ABSTRACT
The study of the so-called transnational novel has demonstrated the variety of practices of rewriting inside and across linguistic borders in the eighteenth century Europe (see e.g. Montandon, 1999; Stewart, 2009). Original works from the period are hard to distinguish from translations, translations of translations, pseudo-translations, authorial revisions, free adaptations, impostures, crudely abridged editions and other versions (Stewart, 2009, pp. 164-65). According to Coulet (1992), French authors were particularly busy revising their own works. Significant changes in narration and plot were common. Well-known is marquis de Sade’s transposition from first-person narration in Justine (1791) to third person in La Nouvelle Justine (1799). In the edition of 1763 the protagonist in Gaspard Guillard de Beaurieu’s L’élève de la nature is confined to live in a cage as a punishment inflicted at his parents; eight years later the confinement is, on the contrary, a part of an educational experiment approved by them.
