Making worlds move: re-ranking contextual parameters in Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit

Abstract

Negotiating the loan of a car by a friend and writing a novel may appear to be very different linguistic activities, but both may call on participants to construct a set of contextual parameters for interaction which re-rank existing social and cultural parameters. Drawing on and developing particular aspects of Werth's cognitive work on text worlds (1999) and Fludernik's account of the schemata we bring to bear in processing narratives (1996), this article considers how interpersonal parameters are constructed in reading and their relationship to generic schemata. It then examines how two novels, Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1951 [1857]) and Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit (1980 [1932]), rework the parameters of the relationship between author and audience through moves which resemble patterns of negotiation described in pragmatic accounts of conversational interactions.