The Female Mentor in Crébillon’s Les Égarements du cœur et de l’esprit
Katherine Deimling, Colgate University
Volume 16, no. 1, October 2003
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
Crebillon’s Les Egarements du coeur et de l’esprit provides a textbook example of what Jean Rousset has called the “double registre” of the memoir novel: an older and wiser narrator relates the story of his younger, naive self. The “I” is split into two different personae, hero and narrator, separated by time. In Crebillon’s novel, the gap between the two is strikingly wide. While the narrator writes with a tone of world-weary assurance, his younger self — eternally undecided and awkward — demonstrates little capacity for development. As Crebillon never completed the novel, the transition from point A to point B is not documented. … This impossible divide between hero and narrator can be seen as the essential condition for Crebillon’s reflection on education and self-development.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Crébillon” include:
Discours libertin et argument national dans le triptyque (Haywood, Crébillon-fils et Kimber) des heureux orphelins
by BEATRIJS VANACKER (ECF 24.4, Summer 2012)
Deux lettres inédites de Crébillon fils; à M.M. de La Place et de La Garde du Mercure de France et à Malesherbes
by SARAH BENHARRECH (ECF 19.4, Summer 2007)
Poétique des ruines: le délabrement du roman dans Les Lettres athéniennes de Crébillon
by DOMINIQUE HOLZLE (ECF 16.4, July 2004)
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