ABSTRACT
As in the case of so many other French authors, Balzac's textual practice has undoubtedly been illuminated by a range of examples of the linguistic criticism that has its origin in the rediscovery in the 1960s of Saussure's insistence on the arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified within the linguistic sign. The vastness of the Balzacian opus has nevertheless militated against the use of his novels for the provision of data in structuralist attempts to establish a narrative grammar. Balzac is likewise under-represented in other forms of early structuralist readings. Insofar as there were explicit links between the 'nouvelle critique' and the 'nouveau roman', the disparagement of Balzac by leading practitioners of the latter will have acted as a disincentive to elect Balzac's writings as illustrations of litterarite. Attention was turned, rather, to Flaubert, such an obviously 'formalist' author yielding much to the methods of formalist criticism.
