Balzac, les Secondes Lumières

Résumé Fr En

Il s’opère en France, entre les années 1830 et 1860, une révolution invisible dans le roman, l’histoire et les enquêtes sociales, les sciences naturelles ou la psychopathologie. L’établissement de la vérité, en réaction à la menace d’une guerre civile nourrie par l’imaginaire de la Terreur, n’y engage plus un accès privilégié de quelques-uns à la « chose en soi », mais la participation de quiconque à la connaissance de ce qui, dans la réalité, mérite examen et action. Le langage devient l’arrière-plan commun de cet appariement des expériences, de cette compossibilité espérée du présent. La Comédie humaine en est le versant littéraire. Between 1830 and 1860, an unseen revolution was taking place in France, affecting the novel, history, social analyses, the natural sciences and psychopathology. The establishment of truth as a reaction against the threat of a civil war feeding on memories of the Terror no longer enables some to have privileged access to the “thing in itself” but allows everyone access to knowledge of what, in reality, warrants examination and action. Language thus provides the shared background for the development of experiences and for the hoped-for collective potentiality of the present. La Comédie humaine is the literary incarnation of this revolution.

Between 1830 and 1860, an unseen revolution was taking place in France, affecting the novel, history, social analyses, the natural sciences and psychopathology. The establishment of truth as a reaction against the threat of a civil war feeding on memories of the Terror no longer enables some to have privileged access to the “thing in itself” but allows everyone access to knowledge of what, in reality, warrants examination and action. Language thus provides the shared background for the development of experiences and for the hoped-for collective potentiality of the present. La Comédie humaine is the literary incarnation of this revolution.