Le Conte a visee morale et philosophique: De Fenelon a Voltaire in Bloomington, MN

How can fiction participate in the moral and intellectual emancipation of the reader? That is the question underlying this study of the poetics of the Enlightenment short story and its evolution, from Fenelon to Voltaire and Marmontel, taking in Montesquieu, Crebillon, Diderot, and Rousseau along the way.