MALENTENDUS GÉNÉRIQUES ET RÉCEPTION DE L’OEUVRE LITTÉRAIRE
GENERIC MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND RECEPTION OF LITERARY WORKS

Summary/Abstract: Misunderstandings concerning the perception by readers of constitutive literary genres and sub-genres run through the history of literature. Taking into account some of the most well-known cases (such as Diderot’s La Religieuse, Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloise or, closer to our times, Laura Albert’s The Heart is Deceitful above all Things), our paper sets out to connect this dimension – which otherwise could appear as merely anecdotical – to a broader theory of literary genres. We will lay a particular emphasis on the pragmatic approach: thus, we hope to highlight a series of notions related to the concept of literary genre, such as the status of fictional speech acts and macro-acts or the inevitable question of referentiality. But, regardless of the type of theoretical approach we choose, misunderstandings - whether they are deliberately planned by the author or appear as a consequence of the receiver’s subjective understanding - play a central role in the orientation of the act of reading.

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