Renart the fox, D'Artagnan the musketeer, ambitious young men like Rastignac or Julien Sorel are usually described in France as universal types and yet they strike the foreign observer as typically French. Conversely, who could say that Huck Finn, Sister Carrie, Joe Christmas or Frederick Henry are anything but American, though their stories have been read and made emblematic of the human fate in numerous foreign countries? There seem to exist subliminal signals which give readers at home the shock of recognition, and also denote the foreignness of a character when seen from distant shores.