SOURCE: " Tike the Sculptor's Chisel': Voices 'On' and 'Off ' in Barbey d'Aurevilly's Les Diaboliques, " in The Romanic Review, Vol. LXXXII, No. 3, May, 1991, pp. 317-30.

In the following essay, Stivale explores the tension between the framing and imbedded narratives in The Diaboliques, focusing especially on the story "The Crimson Curtain."

On the Setting of Barbey's Fiction:

"The little town of + + +" is the trite, almost insufferable device exploited by d'Aurevilly to designate some obscure locale, usually in the Cotentin peninsula of his native Normandy. It regularly appears in his works that to give the true name of a town would be an act of daring comparable only to total disrobing in public. The strip-tease, however, is another matter. Nothing delights him more in his descriptions of locale than to carry suggestion almost, but not quite, to the point of certain identity. Thus in his view of Valognes, which serves...