This article considers the changing relationship between Balzac and theory from the 1970s onwards when Balzac was a favoured, if disparaged, object of theorization, as in Barthes's S/Z. More recent critics, however, see the multi-layered énonciations of/in his texts as evidence of their ability to theorize their own relationship to history, society, sexuality — and literature. In the same way, moreover, as texts such as Sarrasine and Une passion dans le désert critique their own relation to literature, ostensibly (...) theoretical Balzac texts such as Une théorie de la démarche turn theory into a form of fiction. Whether moving from literature to theory or from theory to literature, Balzac — or ‘Balzac’/Balzac — is thus shown to be a nexus of literature, theory and literary theory. (shrink)

In his classic Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Erich Auerbach famously cites the opening pages of Honoré de Balzac’s Père Goriot as emblematic of modern realism. With their minute description of the boardinghouse, where much of the novel’s action takes place, these pages emphasize physical setting, Auerbach argues, in a way new to Western literature. Yet Balzac’s descriptions are driven by something more than an ambition to represent “contemporary life” in scrupulous detail. In Auerbach’s view, (...) the characteristic element of Balzac’s realism is an obsession with the reciprocal action of characters and milieu, a scientific or philosophical principle according to which the quality... (shrink)

El carácter de Alberto Blest Gana como fundador de la novela chilena mal podría ligarlo a la práctica del folletín, aunque registra numerosos títulos publicados en revistas y periódicos. Por lo demás, su filiación como aventajado discípulo de Balzac menos podría propiciar un vínculo con la literatura popular o de masas, como se desarrolló en Francia a mediados del siglo XIX. Y es que el canon literario nacional se construye a partir de una élite intelectual -ilustrada y liberal- que (...) participa de la construcción social de la Nación como la que propiciaba José Victorino Lastarria y el propio Blest Gana -en sus respectivos manifiestos literarios-, en cuya conformación la cultura popular no participa más allá de un “costumbrismo” folklórico, o como un “sabor” local, o como un “pintoresquismo” para solaz de los lectores cultos. En este artículo se indaga en los formantes folletinescos en la narrativa de Blest Gana, recurriendo a las tesis acerca de la literatura popular que han sido postuladas, entre otros, por Eco ; Martín-Barbero, Herlinghaus, Sarlo. Alberto Blest Gana, the founder of the Chilean novel, could not be linked to the practice of writing feuilleton, although a number of his works published in magazines and newspapers exist. Moreover, being an outstanding disciple of Balzac would unlikely link him to the popular or mass literature, as the one developed in France in the middle of the nineteenth century. In fact, the national literary canon is built upon an intellectual elite -enlightened and liberal- that participates in the social construction of the nation as the one fostered by José Victorino Lastarria and Blest Gana -in their respective literary manifests. In their view, the popular culture does not participate beyond a folkloric “costumbrism” or as a local “taste”, or as a “picturesque trait” for the delight of the educated readers. For this reason, this article explores the melodramatic formants in Blest Gana’s narrative, by analyzing them in light of the popular literature perspectives advocated by Eco, Martín-Barbero, Herlinghaus, and Sarlo, among others. (shrink)

Engels explained his admiration for Balzac by pointing to an apparent discrepancy between Balzac’s literature and his politics. Despite his sympathies for the French nobility, Balzac’s realism “compelled” him to portray this class in unflattering terms. In this article, I challenge Engels’s reading, arguing that Marx’s scattered remarks on Balzac take us in a different direction. Specifically, I argue that in his remark on Balzac’s The Peasants Marx pinpointed the author’s preoccupation with the spread of (...) bourgeois ideology into the nobility. Building on this remark, I analyze several of Balzac’s works showing that insofar as Balzac lambasted the nobles, his critique was primarily directed towards nobles who had adopted bourgeois ways. In this light, and against Engels’s observation, Balzac’s critique of the nobles appears to stem from his sympathy to aristocratic values rather than conflicting with them. In showing that affinities between Balzac, Marx and Engels did not depend on Balzac expressing anti-noble sentiment, I argue that the admiration the fathers of communism had for the monarchist’s prose exemplifies a partial, yet typical convergence between socialists and conservatives in their critique of modern bourgeois society. (shrink)

While most studies of reference focus on the relationship of the individual proposition to the world, this book looks at the problem of reference through the holistic lens of the practices and assumptions that inform the construction of literary worlds. Beginning with Balzac’s arguments for establishing his version of realism, Realism and the Drama of Reference then moves to Flaubert’s challenge to those realist norms and assumptions in its depiction of setting, narration, dialogue, and character. Henry James rejects the (...) practices of both French writers, for the fictional worlds he wants to create cannot appear inside their assumptions. Thus, each of these writers takes on the global question of worldhood, of how language generates a world and not just the task of depicting the details of contemporary life that we already know through other languages. (shrink)

The article introduces to the domestic reader an unknown French work of Romain Nazirov titled ‘Trois duels ‘. Nazirov compares the variations of the theme ‘barren omnipotence‘ in the novel ‘The magic skin‘, ‘A Hero of Our Time‘ and ‘Demons‘, considering the episode of ‘predetermined duel‘ as the climax of the of the theme development. Comparative analysis gives the author a reason to believe that Lermontov describing duel in the ‘Hero of Our Time‘ was under the influence of a similar (...) episode of the novel ‘The magic skin‘ by Balzac. However, according Nazirov, in the novel by Lermontov duel becomes a philosophical experiment of the hero. This observation naturally leads the author to Dostoevsky’s novels in which such experiments directly determine the fate of tragic ideologists, the central figures of these texts. Stavrogin’s duel Nazirov interprets as a result of creative debate of Dostoevsky with Balzac and Lermontov. ‘The magic skin‘ and ‘A Hero of Our Time‘ emphasized the inability to find a goal worthy of omnipotence of hero. ‘Demons‘ accentuate the motive of personal guilt, which renders meaningless all further goals and actions of the hero. However Nazirov’s interpretation of ‘Demons‘ is determined not only by moral issues. For the soviet literary scholarship in 1970s social the context of moral conflict of ‘Demons‘ is also important. This context defined by process of breakdown of traditional Russian society structures during the second half of the XIX century. Thus, the article presents a historical and literary-historical comment of the topic ‘barren omnipotence‘ of Balzac to Dostoevsky. In this work, there are all the typical characteristics of a mature scientific style of Nazirov: attention to the social aspects of the history of literature, historical approach to the actual literary phenomena, moral sharpening of artistic perspective. (shrink)

The starting point for my reading of the exchanges between Marx and Balzac is the repetition in The Eighteenth Brumaire of a striking image employed in Colonel Chabert to represent the force of ideology as experienced by a man forcibly set outside the conventions it endorses. Balzac first: “The social and judicial world weighted on his breast like a nightmare.”3 Marx’s appropriation occurs in a much-quoted meditation on the past as impediment to the future.Men make their own history, (...) but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.4What is the weight of an nightmare, and why do Balzac and Marx agree that invoking it is a valid means to express humanity’s relation to its history?5 4. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 15; my emphasis. Further references to this work, abbreviated EB, will be included in the text.5. In French and German: “Le monde social et judiciare lui pesait sur la poitrine comme un cauchemar”; “Die Tradition aller toten Geschlechter lastet wie ein Alp auf dem Gehirne der Lebenden.” This strikes me as so obvious a borrowing that I have to wonder why it does not seem to be generally known. On contributing factor may be that the standard French translation of The Eighteenth Burmaire gives a fanciful version of the sentence in Marx: “La tradition de toutes les generations mortes pèse d’un poids très lourd sur le cerveau des vivants”. Does this poids très lourd come from a misreading of ein Alp as eine Alp? Sandry Petrey is professor of French and comparative literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The author of History in the Text: Quatrevingt-Treize and the French Revolution, he is completing a book entitled Realism and Revolution. (shrink)

« Une Petite sœur toujours actuelle » ; « La place qu’elle fait aux femmes dit de notre culture quelque chose qu’il est temps d’entendre » : les intitulés que Michelle Perrot et Christine Planté donnent respectivement à la préface et à la postface qui encadrent cette réédition de La petite sœur de Balzac disent la pertinence d’un ouvrage devenu en vingt-cinq ans une référence incontournable de la réflexion sur la question du genre et les questions de genre en (...) littérature. Paru en 1989 aux éd... (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the intertextual relationship between the work of François Truffaut and that of Honoré de Balzac. It explores Balzac's influence on the shaping of Truffaut's voice and argues that Balzac's Human Comedy served Truffaut as a model for some of his cinematic innovations. This applies to Truffaut's total oeuvre, but particularly to his series of autobiographical films, “The Adventures of Antoine Doinel”: The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959), Antoine and Colette, (...) Love at Twenty (Antoine et Colette, L'Amour à Vingt Ans, 1962), Stolen Kisses (Baisers Volés, 1968), Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970), Love on the Run (L'Amour en Fuite, 1979). In examining Truffaut's “rewriting” of Balzac, I adopt—and adapt—the intertextual approach of Harold Bloom's theory of the “anxiety of influence.” My paper applies Bloom's concept of misreading to an examination of the relationship between Truffaut's autobiographical films, and Balzac's Human Comedy, both thematically and structurally. (shrink)