The Gates of Horn A Study of Five French Realists

"The author explores this tradition in depth and defines it with a breadthof vision, a dynamic vigor and freedom rarely paralleled today....His method,flexible, generous, humane in the best sense of the word, eschews pedantry,dogma, useless theorizing and scholastic argumentation."--The New York TimesBook Review. "I wish to make it clear that The Gates of Horn represents anoutstanding critical accomplishment."--Saturday Review. In the Odyssey, Homerdescribes two gates of the imagination: one of ivory through which fictitiousdreams pass, and the other of horn, through which nothing but the truth maypass. Realism is the type of literature that passes through the horn, and inthis significant study of the genre Levin examines a major form of Realism--theFrench novel--and focuses on five of its masters--Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert,Zola, and Proust. Now available in paperback, Levin's study is a veritablereconstruction of the artistic and intellectual life of a nation.

Harry Levin is Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University