Le recours à la stratégie d’interlocution comme prétexte à la subversion du romanesque traditionnel dans Jacques le Fataliste et son maître : Approche narratologique

Abstract

The strategy of interlocution as a pretext for the subversion of traditional romance in Jacques le Fataliste et son maître: Narratological approach

Jacques le Fataliste et son maître, a modern novel intended for posthumous publication (1797) continues to attract exegetes because it fascinates with the labyrinthine design of its structure and the audacity of the themes evoked therein, in particular that of the novel conceived in a substantially meta-romantic subversive perspective: exhibition of the arbitrariness of the narrative, primacy given to the latter to the detriment of the story, amalgamation of temporal levels, integration of reception in creation, interferences between reality and fiction... Suddenly the writing is deceptive in what it tells. But in the aftermath the enunciation becomes enjoyable in the way of telling, thereby displacing the interest of a reading governed by a pact of belief, towards that governed by a contract of connivance where the role of the receiving body is undeniably structuring.
The deployment of the interlocution and the discontinuity in the textual space shakes the foundations of the traditional novel which collapses as a result under the effect of formal games contributing to the outrageous complication of the story and its very clear inflection of a realism. of complacency towards a distanced realism of connivance.
Thus by means of the discontinuity, immediate consequence of the interlocution, the text buds, with incises, expansions, digressions, interpolations..., in the sense that the exaggerated intrusions seriously damage the credibility of the story, less supported by a causal logic that the unbridled intervention of the author correlates with the unexpected intrusions of the reader. Also the story exhibits its arbitrariness, overhanging history, reduced to a simple pretext for meta-romantic discourse. Standing out from already established tastes, Jacques le Fataliste is a novel that deliberately contributes to shifting the criteria of appreciation of a readership put on the alert. As a result, the writing is deceptive in what it tells. The disconcerting opening, as we have seen, which nips in the bud the expectations of iconicity in a credulous reader, conditioned by soothing horizons of expectation, is proof of this. But in the aftermath the enunciation becomes enjoyable in the way of telling, thus shifting the interest of a reading governed by a pact of belief, towards a reading governed by complicity. It follows that the systematic inclusion of the Diderotian narrative-discourse in a perspective of interlocution has the function of opening a large breach in the traditional novel by staging the adventure of a writing that calls itself into question. as she searches for herself.