Self-Imitation in the Eighteenth-Century Novel by Marie-Paul Laden (review)

L ’ E s p r i t C r é a t e u r Louis XIV to the Revolution. It provides a wealth of information about how the French public read those novels which have become part of the canon, as well as those which did not. This issue, introduced by Alain Niderst, is also a kind of compendium on the many ways in which Rezeptionsgeschichte is practiced. Some of the articles simply seek to provide addi­ tional information for the literary historian, without applying an interpretive grid to that information. Such is the case of Frédéric Deloffre and Paule Koch’s piece on the Illustres françaises. Other articles are concerned with issues of genre or sub-genre rather than a specific text in and of itself. The relationship between novel and history is explored, as well as the debate over the novel’s morality (Georges Moliné). A number of contributors trace the fate of well-known works in the hands of those most active readers, the imitators and the writers of continuations. Sergio Poli’s study of the continuations of the Histoires tragiques of François de Rosset, shows how changes in public taste and political situation are reflected in succeeding versions of these tales. Jean Serroy studies the continuations of the Roman comique, while Christiane Mervaud pro­ vides a general picture of the influence, direct and indirect of the Lettres portugaises, a piece nicely complemented by Anne-Marie Clin and Yves Giraud’s detailed look at Dorat’s version of these famous letters. Other articles in the collection examine the reaction of readers of choice, such as the abbé Prévost, Diderot, the authors of literary dictionaries, and the writer who penned the novel entries in the Encyclopédie. The fates of Madeleine de Scudéry and Lafayette in the eyes of their immediate successors are examined in pieces by Niderst, Nicole Aronson and Maurice Laugaa. For this reader, the most interesting pieces are those which not only collate a certain number of reactions, but apply a critical grid to them, making the sum greater than its parts. Taken together, the articles in this volume remind us again that the debate over the novel continued to rage through that great century of the novel which was the Enlighten­ ment, that La Princesse de C/èves did not stand out in the solitary splendor accorded it in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary manuals, and that the canon is not a pure conse­ cration of great art, but rather the result of the judgments, prejudices and foibles of individual readers. This number of Œ uvres et Critiques provides abundant raw material for all those whose interest in novels extends beyond the act of reading the texts themselves, to that of reading the novel’s readers. D o n n a K u iz e n g a University o f Missouri, Columbia Marie-Paul Laden. S e l f -Im it a t io n in t h e E ig h t e e n t h -C e n t u r y N o v e l . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pp. 193. We find in this book two extended theoretical discussions, the Introduction (pp. 3-22) and the conclusion of chapter 2 (pp. 119-127). The first surveys a series of philosophical positions on the constitution of self-identity extending from Hume to Heidegger and Derrida. The second develops a typology that contrasts the novels dealt with in the study: a first group (Gils Bias and Moll Flanders) is said to use language primarily at the level of langue, “ a common social language, a system of values and appearances” (p. 123). A second group is characterized in terms of parole, understood as a more marked “ reflexive structure” (p. 123) where “ metalinguistic or semiotic” devices are utilized by the narratorprotagonist for purposes of constructing and manifesting his/her identity (Pamela, La Vie de Marianne, Le Paysan parvenu, Tristram Shandy are the exemplary texts here). One cannot help but welcome the kind of consistent and subtle testing of theoretical issues that this book exemplifies. If I raise some questions in what follows it is only...