Lire l'hésitation: vers l'expérience cognitive du genre narratif

The article aims at reinterpreting the generic theory developed by Todorov throughout Introduction à la littérature fantastique, Typologie du roman policier and L’origine des genres. Anticipating further developments of cognitive narratology, Todorov’s categories can nowadays be fully operational for new research in genre studies. Introduction à la littérature fantastique suggests that the empathic relation between character and reader might constitute a zero degree of generic experience for the latter. By structuring along the plot, the recurring, empathic relation develops into models comparable to intertextual scripts underpinned by the same speech act. Every pragmatic macro-sequence being reduced to larger units of meaning, the reader can identify the generic recurrence of the speech act by inference. This permits to revisit the institutional concept of narrative genre from an experiential perspective: forms and modes of enunciation define the quality of the empathic relation between character and reader, while themes guarantee for the semantic recurrence of the fictional worlds where the empathic relation is set.