Part of
Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking literary realism in comparative perspectivesEdited by Svend Erik Larsen, Steen Bille Jørgensen and Margaret R. Higonnet
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXIII] 2022
► pp. 179–199
Edited by Svend Erik Larsen, Steen Bille Jørgensen and Margaret R. Higonnet
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXIII] 2022
► pp. 179–199
The interplay between emotion and memory
Stendhal, Zola, Musil
Stendhal is one of the key writers of European realism, in particular when it comes to the nature of emotions and their relationship to memory. The young Stendhal’s ideas in Histoire de la peinture en Italie (1817) and De l’amour (1822) are rooted in the old European notions of emotions as they were embedded in the theory of humors and classified as a fixed number of categories. The mature Stendhal, from Le rouge et le noir (1830) to the posthumous Vie de Henry Brulard (1890), points forward both to later writers like Robert Musil and to new research on the interplay between emotions and memory as it emerged in late nineteenth-century philosophy and psychology and was further developed in contemporary research, including recent neuroscience. This case study analyzes Stendhal’s work as a contrast to Émile Zola’s biological determinism and as a parallel to Robert Musil’s sophisticated engagement with the fluidity of, and microscopic movements and entanglement between, emotion and memory. The analysis attempts to embrace the main features of both the literary and the scientific developments in the understanding of emotion and memory through the nineteenth century into the twentieth century.
Keywords: Stendhal, Robert Musil, Émile Zola, theories of emotions, theories of memory, re-enactment, realism
Article outline
- 1.Realism in context
- 2.Toward realism
- 3.The case Stendhal-Zola
- 4.The case Stendhal-Musil
- 5.Conclusion
-
Notes -
Works cited
References
Works cited
Auerbach, Erich
1968 Mimesis [1946], translated by Willard Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Austen, Jane
1976 Mansfield Park [1814] In The Works of Jane Austen, edited by John Gilbert. 375–610. London: Spring Books.
Balzac, Honoré de
1966 “Avant-propos” [1842] In La Comédie Humaine, edited by Pierre Citron and Pierre-Georges Castex, vol. 1, 51–56. Paris: Seuil.
2020 “Author’s Introduction,” anonymous translator. In The Human Comedy: Introductions and Appendix, 41–52. Milton Keynes: Dodo Press.
Bartlett, Frederic
1995 Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology [1932] Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Baudelaire, Charles
1980 Les Fleurs du mal [1857–1868] In Œuvres complètes, edited by Claude Roy and Michel Jamet, 1–158. Paris: Robert Laffont.
1983 Les Fleurs du mal: Flowers of Evil, translated by Richard Howard. Boston: David R. Godine.
Bergson, Henri
1903 Matière et Mémoire: Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit [1896] Paris: Alcan.
2004 Matter and Memory: Essay on the Relation of Body and Spirit, translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. New York: Dover.
Bourdenet, Xavier
2014 “Stendhal essayiste: De l’amour.” Romantisme 164: 51–62.
Chateaubriand, René de
1871 Genius of Christianity, translated by Charles I. White. Boston. John Murphy.
1978 Essai sur les révolutions: Génie du Christianisme [1795–1797] Paris: Gallimard.
Collingwood, Robin George
1946 “History as Re-enactment of Past Experience.” In The Idea of History, 282–302. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ebbinghaus, Hermann
2011 Über das Gedächtnis: Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie [1885] Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
2014 Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, translated by Henry A. Ruger and Clara E. Bussenius. New York: Windham Press.
Elster, Jon
1999 Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
1912 Reden an die deutsche Nation [1808] Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek.
2008 Addresses to the German Nation, edited by Gregory Moore. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frijda, Nico
1986 The Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ginzburg, Carlo
2012 “The Bitter Truth: Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians.” In Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, 137–50. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goldie, Peter
2002 The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Halbwachs, Maurice
1952 Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire [1925] Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1992 On Collective Memory, translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Hume, David
1978 A Treatise of Human Nature [1739–1740] Oxford: Clarendon.
James, William
1957 Principles of Psychology, 2 vols [1890] New York: Dover.
Kensinger, Elizabeth, and Daniel Schacter
2008 “Emotion and Memory.” In Handbook of Memory, edited by Lisa Barrett, Michael Lewis and Jeannette Haviland-Jones, 601–17. New York: The Guilford Press.
Larsen, Svend Erik
1998 “Historical and Literary Sources: A Complementary View.” In Mimesis. Studien zur literarischen Repräsentation, edited by Bernhard Scholze, 15–32. Tübingen: Francke Verlag.
Lombardo, Patrizia
2013 “Stendhal: ‘La vérité, l’âpre verité.’” Philosophiques 40.3: 87–105.
Misselhorn, Catrin
2014 “Musil’s Metaphysical View: Between Philosophical Naturalism and Philosophy in Literature.” The Monist 97: 104–21.
Musil, Robert
1969 Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften [1930–1943], edited by Adolf Frisé. Hamburg: Rowohlt.
1976 Tagebücher [1957], edited by Adolf Frisé. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
1981 Briefe 1901–1942 [1958], edited by Adolf Frisé. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
1995 The Man Without Qualities, 2 vols, translated by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike. New York: A. A. Knopf.
Nussbaum, Martha
2001 The Upheaval of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pethes, Nicolas, and Jens Ruchatz
eds. 2001 Gedächtnis und Erinnerung: Ein interdisziplinäres Lexikon. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Scherer, Kurt
ed. 2004 Appraisal Processes in Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Adam
2002 The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759] Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sousa, Ronald de
1987 The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press.
Stendhal
1926 The Red and the Black, translated by Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff. New York: Random House.
1961 La Chartreuse de Parme [1839] Paris: Garnier.
1965 De l’amour [1822] Paris: Garnier.
1967–1968 Correspondance, 3 vols, edited by Victor Del Litto and Henri Martineau. Paris: Gallimard.
1968 Le Rouge et le Noir [1830] Paris: Ed. de la Renaissance.
1973 Vie de Henry Brulard [1890] Paris: Gallimard.
1975 Love, translated by Gilbert and Suzanna Sale. London: Penguin.
1981 Œuvres Intimes, vol. 1, edited by Victor Del Litto. Paris: Gallimard.
2006 The Charterhouse of Parma, translated by John Sturrock. London: Penguin.
2007 The Life of Henry Brulard, translated by John Sturrock. London: Penguin.
Voltaire, François
1960 “Aventure de la mémoire.” In Romans et Contes, 469–73. Paris: Garnier.
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim
1873–1880 The History of Ancient Art, 2 vols, translated by Giles Henry Lodge. Boston: James Osgood.
1993 Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums [1764] Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Wordsworth, William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2013 Lyrical Ballads [1798 and 1802], edited by Fiona Stafford. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zola, Émile
1881 Les Romanciers naturalistes. Paris: Charpentier.
1967 Germinal [1885] Paris: Le livre de poche.
1979 Thérèse Raquin [1867] Paris: Gallimard.
1992 Thérèse Raquin, translated by Andrew Rothwell. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1993 Germinal, translated by Peter Collier. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2009 La bête humaine, translated by Roger Pearson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2013 La bête humaine [1890] Paris: Gallimard.