Narrative Worlds: Essays on the Nouvelle in 15th- and 16th-Century France

Narrative Worlds is a volume of essays devoted to the nouvelle, one of the most representative genres of the French Renaissance. Contributors examine the ways in which the nouvelle's narrative procedures produce imaginary “worlds,” defined as much by fantasy, phantasm, and unreality as by realism. The purpose of the volume is thus to analyze this important literary form in terms of its own rhetorical procedures, and not merely as a realistic “window” that opens onto 15th- and 16th-century France. As such, it marks a significant departure from much of the scholarly literature that has been devoted to this less-studied genre to date. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of French medieval and Renaissance literature, and in particular to those concerned with early narrative fiction.

Narrative Worlds: Essays on the Nouvelle in 15th and 16th Century France, co-edited by David LaGuardia and Gary Ferguson, justifies the continued existence of an endangered academic genre. Edited collections all too often prove gratuitous in their general purpose and incoherent in their particular diversity. This group of essays, however, exhibits a clear raison d’être: it fills a large gap in the field, it coheres around a common argument against the mimetic function of early narrative, and it offers a series of impressive readings that demonstrate the potential of more adventurous approaches to early narrative.