to immediately before the last paragraph. This way it starts off with a discussion of the book itself, and then flows into a discussion of the book in the context of Balzac's carreer. -- Doom (talk) 22:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

While I appreciate your intent, I prefer the original design, which reflected the structure of the article itself. (I assume, however, that you'd rather see the article also rearranged.) But again, I've used the earlier pattern in other Balzac Featured Articles, and I feel that this is a "If it ain't broke..." situation. Most every book I've read about Balzac in preparation for this article – including, for example, H. J. Hunt's exhaustive analysis of the entire Comédie humaine – starts with the biographical data, then segues into a discussion of the style and themes of the work. I don't see why we should approach it differently. – Scartol • Tok 11:38, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

reflected the structure of the article -- that was not at all obvious. The way it read to me is that the intro was jumping back and forth between subjects. And yes, you're right, I'm talking about organizing the whole article that way. My attitude is, if this is a page about a book, then you talk about the book first, then deal with interesting digressions later.

I haven't read the Hunt, but I can see that if you were trying to deal with the entire Human Comedy in one work, you might as well start with the biographical information, because it's going to be the same throughout. It would seem to me that the way we do that in wikipedia land is keep the biographical info largely (though probably not entirely) in one page... By the way: (1) I sincerely appreciate the amount of work and level of detail you're putting into these pages (2) not all criticism is a ballpeen hammer to be deflected. -- Doom (talk) 22:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that, and I'm taking it on faith that you have the best interest of the article in mind. But if we look at some literature FAs as models, we see the pattern currently in place (background first, then novel discussion) used time and time again: Pattern Recognition (novel); Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; The Slave Community; etc. Obviously this is not the only way to proceed, and I understand your point – but I disagree with it. Perhaps we should get a third opinion, rather than trying to convince each other? – Scartol • Tok 13:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Or just let the subject sit for awhile and see what we think about it later. There isn't any need to find The Right Answer immediately. -- Doom (talk) 17:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Okay, but I'd like to take it to FAC before too long, and I'd like to resolve this before that happens. – Scartol • Tok 10:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

All right, let me try to summarize my position:

Articles about a book should discuss the the book first (synopsis, theme, style), then related subjects such as the role of the book in the author's career and the influence of the book on the world. In the case of this article, that would mean moving the sections "Background" and "Writing and publication" down after "Themes" and before "Reception and legacy".

Are you up on the procedure for calling in adjudication? I haven't looked at that material in a while. -- Doom (talk) 01:13, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

You mean an official process? I was just thinking we post a note at WP:NOVELS and ask someone for another opinion. I don't think we're at the edit-war stage yet, heh. (I would point out that the Novels project style guidelines follow the same pattern I used.) – Scartol • Tok 11:30, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Well thanks for the pointer toward the good the Novels style guide, and it could be I should be arguing about some things over there rather than here (e.g. I don't see why the lede should parallel the article). But take a look at the description of what material should go in the "Background" section. I don't think those paragraphs about the author's career quite fits.

(Sorry if it seems like I'm going on a lot about a minor issue: I've got this thing about how people often end up discussing celebrity when they start out trying to discuss the works of celebrities -- this is the sort of thing that happens in "music journalism" a lot. I think Balzac is a rock star with similar pitfalls.)

Anyway, I'm trying to raise this issue in the discussion page for that style guideline, let's see if anyone wants to weigh in.

-- Doom (talk) 19:46, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Since the feedback has been almost unanimously "it's fine either way", I'd like to leave it as it is for simplicity's sake, if you don't mind terribly. I've composed two other Balzac FAs in the chronological style, and I'd just as soon keep going in this manner. – Scartol • Tok 17:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 04:35, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 04:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Mary Shelley connection

According to Sunstein, "Balzac, who had been influenced by Frankenstein in his Peau de chagrin, cited [Mary Shelley] and Ann Radcliffe as proof that women outdo men in imaginative invention." (Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. (1989), 366) - I wonder if we can find more on the Frankenstein connection? Awadewit (talk) 17:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting. I've not come across this connection before, and a quick look through the indices of my ~25 books about Balzac yields only one passing mention, in Hunt's Balzac's Comédie Humaine. Whilst describing Balzac's wildly varied influences (and doing so in a very general way), we have this sentence: "He stepped himself in the novelists of terror, Horace Walpole, Anne Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Mary Shelley; from 1819 onwards he was a devotee of Maturin, and..."

Clearly this isn't much to go on. The other books have no mention of either Mary Shelley or Frankenstein, so I doubt I'll be able to find anything soon. Still, I'll keep my eyes open and hope that some kind of lighting strikes, like the tree outside young Victor's vacation home. Scartol • Tok 21:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Alas, clearly I think every article on Wikipedia should connect to either Mary Wollstonecraft or Mary Shelley in some way. :) Awadewit (talk) 01:39, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

TFA

Well, last time we had a Balzac TFA (the article on the man himself), it was a right gruesome vandalfest. Let's see how bad it gets this time. Thanks in advance to all the counter-vandalism soldiers on the front line! Scartol • Tok 00:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Reception abroad

Lots of questions from a curious mind, sorry :) What was the reception abroad? Did the novel receive any critical attention in other European countries, or elsewhere, upon its launch? I know Balzac ended up having a significant influence on both British and Russian literature, for example; did he only start to be noticed there later once his reputation in France was secure, or did the fact this publication caused such a stir in France raise his international profile? How long was it before the first major translations of this work appeared (I suppose I am thinking particularly of the first major English translation, and how it was received critically and in sales terms, but I suppose Russian and German translations, for instance, would also be of interest)? On a slightly different note, has modern critical reception been generally positive, now that the book can be viewed as part of Balzac's complete oeuvre? Although its fantastical elements may not be particularly critical to its literary value, they do presumably make it stick out among Balzac's complete work in a way that contemporary reviewers would not have been able to predict. In retrospect has this work been seen as relatively immature, or representative of Balzac's developed style? What features, if any, distinguish this book from the rest of the Comedie humaine?--78.32.103.197 (talk) 01:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)