Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary FormChallenging the view of epistolary narrative as a faulty precursor to the nineteenth century realist novel, Elizabeth MacArthur argues that the openness and flexibility that characterize correspondences, both real and fictional, reflect the preoccupations of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her readings of the Lettres portugaises, Mme du Deffand's correspondence with Horace Walpole, and Rousseau's La Nouvelle Hlose propose an alternative