Abstract: This article focuses on the representation of mesmeric theories in La Comédie humaine, and more specifically in the novels Louis Lambert and Ursule Mirouët, placing Balzac’s work in a wider epistemological context encompassing, within what George Gusdorf calls "Romantic knowledge", several contemporary writers such as Hugo and Dumas. The Romantic conception of genius revealed in Balzac’s work makes him an emissary of higher philosophy, i.e. an authoritative interpreter of scientific and metaphysical mysteries, with the novelist resorting to what might be called ‘literary empiricism’ to assert the truth of theories about second sight and animal magnetism.
