Fantastique, allégorie et ironie dans La Peau de chagrin de Balzac

Contrary to Todorov's claim, fantastic and allegory are not mutually exclusive in Balzac's Peau de chagrin. The rhetorical figures of allegory and irony are both based, as shown by de Man, on distance, which pervades the thematic as well as the structural levels of the novel. Balzac's writing emphasizes the ineluctable discrepancy between sign and referent, and the internal reduplications of allegories of the reading/interpretation process defer knowledge indefinitely. The fantastic becomes the allegory of the paradoxical unity of fiction and reality. (In French) (CB)