“A Discordance between the Self and the World: The Collector in Honoré de Balzac’s Cousin Pons and Henry James’s ‘Adina’”

This essay examines an example of literary (re)appropriation by comparing the characterization of the collector in Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons and in James’s short story “Adina” (1873). Balzac's novel provided James with important insights on the psychology of collectors, which James would later employ to give life to complex characters such as Christopher Newman or Adam Verver. The study of the intertextual relation of the works allows us to reflect on James’s frequent association between the solitary obsessions of the collector and the aggressive isolationism which often characterize his American characters abroad.