La réécriture de l’histoire par Alexandre Dumas et Alfred de Vigny : cas de le comte de monte-cristo et cinq-mars ou une conjuration sous Louis XIII.

Abstract

Alexandre Dumas, like Alfred de Vigny, saw the historical novel as the primary vehicle for Romanticism. Alexandre Dumas' aim was to retrace French history through fiction. By basing himself on history, his main aim was to embellish and purify it. Vigny, on the other hand, set himself the task of taking the real, true facts of History and idealising them, removing the sadness and disenchantment, with the aim not only of making readers dream, but also of bequeathing to posterity a History imbued with positivity. This is the starting point for this analysis, which is based on two historical novels: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Cinq-Mars, by Alexandre Dumas and Alfred de Vigny respectively. The analysis is underpinned by the following central research question: how and for what purposes do Alexandre Dumas and Alfred de Vigny manipulate history in Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Cinq-Mars? The initial hypothesis is that the rewriting of history by these authors raises multiple issues, involving desacralisation in the case of one and idealisation in the case of the other. To support this, the work is broadly based on the sociology of literature theorised by Lucien Goldmann, who considers the work to be the site of expression of a historical materialism whose analysis makes it possible to identify visions of the world. We have chosen to combine this approach with a Genetian narratology based on the narrativity of history in the novel. Our analyses show that the narrative weaves of our stories are permeated by historical facts, which reveal their objective nature and make them true historical novels in the sense in which Walter Scott understood them. We have therefore highlighted the literary dimension of historical writing, in particular the rewriting processes that enabled these Romantic authors to reveal not only their sensibilities and fantasies, but also their aspirations and ideals. This study is structured around three main themes: Firstly, History in The Count of Monte Cristo and Cinq-Mars; secondly, the textualisation of History in these works; and thirdly, the ideology and conception of these two authors.