Paper Trails

Abstract

A striking yet overlooked feature of Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme (1839) is the prominence that this novel accords to passports and movement control practices. This feature is a product of the novel’s historical surroundings. During the post-Napoleonic Restoration, the passport had become a favoured instrument of power for absolutist governments across Europe, and the Austrian Empire in particular had set up a notoriously restrictive passport system, extending also to the Austrian possessions and client states in Northern Italy – the scene of Stendhal’s narrative. Tracing the numerous references to the Austrian movement control regime, this article argues that the passport motif should be seen, not simply as a “reality effect” or a metaphor for identity conflicts, but as an interface linking a specific political practice and a specific literary form. Thus, the novel provides ample historically accurate information about the contemporary passport system, yet at the same time uses this information as a structuring device that crucially informs the articulation of its space, plot, and major themes. By virtue of this structural centrality, the passport motif opens up a new political dimension in a novel that has often been seen simply as an escapist fantasy.