The article contests Balzac’s inclusion among the so-called antimoderns. While the author of the Comédie indeed espoused anti-democratic convictions, he was at the same time markedly receptive to the technological innovations that underpinned the emerging bourgeois society. Modernity, in this perspective, is grounded less in the ideological legacy of the Revolution than in an unwavering confidence in technique. The only recognizably antimodern element ascribed to Balzac is that of the beau geste: an act of fidelity to the past, at once gratuitous and wounding for the one who enacts it.
Balzac antimoderne ?
Francesco Fiorentino
2025-01-01
Abstract
The article contests Balzac’s inclusion among the so-called antimoderns. While the author of the Comédie indeed espoused anti-democratic convictions, he was at the same time markedly receptive to the technological innovations that underpinned the emerging bourgeois society. Modernity, in this perspective, is grounded less in the ideological legacy of the Revolution than in an unwavering confidence in technique. The only recognizably antimodern element ascribed to Balzac is that of the beau geste: an act of fidelity to the past, at once gratuitous and wounding for the one who enacts it.File in questo prodotto:
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