SOURCE: Frappier-Mazur, Lucienne. “Balzac's Metaphors.” In Critical Essays on Honoré de Balzac, edited by Martin Kanes, pp. 187-91. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall and Co., 1990.

In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1976, Frappier-Mazur argues that Balzac's use of metaphor elaborates on human identity and character and attempts to create an eternal human image in a specific historical moment.

Every day sees the publication of a new study of metaphor.¹ Any theoretical conclusion can represent only a step in present-day research.²

At least we now know more about the possible relationships between image and fictional form. We also see more clearly the various mental mechanisms that underpin metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche, and that determine their appearance, their superposition, and their connections, whether they refer to the cultural code, to their context, or to an extralinguistic referent.

An important theoretical consequence results from this. Thanks to the...