SOURCE: Cogman, Peter W. M. “Cheating at Narrating: Back to Mérimée's ‘La Partie de trictrac’.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 26, nos. 1-2 (fall-winter 1997-1998): 80-90.

In the following essay, Cogman proposes a link between Mérimée's interest in storytelling and the tale “La Partie de trictrac.”

“La Partie de trictrac”¹ has presented problems for critics in that the two principal aspects of the story—the tale and its telling—do not seem at first obviously related. Perhaps for this reason it is, as Michel Crouzet notes, “un texte sacrifié, que l'on commente et apprécie fort peu” (1: 385). On the one hand there is the relatively simple and linear tale of a naval lieutenant, Roger, generous but impulsive and obsessed with honor, who wins a mistress, cheats once in a game of backgammon, and whose life is destroyed when the loser in the game commits suicide. This is...