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the store of intertextual information, and some of them are already mutually correlated in possible general schemas of entymematic chains. Aristotelian topoi are nothing but this: overcoded, ready-made paths for inferential walks. |
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As a matter of fact, the reader makes more (and worse) than an entymeme: he makes a sorites of paralogisms. The letter says that Raoul will attend the ball disguised as a Templar, and the reader obliterates the fact that this piece of information is asserted by a letter and assumes it as matter of fact: Raoul is going to the ball disguised as a Templar. The reader then transforms this contingent proposition (there is a Templar who is Raoul) into a necessary one (for every individual in every possible world, if Templar then Raoul). In chapter 5 the reader finally uses the affirmative particular asserted by the text (there is a Templar) to validate a syllogism in Modus Ponens: if Templar, then Raoul; but Templar, then Raoul. |
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Unfortunately, the reader is not thinking in logical terms: he is thinking in terms of intertextual frames. |
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Inferential walks are possible when they are verisimilar: according to Poetics (1451b) what has previously happened is more verisimilar than what happens for the first time, since the fact that it happened proves that it was possible. Inferential walks are supported by the repertory of similar events recorded by the intertextual encyclopedia. |
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Drame's reader enjoys a lot of topoi that can help him: he is reading a story taking place during la belle époque, when the image of the magnificent 'cocu' dominates the scene. (By the way, M. de Porto-Riche, the author of L'Infidèle, the play watched by our heroes, was well known for making in all his plays continual "variations in the same theme, the eternal triangle of the wife, the husband, and the lover" [Encyclopaedia Britannica].) |
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Thus a whole topic entitles our Model Reader to imagine two triangles with the same base and two vertices, so as to form a horned figure, as in Figure 8.1. To frustrate his expectations, the triangle will turn out to be a false square or, better, two parallel lines that never meet, as in Figure 8.2. |
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Thus Drame is a strange sort of betting game. Until chapter 4 it has been like a normal roulette, where you put your stake on the black and |
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