The scratched pier-glass: Chance and literary exemplarity
Le miroir rayé. Hasard et exemplarité littéraire
Résumé
The study of Chance in literature allows us to understand better the double process that makes us on the one side use our experience of the world to read fiction, and on the other to borrow from fiction examples and tools for a better understanding of reality. Whether it be to propose an idealized alternative to this reality, to reveal the randomness of real events beneath their apparent signification, or to show the wide range of possibilities discarded by the realisation of one of them, the presentation of Chance in fiction allows us to see not only what a body of literature thinks of the world, but also what a conception of the world can owe to its literary representations. \textcopyright 2018 Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH. All rights reserved.