Abstract

Let us hypothesize that there are three main "registers" of writing: narrative, description and commentary. "Narrative" and "description" are by definition concerned with diachronic and synchronic relationships ; and it may be said that taken together, they therefore exhaust the inventory of all relationships constituting the "world" our language regards as possible. It is often remarked that there is such an affinity between narration and description that on occasion they are hard to distinguish: narration is the description of an action or change, and description mimes the action of relating items one to the other, and hence may have a narrative function. This solidarity of narration and description justifies their being grouped together as constituting the "topic" of literary discourse. But the function of "commentary," which correlates the text with a context, is to create a different type of relationship, in which makes the narrative/descriptive topic "meaningful." We are thus distinguishing "meaning" and "meaningfulness" on the grounds that "meaning" can be understood as the object of semantic analysis , whereas "meaningfulness" is the meaning bestowed on a set of relationships by an act of interpretation . This type of meaningfulness is what the moral of a La Fontaine fable most characteristically seeks to create. Thus, the two-line commentary segment in Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin: Ceci ressemble fort aux débats qu'ont parfoisLes petits souverains se rapportants aux rois1 designates the narrative/descriptive relationships established on the fable proper , designates the pragmatic context , but also specifies the analogy/homology between the two which makes the text meaningful . Meaningfulness in this sense is thus definable as the perception of a text/context relationship. · 1. "This greatly resembles the debates which petty sovereigns have when they refer to kings." [My translation] Ross Chambers, Marvin Felheim Distinguished University Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is the author of Gérard de Nerval et la poétique du voyage, La Comédie au château, L'Ange et l'automate, "Spirite" de Théophile Gautier, and Room for Maneuver: Reading Oppositional Narrative