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Nineteenth Century French Studies 31.1&2 (2002) 138-140



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Book Review

Writing Realism:
Representations in French Fiction


Armine Kotin Mortimer: Writing Realism: Representations in French Fiction. JohnsHopkins UP. Pp. 256. ISBN 0-8018-6478-X

The final chapter of Writing Realism outlines Armine Kotin Mortimer's conclusions in several sections, one of which bears the subtitle, "The Reader's Role in Writing Realism." This title is, as they would say in French, "génial," because it expresses and exemplifies the main points of her smart and interesting book.

This title first of all represents Mortimer's theoretical stance on realism presented in her introductory chapter. Deriving her definition from the work of various recent theorists, she focuses less on the referent of realism (a purported reality outside of and existing prior to the work itself) and more on the function and product of the writing (the text prompts the reader to participate in the production of meaning). In this way the reader plays a role in writing realism.

In order to study how this reader participation works, Mortimer has chosen to analyze places in texts where writing is itself represented in some form. When writing that constructs a representation attempts to represent itself, certain interesting phen-omena occur. For example, writing-in-writing frequently allows the reader to see to what extent the reader does construct the meaning of the text, a meaning that is not literal. The example that best illustrates this can be found in the letters of Les Liaisons dangereuses. Here, disconnected letters never contain in themselves the "meaning" of the book; this meaning is constructed by the reader who, with the benefit of seeing all of the available letters, can understand and create a reality not literally expressed by the letters taken individually. This constructed meaning is a kind of "supplement" to the individual meanings of the letters. As a result, the "reality" that the text constructs is, of course, not a referent in reality, since this meaning created by the reader is an ideational construct born through the text; the "reality" of the meaning of the text is thus more precisely a referent that is constructed. Mortimer's own explanation is helpful here: "To be sure, referentiality is a property of representation. Representation functions by establishing a relationship between the writing and the thing the writing constructs, and this relationship is referential - as long as we remember that there is not a thing referred to outside the writing; the constructed reality that is represented by the writing is in the writing, and this closed system, this process, is semiosis" (14-15). [End Page 138] This introduction is an excellent analysis of recent theories of realism and would make a useful assignment in an advanced literature course on realism.

To return to the subtitle, "The Reader's Role in Writing Realism," we see a second meaning in the "metatextual" function of this title: it refers not only to the act of composing realist fiction, "writing realism," but also, in a metatextual way, it refers to Mortimer's book, Writing Realism, itself. (This review is, perhaps, my role in writing Writing Realism.) Indeed, Mortimer claims that metafiction is an integral part of fiction, and writing-in-writing serves this role of self-reference, which makes visible the text's constructed nature.

The ways in which represented writing serves this function are varied, as Mortimer shows in close readings of French works from the Heptaméron to Le Livre brisé. In the epistolary novels studied, the act of writing functions in a way similar to that in Les Liaisons dangereuses: In La Religieuse, Suzanne's naive recounting in her letters provokes in the reader a knowledgeable reading that is not literally present in her words. Furthermore, the moment when writing is foregrounded, made visible (Suzanne discusses the difficulties she has in writing), is the moment when the sup-plementary wisdom that writing produces becomes visible and literally present in the text (Suzanne reveals that she, too, knows). The text doubles its own act of writing and producing wisdom at this...

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