Balzac et les géographes : reconversion d’un discours scientifique

Abstract

The paper is an attempt at showing how the mentions and quotations of contemporary geographic dis-courses inserted in the Balzacian texts and paratexts are there to outline the features of a new novelistic æsthetic. We will start from the following observation: the Balzacian novel and its encyclopedic ambi-tion are contemporaneous with the first attempts of some geographers to found a unified science from a diversified set of knowledges and practices. Therefore, modern geography may appear as an adversary of Balzac’s own ambition of totalization and we will show that geographic discourse, rather than being a model for him as other scientific discourses are, is distorted in his novels, deprived of its epistemological value and reduced to a science without knowledge.

Keywords

• honore de balzac
• literature and geography
• alexandre von humboldt
• conrad malte-brun