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A la recherche des ‘Illusions perdues’

2005; Oxford University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/fs/kni245

1468-2931

Andrew Watts,

Historical and Literary Analyses

By Hubertde Phalèse. (Cap'Agreg, 15). Saint-Genouph, Nizet, 2003. 157 pp. Pb €18.00. This study guide to Balzac's Illusions perdues (1837–43) is intended for university students preparing for the agrégation. Writing under a collective pseudonym, the authors, who include Étienne Brunet and Marie-Ève Thérenty, engage in a welcome reappraisal of the novel which Balzac famously proclaimed as ‘l'œuvre capitale dans l'œuvre’ (Lettres à Madame Hanska, 2 vols (Paris, Laffont, 1990), i, 650: 2 March 1843). The volume is divided into six sections. The first gives a detailed chronology of Balzac's career, and situates this within the historical and literary context of the July Monarchy. The focus of the second section is on the lexical and stylistic features of the novel. Like its predecessors in the series, this is a guide which aims to use electronic and online resources in the pursuit of new critical perspectives. The preferred tool in this instance is Étienne Brunet's ‘Recherche hypertextuelle dans La Comédie humaine’ (http://lolita.unice.fr/∼brunet/BALZAC/balzac.htm), a site best known to specialists, perhaps, as a convenient quote-finder. The authors's attempt to use this site as a basis for discussion of the Balzacian lexicon is encouraging, and so it is disappointing that the promise of their approach remains largely unfulfilled. A series of somewhat bewildering graphs, tables, and charts instead leaves us to wonder about the real value of the findings given. Not even the inexperienced reader of Illusions perdues will be surprised to discover that the name ‘Lucien’ appears 1761 times in the novel, or that there are numerous occurrences of ‘journalisme’ and other nouns relating to printing and newspaper production. The third section of the volume is, by comparison, less innovative but more appealing, with the authors probing some of the more salient questions relating to the novel's three prefaces. Among the topics discussed is the absence therein of the name of Walter Scott, a curious omission given that the figure of the historical novelist hangs over the career of Lucien de Rubempré. Also considered is the way in which the 1837 preface can be seen as a forerunner of the ‘Avant-propos', it being a document in which Balzac outlines his ambition for the future Comédie humaine, and his vision of French society as having ‘autant de variétés que la Zoologie’. This section also contains an overview of Balzac's descriptive method, carefully illustrated with a room-by-room analysis of the Séchard printing house. The fourth section covers the themes that will be of most interest to university students: the representation of money, journalism, the theatre, the interrelationship of Paris and the provinces, and the fluctuating fortunes of Lucien. The coverage of these topics is both thorough and insightful, though readers may be put off by the volume's densely packed pages, and frustrated by its sometimes inaccurate references. A more user-friendly option at this level is Aude Déruelle and Françoise Rullier-Theuret's ‘Illusions perdues’ de Balzac (Neuilly, Atlande, 2003), in the series ‘Clefs concours’.