Balzac e la lingua italiana

Several years ago, René Guise and I embarked on the enterprise of showing Balzac’s knowledge of the Italian language, that is to say, both the quantity and the quality of his quotations in this language. Now, returning to the subject on my own, my aim is not to produce a complete catalogue of the Italian references occurring in Balzac but rather to reassemble a mosaic that, while lacking some tesserae, provides the reader with a clear idea of the features and dimensions of this literary aspect in one of the greatest eighteenth-century French authors.