The author takes stock of his preceding research into fiction novels during the Ancien Regime. He sketches a diachronic course centered around enunciation and held together by the narrator, the characters and the object of narration. He enumerates the options available to the so-called libertine writers to evade verbal indecency, he analyses the treatment of dialogue that adds a third dimension to the narrative, and allows a modulation of viewpoints in the relation between narrator and fictitious speakers. French text.