What is it about?

In Maupassant’s short stories, as traumatic events proliferate and his characters descend into madness, colourful modernity fades away to reveal a stark, colourless world. Further, this link between colour and anxiety extends to the reading experience. I argue that black and white draw our attention beyond narrative events to the text, where Maupassant plays on textual shape and punctuation to gesture towards the non-signifying white page beneath the comfortingly signifying black-ink words.

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Why is it important?

Maupassant’s short stories stand in contrast to the works of many of his contemporaries, who have received much scholarly attention for their polychromatic texts. Yet the shift from colour to black and white that occurs in Maupassant’s texts has gone largely un-noted. This article explores this oversight, drawing together the reader's image of a Naturalist world, with the image of the text itself, and with Maupassant's view to a more psychological conception of the novel.

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This page is a summary of: Le Blanc et le Noir: The Spectre behind the Spectrum in Maupassant's Short Stories, Nottingham French Studies, December 2013, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.3366/nfs.2013.0059.
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