Stendhal et l'empire du recit (review)

The subject of Daniel Sangsue's Stendhal et l'empire du récit is the function of the récit - storytelling or narrative - in Stendhal's writing. The main interest of this book is its compilation of various angles from which the author examines both the concept and the lure of the récit.

A wide-ranging (if rather curiously arranged) collection of nine chapters describes where, why, and how that lure drives Stendhal's writing. The first chapter, "L'Empire du Récit," asserts that the récit - the story told - is paramount to all Stendhal's writing, no matter what the genre. It further contends that the comic element - the amusement of listening and telling - is inextricably intertwined with narrative and with the pleasure of recounting it. Ensuing chapters examine the récit de journée (Stendhal's fondness for biography, the diverting stories within the récit de jour), the theater (Stendhal's failed career as a dramatic writer and his displacement of theatrical elements into the novel), and the influence of Greek epic.

The chapter entitled "Le récit des possibles" describes narrative roads "qui nous sont montrés en cours de non réalisation" (68). In an account reminiscent of Gary Morson's notion of "sideshadowing" in Narrative and Freedom, Sangsue argues that the introduction of stories untold, and in that sense unlived, effectuates the transition from historical fact to novelistic fiction. L'Empire du récit is strongest in this territory, when it talks about the "allures déterministes" that permeate the novelist's choices, about the tension between stories lived and stories imagined, regret and self-delusion.

At this point, the book returns to a formal discussion of genre and influences to consider the topos of the manuscrit trouvé - a Trojan horse for controversial political ideas or unorthodox morals. It then moves to a textual study of the comic in La Chartreuse de Parme, arguing persuasively for an interdependence of the comic and the tragic and examining what the comic means to Stendhal. The next chapter closely reads the role of letters in La Chartreuse, finding in them both a barometer of the characters' relationship and an engine for its narrative moments. The penultimate chapter argues against the devaluation of the nouvelle, contending that various genres act as vehicles for Stendhal's récits. The final chapter continues this argument by reading "Ernestine," a complement of De L'Amour, not merely as a blueprint for one of Stendhal's romantic phases, but as a full narrative with a moral lesson of its own.

Each chapter in L'Empire du récit is strongly argued and carefully presented; the readings of La Chartreuse and the analysis of the récit des possibles are particularly persuasive. A major criticism that could be made against L'Empire du récit is that it is a thematic collection of chapters only in the most abstract sense, using the récit, or the idea or love of the récit, as a door to diverse considerations (inspirations, influences, preferences, beliefs, formal constructions). At times, we are presented with subtle readings of a particular work (La Chartreuse, "Ernestine"), at times detailed accounts of portions of Stendhal's life and career (the Greek epic, the theater, the journals), at others an enumeration of various forms of the récit(récit de journée, récit des possibles, the manuscrit trouvé, the nouvelle), and at others, a discussion of mood and purpose. The lack of an articulated connection among these chapters means that Empire does not make a consistent argument. And yet, the book is of value - not only because its chapters provide important insights but also because the author's broad use of the notion of récit has theoretical interest in and of itself. Sangsue does not explicitly address questions of why readers and writers find pleasure in narrative, nor does he tell us how his chapters generate a particular vision of the Stendhalien r...