Deux versions de ­l’histoire, deux usages de la nouvelle historique - Mérimée versus Vigny

The historical novella, which is ­concerned above all with the event or historical fact, is treated differently in ­L’Enlèvement de la redoute and Le Corps de garde russe. In ­Mérimée’s work, the character, not yet the hero, is shown immersed in violence and buried in the unintelligibility of events. In the work of Vigny, meanwhile, the account is dictated by an obsession with parricide; it immediately demonises the figure of the Napoleonic father, and moves firmly into psychodrama.