to be a mere convention and becomes the means to explore the complex dynamics of the story-telling relationship.
This exploration is most fully and subtly worked out in the relationship of Jacques and his master. The underlying symbiosis of the couple is expressed in the one’s need to talk and the other’s need to listen. At the same time, the latant antagonism of master and servant also finds expression in story-telling. Jacques is irritated at his master’s interruptions and exasperated at his demands to side-track to other issues. His master in turn seeks to make of his servant an almost mechanical furnisher of tales for his satisfaction. Jacques frets and worries over the difficulties and ambiguities of story-telling, while his master, with characteristic complacency, simply tellsJacques that the important thing is that one should tell stories and the other listen.
The dramatization of the story-telling relationship fulfils another important function: it highlights the quest for significance or meaning which the stories are intended to provoke. For instance, Jacques and his master are fascinated by the story that the innkeeper’s wife tells them. They argue about the psychological coherence of the characters and how to interpret their behaviour; they argue about the morality of this behaviour and what judgement to pass on it. The Narrator then intrudes to provoke the Reader into discussion. The story has generated what might become an endless series of debates and discussions. The world of
Jacques
is not a fixed and settled one in which incidents and behaviour are easily assessed and interpreted. On the contrary, it is a world of dizzying variety and unpredictability, one which beckons its readers to embark on their own search for meaning rather than offering them ready-made answers.
THEMATIC ORGANIZATION
Is there any ordering principle to be discerned in the welter of anecdotes that make up such a large part of the novel? Certainly, readers may initially be inclined to think that they are being offered a representation of the sprawling untidiness and inconclusiveness of life itself. However, it is fair to say that, besides the major themes of master–servant relations and fatalism dealt with below, there are four other important thematic areas which can be discerned emerging from the confusion.
1. Mutability and Change
Among the great writers of the Enlightenment Diderot is distinctive by the importance which time and transformation play in his vision of the world, a world whose working can only be understood in terms of its perpetual change. This vision is evoked in one of the rare passages of high-flown rhetoric in
Jacques
, an invocation to the folly of two lovers swearing eternal constancy in a world whose every feature is witness of change. This theme of mutability emerges insistently in the motif of sexual inconstancy and infidelity and is most fully developed in the story of Madame de La Pommeraye and the Marquis des Arcis. This story also illustrates the closelyrelated motif of jealousy, the counterpart of inconstancy, which might also be defined as the refusal of the harsh rule of universal change.
2. Rivalry
The second theme of rivalry, like that of jealousy, is frequently illustrated in the context of sexual relations but throughout
Jacques
there recurs a particularly bizarre figure of rivalry in the form of the compulsive duellists. The rivalry motif involves a succession of couples hardly distinguishable the one from the next and offers the reader a haunting image of inexplicability – two men closely attached to one another, unable to live apart and at the same time impelled to fight bloody and dangerous duels.
3. Bizarreness of Human Nature
The inexplicability of human nature, as illustrated by the duellists, is a constant preoccupation in
Jacques
which clearly reflects Diderot’s fascination with the ‘outsize’ human character in Madame de La Pommeraye, Father Hudson and Jacques
This exploration is most fully and subtly worked out in the relationship of Jacques and his master. The underlying symbiosis of the couple is expressed in the one’s need to talk and the other’s need to listen. At the same time, the latant antagonism of master and servant also finds expression in story-telling. Jacques is irritated at his master’s interruptions and exasperated at his demands to side-track to other issues. His master in turn seeks to make of his servant an almost mechanical furnisher of tales for his satisfaction. Jacques frets and worries over the difficulties and ambiguities of story-telling, while his master, with characteristic complacency, simply tellsJacques that the important thing is that one should tell stories and the other listen.
The dramatization of the story-telling relationship fulfils another important function: it highlights the quest for significance or meaning which the stories are intended to provoke. For instance, Jacques and his master are fascinated by the story that the innkeeper’s wife tells them. They argue about the psychological coherence of the characters and how to interpret their behaviour; they argue about the morality of this behaviour and what judgement to pass on it. The Narrator then intrudes to provoke the Reader into discussion. The story has generated what might become an endless series of debates and discussions. The world of
Jacques
is not a fixed and settled one in which incidents and behaviour are easily assessed and interpreted. On the contrary, it is a world of dizzying variety and unpredictability, one which beckons its readers to embark on their own search for meaning rather than offering them ready-made answers.
THEMATIC ORGANIZATION
Is there any ordering principle to be discerned in the welter of anecdotes that make up such a large part of the novel? Certainly, readers may initially be inclined to think that they are being offered a representation of the sprawling untidiness and inconclusiveness of life itself. However, it is fair to say that, besides the major themes of master–servant relations and fatalism dealt with below, there are four other important thematic areas which can be discerned emerging from the confusion.
1. Mutability and Change
Among the great writers of the Enlightenment Diderot is distinctive by the importance which time and transformation play in his vision of the world, a world whose working can only be understood in terms of its perpetual change. This vision is evoked in one of the rare passages of high-flown rhetoric in
Jacques
, an invocation to the folly of two lovers swearing eternal constancy in a world whose every feature is witness of change. This theme of mutability emerges insistently in the motif of sexual inconstancy and infidelity and is most fully developed in the story of Madame de La Pommeraye and the Marquis des Arcis. This story also illustrates the closelyrelated motif of jealousy, the counterpart of inconstancy, which might also be defined as the refusal of the harsh rule of universal change.
2. Rivalry
The second theme of rivalry, like that of jealousy, is frequently illustrated in the context of sexual relations but throughout
Jacques
there recurs a particularly bizarre figure of rivalry in the form of the compulsive duellists. The rivalry motif involves a succession of couples hardly distinguishable the one from the next and offers the reader a haunting image of inexplicability – two men closely attached to one another, unable to live apart and at the same time impelled to fight bloody and dangerous duels.
3. Bizarreness of Human Nature
The inexplicability of human nature, as illustrated by the duellists, is a constant preoccupation in
Jacques
which clearly reflects Diderot’s fascination with the ‘outsize’ human character in Madame de La Pommeraye, Father Hudson and Jacques
Similar Books
Kaldean Chronicles: Kaldean Sunset (Book I)
Maxwell Bond
The Firefighter and the Virgin Princess
Jemma Harte
Heretic
Bernard Cornwell
When Madeline Was Young
Jane Hamilton
Murder in the Smithsonian
Margaret Truman
Dark Inside
Jeyn Roberts
Men in Green Faces
Gene Wentz, B. Abell Jurus
Cops 02 - Love on the Run
Kori Roberts
