Balzac, Honoré de | Allen Thiher (essay date 2001)
Allen Thiher (essay date 2001)
SOURCE: Thiher, Allen. “Balzac and the Unity of Knowledge.” In Fiction Rivals Science: The French Novel from Balzac to Proust, pp. 37-80. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
[In the following essay, Thiher claims that Balzac transformed the novel from philosophical allegory to a discussion about the nature of knowledge, and explores the author's attempt to offer a reality in his novel that would compete with the supposed total truths posited by scientific discourse.]
Qui ne pardonnerait ce dernier plaisir à un homme de science et de poésie?
[Who would not forgive a man of science and poetry for this last pleasure?]
—Balzac, La Peau de chagrin
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
| 1778: | Mesmer arrives in Paris with his medical theory based upon animal magnetism,... |
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