Regicide in the French novel (1824-1853)

A great part of the nineteenth century in France may have been overshadowed by the execution of King Louis XVI. We intended to draw a sketch of its presence in thirty novels written from 1825 to 1850, less known that works by Balzac, Stendhal and G. Sand. In 1832 the legitimists stopped voicing their detestation and liberals stopped being cautious. From then on, few writers considered regicide as an eternal curse: some wondered whether terror was legitimate and aimed at showing the consequences of regicide on the political institutions of a country which for a long time was divided over this issue. At that point, a kind of political compassion was born, aiming at reconciliation. These two periods once studied, two subjects were broached: the staging and setting of regicide, and the family novel. Following L. Hunt, we can acknowledge that, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the family remains an essential criterion to understanding political power. Private life is a metaphor for a political existence which is all but peaceful. Here history is drama, as it stages death, and consequently an attractive material for novelists who intended to create a "dramatic" literature. History is thus close to myth.