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Denis Diderot
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Jacques the Fatalist (Oxford World's Classics) 1st Edition

by Denis Diderot (Author), David Coward (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 43 ratings
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Jacques the Fatalist is a provocative exploration of the problems of human existence, destiny, and free will. In the introduction to this brilliant translation, David Coward explains the philosophical basis of Diderot's fascination with fate and examines the experimental and influential literary techniques that make Jacques the Fatalist a classic of the Enlightenment.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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  1. ISBN-10
    019953795X
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0199537952
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    August 31, 2009
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.6 x 5 x 0.8 inches
  8. Print length
    258 pages
  9. See all details
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From the Publisher

oxford world's classics, literature, novels, myths, celebrated writing
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Coward is Senior Fellow and Emeritus Professor of French Literature at the University of Leeds.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (August 31, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 258 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 019953795X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199537952
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1040L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.6 x 5 x 0.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 43 ratings

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Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot

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4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
43 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Wordsworth
5.0 out of 5 stars It's written on high
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2007
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It may be your destiny to read and adore the pithy wit of Diderot. At a time when the novel was new as a genre as a contemporary of Sterne and Richardson, Diderot confronts the religion and philosophy of his day entrenched in the idea that man's fate was written on a scroll on high and that man only acted out a bit part devoid of real choice in his slavery to destiny. Pre-destination did not sit well with Diderot and Jacques is the novelist in this "dog's breakfast" he has served up railing aginst his own genre to assert his humanity and freedom on his picaresque journey to nowhere. "Does anyone know where they're going?" certainly sounds like Beckett who lived in France and may well have read Diderot. Jacques is forced to conclude that people think they are in charge of their destiny when their destiny is in charge of them. What choice does the fatalist really have except to resign to his fate? Because life is a series of endless misunderstandings, it isn't easy to be captain of one's own soul. The epigrams are deliciously well phrased: "Virtue is an excellent thing. Both good people and wicked people speak highly of it." Or this: "I think there are some very odd things written up there on high." The wicked fable of the Sheath and the Knife is certainly memorable. Jacques is genuinely hilarious in many places and despite Diderot's scathing complaints of the early novel, he wrote wrote an enduring classic beloved because of its pure wit, audacity, irony and uncanny phrasing. I urge you to read this great early novel destined to foretell the promise bound to follow for the genre.
19 people found this helpful
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R. Williams
5.0 out of 5 stars Burning Read
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2001
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This book is amazing. It will make many of your conceptions of where things belong in the history of the novel fall apart. Not coincidentally, that is one of the points of this book, being an exercise more than a message: that all apparent armatures of order are one more perspective away from disintegration. This book is really quite sneaky as well. In the beginning, the constant references to the inscriptive certainties in the heavens seem silly. But then little explanations come along (like the geneology of Jacques' crazy horse), and the novel heads down a dark, yet very enchanting road, into a fuzz that's every bit as modern as any you've read. This thing alternately looks like Bunuel, Zola, Stendhal, Faulkner, Kerouac. The picaresque, the uncertain narrator, the structuralists, all seem to be swimming around in this amazing book.
Surely many writers and artists from this era (like Goya) depicted the nobles as effete and incapable of carrying out the governance of the most basic requirements of existence, but here, they also appear (in the image of the 'master') as so withdrawn from the world as to be blind. If you take away all the stories that are told, the only thing that's left of a plot here is the master having his horse stolen right from under his nose while Jacques was gone and then Jacques finding it for him at the end in a beautiful, mock sort of deus ex machina.
33 people found this helpful
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Matthias Goertz
5.0 out of 5 stars Diderot at his best....
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2021
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...and a great complement to 'The Nun', which Diderot himself said 'Jacques the Fatalist' complements. And it does. At one moment Diderot slips into the skin of a female figure, Suzanne, imprisoned by, well, her skin (as well as the cloister walls), at the next moment into that of a Cervantist, Shandyist male figure, Jacques, liberated by his faith in fate and his companionship with his Master. Goethe reportedly read Diderot's quasi-novel in a single session, and I can see why, though it took me two. A riveting read.
One person found this helpful
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Grampy
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2020
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This is a much-ignored classic that is full of wit and whimsy. It's a fine follow-up to Tristram Shandy.
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Grace Keiser
5.0 out of 5 stars Pricey but no complaints
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2018
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packaging was nice. The price was a bit much. I use thrift books for all of my book shopping and I can get hardcovers for 4$. I have no complaints.
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petewar
5.0 out of 5 stars the best
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2013
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can't go wrong with Didierot! good times. do yourself a favour.
bonus feature - this book is eminently portable and can be easily concealed.
One person found this helpful
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Gordon T. Osing
5.0 out of 5 stars dazzling fatalism
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2012
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Good service, excellent even, and the book is immensely entertaining. I am using parts of it for my own writing projects.
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ginsu
5.0 out of 5 stars very entertaining
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2007
THis book is awesome mix of "Don Quixote," "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy," and the "Colloquies of Erasmus." ... With a dash of Rabelais and Boccaccio for good measure.

In other words: playful bawdy post modern meta narrative where carnivalesque stories weave in and out of each other. Ive read a few things by Diderot and this is my fav so far.

I'm a big fan of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa - so its shocking to learn that it leans so heavily on Jacques. I found Jacques to be more entertaining than Sterne's work.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Kenneth Hunter
5.0 out of 5 stars A lucky discovery
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2023
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I heard about this text while reading 18th century literature. It is delightful and important as metafictional
fiction on the lines of Tristram Shandy. It also draws on Don Quixote. I strongly recommend it. Not to be missed. The Oxford World's Classics edition is near perfect. Go and get it.
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Big Gucci Kony
4.0 out of 5 stars Idk what to make of this book
Reviewed in Canada on February 3, 2022
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I love this books writing style just to know that it’s possible. The author keeps interrupting the story and can’t remember the story he’s telling at times. I love that now I know a book like this is even possible. The story itself is overall decent but nothing to rave about. I feel like the story has very little to do with fatalism, which was a bit of a bummer. I thought this book was about how Diderot balanced cause and effect with the seeming capacity to choose between what we draw our attention to, but it never actually comes up. Jacques is a fatalist but this itself is not really discussed. It’s a fun book if you’re in a French enlightenment mood but if you don’t read it you want have missed anything spectacular.
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Bibilofilia
4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent translation of an intriguing classic
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2011
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An excellent, esay-to-read translation of this 18th-century classic which, in fact, sets new trends for the novel with its reader interactivity.

Modern-day readers may find the constant authorial digressions a little wearing; our contemporary wish to "Get On With It" needs to be re-considered in the context of its time, when readers were of the leisured class and had many hours to fill.

Students of the evolution of the novel will enjoy noting the similarities and differences between this work and the other classic Master/Servant novel: Don Quixote.

To be read slowly and thus enjoyed.
7 people found this helpful
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H. Tee
3.0 out of 5 stars Quixote lite
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2012
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This is the second perhaps less well known novel by Diderot of `The Nun' fame. The novel appears in the list of top 100 World literature and was written in around 1770.

The book is the dialog and stories told by Jacques, a valet, and his master. It is based around the same period as it was written and includes many references to historic actual people (priests, thinkers etc). The thread of the story is Jacques and the master's first loves and how they meet the girls; Jacques as a wounded soldier and the master as a youth conned by a clever friend. There are some funny lines between the erudite and existential Jacques and his equally forthright colleague (and even one by the translotor in the references in the back). They are good friends.

It starts quite philosophically introducing the guys as they journey to the master's home; and then leans more to about 4 or 5 shortish, slightly bawdy, tales in the mode of the Decamaron linked by Jacques fatalism (and his learning from his esteemed Captain) and some booze. The pair, indeed with some textual references, are comparable to Don Quixote and Sancho. It is unlike Quixote in two respects, firstly not least being considerably shorter, there isn't really an extended story or arc. Secondly and most interestingly the author Diderot engages with the reader about how he might affect the story and characters and lead the reader's thinking - this can be quite weird if not modern feel but certainly entertaining.

Some quotes:
"All preachers want people to practise what they preach because we might find ourselves better off and they certainly will be"

"...you are depriving yourself of the most delightful of pleasures. In all honesty, the merit of being morally superior to me is not worth the sacrifice"

(on the subject of his praying sometimes) Jacques: I say `Thou who mad'st the Great Scroll, whatever Thou art, Thou whose finger hast traced the Writing Up Above, Thou hast known for all time what I needed,. Thy will be done. Amen'. Master: Don't you think you would do just as well if you shut up? Jacques: Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I pray on the off-chance

An interesting book reasonably placed in the class of Quixote or Cervantes' `Exemplary Stories', Pantagruel, Decameron and Bouvard & Pécuchet. If you go for erudite classics then definitely 4 stars but as a `general book' overall 3 stars.
5 people found this helpful
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