SOURCE: McCarthy, Mary Susan. Introduction to Balzac and His Reader: A Study of the Creation of Meaning in La Comédie Humaine, pp. 1-18. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982.

In the following essay, McCarthy explores the attention Balzac paid in his novels to the craft of writing as well as to the reader's creative activity of reading, using for her analysis reception theory and touching too on other literary theories that examine the relationship between author, text, reader, and meaning.

C'est toujours à cause de la manière dont une histoire est racontée que nous nous y intéressons. Chaque sujet a sa forme spéciale.

(It is always because of the way in which a story is told that we are interested in it. Every subject has its own special form.)

Balzac, “Lettres sur la littérature”

Our image of Balzac as an artist has been much...