Mateo Falcone Summary
Prosper Mérimée

Mateo Falcone Summary

Prosper Merimee's "Mateo Falcone" (1829), originally subtitled "Les moeurs de Corse" ("The Ways of Corsica"), chronicles the killing of a ten-yearold boy by his father. The story, Merimee's first, is provocative in spite of the detached narrative voice of his unnamed narrator. This laconic, disconnected voice heightens the shock value of the event and at the same time demands the reader to interpret the story objectively. Such contemporaries as Stendhal (Henri Beyle), Henry James...

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