For citation:
Kirichenko V. V. The transfictional meta-character Jean-Baptiste Botul. Izvestiya of Saratov University. Philology. Journalism, 2026, vol. 26, iss. 2, pp. 200-209. DOI: 10.18500/1817-7115-2026-26-2-200-209, EDN: TLGGWX
The transfictional meta-character Jean-Baptiste Botul
This paper focuses on the figure of the fictional philosopher Jean-Baptiste Botul and his role in the discourse of contemporary French literature. To analyze this character, the work employs the concepts of transfictionality and meta-character. Botul was invented by the French satirical journalist Frédéric Pagès. His creation gained a widespread popularity among various figures in science and art, who continued to invent studies and works supposedly written by Botul. The figure of Botul is of significant interest from the perspective of literary theory, especially in the context of introducing such pseudo-real character into explicitly fictional works. For a closer examination of Botul, the article analyzes the novel La disparition de Perek by Hervé Le Tellier, in which this philosopher appears. Textual excerpts from the novel allow us to see Botul as a certain anomaly of the text, in which a non-existent philosopher is presented as an ordinary extratextual phenomenon, although such a person never existed in reality. It is concluded that the mentioning of Botul, being an artistic device in Le Tellier's novel, has a number of functions. It contributes not only to the complexity of the main character's motivation, but also to posing the question of fictional entities within a work of art. Botul serves as a kind of emotional and psychological support for the main character of the novel (Gabriel) in critical moments, helping him make decisions and verify their correctness. Thus, Botul is not only an ironic game with the reader, playing on the ephemerality of literary creation and the possibility of working with the "non-existent", but also an active technique used by the author to explain the behavior of the hero.
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