The Equivocation of Meaning in Stendahl’s Realism

Abstract

Stendahl, the co-founder (along with Balzac) of French realism and one of the great novelists of the nineteenth century, is famous for his use of irony. This essay argues that Stendahl’s irony is more than a reflection of the contemporary social values of ‘wit’ and ‘ridicule’: for Stendahl, irony is the machine of textual production. Stendahl even anticipates the interpretation of his own text, occasionally interrupting the flow of the narrative in order to make an authorial comment. It is through this direct engagement with the reader’s expectations that he carries subversion to the limits, as witnessed in the shock ending to his most famous novel 'Le Rouge et le Noir'. Thus we note a ‘double voice’ in Stendahl, in which the propositions are cut down by their own contradictions. This process does not aim to arrive at truth, unlike the Socratic dialogue, but enters into an endless 'mise en abyme' of shifting perspectives.

Keywords

• french realism, wit, irony, ridicule, stendahl