Telling Stories: Perspectives on Literary History. The Narrative Genres in Eighteenth-Century France

Perhaps I should start with my title. My colleagues have been saying to me that it looks long enough to be a lecture on its own. It is true that it was intended to suggest reasonably fully the range of what I hope to discuss. First of all: telling stories. In other words, it will be about the literary genres that present a narrative; and about different ways in which narratives have been-and can be-presented through language. I shall be leaving aside-both for convenience and to remain within the confines of a single lecture-the relationship between what is conventionally seen as narrative fiction on the one hand and dramatic or theatrical forms of narrative on the other. In the second place my title refers to: perspectives on literary history. My other major emphasis will thus be on attempting to present my topic from a number of different points of view, on trying to build up in this wayan impression in the round. My sub-title aims to suggest the particular types of narrative which I have been most concerned with in my own res'.::arch and which I shall make the focus of my discussion here. I find it hard to believe that I have been occupying myself for over thirty years with what is conventionally labelled as the eighteenth-century French novel. I have in my time turned the pages of literally thousands of examples of the genre, as-together with my research colleaguesI attempted to survey exhaustively this type of writing at this period in the past. Not that I wish to express any sense of weariness or regret-my surprise comes rather from the fact that the subject still seems, to me at least, so fresh and challenging. So in this discussion I should like to try to outline what I see my