Balzac et la lisibilité de l’argent romanesque

In literature, money is first and foremost a lexicon, a vocabulary. There are three main registers of money vocabulary in Balzac : the archaic register, whose fetish word is gold ; modernity, which is distinguished by its references to figures, transforming gold into money and dematerialising the relationship to the real by modifying its representation ; and the jargon of the financial world and its technicalities, which might or might not be understood. Moreover, this vocabulary is inscribed within a narrative “grammar” of money, summed up perfectly by certain tales.