Volume 9

Diderots 'Jaques le fataliste et son maître' und der europäische Roman: Transformationen und Potentiale der Gattung

Editors: Caroline Mannweiler, Olaf Müller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Universitätsverlag WINTER, Heidelberg
1. Edition, 2018; 234 Pages
German

ISBN: 978-3-8253-6959-0
Hardcover / also available as eBook

Denis Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître is one of the most influential novels of the 18th century, which, during his lifetime, the author reserved for an exclusive readership, and, which appeared in book form only posthumously. The novel, itself a reaction to and a practical reflection on various varieties of novel genre from antiquity to its present time, earns productive updates from Schiller and Goethe about Puškin, Machado de Assis and Brecht to Kundera, Henri Lopes, Cécile Avouac or Sophie Divry and on into current contemporary literature again and again.

As the many story-within-the-stories in Jacques le fataliste et son maître prove, Diderot was quite the capable storyteller. But he would not be contented with that. Instead, his novel provides a wealth of arguments addressing the production and reception process of novels, which is exhibited in detail in this volume across historically convincing individual studies on examples of European and Latin American literature. Diderot's novel was and is especially valuable for authors who, in theoretical considerations of novels, recognize not a hollow game, but a foundation for the novel.

Contributing writers: Caroline Mannweiler, Olaf Müller, Colas Duflo, Frank Estelmann, Robert Fajen, Henning Hufnagel, Christine Waldschmidt, Charlotte Krauss, Alfred Gall, Hans Paschen, Frank Zipfel, Andreas Ohme, Nikolas Immer, Tobias Berneiser