Victor Brombert is a lion in the study of French literature, and in this classic of literary criticism, he turns his clear and perspicacious gaze on the works of one of its greatest authors-Stendhal. Best remembered for his novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal is a writer of extraordinary insight into psychology and the many shades of individual and political liberty. Brombert has spent a lifetime reading and teaching Stendhal and here, by focusing on the seemingly contradictory themes of inner freedom and outer constraint within Stendhal’s writings, he offers a revealing analysis of both his work and his life.For Brombert, Stendhal s work is deeply personal; elsewhere, he has written about the myriad connections between Stendhal s ironic inquiries into identity and his own boyhood in France on the brink of World War II. Proceeding via careful and nuanced readings of passages from Stendhal s fiction and autobiography, Brombert pays particular attention to style, tone, and meaning. Paradoxically, Stendhal s heroes often feel most free when in prison, and in a statement of stunning relevance for our contemporary world, Brombert contends that Stendhal is far clearer than any writer before him on the crisis and contradictions of modern humanism that . . . render political freedom illusory. Featuring a new introduction in which Brombert explores his earliest encounters with Stendhal the beginnings of his affair during a year spent as a Fulbright scholar in Rome Stendhal remains a spirited, elegant, and resonant account.
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