ABSTRACT
Like “To be or not to be, that is the question”, “Reader, I Married Him” is probably one of the most iconic phrases in English literature. In 2016, to celebrate the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, it was chosen as a trigger to invite twenty-one contemporary women writers to submit a short story. What might look like an Oulipian constraint, reminiscent of the techniques pioneered by writers such as Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec or Italo Calvino, enlarges the spectrum of “second degree literature” as defined by Gérard Genette. Indeed, this “writing after” (the world-famous Brontëan snippet) is by no means reducible to sequel writing, or any transfictional, chronological sequencing, such as prequel or coquel. Some of the titles of the edited stories incite us to consider “writing after” in terms of literary montage, collage or serendipitous (shock) encounters between imaginary universes.
