# Droll Stories — Complete

_Collected from the Abbeys of Touraine_

By Honoré de Balzac.

"Droll Stories — Complete" by Honoré de Balzac is a collection of humorous short stories published in three groups between 1832 and 1837. Inspired by Boccaccio's "Decameron" and written in pastiche Renaissance French, these ribald tales explore medieval and Renaissance France with startling directness and sexual frankness. Balzac envisioned one hundred stories but completed only thirty, creating what he called an "arabesque" around his serious fiction. The tales evoke a golden age of French character while offering provocative commentary on history, morality, and society through archaic language and remote settings. (Summary by Project Gutenberg, written by machine.)

- Language: English
- Subjects: Humorous stories; French literature -- 19th century; France -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, French -- Translations into English

[Read it](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/books/gutenberg/13260/read)
[Plain text](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/api/books/gutenberg/13260/text)

From Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the United States.
