Abstract: This study examines the rapport between bourgeois ideology and dandyism, and explores the paradox between, on the one hand, the ideology of an accumulation of money and, on the other, a practice of outrageous squandering. Covering the different conceptions of individualism in the work of Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, and Baudelaire, this study highlights a “dandy” theory of grace which illuminates the notion of narcissism often applied to the dandy.
