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Bonald and Balzac

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Joseph F. Jackson
Joseph F. Jackson*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Balzac has summed up his literary theories in the foreword to the first collected edition of the Comédie humaine, written in July 1842, almost thirteen years after he had begun his gigantic task. Critics are divided in their opinion of this document, some considering it an important manifesto of Balzac's doctrine, others regarding it as simply an afterthought intended to give an appearance of unity to a confused mass of ideas.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , June 1928 , pp. 456 - 462
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

1 Cf. Paul Bourget, Études et Portraits, Paris, 1905-1906, III, 55; E. Poitou, “M. de Balzac,” Revue des Deux Mondez, 1856, VI, 720.

2 A. de Bertaucourt, “Balzac et aa Revue parisienne,” M er cure de France, LXXII, 50, p. 62.

3 Œuvres complètes, Paris, 1869-1876, I, 4.

4 Bonald, Œuvres complètes, Paris, 1864, I, passim, e.g., Démonstration philosophique du principe constitutif de la société, XIX, 106; Theorie du pouvoir, part I, xi, 213.

5 Avant-Propos, p. 6. We have been unable to find this quotation in Bonald, but there is a similar one in O.C., III, 1115-1116 (Des Jeunes Écrivains).

6 Avant-Propos, p. 7.

7 Principe constitutif de la sociélé, I, 40.

8 Theorie du pouvoir, col. 704.

9 Ibid., col. 176.

10 Avant-Propos, pp. 7-8.

11 Théorie du pouvoir, col. 176.

12 Principe constitutif, XIX, 106.

13 Théorie du pouvoir, col. 710.

14 Ibid., preface, I, 132.

15 Principe constitutif, XI, 71.

16 Ibid., I, 39.

17 Théorie du pouvoir, II, 558.

18 Avant-Propos, pp. 10-11.

19 Principe constitutif, XX, 107.

20 Théorie du pouvoir, II, 675. To Bonald Catholicism and love are synonymous.

21 A vant-Propos, p. 11.

22 Théorie du pouvoir, col. 727.

23 Avant-Propos, pp. 2-3.

24 Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Hist. desoeuvresdeH.de Balzac, 3rd ed., Paris, 1888, p. 51.

25 Bourget and Salomon point out the parallelism between certain ideas of Bonald and those of Balzac in novels, all of which were published in 1841 and at subsequent dates: Ursule Mirouet (1841), Mémoires dt deux jeunes mariées (1841) and L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine (1842-1848), Bonald, 3rd ed., Paris, 1905, pp. 47, 84, 267, 273.

26 Balzac, Œuvres complètes, XXIII, 641.

27 Ibid., pp. 688 ff.

28 Œuvres complètes, III, Du Style et de la littérature, 976-977.

29 Ibid., Du Mérite de la lit. ancienne et moderne, col. 969.

30 Œuvres complètes, XXII, 547.

31 Bonald, Théorie du pouvoir, col. 708.

32 Lettres à l'étrangère, II, 48 (July1842).

33 Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du XIXe siècle, Paris, 1891, I, 96.

34 Lettres à l'étrangère, II, 416.

35 Nouvelles Pages de critique et de doctrine, Paris, 1922, I, 57-58.

36 Seemy article, “Dating Balzac's Adoption of the Title of ‘La Comédie humaine’,” Mod. L. Notes, XLII, 525-526.

37 Avant-Propos, pp. 1 ff.