Rastignac et son art de parvenir

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, social ambition became an important theme for many French writers in their role as observers of society. Thus, there appear in the literature of this period characters driven by a will to succeed at any cost. All novelists of the age scatter throughout their works the various rules of the art of success, and it may well be this that constitutes their secret charm, giving readers the illusion that, by reading these novels, they learn about life itself. Balzac is one of the most systematic of these theoreticians of success. This...