Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth The Wanderer and Honoré De Balzac's Melmoth Réconcilié

Foreword Usually (I am speaking from a student’s point of view) when one deals with the study of an artist in general, and in my case of a novelist, the “most important works” are taken into consideration, those who made him immortal, and whose characteristics briefly define his greatest qualities. On the other hand, this is the way in which poets, novelists, essayists and historians are presented in the commonest literature books, that is to say through their masterpieces. So, my first contact with Honoré de Balzac was through the reading of Le Père Goriot, presented as an unavoidable step towards the Comédie Humaine, the greatest expression of his genius. But when he wrote this novel, Balzac was already thirty-six and had already fifteen years of literary experiences. Of this long period, we often remember only La Peau de Chagrin, and consequently, but in a general way, the Etudes Philosophiques. But a consistent youth production is absent, the mirror of many influences and which, at least, had the merit to prepare him for the future glory. To his first approaches to literature, dates back his contact with a genre coming from England, the gothic novel, which had a great hold on young Honoré, representing a very fertile humus for his inspiration. Among the so many gothic writers, the most appreciated was Irish Reverend Charles Robert Maturin, the author of the last masterpiece of this genre, Melmoth the Wanderer, and just to his memory is inspired one of the short stories contained in the Etudes Philosophiques, Melmoth Réconcilié. This work has allowed me to study in deep a period of Honoré de Balzac’s career which otherwise could have remained unknown forever. After a brief annotation on how and why the gothic genre was successful in France, I presented the artist dealing with gothic starting from the first general approaches. And after presenting also Melmoth the Wanderer, I finished the comparison between this one and the short story Melmoth Réconcilié, a story presenting itself as the top of a path bringing him directly from young works to maturity works. 3