Abstract
In Le Rouge et le noir (1830), the protagonist Julien Sorel’s quest for upward social mobility is facilitated by father figures and romantic partners. Abandoned by his abusive father, Julien is inspired by Napoleon and the surgeon-major, and aided by several other father figures: the priests Chélan and Pirard, M. de Rênal, and marquis de La Mole. Further, his own paternity is a predominant theme in the novel. His relationship with Mme de Rênal disrupts both her conjugal relationship, and her husband’s relationship with his children. While Mathilde struggles with her decision to marry Julien, her relationship with her father is strained. Using Miller, Derrida, and Enqvist, this essay proposes to show that the paternal and conjugal relationships, which involve two (in)fidelities, are governed by a chain of anacoluthons. Further, a nuanced definition of the trope will provide insights into Mathilde’s attempt to bridge the gap between the nobility and the working class. The essay concludes that Julien Sorel’s death leaves many loose ends, and that his character is an embodiment of the ambiguity in the anacoluthon.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Miller (1998) examines Albertine’s lies in her relationship with Marcel in A la recherche du temps perdu. Derrida’s essay (2002) is about lies and bigamy in Henri Thomas’s novel Le Parjure. Wood (2014) uses the trope to study fidelity between friends in Elizabeth Brown’s novel The Little Girls, and Dillon (2006) studies the (re)use of critical concepts, that is, fidelity and betrayal in literary interpretations.
According to Derrida, the anacoluthon “est sans doute plus qu’une figure de rhétorique, malgré l’apparence. En tout cas, elle fait signe vers l’au-dela du rhétorique dans la rhétorique. Au-delà de la grammaire dans la grammaire” (2002: 21; emphasis original).
Lies are endemic in Le Rouge et le noir. Besides the main characters, the editor, the author/narrator, the priests, and the politicians engage in some form of dissimulation. This essay will focus on the lies concerning paternal and conjugal relationships.
Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir (Garnier-Flammarion, 1964) 53. All future references are to this edition and will be indicated by page numbers in parenthesis in the text.
In another instance symbolic of the interruption, immersed in thoughts about revolutionaries, a subject that is taboo at the hôtel de La Mole, Julien unconsciously breaks a windowpane at the library (306).
The duality is exemplified during the king’s visit to Verrières when he partakes in ceremonies of the Army and the Church (124, 128).
The narrator’s reluctance to provide clear details of the time Julien spends at the seminary shows that it is of little relevance to the main story (202).
Schad writes: “There is more to anacoluthon than simply lack, and this secret is buried in the very word ‘companion’, the word on which both Fontanier and Derrida insist and which, if broken open, reveals ‘companis’ meaning ‘with-bread’—a companion is, literally, one with whom you share bread” (2003: 178). This is true in Julien’s case for, besides a salary, the de Rênals provide him boarding and lodging.
Unlike the English words perjure and perjury, which are used in legal parlance, in French, the verb parjurer means to break any promise or contract, a betrayal. Derrida asserts: “Tout mensonge est un parjure, tout parjure implique un mensonge. L’un et l’autre trahissent une promesse, c’est-à-dire un serment au moins implicite” (2002: 20–21).
This idea is illustrated by Mme de Rênal and Julien when they repeatedly hold and withdraw each other’s hand (68, 78–82, 91, 92, 102, 103, 104). For more on this subject, see Rangarajan (2017).
It is ironic that he calls truth “idée romanesque,” that is, a fiction, a lie.
Till the end she fails to resolve the conflict between her religious beliefs and her immoral conduct (484–485).
Pertinently, Julien refers to his quest as “mon roman” (442).
References
Arndt, D. D. (1998). Ground and abyss: The question of poiesis in Heidegger, Arendt, Foucault, and Stevens. Ann Arbor: UMI.
Brooks, P. (1982). The novel and the guillotine; or, fathers and sons in Le Rouge et le noir. PMLA 97(3), 348–362.
Crouzet, M. (2012). Le Rouge et le noir: essai sur le romanesque stendhalien suivi de deux essais. La formation aristocratique de Julien Sorel. La laideur dans Le Rouge et le noir. Nouvelle éd. revue, corrigée et augmentée. Paris: Eurédit.
Derrida, J. (2002). Le parjure, peut-être (“brusques sautes de syntaxe”). Études françaises, 38(1–2), 15–57.
Derrida, J. (2003). Following theory. In M. Payen & J. Schad (Eds.), Life after theory (pp. 1–51). London: Continuum.
Dillon, S. (2006). Life after Derrida: Anacolutha and the agrammaticality of following. Research in Phenomenology, 36, 97–114.
Dupriez, B. (1991). A dictionary of literary devices: Gradus. A-Z. Trans. and adapted by A. W. Halsall. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
Enkvist, N. E. (1988). A note on the definition and description of true anacolutha. In C. Duncan-Rose & T. Vennemann (Eds.), On language: Rhetorica, phonologica, syntactica. A fetschrift for Robert P. Stockwell from his friends and colleagues (pp. 315–324). London: Routledge.
Esquier, S. (2016). La relation au père dans le roman stendhalien. In P. Auraix-Jonchière (Ed.), Balzac et consorts: scénographies familiales des conflits historiques dans le roman du XIX e siècle. Brill Rodopi: Leiden.
Fontanier, P. (1968). Les figures du discours. Paris: Flammarion.
MacCannell, J. F. (1999). How Julien loses his head; or, Stendhal and the politics of the imaginary. In D. de la Motte & S. Haig (Eds.), Approaches to teaching Stendhal’s the red and the black (pp. 67–79). New York: The Modern Language Association of America.
Miller, J. H. (Ed.). (1998). The anacoluthonic lie. In Reading narrative (pp. 149–157). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Rangarajan, S. (2017). The poetics of the hand in Le Rouge et le noir. The French Review 91(2) (forthcoming).
Schad, J. (2003). Epilogue: Coming back to “life”: “Leavis spells pianos”. In M. Payen & J. Schad (Eds.), Life after theory (pp. 168–189). London: Continuum.
Stendhal. (1952). Projet d'article sur Le Rouge et le noir. In H. Martineau (Ed), Romans et nouvelles. Coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Vol. I, pp. 700-714). Paris: Gallimard.
Stendhal, (1964). Le Rouge et le noir. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion.
Wood, S. (Ed.). (2014). Try thinking as if perhaps. In Without mastery: Reading and other forces (pp. 24–41). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rangarajan, S. The Anacoluthon in Le Rouge et le noir: Cutting Cords and Tying Knots. Neophilologus 101, 387–397 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-017-9521-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-017-9521-0