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CliffsNotes on The Red and the Black fictionalizes and elaborates an actual happening concerning the murder of a local dignitary in church. The novel's political and social dimensions ran deep, foreseeing the revolution that overthrew the Bourbon dynasty of France in 1830 (although the novel was written in 1829, Stendhal dared not publish it until 1831).
In this study guide, you'll find Life and Background of the Author, A Brief Synopsis, Lists of Characters, and more:
- Critical Commentaries
- Character Analyses
- Critical Essays
- Essay Topics and Review Questions
- Selected Bibliography
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STENDHAL'S THE RED AND THE BLACK Notes including • Life and Background of the Author • List of Characters • A Brief Synopsis • Critical Commentaries • Character Analyses • Critical Essay • Essay Topics and Review Questions • Selected Bibliography
by D. L. Gobert, Ph.D. Department of Foreign Languages Southern Illinois University
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA 68501 1-800-228-4078 www.CLIFFS.com ISBN 0-8220-7280-7 © Copyright 1967 by Cliffs Notes, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Cliffs Notes on The Red and The Black © 1967
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LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR Henri Beyle (Stendhal) was born in 1783, in Grenoble, into a respectable, middle-class family. Chérubin Beyle, Stendhal's father, a reactionary in politics, was an industrious, narrow-minded bourgeois, whom Henri detested and to whom he later referred as the "bâtard." Stendhal loved his mother tenderly, but this delightful woman, whose origin Stendhal liked to think was Italian, died when he was only seven. Later, he idealized her memory just as he exaggerated the mediocrity of his father. Of a fiery and rebellious nature, Stendhal declared himself early to be an atheist and "jacobin," or liberal--an expression of revolt, no doubt, against his father. Stendhal studied at the Ecole Centrale in Grenoble until 1799, excelling in mathematics and art. Thirsting for adventure, he went to Paris, and securing a commission in the army, sojourned briefly in Italy, a country he came to love above France. Back in Paris, Stendhal resigned from the army, and from 1802 until 1806, he studied the eighteenth-century materialistic philosophers Helvétius and Cabanis, and aspired unsuccessfully to become a playwright. A highly placed relative obtained for Stendhal an administrative position in the army that took him to Germany, with periodic trips back to Paris. In 1812, he participated in Napoleon's Russian retreat. Stendhal's first literary endeavors were biographies, Vies de Haydn, de Mozart, et de Métastase, written in 1815 in Milan, where he lived as a dilettante, fraternizing with Italian liberals, delighting in Italian art and music. He was so taken with Italy, and in particular with Milan, that he requested that his epitaph read: "Henri Beyle, Milanais." He believed that Italy afforded a more propitious atmosphere for the pursuit of the cult of energy than did more prosaic, post-Napoleonic France. Turning to art criticism, he wrote Histoire de la Peinture en Italie (1817), and addressing himself to tourism, Rome, Naples, et Florence (1817). Stendhal's unsuccessful love affair with Méthilde Dembowski inspired him to write the autobiographical treatise De l'Amour (1822). Méthilde served as a model for various of Stendhal's subsequent heroines. The treatise analyzes the