Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T00:50:20.723Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Novel and the Guillotine; or, Fathers and Sons in Le Rouge et le noir

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peter Brooks
Peter Brooks*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The end of Le Rouge et le noir constitutes a chronic critical scandal, raising a host of problems concerning the novel's plot and its legitimating authority that may be approached through the question of paternity in the career of Julien Sorel. Paternity becomes a key issue in a novel structured by a conflict between legitimacy and usurpation, a conflict that has political, historical, and narratological implications. Politics versus manners, the hypothesis of Julien's illegitimate noble birth versus his career of monstrous usurpation, the role of the narrator as a father figure who subverts paternalistic control–these and related questions may provide a context for reading the end of the novel, for determining the relation of what Julien calls his novel to Stendhal's, and for understanding the uses of the guillotine.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 97 , Issue 3 , May 1982 , pp. 348 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

André, Robert. Ecriture et pulsions dans le roman stendhalien. Paris: Klincksieck, 1977.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. Trans. Trask, Willard. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday, 1957.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits.” Communications 8(1966): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brombert, Victor. Stendhal et la voie oblique. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1954.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter. “Freud's Masterplot.” Yale French Studies 55-56(1977-78):280–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, Peter. The Novel of Worldliness. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castex, P-G. Le Rouge et le noir de Stendhal. Paris: Sedes, 1967.Google Scholar
Flaubert, Gustave. L'Education sentimentale. Paris: Garnier, 1964.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “Family Romances” [Der Familienroman der Neurotiker]. In Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth, 1953–59, 9:237–41.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. “Discours du récit.” In Figures III. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1972.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. “‘Stendhal.‘” In Figures II. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969, 155–93.Google Scholar
Girard, René. Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque. Paris: Grasset, 1961.Google Scholar
Hemmings, F. W. J. Stendhal: A Study of His Novels. Oxford: Clarendon, 1964.Google Scholar
Imbert, Henri-François. Les Métamorphoses de la liberté. Paris: Corti, 1967.Google Scholar
Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Random, 1961.Google Scholar
Levin, Harry. The Gates of Horn. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “The Structural Study of Myth.” In Structural Anthropology. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday, 1967, 202–28.Google Scholar
Levowitz-Treu, Micheline. L'Amour et la mort chez Stendhal. Aran: Editions du Grand Chêne, 1978.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Bostock, Anna. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Martineau, Henri. L'Œuvre de Stendhal. Paris: Divan, 1945.Google Scholar
Miller, D. A. Narrative and Its Discontents. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Poulet, Georges. Mesure de l'instant. Paris: Pion, 1968.Google Scholar
Prévost, Jean. La Création chez Stendhal. Marseille: Editions du Sagittaire, 1942.Google Scholar
Starobinski, Jean. “Stendhal pseudonyme.” In L'Œil vivant. Paris: Gallimard, 1963.Google Scholar
Stendhal. “La Comédie est impossible en 1836.” In Mélanges de littérature. Ed. Martineau, Henri. Paris: Divan, 1933. Vol. 3.Google Scholar
Stendhal. Lucien Leuwen. In Romans et Nouvelles. Ed. Martineau, Henri. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1952, 1:760–1413.Google Scholar
Stendhal. Pensées. Filosofia Nova. Ed. Martineau, Henri. Paris: Divan, 1931.Google Scholar
Stendhal. Racine et Shakespeare. Ed. Martineau, Henri. Paris: Divan, 1928.Google Scholar
Stendhal. Le Rouge et le noir. Ed. Martineau, Henri. Paris: Garnier, 1957.Google Scholar
Stendhal. La Vie de Henry Brulard. In Œuvres intimes. Ed. Martineau, Henri. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1955.Google Scholar
Stivale, Charles J. “Le Vraisemblable temporel dans Le Rouge et le noir.” Stendhal Club 84(1979):299–313.Google Scholar