L’ultima lettera di Julie. Interpretazioni di un conflitto (Rousseau, Cottin, Balzac)

Julie's last letter constitutes a « compromise formation » between the two instances of western love in irreducibile conflict : the respect of marital love and the amour-passion. This confrontation, with no winner, shows ambiguities that are not present in the courtly codification. In the following fictional canon there are some significant variants to the ending of La Nouvelle Héloïse. In Sophie Cottin's Claire d'Albe, the research of happiness asserts itself as an act which shatters the idealizing and repressive order. In Le Lys de la vallée, the regret, due to the withdrawal, has got an even greater demystifying power, in that it reveals how the respect of the social order inflicts on woman an unnatural sorrow.