I'm not actually judging the short story itself here - which, let's be clear, is quite awful, but in an interesting way since it's essentially Napoleon writing a self-insert story about his own love life and career. But the introduction, afterword, and other attempts at padding out the text are worse. They try to convince you that this is a paragon of the Romantic and Pastoral genres, that the story is an example of Napoleon's genius and worth reading for its literary merits. They seem to believe that Napoleon's clumsy prose and obvious leanings on his favourite books were intentional and radical marks of style, put there to Say Something about his society and about the human condition. Also, they keep calling the 20 page short story, pieced together from 6 different manuscripts discovered posthumously (which largely contradict each other on the plot), a "novel".

My best guess is that the academics involved just read Clisson et Eugénie so many times that they went a bit insane.