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The symbolic schematization of the fabula shows how the ghost chapters intrude upon its states to make false forecasts and how the last states of the fabula ambiguously disprove and accept them at the same time, so as to lead the reader to an impossible reassessment of his ghost chapters. |
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Let us read the ghost chapters again to follow the desperate attempts of the cooperative reader. |
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Ghost chapter 1. The reader imagines that there are two imprecise individuals linked by an S-necessary relation respectively to Raoul and Marguerite. Then he attributes to Raoul and Marguerite the project of going to the ball. It remains vague whether they go because they have planned this with their respective lovers or because each of them wants to catch his or her own marital partner in the act. |
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In the first case the reader supposes that Raoul has really plotted with an x2 to go to the ball (he as a Templar and she as a Pirogue) and that Marguerite has plotted with an xl to go to the ball (she as a Pirogue and he as a Templar). It should thus be assumed that the two adulterous couples have chosen the same disguise. |
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In the second case the reader is obliged (or virtually so) to assume that both Raoul and Marguerite knew the contents of the letter they did not readthat is, the reader assumes that each main character knows what is said in the letter received by the other. In doing so the reader is assuming as a matter of (fictional) fact what was referentially opaque in WNs2. |
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Both inferences are preposterous: the first is logically incorrect; the second, intertextually improbable. |
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