Felicidade à flor da pele: estudo sobre A pele de Onagro, de Honoré de Balzac

Abstract

The present dissertation is dedicated to the investigation of the desire for happiness in the book A Pele de Onagro, by Honoré de Balzac, whose main character, Raphaël de Valentim, accepts to take possession of a magical skin, with which he manages to obtain all desires, under the condition that with each consummated desire, he is losing his own life. The novel 19th century the cradle - a period that profound technology, is set in the structural changes in industry politics and society. The text was analyzed in the dimensions of customs studies and philosophical studies, based on the main character and its resonances with the social man. So, the corpus of this work allows us to think, in the light of literature and thinkers who make up the Social Sciences such as Edgar Morin, Zygmunt Bauman, Georges Minois, Gilles Lipovetsky, Sigmund Freud and André Comte-Sponville how happiness can be characterized as being a symptom of the social and how much of Raphaël de Valentim inhabits us and covers us with his own "skin" of anxieties and desires.