L’objet monétaire comme objet romanesque : le cas de Balzac

Abstract

The 19th century novel accords an attention to the monetary object that goes beyond simple episodic evocation: aware of the affective and metaphysical charge it conveys, the novelist describes the concrete reality of the general equivalent, he questions its potentialities and its symbolic strength. In The Human Comedy, metallic money plays a decisive role in the financial transactions that take place between the characters. But the role of paper money is just as significant. The coexistence of metal and paper conveys the idea of a multifaceted vitality of wealth and that of a multiple relationship to the materiality of money. Captured in its mass or in its apparent insignificance, Balzacian money becomes a sensory element, a fetish that triggers desire. Dissociated from its exchange value, the monetary object comes to life and turns paradoxically into a symbol of contestation of the economic order.