This article will examine the strategic use of the term ‘postérité’ in the process of authorial self-fashioning. It will explore how Bussy-Rabutin (1618-93), the disgraced and exiled maître de camp turned mémorialiste, used appeals to posterity to restore his reputation and obtain Louis XIV’s forgiveness. Bussy self-consciously deployed the idea of ‘postérité’ to affect his present circumstances: using the judgement of posterity as a weapon, Bussy hoped to persuade the King to act in the present, as the more Bussy praised Louis XIV, the worse the latter would appear to future readers if he did not reprieve Bussy’s sentence of exile. Bussy’s call to ‘postérité’ thus sets the power of the writer’s word against the actions of the monarch. His use of this concept further serves his literary reputation by promoting the agency of his own work alongside other potential forms of memorialization, in particular the institutional ‘immortalité’ conferred by membership of the Académie française. This very anticipation of future glory through textual means might secure Bussy’s reputation at the time of writing; but how effective is his rhetorical positioning of ‘postérité’ when — and if — it is encountered by the later readers it envisions?

中文翻译：

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Bussy-Rabutin对“Postérité”的定位

本文将探讨在作者自我塑造过程中“postérité”一词的战略使用。它将探索被耻辱和流放的女主人营的Bussy-Rabutin（1618-93）如何转变为纪念主义者，如何利用后代的吸引力来恢复他的声誉并获得路易十四的宽恕。Bussy自觉地运用“后事”的思想来影响他的现状：Busy用后代的判断作为武器，希望说服国王在当下行事，因为Bussy越是赞扬路易十四，后者就越糟。如果他不宽恕布西的流放刑期，那对将来的读者来说似乎会如此。Bussy对“postérité”的呼唤因此使作者的话语权与君主的行为背道而驰。他对这一概念的运用，通过促进他自己作品的代理以及其他潜在的纪念形式，尤其是由法国书院成员授予的机构“不朽”，进一步提高了他的文学声誉。通过文字手段对未来荣耀的这种非常期待可以确保Bussy在撰写本文时的声誉。但是当他设想的以后读者（如果有的话）遇到时，他对“后事”的修辞定位的效果如何？