Uncertain Boundaries: Dispositive Techniques in Provost's Novels

University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Uncertain Boundaries: Dispositive Techniques in Provost's Novels Benjamin Hillel Baker University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Baker, Benjamin Hillel, "Uncertain Boundaries: Dispositive Techniques in Provost's Novels" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1597. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1597 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1597 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Uncertain Boundaries: Dispositive Techniques in Provost's Novels Abstract Archaeological survey, GIS, Longue duree, Roman ceramics, Settlement history, Sicily Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Romance Languages First Advisor Gerald J. Prince Second Advisor Christophe Martin Keywords Disposition, Narratology, Paratext, Part, Structure, Whole Subject Categories English Language and Literature This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1597 UNCERTAIN BOUNDARIES DISPOSITIVE TECHNIQUES IN PRÉVOST’S NOVELS Benjamin Hillel Baker A DISSERTATION in French for the Graduate Group in Romance Languages Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation Gerald Prince Professor of Romance Languages University of Pennsylvania Co-Supervisor of Dissertation Christophe Martin Professeur de langue et littérature françaises Université Paris-Sorbonne Graduate Group Chairperson Andrea Goulet Associate Professor of Romance Languages University of Pennsylvania Dissertation Committee Anne Deneys-Tunney Scott Francis Professor of French Assistant Professor of Romance Languages New York University University of Pennsylvania Catherine Gallouët Professor of French and Francophone Studies Hobart and William Smith Colleges UNCERTAIN BOUNDARIES DISPOSITIVE TECHNIQUES IN PRÉVOST’S NOVELS COPYRIGHT 2016 Benjamin Hillel Baker This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ To Elisa iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS At the term of this long process of discovery, I would like to thank those who made it possible. First, my appreciation goes to my dissertation advisors: to Michel Delon, for being the first to turn my attention toward the relationship between the part and the whole, which has proved to be an even richer subject than I ever expected it to be, and for directing the first phase of my research; to Christophe Martin, for agreeing to take on a project already in progress when it came time for a passing of the baton, and for providing the necessary insight and guidance to bring the project to completion; and to Gerald Prince, for being a steadfast support from the beginning to the end. Second, I am grateful to my external committee members, Catherine Gallouët and Anne Deneys-Tunney, for lending their support to this endeavor. And while any errors that remain are my own, hopefully there are fewer of them due to the efforts of Lucy Swanson, who read parts of my work while I was revising it. I would also like to thank Scott Francis for his encouraging comments, and for his participation in the defense. I have many parents, and I would like to thank them all for their unwavering support during this challenging time. Thank you: to Lynda and Kerry Baker, for having confidence in me all along, and for helping me to summon the courage I needed; to Mark and Gail Sherman, for showing me the value of my work when I was too close to it to see it for myself, and for significant pragmatic support (even proofreading); to Steve and Alison McCool, for providing much-needed perspective on the process of earning a doctorate; and to Ilene McCool, for celebrating with me at each intermediary milestone along the way. My deep appreciation goes to all of my parents for teaching me a love of learning and for passing on their commitment to engaging with the world in a meaningful way. Finally, although mere human language can never express all of my gratitude to my wife, Elisa McCool, these words will have to do, even if incompletely. Thank you for your love and support: none of this would have been possible without you. iv ABSTRACT UNCERTAIN BOUNDARIES DISPOSITIVE TECHNIQUES IN PRÉVOST’S NOVELS Benjamin Hillel Baker Gerald Prince Christophe Martin This thesis examines the relationship between part and whole in novels by Antoine François Prévost to question the modern assumption that prototypical novelistic narrative structure and dispositive structure (chapters, books, volumes, parts, installments, etc.) share the same points of articulation. In Prévost’s day, the combination of the unpredictable rhythm of publication in installments and the ever-present possibility of continuation made it difficult for authors and readers to identify a novel’s definitive conclusion. This uncertainty led to tension between a novel’s concrete parts and its imagined narrative whole, and that tension created what I have termed a segmentary esthetic that stands in contrast to both the more regularly serialized novels of the nineteenth century and to more recent single-installment novels. To support these hypotheses, I first investigate schemas of interaction between dispositive structure and narrative structure in Prévost’s novels that differ from modern formal expectations: pseudoworks (works- within-works) and narrative units that cross dispositive boundaries in the Mémoires d’un homme de qualité and the Voyages de Robert Lade, and interrupted publication and unauthorized continuation in Cleveland and Mémoires d’un honnête homme. I then identify similar interactions in two of Prévost’s more formally modern novels La Jeunesse du Commandeur and Histoire d’une Grecque moderne. This study shows that unstable boundaries can be compatible with compositional sophistication, and outlines a new method of analysis that can be applied to narrative fiction from other periods and in other media. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Context .................................................................................................................................... 1 Serialization and Literature ............................................................................................................... 3 Prévost’s place in the study of the history of the French novel ......................................................... 8 Origins of modern critical ideas about part–whole relationship ..................................................... 13 Modern background of recent critical ideas about part–whole relationship ................................... 17 Publication rhythm .......................................................................................................................... 18 Boundaries and the idea of unity ..................................................................................................... 20 Parts and the idea of structure ......................................................................................................... 22 Crossing the Genettian threshold to walk on Dionne’s path to chapters ......................................... 26 Two mutually-illuminating ideas: narration and disposition ........................................................... 38 Findings ................................................................................................................................. 45 Methods ........................................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter Summaries ......................................................................................................................... 50 Part I: When the Whole Has Wholes in It .................................................................................. 50 Part II: When the Whole Has a Hole in it ................................................................................... 52 Part III: When the Whole Story Has Been Told ......................................................................... 55 Part I: When the Whole Has Wholes in It ......................................................................... 58 Chapter 1: When the Whole is in Pieces: Dispositive Structure, Narrative Structure, and the Segmentary Esthetic in Mémoires d’un homme de qualité ........................................................... 58 Disposition, Narration, and the Identity of a Work ............................................................... 58 Disposition and Narration as Simultaneously Operating Independent Systems Subtending the Structure of a Text as a “Work” ...................................................................................................... 60 Dual Structure and the Segmentary

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