De Graffigny Research Articles

Марсианские хроники «прекрасной эпохи»

The French literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that can be classified as “space fiction” centered on missions to Mars and making contact with Martians. The topic’s appeal stems from scientific findings of the time (particularly the so-called Martian canals) as well as the traditional symbolism of the Roman god who gave the Red Planet its name. All authors who wrote about Mars during the “Belle Époque” were inspired, to varying degrees, by the writings of the eminent astronomer Camille Flammarion (both scientific and fictional). The article delves into the specifics of how Joseph Rosnyaîné, André Laurie, Georges Le Faure, Henry de Graffigny, Arnould Galopin, Gustave Le Rouge, and Jean de La Hire interpret the Martian theme in their works. It is demonstrated that the use of traditional materials for popular novels is mixed with a desire to update popular literature’s narrative strategies. Thus, The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System by Le Faure and Graffigny, written between 1888-1896, contrasts the “intergalactic” theme, which was novel in French literature, with its archaic interpretation. The tendency to mix genres, to combine the “merveilleux-scientifique” (scientific marvelous) with Gothic and vampire literature approaches, as well as to augment the story with the occult component, increases. The so-called “martian duology” by G. Le Rouge, which lays the foundation for the poetics of horror – so vital to the 20th-century popular reading – is among the most significant literary works. The modernist bent is particularly evident in J. de La Hire’s 1911 book The Mystery of the Fifteen, which foresaw the rise of the superman hero, a new type of hero for the popular novel (however, this hero did not gain popularity in France).

Curating Zilia: The Temple du soleil in Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne

Abstract: Françoise de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne repeatedly highlights a collection of Peruvian treasures. Graffigny's description of these objects, both when they are on display in Zilia's private room in a French convent and in the Temple du soleil in her country house at the end of the novel, invokes a vocabulary drawn from eighteenth-century French standards of stylish interior design and private collecting. Social status in eighteenth-century France was performative; demonstrating one's own good taste with the displays in a well-decorated room or a private collection communicated that one belonged to the elite. Graffigny's contemporaries would have recognized that the descriptions of the arrangement of the Peruvian objects affirms Zilia's social value—and also that of her would-be lover, the chevalier de Déterville. Déterville, disinherited so that his older brother could keep the family wealth intact, is not able to easily demonstrate his belonging. However, his curation of the Temple de soleil helps rehabilitate his social status, and, at the same time, further contributes to his control over Zilia. Paying attention to the ways in which the Peruvian objects are displayed in the context of contemporary interior decoration and private collections ultimately destabilizes the dominant feminist interpretation of Zilia's final independence.

Lettres d'une Péruvienne : An Eighteenth-Century Fairy Tale?

Abstract: In this essay, we examine how the popular genres of the fairy tale and the merveilleux influenced Françoise de Graffigny's writing of Lettres d'une Péruvienne ( Letters from a Peruvian Woman ). We demonstrate how the author incorporates elements of the wonderous in her descriptions and themes, especially in Letter 35. In a comparison of the fairy tale that Graffigny herself wrote, La Princesse Azerolle, ou l'excès de la constance ( Princess Azerolle, or the Excess of Constancy ), to her famous novel, we uncover the thematic elements that appear in both. Finally, we speculate as to why scholars have overlooked the inspiration of the fairy tale in favor of the novel's Enlightenment associations.

Епістолярний роман в класиці літератури: прецедент «Португальських листів» Ґієраґа та «Листів перуанки» Ф. де Ґрафіньї

The dynamics of the text’s stay in the circle of literary classics becomes clear only over time: the experience of epistolary novels of the Enlightenment is very indicative of many aspects of literary production. “Portuguese Letters” by Guilleragues (second half of the XVIIth century) and “Letters from a Peruvian” by F. de Graffigny (middle of the XVIIIth century) offer material for understanding the mechanisms of the novel’s timeless success. These texts have experienced powerful recognition, oblivion, and rediscovery throughout history. From the history of creation, genre canon, literary process to the system of motives, rhetoric, figures, and metaphors – everything in these works is a kaleidoscope of the widest readership. The extra-literary factors and intra-textual mechanisms of the two novels by Guilleragues and F. de Graffigny together shed light on the secret of the power of the work in the context of the classics of literature. At the same time, they encourage us to check the essence of such categories as author’s mystification, fictionality, mimeticity in the communication arch of an artistic work. The article reveals these questions, which allows us to introduce the “Portuguese Letters” of Guilleragues and the “Letters from a Peruvian” by F. de Graffigny into the circle of current issues of modern literary studies to fill the gap in Ukrainian literary studies around the theme of the formation, flowering, and power of the epistolary genre in the history of French literature.

Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d’une Péruvienne. Édition de Martine Reid

Françoise de Graffigny’s remarkable novel, a huge success in her own time, has risen again in ours. In the last thirty years, half a dozen different scholarly editions have appeared. This one differs from most, however, by using the text of Graffigny’s original (and clandestine) publication of 1747, rather than the augmented version she published in 1752. One might also say that Martine Reid’s initial overview of the work, its author, and contexts is written with unusual elegance. The account is still systematic, but also fluent and evocative. Quotations from the text or from Graffigny’s own wonderful correspondence are nicely employed, beginning with an epigraph on ‘le plaisir d’être’ from the work’s final letter. Particularly useful is Reid’s suggestive heading ‘Dans l’atelier de la littérature’ (p. 11) to characterize the sociable process of ‘salon writing’ which stimulated Graffigny’s own literary ambition at court in her native Lorraine and then, more circumstantially, in the Quinault–Caylus circle and the ‘monde du livre’ in Paris (p. 14). Sections follow on major aspects of the work: epistolarity; the device of the stranger (still critical but now female and alienated); aspects of love (and the heroine’s final refusal of marriage); languages; and the ‘nouveauté’ of Graffigny’s heterogeneous combination of all these and more (cited, p. 23). The text of 1747, lightly annotated, is followed by an annexe of material added in 1752, including the four illustrations. There is also a chronology of Graffigny’s life, a notice on editions, and a selected bibliography. Due acknowledgment is made throughout of debts to Jonathan Mallinson’s outstanding critical edition (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002) and to the essential biography by English Showalter, Françoise de Graffigny: Her Life and Works (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004), as well as the same author’s indispensable Choix de lettres (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2001). There are nevertheless curious slips: Cénie is rightly described as a ‘comédie larmoyante’ but later as a ‘tragédie’ (pp. 10, 238); Graffigny is said to have made several visits to Voltaire at Cirey (pp. 11, 230) instead of one (notorious) visit. There is some overlap between editorial sections. But generally this is an informed, pleasingly written, and valuable edition. Finally, we might return to the choice of text. Other modern editions have opted to use the expanded version of 1752 largely because of its extra letters which offer a more trenchant social critique of luxury and of the situation of women in France, and its illustrations (of topics chosen by the author). It is also the case that Graffigny’s correspondence tells us much about the publication of the 1752 edition, whereas we have regrettably little information about that of 1747. Reid’s brief explanation of her different choice is also pragmatic, though more literary: she considers the extra critiques added in 1752 (composed with more confidence after the huge success of 1747) awkwardly long and heavy (pp. 33–34). But surely there is also an issue of principle. Should the base text for a scholarly edition be the last version known to have been approved by the author? This however may be (and indeed in the present case is) contingent. Alternatively, should it be the first published version — ‘original’ also in the sense of most authentic?

Cheek, Pamela L. Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emergence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century

Cheek, Pamela L. <i>Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emergence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century</i>

Anticipating Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the state of nature in the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” by Madame de Graffigny (1747)

The article deals with the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” (Lettres d'une Péruvienne, 1747) by Madame de Graffigny, which anticipates many ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including the notion of state of nature. The main character, a young Peruvian woman, who was taken away to France, embodies the concept of the ‟noble savage”. Unlike civilised Europeans she has high moral qualities, critically evaluates the institutions and customs of her time, and she aspires to the state of nature, though knowledge about this world did not make her happy. Madame de Graffigny uses the Peruvian theme according to the general interest in the age of Enlightenment in the Inca Empire, which was considered as idyllic society, organised under the laws of nature. She tries, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to display merits of savages and demerits of civilised Europeans. The intellectual influence of Madame de Graffigny and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on each other is confirmed by their personal contacts. As a result, we claim that the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” was influenced by advanced philosophical ideas of the mid-18thcentury – this text stands at the origins of the concept of the ‟state of nature”, which eventually became one of the main terms of Rousseauism.

‘Ceux qui m’ont gâté ma langue’: penser la langue au féminin au dix-huitième siècle

Abstract This article analyses the role of nature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century conceptions of language as a gauge of linguistic and gender ideologies. Natural, oral, sensitive language was coded as supposedly female or feminine, and cultural, written, public language was considered as male or masculine. As salonnières, letter-writers, novelists, and translators, Françoise de Graffigny, Émilie Du Châtelet, Louise d’Épinay, and Isabelle de Charrière succeeded in calling into question this boundary between feminine language and letters, and masculine literature and philosophy. They had earned their status as authors and intellectuals and, therefore, the right to think about their own language and style, questioning their writing practices and reflecting on conceptions of language. Women’s language thus shifts from being regarded as natural, to being invested with supposedly feminine powers of seduction, until being recognized as a vehicle for universal knowledge.

«Испанская новелла...» Ф. де Графиньи: жанровая специфика

The paper aims to reveal genre peculiarities of “Nouvelle Espagnole” (Spanish Novella) (1745) by the French authoress Françoise de Graffigny. The article analyzes poetological peculiarities of the French novels and novellas of the XVII-XVIII centuries, shows their realization in “Nouvelle Espagnole”. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that for the first time in the domestic literary criticism, the researcher analyzes the novella by the French writer whose creative work is still poorly investigated. As a result, it is proved that F. de Graffigny’s novella bears influence of classicism and pre-sentimentalism, combines features of the novel and the novella genre.

Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emergence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century

Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emergence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century

The “Inca Utopia” in the Novel “Letters from a Peruvian Woman” by F. De Graffigny

The article considers the French novel “Letters from a Peruvian Woman&amp;amp;8j1; (Lettres d’une Péruvienne, 1747) by Françoise de Graffigny, as well as the “Historical introduction…&amp;amp;8j1; (Introduction historique aux lettres péruviennes), which was included into the novel in 1752, and where the Inca Empire is described in an idealized way. The main source of information for F. de Graffigny was “The Royal commentaries of the Incas&amp;amp;8j1; by Garcilaso de la Vega (1609) and other philosophical, critical and fictional publications on American natives: Michel de Montaigne’s essays, the tragedy “Alzira, or the Americans&amp;amp;8j1; by Voltaire, etc. The “Historical introduction...&amp;amp;8j1; praises the wealth and wisdom of the Incas, the merits of their state organization. This article claims that the “Historical introduction…&amp;amp;8j1; plays an important ideological and compositional role in F. de Graffigny’s book: a utopian description of the Inca Empire serves as a specific philosophical frame for the novel with a love story. Ideas concerning the empire of the ancient Incas, as reflected in the fictional “Letters from a Peruvian Woman&amp;amp;8j1;, are congenial with the Age of Enlightenment.

Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), femme de lettres des Lumières éd. par Charlotte Simonin

Reviewed by: Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), femme de lettres des Lumières éd. par Charlotte Simonin Anoosheh Ghaderi Simonin, Charlotte, éd. Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), femme de lettres des Lumières. Garnier, 2020. ISBN 978-2-406-09736-5. Pp. 460. This book's introduction highlights two events that shed light on Graffigny's work. First, in 1960, after having been forgotten since the success of her play Cénie (1750) and the reedition of her novel Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1754), Graffigny came back to public attention as a result of new editions and translations. This event made her works accessible to a larger audience and turned her into a canonical author in literature programs in countries such as the United States. Secondly, 2500 of Graffigny's letters, exchanged with her friend François-Antoine Devaux between 1738 and 1758, were found in an auction of Sir Thomas Phillips's library in 1965. The publication of Graffigny's Correspondance jumpstarted several research projects and a series of conferences by English Showalter from 1999 to 2004. This collection gathers twenty articles, which exhibit the richness of Graffigny's work, each from a different aspect. The editor classified the essays in four major sections. The essays in the first section locate Graffigny in her social milieu and the impact of the surrounding environment on her literary career. "Françoise de Graffigny et ses relations avec les pays germaniques" studies the importance of Graffigny's relationships in Vienna for the recognition and distribution of her works, even before they were published. The research on Graffigny's letters, plays, and fairy tales is the subject of the second section, which shows that Graffigny's Correspondance offers a unique historical document for the researchers interested in studying French society under the Ancien Régime. For instance, Simonin's article tracks the representation of dogs and canine references, which demonstrates aspects of everyday life of the time. Given that the Correspondance is an intimate exchange, Aurore Montesi argues that it makes the collection more than just a historical document. It is in fact a document devoid of "pressions extérieures," such as censorship. Moreover, the Correspondance provides information about literary figures of the time, for example Marivaux. The third section tackles the feminist- and gender-related themes in Graffigny's works and letters. Some of the articles challenge Graffigny's relation to other women in her real life, her ideas about gender-related issues, and the contradictions that one can find in some of her writings. The fourth section focuses on translations of Lettres d'une Péruvienne in Germany and Spain, and of Cénie in Italy and the Netherlands, which will be of interest to scholars working in translation studies. [End Page 239] Anoosheh Ghaderi Louisiana State University Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French

The Reception of F. de Graffigny’s Works in Russia: “Letters from Two Peruvians” by A. A. Pisarev

The Reception of F. de Graffigny’s Works in Russia: “Letters from Two Peruvians” by A. A. Pisarev

Objects, Senses, and the Materiality of Identity

This article examines the ways in which material objects inflect and influence identity in Françoise de Graffigny's novel Lettres d'une Péruvienne. I argue that material determination of culture allows us to order to rethink questions of identity, selfhood, and assimilation. To illustrate this, I focus on how material culture in this novel exemplifies distinct intertwinements of culture and identity through a reading of the protagonist Zilia's relationship with objects. Exploring the aesthetics of representation, this article shows that material culture offers not just a chance to rethink the question of cultural representation itself, but also to assess its relation to memory.

La Correspondance d’Émilie Du Châtelet ed. by Ulla Kölving, Andrew Brown

MLR, .,   itself strikes a good balance between faithfulness to the text and a pleasing modern readability. It is a shame that there is still no English translation of èbes that includes the original text in a facing-page arrangement, as, for example, there is with the modern French translations. However, the fact that Ferrante and Hanning have maintained the verse structure of the original text, and that this text was edited in a widely available edition (Roman de èbes, ed. by Francine Mora-Lebrun (Paris: Livre de Poche, )), means that readers wishing to make comparisons will find it relatively easy to cross-reference. Overall, this translation is a welcome addition to the field, and will be particularly valued by students and non-specialists looking for an introduction to èbes’s characters and stories. H-U  B S H La Correspondance d’Émilie Du Châtelet. Ed. by U K and A B.  vols. Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d’Étude du e Siècle. .  pp. (vol. );  pp. (vol. ). €. ISBN –––– (set). is new critical edition of Émilie Du Châtelet’s correspondence is a scholarly compendium of the highest value. Replacing the carefully edited, but sparsely annotated and partly outdated Besterman edition (Voltaire’s Correspondence,  vols (Geneva : Institut et Musée Voltaire, –); Les Lettres de la Marquise Du Châtelet,  vols (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, )), the new edition gives Du Châtelet the outstanding place she deserves in early eighteenth-century European intellectual history. Whereas her enduring fame is mostly attached to the Institutions de physique () and her posthumously published annotated translation of Newton’s Principia (), Du Châtelet was not only deeply engaged with metaphysics and natural philosophy, but also with moral philosophy, religious criticism, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the fine arts. e new edition includes a number of new correspondents (mostly belonging to Du Châtelet’s private entourage) and a considerable number of unknown letters from and to the marquise’s illustrious correspondents, such as Algarotti, Mairan, Madame de Graffigny, Frederick II of Prussia, and Christian Wolff. e editors had to grapple with a number of irremediable lacunae—such as, first and foremost, the loss of the complete correspondence with her companion Voltaire; the major part of the correspondence with her second important tutor and, later, intellectual antagonist, Maupertuis; the entire scientific correspondence with Christian Wolff (repeatedly referred to in the Wolff–Manteuffel correspondence, available online at

L'épistolier au féminin au XVIIIe siècle : Lettres d’une Péruvienne de Mme de Graffigny

En este artículo presentamos un análisis de la obra de Mme de Graffigny Lettres d’une Péruvienne (1747), novela que tuvo un éxito considerable en el momento de su publicación, aunque presentaba unas tesis altamente críticas sobre la situación de la mujer en la sociedad de la Ilustración. Situaremos nuestro análisis de la obra en el contexto de la novela epistolar francesa del siglo XVIII. Destacamos los elementos que consideramos innovadores en este trabajo en relación con el género al que pertenece. In this article we present an analysis of the work of Mme de Graffigny Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1747), a novel which was a considerable success at the time of its publication, although it presented a thesis on the situation of women in Lumière's highly critical society. We situate our analysis of the work in the context of the epistolary novel in France in the 18th century. We highlight the elements that we consider innovative in this work in relation to the genre to which it belongs.

Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy

Reviewed by: Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy Sharon Diane Nell Theresa Varney Kennedy. Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750). routledge, 2018. 202 pp. in la poétique (1639), the French dramatic theorist and playwright La Mesnardiére wrote that women on stage should not be portrayed as heroic or clever, since these characteristics contradicted the rules of vraisemblance or verisimilitude (qtd. in Kennedy 2). But, as Theresa Varney Kennedy demonstrates, women playwrights often did not follow his recommendations. Continuing the work of scholars such as Perry Gethner, Nathalie Grande, and Erica Harth, Kennedy focuses on heroines in plays by women from 1637 to 1761. Kennedy is particularly interested in rationality as a possibility for women and the ways in which this theme is developed in plays by women in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After a brief introduction, Kennedy launches into four chapters, each of which features one of four heroine types: irrational, dutiful, bold and brazen, and deliberative. In chapter 1, Kennedy analyzes the irrational heroine who derives from Jean Racine's female characters, particularly Phédre, but the irrational heroines in the plays that Kennedy includes are not all from tragedies, and not all of them are homicidal or suicidal or both. Also, the irrational actions of each are accompanied by an element of self-awareness, although these characters remain "one-dimensional" (46). Unlike the emblematic Phédre, Kennedy's irrational heroines are "free agents" (18) who wield authority usurped from the patriarchy (44) and, in the end, acknowledge their treacherous motives and take responsibility for their actions (45). For example, Tomyris—the female character penned by playwright Marie-Anne Barbier—fulfills the stereotype that women are unstable and, for that reason, should not wield political power. She also prioritizes her lustful desires over the security of her kingdom. Unlike Phédre, however, her "final violent act"—the execution of Cyrus—"does allow her to reestablish dignity and honor" (44, 30). Dutiful heroines, whose emblematic model is Pierre Corneille's Chiméne (55–56), are explored in chapter 2. Unlike Chiméne, who plays a secondary [End Page 299] role in Le Cid, the dutiful heroines that Kennedy analyzes are the main characters in their respective plays. They also exhibit intelligence and "leadership skills" (57). Yet, while they "challenge the norms and behavior traditionally associated with early modern women," the outcomes of the plays "reinforce patriarchal institutions" (91). For example, Théonise, in Françoise de Graffigny's La Fille d'Aristide (composed in 1758), stoically holds fast to her duty to marry a man she does not love; however, when she sells herself into slavery to save her beloved, the latter buys her from the slave trader and obtains her release from the man to whom she is betrothed so that the two can marry. Kennedy points out that "despite her show of independence and heroic sacrifice, Théonise still remains a commodity—an object of exchange between men" (90). Kennedy turns to bold and brazen heroines in chapter 3. The female leads in this chapter are studied together because they "act upon their emotions, especiallyin the name of romance" (128). All five of the plays that Kennedy analyzes in this chapter were either not performed at all or appeared in productions in "the salon, the théátres de société, and other venues outside Paris" (99). Whereas the irrational heroines of chapter 1 act impulsively out of "lust and vengeance," the bold and brazen heroines are motivated by love and desire (100). The results of their valiant actions are mixed. Triphine, in Françoise Pascal's Agathonphile martyr (published in 1655), defies the patriarchal system by refusing to marry the man chosen for her by her father and is executed (114). Even when things do work out well, as in the case of the Countess, who appears in Le Caprice de l'Amour by Mademoiselle Huau (also known as Madame La Grange de Richebourg), a play that was performed at the French Comedy in The Hague in 1739, not only does the play reinforce...

Letters from an Austrian Woman: Adapting Transhistoric Girlhood in Sofia Coppola's &lt;em&gt;Marie Antoinette&lt;/em&gt; (2006)

Sofia Coppola's 2006 biopic Marie Antoinette has been derided by scholars and critics for its perceived lack of historical depth. However, this article re-examines the role of adaptation and historical fidelity in Coppola's film through a comparative reading of the narratively, structurally, and temporally similar eighteenth-century novel Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1747). Through this parallel reading with Françoise de Graffigny's epistolary novel, I demonstrate how the film is a prime representative of its era in its use of autobiographical centralism and the role of foreign feminine Other as social critic, speaking to a transhistoric girlhood across centuries and borders.

Letters from an Austrian Woman: Adapting Transhistoric Girlhood in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006)

Sofia Coppola's 2006 biopic Marie Antoinette has been derided by scholars and critics for its perceived lack of historical depth. However, this article re-examines the role of adaptation and historical fidelity in Coppola's film through a comparative reading of the narratively, structurally, and temporally similar eighteenth-century novel Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1747). Through this parallel reading with Françoise de Graffigny's epistolary novel, I demonstrate how the film is a prime representative of its era in its use of autobiographical centralism and the role of foreign feminine Other as social critic, speaking to a transhistoric girlhood across centuries and borders.

Flat Protagonists: A Theory of Novel Character by Marta Figlerowicz

Reviewed by: Flat Protagonists: A Theory of Novel Character by Marta Figlerowicz Nan Z. Da Flat Protagonists: A Theory of Novel Character. Marta Figlerowicz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 208. $53.00 (cloth); $52.99 (eBook). Here is a get-over-yourself model of literary character. Flat protagonists are those that do not become more filled out or more compelling to others over the course of the novel even though they occupy the most space. Marta Figlerowicz takes a wonderful risk in giving her book this name because the flatness of the protagonists she tracks is not a dimensional reduction (as in: keeping them flat to study them from a distance, paring down their attributes until only the most essential—usually, historical materialist—ones remain, or turning them into the new objects of an anti-depth hermeneutics). Rather, their flatness inheres in their fidelity to a truth about the scarcity of attention and interest in the world. Her characters are those that get less interesting, less round, less representative of the world they centrally inhabit, not because of anyone’s failure or intention but because, regardless of genre or period, they realistically represent how most of our lives unfold. Figlerowicz finds exemplary flat protagonists in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, François de Graffigny’s Letters from a Peruvian Woman, Isabelle de Charrière’s Letters of Mistress Henley Published by Her Friend, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. The philosophical question she poses to them—“Can a represented world make present to its reader not only the breadth and depth of character relationships, but also the resurging indifference that . . . inevitably dilutes them?”—is answered by a literary device rather than a literary topos (1). The flat protagonist is a solution to a problem of representation, not something that clusters into certain words or attributes. The natural diminishment of interest and attention cannot be “functionalized,” or seen in a character-space, or located on any social-network map of the novel. A novel, like another person, does not have all the time and space in the world for you; and in a novel, as in human relations, the affective and social ties between people can only go so far. There are not communities or objects enough to be permanent audiences to our observations and insights. Although Figlerowicz’s novel theory does not care much [End Page 197] about genealogy, it does propose a different genealogy for the modern novel. Its ancestor would not be the protomodernist novel (if such a thing exists), but a character like Oroonoko, whose self-mutilation after murdering his wife and child is witnessed by onlookers who take nothing “deep or precise” from it (46). Or characters like Jude and Arabella, for whom “invoking familiar cultural tropes does not ensure that [their] lives will become compelling to others, or that the relationships to which they refer in these grand terms will last” (101). The novels themselves are “flat” insofar as they realize, through their protagonists, that even the world they think they are representing is incomplete, small, one in which wonderfully generalizable claims lose robustness and become trivial if their scope constricts even a little. In a sense, the flat character is right in keeping with the essential characteristics of the bildungsroman. When you grow up, you realize the world was not as much for you as you thought even though you have gotten into the habit of orienting it around you. The more platitudinous version of this insight would be that as you grow up you realize how small you are, how limited your ability to make a real difference. Figlerowicz walks this line and defamiliarizes it by producing moments of deep interpretive accuracy, such as this one: “At the beginning of [Jude the Obscure], . . . Jude carves into the tree at his village crossroads an arrow pointing towards Christminster with his initials above it, as if his own departure there were as self-evident and important as the city’s geographical location” (103). I once wrote a botched close reading of this scene, over-allegorizing the carving, but also...