Approaches to Teaching Balzac’s ‘Old Goriot’ ed. by Michal Peled Ginsburg, Honoré de Balzac, and: Le Père Goriot by Richard Bolster (review)

Abstract

MLRy 98.1, 2003 203 plebeianisme radical, se scandalisant toujours davantage de l'entetement reactionnaire des Bourbons et du Vatican' (p. 6). The opening three chapters of Busst's analysis focus on debates over the 'origine de la parole'. Ballanche postulates a divine reve? lation of language to humanity, at odds with the sensualist and empiricist notion of language evolution. In Busst's words, Ballanche believes that 'le rapport entre [. . .] le signifiantet le signifie n'est pas arbitraire, mais au contraire necessaire' (p. 25), and with language the human potential forthought was immediately activated. But since the Fall this 'contenu profond' of language has been obscured from view. Making par? ticular use of his own important work on Vico's influence on Ballanche, Busst goes on to explain the latter's faith in a single original language whose primary function is to reveal man to himself. The final three chapters explain Ballanche's account of the fate of language after the Fall. That original language has fragmented into the multiplicity of languages, poetry has been supplanted by prose, and speech by writing. The resolution of history's imperfections will depend upon the 'unite toujours croissante' of individuals and nations until the telos, 'a la findes temps', when 'tous les hommes parleront done la meme langue, et cette langue sera celle que l'homme avait parlee au debut' (p. m). Meanwhile, Ballanche argues (and Busst quips), French will do, 'car la France seule peut donner l'apotheose, comme sa langue seule peut donner l'universalite' (p. 111). Primary among the numerous virtues in Busst's account is the clarity with which he maintains his explanatory purpose while nevertheless resisting the temptation to see terrafirma where there is really shiftingsand. Such a command of the subject comes as little surprise given?as Ceri Crossley notes in the preface which opens the volume?that 'Alan Busst est un grand specialiste de l'ceuvre de Ballanche dont il revele la richesse et la complexite depuis plus d'une trentaine d'annees' (p. ix). Emmanuel College, Cambridge Nicholas White Approaches to Teaching Balzac's (Old Goriot'. Ed. by Michal Peled Ginsburg. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. 2000. xi + 203 pp. ISBN 0-87352-759-3 (pbk 0-87352-760-7). Honore de Balzac, Le Pere Goriot. By Richard Bolster. (Critical Guides to French Texts, 126) London: Grant and Cutler. 2000. 76 pp. ?5.95; $9.60. ISBN 0-7293-0426-4. Michal Ginsburg's nineteen contributors understand their brief in different ways. Some describe their teaching practices, others make no reference to the classroom, while a third group merely nods in the direction of the aim behind the series to which the volume belongs. That said, worthwhile critical insights are fairly distributed across the three categories. It is none the less strikingjust how many instructors feel obliged to work around the notion of 'student resistance', both to the text itself and (less culpably, one might feel) to interpretations advanced. While some instructors stress their determination not to impose their interpretations on their students, others show few such qualms. Particularly impressive is Dorothy Kelly's account of the way she moves from basics to the psychoanalytical perspective of Laplanche and Pontalis through a number of well-defined stages. In the final analysis, however, the accounts of practice are of direct relevance only to systems in which classroom discussion is the principal mode of teaching and where a good number of hours are available to devote to in-depth consideration of a single text. In an attempt to be accessible to courses on the European novel in translation, the quotations also appear in English. (The lack of indentation and the undifferentiated typography are, however, serious impediments to a fluent reading.) There is widespread agreement that the most readibly available translation, by Marion Ayton Crawford, is inadequate, which prompts this reviewer 204 Reviews to observe that many of the textual interpretations proposed would not have been available to the monolingual student. Those working in the field of Balzac studies will probably not wish to dwell on the strategies designed to invite students to relate Balzac's social realism to elements in their own culture and...