Les merveilleux nuages aurévilliens Barbey lecteur d’Ossian ?

On the face of it, it would seem that there is nothing further removed from the world of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly than the poetry from Ossian. However, Barbey admires Burns and Scott, who are in the same poetic realm as the Scottish bard. His poetics of the landscape will allow Barbey to construct a thoroughly Ossianic Normandy in Une vieille maîtresse and furnish some of his heroines with Malvina’s qualities—in an ironic fashion. Beyond that, it is the very principle of literary deception that interests Barbey and turns him into a reader of Ossian.