De la description comme euphémisation du savoir La « belle fabrique de clous » de Verrières

Critics underline the abstract character of Stendhal’s descriptions. For example, the pretty “little town” of Verrières, described straightaway in Le Rouge et le Noir, has no precise referent. This abstraction privileges the intertextual origin of the third paragraph devoted to the description of M. de Rênal’s nail factory: the evocation of the pin factory which opens A. Smith’s La Richesse des nations. Stendhal’s irony seizes on this canonical theme of political economy.