{"product_id":"treatise-on-elegant-living-by-honore-de-balzac","title":"Treatise on Elegant Living by Honore de Balzac","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eFrom the publisher:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eHonoré de Balzac’s 1830 \u003ci\u003eTreatise on Elegant Living\u003c\/i\u003e was a keystone text on dandyism, preceding Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s \u003ci\u003eAnatomy of Dandyism\u003c\/i\u003e (1845) and Charles Baudelaire’s “The Dandy” (in \u003ci\u003eThe Painter of Modern Life\u003c\/i\u003e, 1863), and marking an important shift from the early dandyism of the British Regency to the intellectual and artistic dandyism of nineteenth-century France. The \u003ci\u003eTreatise\u003c\/i\u003e is the first true philosophical expression of dandyism, and is full of well-crafted aphorisms: “Elegant living is, in the broad acceptance of the term, the art of animating repose,” runs one classic definition of dandyism, and “The man of taste must always know how to reduce need to a minimum” asserts the role elegant living can play in times of both opulence and strife. Further embellished with anecdotes and historical and personal illustrations, Balzac’s \u003ci\u003eTreatise\u003c\/i\u003e even features a fictitious encounter with the original dandy himself, Beau Brummell. Never before translated into English, this witty tract makes for an illuminating cornerstone to Balzac’s \u003ci\u003eHuman Comedy\u003c\/i\u003e (which was originally to have included a never-completed four-part philosophical “Pathology of Social Life”). Above all, it represents a decisive moment in the history of dandyism, and an entertaining exposition on the profundities of what lies deepest within all of us: our appearance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eMeasures 4.5\" wide x 7\" tall, 112 pages, printed in the USA.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Wakefield Press","offers":[{"title":"available","offer_id":1052438852,"sku":"","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0006\/3622\/products\/balzaccover.jpg?v=1418258408","url":"https:\/\/www.littleotsu.mom\/products\/treatise-on-elegant-living-by-honore-de-balzac","provider":"Little Otsu","version":"1.0","type":"link"}