Reviews 227 subjects in French Romanticism, also including outward (literary explorations of exotic lands), inward (second states of consciousness), and upward (transcendent spirituality). Therefore Massonnaud passes over the many Balzacian novels that explore these regions. In his strongest area, historical dimensions, Massonnaud offers many plausible speculations for influences on Balzac, and he has thoroughly combed through Balzac’s own writings, but all too often he is content to show that Balzac has mentioned another thinker’s name, and he seldom demonstrates the effects of supposed influences on specific aspects of Balzac’s texts—unlike Éric Le Calvez’s or Mary Orr’s superb genetic criticisms of Flaubert. Chapters 3, 4, and 6 are welcome exceptions, although their analyses would benefit from more precise textual detail. Finally,with the exception of his good chapter 6,“Panorama ou Kaleidoscope?”(respectively , organized and disorganized vues d’ensemble), Massonnaud lacks a sense of true meta-structures—see instead,for example,Dominique Peyrache-Leborgne’s Grotesques et arabesques dans le récit romantique (2012) or the poet John Ashbery’s classic “SelfPortrait in a Convex Mirror.” The last six chapters lose direction and intensity, often becoming descriptive and enumerative, although 7 valiantly attempts to identify “unifying figures”; pages 366–415 (end of chapter 10, 11) ingeniously associate social evolution with the theories of Cuvier and of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Chapter 12, seeking a rousing conclusion, becomes self-defeating, when Massonnaud points out that Facino Cane (1836) is Balzac’s only novel to contain no recurring characters, and then tries to characterize its “effet-monde” created by a kaleidoscopic whirligig of virtual narrator, narratee, and narrated. Such effects do not create a world, but a narcissistic prison. Contemplation of the narrative’s flickering among modes of identity—specific, generic, or suppositional (465–67)—leads to concluding that what makes this work a world is its self-reflexive quality, scanned like a Möbius strip. As Valéry’s Jeune Parque said,“Je suis étant, et me voyant me voir.” Oberlin College Laurence M. Porter Mikhalevitch, Alexandre. Balzac & Bianchon. Paris: Champion, 2014. ISBN 9782 -7453-2612-6. Pp 328. 60 a. This study offers an exhaustive survey of one of the most commonly-reoccurring characters in the Comédie humaine: doctor Horace Bianchon. Appearing in no fewer than thirty-one works, Bianchon’s presence is only surpassed by that of financier Nucingen, but, as, Mikhalevitch shows, the doctor nevertheless remains incompletely described—a curious lacuna for an author so given to physiognomy in the descriptions of his protagonists.Bianchon’s“opacity”extends from his family history to his romantic interests, and even to his origins, rendering this secondary character of decidedly firstrate importance in terms of plot development, all the more fascinating. Meticulously organized, the monograph traces Bianchon’s interventions—penned over the course of fifteen years by an already mature writer—both through the historical periods in which the action takes place, and chronologically in terms of publication date, allowing for a more nuanced, if often paradoxical portrait of the doctor, from his meteoric rise to his ultimate reclusiveness. Part one opens with a panoramic view of Bianchon’s trajectory from his first appearance in Père Goriot (1834)—the action of which takes place in 1819—to his last in L’envers de l’histoire contemporaine (1848). Part two details the doctor’s new-found ambition and adaptability in his successful negotiation of Restauration Paris, while the third identifies Bianchon as a “libéral désabusé” in both politics and medicine during actions spanning the July Monarchy (164). Part four interrogates Bianchon’s later appearances in plots taking place between 1833 and 1836—during which time Balzac began situating his stories closer to the present of his readership. Finally, part five purports to tease out thematic lessons by shifting focus from the “pseudo biographie” of a fictional character to a synchronic analysis of his evolution in terms of publication date, thereby avoiding some of the pitfalls of the biographical approach while opening up space to draw parallels between the doctor and his creator, who share the initials“H.B.”(285). Throughout, Mikhalevitch probes the stakes of Bianchon’s evolving role, playfully fleshing out the contours...