Auctor et lector in fabula Representing the actors of a poetics in the Histoires brisées

Paul Valéry is extremely aware of the specific relationship between the opposite systems of the author or producer on the one hand, and its reader, spectator or consumer, on the other. The importance of the mise en abyme pattern in Histoires brisées reflects Valéry’s complex, and often equivocal, approach of the narrative genres. Many of the fictions in this series of unfinished “contes” depict the storyteller and his reader, showing their reciprocal links in various forms.