Stendhal: The Red and the Black

Stirling Haig (Author)

9780521349826, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 June 1989

120 pages
19.8 x 12.9 x 1 cm, 0.22 kg

"...a concise yet perspicacious treatment of the most important features of the novel." Nineteenth-Century French Studies

Stendhal's great novel The Red and the Black, published in 1830, is seen as one of the most distinguished monuments of literary realism. In this introductory study, Stirling Haig shows how this realism derives from the incorporation of both history and legal reportage into the novel, and how it combines autobiography with mimesis. Professor Haig locates the novel in the context of Stendhal's own experiences as a Commissariat officer in the Napoleonic army, journalist, opera-lover, salon dandy and traveller in Italy and Restoration France, and highlights the constant inter-penetration of personal, documentary, and fictional elements in Stendhal's writings.

Acknowledgements
Note on translations
Chronology
1. The Red and the Black: the background
2. The Red and the Black: the novel
3. Stendhal's mirrors
Guide to further reading.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]