Abstract EN:

Many changes were made to the prose narrative in the 1660s: the structure was simplified and the subject matter was drawn closer to the readers' interests. Shorter forms called "petits romans", "histoires", "nouvelles" replaced long heroic novels. Around the same period, there were numerous attempts at codifying what a novel was. Highlighting the distinctions between long and short novels, these writings noted the changes and construed them as a shift in the genre. The 1660s can be heralded as a turning point in the theorisation of the genre. This interpretation induces an exhaustive study of the texts dealing with the novel form in the 17th c. In order to compare the poetics and the writing of novels. In the first middle of the century, the theory was apologetic in tone, since the aim was to define the novel against its opponents. A notable characteristic of these writings was that they were either in favour or against it. However the French fiction, progressively seen both as a legitimate literary type and, in the eyes of readers, as a genre, triggered a thorough study of the status and the aim of a prose narrative. The years 1660s witnessed the birth of the poetics of the novel, which went well beyond codification to focus on the impact of a narrative. For the first time the novel was considered as a literary genre. As a consequence the change in the novel had more in common with rhetorics and ethics than aesthetics. The "art de l'éloignement", which reigned as the predominant narrative rule in the first period, was superseded by the art of verisimilitude. This deeply modified the status of both the author and reader and transformed the ideological impressions it made.