Abstract
THE READER OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NARRATIVES is likely to encounter an intricate web of critical problems. A disconcerting intertwining of discourse and narration within the narratives themselves complicates any attempt to articulate a coherent theory of the early novel. The narrators of texts like Tom Jones and Jacques le fataliste become characters in their works, eager to comment on the esthetics or conventions of story-telling. Such narrative personae dramatize the complexities of writing, while often invoking a fictional reader who represents the processes of interpretation. What is the relationship between theoretical discourse and story in these hybrid texts? How is interpretation (reading) tied to narration (writing)? Questions of this sort ensnare the critic who pursues the tangled threads of such yarns. These theoretical issues have been raised only recently in studies of Marivaux. Critics interested in the problematics of signification and interpretation in early French novels have begun to explore Marivaux's journals, the most neglected part of his corpus. These little-known texts, which include reflections on contemporary topics, fictional dialogues, and narratives, explicitly investigate aspects of the relationship between language and thought, signifiers and signifieds. A noteworthy example of this new focus of critical attention is G. P. Bennington's study of Marivaux's earliest journal, Le Spec-
Published Version
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