Mélanges autour de 'Jacques le fataliste' de Diderot by Jacques Domenech (review)

This volume is a mosaic of mostly short pieces on Jacques le fataliste, with the editor, Jacques Domenech, contributing several fragments himself, as well as an Introduction and Conclusion. There are some interesting aperçus concerning possible precursors of Diderot's novel (Nicolas Fromaget's Cousin de Mahomet, Joanot Martorell's Tirant lo Blanc), but these remain undeveloped. The brevity of many of the contributions is frustrating: Béatrice Didier considers Diderot's debt to Rabelais in six pages; Lydia Vázquez has eight pages to discuss the relationship of Jacques le fataliste to Don Quixote. Scattered among these critical appreciations are various documents of questionable relevance, including a four-page text by Umberto Eco and a two-page 'Hommage à Michel Butor'. There is no bibliography for the volume as a whole, and references to Jacques le fataliste have not been standardized. One of the most interesting articles, by Samuel Macaigne, reflects on the place of doctors and medicine in Diderot's novel. Otherwise, the most substantial pieces in this volume, Jean Deprun's 'Diderot devant l'idéalisme' and Gerhardt Stenger's 'Le Fatalisme de Diderot', have been previously published.