Introduction

Abstract

The term light, when applied to literature, is something we all intuitively understand. Everybody knows a light read when they see one, and we all know what to expect from such narratives. This is the kind of literature we associate with pleasure and ease—the kind of literature that requires a minimal degree of effort to read and does whatever it takes to keep us turning the pages. The quality of lightness, in other words, is what distinguishes Ian Fleming from Henry James, Papillon from Nietzsche. But what, precisely, does this term signify? What do we actually mean when we describe a work of literature as light? What are the defining characteristics of this quality, and what are some of the key strategies by which the effect of lightness is achieved? In what follows, I shall be working backward from the adjective to the substantive, attempting to gain a better understanding of the structural features underlying this literary-aesthetic quality.¹ My discussion of the subject will be deliberately wide-ranging and eclectic—covering four different centuries and five different countries. In each case, I shall be focusing on a particular “type” of lightness, whether it be the refined triviality of Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book, the ludic tendencies of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, or the “exhilarating and primitive vitality” (Calvino, “Candide” 103) of Voltaire’s Candide.