The ‘Shakespearean’ roots of Stendhal’s forests

Abstract

The ecopoetic approach examines the suggestive power of the forest as a major setting in Stendhal's last completed fictions, written in 1838 and 1839. By identifying the progressive layers in the construction of such an object, this analysis will reveal the intimate relationship between the author and the image of the forest, and how this personal construction intertwines with his own Shakespearean imagination. What particular suggestive power does the forest possess under the novelist's pen? How can we understand the use of this natural space in fiction, and where do we draw the line between the possible referential function of the place and its poetic power, which paradoxically only becomes apparent to the reader of the novel when the author's own imagination is taken into account?