[In the following essay, Runte compares the Aesopic fable with the work of French writer Jean de la Fontaine, identifying this distinction: while Aesopic fables treat the reader as a student to be instructed, La Fontaine's fables in verse treat the reader as a coparticipant in interpreting the fable's meaning.]

"Une ample comedie a cent actes divers," La Fontaine thus characterized his collection of fables.¹ Critics have not been remiss in exploring the dramatic qualities of these "scenes parfaites pour les caracteres et le dialogue."² Dialogue has been explored primarily on the level of the plot line and in terms of the characters created by the fabulist: "Le Fabuliste fait de ses animaux ce qu'un Dramatique habile fait de ses Acteurs."³ However, a second level of exchange exists in the fables. This is the dialogue which the author maintains with his reader. The presence of an authorial persona has been noted since the eighteenth century. La Harpe, for example, stated that La Fontaine, "a tellement imprime son caractere a ses ecrits, et ce caractere est si aimable, qu'il s'est fait des amis de tous ses lecteurs."⁴ Marmontel suggested that the fabulist had designed a role for himself: that of a simple and credulous man to create an illusion by which to seduce the reader. La Fontaine was not a conteur, declared Marmontel, but "un temoin present a l'action et qui veut vous y rendre present vous-meme."⁵ Chamfort went a step further and exclaimed, "Que dirai-je de cet art charmant de s'entretenir avec son lecteur … ?"⁶ It is this art which we shall attempt to define.

La Fontaine has created three authorial personae: the translator, the commentator, and the author. As translator he denies authorship of the fables and sets the stage for the second persona who is thus free to comment on and react to both fable and moral discourse. As non-author, he may disagree with either the allegorical pretense or the moral conclusion. This persona often makes personal application of the moral and it is thus that "La Fontaine nous fait rire, mais a ses depens, et c'est sur lui-meme qu'il fait tomber le ridicule."⁷ The author as persona admits timidly to the creation of some fables such as "La Mort et le bûcheron." He is self-conscious of his art and extends his discussion of choice of character, form and style beyond the prologues and epilogues. A self-commentary extends through the entire collection. For example, he is concerned about length, "Je pourrais tout gater par de plus longs recits," (289) and correction of language, "J'ai regret que ce mot soit tropvieux aujourd'hui," (101). Finally, the author's presence in the text is indicated through the choice of stylistic devices including rhetorical figures and parenthetical expressions which imply an overall system of values and establish a personality. In the first two manifestations of the authorial persona, the first person singular is the referential axis of discourse. The last instance is impersonal but nonetheless indicative of an opinion either through an overt statement: "[Un lion] Manda des medecins; / II en est de tous arts" (184) or through the juxtaposition of opposites, the shortening of a line, the use of unexpected expressions, exaggeration and contrast, etc.

The translator's presence is evidenced through numerous statements of this nature: "Voici comme a peu pres Esope le raconte" (133), "Pilpay conte qu'ainsi la chose s'est passee" (306). The translator assumes a guise of humility before his illustrious predecessors as well as his reader.

The commentator is present on both an impersonal and on a personal level, maintaining in each instance a rapport with the reader. He introduces his plot with expressions such as, "J'ai lu" (88) and "le conte m'en a plu toujours infiniment" (232). He reflects on character, situation and moral: "je le crois" (232, 377), "j'entends" (259), "je ne vois point" (228). The personal contact paints a human portrait of the fabulist which corresponds to some extent to the legendary interpretation of the artist who was seen as a fablier, a bonhomme. "On adore en lui cette bonhommie, devenue dans la posterite un de ses attributs distinctifs, mot vulgaire anobli en faveur de deux hommes rares, Henri IV et La Fontaine."⁸ Just as the translator denies authorship, the commentator denies omniscience. He constantly underlines his human frailty and the limits of his prescience: "Je ne sais s'il avait raison" (86), "Concluons que la Providence / Sait ce qu'il nous faut mieux que nous" (135). He is naive and appears to believe that which the reader is too sophisticated to admit: "Quand pour expliquer comment un cerf ignorait une maxime de Salomon, il nous avertit que ce cerf n'etait pas accoutume de lire … nous rions, mais de la nouvete du poete, et c'est a ce piege si délicat que se prend notre vanite."⁹ This character is forgetful (not always able to recall his source); insouciant: "ce ne sont pas la mes affaires" (100); misogynous as in "Le Mal Marie"; indolent: "Une souris tomba … / Je ne l'eusse pas ramassee" (223); nostalgic: "ai-je passé le temps d'aimer?" (219); impractical and prone to reverie: "Solitude où je trouve une douceur secrète" (268); slightly anti-social lacking paternal instincts: "O père de famille / (Et je ne t'ai jamais envié cet honneur)" (267). In short, he admits imperfection and reveals his personal flaws to establish intimacy with the reader. By the same token he authenticates his persona on whose reality depends the illusion of veracity, which in turn lends interest to the tale and credibility to the moral.

The three personae address themselves to two readers. One is the critic against whom the second reader is asked to join forces with La Fontaine. The presence of the critic demonstrates the merits of the second reader with whom we are asked to identify and with whom La Fontaine dialogues. We are invited to be the friend of the author (213) and to scorn the critic: "Maudit censeur, te tairas-tu?" (52). We want La Fontaine to conclude his conte and are obviously separate from "les délicats" who are "malheureux! / Rien ne saurait les satisfaire" (52). An example of the exchange between the reader-commentator and the second reader is in the fable, "Le Lion et le Moucheron": "Quelle chose par Ia nous peut etre enseignée? [Author asks reader] J'en vois deux.… [Author confides and perhaps replies to reader]" (59).

La Fontaine's extended system of dialogue between authorial personae and readers is unique. "Aesop's" fables present a narration in the third person punctuated by occasional recourse to limited dialogue between animal characters.¹⁰ If morals are presented, as in Nevelet, they are voiced by an impersonal, omniscient narrator. La Motte aptly summed up the effect: "En un mot je vois dans Esope un Philosophe qui s'abaisse pour être à la portée des plus simples."¹¹ The case is clear and may be easily illustrated by comparing the conclusion of the fable, "Le Corbeau et le renard," with La Fontaine's familiar verse. Esope in Nevelet reads: "Alors le corbeau dupe gémit de sa stupidité. Ceci montre combien l'intelligence a de valeur. Toujours, même sur le courage, prévaut la sagesse."¹² There is no complicity between author and reader. The author is present through omniscience, absent through intratextual signs. The author condescends to elucidate the reader. In La Fontaine's fables, the contrary is the rule. The reader condescends to join the poet in evaluating the allegorical relation and the moral as implied or stated. The Aesopian fable is straightforward while La Fontaine's is devious. The seventeenth-century poet plays with illusion and warns us: "Les fables ne sont pas ce qu'elles semblent être" (132). With La Fontaine the artistic veil of allegory extends beyond the simple récit to envelop its framework and moral.

The case of the eighteenth-century fable is necessarily more complex and difficult to analyze because of the extensive number of authors. Cognizant of the risks of generalities it may be advanced that these fabulists returned to the Aesopian norm of impersonal and omniscient narrator. The reader does not conspire with the narrator. The reader is the subject of the tale and the object of the moral. The author is ever aware of his weighty task of correcting the faults of the reader.¹³ Unlike the Aesopian narrator who addresses a general public guilty of a myriad of imperfections, the eighteenth-century fabulist often singles out one social group: belles, libertins or an individual (often thinly masked by a plural): rois, ambassadeurs, etc. Rather than personalize the fable, this device reduces the scope of the moral application and the fable becomes exclusive instead of inclusive. When Aubert names his readers "Incrédules mortels, ceci s'adresse á vous. / Race ingrate, parlez: sera-ce quand la foudre / Aura réduit ce globe en poudre, / Que d'un être vengeur vous craindrez le courroux?" the effect is alienation.¹⁴ The reader instinctively denies any relationship with these "incrédules mortels" and rejects personal application of the moral. Similarly, Benninger's vehement outcry, "O que ne pouvez-vous en accrocher autant, / Maudits flatteurs, que l'imbécile honore, / Mais que le sage abhorre," inspires neither identification nor participation.¹⁵ The psychological effect contradicts the author's intention and the charm of the tale is lost in the thunder of the sermon.¹⁶ Chamfort, in comparing La Fontaine to Moliére, said that the former makes us aware of ourselves and our shortcomings, while the latter illustrates the vices of others. The impact of the first is necessarily greater than that of the second which the reader/spectator refuses to acknowledge.¹⁷ The parallel may be aptly extended to the case under consideration. La Fontaine's fifteen-line fable, "Le Corbeau et le renard" may be compared to Le Noble's seventy-two-line fable of the same title. Eighteen lines are separate from the allegorical tale and are moralistic: "Oh la dangereuse fumée, / Que celle d'un Encens flatteur, / Malheur, malheur à ceux dont l'âme est si affamée / D'un mets si doux, si seducteur.…"¹⁸ The subtitle of Richer's inversion of the same fable, "Leçon allegorique a ceux qui se croyent plus fins que les autres" is in itself indicative of the tone of omniscience. The narrative is imbued with serious moral purpose.¹⁹ It is furthermore an invitation to telescope rather than to magnify the moral thrust. The eighteenth-century fabulist's method is deductive and both the premises of the argument and the conclusion of the syllogism are clearly indicated to the reader whose only action is to accept or reject the lesson. La Fontaine presents the evidence or observations and invites the reader to actively participate in induction.

These distinctions are at first view incompatible with history. La Fontaine's enormous popularity and the hommage paid to his genius during the eighteenth century have been established.²⁰ He was openly regarded by his successors in the genre as a model. This fact is the key to the seeming paradox. The eighteenth-century fabulists analyzed La Fontaine's works to discover the elements of his success. It is ironic that this very research should have been responsible for their failure. On the most obvious level, they became self-conscious authors following an established set of rules. Grozelier said: "…[La Motte and D'Ardenne] ont etabli des regles … ainsi j'ai dfi me conformer a ces regles, au lieu d'en proposer de nouvelles."²¹ In complying with an abstract formula, the author's individual characteristics tended to be obscured, and the fable became less personal. Among the precepts for perfection were polished language and style. La Fontaine was considered inelegant and negligent.²² The attempt to regularize and correct also contributed to the sterility of the form. Creation was preceded and dominated by critical theory. The stilted result again removed the fable from the realm of author-reader correspondence. It is a question of temporal and stylistic distance. The creative process continues as the reader participates with La Fontaine. In the eighteenth-century fable, a finished production is presented. The creative process begins and ends with the author.

Nivernais echoed the sentiment of most eighteenth-century fabulists when he prefaced his fables: "Ce ne sont pas contes pour rire / Que j'offre ici; / Je veux instruire … "²³ La Fontaine's successors maintained that the master had neglected his moral purpose. La Motte even hypothesized that he had written the fable and then sought a moral to justify its existence. In reversing the situation, the eighteenth-century poet became didactic. He concentrated on idea rather than format and conscious of his moral mission, emphasized the moral to the detriment of the allegorical tale.²⁴ Fearing that the reader would fall victim to the artifice and neglect to read beneath the surface features of the text, the narrator constantly raised the level of comprehension to a conscious level. In La Fontaine it was subconscious and followed the act of reading. That is, where La Fontaine is implicit, the eighteenth-century fabulist is explicit. For example, in addition to his moral he often explains the allegory: "Le Malheur de ce rejetton / Opprime par ce Chene antique, / Est celui de Boston sous la loi Tyrannique / De l'orgueilleuse Albion: / Et la France est le Bucheron / Qui, par sa valeur heroique, / Le tire de l'oppression."²⁵

In their quest for success, the eighteenth-century fabulists considered the question of authorship. With D'Ardenne, most admitted that previously invented situations or truths (morals) might be employed if counterbalanced by originality in other aspects of the narration. La Motte proposed the creation of new characters: "Les acteurs les moins usites et les plus bizarres deviennent naturels et meritent meme la preference sur d'autres."²⁶ This resulted in a reduction of simplicity and an increase in the distance between the reader and the text. Metaphysical and symbolic beings: "La Lune et la jarretiere," "Le Crime et le chatiment," the bizarre: "La Vessie," "Le Gras de la jambe et le teton," "La Jonquille et le grate-cul," "Le Pot de chambre et la trophee," "L'Oeil et le pantoufle," the obscure: "La Metamorphose d'un professeur de philosophie en cigale," "Les Femelles des oiseaux en ambassade devant Jupiter," remove the fable from the terrain of the familiar. Abstractions such as pregnant ignorance giving birth to Miss Opinion who is named Truth by Pride and indolence, lack the warmth and spontaneity of Jean Lapin.²⁷ The reader is further separated from the text by the tone inspired by these characters. Moreover, since the authors insisted on originality (novelty), they necessarily rejected the role of translator and removed their own personal presence from the text.

While the eighteenth-century fabulists recognized in La Fontaine a quality they termed variously, le genie, le plaisant, le sublime du naturel, le riant, leje ne sais quoi, they had difficulty in defining it.²⁸ Rules were nonetheless established for reproducing the effect. However, its role was limited to that of stylistic ornamentation and the conscious presence of figures such as the use of familiar nomenclature (Maitre Corbeau, Jean Lapin) is not consonant with the overall tenor of the fable. Mile Opinion and Dame Pleine Lune, as well as carefully chosen plays on words, are anachronistic. The effect is neither continuous nor extensive. Theydo not appear casual. They are formal literary devices, obvious to the reader as they stand out from the text. Instead of revealing a confidant, a reader with a human character present in the tale, they unveil an author who is unsuccessfully attempting to create an illusion.

The overriding desires of the eighteenth-century fabulists are to be moral, to justify their productions through their claim to originality and uniqueness, and to regularize the genre while capturing the charms of naivete. The author as persona was replaced by the author as moral artist. The authorial personae in La Fontaine dialogue; the moral artist or omniscient narrator sermonizes. The first posit their imperfection and surprise the reader who discovers unsuspected merit. The second claims expertise and invites criticism. La Fontaine reduced his commentator to a level beneath that of the reader. The eighteenth-century fabulist attempted to raise the reader to his own level of literary and moral perfection. La Fontaine conspires with his reader and inspires confidence. His successors conspired against the reader and alienated him.

The structure and tone of La Fontaine's fables meet the conditions described by many critics as characteristic of irony. Socrates was a midwife to his disciples' intelligence. He would dissimulate urbanely and ask his followers for plain answers suited to his own professed ignorance.²⁹ La Fontaine's authorial personae claim to be something less than they are in reality. They play the role of an eiron.³⁰ They operate a brachylogy, renouncing exhaustiveness and placing confidence in the reader to interpret and understand, to complete the textual implications. It is an elliptical rather than an encyclopaedic manner.³¹ The reader is not exposed to attack but admitted to an alliance upon which the whole force of the rhetoric depends."³² "… We have come to apply the term irony to the fusion in a spectator's mind of superior knowledge and detached sympathy."³³ The preceding discussion of the exchange between authorial personae and reader in La Fontaine illustrates the manner in which his form suits the description of Socratic Irony.

Irony requires an unconscious art.³⁴ It may be found in simplicity. "Irony by its very nature instructs by pleasing. To ignore the pleasure, and its civilized implications, is inevitably to simplify and falsify the total effect."³⁵ It has been demonstrated that the eighteenth-century fabulist was conscious of his art and tended to make pleasure secondary to instruction. In so doing, he ignored some of the implications of irony.

Verbal and situational irony create tension. Alternatives of perspective, the clash between appearance and reality, the trembling equipoise between jest and earnest create a sense of irony.³⁶ Irony is false modesty, false naivete, and false negligence, according to Jankelevitch (or artistry in Thompson).³⁷ The eighteenth-century fabulist failed to recognize the illusion which was deliberately created by La Fontaine. When he spokeseriously of insignificant matters it was ironic. The fabulists of the next century did not interpret correctly the ironist's mask. They saw it as a true face. They mistook the appearance for reality. The result is the difference between La Fontaine and his successors. The first has "I'apparence du serieux," the second, "le serieux de l'apparence."³⁸ That is, La Fontaine's pleasantries seem serious, while during the enlightenment, what was serious was made to seem amusing. La Fontaine, the ironist, stood halfway between the illusion of his allegory and the truth of his moral, fluctuating between hypocrisy and good faith. The eighteenth-century fabulist never deviated from his moral intention. He refused to allow either himself or his reader to be confidently unaware that appearance is only appearance.³⁹ Both are eternally witness to reality. Text and context are unified.

In dramatic irony there are three roles: the victim, the audience and the author,⁴⁰ In La Fontaine the author and reader collaborate to unmask the victim, while in the fables of the later period, the victim is the audience. One role has been omitted and the effect is not ironic. It is closer to satire.⁴¹

Irony, in general terms, is the clash between connotative and denotative signs. The superficial text makes a statement which is counter to the implied meaning. To interpret such a text the reader must engage in a process of reconstruction. He must peer into the text and unmask the eiron. He executes a pas de deux, tearing down the surface features and reconstructing meaning. The author invites the reader to form a new conclusion. La Fontaine, through his authorial personae, commences the process within the text itself. He dramatically engages with the reader in discovering the implications of the allegory.⁴² The eighteenth-century fabulist, in placing the reader in a role of passive detachment, has deconstructed the possibilities for surface tension and a search for hidden meaning.

La Fontaine's fables are vertical in structure while those of the eighteenth century are horizontal. La Fontaine's dialogue gives the fables a double layer. They are, like irony, a two-storied phenomenon.⁴³ The reader is encouraged to sound the depths and move to a new level. The eighteenth-century fable's surface is flat; the significance is apparent. The thesis is explained in the lecture, the moral in the sermon. There are no further levels of application for the reader to explore.

La Fermiere, an eighteenth-century fabulist, saw the mask in the fable: "Ce genre antique, invente par un sage, / Offre toujours un voile officieux / Que l'amourpropre emploie a son usage. / La Fable plait quand la Satire outrage, / Et par-la meme elle instruit beaucoup mieux."⁴⁴ However, he did not completely understand its function. He interpreted it as a shield for the reader who would otherwise be wounded by the author's satiric barbs. It was more than this. It was a delicate cornerstone of the ironic structure of the fable. La Fontaine offered the veil not only as protection, butalso as enticement to the reader to enter into the process of reconstruction. The eighteenth-century fabulist denied the veil, or rather misapplied it and purposefully filled it with holes. He feared it would effectively hide his moral and did not trust the reader to infer the meaning. For example, La Fermiere himself concludes a fable: "Expliquons l'allegorie; / Dans ce combat le Lecteur / Verra la Philosophie aux prises avec l'Erreur."⁴⁵

In effect, the eighteenth-century fabulist assumed the role of philosopher fighting error. Like Aesop, he used the fable as an illustration for his moral. Fable and moral were one. Connotative and denotative meaning were congruous. La Fontaine' socratically asked his reader to become a philosopher and discover both his own and the author's errors. The invitation is indicated by the tension between overt and covert significance and is delivered in the dialogue between authorial personae and reader which frames the allegorical narration. The double-tiered literary structure parallels the intellectual construction the reader will build by the juxtaposition of antipodal meanings. The reader of Aesop and the eighteenth-century fabulist is a witness, while La Fontaine's reader is co-author, continuing the creative function in reconstructing in his own terms the significance of the fable: "La veritable auteur du recit n'est pas seulement celui qui le raconte, mais aussi, et parfois bien davantage, celui qui l'6coute.""⁴⁶

Notes

¹ Jean de La Fontaine, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 115. Further references to this work appear in the text. When appropriate, spelling has been modernized. See also Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Leopold Collin, 1809), II, 5-6: "La Fable est une comedie legere, et toute comedie n'est qu'un long apologue: leur difference est, que dans notre comedie les hommes sont souvent des betes, et qui pis est, des betes mechantes."

² Jean-Francois de La Harpe, "Eloge de La Fontaine," Recueil de 1'Academie des Belles-Lettres, Sciences et Arts (Marseilles, 1774), p. 16.

³ La Harpe, p. 17.

⁴ La Harpe, Lycée ou cours de littéature (Paris: H. Agasse, 1798), VI, 325.

⁵ Jean-Francois Marmontel, "Fable," Encyclopedie ou dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann, 1966), VI [1756], 346.

⁶ Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort, "Eloge de La Fontaine," Les Trois Fabulistes: Esope, Phedre et La Fontaine (Paris, 1976), III, 186.

⁷ Marmontel, p. 348.

⁸ La Harpe, Lycee, p. 325.

⁹ Marmontel, p. 348.

¹⁰ "Aesopian fables" here refers to fables collected and transmitted in such works as Mythologia Aesopica Isaaci Nicolai Neveleti (Frankfort, 1610).

¹¹ Antoine Houdar de La Motte, Fables nouvelles (Paris: Gregoire Dupuis, 1719), p. xiv.

¹² La Fontaine, Fables, ed. R. Radouant (Paris: Hachette, 1929), p. 16.

¹³ See Roseann Runte, "The Paradox of the Fable in Eighteenth-Century France," Neophilologus (to appear) and "A Study of Thematic Artifice: The Eighteenth-Century French Fable," paper delivered at the 1976 conference of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Virginia.

¹⁴ Abbe Jean-Louis Aubert, "Les Mites," in Lottin [Herissant], Le Fablier francais ou elite des meilleures fables depuis La Fontaine (Paris: Lottin le jeune, 1771), pp. 70-71.

¹⁵ Benninger, "Le Corbeau et le renard," Choix des plus belles fables qui ont paru en Allemagne imitées en vers français (Kehl, 1782).

¹⁶ Saint-Marc Girardin, La Fontaine et les fabulistes (Paris: Michel Levy freres, 1867), II, 466, 243 ff.

¹⁷ Chamfort, p. 176.

¹⁸ Eustache Le Noble, Contes et fables (Lyon: Claude Rey, 1697), II, 85-86.

¹⁹ Henri Richer, "Le Corbeau et le renard," in Gaigne, Encyclopedie poetique ou recueil complet de chefd 'oeuvres de poesie sur tous les sujets possibles (Paris: Gaigne et Moutard, 1778), IV, 330-32.

²⁰ See for example G. Saillard, Essal sur la fable en France au dix-huitieme siecle (Toulouse: Privat, 1912), pp. 12-57.

²¹ Pere Nicolas Grozelier, Fables nouvelles (Paris: De Saint et Saillant, 1790), p. v.

²² See Runte, "Paradox."

²³ Louis-Jules Barbon Mancini-Mazarini duc de Nivernais, Fables (Paris: Nivernais, 1796), I, 3.

²⁴ Saillard, p. 156: "Ils ont sacrifie la forme au fond."

²⁵ Demarie, "Le Chene, I'arbrisseau, et le bûcheron," Journal de littérature, des sciences et des arts, 5 (Paris: Au bureau du journal, 1781), 5.

²⁶ La Motte, p. xxviii.

²⁷ Marmontel, p. 347.

²⁸ Pierre Clarac, La Fontaine: 1'homme et l'oeuvre (Paris: Boivin, 1947), p. 154.

²⁹ S.C. Muecke, The Compass of Irony, (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 57 and G.C. Sedgewick, Of Irony Especially in Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948), p. 13.

³⁰ J.A.K. Thompson, Irony, An Historical Introduction (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1926), pp. 10-18.

³¹ Vladimir Jankelevitch, L'Ironie (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1936), p. 89.

³² A.E. Dyson, The Crazy Fabric. Essays in Irony (London: Macmillan and Co., 1965), p. 152.

³³ Sedgewick, p. 33.

³⁴ Thompson, p. 109.

³⁵ Dyson, p. 13.

³⁶ Sedgewick, p. 26, Thompson, p. 166, Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1947), p. 195.

³⁷ Jankelevitch, p. 90 and Thompson, p. 131.

³⁸ Jankelevitch, p. 111. See also Marmontel, p. 346: "c'est le serieux avec lequel il mele les plus grandes choses avec les plus petites.…"

³⁹ See for example Normal Knox, "On the Classification of Ironies," Modern Philology, 70 (1972), p. 53.

⁴⁰ Jankelevitch, p. 111; Muecke, Irony (Norfolk, Great Britain: Methuen, 1970), p. 35.

⁴¹ Dyson, p. 1.

⁴² Cleanth Brooks, "Irony and 'Ironic' Poetry," College English 9 (1948), 237; Muecke, Compass, 21, 29; Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), passim, especially Ch. 11; Dyson, p. 5.

⁴³ Muecke, Compass, p. 19.

⁴⁴ [La Fermiere], Fables et contes (Paris: Lacombe, 1775), title page.

⁴⁵ [La Fermiere], p. 175.

⁴⁶ Gerard Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 267.