Novels
Constant published only one novel during his lifetime, Adolphe (1816), the story of a young indecisive man's disastrous love affair with an older mistress. A first-person novel in the sentimentalist tradition, Adolphe examines the thoughts of the young man as he falls in and out of love with Ellenore, a woman of uncertain virtue. Constant began the novel as an autobiographical tale of two loves, but decided that the reading public would object to serial passions. The love affair depicted in the finished version of the novel is thought to be based on Constant's affair with Anna Lindsay, who describes the affair in her correspendence (published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, December 1930 – January 1931). The book has been compared to Chateaubriand’s René or Mme de Stael’s Corinne.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Constant
Famous quotes containing the word novels:
“All middle-class novels are about the trials of three, all upper-class novels about mass fornication, all revolutionary novels about a bad man turned good by a tractor.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Primarily I am a passionately religious man, and my novels must be written from the depth of my religious experience.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)