Talk:La Comédie humaine

Want to know what I think?
TLDR That's what I think! 81.149.250.228 (talk) 08:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

BTW: Honoré de Balzac has never been "de"... Yes, he wanted to be the One, that is why he had built a story about about his "de". Originally he was Honoré Balzac, but it is another story. There are a lot of books about it. Thx, Alexander Martin — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.142.4.32 (talk) 11:17, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunate
It really is unfortunate how few of these we actually have articles on. 19 out of 95! That is not good. The French Wikipedia has at least a short article on all of them. It would be a useful plan for someone to translate these, at least. john k (talk) 05:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I've started on the task - I've translated La Maison du chat-qui-pelote (which is just a stub, unfortunately) and Le Bal de Sceaux. Hopefully I'll get to more soon. john k (talk) 04:52, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Origin of the title
The title's origin is a bit hazy. While most assume that it's an allusion to the Divine Comedy, Ferdinand Brunetière believes it may have stemmed from two poets Balzac admired, or that it's just a coincidence. --Bateau (talk) 22:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

"Albadabtre" ?
First word in second paragraph, "Albadabtre"? What is that? A name, a citation, or what? Needs clarification. Myles Callum 22:21, 10 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Myles Callum (talk • contribs)

Requested move 3 June 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, with no prejudice against a new MR to discuss a move to a qualified English title. --  JHunterJ (talk) 17:56, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

– The Balzac magnum opus, known in the English-speaking world under its English title, The Human Comedy, is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It is true that some scholarly books may refer to Balzac's works or even to all of French literature by their French titles but there are few if any English-language editions which bear the French title, especially with the accent and lowercase "h". I realize that WikiProject Balzac has made an exception of Balzac, but in the same manner that the works of, for example, Alexandre Dumas or Jules Verne are known in the English-speaking world by their English publication titles, so should the works of Balzac be known. Here are five examples among the currently available editions of Balzac:, , , , and here is its Britannica entry. — Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 00:16, 3 June 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. ~SS49~   {talk}  01:00, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * La Comédie humaine → The Human Comedy
 * The Human Comedy → The Human Comedy (disambiguation)


 * Oppose – disambiguation still works better than a primarytopic takeover here. I would change the disambig page so it's not in the "See also" section, though.  Dicklyon (talk) 00:51, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I, a native English-speaker, have always known it as La Comédie humaine; so I deny OP's assertion. Narky Blert (talk) 15:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:USEENGLISH. The proposer provides enough evidence to establish that the common English name is the English translation. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. If the translations translate the title, so should we. Here is an ngram. Allan Rice (talk) 00:06, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * We can translate the title without a primarytopic takeover. And the n-grams tranjectories definitely suggest that a lot of those hits aren't about the Balzac work.  This n-gram view suggests that maybe William Soroyan's novel is a big part of it. Dicklyon (talk) 00:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. "The Human Comedy" is the preferred term in English sources, but we can only use it if this is the primary topic. Massviews shows that La Comédie humaine gets 51% of 2019 pageviews, which is not enough IMO; it needs to be larger than 50% by a significant margin. So the current title is the best WP:NATURALDIS. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:11, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose of current titles. Use English - that's policy. Holy cow, just because Mercury is a dab page, we don't rename the element to Quecksilber. Move as proposed is better, but parentheses are acceptable. Red   Slash  05:07, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * There are two separate issues here: whether the French work is the primary topic of "The Human Comedy", and what its ideal title is. If the first point is not true, then it cannot be at "The Human Comedy" even if that is the preferred title. In that case we would have to consider whether "La Comédie humaine" or a parenthetical version of "The Human Comedy" is better. Again, WP:USEENGLISH does not require the use of titles which are in English, but rather titles which are most commonly found in English-language sources. I get 10k Google hits for "human comedy by balzac" and 3k for "comédie humaine by balzac", so the French title is by no means obscure in English literature. WP:NATURALDIS suggests that in this case using an alternative name which is commonly found in English sources, even if it is not the most common, may be preferable to parenthetical disambiguation of the most common term. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠</b> 05:18, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Taking into account that each case may be considered under its own set of circumstances, it may be instructive to peruse the lengthy 2012 discussion at Talk:Bande à part (film) in which the parenthetically-qualified French title, Bande à part (film) was ultimately heavily favored over the clear English form used in the film's Criterion Collection release, Band of Outsiders (to put it into perspective, Wikipedia main title headers follow the Criterion title form in virtually all other cases), despite the following comment: "Support – If it were not disambiguated I would oppose the move on the basis that the French name is more widely used in English language literature, but since its French title actually serves as a disambiguation page it makes sense to have the article under its English title. Betty Logan (talk) 17:58, 28 January 2012 (UTC)". —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 22:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Note: Announcement of this discussion appears at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 22:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per discussion and the page views. Took Dicklyon's advice above and moved this title out of the disamb 'See also' section, and moved it to the first item with the years added (are the years 1829-1848 accurate?). The name is not unfamiliar to readers, and per the French title looking classier. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 2 January 2021
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 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure)  Vpab15 (talk) 15:57, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

La Comédie humaine → The Human Comedy (literary cycle) – Among the seven participants in the previous discussion (Talk:La Comédie humaine), two expressed a preference for the retention of the original French title, three supported a move to the English title and two were opposed to making The Human Comedy the primary topic, but did not express a strong preference for the French title. The key argument remains that translation of French literature titles into English is commonplace, as evidenced by the English titles of novels by Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers, not Les Trois Mousquetaires) or Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, not Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers). As for The Human Comedy, here are five examples among the currently available English-language editions:, , , , and here is its Britannica entry. If consensus were to prefer The Human Comedy (Balzac literary cycle), The Human Comedy (Balzac novels), The Human Comedy (Balzac writings) or The Human Comedy (Balzac magnum opus), I would support those or other suggested parenthetical qualifiers. — Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 07:06, 2 January 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. Jack Frost (talk) 13:00, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose Those are selective examples.  Victor Hugo's novel is known as Les Miserables, not The Wretched, Guy de Maupassant's Bel-Ami, not Dear Friend, etc.  Anyway, in my estimation, this is a more divided case, as both are used. But I'll give the edge to La Comedie humaine for its natural disambiguation, and because that it how many long-standing and famous translations rendered it (e.g. Saintsbury edition, Barrie edition , Wormeley edition , Century edition , etc.) which has wormed its way into common English usage.  It certainly seems used preferentially in secondary references, such as in the magisterial 1959 study Balzac's Comédie Humaine by H.J. Hunt. And I find that even those that render it "Human Comedy" often bother to add a parenthetical note that it is the "Comedie humaine" somewhere for recognizability. (including your example [1], which is actually has this version on Amazon . Britannica is conflicted - its biography of Balzac renders it Comedie humaine (Britannica). So although not decisive, I'm not really seeing much gain here.  Walrasiad (talk) 04:37, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The five examples linked in the nomination are not selective at all — English-language editions published within the last 75 years, or possibly even 100 years, use the English-language title. In fact, it is the linked 19th-century editions that are selective examples — in the 19th century, Les Miserables as well as Bel-Ami were indeed published in the English-speaking world under English-language titles. If the French title for The Human Comedy had actually "wormed its way into common English usage", then English-language editions would be currently using the French title.
 * As for writers who use the French title, such as H.J. Hunt, they probably use French titles for all of Balzac's works or even for all works of French literature. One among such Balzac experts most likely wrote the Britannica entry for Balzac, but the headers for Britannica entries delineating Balzac's works were obviously rendered in their published English forms by Britannica editors. Regarding natural disambiguation, participants in the previous discussion did not feel that the Balzac title should stand alone as the primary entry within The Human Comedy disambiguation page. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 12:08, 16 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose Balzac's cycle known by French name in English. The translation is unusual. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:40, 17 January 2021 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.