Chateaubriand – The Adventures of the Last Abencerage: An impossible love? The passion of Blanca, granddaughter of Cid and Aben-Hamet, the last descendant of these Abencerages who lost Granada, and the life of the hand of the Cid is without complications, frank, assumed with lucidity … but just as without outcome. “[At] Aben-Hamet the unfaithful, the attitude towards passion and religion is no different from that of Blanca whose drama obviously presents the same spiritual issues […] Islam is therefore used to the equal of Christianity to exalt the refusal of the fault, to stir up in its two heroes these “inner struggles”, these unparalleled torments that provokes the thought of transgression in a pious soul, with these remorse, these terrors, these temptations that it makes all the more vivid and frightening. Because this sense of fault also has the advantage of giving full value to the passion, which he only better underlines the subversive power […] Thus, firm, resigned from the outset, Aben-Hamet and Blanca are no less mature characters, who gain in heroism, because they learn to dominate their passion and especially to control their destiny, to take it completely in charge, to the point of finally being able to decide for themselves, on behalf of the love and esteem they have devoted themselves to, the tragic outcome of their affair. “(Bercegol Fabienne: The Game of Passions in The Adventures of the Last Abencérage: Bulletin of the Guillaume Budé Association: Letters of Humanity, No. 56, December 1997. pp. 320-337 in persee.fr).

One of the three founding texts of Chateaubriand’s romanticism with Atala and René. “But between all the writings of M. de Chateaubriand nothing gives rise to the idea of ​​a greater perfection, nothing is more touching than the Abencérage” (A. Vinet, Chateaubriand, Éditions l’Age d’Homme , “Pocket Switzerland”, 1990, pp. 215).