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Droll Stories
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Illustration by Boris Artzybasheff for an American edition of Honoré de Balzac's Droll Stories.
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Illustration by Boris Artzybasheff for an American edition of Honoré de Balzac's Droll Stories.
Illustration by Boris Artzybasheff for an American edition of Honoré de Balzac's Droll Stories.

Droll Stories

short stories by Balzac
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Also known as: “Contes drolatiques”
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Article History

Droll Stories, collection of short stories by Honoré de Balzac, published in three sets of 10 stories each, in 1832, 1833, and 1837, as Contes drolatiques.

Rabelaisian in theme, the stories are written with great vitality in a pastiche of 16th-century language. The tales are fully as lively as the author’s masterful Comédie humaine series, but they stand apart for their good-humoured licentiousness and historical wordplay.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.