Imagined ancestry Lineage memory and family mythology in Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

This article describes the weight of family fantasies and myths in the social, intellectual, and aesthetic genesis of Barbey d’Aurevilly who was destined, from childhood, to cultivate the morals of an idealized nobility in the aftermath of the Revolution. The significant influence of family transmission, between fabulations and approximations, on the Aurevillian imagination is revealed through the beliefs, anecdotes, and stories relating to the writer’s ancestry, mixing epic and genealogical tales.