Stendhal et l'invention de l'intellectuel

Less attention has been devoted to Stendhal's contributions to cultural criticism than to his literary works. Inspired by recent re-editions in that area, this essay examines the writer's militant struggles during the Restoration, as well as a work that exemplifies the originality of his thoughts on intellectuals, his 1825 political pamphlet D'un Nouveau Complot contre les Industriels. Whereas Stendhal's isolated position in the cultural field of his time has usually been ascribed to his age and his leanings towards the 18th century, it is his modernity and his significance as a theorist of the modern intellectual that are emphasized here, not only with regard to his values, but also to his conception of the classe pensante as an autonomous and independent social force. (In French)