ABSTRACT
In exploring the use in Le Rouge et le noir of capitals, italics, foot-notes, citations, epigraphs, parentheses and other signs, this chapter shows how the creation of meaning on the literary page is both clarified and problematised by Stendhal. Stendhal's use in Le Rouge et le noir of various forms of typography – roman, capitals, italics – shows us, from the beginning, that he is acutely aware of words as signs, both in the sense of physical notices and in the sense of indexes pointing to objects or highlighting certain features. Stendhal's project as a novelist was as much concerned with exploring the problematic relationship between narrator and character as with the development of the narrative plot or the fictional hero. The triangular structure of the relationships collapses and the hero assumes the function hitherto fulfilled by the narrator: both reader and narrator identify more or less completely with the hero.
