French Literature Reviews - 2026
T. Ozwald, Stendhal. La Conquête de soi.
Novel and Narrative Prose
Stendhal. La Conquête de soi,
Thierry Ozwald
Paris, éditions Eurédit, 322p.
ISBN : 978-2-84830-223-2.
Retail price: 59 €.
Is there any writer more out of touch with our times than Stendhal? Indeed, it would seem that he is condemned to a second purgatory, following the eclipse of naturalism and the late 19th century. In the 20th century, people often sought to imitate him, to champion him, to display him, to claim him as their own; yet today, at a time when literature yammers on and favors a dissonant, carnivalesque clamor—if not an amorphous universe of noise—and when it is moreover enslaved to the media and social networks, this great master of French prose can scarcely be heard anymore.
Among the younger generations emerging from the "republican" school system, he has become a murky, unreadable, and supremely boring classic. Certain critics have also done him a terrible disservice since the post-war period. When he hasn't been pigeonholed into psychoanalytical frameworks or put through the sieve of socio-criticism, structural analysis has tended to reduce him to a mere series of themes or tropes, smoothing him over, flattening him, and robbing him of his flavor.
There is no longer a Stendhal, only a Stendhalian textuality; yet what writer is more resistant than Stendhal to this homogenization and devitalization? What body of work is less inclined to bow to the tyranny of sheer literariness and renounce its allegiance to literature?
In contrast to the prevailing positivist approach, which tends to annihilate any other perspective, this book aims to offer a more spiritualist reading of his work, choosing not to dismiss the question of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. There is a moral Stendhal who, in truth, is of no small interest.
Thierry Ozwald examines the work of Stendhal in relation to aesthetics and ethics, addressing the moral dimensions. Readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature and Stendhalian studies may find this volume relevant to broader discussions surrounding literary reception and interpretation.