Lʹhistoire de Madame de Luz : an analysis of the novel and of its relationship to the development of the eighteenth-century French novel

Abstract

The best literary critics of the contemporary period, contrary to those of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tend to judge works of fiction impartially, according to the literary merits of the text and to the importance of the work in the development of its respective genre. This critical approach is particularly clear in the case of literary criticism treating the writers of licentious tales and novels of the eighteenth-century like Laclos and Sade. Whereas past critics often condemned these writers on moral grounds without giving due process to the texts, 1 recent commentators have studied such authors with an impersonal attitude, so as to evaluate novelists principally on the basis of the texts' literary qualities.

The relatively large number of current critical essays and books studying Charles Pinot Duclos indicate a very definite renaissance of interest in his writings. The accompanying reassessment of his literary merit warrants a more detailed study of his novels. It is to this end and in the spirit of recent critics favorable to Duclos that the present work is undertaken. Duclos' Madame de Luz will be judged in its own right, without recourse to preconceived or ill-conceived biographical, historical or literary prejudices.