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

by Denis Diderot (Author), David Coward (Translator)

14 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0199537952

ISBN-10: 019953795X

Why is ISBN important?

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Buy used On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

$8.45 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

Condition: Used - Like New

In Stock. Sold by allnewbooks

Condition: Used: Like New

Comment: BRAND NEW

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

16 Used from $8.45

+ $3.99 shipping

Turn on 1-Click ordering

Buy new On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

$12.44 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Want it Thursday, Dec. 31? Order within and choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

List Price: $13.95 Save: $1.51 (11%)

25 New from $5.50

FREE Shipping on orders over $35.

Turn on 1-Click ordering

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

More Buying Choices

25 New from $5.50 16 Used from $8.45

41 used & new from $5.50

See All Buying Options

Free%20Two-Day%20Shipping%20for%20College%20Students%20with%20Amazon%20Student

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.

Jacques the Fatalist (Oxford World's Classics)

$12.44 FREE Shipping on orders over $35. In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Denis Diderot

13

Paperback
$12.44
Virginia Woolf

361

Paperback
$10.90
Rabindranath Tagore

10

Paperback
$11.76
Saint Augustine

404

Paperback
$6.57
Madame de Lafayette

35

Paperback
$12.25
Laurence Sterne

22

Paperback
$10.33

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Series: Oxford World's Classics
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; 1 edition (August 31, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 019953795X
ISBN-13: 978-0199537952
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 0.5 x 5 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #139 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > European > French
- #1692 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Literature
- #2903 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars

5 star		93%
4 star		0%
3 star		0%
2 star		7%
1 star		0%

See all 14 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful

An interactive literary device

By Guillermo Maynez on January 6, 2003

Format: Paperback

Two centuries or so before "modern" writers began writing experimental novels, Denis Diderot, the force behind the Encyclopaedia effort, wrote this strange and indeed very "modern" novel in which the author leads a conversation with the reader, asking him where he (or she, of course) would want to go and what to do with the characters and the story. Here we see the author in the very process of creation, exposing his doubts, exploring his options, and playing with the story.
There is really no plot as such. Jacques, a man who seems to believe everything that happens is already written "up on high", but who nonetheless keeps making decisions for himself, is riding through France with his unnamed master, a man who is skeptic of Jacques's determinism but who remains rather passive throughout the book. Fate and the creator-author will put repeatedly to test Jacques's theory, through a series of more or less fortunate accidents and situations, as well as by way of numerous asides in the form of subplots or stories.
The novel is totally disjointed and these asides and subplots blurb all over the place, always interrupted themselves by other happenings. The most interesting of them is the story of Madame de Pommeroy and her bitter but ultimately ineffectual revenge on her ex-lover.
Diderot confesses to having taken much from Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and Cervantes's "Don Quixote". This last novel's influence seems obvious at two levels: Cervantes also talks to the reader, especially in Part Two, and also reflects abundantly on the creative process.Read more ›

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful

Burning Read

By R. Williams VINE VOICE on December 28, 2001

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

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.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

The most relevant Enlightenment work for our times

By A Customer on September 15, 1999

Format: Paperback

Jacques is, in terms of subject matter and narrative voice, the most modern work to come from the Enlightenment. It is a hilarious and thoughtful work from an author who found the acceptance of current literary traditions generally ridiculous. Diderot is amazingly adept at building up ominous situations which unnaturally trigger the reader's foreshadowing sensors, only to destroy all of one's expectations, laughingly, with a hammer. Truly a great work, full of wonderful philosophy and revolutionary expression.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

Buried Treasure

By P. Hines on May 28, 2002

Format: Paperback

Yeah. Believe all the reviews below. This book really is amazing. It would feel like it was written yesterday, if it was more derivative -- but it's fresh! The language is incisive, no waste, and the pacing and structure are brilliantly fluid. It's smart and funny, too, and completely unpredictable, filled with weird offhand bursts of bewildering narrativity. And yet balanced, apparently sane. I truly enjoyed reading it. It's great.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful

Audacious and very funny.

By darragh o'donoghue on October 11, 2000

Format: Paperback

Anyone who thrilled at Calvino's 'If on a winter's night a traveller...', but despaired at ever finding another book like it (uniqueness DOES have its price), need fear no longer. 'Jacques', acknowledged by Calvino himself as a major influence, is one of the great precursors of post-modern literature. Like 'If on', the book is crammed with stories unfinished or interrupted by digressions, accidents, more interesting stories. Whereas the 19th centruy novelist generally talked down to his audience and explained everything, Diderot gives his reader a lot of freedom, and one of the dialogues of this book, a la Calvino, is between author and reader. Each story, incomplete or no, is a masterpiece of narrative (cinephiles might recognise the story of Madame de la Pommeraye as the basis of Robert Bresson's 'Les Dames du bois du Boulogne'); the formal experimentation does not mean blindness to a panorama of 18th century society - soldiers, peasants, thieves, innkeepers, aristocrats, prostitutes - and place (country, city, foreign climes) in a France on the cusp of Revolution.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See all 14 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Five Stars

More entertaining, IMO, than similar philosophers, without sacrificing profundity. Equally valuable as a narrative and an allegory.

Published 7 months ago by Kellen Frank

Storytelling at its best

Jacques the Fatalist is a delightful and surprising story about the art of storytelling itself. There is no plot. Read more

Published 21 months ago by Steven Davis

the best

can't go wrong with Didierot! good times. do yourself a favour.
bonus feature - this book is eminently portable and can be easily concealed.

Published on July 2, 2013 by petewar

Satisfied Customer

Satisfied Customer Item was as described instant download was convenient fast shipper I received item quickly. I would order again if I needed something similar.

Published on February 6, 2013 by Karen L. Kelly

Ponderous

"Jacques the Fatalist and His Master," by Denis Diderot (1713-1784), is often mentioned in the (short) list of First Modern Novels. Read more

Published on January 3, 2013 by David Island

dazzling fatalism

Good service, excellent even, and the book is immensely entertaining. I am using parts of it for my own writing projects.

Published on August 14, 2012 by Gordon T. Osing

very entertaining

THis book is awesome mix of "Don Quixote," "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy," and the "Colloquies of Erasmus." ... Read more

Published on July 31, 2007 by ginsu

It's written on high

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... Read more

Published on March 20, 2007 by Wordsworth

A Work of the Enlightenment

Similar to Voltaire's "Candide", this book examines the exploits of the Spinozan Jacques, and his adventures in a world he considers predetermined. Read more

Published on July 10, 2001

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more