This paper concerns the analysis of several case studies regarding the rewriting of a late eighteenth-century French novel, Paul et Virginie (1788) by Bernardin de Saint Pierre. In introducing the methodological approach that has been selected, the author points out that rather than favouring a rigid definition of the term rewriting, she has preferred a more flexible demarcation in this practice of textual transformation, the general fuzziness of which is still one of its general characteristics. The interferences in the hypertextual cases of rewriting, including for example translation, pastiche, transformation and parody have in fact caused considerable confusion. In the conclusion, the author sets out to illustrate the state of her research, and to establish a different point of view that from translation extends to the rewriting of literary tradition through its manipulation.