Speculum amantis, speculum artis: The Seduction of Mademoiselle de Maupin

Mademoiselle de Maupin is explored as a text that, through a multiplicity of signs containing two isotopes – sexual and artistic – dissimulates an æsthetic message within an erotic one. The problematical narrative focus, with its apparent abnegation of authority, seduces the reader into accepting a deeper level of authority, one provided by the figural and narrational embeddings. By making the characters and their actions allegories of the fictional act itself, and by mirroring the act of reading, the novel provides an exemplary text for a theory of narrative as seduction. (RHL)