Du roman à l’Anti-roman : les dangers de l’immersion fictionnelle

• Main Author: Isabelle Moreau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institut du Monde Anglophone 2008-06-01
• Series: Etudes Epistémè
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/900

Sorel is probably the only libertine author who takes into account the readership of the ‘honnêtes gens’. He is also the only one to write his novels with such a pedagogical aim in mind. Le Berger extravagant is an ‘anti-novel’ written in order to cure the readers of their blind love for fiction. Reading the adventures of the shepherd Lysis reminds one of Dom Quichotte. But Sorel’s critical point of view on the subject gives rise to some fresh thinking on reading. Contrary to what those who support a therapeutic use of literature might think, Sorel warns his readership against fictional immersion or make-belief, underlining its pernicious influence on both body and mind. Pretending to write on the death of fiction while using all the techniques of novel writing may seem a complete paradox. How effective is a remedy against reading that you have to read? Thanks to Sorel’s comments on his own fiction, through a series of critical remarks, we have some hints about the first reactions of his readership. It seems that the pedagogical aim of conveying knowledge to readers stumbles over the apparent impossibility of reforming mankind. The failure of Sorel’s pedagogy may well be explained by a profoundly inegalitarian conception of human nature, which is present in Sorel’s La Science universelle.