Quests and conquests of the 'Renaissance individual' as told by early nineteenth-century writers: Stendhal, Balzac and Hugo

This study examines the simultaneous emergence of the concepts "Renaissance" and "individualism" during the early nineteenth century, a tumultuous time in the history of France when instability reigned as a result of widespread disagreement on how to best organize society through the institutionalization of popular political ideologies. One of the fundamental questions that commanded an enormous amount of attention was how to mediate the relationship between the individual and community. This question evolved into a polemic debate that assumed either the individual or the community could and should be subverted. The debate was carried out in the political and literary writings of Stendhal, Balzac and Hugo published between 1830 and 1835. All three appropriated the Renaissance in different ways to promote their political agendas.;J. B. Bullen's The Myth of the Renaissance in Nineteenth-Century Writing explores the "myths" created by nineteenth-century writers in their representations of the Renaissance and categorizes them into two main groups. The first describes those who sought to conquer individualism through a harsh criticism of the sixteenth century as a time of degeneration and a falling away from the Catholic community into a paganistic, fractured and individualistic society. The second group embarked on a quest for freedom of expression and intellectual liberty and praised the Renaissance for its cultivation of individualism. According to this paradigm, Balzac in his criticism of "Renaissance individualism" and Hugo as a Gothic revivalist would appear to fit into the first category. Stendhal a staunch supporter of "Renaissance individualism" would fit into the second.;This study challenges the antithetical perspective both nineteenth-century writers and modern scholars, represented by Bullen, try to maintain. Through a careful examination of Stendhal, Balzac and Hugo's political and literary works, I demonstrate that all three of these authors expose the inherent complexity of both the Renaissance and individualism. The difference between them is that Stendhal and Balzac's representation of the past is contentious because both set out to subvert either the individual or community and end up doing the exact opposite. Hugo on the other hand offers an alternative model to the polemic debate and helps launch France on a path towards a more balanced approach to the organization of society.