Patterns of Marginality in French Prose Fiction, 1701-1800

Abstract

Patterns of Marginality in French Prose Fiction, 1701-1800 Richard L. Frautschi and Angus Martín Widi an assessment ofover 1 1,000 first editions and dieir reissues for die fordicoming Bibliographie du genre romanesquefrançais, 1 700-1800 (MMF2) , we have confirmed die coming ofage ofa once ill-considered prose form.1 During a search for works of narrative fiction in French and an elaboration of content summaries, we have encountered a modest number ofitems diat defy rejection, yetwhich we hesitate to present as mainstream prose fiction. In 1977, with die publication of our French prose fiction bibliography for the second halfofdie century (MMFl), the problem ofsuch indeterminate works had already arisen, and we identified as "marginal" certain tides containing para-fictive, if not non-fictive, components.2 This article presents areviewofdiree prevalent categories ofsuch hybrids, situated in the generic borderlands offullyfledged or "standard" prose fiction. As in Maurice Lever's listing ofseventeendi-century French fiction, MMF2 will include a list ofworks widi titles diat suggest prose fiction, while dieir actual non-fictive subject matterjustifies rejection.3 Genre markers in titles, it should be noted, are far from reliable in deciding what is prose fiction and what is not. Poèmes can be in prose and 1 See Frautschi and Martin, "French Prose Fiction Published between 1700 and 1751: ANew Profile ofProduction," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 14:3-4 (2002), 735-56. 2 Angus Martin, Vivienne G. Mylne, and Richard Frautschi, Bibliographie du genre romanesque français, 1751-1800 (London: Mansell; Paris: France-Expansion, 1977). 3 La Fiction narrative au XVIIe siècle: répertoire bibliographique du genre romanesque ¡600-1 700 (Paris: CNRS, 1976). EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 16, Number 4,JuIy 2004 544 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION narrative in form and contes and nouvelles can be in verse. The terms histoires and mémoires have long been appropriated by novelists, historians, and biographers. The use of die term roman in a tide can refer to a play, as in Melfort's Les Amazones révoltées, roman moderne (1738), or to a dissertation, as in die anonymous Leroman cabalistique (1750). Lesprincipales aventures de l'admirabledon (Quichotte (1746) turns out to be a collection ofengravings, and de Groot's Les agréments de la campagne (1750) describes die construction ofcountry houses. Not all such tides can, however, be so easily rejected. In MMFl and again in MMF2, we have included, but classified widi die marker "m" (for "marginal"), avariety oftypes ofwork diat combine characteristics offictive prose narrative widi atypical or non-fictive components. Some ofthese are whatmaybe termed generic crossovers: for example, prose translations from verse originals, be diey epic poems, narrative ballads, or pastoral idylls. Aldiough theatrical forms are regularly excluded from our listings, exceptional cases do exist, such as Bret's Essai decontes morauxetdramatiques (1765), where die authorexplicidypresents stories as reading matter radier dian for stage production. As well as diese atypical forms of prose narrative, die fictional/factual status of die contents is unclear in odier forms. Hesitations about die classification ofsome narrations either as history or as fiction can frequently occur in works purporting to be memoirs, biographies, travel narratives, descriptions of social life in spa towns, faits divers, scandals, wordiy deeds, legal cases, or hagiography. For example, Bret's Mémoires surla vie de mademoiselle de L'Enclos is usually considered to be history, but Damour's Lettres deNinon deLéñelos au marquis de Sévignéis accepted as fiction. The appurtenances of historical writing, such as dates, notes, eyewitness reports, and odier marginalia, are at times used for fictive verisimilitude and also forsatirical orburlesque effect: for example, the anonymous Histoire des rats (1737). In our bibliography, we do not include stories published in periodicals, unless later republished in book form: for example, Lettres d'un sauvage dépaysé (1738).4 However, some of die marginal formulae discussed in this article are close to methods of the journalistic periodical, be diey miscellanies widi occasional stories or essays where a "spectator" observes social behaviour and illustrates it with embedded portraits and vignettes. Such minimal fictive 4 That is, if die titles appear in Dictionnaire desjournaux, 1600-1 789, 2 vols., ed.Jean Sgard (Paris: Universitas; Oxford...