The literary mystification: Diderot, Merimee, Hildesheimer (Germany, Denis Diderot, Prosper Merimee, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, France)

This study defines the specificity of the mystification as a literary form through readings of selected texts from the Enlightenment to the present. Unlike forgery, the literary mystification is an instrument of deception and enlightenment. To achieve its goal of provoking reflection, it must deceive, but also provide clues for its own unmasking. Thus a reader perceives the trick and joins the mystifier in understanding.; Chapter I takes as its starting point the coining of the French term "mystification" in the 1750s. It presents the mystification's origins as a social phenomenon and shows how its transformation into a critical, analytical practice resulted from its adoption by the philosophes. This chapter then defines the literary mystification, showing that it is a form with typical features.; Subsequent chapters examine how particular mystifications have responded to literary trends through formal imitation. Chapter II treats Diderot's Mystification in detail, also giving attention to La Religieuse, Les Deux amis de Bourbonne, and Est-il bon? est-il mechant?. These texts are inspired by deceptions which test to what point reality can be transformed before the "victim" detects the trick. Fictional representation of deceptive incidents, combined with overdetermined observance of the 18th-century convention of veracity, make these texts metadiscursive presentations of the mystification.; Merimee's Romantic-era mystifications, Le Theatre de Clara Gazul and La Guzla, form the subject of Chapter III. They are paradigmatic literary mystifications. Through irony and complex frames, Merimee draws critical attention to the contemporary fashion for "local color" and to the utopic Romantic conception of folk literature.; Chapter IV treats Hildesheimer's novel Marbot, received as an authentic biography although its subject is apocryphal. This chapter examines how Marbot's apparatus criticus undermines its own scholarly authority, drawing attention to a discomfort of the post-modern era, in which subjectivity is felt to-undermine even sophisticated research.; The mystification's relevance remains strong, as new examples of the form continue to be created. A powerful critical tool at the moment of writing, the mystification can also serve as a lens to examine literary history. If this study has succeeded, it has added a brief new chapter to that history.