Literary and Critical Significance
André Gide said that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the 20th century. In Stendhal’s time, prose novels included dialogue and omniscient narrator descriptions; his great contribution to literary technique was describing the psychologies (feelings, thoughts, inner monologues) of the characters, and as a result he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (1948), the protagonist Hugo Barine suggests pseudonyms for himself, including “Julien Sorel”, whom he resembles.
Joyce Carol Oates stated in the Afterword to her novel them that she originally titled the manuscript Love and Money as a nod to classic 19th century novels, among them, The Red and The Black "whose class-conscious hero Julien Sorel is less idealistic, greedier, and crueler than Jules Wendell but is clearly his spiritual kinsman".
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“The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.”
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