Abstract
This paper deals with Balzac’s Poetics of the Novel as expressed in his famous prologue to La Comedie humaine. Firstly, I examine a particular reading of the main tenets of this text, which, by focusing on modern science, makes the latter the essential model of La Comedie humaine. Secondly, I offer a new reading from a hermeneutical perspective. Consquently, it may be concluded that Balzac in his prologue refused to understand the human world by means of biological categories, thus becoming a forerunner of Dilthey’s differentiation between Natural and Human Sciences (Geisteswissenschaften, ‘Sciences of the Spirit’). Lastly, it is necessary to underline what the “Avant-Propos” owes to the literary model of Walter Scott and of the tradition of the novel in general, whose defense and vindication is arguably among Balzac’s aims in this theoretical text.
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