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"Tomber dans le phenomene": Balzac's Optics of Narration.

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From: French Forum
Date: 20010922
Author:

Andrea Goulet

Traditional distinctions between romantic and realist fiction in nineteenth-century France invoke a direct relation between narrative form and authorial vision: the poetic thrust of the romantic novel implies a visionary eye, attuned to the realm of mystical revelation, while the descriptive logic of the realist novel implies a scientific eye, trained for the positivist observation of details in the world. One need only read the titles of two well-known critical works on Hugo and Zola to recognize the competing poles of visuality at stake: Victor Hugo and the ...

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