The structuralist revolution, or more precisely the trend towards linguistic analysis of texts manifesting the so-called poetic function of language,' has immeasurably increased our understanding of the types of relationships, paradigmatic and syntagmatic, which constitute the "litterarite" of texts. But it has necessarily left out of account those relationships which, because they are hierarchical, do not so easily admit of contrastive analysis in terms of binary equivalences; these are the "interpreting relationships" which exist between a specific segment of discourse within a text and the text as a whole. Such, for example, is the role of a title, a "punch-line," or in certain cases an embedded segment which microstructurally mirrors the macrostructure. To treat such segments as defining an "isotopie de lecture" on the semantic plane, or as indexing a particular structure on the formal plane, is valuable, but it does not exhaust their significance, since one needs also to account for the situation of privilege which is thus accorded a specific semantic isotope or structural pattern over other, perhaps equally valid, modes of analysis or reading. Nor does this kind of analysis account in any specific way for the generalizing function of such items, that is, the impression they give the reader that they form a valid summary or synthesis of the text as a whole. The position with regard to the comparative reading of texts is also instructive. The most rigorous attempt to apply formal structural analysis on the Jakobson-Levin model to the comparison of texts is recorded in Jacques Geninasca's Une Analyse structurale des "Chimeres" de