SOURCE: "Narrator and Supernatural in Mérimée's La Vénus D'Ille" in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. IV, Nos. 1-2, Fall-Winter, 1975-76, pp. 24-30.

In the following essay, Pilkington examines the "gap between objective reality and subjective viewpoint" elicited by the narrator of "La Vénus d'Ille"

The role of the narrator and the theme of the supernatural in La Vénus d'Ille have received a good deal of critical attention. This paper will attempt to relate to each other the narrative and thematic aspects of the tale, in order to define something of the distinctive quality of Mérimée's achievement in the story which he considered to be his masterpiece.

The narrator, whom Mérimée includes in a number of his tales, has been variously held to be a projection of the author himself or a means of setting the story within an artistic framework...