Dangerous Liaisons 2: The Riccoboni-Laclos Sequel

Dangerous Liaisons 2: The Riccoboni-Laclos SequelJanie Vanpée 'To reread as a woman is at least to imagine the lady's place" ' Nancy K. Miller From the double and contradictory pre-texts introducing the correspondence that constitutes the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) to the fictive correspondents' careful articulation of their theories ofreading and writing, Choderlos de Laclos's novel foregrounds the problem of reading and examines the moral, social, and dramatic consequences of different models of reading. Even before the reader can laugh at the naïve misreadings of social codes that Cécile recounts innocently in the novel's first letter, the editor's "avertissement" and the publisher's preface propose and pit against each other at least two opposed models for reading the novel.2 Conflicting Models ofReading On the one hand, the publisher draws the reader's attention to the ensuing correspondence's lack of authenticity and dismisses it derogatorily as a novel. Taking issue with the editor's preface that follows, the publisher 1 Nancy K. Miller, French Dressing: Women, Men, andAncien Régime Fiction (New York: Routledge , 1995), p. 47. 2 For a detailed exegesis of the ironic resonances echoing back and forth between the two prefaces, see Frédéric Calas, "Le Discours préfaciel comme prélecture: Les deux pseudo-préfaces des Liaisons dangereuses," in L'Epreuve du lecteur: Livres etlecteurs dans le roman d'ancien régime, ed. Jan Herman and Paul Pelckmans (Louvain and Paris: Editions Peelers, 1994), pp. 436-48. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 9, Number 1, October 1996 52 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION insists on warning the public ("prévenir le Public") not to accept the story, its characters, their behaviour or morality as truthful in any way. By revealing the outcome of the novel's plot to be contrary to both logic and experience, that is, to lack verisimilitude, the publisher seeks to demystify the reader's credulity and to replace it with critical scepticism. In four short paragraphs, the publisher rapidly reviews the major thorny problems debated throughout the eighteenth century about the novel—the issues of authenticity, verisimilitude, and morality or immorality—and judges incisively in each case. The "avertissement" thus not only presents an interpretation of the text but also cautions against taking fiction for reality, imaginary characters and events for true-to-life portraits and descriptions of real (or even plausible) events, and fictive characters for moral exemplars. Moreover, it proposes two examples of an ideal reader for this novel—the publisher's own ironic practice of reading as exemplified in this liminal text, and the demystified, critical, but as yet virtual, reader that the publisher imagines. The editor's preface, on the other hand, endorses another interpretation of the correspondence and a different model for its ideal reader. It, too, reviews some of the most common conventions of prefatory discourses to the novel. But in contrast to the publisher's "avertissement," which debunked the conventions, the editor fully assumes them, never once revealing any doubt over the authenticity of the letters. The editor claims to have copied, edited, annotated, translated, corrected, selected, and organized the letters into a coherent collection or compendium upon the request of the various owners of the correspondence. True to his role as mere compiler, the editor treats the letters as linguistic raw material and focuses myopically on the stylistic infelicities and carelessness of their authors, worrying especially about the reader's possible displeasure and boredom. In speculating about the type of reader this heterogenous anthology of letters might interest, the editor, like the publisher, imagines an ideal reader.3 Unlike the publisher's rather general and ungendered reader, however, the editor draws the portrait of a much more specific and gendered reader: 3 The portrait of this ideal reader is framed by a series of readers that the editor rejects as unsuitable—the depraved reader who might feel threatened by the letters' revelations; the puritanical reader, offended by the letters' depiction of corruption; the religious libertine, bored by Mme de Tourvel's piety; the devout, who would object to the failure of both virtue and religion ; the esthetically refined reader, who would disapprove of the linguistic...