Abstract EN:

This thesis consists in a comparative study : its purpose is to present results and show how the epistolary novel developed at the beginning of the XIXth century in three European countries : France, Germany and England. In the course of her study, the author of this survey endeavored to raise a certain number of questions and bring out answers to these questions. In the first part, after a short historical outline, she made an inventory and examined the alleged disappearance of that type of novel. In the second pat, she wondered under which forms the epistolary novel had survived and whether a new definition of the genre was made necessary. At the same time, she laid stress on the limits, paradoxes and narrative options at stake. Finally, in the third part, the author's aim was to analyze the continuity of the genre as well as to study why it is so modern. Thus, she delineated the themes tackled in the epistolary novels; she studied now these themes adjusted to the new forms of the novel, such as the historical novel and the private diary. She also defined the part they played in the emergence of new modes of writing such as the monologue. The epistolary novel is a genre which has kept changing and moving. It evolved thanks to its multifarious Romanesque forms. The XIXth century novelists succeeded in the epistolary novel. It is much later, at the beginning of the century that this mode of writing would be operated by writers, as a literary technique in itself. Even if it is impossible to ignore the fact that the epistolary novel wasn't equally successful in France and England in the one hand, and in Germany on the other hand, it can't be denied that it lived through the whole romantic period and that this very ability to resist enabled the genre to live to this day.