Pour une analyse dynamique de la variation textuelle: Le Chef-d'œuvre trop connu

Balzac's Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu is a story of artistic revision, both successful and catastrophic. It is also a text many times revised by its author. Its hero's acts of repainting at first give life to, but ultimately destroy, female figures. The same can be said of Balzac's rewritings, which produce, then devalue, and finally lose the story's heroine. The most interesting definition that can be given of the text may thus lie in the nature of the successive operations by which it is transformed from one version to another. (WRP)