Philosophical Study' from La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy). By the French novelist who is regarded as a founding-father of realism in European fiction. His large output of novels and stories, collectively entitled La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy), is a broad panorama of French society in the period of the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830-1848). His stories are an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France. They are placed in a variety of settings, with characters reappearing in multiple stories.