La Chartreuse de Parme, Michel Crouzet

Abstract

236 Reviews in its effort to gain, maintain, and undermine authority within the theatre, partici pated in thehistorical shiftfrom traditional to modern drama. The thirdchapter, 'The Revolution and British Theatrical Politics', explores the context ofBritish theatrical politics at the time of the Revolution and the reception and impact of the French Revolution's crisis of dramatic form inBritain. Taking a closer look atBritain's par liamentary rhetoric and newspaper industry at this time,Buckley focuses on Burke's dramatic discourse in his Reflections on theRevolution inFrance and on Sheridan's various activities as a celebrated orator, theatremanager, and playwright, and, more specifically, on his triumphant Pizzaro (1797). Buckley thus analyses the complex processes inwhich Britain's political culture opposed French Revolutionary dramatic politics, while transforming,appropriating, and imitating it to suitBritish represen tations of history.Chapter 4, 'The Fall ofRobespierre and theTragic Imagination', explores aspects of themediated experience of Revolutionary history inBritain, by examining the circumstances inwhich Coleridge and Southey wrote The Fall of Robespierre (I794) and the shaping ofColeridge's dramatic imagination, inspired by the events of Thermidor as described in theLondon Times. Here Buckley discusses themanner inwhich the Times 'affected the rhythms and the dramatic structure of Revolutionary events' (p. io6), and thus influenced the tragic imagination ofBritish culture. The fifthand finalchapter, 'Reviving theRevolution: Dantons Tod', offers a new reading ofGeorg Biuchner's play.Here Buckley provides an important analysis of the manner inwhich Biuchner reshaped thedrama ofRevolutionary politics and draws parallels between nineteenth-century modernist theatre and theRevolution's legacy. Aimed at researchers and students in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European culture, history,politics, and literaryhistory,Buckley's compelling account of thebirth ofmodern drama and itsrelationshipwith theFrench Revolutionwould be of interest to amuch wider readership. It redraws theboundaries of scholarly insight and represents a valuable contribution to the fieldofEighteenth-Century Studies. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON RADOSVETA GETOVA La Chartreuse de Parme. By STENDHAL. Ed. by MICHEL CROUZET. (Hologrammes, 3)Orleans: Paradigme. 2007. 592 pp. ?39. ISBN 978-2-86878-249-6. This is a finecritical edition produced by one of the most experienced and stimulating specialists in the field.Michel Crouzet selects judiciously from the vast amount of comment inspired by Stendhal's great Italian novel, and the quality of his own style raises his observations from the level ofmere erudition to that of art. His style is lucid, vivid, witty, and avoids all jargon and obscurity. The preface consists of sixty pages fullof information illuminated by original comment. It startswith helpful facts about thegenesis of thenovel and themanner inwhich itwas written in a euphoria of inspiration and self-belief.This was no doubt thedominant manner of thegeneration thatproduced not only theworks of Stendhal, but also those ofBalzac and ofGeorge Sand. Crouzet's thematic analysis is fullof interestingobservations, often amusing, as when he replies to criticswho accused Mosca of cruelty and Stendhal of reactionary attitudes, askingwhether theywanted air strikes against Parma. He rightlypoints out thatStendhal's opinion of tyranny should be clear to any careful reader.His Italian novel should, however, not be seen as a fablewith a simple moral, but as something more subtle and complex. The novel appeared in I839, and the firstgeneration of readers naturally had theirown perspective on it.Balzac and others saw the real state ofModena as thenovelist's main source of inspiration, and the textcertainly contains allusions thatwere clear at the time. Crouzet stresses the plurality of the possible models for the fictional Parma, and the importance of France in the time of Louis MLR, 103.1, 2oo8 237 XIV as recorded by Saint-Simon. He argues that such models were transformed by imagination in amanner that raised the novel above prosaic realism. It is possible to understate the closeness of Stendhal's fictionalworld to the reality of the Italy he knew, but Crouzet makes his case well. He writes equally well on themes such as Stendhal's representation of class, also his treatment of the complex and delicate subject of political violence, in which Ferrante Palla isboth a terroristand an idealist. He concludes with a lucid analysis ofFabrice, a strange and disconcerting protagonist, a combination of passivity and energy, of principle and immorality, of pride and humility. Crouzet provides...