Le crayon et le stylo La modernité balzacienne dans Ne touchez pas la hache de Jacques Rivette

This article proposes an allegorical reading of the figuration of a Conté crayon in Rivette’s adaptation of La Duchesse de Langeais. Its cinematic representation as a sketch is linked to a series of historical insights—drawing after the Revolution, Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, and the emergence of the New Wave after the Liberation—to show how Balzac’s adaptation allows us to scrutinize the claim that the New Wave placed on nineteenth-century aesthetic modernity.