Aspects and Functions of Fictional Description: Balzac's "The Village Priest"

At the level of Roland Barthes' functions, descriptions in The Village Priest index the character of a limited observer. Second, at the level of thematic index or symbolic code they develop paradigmatically sets of binary oppositions between the past and the present, appearance and reality, and between destruction and restoration. Analysis of several descriptions of different settings reveals qualities that can be classed into an ultimate opposition, that between the fertile and infertile, which then serves as the basis for classifying characters in relation to the most general theme of agricultural and spiritual regeneration.