From the "Persian Letters" to Montesquieu’s "True Story": Reiteration or Literary Evolution?

Abstract

The immense success of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) paradoxically overshadowed all his subsequent fictional productions. Such was the fate of his True Story, an orientalising tale that was not published until the end of the nineteenth century, long after his death. The present study aims to show the originality of this work by Montesquieu, in which the author draws on both Lucian’s ancient True Story from the second century and borrows the theme of reincarnation from Thomas-Simon Guelette’s Marvelous Adventures of the Mandarin Fun-Hoam (1723). The aim is also to discover the debt it undoubtedly owes to the picaresque novel, which was very fashionable at the time, and to prove to what extent it prefigures the philosophical tale practiced by Voltaire. Montesquieu’s True Story is a highly original and innovative literary work, which fully deserves to emerge, at last, from the shadow of the Persian Letters.