The present study argues that the French first-person novel, which came into
fashion in the Enlightenment period through the adoption of epistolary, diary or memoir
forms, or through their admixture in texts, lends itself particularly well to “reading
pacts”. The sociopolitical context of the period favored romantic fictions of intimate
literature that were attuned to the events of the day. In this paratextual discourse, novelists
relied on contemporary events to initiate readers into questions such as the status
and the goals of novelistic writing, while attempting to legitimize and to valorize the
latter
