The Crisis of Narrative Doubling: Balzac's La Comédie humaine

Scenes of death figure prominently in Balzac's La Comédie humaine. My analysis considers how this preoccupation with death is central to understanding the role of the narrator as authorial double within Balzac's shorter prose (Les Proscrits [1831], Honorine [1842]). In these shorter texts the narrator falls prey to the process of doubling rather than mastering it; his/her narrative intervention is represented as disempowering. This textual analysis, also based on the study of Balzac's letters, allows me to modify interpretative accounts of La Comédie humaine that center on the primacy of desire in his work. (BMG)