Common textual variants (in Balzac) : Balzacian production and textual discourse analysis

Résumé 0

The title of this study echoes the work of specialists in the field of the textual linguistics of discourse: Jean-Michel Adam and Jean Peytard. The avenues opened up by the theoretical and practical proposals made in Jean-Michel Adam’s book—Souvent textes varient (Garnier, 2018)—correspond exactly to what we find in Balzac: it makes us see texts as changing objects that need to be patiently and precisely recaptured, without neglecting their modes of editorial presence, their relationship to previous discursive productions, and the place assigned to their readers in a given social field at a given historical moment. Balzac’s production is eminently significant at the particular historical moment of a “society of individuals” that departs from the society of the different orders of the Ancien Régime, at a time when greater value was being ascribed to the uniqueness of a given author’s style and the abandonment of academic and rhetorical models, in particular in the realm of composition. By making room for Balzac and his critics, the theoretical voice of Jean-Michel Adam espouses, and indeed opens the door for, the work of Balzac critics. Perhaps because we can apprehend this writer in the guise of an author-weaver: a figure taken from Goethe, when, in Faust, he defines “le fabricant de pensées.” He who, by the knotting of threads, ensures his presence at the center of the tapestry, the author of a work who confirms his métier by constantly working and re-working his work.