Jacques the fatalist and his Master is a Romance of Denis Diderot, whose writing extends from 1771 until the death of the author. This novel was the subject of many posthumous editions, of which the first in 1796. Before being for the first time published in France in 1796 (posthumous edition) Jacques the fatalist will be known in Germany grace, in particular, with the translations of Schiller (partial translation in 1785) and Mylius (1792).

This novel complex, disconcerting and diverting by its digressions - undoubtedly the work of Diderot the most commented on - draws to some extent its inspiration in the Vie and opinions of Tristram Shandy of Laurence Sterne, appeared a few years before (1759 - 1763).

The account

Multiplying the incredible bounces, just like the oiseuses interruptions of an exasperating and omnipresent Narrator, the novel openly scoffs the commonplaces at the kind, even if it means to irritate its reader whose waitings seem unceasingly disappointed. The Incipit of the novel, remained celebrates, gives the tone:

Comment had they met? By chance, like everyone. How were they called? What imports you? From which did they come? The nearest place. Where did they go? Is it known where one goes? What did they say? The Master did not say anything; and Jacques said that its captain said that all that arrives to us of good and evil ici-bas was written up there.

Jacques, more complex than a servant of comedy, chatterer but somewhat philosophical (“a species of philosopher”), voyage in company of its Master. It is in addition its Fatalisme which will give its nickname to Jacques. To fill the trouble, he promises with his Master to tell him the continuation of his adventures in love.

But the account is unceasingly stopped either by its Master, or by interventions or incidental outsides, or by autonomous “stories” coming to replace the initial account.

Structure of the novel

In this very complex novel, the author puts all his genius to be mixed, intermingle, several elements structuring the account.

In first, the topic of the voyage is the posted goal of the novel, since it is by there that the history starts: they travel for “businesses” and the child of the Master. The only temporal indication in all work is at the beginning, it locates the action in 1765, twenty years after the battle of Fontenoy, but this indication does not have anything final since it is followed many inconsistencies. If one sticks to this topic of the voyage, one realizes well quickly that it is empty of any action, Diderot seems to reverse the priorities, as well for the date as for the “main theme” as for the final goal of the voyage which is in fact the child, and anything else.

The true action is not in the voyage, it is in fact in other accounts, the loves of Jacques. Indeed, they occupy a central place in work, and the Master asks without stop Jacques to tell his loves. Jacques then will tell his sex education, which will become obviously the principal intrigue of the novel. In these accounts, Jacques upsets the chronology without never following a logical wire and dilates time by giving much more importance to his first sexual experiment than with his childhood. Only, the end of the novel does not confirm the loves of Jacques in their central place since the true fall seems to be the arrival of the Master in the nurse of sound “wire”…

In fact, the coherence of the novel is not in a single topic or only one account, but in a proliferation of additional accounts, which they are told by Jacques (stories of its captain, Furrier, the Father Angel…), by other characters (like Pommeraye by the landlord) or by the narrator himself (the poet of Pondichéry…)…

Because finally, the interest of the novel is not only in the account, but as in the brackets as made there Diderot, to guarantee or not a moral position, like the judgment of Pommeraye by the Master, to give his opinion, as on the theater of Molière, or to speak to the reader directly. Diderot seems in fact very attached to break the romantic illusion.

Random links:

Kathy Najimy | Grant Esterhuizen | Louis Lefebvre (writer) | Negosavlje | 4th regiment of light infantry