Foreigners on foreign soil Etrangisation as critical device in eighteenth-century France

In the 18th century, the narrative process of defamiliarization as conceived by Victor Shklovsky in his theories becomes the literary strategy that many French writers use to hide behind the words of the characters of their works. In this sense, the journey of foreigners to Europe – or the testimonies of these - that these writings describe constitutes the background of a virulent criticism of the mores of Western societies of the period.