Bagatelle (literary technique)

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A bagatelle is a literary technique used in fiction. The author empowers a character or object beyond natural or expected abilities (i.e. of comprehension, awareness, memory, etc.) so that it may carry a point across to the reader more transparently. A bagatelle creates a more direct communication between author and reader than common in fiction.

[edit] Example

Jostein Gaarder, the Norwegian author of the popular summary of Western philosophical history Sophie's World (English: Berkley, New York, 1996), uses the tool openly and humorously in that work. In Sophie's World, Sophie Amundsen, a young girl being tutored in philosophy who later finds out that they are themselves characters in a work of fiction, asks her instructor Alberto Knox how he remembers some of the extremely lengthy and esoteric information that he seems to be able to recall without any hesitation or error. Alberto replies "A bagatelle, my dear," on a number of occasions.