title: Sick Heroes: French Society and Literature in the Romantic Age 1750-1850 (Exeter Textes Litteraires)
author:  Allan H. Pasco 
description: <DIV><P>&#8220;A penetrating rethinking of the heroes and heroines of French romantic literature which carefully situates their plight within the broader contexts of social and cultural change in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.&#8221; &#8211;Richard D.E. Burton, Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Sussex</P></DIV> (Richard D.E. Burton)<br /><br /><DIV><P>&#8220;Meticulously documented, written in a clear and witty manner, Sick Heroes is ambitious in the scope of literature it examines and audacious in its application of modern studies in the behavioural sciences to fiction. It is a valuable addition to the criticism of the Romantic novel because of the fresh insights it brings to well-known works and for the wealth of information it provides on lesser-known literature. Its most significant contribution to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French studies, however, is the coherent and convincing psychological portrait it paints of an age so obviously afflicated with many of the problems of the twentieth century. Pasco succeeds admirably in accounting for the appeal of his unusual heroes and heroines, characters who expressed a popular mentality to a much greater degree than historians and literary scholars have previously recognized.&#8221; &#8211;<I>Philosophy and Literature,</I> April 1998</P></DIV> (<i>Philosophy and Literature</i>)<br /><br /><DIV><P>&#8220;Pasco does not preach, does not try to make literary works into the heroes or accessory villains of a political struggle in which he feels invested. Instead, they are symptoms of a sociopathology that one could readily corroborate with examples of abused and neglected children in the fictions of Hugo or Dickens. Pasco offers an impressive, harmonious blend of "hard scholarship" (investigation of original sources) and imaginative synthesis. One can anticipate that this study, like his important overview that opens Allusion (Toronto UP, 1994), will become widely influential.&#8221; &#8211;<I>Nineteenth Century French Studies, </I>Vol. 27, No 1 and 2<I></I></P></DIV> (<i>Nineteenth Century French Studies</i>)<br /><br /><DIV><P>&#8220;This attractively-written and thoroughly researched and documented study redefines Romanticism as primarily a cultural phenomenon and paints a sweeping portrait of the French people's collective mentality during the period extending from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, a time-frame which encompasses the most profound social, political, and aesthetic changes.This is a remarkably rich, infromative, and in many ways innovative examination of a crucial period in French literary and cultural history.&#8221;</P></DIV> (French Review <i>March 1999</i>)
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  # Madam de Beaumont
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Penelope Aubin
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  THE PREFACE TO THE READER.
  
  
  THE LIFE OF Madam de Beaumount.
  
  
  CHAP. I.
  
  
  CHAP. II.
  
  
  CHAP. III.
  
  
  CHAP. IV.
  
  
  CHAP. V.
  
  
  CHAP. VI.
  
  
  CHAP. VII.
  
  
  CHAP. VIII.
  
  
  CHAP. IX.
  
  
  CHAP. X.
  
  
  CHAP. XI.
  
  
  CHAP. XII.
  
  
  CHAP. XIII.
  
  
  
  
  
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  THE LIFE OF Madam _de Beaumount,_ A French LADY.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### THE PREFACE TO THE READER.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  _The_ Air has infected some of the neighbouring Nations with
  
  
  the Plague, and swept away the astonished Inhabitants by thousands; but
  
  
  in our Nation it has had a different Effect, it has certainly infected
  
  
  our Understandings: A Madness has for some Time possessed the English,
  
  
  and we are turned Projectors, exceeding the French in extravagant
  
  
  Whimsies, and parted with our Money as easily as if we had forgot that
  
  
  we were to live a Day longer: We are grown false as Jews in Tr