SOURCE: “A Suitable Case for Treatment: Ideological Confusion in Vigny's Cinq-Mars,” in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4, October, 1982, pp. 335-50.

In the following essay, Wren critiques the political thesis of Vigny's novel Cinq-Mars, contending that it is weakened by the author's inability to find in Cardinal Richelieu a suitable historical persona to satisfy his view of French history.

In May 1837 Alfred de Vigny wrote of his novel Cinq-Mars, first published eleven years previously, that “il n'y a pas de livre que j'ai plus longtemps et plus sérieusement médité”.¹ This opinion of the importance which the author retrospectively ascribed to the position of Cinq-Mars in his literary output has not, in any great measure, been echoed by critics, who tend to dismiss the novel as a heavily biased and over-subjective interpretation of historical reality. Most would subscribe without demur to the assessment of Georg Luk...