El efecto-ideología en la narrativa de Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

Abstract

Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly has been an unknown writer until recently, even in his home country, France. Nevertheless, his literary work has undergone a growing interest in the last decades. The erudite Jacques Petit was the first who studied his novels in the mid-eighties with a luxury edition of his works in the prestigious French publisher La Pléiade. He opened the way to discover the figure of the Normand author and his extensive and varied literary work. Barbey d'Aurevilly was known as a dandy artisan of his own persona, adopting an aristocratic style and hinting at a mysterious past, though his parentage was provincial bourgeois nobility, and his youth comparatively uneventful. Inspired by the character and ambience of Valognes, he set his works in the society of Normand aristocracy. Although he himself did not use the Normand patois, his example encouraged the revival of vernacular literature in his home region. The author’s family lost his fortune during the French Revolution, reason why he was against it and defended the Monarchy and the Ancien Regime; he became a counter-revolutionary. A counter-revolutionary is someone who opposes to a revolution, particularly the one who acts after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it totally or in part. The adjective "counter-revolutionary" refers to movements that would restore the state of affairs or the principles that prevail during a prerevolutionary era; his essays, letters and newspaper articles refer to this...