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Notes
Jean Sgard,Prévost Romancier (Paris: Jose Corti, 1968), pp. 315–417. Sgard does discuss fictional techniques, but he essentially views the contradictions in theDoyen as a sign of the reemergence of Prévost's basic pessimism, that now takes on a newer and even deeper form. William Mead, “ The Puzzle of Prévost:The Doyen de Killerine,”L'Esprit Créateur (1972), pp. 82–93, attributes the failure of the text to the fact that Prévost could not convincingly depict characters that were unlike himself. Jeanne Monty, inLes Romans de l'abbé Prévost: procédés littéraires et pensée morale, SVEC 78 (1970), argues that the text fails due to Prévost's faulty fictional techniques, which make it impossible for the work to contain the clear lesson promised in the preface.
Studies such as those of René Désmoris,Le Roman à la première personne: du classicisme aux lumières (Paris: Armand Colin, 1975) and Marie-Thérèse Hipp,Mythes et Réalités: Enquêtes sur le roman et les mémoires (1660–1770) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1976), discuss at great length the different kinds of memoir-novels and show the difficulty in classifying them as a genre.
Henri Coulet, “Le Comique dans les romans de Prévost,”Colloque Pré vost (Aix-en-Provence: Ophrys, 1965), pp. 173–183. Coulet believes thatLe Doyen is the most comical of all Prévost's works. However, he concludes that the comical effect of the work is difficult to determine since this could be the unintended result of conventions that no longer touch the modern reader.
A brief but helpful sketch of the typologies of theBildungsroman confession and novel is given by Marianne Hirsch Gottfried,PMLA 91 (1976), p. 122.
J. P. Hunter, inThe Reluctant Pilgrim (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1966), p. 183. For an argument that the mixture of human and divine causality actually represents a major shift in belief from a God-ordered to a man-ordered universe see Melvyn New “The Grease of God: The Form of Eighteenth Century Fiction,”PMLA, Vol. 91 (1976), pp. 235–244. However, here one must assume with New that human causality is not an important factor in romance, which, as we will argue, was never the case.
The Rise of the Novel (Berkely: University of California Press, 1957), pp. 9–34. In a novel character development and personal relationships must be integrated into a specific and influential social setting. The function of time is to emphasize human causality by showing how a personal identity can be changed in time, as a result of the experiences the characters brought about. See also Northrop Frye,Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 303–307.
The five extant Greek erotic romances are: Heliodorus,Ethiopica; Xenophon,The Ephesiaca; Chariton,Chaereas and Callirhöe; Longus,Daphnis and Chloe; Achilles Tatius,Clitopho and Leucippe. See Gustave Reynier,Le Roman Sentimental avant l'Astrée (1908: reprinted Paris: Armand Colin, 1971), pp. 263–368, for descriptions of many of the French imitations of the Greek romances. Henri Coulet gives a general discussion of their continuing influence in the seventeenth century inLe Roman jusqu'à la Révolution (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), pp. 137–207.
Pour et Contre XIII pp. 136–144.
Moses Hadas,Three Greek Romances (New York: The Library of Liberal Arts, 1953), pp. VII.
R. Merkelbach,Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich: Beck, 1962), essentially argues that the Greek romance is not only religious in origin but also closely imitative in materials and structure of the rituals and underlying myths of mystery cults. Arthur Heisermann,The Novel Before the Novel (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977), acknowledges this possibility but also discusses in illuminating detail how, in each romance, the fictional techniques serve to bring the reader indirectly to conclusions concerning man's destiny and his relationship to providential powers. Complicated plots and non-developmental, though not helpless, characters are techniques that dramatize dependent but virtuous types who cooperate with the destiny/deity that works behind the scenes to reward them.
“Ideas and Prose Fiction in Antiquity,”Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. IV, No. 3 (1974), pp. 185–204.
Doyen de Killerine, Oeuvres Choisies (Amsterdam: Hotel Serpente, 1783), Vol. VIII, pp. 5–7. All further parenthetical references to theDoyen are taken from this edition.
See J. Deprun, “Thèmes malebranchistes dans l'oeuvre de Prévost”Colloque Pré vost, pp. 155–172. Discussions of Prévost's oeuvre in the following works that use the history of ideas approach also relate many of the theoretical discussions in theDoyen to specific literary, philosophical or moral theories: R. Mauzi,L'idée du bonheur au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967): R. Mercier,La Réhabilitation de la nature humaine (1700–1750), (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1963).
For a detailed analysis of the comic aspects of this romance, see A. Heiserman,The Novel Before the Novel, pp. 118–130.
Chastity is also a source of humor inLe Doyen. The Dean, in the name of religion and Providence, tries to keep Patrice and Julie chaste even after marriage, so that it will be easier to get the marriage annulled. He does, however, try at times to help Sara's clumsy attempts to seduce Patrice so that their marriage will be secure in the eyes of the “Ciel.”
TheNovel Before the Novel, pp. 192–195. Heiserman argues that Calasiris does not embody true wisdom but that he prefigures the technique of cooperation which will be demonstrated in the end by the heroine Chariclea when she manipulates the reunion scene.
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Lazzaro-Weis, C. Prévost's comic romance: TheDoyen de Killerine . Neophilologus 67, 517–524 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352410
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352410