ABSTRACT

Memoirs, autobiographies, letters, and diaries of the period bolster the themes found in literature, reflecting social changes. They parallel and thus assure that what occurs in literature was in fact what was going on in society. While these documents do provide such support, they are few in number, for the reasons discussed in Chapter 1. There are enough, especially when combined with numerous, scholarly studies of other aspects of eighteenth-century France, to support the argument that through the course of the eighteenth century, love defined as duty to the family, the church, and the king was superseded by a new ideal of love that depended on passion capable of giving individual pleasure, happiness, and definition. Illyrine offers an interesting text since we do not know how to categorize it. Because it so parallels the structure of the normal novel, Martin lists it in his Bibliographie romanesque [Bibliography of Prose Fiction], while Quérard considers that the book is mostly an autobiography.1 Decisions similar to Martin’s on the grounds of technique or style are very problematic, as will be clear on recalling the widely remarked resemblance between historical and fictional narration that writers frequently exploited in the eighteenth century. Authors regularly claimed to be

1 Angus Martin, Vivienne G. Mylne, and Richard Frautschi, Bibliographie du genre romanesque français: 1751-1800 (London: Mansell, 1977); Joseph-Marie Quérard, La France littéraire, ou dictionnaire bibliographique, 12 vols (Paris: Didot, 1827-1857).