Abstract: Confronted with a personal crisis in 1848 and the turbulences of collective history, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly enacted a veritable “return to his roots”. This period corresponds with the composition of Une vieille maîtresse, begun in 1845, taken up again in 1848-1849, and published in 1851. The composition of the work coincided with an ideological turnaround. The novel proposes the reworking of a model in crisis, leading to the appropriation of a new aristocratic identity and the affirmation of an authoritarian ethos.os.
