Diderot and the context of the novel in the eighteenth century

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyze the novel Jacques le fataliste et son maître (1778) by the French writer and philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784), in order to demonstrate how this work gives, in its own narrative structure, a very unique and legitimate answer to the questions put to the genre in the eighteenth century: after all, what is the novel genre? How to look up verisimilitude in the narrative? What purpose does a novel serve? What is its function and what are the main features that distinguish it from poetry, drama and history? Thus, this work aims at demonstrating the importance of Jacques le fataliste to the evolution of the genre by putting into evidence procedures and innovative literary themes, changing the false – that is, the fiction – into a way of saying the truth and of discussing historical problems of its time. After reading the novel and thinking about its form, we noticed that the novel is innovative in the eighteenth century France in all senses once it questions the limits of the genre by means of the narrative composition.