This new study of Stendhal's novels takes its title from Stendhal's dictum `Un roman est comme un archet, la caisse du violon qui rend les sons, c'est l'âme du lecteur.' Its central theme is the relationship between novelist and reader, as orchestrated in Armance, Le Rouge et le Noir, Lucien Leuwen and La Chartreuse de Parme.

From the author's analyses of these novels it emerges that Stendhal plays upon the reader's reactions and makes him or her experience in the act of reading what his protagonists experience in the act of living.

Well written, and without obscure theoretical terminology, Stendhal's Violin is aimed at both the first-degree scholar and specialist reader. It contains full discussion of the views of other critics, and presents individual, challenging new interpretations of Stendhal's novels.