La place du lecteur dans les fictions épistolaires orientales (1686-1735)

Résumé 0

In his «Some Reflections on the Persian Letters» Montesquieu reflects on the success of his work, but also on other examples of “this type of novels” and supposes that it is popular “because the writers are describing their own feelings at the actual moment, which means that emotions are conveyed more powerfully” (transl. Margaret Mauldon). The present paper starts from these considerations in order to analyse such possibilities of reader participation in the genre Montesquieu refers to: oriental epistolary fictions of the early Enlightenment. Thus, the paper examines, next to Montequieu’s Lettres persanes (1721), two further strongly influential texts of the genre: Gian Paolo Marana’s L’Espion du Grand-Seigneur (1686) and the marquis d’Argens’ Lettres chinoises (1735). The three aspects which characterize the genre will be analysed subsequently: first, the epistolary particularities, such as the effect of the real, temporal and affective immediacy and multiperspectivity; secondly, suspense created by the character’s journey; and thirdly, the Oriental’s character, which is not only ‘other’, but equally profoundly human, thus provoking the reader’s empathy and favouring a change of perspective.