Novel testaments: Balzac’s fictional wills

Abstract

This article examines the prominent role played by wills in LaComedie humaine. After tracing the increasing complexity of Balzac’s treatment of a number of literary and theatrical stereotypes with regard to testators and inheritance, it looks beyond the realms of characterization and plot to focus on the way Balzac’s fictional wills are, by virtue of their concern with language and the authority of the word, part of the novelist’s self-conscious reflection on his textual medium. The exemplary status of the will with regard to Balzac’s own activity as writer stems from the way its authority is, in fact, problematic. The numerous instances of unsatisfactory wills in his fiction are, through their links with a thematic obsession with the copy, a reflection of the way the representation of the real is consistently threatened by circularity, sterility, and the counterfeit.