D’une possible rivalité. Considérations sur les relations entre l’économie politique et le récit réaliste dans la France du premier XIXe siècle

The literary elites of the early nineteenth century willingly criticise the utilitarian footprint in political economy, a stance that goes far beyond a mere condemnation, as in the case of Balzac. Indeed, the creator of La Comédie humaine denounces the claim of political economy to occupy a prominent place in the hierarchy of knowledge. This claim was then illustrated and transmitted by the pedagogical rhetoric of the liberal publicists. It is thus appropriate to study how the latter resort to fiction, not only to illustrate their theories, but also in terms of performative strategies aimed at embodying theoretical principles and favouring their mass adoption. In that, this form of narrative is opposed to the type of literary fiction, whose staging of the economy involves complex effects meant to express the profound changes engendered by the spread of capitalism. Modelling on the one hand, decrypting on the other: these two modes of setting the real into fiction are pitted against each other not only because they offer different conceptions of the human being, but mostly because they are two ways of representing the world; a strategic issue for the project of the moderns.