The Sins of Utopia: Balzac's Le Médecin de campagne

Balzac's Le Médecin de campagne is a peculiar Utopia indeed, more inclined to delve into sorrow than to dwell on joy. What are the reasons for this melancholia? At a first level, there are obvious diegetic elements (in and of themselves politically determined) that restrict the scope of individual fulfillment in Benassis's microcosm: its emphasis on productivity and usefulness, the unchallengeable role of the political leaders, their Machiavellian use of religion. More substantially, however, the long-standing querelle about Balzac's politics must yield to broader considerations about the (ultimately contradictory) features of literary Utopia as an outcrop of Western philosophical dualism. (CT)