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Marie-Paule Laden



Abstract :

The abbé is a ubiquitous figure in eighteenth-century literature. This article focuses on the different roles played by the abbé in the novels Isabelle de Charrière wrote during the Revolutionary period. Although the Abbé de la Tour is the unifying element in the texts that Charrière gathered under the title L’abbé de la Tour ou recueil de nouvelles et autres écrits divers, he is more than a narrative ploy in the novels examined in this essay. A mentor and father-figure in Henriette et Richard, a hybrid character connecting the various factions scattered all over Europe by the Revolution in Lettres trouvées dans des porte-feuilles d’émigrés, author, prime witness and protagonist in Trois femmes, the abbé is above all Charrière’s ideological representative in the new post-Revolutionary world.



SvD, December 2008



  • Publications > Belle de Zuylen Papers > 2008 > Laden

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