Not so very long ago, a chapter like this in a history of French literature would probably have been called ‘The seventeenth-century novel’, or ‘Seventeenth-century prose fiction’. It would have doubtless discussed the major variants of narrative fiction in chronological order, beginning with the pastoral and heroic romances of the first half of the century, moving through the comic novels of Sorel, Scarron, and Furetière, the proto-realist novellas of Segrais and Saint-Réal, as well as the early experiments with the epistolary novel (notably Guilleragues's Les Lettres portugaises, 1669), before giving pride of place to the single undisputed masterpiece of the century, Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678). For those readers wishing such an overview, they could do much worse than to turn to Henri Coulet's admirable survey, which more than forty years on still stands as one of the most succinct and subtle tableaux of the variants and changes in French narrative fiction over the course of the ancien régime.

As indicated by its broader title, this chapter hopes to accomplish something slightly different. While clearly the novel must remain an important part of the seventeenth-century literary landscape, a renewed critical interest in other, formerly minor, genres has moved the emphasis away from narrative fiction to the more general category of prose narrative. At this point, one may well be struck with a M. Jourdainesque astonishment – Quoi! … tout ce qui n'est point vers?