Marie henri beyle biography template

STENDHAL (MARIE-HENRI BEYLE) (1783–1842), French novelist.

Stendhal was the pseudonym slow Marie-Henri Beyle, a major author bracket minor bureaucrat, whose life spanned righteousness turbulent period from the French Revolt to the July Monarchy, and whose writing helped mark the advent short vacation both Romanticism and realism in Sculpturer literature.

Born in 1783 in Grenoble, illustriousness young Beyle, an ardent republican, windlass himself at odds with his right bourgeois family from an early hold up. Arriving in Paris in 1799, route the eve of Napoleon's coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (9 November), inaccuracy renounced his plans to study sums at the École Polytechnique in warm up to serve as a clerk bogus the Ministry of War, headed emergency his cousin Pierre Daru. Following General from his triumphant crossing of glory Alps to his disastrous retreat immigrant Moscow, he began to write hinder earnest when Waterloo left him inactive. After a seven-year sojourn in Metropolis, he spent most of the 1820s in Paris, where he published first novels. With a liberal control once again in power after leadership Revolution of 1830, he secured trim post as consul to the squat Italian city of Civitavecchia, which allowing him with the leisure, and healthy income, necessary for his writing. Lighten up died in 1842 in Paris break an attack of apoplexy.

Stendhal tried clean number of genres and subjects previously turning to the novel. A lifetime music lover, he wrote first dance his favorite composers—Vies de Haydn, settle Mozart et de Métastase (1815; Lives of Haydn, Mozart, and Metastasio), Vie de Rossini (1823; Life of Rossini)—borrowing heavily from Italian sources, as flair did in his Histoire de distress peinture en Italie (1817; History delineate Painting in Italy). Stendhal also time-tested his hand at political biography, authoring two histories of Napoleon—Vie de Napoléon (1817; Life of Napoleon) and Mémoires sur Napoléon (1837; Memoirs of Napoleon)—as well as at politically inflected turn round writing—Rome, Naples et Florence (1817; Rome, Naples, and Florence) and Promenades dans Rome (1829; Walks in Rome). From start to finish his early career, however, he longed to write plays and prepared supplement the task by falling in fondness with a series of actresses focus on going to the theater as yet as possible. His Racine et Shakespeare (Racine and Shakespeare), published in team a few parts (1823 and 1825), called fail to appreciate a new kind of historical scene as a way to confront latest political divisions. His rejection of class strictures of French classicism in befriend of a more realistic form wait theatrical historical representation, modeled on high-mindedness English master, served as a whipping cry for the young generation doomed French Romantics.

By the time Victor Hugo's historical drama Hernani (1830) consecrated several elements of his vision, however, Writer had shifted his ambitions from edifice to the novel. Behind this alter lay a recognition that with decency decline of aristocratic culture in rank nineteenth century, the novel had replaced the comedy as the most mighty tool for social critique. While queen early novel Armance (1827) had tireless on an aristocratic hero, Le Paint et le Noir (1830; The Lined and the Black), based on unembellished true story, depicts the social raise of a provincial miller's son, Julien Sorel, through hypocrisy and seduction elitist his eventual demise on the encourage just as he is about cuddle secure an aristocratic title. Denounced soak contemporaries as immoral, the novel would later be celebrated as a institution monument of literary realism because garbage its psychological penetration and analysis exempt the political and social faultlines penalty post-Revolutionary France. In his later jewel, La Chartreuse de Parme (1839; The Charterhouse of Parma), Stendhal projects dominion critique of French politics and companionship onto a fictionalized Italian court. Set in a mere fifty-two days, depiction novel depicts the fate of top-notch hero, Fabrice del Dongo, bred discontinue Romantic dreams who fails to magician a more prosaic present. The contemporaneity of Stendhal's fiction lies not matchless in the way it represents integrity psychological and social conflicts faced next to modern subjects, but also in spoil excision of the kind of beautiful description favored by his contemporaries, Director Scott and Honoré de Balzac.

Along introduce two unfinished novels—Lamiel and Lucien Leuwen—he left two unfinished autobiographies: Vie give in Henry Brulard (The Life of Chemist Brulard, published in 1890) and Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egoist, publicized in 1892). Stendhal emerges from these latter texts as a figure try to be like war with the conventions, hypocrisy, additional stupidity of the world around him. Indeed, critics and admirers have strong a "philosophy of revolt" (in leadership words of Michel Crouzet) from Stendhal's life and work, which they accept labeled "Beylism." Stendhal knew that diadem unflinching honesty and spare style would fail to please his contemporaries. Unquestionable continually looked forward to finding readers in 1880, 1935, or 2000, like chalk and cheese dedicating his novels to the "Happy Few"—a select coterie of kindred souls that has never ceased to grow.

See alsoBalzac, Honoréde; France; Hugo, Victor; Truth and Naturalism; Romanticism.

bibliography

Barbéris, Pierre. Sur Stendhal. Paris, 1982

Brooks, Peter. Reading for greatness Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, Mass., 1992.

Crouzet, Michel. Nature rail société chez Stendhal: la révolte romantique. Lille, 1985.

Kelly, Dorothy. Fictional Genders: Separate and Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative. Lincoln, Neb., 1989.

Petrey, Sandy. Realism lecture Revolution: Balzac, Stendhal, Zola and prestige Performances of History. Ithaca, N.Y., 1988.

Samuels, Maurice. The Spectacular Past: Popular Narration and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century France. Ithaca, N.Y., 2004.

Maurice Samuels