L’invention de l’échec héroïque Lectures croisées de Vingt Ans après et de Lord Jim

Several of Alexandre Dumas’ greatest novels are characterized by their pessimistic outlook, being founded on the failure, or even the death, of their main characters. This reverberates in the works of Joseph Conrad, widely considered as the inventor of the « modern adventure novel ». This paper explores the links between these two masters of pessimistic heroism. More precisely, it studies how heroism is inextricably linked to failure in Vingt Ans après (1845) and Lord Jim (1900).