Charles Rabou’s interventions in Les Petits Bourgeois

Résumé 0

An unfinished novel of great importance, Les Petits Bourgeois (just like Le Député d´Arcis), was “finished” by Charles Rabou, former collaborator of Balzac, after the death of the novelist and according to the wishes of his widow. This apocryphal version was the subject of a number of publications between 1854 and 1864. Modern critics and editors have systematically ignored it in favor of Balzac’s original version, which was reconstructed from authentic, extant documents. However, an examination of Rabou’s contributions is necessary in order to shed light on how he attempted to implement (by selecting, jettisoning, and reconfiguring) the multiple fictional potentialities that Balzac envisioned without managing to truly explore them as his text developed. This means rethinking the difficulty involved in tackling Balzac’s interrupted novel, in the light of the “finished” but inevitably reductive work of his post-mortem co-writer.