{"title":"Signifying Difference","authors":"A. Wettlaufer","doi":"10.1215/00358118-9091109","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This essay considers the ways in which Honoré de Balzac and George Sand, an influential pair of “public writers” who were committed to diametrically opposing sociopolitical discourses, constructed aspects of their authorial identities and indeed the social import of their oeuvres in a self-conscious exchange with, and about, one another. In letters, novels, memoirs, and paratexts from their first encounter in the early 1830s to the end of their careers, Balzac and Sand portrayed, parodied, quoted, misquoted, alluded to, wrote, and rewrote each other in ways that their contemporary readers would doubtless have recognized. In considering some of these various invocations in terms of a larger dialogue between this pair of influential authors, surprising intersections emerge that complicate our current conceptions of the relationship between Balzac’s and Sand’s works. Reflecting on the dialogical generation of meaning, I trace the ways in which reading Balzac and Sand together reveals a complex and continuing conversation between the two authors about similarity, difference, and the dialectical nature of identity. This ongoing intertextual exchange, I argue, helps us see how their literary, social, and political positions as “public writers” were to some extent dependent on constructions of each other.","PeriodicalId":39614,"journal":{"name":"Romanic Review","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Romanic Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00358118-9091109","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, ROMANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This essay considers the ways in which Honoré de Balzac and George Sand, an influential pair of “public writers” who were committed to diametrically opposing sociopolitical discourses, constructed aspects of their authorial identities and indeed the social import of their oeuvres in a self-conscious exchange with, and about, one another. In letters, novels, memoirs, and paratexts from their first encounter in the early 1830s to the end of their careers, Balzac and Sand portrayed, parodied, quoted, misquoted, alluded to, wrote, and rewrote each other in ways that their contemporary readers would doubtless have recognized. In considering some of these various invocations in terms of a larger dialogue between this pair of influential authors, surprising intersections emerge that complicate our current conceptions of the relationship between Balzac’s and Sand’s works. Reflecting on the dialogical generation of meaning, I trace the ways in which reading Balzac and Sand together reveals a complex and continuing conversation between the two authors about similarity, difference, and the dialectical nature of identity. This ongoing intertextual exchange, I argue, helps us see how their literary, social, and political positions as “public writers” were to some extent dependent on constructions of each other.
Romanic ReviewArts and Humanities-Arts and Humanities (all)
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
23
期刊介绍:
The Romanic Review is a journal devoted to the study of Romance literatures.Founded by Henry Alfred Todd in 1910, it is published by the Department of French and Romance Philology of Columbia University in cooperation with the Departments of Spanish and Italian. The journal is published four times a year (January, March, May, November) and balances special thematic issues and regular unsolicited issues. It covers all periods of French, Italian and Spanish-language literature, and welcomes a broad diversity of critical approaches.