Overview

A Gothic Masterpiece of Passion, Mystery, and Supernatural Terror In the windswept Norman countryside, where ancient superstitions run as deep as Catholic faith, a darkness has taken hold of the village of Blanchelande. At its center stands the Abbé de la Croix-Jugan-a former Chouan warrior turned priest, his face bearing the terrible scars of revolutionary warfare. When the pious Jeanne le Hardouey begins visiting la Clotte, a woman shunned by decent society, the village whispers of witchcraft and forbidden influence. But it is Jeanne's transformation, her growing obsession with the enigmatic abbé, that will destroy her. Set in the aftermath of the failed royalist uprising, L'Ensorcelée weaves supernatural dread into the fabric of post-Revolutionary France. Barbey d'Aurevilly draws on Norman oral tradition-tales of shepherds casting spells, of curses spoken in the shadows-to create what he called ""Shakespeare in a ditch of the Cotentin."" The result is a novel that operates simultaneously as Gothic romance, historical chronicle, and psychological study of guilt and desire. When the church bells of Blanchelande toll nine times, Jeanne's fate and the abbé's converge in violence that the village can only explain through the old superstitions: ensorcellement, bewitchment. First published in 1854, this new translation brings Barbey d'Aurevilly's masterwork of French Gothic literature to English readers.

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