La préface de Le Procès-verbal de Le Clézio : invitation habile à la rencontre esthétique
The preface to Le Procès-verbal by Le Clézio: skilful invitation to an aesthetic encounter

Summary/Abstract: The reception of a literary text is in constant evolution as a result of various internal and external factors. To guide readers, many writers choose to include a preface in their novels. The preface acts as a clever prelude, encouraging the reader to accept or reject the text. In this sense, the present article examines the primordial role of this hors-texte (“outside-the-text”) in the construction of a readership, while insisting on its influence on a horizon of expectations. From the angle of the aesthetics of reception, the aim will be to approach this perspective according to which the text or the paratext is a form of communication between an author who encodes and a reader who tries to decode all the stylistic, rhetorical, textual, and linguistic aspects. Aware of the importance of the preface, Le Clézio, playing the role of the theoretician, prefaced his first novel Le Procès-verbal with an introductory note to lift the veil on the characteristics of his writing. While it is true that the preface is an edge, a fringe of the text, or even outside the text, it is nonetheless true that it constitutes a place of ‘transaction’, as Genette calls it in his book Seuils, insofar as it facilitates reception by exercising power over the readership.

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