At the turn of 1830, two prominent titles set out to reinvent the novel by adopting the chronicle form: 1572. Chronique du règne de Charles IX (1829) and Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), the latter work being subtitled “Chronique du XIXe siècle” and “Chronique de 1830”. This article explores the poetic and aesthetic issues at play in the “chronicle novel” form. We demonstrate that the use of the chronicle form in fiction, similar to the adoption of a historiographical approach during the Restoration, is not entirely free of ambiguities, notably in the relationship to temporality. We put forward the assumption that the “chronicle” label plays a highly strategic role. It provides a lever enabling the two liberal novelists to carve out a niche in the literary landscape of the time by adopting a desymbolisation practice specific to the chronicle.