Sarrasine

Sarrasine is one of many works that Balzac set within a fictionalized version of 19th-century French society to create his La Comédie Humaine series. This body of work cemented Balzac’s reputation as one of the greatest French writers of the modern era and was a landmark in the development of the Realist movement. Realism was a reaction against the drama and sentimentality of the preceding Romantic movement and aimed to depict a more accurate portrayal of life, including the internal worlds and perspectives of characters. Balzac’s work is characterized by lengthy, detailed depictions of characters and settings, which combine to provide a vivid account of events. Descriptive language appears throughout Sarrasine, but particularly in the opening paragraphs of the frame narrative, where it establishes the scene of the de Lanty family ball, and during Sarrasine’s first encounter with La Zambinella at the Italian opera, where it conveys the performance’s intense impact on him. 

Another literary device that features frequently in Sarrasine is antithesis, as Balzac establishes dichotomies between opposing elements to create tension or express particular themes. One of the most prominent examples involves life and death, which the first paragraph of the novella juxtaposes, comparing a tableau of bare trees to the “Dance of Death” (a