Persuasion in the French Personal Novel: Studies of Chateaubriand, Constant, Balzac, Nerval, and Fromentin"This book tackles the manner in which techniques of persuasion inform the substance of major texts written in the Romantic period. After an introduction which reviews aspects of rhetoric germane to such a study, individual chapters detail the way in which they are deployed. In Chateaubriand's Rene, the eponymous hero gears his narrative in such a way as to assure himself of tactical superiority over his listeners. Constant's Adolphe clothes himself in superficially dazzling language, while the hero of Balzac's Le Lys dans la vallee adopts a more low-key display of epistolary self-justification. In Nerval's Sylvie, the protagonist engages in a program of poetic self-delusion, a procedure which Fromentin's Dominique carries out to a more emphatic degree of willed assertion. The common thread is that all of these texts contain inscribed within their fabric a desire to project private failure as public success." |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Adolphes Romantic Clothing | 35 |
A Poetics of Modesty | 83 |
Copyright | |
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addressed Adolphe already appear areas attitude avait becomes bien certainly Chactas chapter character clearly close communication Constant construction course criticism d'une dans la desire distance Dominique effect elle Ellénore emotional engage episode epistolary example exercise existence expression fact Félix final force given Henriette important instance J'ai jamais language less letter listeners literary looking Madeleine manner matter means ment mind Mortsauf move narrative narrator nature negative Nerval never notably nous novel occasion once opening Paris Père Souël performance persuasion picture positive possible present protagonist provides psychological question reader reading récit reflection regard religious remains René René's rhetorical rien role Romantic scenes seems sentence seul silence situation sort speaks story success Sylvie tactic telling things tion tout University vallée whole