Introduction: The three regimes of the novel -- The impossible Princess (Lafayette) -- Quixote circa 1670 (Subligny) -- How to read a mind (Crébillon) -- The aesthetics of sentiment (Rousseau) -- The demon of reality (Diderot) -- Beyond belief (Cazotte) -- Conclusion: On narrators natural and unnatural
Summary
Before Fiction asks why so many early novelists pretended their novels were literally true when no one believed them. For Nicholas D. Paige the answer lies in a radically new view of the formal history of the novel in England and France
