| Summary: | Creating a fictional foreign character (usually highly stereotyped) allows an author to use irony to demonstrate how he is detached from a country’s natives. Using the way in which Montesquieu goes about writing ‘Lettres Persanes’ (1721) as a starting point, we will look at the parallel narrative strategies used by P. Daninos during the contemporary movement in his five-book series, whose protagonist is Major Thompson (1954-2000). We will equally spend time focussing on the particular kind of redraft proposed by C. Djavann in ‘Comment peut-on être français?’ (2006). We will observe how the so-called naïveté, brought to light via the spontaneous comments made by foreigners who are discovering France, allows authors to put in place a polyphony which transmits light-hearted or grating irony. Yet the character, who is both paradoxical and changeable to the ironic enunciation, gives rise to a complex game of detachment with regard to the opinions of the foreigner and of the French native.
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