STENDHAL, stfix'dall. The name assumed by MARIE HEN RI BETLE (1783-1842). A French novelist remarkable for the keenness of his analysis of character. Though never popular, Stendhal has been much read and admired by later psychologie novelist Bourget. Stendhal was born at. Grenoble. At seventeen he entered the service of Bonaparte, for whom he conceived great admiration. After Napoleon's downfall he resided in Italy. In 1821 he was expelled by the .Austrians and returned to Paris. In 1831 he becalm French Consul-General at (ivitavecchia. In the age of Chateaubriand Stendhal sympa thized with Voltaire, in the day of the Romantic carnival he was practicing the restless dissection of character that marks the work of Taine and Bourget. hardly one of his books could have paid the expense of print ing, and of his now admired essay on love (De l'amour) it is said that seventeen copies were sold in eleven years. Nisard, the great literary historian of his time, does not name him. To day he takes his place among the 'great French writers.' His works are collected in twenty-four volumes, of which five are posthumous. They begin with a book of Italian travel and an essay De la peinture en Italic (1817) ; De rumour follows in 1822, with a striking essay on Ii.wine et Shakespeare, par
ticipating much in the contention of the Roman ticists. IIis first novel, Arnmnee 11827), was followed by Le rouge et lc noir (1831) and La chartreuse de Panne (1330). In all these he analyzes the various forms of restlessness into which the fall of Napoleon had thrown a generation trained to expect a life filled with violent emotion. All the novels are realistic studies of social types, but of types of energy and passion. The greatest of his creations is Julien Sorel, the criminal hero of Le rouge et le noir, whose career, founded on fact, is a. veritable breviary of hypocrisy, though the Fab rice of La chartreuse de Panne is hardly inferior. But, though skillful in the dissection of motive, Stendhal's novels are careless in style, slovenly in construction, much inferior in this to his posthumously published Fie de NapoMon ( 1876 ) . Consult: Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ix. (Paris, 1857-62) ; Zola, Lcs roman.ciers nat vralistcs (ib., 1881) ; Bourget. Essais de psy chologic contemporaine (ib., 1883) ; Rod, Sten dhal, in "Les Brands ferivains franGais" (ib., 1892) ; Farges, Stendhal diplomate (ib., 1892) ; Brun, Stendhal (ib., 1900).