Introducing Trace as an Embodied Approach to the Novel in English

Trace is a versatile concept with a wide spectrum of applications beyond detective fiction. Indeed, trace offers a key for gauging novel reading experiences. The collected articles exemplify that the qualities of trace, as conceptualised by Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, help to unfold the relation of embodiment and the novel. The essays examine the manner in which trace inside the novel cues readers to mimetic effects. In the light of the recent debates about critique and postcritique, the introduction elucidates the less well-known rootedness of Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation in the phenomenology of the lived body and locates the concept of trace therein.