orel throughout the novel is certainly intriguing: alternately, the author treats his character with keen irony, with sympathy and admiration. Without this specific device he would hardly manage the complex effect that Julien produces on the audience. It can be said that here at least Stendhal overcomes realism and displays traces of modernism in that he does not content himself with casting an objective and indifferent light over his characters and his story. Instead, by alternately mocking and sympathizing with Julien, he introduces his hero as a complex and maybe naive personage, who hesitates between a Napoleonic, Romantic drive and a stereotypical attitude. Thus, through a single character, Stendhal illustrates at the same time his highest ideal and his deepest disdain. Sorel is a hybrid character, embodying two different aspirations: Romantic recklessness on the one hand and conventionality and stereotypy on the other.
             Moreover, to adapt to this changing view of his character, Stendhal employs the free indirect speech technique through which he reveals Sorel's thoughts combined with direct authorial commentaries on his character's attitudes and actions. According to many critics thus, Stendhal stands just on the verge of Realism and Romanticism, being a stylistic innovator in every way. In Claudia Moscovici's opinion for instance, The Red and the Black is drafted in a new form of realism that can assimilate both epic and idyllic motifs: "Stendhal is not a purely romantic novelist, but the innovator of a form of realism which can assimilate the epic and idyllic motifs into true-to-life representation."(Moscovici, 150) Thus, Moscovici's theory emphasizes the two antagonistic aspects of Sorel's personality: his appraisal at the same time of the epic or Napoleonic drive and of an idyllic and Romantic simplicity. Both of these aspects are represented in the hero's relationship with Madame de R...