SOURCE: Gans, Eric. “René and the Romantic Model of Self-Centralization.” Studies in Romanticism 22, no. 3 (fall 1983): 421-35.

In the following essay, Gans argues that Chateaubriand attemped to integrate classical, Hellenic aesthetics with Christian morality in René. Gans claims the character of René—as both a literary hero and a behavioral model—operates as the central and self-centered character whose behavior is not motivated by desire. In this way, the work positions aesthetic questions rather than moral ones at its center.

Few men have been as aware as Chateaubriand that modern western culture is a combination of Hellenic esthetics and Hebraic (or “Judeo-Christian”) morality. His attempts at realizing new forms of this combination have had varying long-term success. His novel Les Martyrs, for example, is less than convincing as a tableau of the Christian sublimation of classical virtues. It is rather in the two novelettes, Atala and René, included as...