Balzac, Business as Metaphor for the Unpredictability of the Political and Socio-economic Transformations of Near-History

This paper scrutinizes the business world in La Comédie humaine. This world becomes a metaphor for the unpredictability of social transformations, a battlefield of risk and immorality, which Balzac uses to express his ironic vision of contemporary society and near-history. A rise in moral fluidity pushes the boundaries of post-Romantic individualism, against a backdrop of social mobility and the rise of the stock market.