Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:08:54.746Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Tenor of “Sarrasine”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Katherine Kolb
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In dialogue with Roland Barthes, whose S/Z unfolds a multiplicity of “voices” in Balzac's “Sarrasine,” this essay focuses on literal voices in the story: those of the castrato and his historical successor, the tenor. It exposes the anachronism whereby a nineteenth-century tenor occupies the place of the baroque castrato hero in the central performance that seduces the title hero, and it analyzes the assumptions that made this anachronism essential to the functioning of the story-and invisible to Balzac, Barthes, and others. By emphasizing the thematics of rivalry and rage in the story and in the political and literary history surrounding it, the essay brings out the oedipal tensions in “Sarrasine” (and, briefly, its companion “L'élixir de longue vie”), tensions that both precipitated the castrato's demise and ensured his survival as a haunting presence in 1830, 1970, and beyond.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 5 , October 2005 , pp. 1560 - 1575
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. London: Oxford UP, 1953.Google Scholar
Balzac, Honoré de. Correspondance. Vol. 1. Paris: Garnier, 1960.Google Scholar
Balzac, Honoré de. “L’élixir de longue vie.” La comédie humaine. Vol. 11. Ed. Pierre-Georges Castex [René Guise]. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. 459–95, 1424–39.Google Scholar
Balzac, Honoré de. “Massimila Doni.” La comédie humaine. Vol. 10. Ed. René Guise. Paris: Gallimard, 1979. 517–619, 1504–62.Google Scholar
Balzac, Honoré de. “Sarrasine.” La comédie humaine. Vol. 6. Ed. Pierre Citron. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. 1033–76, 1544–54.Google Scholar
Barbier, Patrick. Histoire des castrats. Paris: Grasset, 1989.Google Scholar
Baron, Anne-Marie. Le fils prodige: L'inconscient de La comédie humaine. Paris: Nathan, 1993.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “Le chant romantique.” L'obvie et l'obtus: Essais critiques III. Paris: Seuil, 1982. 253–58.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Burke 125–30.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. Le plaisir du texte. Paris: Seuil, 1973.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “The Romantic Song.” The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. Trans. Howard, Richard. New York: Hill, 1986. 286–92. Trans. of Barthes, “Chant.”Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1970.Google Scholar
Bataille, Georges. Le bleu du ciel. Paris: Pauvert, 1957.Google Scholar
Berlioz, Hector. Correspondance générale. 8 vols. Paris: Flammarion, 1972–2003.Google Scholar
Berlioz, Hector. The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz. Trans. and ed. Cairns, David. New York: Knopf, 2002. Trans. of Mémoires. 1870. Ed. Pierre Citron. Paris: Flammarion, 1991.Google Scholar
Bernard, Claudie, and Schuerewegen, Franc, eds. Balzac, pater familias. Cahiers de recherche des instituts néerlandais de langue et de littérature française (CRIN) 38. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bremond, Claude, and Pavel, Thomas. De Barthes à Balzac: Fictions d'un critique, critiques d'une fiction. Paris: Michel, 1998.Google Scholar
Brunel, Pierre, ed. Balzac: “Sarrasine,” “Gambara,” “Massimila Doni.” Paris: Folio-Gallimard, 1995.Google Scholar
Burke, Sean, ed. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Chambers, Ross. “‘Sarrasine’ and the Impact of Art.” Story and Situation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. 73–96.Google Scholar
Citron, Pierre. Dans Balzac. Paris: Seuil, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Compagnon, Antoine. “Proust et moi.” Autobiography, Historiography, Rhetoric: A Festschrift in Honor of Frank P. Bowman. Ed. Donaldson-Evans, Mary et al. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. 11–16.Google Scholar
Dame, Joke. “Unveiled Voices: Sexual Difference and the Castrato.” Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. Ed. Brett, Philip, Thomas, Gary C., and Wood, Elizabeth. New York: Routledge, 1994. 139–54.Google Scholar
Dent, Edward J. The Rise of Romantic Opera. Ed. Dean, Winton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Fauquet, Joël, ed. Dictionnaire de la musique en France au XIXe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 2003.Google Scholar
Frank, Felicia Miller. The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Furet, François. “The Tyranny of Revolutionary Memory.” Fictions of the French Revolution. Ed. Fort, Bernadette. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1991. 151–60.Google Scholar
Gautier, Théophile. “Contralto.” Emaux et camées. Ed. Adolphe Boschot. Paris: Garnier, [1954]. 30–33.Google Scholar
Heriot, Angus. The Castrati in Opera. 1956. New York: Da Capo, 1974.Google Scholar
Higgins, Lynn. New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1996.Google Scholar
Hiner, Susan. “Hand Writing: Dismembering and Re-membering in Nodier, Nerval and Maupassant.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 30 (2002): 300–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. “The Critical Difference: BartheS/BalZac.” The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. 3–12.Google Scholar
Lambert, Deborah G. “S/Z: Barthes’ Castration Camp and the Discourse of Polarity.” Modern Language Studies 16 (1986): 161–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larousse, Pierre. “Ténor.” Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXème siècle. 1866–79. Paris: Slatkine, 1981.Google Scholar
Michotte, Edmond. Richard Wagner's Visit to Rossini (Paris 1860) and An Evening at Rossini's in Beau-Sejour (Passy) 1858. Trans. Herbert Weinstock. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1968.Google Scholar
Miller, Nancy K. “Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing and the Reader.” Burke 193–211.Google Scholar
Morel, Bénédict Auguste. Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine. Paris: J. B. Baillère, 1857.Google Scholar
Nesbit, Molly. “What Was an Author?” Burke 247–62.Google Scholar
Noble, Yvonne. “Castrati, Balzac, and BartheS/Z.” Comparative Drama 31 (1997): 28–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pry, Paul [Amédée Pichot]. “Les aventures des trois Valentins.” Le mercure de France 30 Oct. 1830.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Margaret. “Ruggiero's Deceptions, Cherubino's Distractions.” En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera. Ed. Blackmer, Corinne E. and Smith, Patricia Juliana. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. 132–51.Google Scholar
Rosselli, John. Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Schehr, Lawrence R. “Rossini's Castrati.” Taste and Nostalgia. Ed. Weiss, Allen S. New York: Lusitania, 1997. 43–47.Google Scholar
Schor, Naomi. “Dreaming Dissymmetry: Barthes, Foucault, and Sexual Difference.” Men in Feminism. Ed. Jardine, Alice and Smith, Paul. New York: Methuen, 1987. 98–110.Google Scholar
Stendhal, Henri Beyle. Life of Rossini. Trans. and ed. Coe, Richard. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1972. Trans. of Vie de Rossini. 1824. Ed. Pierre Brunel. Paris: Gallimard, 1992.Google Scholar
Tadié, Jean-Yves. Marcel Proust. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.Google Scholar
Tissot, Tissot Samuel Auguste. De la santé des gens de lettres. Lausanne: Grasset, 1775.Google Scholar
Tissot, Tissot Samuel Auguste. L'onanisme, dissertation sur les maladies produites par la masturbation. 1760. Paris: Le Sycomore, 1980.Google Scholar
Waller, Margaret. “Cherchez la Femme: Male Malady and Narrative Politics in the French Romantic Novel.” PMLA (1989): 141–51.Google Scholar