‘Did I really see it, a battle?’

Abstract

The Waterloo episode in Stendhal’s La chartreuse de Parme seems to present all those traits that we might trace to a general model of the functioning of reason and passion in wartime. Indeed, the approach to the battlefield of the protagonist Fabrizio del Dongo corresponds to his progressive breakdown as a subject on the sensory, passionate, cognitive, and pragmatic levels. The paper analyzes two excerpts from the book by exploring the notions of sensoriality and figurativeness underlying the construction and prehension of meaning.