SOURCE: "Crébillon: Innovations in Points of View," in The Eighteenth-Century French Novel: Techniques of Illusion, second edition, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 125–43.

In the following essay, first published in 1965, Mylne assesses Crébillon's treatment of the memoir-novel, particularly Les Egarements.

It was after the memoir-novel had become established as the predominant form of French fiction that a fresh form, the letter-novel, came into vogue in the mid-eighteenth century. Crébillon fils is an exception to this general pattern. His first novel was the Letters de la Marquise de M*** au Comte de R***, published in 1732, and it was not until 1736 that he began publishing Les Egarements du cæur et de l'esprit, ou Mémoires de M. de Meilcour….

In his two editions of Les Egarements, Etiemble makes high claims for Crébillon, and maintains that he has been treated unfairly by generations of critics and teachers: L'Ecumoire...