The Road from Decadence, from brothel to cloister

From a series of inductive analyses of the best-known French novels of the past century, this study develops a theory of the ways in which the notion of causation functions to bind together the threads of narrative. Unavoidably present in the language of novels, where every transitive verb implies it, causation at the level of the story is essentially the readers' creation, as they determine for themselves what causes specific story events and what motivates characters.