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unknown'. Popular novels are full of chapters beginning with the description of an unknown character (usually disguised) who, even to the most inattentive reader, clearly appears as one of the previously mentioned heroes of the story. Unfailingly, after this short description, the author gives up his device and takes for granted the fact that the Model Reader has already recognized the unknown figure: "As our readers have certainly realized, the mysterious visitor was Count So-and-So. . . ." |
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Thus, through the mediation of an inferential walk and by virtue of an intertextual frame, the Model Reader of Drame establishes a co-referential link between the names and the pronouns referring to the individuals of chapters 1 to 4 and those referring to the individuals of chapter 5. |
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Let me stress that such a co-reference is not established on grammatical grounds, but rather on narratological grounds. But this means that the discursive strategy is improved by operations made at the narrative level, while at the same time inferences at this level are implemented by a discursive strategy. |
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However, the whole of the discursive level has a vicarious function with respect to the narrative level and aims at eliciting processes of expectation and forecasts at the level of the fabula. This happens with many fictional texts; what distinguishes Drame from its congeners is the fact that in Drame the discursive structures, until chapter 6, support two different and mutually irreducible fabulae. |
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In order to recognize a given fabula the reader has to identify a narrative topic or a main theme. A narrative topic is nothing but a higher-level fabula or an ultimate macroproposition such as can be expressed by a title: De Bello Gallico is a satisfactory clue to decide what the corresponding Caesar text is about (see the notion of discursive topic in van Dijk, 1977, and the notion of theme in Sceglov
* and Zolkovskij*, 1971). Once a narrative topic has been established (frequently by various tentative abductions and through a trial-and-error process), the reader activates one or more intertextual frames to take his inferential walks and to hazard forecasts apropos of the course of the fabula. |
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At the end of chapter 4 of Drame, the reader is, in principle, in the position of singling out two narrative topics (a story of an adultery and a story of a misunderstanding) and may resort to two intertextual frames («adultery» and «misunderstanding»), so as to outline two stories or basic treatments: |
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Treatment 1: Raoul and Marguerite love each other but are mutually jealous. Each of them receives a letter announcing that his/her partner will meet his/her lover. Both manage to catch the other in the act. The letter(s) was (were) true. |
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