Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle | |
|---|---|
 Portrait by Olof Johan Södermark, 1840 | |
| Born | 23 January 1783 |
| Died | 23 March 1842 (aged 59) |
Resting place | Montmartre Cemetery, Paris |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Writing career | |
Movements | Romanticism, Realism |
Marie-Henri Beyle (French: [maʁi ɑ̃ʁi bɛl]; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (UK: /ˈstɒ̃dɑːl/, US: /stɛnˈdɑːl, stænˈ-/, French: [stɛ̃dal, stɑ̃dal]), was a French writer. Best known for the novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839), he is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners of realism. Stendhal proclaimed himself an egotist; the neologism for the same characteristic in his characters was "Beylism".
Stendhal is also known for De l'amour, his work on "passionate love" in which the concept of "crystallization" was invented. The book was mostly ignored after publishing, but has been lauded posthumously as one of the first "modern" attempts at understanding love. Sharon Brehm, a president of the American Psychological Association, has called Stendhal "a first-rate psychologist before the official term was coined".