Withheld secrets in realist narrative serve as preparation rather than resolution

Evidence

The point to be made about this whole initial narrative movement­ the operation of what Barthes somewhat improperly calls the “her­ meneutic code” of a play of appearance and reality and a search for withheld secrets-is that, itself a preparation for the principal narra­ tive, it is never fully resolved: the revelation of the sexual secret does not, in other words, spell a conclusion to the comedy, as it would in Boccaccio or in the Contes drolatiques, but is a means to a more 1 50 P O L I T I CA L U N C O N S C I O U S unexpected end. — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 3846

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Barthes’ ‘hermeneutic code’ as a play of appearance/reality and withheld secrets.