SOURCE: "History and Fiction in the Works of Mérimée, 1803-1870," in History Today, Vol. XIX, No. 4, April, 1969, pp. 240-47.

In the following essay, Raitt summarizes the importance of historical authenticity to Mérimeé 's fictional works.

Prosper Mérimée, born in 1803, grew up at a time when historical studies in France were coming to enjoy enormous popularity, both in their own right and as an apparently inexhaustible source of inspiration for imaginative literature. His was the generation of such illustrious representatives of the new school of historiography as Michelet, Augustin Thierry and Thiers, the same generation as those novelists and dramatists like Hugo, Vigny, Musset, Dumas and George Sand who, following the success of the Waverley novels and Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs, avidly battened on history for their subjects. But he is almost unique among his contemporaries in standing poised between the two sides of the...