SOURCE: “The Relation of History to Literature in Vigny's Thought before the Preface to Cinq-Mars,” in French Forum, Vol. 18, No. 2, May, 1993, pp. 165-83.

In the following essay, Jensen discusses Vigny's thoughts on the close relationship of history and literature as represented in his historical novel Cinq-Mars and its apologetic preface.

During the lifetime of Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863), Cinq-Mars, ou une conjuration sous Louis XIII¹ was without a doubt his most widely read work. Written in 1824-25 and published in January 1826, the novel went through 12 or 13 separate editions; its popular success was thus about twice that of Stello and Servitude et grandeur militaires. In the introduction to his translation of Cinq-Mars, William Hazlitt (the younger) remarked: “There is no person of any reading who has not present in his memory” the various characters of the novel.² Nor was the success of Cinq-Mars merely popular: both Louis-Philippe and Napol...