The lineage of A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)

Following one thread, 3 works from A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) to The Works of Ossian. Back to all 33 works

1. 1802

   René

   François-René de Chateaubriand

   Consulate. France. written in French.

   Short narrative in which a melancholy young Frenchman tells his life of restless, aimless longing; a founding text of the 'mal du siècle'.

   What it handed down

   To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

   Thematic kinship, probable.

   Frédéric's vague yearnings, idleness and sense of a life without purpose descend from the 'vague des passions' that Chateaubriand's René made fashionable. Flaubert absorbed Chateaubriand as an adolescent and treats this Romantic malaise ironically, as a generation's habit of mind.

   To Volupté

   Thematic kinship, probable.

   Amaury belongs to the generation of melancholy, irresolute heroes that René created. Sainte-Beuve, a close reader and later historian of Chateaubriand, gives him the same mix of introspection, religious longing and paralysis of will.

   Where it came from

   • The Works of Ossian, James Macpherson 1765
   • The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 follow this thread

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