The narrativity of history in the contemporary French novel - Michel Peyramaure's 'Henri IV'

In his trilogy about Henry IV (1997), Michael Peyramaure assumes that narra ting the past is not problematic since human nature has not changed within the last 400 years. Regarding the content of the novel, there is no plurali ty of "Weltanschaung" which would correspond to the polyphony of the narrat ive composition. This incongruity is due to the complex political conflict between Protestants and Catholics which is transposed into simple moral opp ositions like good and bad and therefore does not demand a special effort o f attention by the reader. This kind of historical topic seems to suggest t he use of Walter Scott's structure of narration in his historical novel Iva nhoe, but the author, Peyramaure, does not follow it. However, he does not even draw out attention to the fact that an incident like the St. Bartholom ew Massacre in 1572 can only be narrated if the narrative principles of Sco tt are not applied or at least in another way. If Peyramaure can be said to benefit from any narrative convention at all, it is to be found in the rep ertoire of naturalism.