Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows how his plan to marry the lovely Semire, to whom he seems so well suited socially and amorously, is thwarted when he defends her against the brigands of his jealous rival, Orcan. It explores that Zadig tests her loyalty by pretending to have died and have one of his friends, Cador (one of those young men in whom Azora finds such 'merite'), offer her a shoulder to cry on. The book opens with Zadig, not once but twice the victim of disappointed love, turning from marriage to nature. It examines Christopher Prendergast's The Order of Mimesis which connects Ginzburg's conjectural paradigm to the classic French novel. The book addresses, from yet another perspective, the consumerization of love and the rise of divorce.