A parody of the genre? The epistolarity of Lettres d'Amabed, etc. (1769) between Montesquieu, Graffigny and Richardson

Les Lettres d'Amabed, etc. is an epistolary tale written by Voltaire and first published in 1769. While its narrative appears to be a partial rewriting of Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne, several aspects of its general structure reflect well-known archetypes of the epistolary genre. More than a canonic attempt at creating an epistolary novel, the tale appears rather as a badinage with the traditional codes of epistolary writing. It particularly resonates with two novels that embody the dominant paradigms of the epistolary field: the "exotic" vein characterized by the Lettres Persanes (Montesquieu, 1721) and the "sentimental" one with Pamela (Richardson, 1740). This study seeks to demonstrate how the in praesentia use of epistolary codes creates a parodic filiation with the former, whereas the in absentia game with epistolary voices implicitly satirizes the latter. With this case study, we ultimately hope to outline how the moral and critical realism associated with the epistolary genre - and its subgenres - can transcend its narrative content to affect its very own structures and writing codes, from a parodic and metacritical point of view.

Keywords: philosophical tale; epistolary novel; parody; literary genres; Les Lettres d'Amabed; Voltaire; Montesquieu; Richardson; Graffigny