Research on Stendhal, Vol. II These nine studies analyze Stendhal's work, his criticism of the prose of Cicero and his epigones, his evocation of reality and the nocturnal sides of humanity, his famous definition of the novel as a mirror, the interferences between Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Schiller, Beethoven and Stendhal, and his indictment of tyranny in all its forms, symbolized by the Red of the blood of tyrants and their victims and by the Black of oppression.