FRENCH 17

AYRES-BENNETT, WENDY. “Presenting Grammar to a Non-Specialist Audience: Vaugelas’s Use of Metaphors in his Remarques sur la langue françoise (1647).” SCFS, 31.1 (2009), 36—45.

Examines a number of functions which metaphors, taken from a wide range of domains, can be seen to play in Vaugelas’s text, focusing particularly on “the extent to which they are part of a deliberate strategy to present the key ideas and arguments of the work to a non-specialist readership in an accessible way.”

CARON, PHILIPPE. “Pouvons-nous reconstituer la diction haute du français vers 1700? A propos du Bourgeois Gentilhomme en DVD.” SCFS, 30.2 (2008), 182—195.

Focuses on four areas in order to answer the question posed in the title, namely: “l’oralisation des marques de pluriel à la pause, le timbre vocalique et l’oralisation de la vibrante dans les infinitifs du premier groupe à la pause, la nature des nasales et leur articulation et enfin la prononciation exacte du schwa.”

COMBETTES, BERNARD and ANNIE KUYUMCUYAN. “Comme dans les comparaisons d’égalité: la corrélation aussi/autant. . .comme jusqu’à l’époque classique.” LF 159 (2008), 16—32.

Focusing on the 16th and 17th centuries, examines the evolution of comparative expressions using “comme” and the fact that it seems to have several uses and interpretations, whereas expressions with “que” are less ambiguous.

CONSIDINE, JOHN. Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the making of heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Review: A. Smyth in TLS 5543 (June 26 2009): 32. Covers “dictionaries, and texts related to dictionaries, of Latin, Greek, and Germanic and Romance languages.” Preoccupation with the “relationship between lexicography and heritage” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reviewer praises author for reading dictionaries as “heroic works of the imagination” and says the book “is shot through with a love for its subject, and brings to critical prominence a cast of brilliant individuals.”

DELAPLACE, DENIS, ed. La Vie genereuse des Mercelots, Gueuz, et Boesmiens. Textes de la Renaissance 133. Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: E. Benson in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 895—896: Although modern editions of this “anonymous account of a youth’s induction into an elaborately organized underworld of landless vagabonds” have been published, including Roger Chartier’s, D.’s edition is noteworthy for providing “a scrupulously accurate edition of the 1596 editio princeps, with variants and extensive critical apparatus and commentary” (896). Important for its linguistic and socio-historical perspectives.

DENIS, DELPHINE,dir. L’obscurité. Langage et herméneutique sous l’Ancien Régime. Louvain-la-Neuve, Bruylant-Academia, coll. “Au cœur du texte,” 2007.

Review: B. Papasogli in S Fr 155 (2008): 446—447. Focus of this collection of some eighteen essays is the Grand Siècle and obscurity seen in contrast to “la clarté française.” Sections are devoted to theory, “Mystères sacrés,” “La confusion des signes,” and “Illustrer et commenter.” These Acts of a seminar directed by D. in Sorbonne (2004—2006) are praiseworthy in ambition of scope, quality of methodology and analysis.

EZELL, MARGARET J. M. “The Laughing Tortoise: Speculations on Manuscript Sources and Women’s Book History.” ELR 38.2 (2008): 331—355.

Masterful article challenges us “to revisit the nature of the significance of manuscript studies for those working with early modern women writers in the context of the expansion of a new literary historical field, the history of the book” (333). E. points to several excellent monographs of women’s participation in the print trade, but deplores the lack of attention to mansucript volumes which can offer valuable insights into gender, culture, authorship and the role of the reader (336). Includes a detailed case study of the recently rediscovered manuscript volume of poetry and romance by Hester Pulter (1640s—1660s).

FRANCOEUR, ALINE. “Portrait d’un dictionnaire révolutionnaire: le New Dictionary French and English de Guy Miège.” SCFS, 30.2 (2008), 154—169.

Focuses on two main questions: “En quoi les dictionnaires de Cotgrave et de Miège se distinguent-ils quant au lexique qu’ils répertorient?” and “Dans quelle mesure le New Dictionary reflète-t-il les principes de la doctrine puriste prônée par Malherbe et ses continuateurs?”

JOSTOCK, INGEBORG. La Censure négociée: Le contrôle du livre à Genève 1560—1625. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 430. Geneva: Droz, 2007.

Review: R.M. Kingdon in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 582—583. “Meticulous and thoughtful,” J.’s study is judged “a major contribution to . . . the history of printing and of censorship in Geneva” (582—683). Censorship is found to be “a process, a result of negotiation among the interested parties [governmental, ecclesiastical, authors, printers and publishers]” (582). Chronological analysis, index, appendix and bibliography.

OST, FRANÇOIS. La démocratisation de la langue. Paris: Michalon, 2008.

Review: J. Le Goff in Esprit (juillet 2009), 233—34: “‘Les affaires et les querelles de dictionnaires ne sont jamais insignifiantes ni banales’: rien ne l’illustre mieux que l’histoire mouvementée, fin XVIIe siècle, du Dictionnaire universel d’Antoine Furetière, œuvre à success, éditée à La Haye en 1690.” L’auteur fait “redécouvrir l’étonnante modernité d’un auteur exposé à l’oubli.”

RODAUT, FRANÇOIS, éd. Jean (c. 1525—1570) et Josias (c. 1560—1626) Mercier. L’amour de la philologie à la Renaissance et au début de l’âge classique. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006.

Review: M. Engammare in BHR 71.2 (2009), 403—05: Actes d’un colloque tenu à Uzès (2—3 mars 2001) qui portent attention sur l’œuvre des Mercier père et fils.

TRUE, MICAH. “Maistre et Escolier: Amerindian Languages and Seventeenth-Century French Missionary Politics in the Jesuit Relations from New France.” SCFS, 31.1 (2009), 59—70.

Article examines “how seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries in the colony used Amerindian languages as an exclusionary principle to grant themselves access to New France’s spiritual riches in the pages of the published Jesuit Relations while simultaneously locking out potential rivals.”

ASSAF, FRANCIS. “L’Hiver de 1709.” CdDS 12.2 (2009): 1—29.

Assaf examines different reactions to the winter calamities, which affected not only France but most of Europe in 1709. Particular emphasis is placed on testimonies by Voltaire and Saint-Simon. The latter, in particular, harshly criticized the egotism and malpractices that went hand in hand with the devastating economic breakdown. The tragic consequences of the winter storms also serve Saint-Simon to criticize political mischief, i.e., the royal fiscal policy. This essay then discusses in great length the international dimension of the damages done by the cold winter.

BALVAY, ARNAUD. L’épée et la plume. Amérindiens et soldats des troupes de la marine en Louisiane et au Pays d’en Haut (1683—1763). Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006.

Review : J. A. Dickinson in UTQ, 78.1 (Winter 2009), 624—627 : “Ce livre s’intéresse aux forts, aussi bien dans les Pays d’en Haut qu’en Louisiane à l’époque du déploiement des troupes de la marine par l’administration coloniale française, soit une période relativement courte de 1683 à 1760. [. . .] Le livre se divise en trois parties : la politique impériale française et le rôle des forts dans le maintien des alliances avec les autochtones ; la manière d’aborder l’altérité et de tisser des liens par la guerre, la diplomatie et le métissage ; enfin, la société des forts. [. . .] En fin de compte, ce travail déçoit et le questionnement initial. . . n’est que partiellement démontré. Il y a trop de digressions ‘hors sujet’. . . On regrette aussi que l’approche ne soit pas systématique et précise. . .Le résultat est peu convaincant. . .”

BARIDON, MICHEL. A history of the gardens of Versailles. trans. Adrienne Mason. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Review: A. Widder in CHOICE 46 (2009), 1300—01: A scholarly history of the gardens from Louis XIV to Louis XVI, based on original sources. “The approach is chronological and emphasizes the political, intellectual, artistic, and scientific ideas behind the park’s developments” (1300). Provides little information on specific plants, etc., in the gardens. Reviewer laments the book’s minimal illustrations but recommends the work overall. The review itself contains useful bibliographic supplements to Baridon’s work.

BECKER, KARIN etOLIVIER LEPLATRE,dir. Ecritures du repas. Fragments d’un discours gastronomique. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007.

Review: G. Bosco in S Fr 155 (2008): 506—507. Organized as a voyage through European culture “des mots et des mets,” B. and L.’s edited collection focuses on both “littérature pragmatique” and “belles-lettres.” After a multidimensional theoretical section, the essays follow a chronological order from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. 17th C scholars will appreciate Jean-Pierre Landry’s textual analysis of Molière’s first and last comedies and Marine Ricord’s examination of nourishment, literal and metaphorical, in Mme de Sévigné.

BETTENCOURT, FRANCISCO and FLORIKE EGMOND, eds. Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400—1700. Cambridge: CUP, 2007.

Review: J. Papy in RBPH 86.2 (2008), 521—523: “A third volume, resulting from a prestigious research programme sponsored by the European Science Foundation, Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400—1700, has but rightly been devoted to the central importance of epistolary exchange as a means of cultural exchange. Article by Peter Mason “endeavoured to combine the reading of Nicolas Poussin’s painting Israelites Gathering the Manna and his letter to Paul Fréart de Chantelou (dated April 1639). In a similar line of thought Mason analyses Poussin’s last, yet never completed Apollo and Daphne (1665): in an amazing way letter writing and painting went hand in hand again.”

BIGLIAZZI, SILVIA and SHARON WOOD, eds. Collaboration in the Arts from the Middle Ages to the Present. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 44.1 (2008): 91. “Collaboration” is illustrated both positively and negatively in this rich and wide-ranging collection of studies which also serves as a “useful reminder about the alleged indeterminacy of meanings and the positive weight of critical collaborations to combat political correctness” (91).

BIRBERICK, ANNE L. and RUSSELL GANIM, eds. Modern Perspectives on the Early Modern: Temps recherché, temps retrouvé. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press (EMF: Studies in Early Modern France, 10), 2005.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 44.1 (2008): 94. Praiseworthy for its ambition along with its coherence and high quality, this edition of nine essays explores theory, influence, representation, rhetoric—in sum, “different facets of a wide-ranging topic, namely reflections on the Renaissance and seventeenth-century culture in modern (and post-modern) literature, art and critical thinking” (94). A bibliography accompanies each article and there is an index to the whole.

BJØRNSTAD, HALL. “ « Plus d’éclaircissement touchant la grande galerie de Versailles » : du nouveau sur les inscriptions latines.” DSS 243 (2009), 321—343.

In light of the recent restoration work at Versailles, the author revisits the reading and interpretation of the Latin inscriptions found in the Galerie des Glaces.

BRAUN, GUIDO and SUSANNE LACHENICHT, eds. Hugenotten und deutsche Territorialstaaten. Immigrationspolitik und Integrationsprozesse. Les États allemands et les huguenots. Politique d’immigration et processus d’intégration. Pariser Historische Studien, Bd. 82. München: Oldenbourg, 2007.

Review: P. Fuchs in HZ 286.3 (2008): 724—726. This collection of 8 French and 7 German essays results from the October 7, 2005 Colloque which took place at the German Historical Institute in Paris. Concentrating on the plight of the Huguenots who fled France after Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and focusing on the German states and the process of integration, the essays take up subjects such as linguistic acculturation, identity, mémoires of the refugees, and the Huguenots as artisans of the Enlightenment. Myriam Yardeni, “die grande dame der Hugenotten Forschung” (12) is responsible for the summing up of the volume’s contributions.

BRAZEAU, BRIAN. “Nos Ancêtres les Américains: Myth and Origins in Early New France.” CdDS 12.1 (2008): 1—15.

The article centers its discussion on the important question of francisation, leading to a reflection on what the term “français” implied. The author is particularly interested in the type of francisation before official policy, and he analyzes seventeenth-century reflections on identity through the work of Marc Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. He concludes that Lescarbot’s France finds itself transformed by the writer’s attempted francisation of America.

BREEN, MICHAEL P. Law, City, and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon. Rochester, NY: U of Rochester P, 2007.

Review: O. Ranum in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 559—561. Acclaimed as “the first really successful political-culture study known to this reviewer,” B.’s synthesis is well-documented by manuscript and printed sources and demonstrates “a thoughtful understanding of recent work” on the subject (559). B.’s discerning examination involves qualities or themes such as “self, honor, and dignity,” “social relations,” “secular civic consciousness,” “corporations,” “attitudes toward the political,” the late 17th C “intellectually-rich legal culture,” and “symbol-laden detail” such as the arches and inscriptions of entrées (560—561). The astute, erudite reviewer offers a few questions for future study and further refinement of the subject.

BRIGGS, ROBIN. The Witches of Lorraine. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.

Review: J. Black in JES 38 (2008): 321—22. An “important and scholarly study of early modern European witchcraft.” Records of trials offer opportunity to penetrate the world of villagers, who talk more about the routine aspects of their lives in witchcraft cases than about the supposed crime. The book places less emphasis on persecution of witches than on witchcraft as a “regular part of social relations.” Even in Lorraine, where persecution was intense, most people dealt with witchcraft by informal means, such as “religious rituals, counter-magic, local negotiations, and personal violence.” An important book for scholars of witchcraft, of the Reformation and of the Counter-Reformation.

Review: S. Clark in TLS 5503 (Sept 19, 2008): 24—25. Briggs has used the Ducal archives at Nancy to reinsert “the figure of the witch into the dynamics of small peasant and farming communities and their often murderous relationships and rivalries.” Trial records show that responsibility for alleged acts of witchcraft was “a matter of inference rather than a specific assertion.” Witnesses therefore offered “detailed accounts of the often subtle inflections in their relationships and interactions with their neighbours, sometimes stretching back many years.” Accusations depended on interpreting nuances of speech, and “Language is at the heart of Briggs’s analysis.” The extent to which witches were “managed,” as part of the fabric of village life, rather than persecuted is striking. Reviewer praises companion website, which offers English summaries of nearly 400 witch trials from Lorraine and lengthy excerpts in French from those transcripts.

BURGUIÈRE, ANDRÉ. L’École des Annales. Une histoire intellectuelle. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006.

Review: O.G. Oexle in HZ 286.2 (2008): 435—436. Welcome monograph by the “Directeur d’études an der ‘École des hautes études en sciences sociales’” (435). This concise and fluid volume examines France’s identity and cultural value as well as the country’s history and the science of history from Annales perspectives. Overarching theme is the development from the 1930s history of mentalities to the 1970s and 1980s anthropological “era.” Although the reviewer says nothing specific about the 17th C, specialists will want to be aware of this important study.

BURKE, PETER. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Third edition. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: E. Scott-Baumann in TLS 5553 (Sept 4 2009): 27. In a new introduction, Burke defends his original approach and explores the problems posed by the key words popular and culture. “Burke’s is still an erudite and stimulating guide to pre-industrial European culture after thirty years of lively work in the field.”

CALABI, DONATELLA and STEPHEN TURK CHRISTENSEN, eds. Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400—1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.

Review: E. Dursteler in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 947—950: Multifaceted volume addresses both conceptual issues and representative case studies. Europe and the Mediterranean are the geographical focus of the authors as they examine “spaces and structures of cultural exchange” (948) along with the place of foreigners in cities.

CAMPBELL, THOMAS P., ed. Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.

Review: J. C. Smith in Ren Q 61.3 (2008), 980—981. Highly praiseworthy collection edited by the present director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art includes articles on Parisian workshops of the first half of the 17th C and on the Gobelins weavers and royal workshops at Beauvais during Louis XIV’s reign. This catalogue of the exhibit Tapestry in the Baroque (New York and Madrid) is judged “stellar” and is geographically wide-ranging, embracing production and marketing in Brussels, Antwerp, London and Rome, among other important cities. In addition to “his knowledgeable contributors,” C. himself offers several essays of his own. Remarkable color plates.

CHARBONNEAU, FRÉDÉRIC. “ « Un si prodigieux amas de bienfaits tourné en poison » : félonie et démesure dans les Mémoires de Saint-Simon.” EF 45.2 (2009), 99—111.

Describes how the memorialist Saint-Simon used his writings as he tirelessly fought to have the rank of “prince étranger” abolished and the Bouillons put in what he perceived to be their rightful place.

CLARKE, DESMOND M. Descartes’s Theory of Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.

Review: Jorge Secada in PhQ 59 (April 2009), 359—362. Reviewed along with Clarke’s biography of Descartes. Secada notes that the books contain “much important material,” although he takes issue with a few of Clarke’s interpretations, which run afoul of historical context and at times Descartes’s own arguments.

CORNETTE, JOËL. Histoire de la Bretagne et des Bretons. Tome I. Des âges obscurs au règne de Louis XIV. Tome II. Des Lumières au XXIe siècle. Paris : Seuil, 2005.

Review : J.-M. Le Gal in QL 983 (du 1er au 15 janvier 2009), 22—23 : “L’organisation de cet exposé chronologique, proposant sur une aussi large perspective historique une récapitulation systématique des connaissances, s’appuie sur un mode spécifique d’investigation. En effet, en complément d’apports allant de l’archéologie à la linguistique et à côté des donnés relevant de l’histoire structurelle, il est fait bonne place à une source souvent reléguée au second plan par les historiens : les écrits de contemporains de l’action offrant l’éclairage d’un regard personnel et unique, ces documents privilégiés qui viennent ainsi ‘en contrepoint d’une histoire à dominante nécessairement événementielle.’” Le critique signale le témoignage de documents exceptionnels comme pour le XVIIe siècle, “l’étonnante Correspondance du marquis et de la marquise de La Moussaye (1619—1663).”

COWART, GEORGIA. The triumph of pleasure: Louis XIV and the politics of spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Review: V. Vaughan in CHOICE 47 (2009), 309—10. Discusses different phases of monarchal influence over opera-ballets. Progresses logically from Louis’ better-known moments of involvement to lesser-known instances during strained moments late in his reign. Also addresses the political nature of burlesque, self-referential satire, the shifting role of Italy and adaptations of the myth of Cythera. Recommended.

DEKONINCK, RALPH and AGNÈS GUIDERDONI-BRUSLÉ, eds. Emblemata sacra: Rhétorique et herméneutique du discours sacré dans la littérature en images. Imago Figurata Studies 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.

Review: A. Saunders in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 963—964: Judged “substantial” and “impressive” as the collection opens up “the broader spiritual context in which emblematic religious writings should be situated” (964). One of two important publications that have resulted from the 2005 conference on the topic at the Université Catholique de Louvain. Focus is on French works from the 17th C and Catholic spirituality; “discours sacré” includes both texts and images. The collection is organized into seven sections: “Questions d’histoire et de méthodes,” “Exégèse de l’Ecriture et de la Création,” “L’image in absentia,” “Rhétorique et poétique de l’image,” “Le spectacle de l’image,” “La circulation des images entre sensibilités religieuses,” and “L’efficace de l’image.” The essays are rich and varied, treating both well- and little-known subjects. Reviewer, who herself is a renowned specialist in the domain, regrets nevertheless the paucity of illustrations and lack of a bibliography.

DEMERS, PAUL A. “The French Colonial Legacy of the Canada-United States Border in Eastern North America, 1650—1783.” French Colonial History 10 (2009), 35—54.

Analyzes the territory disputes in the Northeast Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries, along with the process of border formation.

DIMLER, G. RICHARD. Studies in the Jesuit Emblem. AMS Studies in the Emblem 18. Brooklyn: AMS Press, 2007.

Review: W Melion in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 584—586. Welcome volume “bears witness to this scholar’s foundational contributions to the field of emblematics” (586). Rhetorical form and function are the focus of these essays “selected from D.’s extensive writings on emblematic theory and practice” (584). Praiseworthy introduction provides “a comprehensive overview of scholarship on the Jesuit emblem” (585). Particularly impressive are chapters on Jakob Masen’s theory of the figurative image which although privileging the visual demonstrate the power of the symbolic as regards persuasion.

DOUSSET, CHRISTINE. “Femmes et héritage en France au XVIIe siècle.” DSS 244 (2009), 477—491.

The author provides a detailed historical analysis of the judicial status of women during the 17th C, concluding that “[l]a diversité juridique, les différences sociales, l’hétérogénéité des pratiques familiales dessinent dans la France du XVIIe siècle un paysage infiniment varié. La place des femmes dans les systèmes successoraux n’y apparaît pas de manière univoque et garde, dans l’état actuel des connaissances, de larges parts d’ombre. Face aux hommes, elles ne sont jamais totalement exclues de l’accès à la propriété ni des processus de transmission, mais elles restent très majoritairement sans doute à une place secondaire.”

EGMOND, FLORIKE and FRANCISCO BETHENCOURT, eds. Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400—1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.

Review: E. Dursteler in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 947—950: Praiseworthy demonstration of a “much denser network of communications involving many smaller centers” than previous research had uncovered (948). Enlarges our understanding of communication, showing the engagement not only of the literate, political and the artistic, but also of the non-literary, even illiterate population.

EMICH, BIRGIT. Geschichte der Frühen Neuzeit studieren. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2006.

Review: S. Benz in HZ 286.2 (2008): 478—480. Wide-ranging volume is conceived particularly for students and is a helpful compendium of the “long” Renaissance. Praised for its lucid presentation of historical scholarship, complete with microhistory and discourse analysis, among others.

ERBEN, DIETRICH. Paris und Rom. Die staatlich gelenkten Kunstbeziehungen unter Ludwig XIV. Studien aus dem Warburg-Haus, Bd. 9. Berlin: Akademie, 2004.

Review: M. Hesse in HZ 286.3 (2008): 729—730. Although H. quibbles with an occasional tendency of E. toward panegyric and propaganda, he finds the volume a standard work on the political iconography of Louis XIV’s era. The well-known monuments, institutions and debates are contextualized in a convincing and stimulating manner (730). E. focuses on the numerous and essential Italian contributions to the systematic artistic policy such as the Escalier des Ambassadeurs in Versailles, the Académie and the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes.

FIGEAC, MICHEL, ed. L’Ancienne France au quotidien: la vie et les choses sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Armand Colin, 2007.

Review: E. Ousselin in FR 82 (2009), 896—98: A dictionary with articles on material objects used during the Ancien Régime. “Centrés sur des objets ou des procédés matériels, la plupart des articles permettent d’éclairer sous un angle original des aspects sociaux de la France de l’Ancien Régime” (897). Contains useful bibliographic information. The reviewer would have enjoyed more illustrations, but nonetheless highly recommends the work.

FOLLAIN, ANTOINE. Le village sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Fayard, 2008.

Review: S. Surreaux in DSS 244 (2009), 562—564: Filling an enormous lacuna, this nuanced and detailed work represents “une somme sur l’histoire rurale française, au travers de sa composante essentielle, le village, et ce qui en fait son essence et sa force: la communauté villageoise. Cet ouvrage se compose de 12 chapitres, d’un index des noms des bourgs et des villages cités ainsi que de 12 pages de documents iconographiques.”

FRAGONARD, MARIE-MADELEINE and JACQUES BERCHTOLD, eds. La Mémoire des Guerres de religion: La concurrence des genres historiques (XVIe—XVIIIe siècles). Actes du Colloque international de Paris (15—16 novembre 2002). Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance 79. Geneva: Droz, 2007.

Review: K. MacDonald in Ren Q 61.1 (2008): 202—204. This volume, which offers the acts of the first conference of the “Equipe Formes et idées de la Renaissance aux lumières,” fills a recognized lacuna in the criticism of the practice of history writing of the Wars of Religion. The 15 essays are chronologically arranged and explore a wide variety of genres from official histories and polemical pamphlets to memoires, letters, ballets, even the nouvelle, among others. The “personal documents” are shown to complement the “official,” as M. states: “The nouvelle showed what la grande Histoire was either unable or unwilling to” (203).

FRAPPIER, LOUISE. “Construction de la Figure monarchique et perfection divine dans les récits d’entrée royale à Avignon (1600 et 1622).” EMF 12 (2008): 26—43.

This article takes a closer look at the rhetorical devices that were used to describe the royal entrances in Avignon by Marie de Medici and Louis XIII. It shows how the image of the monarch’s divine character was not only constructed but even transformed, according to the political climate of the time. The ultimate construction is that of Louis XIII as image of God.

GALLO, DAVID M. “Royal Bodies, Royal Bedrooms: The Lever du Roy and Louis XIV’s Versailles.” CdDS 12.1 (2008): 99—118.

Starting with Norbert Elias’s The Court Society, the author discusses the general operation of power at the early modern court. He then turns to the lever in order to study the important development and shift in the public presentation of the French monarchy during Louis XIV’s latter reign and its implications for its future. He provides us with an in-depth study of the different stages and rituals in the lever du roi and its elaboration between 1663 and 1682. The essay concludes with the idea how the physical body of the king joined the immortal “mystical body” of the kings of France, now permanently visible and on display.

GARRAWAY, DORIS. The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2005.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 44.1 (2008): 92. Welcome multidisciplinary analysis of cultural contacts based on “subtle and revealing literary interpretations of early modern histories, fictions, engravings, legal documents and travel writings.” The study, infused with methodology drawn from “historiography, anthropology and psychoanalysis,” will be useful to “students and specialists of the Early Modern period, colonial history, women’s studies and postcolonial studies” (92).

GIAVARINI, LAURENCE, éd. Construire l’exemplarité. Pratiques littéraires et discours historiens (XVIe — XVIIIe siècles). Dijon: Editions de l’Université de Dijon, 2008.

Review: J. Boucher in BHR 71.1 (2009), 183—85: “Ce volume collectif (13 articles) a une certain unité grâce à un avant-propos (L. Giavarini, pp. 7—25) ‘Étranges exemplarités’ et à une bibliographie pluridisciplinaire. À l’origine du colloque de Dijon (3—4 mars 2006), dont ce sont les Actes, il y avait eu l’intention d’offrir à des historiens et à des littéraires l’occasion de travailler sur l’exemple comme objet et méthode.”

GIBIAT, SAMUEL. Hiérarchies sociales et ennoblissement: les commissaires des guerres de la maison du roi, 1691—1790. Paris: École des Chartes, 2006.

Review: J. Laroche in FR 82 (2009), 1338—39: Describes the particular social ascent which was enjoyed by the king’s commissaires des guerres. This office was created so as give bourgeois who were devoted to Louis XIV a means to attain noble rank. Gibiat explores the extent to which early modern persons were attracted to these posts and what proved to be their long-term fate.

GOLDSTEIN, CLAIRE. Vaux and Versailles: The Appropriations, Erasures, and Accidents that Made Modern France. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

Review: A. Stedman in FR 82 (2009), 898—99: A compelling revision to received ideas about Louis XIV as the innovator of classicism. Goldstein “unearths the surprising, bourgeois origins of classicism’s aesthetic hegemony: Fouquet’s artistic court at Vaux-le-Vicomte” (898). By examining cultural works by canonical figures initially allied with Vaux, and then with Versailles, Goldstein establishes “French classiscism’s material and ideological debt to a salon-like circle of artistic collaboration—a society whose tenets of diversity, tolerance, generosity, refinement, discussion, and innovation fundamentally undercut the synonymous relationship between the French classical style and the absolutist political enterprise” (898).

Review: D. Grelé in SCN 66 (2008), 235—239: “Claire Goldstein examines the intersection of a particular aesthetic with the awareness of belonging to French culture and ultimately the feeling of being a subject of the king of France through the descriptive literature of Versailles and Vaux in the mid-Seventeenth Century. However, Professor Goldstein differentiates Vaux, the most accomplished model of a private residence, from Versailles, a less successful royal palace. Professor Goldstein elucidates the transformations in the social order through the study of Fouquet’s home and Louis XIV’s palace. Her book explores the state’s attempts to take control over the arts, and more specifically architecture, horticulture, pictorial arts and literature in order to serve its own ends.”

GONTHIER, URSULA HASKINS. “Une colonisation linguistique? Les Mémoires de l’Amérique septentrionale de Lahontan.” EF 45.2 (2009), 115—29.

Describes the 1703 memoirs of the Baron de Lahontan which include a “portrait ethnogéographique du Canada colonial” that, contrary to missionary accounts, shows the ways in which European and New World Cultures mixed and influenced each other.

GOODMAN, ELISE. The Cultivated Woman. Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century France. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2008.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 156 (2008): 659. Praiseworthy rich analyses of portraits collected from libraries and museums in Europe and America. Important work for the history of the genre, art history and for its interdisciplinary approach. Among the topics which receive focus are the education of women, the précieuses, and the production of Mme de Sévigné, Anne de La Vigne and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. G.’s study allows us a deeper understanding of la femme cultivée in its mythological and allegorical dimensions. Rich bibliography. Particularly accessible to an Anglophone public (and not only to specialists) due to the translations included.

HABIB, CLAUDE. Galanterie française. Paris: Gallimard, 2006.

Review: F. Pilone in S Fr 154 (2008): 241—242. Welcome consideration of the history of galanterie focuses on certain social institutions and personalities such as Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Cyrano and Rousseau. According to H., “per comprendere a pieno la galanterie bisogna passare attraverso la préciosité” (242). The section “L’âge galant: libertés, fictions” focuses essentially on feminine liberty.

HASQUIN, HERVÉ. Louis XIV face à l’Europe du Nord. L’absolutisme vaincu par les libertés. Bruxelles: Editions Racines, 2005.

Review: K. Malettke in HZ 286.2 (2008): 491—493. Instructive and stimulating manual of European history in the era of the Sun King includes economic, social and religious developments as well as artistic and cultural ones. Organized into the following sections: “L’Espagne sur le déclin,” “Comment Louis XIV a coalisé l’Europe du Nord contre la France, 1661—1697,” and “L’Angleterre arbitre, 1698—1715.” The study does not hesitate to present the negative side of Louis XIV and absolutism, for example, the repressive practice against the Huguenots which is called “le comble de la perversion” (n.p.). Useful maps, illustrations, tables, bibliography and index of names.

HELFFERICH, TRYNTJE, ed. and trans. The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009.

Review: L. Martines in TLS 5556 (Sept 25 2009): 12—13. A “remarkable collection of documents.” Reviewer does not specifically mention any documents of French origin, but says that book includes diaries and memoirs. This “learned eyewitness text is a superb companion for [Peter H.] Wilson’s magisterial history.”

HOGG, CHLOÉ. “Useful Wounds.” EMF 12 (2008): 1—25.

Hogg links the question of wounds to the question of state, of what she calls “pathological absolutism.” Although spectacles of noble injuries contributed to gloire, they both cover and deflect the king’s vulnerability and bind subjects to the mortal royal body. The essay concludes with the Hôtel Royal des Invalides, as a monument of “pathological absolutism” that “both requires and erases the invalid body.”

IBBETT, KATHERINE. “Productive Perfection: The Trope of the River in Early Modern Political Writing.” EMF 12 (2008): 44—57.

Ibbett looks at rhetorical devices, in particular the river imagery, in the political writings of French and Italian writers, namely Gabriel Naudé, Giovanni Botero and Jean Silhon. She discusses the relation between the discursive landscape, the figurative rivers that appear in political treatises, and the material landscape of real rivers to show their relation to the construction of political notions of the (“perfect”) state and how this imagery came to symbolize a vision of perfected classicism.

JAFFARY, NORA E., ed. Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Review: J. R. Ottman in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 545—546. Welcome collection of eleven essays which “illustrate the kaleidoscopic variety of ways in which gender, race and religion interacted in the early modern Americas [rather] than to support the construction of any overarching synthesis” (545). Organized in thematic sections as follows: “Frontiers,” “Female Religious,” “Race Mixing,” and “Networks,” the essays are wide-ranging geographically and perspectives include the spiritual, the political and gender, among others. 17th C French scholars will appreciate Susan Broomhall’s examination of the chronicle of the Benedictine nuns in Tours and its minimization of ethnic differences.

JERVIS, SIMON SWYNFEN. “The Baroque exhibition in London.” Burlington 1275 (2009), 367—71.

Describes and critiques a recent exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum entitled “Baroque 1620—1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence.” Although some might dispute the category or the works or dates covered, the catalogue nonetheless may be of interest to dix-septiémistes, as it covers works of art from a variety of countries, including France.

LANZA, JANINE M. From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris: Gender, Economy, and the Law. Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.

Review: M. Kaplan in FR 82 (2009), 1083—84: Suggests that widows of master craftsmen “broke away from a conception of gender as binary opposition and were able to occupy a spectrum of acceptable gendered roles” (9—10), that such women reconfigure our sense of the ‘family economy,’ and that they made strategic use of early modern law, rather than being passively governed by it. Very solidly researched; of interest to historians and literary scholars alike.

LEFFIZ, MICHEL. Jean Del Cour 1631—1707. Brussels: Editions Racine, 2007.

Review: Jennifer Montagu in Burlington 1268 (2008), 778. Biography and catalogue of over 200 sculptures by the man Montagu calls “the most famous sculptor of Baroque Liège.”

LEWIS, JOHN. Galileo in France: French Reactions to the Theories and Trial of Galileo. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

Review: William L. Hine in Isis 100 (June 2009), 405—406. “A significant contribution to the study of Galileo’s influence in France,” characterized by “meticulous scholarship,” which analyzes the reactions not only of well-known figures such as Mersenne, Descartes, Peiresc and Gassendi, but also of minor figures, some of whom had studied with Galileo in Padua, who were concerned about his prosecution and tried to help.

LONG, KATHLEEN P. Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

Review: G. S. Eschrich in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 620—622. Judged “rich and revealing,” L.’s study analyzes a wide variety of documents from scientific treatises to novels and poetry. Chapters include examinations of the role of the hermaphrodite in alchemy, gendered representation and alchemical writings, the lyric hermaphrodite, portrayals of Henri III and his mignons and Thomas Artus’s novel Description de l’Isle des Hermaphrodites. Praiseworthy for its “helpful framework” and “significant contribution to gender studies” (622).

LYNN, JOHN A., II. Women, armies, and warfare in early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Review: J. Harrie in CHOICE 47 (2009), 190: Uses a wide range of sources to explore the role of women in European military campaigns from 1500 to 1815. Considers women who adopted male identities to fight, as well as prostitutes, wives and laundresses who were more diffusely involved in wars. Lynn highlights the years around 1650 as a turning point when women’s participation in military campaigns declined, a statistic he uses as a new way of indexing changes in state formation and state armies. Recommended.

MARTIN, MARGOT. “The Rhetoric of Mouvement and Passionate Expression in Seventeenth-Century French Harpischord Music.” SCFS, 31.2 (2009), 137—149.

Analyses how the rhetorical notion of mouvement, commonly identified in other art forms, can equally be found in early modern harpsichord music. Examines “how mouvement in harpsichord music was engendered by directing the physical / temporal motion of sound on many levels—tempo, meter, melody, rhythm, harmonic rate of change, use of agréments—, [thus] illustrating their participation in an intricate declamatory language used to create an expressive rhetorical discourse that reflected contemporary aesthetic values.”

MASON, CAROL I. and KATHLEEN L. EHRHARDT. “Iconographic (Jesuit) Rings in European/Native Exchange.” French Colonial History 10 (2009), 55—73.

Describes an archeological find in “New France,” namely Jesuit rings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Suggests that the process used to date these sites may need to be revamped.

MCCABE, INA BAGHDIANTZ. Orientalism in early modern France: Eurasian trade, exoticism, and the Ancien Régime. Oxford: Berg, 2008.

Review: F. Baumgartner in CHOICE 46 (2009), 2401: Suggests that Orientalism had a major impact on the economy and culture of early modern France. “The book’s narrative core is the reign of Louis XIV, who encouraged French overseas enterprises and at whose court the consumption of exotic luxury goods reached unprecedented levels.” An erudite book which can be of interest, however, “the author’s control of the facts of French history is often shaky” (2401).

Review: D. Visser in FR 82 (2009), 1337—38: Primarily concerned with the Ottoman Near East. Includes treatment of issues such as the “oriental” origins of French science, the “domestication” of exotic products such as coffee, tea and textiles, the loss of religious liberties by non-citizens and the failure of Colbert’s mercantilist policies. The reviewer laments the book’s poor editing but suggests that there is nonetheless much to recommend it.

MCCLELLAN, ANDREW, et al. Kings as Collectors: Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts from the Musée du Louvre. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2006.

Review: J. Gilroy in FR 82 (2008), 177—78: The catalogue of a travelling exhibit entitled “Artisans and Kings” held in Atlanta and Denver between 2006 and 2008. The exhibit addressed the relationship between the arts and the development of politics and society under Louis XIV, XV and XVI. The reviewer lends particular attention to McClellan’s introductory essay on Louis XVI-era projects for opening a public art museum in the Louvre.

MCCLURE, ELLEN. Sunspots and the Sun King: Sovereignty and Mediation in Seventeenth-Century France: Urbana and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Review: C. Daniélou in FR 82 (2009), 1082—83: Suggests (through the example of Louis XIV) that the logic of divine right monarchy often fell into contradiction with its mythos. McClure presents the Sun King as “a divine right monarch caught between the choice of emphasizing his legitimacy and thereby losing himself or underlining his power and thereby obscuring the source of his authority” (85). Chapters on Louis’ memoirs, on diplomacy and its transfers of authority, and on the theater, develop this study of early modern political mediation. “Dense, méticuleux, admirable de précision” (1083).

MCHUGH, TIM. Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France: The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor. Aldershot & Burlington: Ashgate, 2007.

Review: S. Broomhill in SCN 66 (2008), 242—246: In this well reviewed book, “McHugh argues that the dominant historiography of early modern charity has seen in royal edicts the trace of an emerging strategy of crown control, often with little attention to the evidence of extant local records. His study will go some way towards showing the interpretive possibilities of remaining local evidence for offering a more complex narrative of early modern hospital politics.”

MERLIN-KAJMAN, HÉLÈNE. “Le texte comme don public.” EF 45.2 (2009), 47—67.

Discusses the role of works created specifically for artistic and literary patrons, the question of “stratégies sociales” as they related to these works and the relationship between writer and patron.

MOLHO, ANTHONY, DIOGO RAMADA CURTO, and NIKI KONIORDOS, eds. Finding Europe: Discourses on Margins, Communities, Images ca. 13th—ca. 18th Centuries. NY: Berghahn Books, 2007.

Review: E. D. English in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 953—955: Praiseworthy for its varied exploration of discourses both positive and negative from the early modern era. Organized under three topics: “the drawing and policing of margins,” “the formations, disciplining and functioning of communities,” and “the modeling, transmission and circulation of specific images and practices” (954), the volume provides scholars with a better understanding of historical values. The essays, though not all-encompassing, are wide-ranging, from ethnographic studies to shared traditions and the ius commune, the idea of the museum and demonology, to name only a fraction of the themes.

MOLLENAUER, LYNN WOOD. Strange Revelations: Magic, Poison, and Sacrilege in Louis XIV’s France. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2007.

Review: J. Prest in TLS 5504 (Sept 26, 2008): 12. A “book that is rich in detail and supporting anecdote.” Impressive array of sources, but Mollenauer “tends to treat them indiscriminately, as all equally able to support a point, and equally reliable.” “The book would have benefited from a more firmly articulated skepticism.” Mollenauer is more successful when analyzing the Affair in terms of gender and when comparing the formal hierarchy of the court with the shadow hierarchy which offered considerable power to the women in the king’s life. Author makes a strong case for why Mme de Montespan might have wanted to poison her rivals.

MOREAU, I. and G. HOLTZ, eds. “Parler librement.” La liberté de parole au tournant du XVIe et du XVIIe siècle. Lyon: ENS Editions, 2005.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 154 (2008): 178—179. These essays are the result of some journées d’étude organized by the ENS of Lyon from 2002—2003. Erudite libertinism is the subject of the volume which focuses on the pamphlet and strategies of dissimulation. The literary and historical dimensions are privileged in sections devoted to “auctoritas” and the ideological.

PETRY, CHRISTINE. “Faire des sujets du roi.” Rechtspolitik in Metz, Toul und Verdun unter französischer Herrschaft (1552—1648). Pariser Historische Studien. Bd. 73. München: Oldenbourg, 2006.

Review: M. Wrede in HZ 286.2 (2008): 487—489. Praiseworthy volume originated as a dissertation and traces the gradual process in the structuring of the French état royal of the three Lorraine cities (names in the title). Henri II is the protector of the cities while Louis XIV is the de facto souverain seigneur. Exemplary analysis of stages of the process, meaning and relationships between lords and rulers. An excellent reference.

POWELL, VÉRONIQUE GERARD. “Le Grand Siècle aux Gobelins.” RDM (février 2009), 169—72.

“Avec Alexandre et Louis XIV. Tissages de gloire, la galerie des Gobelins, rouverte en mai 2007 après des décennies de fermeture, rend homage à son royal fondateur, au talent extraordinaire du peintre du roi Charles Le Brun (1619—1690), son premier directeur, et au métier superbe de ses artisans.” Le catalogue de l’exposition (jusqu’au 1er mars 2009) est consacré à la pièce maîtresse, la tenture de l’Histoire d’Alexandre le Grand, “exposée pour la première fois depuis la révolution française dans la totalité de ses onze pièces de tapisserie . . .”

QUENET, GREGORY. Les tremblements de terre aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: La naissance d’un risque. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005.

Review: Kenneth L. Taylor in Isis 100 (March 2009), 164—165. Impressively researched, a “multidisciplinary exploration of the mentalities exhibited in relation to earthquakes.” Places seismic activity in the larger context of reaction to unforeseen catastrophe, and argues convincingly that earthquakes “are much more than physical processes and events; they are cultural elaborations upon them.”

ROLET, STÉPHANE, ed. L’Emblème littéraire: Théories et pratiques. Littérature 145. Paris: Larousse, 2007.

Review: D. Graham in Ren Q 61.1 (2008): 230—232. Despite inadequate proofreading (there are unfortunate misspellings and typos), this edited collection is judged a worthwhile contribution to the field. Varied subjects treated range from the conception and edition of emblem books, sources, emblem as propaganda, symbolism, along with case studies. Particularly noteworthy is Daniel Russell’s “Nouvelles directions dans l’étude de l’emblème français” which considers emblem not only as form but as “mode of thought and reading” (232).

ROODENBURG, HERMAN, ed. Forging European Identities, 1400—1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.

Review: E. Dursteler in Ren Q 61.3 (2007): 947—950: Although the volume includes “many excellent essays” offering perspectives on subjects from ceramics to costume and dance, the introduction “fails to place the . . . essays into any intelligible dialogue with each other” (948—949). Furthermore, the focus is on art and material culture rather than, as the title suggests, the formation of identity.

SHOEMAKER, PETER W. Powerful Connections: The Poetics of Patronage in the Age of Louis XIII. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2007.

Review: L. Seifert in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 898—899: Praiseworthy for providing a broad and “multifaceted account of both the rhetoric and the practice of literary patronage “during the early 17th C. Chapters focus on “ambiguities and paradoxes of the patron-client relationship,” Guez de Balzac’s letters as “an ideal of the autonomous self, “a poetic corpus drawn from Régnier, Sigogne and Malherbe illustrating “authorship shared with the patron,” libertine writers (St. Amant, Théophile, Sorel), the theatre (Corneille, Mairet, DuRyer) and others “sponsored by Richelieu,” and the Académie Française (S. sees the academy as “both a beneficiary of Richelieu’s patronage [and] an institutional patron”). Highly recommended for its valuable perspectives on authorship, the development of literary fields and the reading public.

Review: G. Turnovsky in SCN 66 (2008), 233—236: “Powerful Connections delivers an intricate and complete account of the intellectual culture of early seventeenth-century France, refracted through the history of an institution [patronage] that was absolutely central to this culture yet whose precise contribution to its development has not always been well defined. As the title suggests, Shoemaker’s study is especially strong when it builds its historical analysis on an incisive examination of the rhetoric that, in a way, is what really constituted patronage.”

SMITH, PAMELA H. and BENJAMIN SCHMIDT, eds. Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400—1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Review: H. Floris Cohen in Isis 100 (September 2009), 662—663. Stems from a conference intended to correct the bias in history writing towards textual material and to link the production of knowledge in early modern Europe with contemporary European historical phenomena. If one leaves aside the overly ambitious claims to scholarly innovation, which the reviewer finds a bit much, there are some very good papers (the reviewer names those on Solomon’s Temple, on efforts at botanical nomenclature, and on the Dutch literary adoption of novelty), although others, such as the piece on Boyle’s adoption of the essay form, “do not even meet elementary criteria of scholarly adequacy.” There are also some unfortunate oversights in the editing (misspellings, etc.)

SPAWFORTH, TONY. Versailles: A Biography of a Palace. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008.

Review: J. Rogister in TLS 5542 (June 19 2009): 10. A “useful biography of the palace over its 300 years of existence.” Discusses palace “as centre of government, a place for living, and a place of conspicuous consumption.” Shows awareness that at Versailles, “all was not right” from the start.

TAKEDA, JUNKO THÉRÈSE. “Levantines and Marseille: The Politics of Naturalization and Neutralization in Early Modern France, 1660—1720.” SCFS, 30.2 (2008), 170—181.

Article “examines the connections between fluctuations in French policies directed at Levantine migrations into the kingdom, and depictions of Ottoman Levantine peoples in French travel literature during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Argues that the favorable portraits and emphasis on inclusiveness which mark the period 1660 to 1683 give way by the end of Colbert’s tenure to a discourse of exclusion, where the “Levantine other was depicted as a threat to French identity.”

TAPIÉ, ALAIN et al., eds. Philippe de Champaigne (1602—1674), entre politique et devotion. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2007.

Review: J. Rogister in TLS 5478 (March 28, 2008): 10. Catalogue of exhibition that took place in 2007. Vincent Carraud gives “revealing anaylsis of pictures.” “In celebrating a great and hitherto neglected painter, last year’s exhibition and the accompanying catalogue have drawn attention to the far-reaching spiritual and cultural aspect of jansensism.” Review itself provides helpful overview of Champaigne’s career.

TRUE, MICAH. “‘Il faut parler pour estre entendu.’ Talking about God in Wendat in 17th century New France.” CdDS 12.1 (2008): 80—36.

The author looks at the communication challenges facing the Jesuit priests in their missionary encounters with the Iroquoian and Algonquoian groups. He focuses on the strategies, linguistic inventions and compromises that made it possible for the Jesuits to embrace their message in front of the Amerindians. The article draws on the Jesuit Relations and six unpublished bilingual dictionaries, written by Jesuit missionaries.

TURREL, DENISE. “Les mariages de nuit: les rituels nuptiaux dans les villes du XVIIe siècle.” DSS 244 (2009), 523—533.

Using the records of Bourg and Pont-de-Vaux as historical examples, the author asks the question, “À quelle heure se mariait-on sous l’Ancien Régime? Cette question n’a jamais été étudiée de façon systématique. Or, bien que la mention de l’heure de la célébration ne soit pas obligatoire dans les registres paroissiaux, on la trouve assez souvent au XVIIe siècle pour pouvoir en faire une analyse. L’horaire de la cérémonie religieuse est en effet un indicateur précieux: il détermine le déroulement des festivités profanes des noces, accompagnées de repas et de danses. Il met donc en jeu les usages sociaux de la structure temporelle de la journée, le rapport de la société urbaine à la nuit, la prégnance du temps religieux sur les individus.”

VALVERDE, NURIA. “Small Parts: Crisóstomo Martínez (1638—1694), Bone Histology, and the Visual Making of Body Wholeness.” Isis 100 (September 2009), 505—536.

Contextualizes the work of the Valencian engraver (who came to Paris in 1687 with a commission to create an anatomical atlas, the only one of the period structured around the microscopic image) in cultural and historical discourses of wholeness. “Through the analysis of his osteological engravings, it is possible to appraise the extent to which the problem of illustrating the intrinsic unity of the skeleton from a dynamic point of view converged with that of producing a common human environment and destiny” (508).

WAGNER, MARIE-FRANCE, LOUISE FRAPPIER and CLAIRE LATRAVERSE, eds. Les jeux de l’échange: Entrées solennelles et divertissements du XVe au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: F. Pilone in S Fr 154 (2008): 241. Literary and historical specialists examine in this volume the theme of exchange in its social relationships, ritual, political, economic and symbolic values. 17th C scholars will appreciate a number of important analyses in the two sections “Des entrées solennelles” and “Des divertissements,” ranging from women’s roles, the theatre, rhetoric, music and symbol. Indices of anonymous works, illustrations and names.

WILSON, PETER H. Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Year’s War. London: Allen Lane, 2009.

Review: L. Martines in TLS 5556 (Sept 25 2009): 12—13. Wilson’s book is “most ambitious treatment of the Thirty Year’s War ever to appear in English.” This is a “sobre, wise, wide-seeing account, tenaciously researched and offered in limpid pose.” Book contains something for all readers, including “devotees of gender studies” and military historians. Reviewer says Wilson’s evidence “shows that the Thirty Years War was prolonged by foreign meddling, appalling supply lines, virulent disease, the chronic desertion of troops and the simple fact that princes could not afford war on such a scale.” A “magisterial history.”

ZALLOUA, ZAHI. “(Im)Perfecting the Self: Montaigne’s Pedagogical Ideal.” EMF 12 (2008): 111—126.

The author is concerned with the humanistic project of self-perfection, as we find it in Montaigne’s Essais. After initially turning to ancient and medieval ideals of self-perfection, Zalloua focuses on Montaigne’s alternative model of the “imperfect” self.

AÏT-TOUATI, FRÉDÉRIQUE. “La mesure du ciel : la correspondance de Chapelain et Huygens.” EF 45.2 (2009), 83—97.

Examines the correspondence between the mathematician and astronomer Christiaan Huygens and the poet Jean Chapelain, particularly concerning Saturn’s ring, as each tries to convince others of his understanding of the universe as revealed by his respective field.

BARBICHE, BERNARD. Bulla, Legatus, Nuntius: Études de diplomatique et de diplomatie pontificales (XIIIe—XVIIIe siècle). Mémoires et documents de l’École des Chartes 85. Paris: École des Chartes, 2007.

Review: C. Shaw in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 868—870: These twenty-five articles by B., some co-authored with Ségolène de Dainville-Barbiche, furnish valuable meticulous analyses of materials derived from correspondence, papal documents in French archives and elsewhere. They shed light on “the revival of French influences at the papal court . . . personnel of the papal chancery and papal diplomatic missions to France and the technical aspects of their powers” (869—870). Index.

BAXTER, CAROL. “Women, Religious Conviction and the Subversive Use of Power.” SCFS, 31.2 (2009), 111—121.

Examines how the Ursuline and Visitandine communities sought to play an active role outside the cloister, particularly in their role as spiritual directors “to women in their local communities, to clerics and to prominent courtiers.” Argues that “by exercising subversive power clandestinely, they succeeded in wielding significant influence, even over doctrinal matters.” The contrast with the overt subversive challenges of both Madame Guyon and the Port-Royal nuns is explored.

BELGRADO, ANNA MINERBI. Sulla crisi della teologia filosofica nel Seicento. Pierre Jurieu e dintorni. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2008.

Review: A. Dufour in BHR 71.1 (2009), 225—27: “Le livre est centré sur les efforts quasi désespérés de Pierre Jurieu pour défendre l’orthodoxie réformée contre les théologiens protestants trop audacieux, ceux que l’on qualifiait alors de ‘sociniens,’ voire de ‘libertins.’”

BELIN, CHRISTIAN, ed. La Méditation au XVIIe siècle: Rhétorique, art, spiritualité. Colloques, congrès et conférences sur le Classicisme. Paris: Champion, 2006.

Review: A. Szabari in Ren Q 61.1 (2008): 191—193. This collection includes papers from a conference held in Montpellier in 2000 and attests to the richness and variety of practices of meditation. Scholars will appreciate several analyses: on texts of Bossuet and Fénelon (polemical aspects), Descartes and Malebranche (philosophical aspects), among others. Multiple genres are explored in literature and the arts. Meditation as a rhetorical topos is never lost sight of in this volume which offers “a rich array of materials for anyone interested in the conjunction of rhetoric, literature, arts, and spirituality in the Seventeenth Century” (192). S. would have appreciated clues “as to why this boom of meditative practices immediately precedes the eclipse of interest in this form of spirituality that occurs in the eighteenth century” (192).

BONARDEL, FRANÇOISE. Philosopher par le feu. Anthologie de textes alchimiques. Paris : Almora, 2009.

Review : D. Goy-Blanquet in QL 987 (du 1er au 15 mars 2009), 19 : Il s’agit d’une réédition, le “Points” Seuil étant épuisé depuis quelques années. “Cette anthologie est une mine d’or, hélas difficilement exploitable faute d’un éditeur sérieux. Elle offre un petit glossaire et un index des noms propres, mais pas de bibliographie, ni de liste des œuvres citées. Priorité est donnée aux textes, c’est normal, mais d’où viennent-ils, quels manuscrits, quelles éditions, la plupart des extraits, souvent de seconde main, ne le disent pas. Les pépites sont livrées en vrac, avec des références minimales, parfois erronées. [. . .] Une solide introduction nous le rappelle, cet ‘art foncièrement absurde’ aux dires de Burckhardt a constamment croisé la science aux origines de la chimie moderne, et rayonné sur l’histoire des cultures et des idées.”

BRAUN, GUIDO and SUSANNE LACHENICHT, eds. Hugenotten und deutsche Territorialstaaten. Immigrationspolitik und Integrationsprozesse. Les États allemands et les huguenots. Politique d’immigration et processus d’intégration. Pariser Historische Studien, Bd. 82. München: Oldenbourg, 2007.

Review: P. Fuchs in HZ 286.3 (2008): 724—726. This collection of 8 French and 7 German essays results from the October 7, 2005 Colloque which took place at the German Historical Institute in Paris. Concentrating on the plight of the Huguenots who fled France after Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and focusing on the German states and the process of integration, the essays take up subjects such as linguistic acculturation, identity, mémoires of the refugees and the Huguenots as artisans of the Enlightenment. Myriam Yardeni, “die grande dame der Hugenotten Forschung” (12) is responsible for the summing up of the volume’s contributions.

CARLINO, ANDREA and ALEXANDRE WENGER, eds. Littérature et médecine. Approches et perspectives (XVIe—XIXe siècles). “Recherches et rencontres” vol. 24. Genève: Droz, 2007.

Review: G. Bosco in S Fr 156 (2008): 716. Welcome collection of articles updates the state of research at the intersection of literature and medicine since George S. Rousseau’s 1981 work. C.’s and W.’s edited volume brings together the Acts of the October 2005 Geneva Colloquium focusing on mutual influences of the two disciplines and cultures. This volume, in hommage of Jean Starobinski, is organized in sections on “La Littérarité des texts médicaux,” “Les Maladies (et mort) des gens de lettres,” “Les doctrines médicales et la textualité,” and “Les Mises en récit de la maladie.”

CARR, THOMAS M., JR., ed. The Cloister and the World: Early Modern Convent Voices. Studies in Early Modern France 11. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2007.

Review: M. Sweetser in FR 82 (2009), 630—31: An impressive volume which brings out the important work of religious women in carrying out the objectives of the Catholic Reformation. The collection gives a good overview of how women in the various religious orders tended to write, and discusses intriguing examples such as Jeanne de Cambry’s Traité de la Réforme du Mariage. An excellent introduction by Thomas Carr, Jr. gives a helpful description of scholarship in the field; Carr also includes a bibliography of religious women’s writing. Highly praised by the reviewer.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 44 (2008): 90—91: Praiseworthy edited volume of eleven articles on the important topic of “the writings and documentary vestiges of convent life in pre-Revolutionary France” (90). Serving as a collection of well-documented and engaging investigations, the work offers perspectives of both literary and historical nature and “may also serve as an illustrative introduction to a significant corpus of women’s writings” (90). A variety of genres are represented (including marriage manuals!) and the arrangement is chronological. Includes an extensive bibliography, an état présent of research on convent writings and indices.

CARR, THOMAS M., JR. Voix des abbesses du Grand Siècle: La Prédication au féminin à Port-Royal: Context rhétorique et Dossier. Biblio 17, vol. 164. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2006.

Review: C. F. Klaus in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 565—566. Praiseworthy on several accounts, the reviewer declares that “this book will be welcomed not only by scholars of Port-Royal but by anyone with an interest in the history of absolutist France, monasticism, women’s voices or rhetoric” (566). C. focuses on sisters Angélique and Agnès of the Arnauld family and their nièce Angélique de Saint-Jean and has collected and examined “some of the most elusive of texts, namely the written record of these eloquent abbesses’ spoken words” (565). After setting the stage with a discussion of women’s preaching in this period and an examination of Port-Royal and its abbesses, C. provides an important collection of texts, organized thematically. His choice of texts and analyses illuminate the community building of the abbesses which emphasized the theology of grace; he underscores the importance of their preaching during significant periods of serious conflict.

CARRIERO, JOHN. Between two worlds: a reading of Descartes’s Meditations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Review: M. Bertman in CHOICE 46 (2009), 1710—11: Compares the Meditations to works by Thomas Aquinas. Carriero declines to discuss current scholarship on Descartes and goes about his task in problematic ways. “[H]as a poor sense of Descartes’ strategy in responding to increasing skepticism of metaphysics” (1710) and “does not much attend to Descartes’ contemporaries’ criticism of [the] Meditations” (1711). Not recommended by the reviewer.

CONTE, SOPHIE, ed. Nicolas Caussin: rhétorique et spiritualité à l’époque de Louis XIII. Actes du Colloque de Troyes, 16—17 septembre 2004. Berlin: Verlag, 2007.

Review: C. Mazouer in DSS 244 (2009), 556—558: Described as “un fort beau volume,” the reviewer finds a study of Louis XIII’s confessor an essential addition to scholarship on the period and he finds the organization of papers and introduction by Conte to be exemplary.

COUSSON, AGNÈS. “Les tentations de la correspondance: l’exemple d’Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly.” DSS 244 (2009), 493—509.

“Religieuse renommée pour ses vertus spirituelles et une austérité jugée excessive, rien ne laisse supposer qu’Angélique de Saint-Jean succombe à une tentation quelconque, surtout pas à celles de la communication, contre lesquelles l’éducation du couvent met en garde. Elle se distingue pourtant de ses compagnes, dont les correspondances nous sont parvenues, par une difficulté plus nette à maîtriser sa plume et une propension à écrire à laquelle sa culture et ses talents littéraires ne sont pas étrangers. Des écarts paraissent dans ses lettres, infimes certes, mais révélateurs des risques inhérents à l’acte de correspondre, de la difficulté de faire coïncider le permis et le possible. À quelles tentations cède-t-elle et pourquoi? Comment réagit-elle dans les cas où elle en a conscience? Ces questions, qui ne visent pas à établir de jugement de valeur, permettront d’examiner sa relation effective avec la correspondance et les effets de celle-ci sur son intériorité.”

DESCOTES, DOMINIQUE, ed. Pascal, auteur spiritual. Colloques, congrès et conferences sur le Classicisme 9. Paris: Champion, 2009.

Review: S. Natan in FR 82 (2008), 390: A volume which brings together papers from three recent conferences on Pascal and which attempts to elucidate Pascal’s theological and spiritual writings, texts less well known than his Pensées and Lettres provinciales. The reviewer finds the collection on the whole disappointing and would have liked to have seen more attention given to Pascal’s Ecrits sur la grâce. He does, however, admire individual papers within the collection.

DINAN, SUSAN E. Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Review: L.R.N. Ashley in BHR 71.1 (2009), 144: “This book is actually a history of the Daughters of Charity, a Roman Catholic order who [sic], that was not cloistered, out in the world in the service of the indigent and downtrodden. It is also part of the history of the poor, the history of the Counter-Reformation and what this author calls the ‘feminization’ of religion in modern France.”

DIPIERO, THOMAS. “Voltaire’s Parrot; or, How to Do Things with Birds.” SUBSTANCE 37 (2008), 341—63.

Though considerably focused on Voltaire, Dipiero turns to the 17th Century to begin his exploration of how philosophers of language used the example of birds. Dipiero notes how Descartes discussed birds’ mechanical (but unthinking) production of speech to underscore a human monopoly on reason. The article identifies examples involving birds which reiterate this view in the Grammaire générale et raisonnée and in the work of the mathmetician Bernard Lamy. However, Dipiero goes on to show Lamy’s divergence from Descartes, his perhaps unwitting suggestion that thought can emanate from non-human sources.

ENENKEL, KARL A.E. and PAUL J. SMITH, eds. Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts. 2 vols. Intersections Yearbook for Early Modern Studies 7. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Review: I. MacInnes in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 925—926: Judged somewhat unequal and frustrating for some undertheorization and underdevelopment as well as for its “few references to recent scholarship,” yet recommended for its overall “fine scholarship” (focusing on primary sources) and diversity. This wide-ranging volume is valuable for art historians, cultural and literary scholars as it contributes to the “still-emerging field of early modern animal studies” (926).

FERRARI, JEAN, MARGIT RUFFING, ROBERT THEIS and MATTHIAS VOLLET, eds. Kant et la France—Kant und Frankreich. Hildesheim: Olms, 2005. Europaea Memoria. Studien und Texte zur Geschichte der europäischen Ideen; Reihe I, 46.

Review: G. Schlüter in RF 120.4 (2008): 531—535. One of the numerous publications resulting from the 2004 world-wide Kant commemorations, the present meritorious volume includes over thirty essays from the 2004 congress held in Mainz, Dijon and Luxembourg. Although many essays examine connections relating to Kant’s reception or affinities with modern figures such as Péguy, the first part deals with Kant’s predecessors and parallels (objective reality and Descartes, Kant and Pascal “deux critiques de la raison,” or “Espèce et adaptation chez Kant et Buffon,” for example) (531).

GRÉGOIRE, VINCENT. “Mais comment peut-on être protestant en Nouvelle-France au dix-septième siècle?” SCFS, 31.1 (2009), 46—58.

Examines firstly the presence of Huguenots in Canada from 1632 to 1685 and their “conditions d’existence,” and secondly how they are represented in the annually published Relations des Jésuites.

GUENOUN, SOLANGE M. “Conversos, conversion et contours de « la nation juive » au XVIIe siècle.” PFSCL XXXVI, 70 (2009), 187—197.

Covers a range of issues including an overview of the position of Jews in early modern France and Amsterdam; the representation of Jews in Pascal and Racine; a synthesis on the MLA 2006 session devoted to “Jews, Judaism, Judéités;” and a commentary on debates in contemporary France concerning Judaism.

JAQUET, CHANTALTAMÁS PAVLOVITS(dir.). Les facultés de l’âme à l’âge classique. Paris : Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006.

Review : M.-F. Pellegrin in RPFE no4/2008, 484—485: “Sur une question traditionnelle autant que centrale de la philosophie classique, celle des facultés de l’âme, cet ouvrage collectif entend adopter un point de vue décalé : non pas décrire le XVIIe siècle comme celui du triomphe de la raison, mais comme ‘une époque de crise’ où s’élaborent de nouvelles compréhensions de l’esprit. [. . .] Cette perspective. . .évite en effet toute illusion rétrospective. Les grands rationalismes sont travaillés dans leur genèse comme dans leur fonctionnement par des difficultés importantes sur le rôle et l’équilibre de chacune des facultés de l’âme. [. . .] L’ouvrage s’organise selon ces trois notions [l’entendement, l’imagination et le jugement] et se compose d’interventions de très bon niveau.”

JULLIEN, VINCENT. Philosophie naturelle et géométrie au XVIIe siècle. Sciences, techniques et civilisations du Moyen Âge à l’aube des lumières 9. Paris: Champion, 2006.

Review: D. Des Chene in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 640—642. Valuable collection of essays for historians, philosophers and students of Roberval. For the latter, J.’s work is considered essential. Innovations and frontiers are examined, as are differing methods and disagreements such as those between Descartes and Roberval. Index, illustrations, bibliography.

KAPLAN, BENJAMIN J. Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007.

Review: C.J. Nederman in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 942—944: Although N. has several reservations including K.’s “strict division between elite and popular practices of tolerance” and points out that evidence for cross-fertilization may be found in homilies and pamphlets, he praises K.’s “manifest accomplishment.” N. singles out as particularly valuable the study’s “nuanced and multi-layered approach,” the evidence K. has discovered in the “daily lives of all people who lived in religiously mixed communities” (8) and K.’s accessible writing itself.

KLUETING, HARM, ed. Irenik und Antikonfessionalismus im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Hildesheimer Forschungen, Bd. 2. Hildesheim: Olms, 2003.

Review: R Dürr in HZ 286.1 (2008): 201—204. Praiseworthy and wide-ranging confessionally and geographically, this collection of essays from a 2002 conference held in Hildesheim provides contributions from archivists, theologians and historians to the overarching subject. 17th C French scholars will appreciate Bruno Bernard’s essays “Jansenismus und Irenik.”

LAVOCAT, FRANÇOISE, PIERRE KAPITANIAK and MARIANNE CLOSSON, eds. Fictions du diable: Littérature et démonologie de saint Augustin à Leo Taxil. Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance 81. Geneva: Droz, 2007.

Review: H. Kallendorf in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 932—934: Praised as “a solid contribution to the study of demonology in the Renaissance and beyond.” Fiction and literature’s relation to treatises on demonology is examined. Sponsored both by a 2003 conference held at Paris—7 Denis Diderot and an interdisciplinary team under the auspices of the Ministère de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur, the volume is organized into sections focusing on “writing strategies of demonologists,” the “cross-fertilization of demonological treatises and literary texts” and “the contributions of demonology to the history of ideas” (933). Useful in itself and stimulating for future scholarship.

Review: H. Hotton in DSS 243 (2009), 376—378: “Ce recueil, par la quantité des pistes de recherche qu’il soulève et la richesse des perspectives d’analyse qu’il propose, permet de mesurer à quel point la démonologie n’est jamais circonstancielle ou marginale dans la culture de l’Ancien Régime. Bien au contraire, ses discours et ses représentations sont au cœur de l’activité intellectuelle et créatrice, glissant au fil des siècles vers les territoires de l’imaginaire et de la fiction, renouant par là les rapports complexes avec la littérature qui les constituent.”

MCHUGH, TIM. Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France: The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor. The History of Medicine in Context. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Review: K.A. Lynch in Ren Q 61.1 (2008): 205—207. Wide-ranging despite its modest length, the study is judged a “solid contribution to the history of poor relief, the history of French political development and early modern urban history” (207). “Highly readable, embracing the theoretical, distinguishing between Jansenist, Jesuit and secular approaches, and focusing on three case studies (in Paris, Montpellier and Nîmes), McH.’s volume argues convincingly that the crown had only an indirect role in the development of poor relief” (206).

MÉCHOULANES, ÉRIC. “Valeurs de vérité et formes publiques d’énonciation chez le « Secrétaire de Port-Royal » : l’impasse heureuse des Provinciales.” EF 45.2 (2009), 69—81.

Abstract: “À partir de la controverse entre jansénistes et jésuites . . . cet article cherche à comprendre le rapport entre vérité, formes de publication, institutions autorisantes et sujet d’énonciation où se négocient les calculs du commensurable et de l’incommensurable.”

MOREAU, PIERRE-FRANÇOIS(dir.). Les passions à l’âge classique (Théories et critiques des passions, II). Paris : PUF, 2006.

Review : J.-P. Richard in RPFE no4/2008, 485—486: “L’âge classique, cadre chronologique de l’enquête, s’oppose simplement à la période antique et médiévale à laquelle était consacré un premier volume : Descartes, Gracián, Pascal, Spinoza, Locke et Leibniz font naturellement l’objet de monographies (sous la plume respectivement de D. Kambouchner, E. Marquer, C. Talon-Hugon, P.-F. Moreau, J. Terrel et S. di Bella), mais elles comportent ou appellent aussi une lecture transversale : l’amour cartésien est-il l’antithèse de la charité pascalienne ? Quel rôle joue le thème du passionnel dans la théorie politique de Gracián, de Hobbes, de Spinoza ou de Locke ? [. . .] À la fois savant et praticable, ce dossier offre durablement un matériau à la réflexion.”

OLIER, JEAN-JACQUES. L’âme cristal: des attributs divins en nous, édité, présenté et annoté par Mariel Mazzocco. Paris: Le Seuil, 2008.

Review: Y. Rodier in DSS 244 (2009), 561—562: “La plupart des écrits de Jean-Jacques Olier, auteur pléthorique, sont restés méconnus, faute d’avoir été publiés, en raison de l’antimysticisme qui sévissait alors. Cet écrit mystique inédit fournit l’occasion de mieux connaître la pensée du fondateur du séminaire de Saint-Sulpice dont le mysticisme a parfois interpellé.”

ONFRAY, MICHEL. Les libertins baroques. Contre-histoire de la philosophie, Tome 3. Paris : Le Livre de Poche, 2009.

Review : E. Pieiller in QL 988 (du 16 au 31 mars 2009), 27 : Onfray veut rendre leur place et leur rôle aux courants de pensée occultés délibérément par l’historiographie et l’enseignement dominants. La critique remarque, cependant, qu’“on peut néanmoins remarquer que les ‘Libertins’ n’en finissent pas d’être redécouverts, et que ce n’est plus tout à fait une nouveauté que s’insurger contre l’étiquetage du Grand Siècle comme ‘classique.’ [. . .] Allègres, légères, gentiment répétitives, ces longues notices permettront aux curieux de s’initier, même s’ils sont susceptibles de déplorer l’absence d’extraits conséquents.”

PARK, KATHARINE and LORRAINE DASTON, eds. The Cambridge History of Science. Vol. 3. Early Modern Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.

Review: A Renner in HZ 286.1 (2008): 181—183. Welcome third volume of a larger project is both encyclopedic in its overview and elastic in its conception. Individual chapters may be read with profit in this collection which brings together 35 authors of both traditional and newer methodologies. Overarching organization is not biographical but contextual.

PIERRE, BENOIST. Le Père Joseph: l’éminence grise de Richelieu. Paris: Perrin, 2007.

Review: N. Le Roux in DSS 244 (2009), 564—565: The author delivers “un fort bel ouvrage consacré à une figure fameuse de l’époque baroque, François Le Clerc du Tremblay (1577—1638), en religion le P. Joseph de Paris. Une littérature considérable était déjà consacrée à ce personnage dont l’activité inlassable a stimulé les imaginations, mais Pierre a réussi à renouveler le sujet grâce au dépouillement de sources peu fréquentées, des actes notariés (pour la jeunesse), les lettres du P. Joseph aux calvairiennes d’Angers, les fonds des capucins de Paris, les correspondances diplomatiques et la littérature imprimée.”

REGUIG-NAYA, DELPHINE. Le Corps des idées—Pensées et poétiques du langage dans l’augustinisme de Port-Royal: Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Mme de La Fayette, Racine. Lumière Classique 70. Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: S. Natan in FR 82 (2008), 391—92: A study which underscores the influence of Port-Royal on the reform of the French language, documenting this influence in a range of writers. For example, the chapter on La Fayette illustrates how the latter may have taken up Nicole’s ideas on language as a vehicle of lust. Despite being addressed to a specialist reader, the volume is generally of high quality.

STRAYER, BRIAN E. Suffering saints: Jansenists and convulsionnaires in France, 1640—1799.

Review: D. Baxter in CHOICE 46 (2009), 2195: “Provides an even balance between the 17th-century days of Port Royal and the tumultuous 18th century” (2195). Arranged both chronologically and topically. Strayer sees Jansenists not only as a “party of opposition” but as proponents of religious liberty. Praised by the reviewer.

STRIKER-METRAL, CHARLES-OLIVIER. Narcisse contrarié: l’amour-propre dans le discours moral en France (1650—1715). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007.

Review: F. Greiner in DSS 243 (2009), 369—372: Of this impressive and comprehensive study, the reviewer concludes that “[o]n sort inévitablement admiratif de ce beau livre qui réussit la performance de faire le tour d’un sujet complexe et touffu sans jamais rencontrer les écueils des approximations et des aperçus hâtifs, et sans jamais se perdre dans le labyrinthe des analyses ponctuelles. C’est là sans doute sa principale qualité: faire en sorte que le détail se marie toujours harmonieusement aux réflexions de portée générale, que les précisions monographiques convergent en définitive vers la constitution d’une véritable synthèse.”

TÓTH, ISTAVÁN GYÖRGY and HEINZ SCHILLING, eds. Religion and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400—1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.

Review: E. Dursteler in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 947—950: Praiseworthy for its perspectives on the range and variety of exchanges and on the importance of religious identities as cultural markers” (1:3). Examines religious ritual and transmission, conflict and coexistence along geo-political boundaries.

TRUE, MICAH. “Maistre et Escolier: Amerindian Languages and Seventeenth-Century French Missionary Politics in the Jesuit Relations from New France.” SCFS, 31.1 (2009), 59—70.

Article examines “how seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries in the colony used Amerindian languages as an exclusionary principle to grant themselves access to New France’s spiritual riches in the pages of the published Jesuit Relations while simultaneously locking out potential rivals.”

VON GREYERZ, KASPAR. Religion and Culture in Early Modern Europe 1500—1800. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.

Review: E. Saak in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 945—947: Mixed review allows that at least for its cultural perspectives, Von G.’s work will serve future scholarship, yet indicates numerous critical omissions such “how individuals in early modern Europe defined religion for themselves” and references to ground-breaking work such as that by Norbert Elias, Mircea Eliade and Berndt Hamm. Organization is topical and chronological from the Reformation to the Enlightenment.

YARDENI, MYRIAM. “Perceptions de l’altérité juive en France au XVIIe siècle.” PFSCL XXXVI, 70 (2009), 199—207.

Examines a range of early modern perceptions of Jewish alterity under four headings: “L’altérité économique et utilitaire,” “Richard Simon et l’historisation de l’altérité juive,” “Du mépris et de la sainte horreur par exemple chez Bossuet à l’antisémitisme doux de Fénélon,” and “L’altérité juive et l’antisémitisme pamphlétaire.”

XVIIe siècle, 230 (janvier—mars 2006).

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 155 (2008): 445. This volume is devoted to a subject of interest to specialists in both literature and art: “L’Eglise et la peinture dans la France du XVIIe siècle: les écrits d’ecclésiastiques, entre théologie et théorie de l’art.” In Varia two essays focus on Richelieu and his period.

XVIIe siècle, 231 (avril—juin 2006).

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 155 (2008): 445—446. In addition to an “In Mémoriam” for Jacques Morel, this volume features criticism on both historical and literary subjects.

XVIIe siècle, 232 (juillet-septembre 2006).

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 155 (2008): 446. Literature is the focus of this welcome volume which includes criticism on Spinoza, Huet and Tristan, among others. Section on “Notes et documents” includes an état présent on Galileo.

XVIIe siècle, 233 (octobre—décembre 2006).

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 155 (2008): 446. Gassendi is the focus of eight articles on related literature, philosophy and “libertinage.” The Varia includes an article on partonage and one on La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism and “libertinage.”

ALESSANDRELLI, SUSANNA. Ironie vs humour. Essai de définition typologique. Perugia: Morlacchi, 2006.

Review: F. Cittadini in S Fr 154 (2008): 235—236. A.’s welcome study is organized into sections including a review of relevant linguistic and aesthetic studies and analyses of ironic forms (irony as antiphrastic). Judged an important (and convincing) contribution (both by theoretical underpinnings and textual analysis) to the definition of the relationship between irony and humour.

ASSAF, FRANCIS. “Amadis de Grèce ou la mise en fiction du pouvoir royal.” SCFS, 31.1 (2009), 14—24.

“L’article examine d’une part les points de correspondance historiques (Guerre de la Ligue d’Augsbourg et camp de Compiègne) qui identifient Amadis avec Louis XIV et de l’autre l’appareil dramatique qui montre Amadis en prince enchanté.”

BAADER, RENATE. “Nachrufe. Margarete Zimmermann (1937—2007).” RF 120.1 (2008): 59—62.

This “in memoriam” reminds 17th C scholars of B.’s many and significant contributions to the field. Important studies and edited collections ranging in subject from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century mark her career, but she is best known for her often cited 1986 volume Dames de Lettres: Autorinnen des preziösen, hocharistokratischen und ‘modernen’ Salons (1649—1698): Mlle de Scudéry—Mlle de Montpensier—Mme d’Aulnoy. Stuttgart: Metzler.

BEASLEY, FAITH and KATHLEEN WINE, eds. Intersections. Biblio 17—161. Tübingen, Gunter Narr, 2005.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 154 (2008): 183. The Acts of the May 2003 Congress of NASSCFL, held at Dartmouth College testify to the usefulness of an interdisciplinary approach. Among the “intersections” examined are novel and theatre, comedy and tragedy, the sacred and the ironic, print and performance, arts and literature, writing and geographical spaces, human spaces, high and low culture and the sacred and the secular.

BELIN, CHRISTIAN, ed. La Méditation au XVIIe siècle: Rhétorique, art, spiritualité. Colloques, congrès et conférences sur le Classicisme. Paris: Champion, 2006.

Review: A. Szabari in Ren Q 61.1 (2008): 191—193. This collection includes papers from a conference held in Montpellier in 2000 and attests to the richness and variety of practices of meditation. Scholars will appreciate several analyses: on texts of Bossuet and Fénelon (polemical aspects), Descartes and Malebranche (philosophical aspects), among others. Multiple genres are explored in literature and the arts. Meditation as a rhetorical topos is never lost sight of in this volume which offers “a rich array of materials for anyone interested in the conjunction of rhetoric, literature, arts and spirituality in the Seventeenth Century” (192). S. would have appreciated clues “as to why this boom of meditative practices immediately precedes the eclipse of interest in this form of spirituality that occurs in the eighteenth century” (192).

BIRBERICK, ANNE L. and RUSSELL GANIM, eds. Modern Perspectives on the Early Modern: Temps recherché, temps retrouvé. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press (EMF: Studies in Early Modern France, 10), 2005.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 44.1 (2008): 94. Praiseworthy for its ambition along with its coherence and high quality, this edition of nine essays explores theory, influence, representation, rhetoric—in sum, “different facets of a wide-ranging topic, namely reflections on the Renaissance and seventeenth-century culture in modern (and post-modern) literature, art and critical thinking” (94). A bibliography accompanies each article and there is an index to the whole.

BOURGEOIS, CHRISTOPHE. Théologies poétiques de l’âge baroque: la muse chrétienne (1570—1630). Lumières Classiques 69. Paris: Champion, 2006.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 154 (2008): 177—178. A fine study of the baroque of late 16th and early 17th centuries; B.’s focus is both Catholic and Protestant French Christian baroque literature. Well-known authors as well as lesser known ones are analyzed in this examination which is organized in four sections: “La conversion des muses,” “Biblical figures,” “the rhetoric of the spirit,” and a “mistica della parole.” Rich and diverse bibliography.

Review: R. Ganim in FR 82 (2008), 388—89: “[A]n exhaustive study of the intellectual and aesthetic circumstances in which a resurgent devotional poetry and poetics found themselves during the baroque era” (388). The reviewer admires the author’s extensive consideration of the “humanistic, rhetorical, patristic and literary contexts” of the poems in question. He would have liked to have seen more consideration of the conflict between sacred and profane poetry in this period.

BURY, EMMANUEL etFRANCINE MORA,dirs. Du Roman courtois au roman baroque. Actes du Colloque des 2—5 juillet, 2002 (U de Versailles—Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines). Paris: Belles Lettres, 2004.

Review: B. Ferrari in S Fr 154 (2008): 239—241. These Acts bring together specialists from different periods examining the evolution of romanesque production from the Middle Ages to the 17th C. The basic question of the colloque and present volume is “Ruptures ou continuité.” An état présent furnishes helpful parameters. The various axes of research include the following: “La merveille et l’amour,” “Stratégies éditoriales et narratives,” “Éthiques et idéologies,” “Rencontres génériques,” and “Poétiques immanentes et théories du roman.” Welcome volume allows us to appreciate a very real continuity (due to reception and metamorphoses of the great medieval works), make a re-evaluation of the importance of 15th C works and permits a better understanding of the cultural climate predisposing the prolongation of the Baroque age (Bury and Mora, introduction). Bibliography, index of authors and works cited.

BUTTERWORTH, EMILY. Poisoned Words, Slander, and Satire in Early Modern France. London: Legenda, 2006.

Review: R. Runte in FR 82 (2009), 1314: “This slim volume presents slander and satire in a non-literary guise, focusing nonetheless on the works of several authors who were victims or themselves employers of the Menippean style” (1314). Addresses Béroalde de Verville, Marie de Gournay and Jean-Pierre Camus. Could benefit from some editing, but “an intelligent discussion” (1314) which leaves the reader’s interest piqued.

CARLINO, ANDREA and ALEXANDRE WENGER, eds. Littérature et médecine. Approches et perspectives (XVIe—XIXe siècles). “Recherches et rencontres” vol. 24. Genève: Droz, 2007.

Review: G. Bosco in S Fr 156 (2008): 716. Welcome collection of articles updates the state of research at the intersection of literature and medicine since George S. Rousseau’s 1981 work. C.’s and W.’s edited volume brings together the Acts of the October 2005 Geneva Colloquium focusing on mutual influences of the two disciplines and cultures. This volume, in hommage of Jean Starobinski, is organized in sections on “La Littérarité des texts médicaux,” “Les Maladies (et mort) des gens de lettres,” “Les doctrines médicales et la textualité,” and “Les Mises en récit de la maladie.”

CHATELAIN, MARIE-CLAIRE. Ovide savant, Ovide gallant: Ovide en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008.

Review: V. Kapp in OeC 34.1 (2009), 102—05: “. . .l’auteur analyse un domaine particulièrement riche de la réception de ce poète en élucidant les deux volets par ailleurs inséparables: le discours critique et l’assimilation par le champ littéraire où la poésie du Romain renaît, métamorphosée, dans les formes et les genres poétiques français les plus divers. Ces analyses procurent un plaisir de lecture dû à la finesse des explications et à la clarté des développements.”

CHOMETY, PHILIPPE. “Philosopher en langage des dieux.” La poésie d’idées en France au siècle de Louis XIV. Paris: Champion, 2006.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 154 (2008): 182—183. This thèse d’état of the U of Provence examines a neglected area of poetry and takes the quotation of its title from La Fontaine’s “Poème de Quinquina.” The study which focuses on the period 1653—1716 is organized in three parts: “La ‘querelle’ des poètes et des philosophes,” “Une poésie qui satisfait aux exigences du didactisme,” and “Poésie d’idées et art du langage.” An annex sketches the lives of little known authors. Includes a rich bibliography and index of names. Reviewer would have preferred only “le XVIIe siècle” in the title, since numerous references are made to texts preceding the reign of Louis XIV.

CRON, ADELAIDE etCÉCILE LIGNEREUX,dir. Littératures classiques 62 (2007). “Le langage des larmes aux siècles classiques.”

Review: B. Papasogli in S Fr 155 (2008): 451. Highly ambitious both by its double focus on language and emotion as well as on both 17th and 18th centuries. The editors provide an introduction with bibliography, “De la lisibilité des larmes.” Sections with rich and varied dimensions are organized as follows: “La spiritualité des larmes,” “L’intimité des larmes,” “La fiction des larmes,” “Le spectacle des larmes.”

D’ADDARIO, CHRISTOPHER. Exile and Journey in Seventeenth-Century Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.

Review: L. Tredennick in Ren Q 61.2 .(2008): 656—657. Judged “enormously powerful” conceptually, D’A’s study outlines “the importance of exile to our understanding of prominent literary, religious and philosophical texts, indeed some of the foundational elements of the early modern canon” (D’A. 3). For D’A., the psychology of exile is “a complex blend of nostalgia, national idealism, displacement, anger, longing and self-consciousness” (T. 656). Although the focus is English, 17th C French scholars will find D’A.’s conceptual delineations useful.

DAGEN, JEAN, MARC ESCOLA et MARTIN RUEFF. Morales et politiques. Actes du colloque international organisé par le Groupe d’étude des moralistes. Paris: Champion, 2005.

Review: R. Hodgson in DSS 242 (2009), 179—180: “L’objectif principal de ce colloque a été d’étudier la convergence entre pensée politique et réflexion morale dans une grande variété de textes (pièces de théâtre, poésie, mémoires, fables, romans, traités, etc.). Les 23 communications que ce livre réunit se caractérisent par une diversité remarquable d’approches méthodologiques et de points de vue philosophiques. La plupart des contributions portent sur un corpus de textes français des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, avec une exception, une étude de Philippe Raynaud sur la civilité chez Hume.”

DEFRANCE, ANNE and JEAN-FRANÇOIS PERRIN, eds. Le conte en ses paroles: La figuration de l’oralité dans le conte merveilleux du Classicisme aux Lumières.

Review: M. Papachristophorou in Marvels & Tales 23.1 (2009), 201—04. The proceedings of a 2005 conference entitled “Le conte en ses paroles: le dire et le dit dans le conte merveilleux de l’âge Classique (XVIIe—XVIIIe siècles),” the ensemble of which, according to the reviewer, show that “Orality and literature are. . .perceived as complementary notions,” rather than as separate phenomena.

DEKONINCK, RALPH and AGNÈS GUIDERDONI-BRUSLÉ, eds. Emblemata sacra: Rhétorique et herméneutique du discours sacré dans la littérature en images. Imago Figurata Studies 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.

Review: A. Saunders in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 963—964: Judged “substantial” and “impressive” as the collection opens up “the broader spiritual context in which emblematic religious writings should be situated” (964). One of two important publications that have resulted from the 2005 conference on the topic at the Université Catholique de Louvain. Focus is on French works from the 17th C and Catholic spirituality; “discours sacré” includes both texts and images. The collection is organized into seven sections: “Questions d’histoire et de méthodes,” “Exégèse de l’Ecriture et de la Création,” “L’image in absentia,” “Rhétorique et poétique de l’image,” “Le spectacle de l’image,” “La circulation des images entre sensibilités religieuses,” and “L’efficace de l’image.” The essays are rich and varied, treating both well- and little-known subjects. Reviewer, who herself is a renowned specialist in the domain, regrets nevertheless the paucity of illustrations and lack of a bibliography.

DENIS, DELPHINE. Le Parnasse galant. Institution d’une catégorie littéraire au XVIIe siècle. Paris:Champion, 2001.

Review: V. Kapp in RF 120.1 (2008): 104—107. Highly praiseworthy for its innovative interpretations, excellent documentation, careful reflections and elegant writing, D.’s study includes analyses of various galant texts, the self-identification of galant authors and their inventio. Attentive to theory and aesthetics, production, reception, linguistic and rhetorical components, D.’s examination focuses on honnête and galant: “l’air galant, venant s’ajouter par surcroît aux qualités de l’honnête homme, en constitue le versant sociable extériorisé” (124).

DENIS, DELPHINE, ed. L’obscurité: Langage et herméneutique sous l’Ancien Régime. Louvain: Bruylant-Academia, 2007.

Review: A. Faudemay in DSS 244 (2009), 559—561: Eighteen excellent articles are grouped in 4 parts: “Ancrages théoriques,” “Mystères sacrés,” “La confusion des signes,” and “Illustrer et commenter” and all “font parfaitement ressortir la double dépendence de l’obscurité, vis-à-vis du contexte, d’une part, de la représentation anticipée des destinataires et de la réception des œuvres, d’autre part.”

DIMLER, G. RICHARD. Studies in the Jesuit Emblem. AMS Studies in the Emblem 18. Brooklyn: AMS Press, 2007.

Review: W Melion in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 584—586. Welcome volume “bears witness to this scholar’s foundational contributions to the field of emblematics” (586). Rhetorical form and function are the focus of these essays “selected from D.’s extensive writings on emblematic theory and practice” (584). Praiseworthy introduction provides “a comprehensive overview of scholarship on the Jesuit emblem” (585). Particularly impressive are chapters on Jakob Masen’s theory of the figurative image which although privileging the visual demonstrate the power of the symbolic as regards persuasion.

DOMENECH, JACQUES(sous la dir. de). Censure, autocensure et art d’écrire: De L’Antiquité à nos jours. Bruxelles: Éditions Complexe, 2005.

Review: Y. Laberge in OeC 34.1 (2009), 101—02: “Ouvrage collectif produit à la suite d’un séminaire de l’Université de Nice tenu entre 2001 et 2003, Censure, autocensure et art d’écrire: De l’Antiquité à nos jours propose 23 chapitres consacrés à different aspects, principalement des analyses de cas entourant des œuvres et des auteurs, pour la plupart européens. Dans son introduction, Jacques Domenech souligne le caractère transdisciplinaire de son séminaire et rappelle pertinemment que ‘la véritable censure, consubstantielle à l’art d’écrire, impose des normes qui ne sont pas seulement idéologiques. Elle s’oppose à la nouveauté, à la création’ (22).” Voir l’article de J. Emelina “qui étudie — non sans humour — comment certains passages plus gaillards de la Bible . . . avaient été retranchés ou réinterpretés dans des éditions du XVIIe siècle,” et l’article de Françoise Weil sur le “‘Fonctionnement de la censure en France au XVIIe siècle’. . .”

DOTOLI, GIOVANNI. “Quel italianisme en France au XVIIe siècle?” TL 22 (2009): 179—191.

D., who here takes up Cecilia Rizza’s challenge made at a 1966 colloque and who himself published in 2001, with Castiglione Minischetti, V. Pompejano and P. Placella Sommella, Les Traductions de l’italien en français au XVIIe siècle (Schena), refuses “[le] concept d’‘influences’ et . . . un comparatisme ne reposant pas sur des données solides . . . [pour] suivre le chemin de la réalité” (180). D.’s rich essay underscores views both negative and positive, from French writers and statesmen concerned with establishing France’s cultural and political hegemony in Europe to others such as Claude Lancelot who praised the beauty, esteem and importance of Italian. Evoking an expression in the title of J. Balsamo’s 1998 edited volume Passer les mots. Français en Italia. L’Italie en France (1494—1525), (Champion), D. challenges scholars: “il faut que nous passions encore les monts, les uns et les autres, jour après jour” (191). Reminding us of Dominique Fernandez’s 1995 cultural history of the baroque, La Perle et le croissant. L’Europe baroque de Naples à Saint-Pétersbourg, he declares: “il est temps d’écrire une histoire culturelle de l’Europe en partant de l’Italie” (190).

DULONG, CLAUDE. “Grandeurs et servitudes de la biographie.” PFSCL XXXVI, 70 (2009), 181—184.

A short reflection on the work of the biographer.

DUMORA, FLORENCE. L’œuvre nocturne. Songe et représentation au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Champion, 2005.

Review: L. Rimpau in RF 120.2 (2008): 232—235. Welcome study takes its rightful place in the scholarship on dream in the early modern, a burgeoning field since the late 1990s. D.’s work gives the lie to Jean Bousquet’s thesis that “les hommes ne rêvent guère que depuis 1780” (8) as it pioneers the investigation of the theme in 17th C texts and, following Foucault’s theoretical formulations, constructs an “archéologie du songe à l’âge classique” (13). Organized into sections on “Le Discours sur le songe” and “Récits de songes,” D.’s work provides new perspectives and new sources (28 anonymous ones previously unedited). While R. would have appreciated more socio-historical context and political dimensions, she praises D.’s contribution for its diversity and clarity of thought.

EGMOND, FLORIKE and FRANCISCO BETHENCOURT, eds. Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400—1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.

Review: E. Dursteler in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 947—950: Praiseworthy demonstration of a “much denser network of communications involving many smaller centers” than previous research had uncovered (948). Enlarges our understanding of communication, showing the engagement not only of the literate, political and the artistic, but also of the non-literary, even illiterate population.

EICHEL-LOJKINE, PATRICIA, éd. ‘De bonne vie s’ensuit bonne mort’. Récits de mort, récits de vie en Europe (XVe — XVIIe siècle). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006.

Review: G. Banderier in RBPH 86.2 (2008), 528: “A bien des égards, le récit de la mort forme, sous l’Ancien Régime, sinon un genre littéraire à part entière, du moins une sorte de spécialité, incarnée dans l’oraison funèbre, qui—paradoxalement—évoque plus la vie passée que le trépas. Actes d’un colloque organize à l’université de Montpellier en septembre 2003, ce volume aborde, en moins de trois cent cinquante pages, un champ infiniment vaste. On y trouvera donc plutôt des coups de sonde dans le noir du Temps, qu’une synthèse digne de ce nom. Sont abordés les domaines français (Catherine d’Amboise, Nicolas Caussin). . .”

ERDMANN, EVA and KONRAD SCHOELL, eds. Le comique corporel. Mouvement et comique dans l’espace théâtral du XVIIe siècle. Biblio 17—163. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2006.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 154 (2008): 180. These studies represent the Acts of the 2002 seminar by the same title of the 3rd Congress of the Associazione dei franco-romanisti tedeschi. The essays presented by S. are organized around the contribution of Charles Mazouer, the guest of honor of the seminar and himself the author of “Le jeu avec les objets dans le scenario de Domenico Biancolelli.” Other essays focus on gestures of comic effect, inherited from the farce and the commedia dell’arte (Rotrou, Mairet, Corneille and Scarron are among the authors studied). Four essays treat Molière from various perspectives of the corporeal comic. Bibliographies accompany each essay.

Review: W. Theile in RF 120.1 (2008): 107—109. Collection of essays from the third meeting of the German-French organization of Romance specialists offers an “interesting and rich kaleidoscope.” Theory and practice are important to this “historical anthropology of comedic creation” which includes analyses of little known as well as celebrated authors, even considering a 20th C film focusing on the 17th C.

ESMEIN-SARRAZIN, CAMILLE. “‘Parler roman’: imaginaire de la langue et traits du style Romanesque au XVIIème siècle.” RHLF 109.1 (2009): 85—99.

Theoretical approach to the definition and prescriptions concerning the roman in the Seventeenth Century. The essay turns starts with the critical perception of the “style Nervèze” and the précieux styles as anti-models of prose while critics sought to purify and simplify its language. In a next step, the author addresses the importance of finding a language adequate for the novel, and the ambitions to find such a language. The essay concludes by defining that “parler roman” can be seen as a theoretical representation of Romanesque language that may have appeared a bit belatedly in the century but which sought to account for the production of the entire period, ranging from the sentimental to the heroic novel.

EVAIN, AURORE, PERRY GETHNER, et HENRIETTE GOLDWYN, éds. Théâtre des femmes de l’Ancien Régime. 1530—1811. Anthologie en 5 volumes. Vol. 2: XVIIe siècle. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université Saint-Etienne, 2008.

Review: R. Lalande in OeC 33.2 (2008), 165—66: “Particulièrement bien équilibré du point de vue des œuvres choisies qui s’échalonnent de 1655 à 1680, ce volume présente neuf pieces de cinq femmes dramaturges, dont Françoise Pascal, la Sœur de la Chapelle, Marie-Catherine Desjardins (Madame de Villedieu), Anne de la Roche Guilhen, et Antoinette Deshoulières. Munie d’introductions, de nombreuses notes et d’un glossaire, cette edition méticuleuse rend justice à la richesse et à la découverte de ces autrices à la comédie, à la tragic-comédie, à la comédie-ballet, au théâtre sacré et à la tragédie.”

EZELL, MARGARET J. M. “The Laughing Tortoise: Speculations on Manuscript Sources and Women’s Book History.” ELR 38.2 (2008): 331—355.

Masterful article challenges us “to revisit the nature of the significance of manuscript studies for those working with early modern women writers in the context of the expansion of a new literary historical field, the history of the book” (333). E. points to several excellent monographs of women’s participation in the print trade, but deplores the lack of attention to mansucript volumes which can offer valuable insights into gender, culture, authorship and the role of the reader (336). Includes a detailed case study of the recently rediscovered manuscript volume of poetry and romance by Hester Pulter (1640s—1660s).

FERRARI, JEAN, MARGIT RUFFING, ROBERT THEIS and MATTHIAS VOLLET, eds. Kant et la France—Kant und Frankreich. Hildesheim: Olms, 2005. Europaea Memoria. Studien und Texte zur Geschichte der europäischen Ideen; Reihe I, 46.

Review: G. Schlüter in RF 120.4 (2008): 531—535. One of the numerous publications resulting from the 2004 world-wide Kant commemorations, the present meritorious volume includes over thirty essays from the 2004 congress held in Mainz, Dijon and Luxembourg. Although many essays examine connections relating to Kant’s reception or affinities with modern figures such as Péguy, the first part deals with Kant’s predecessors and parallels (objective reality and Descartes, Kant and Pascal “deux critiques de la raison,” or “Espèce et adaptation chez Kant et Buffon,” for example) (531).

FRAGONARD, MARIE-MADELEINE and JACQUES BERCHTOLD, eds. La Mémoire des Guerres de religion: La concurrence des genres historiques (XVIe—XVIIIe siècles). Actes du Colloque international de Paris (15—16 novembre 2002). Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance 79. Geneva: Droz, 2007.

Review: K. MacDonald in Ren Q 61.1 (2008): 202—204. This volume, which offers the acts of the first conference of the “Equipe Formes et idées de la Renaissance aux lumières,” fills a recognized lacuna in the criticism of the practice of history writing of the Wars of Religion. The 15 essays are chronologically arranged and explore a wide variety of genres from official histories and polemical pamphlets to memoires, letters, ballets, even the nouvelle, among others. The “personal documents” are shown to complement the “official,” as M. states: “The nouvelle showed what la grande Histoire was either unable or unwilling to” (203).

FRAPPIER, LOUISE. “Construction de la Figure monarchique et perfection divine dans les récits d’entrée royale à Avignon (1600 et 1622).” EMF 12 (2008): 26—43.

This article takes a closer look at the rhetorical devices that were used to describe the royal entrances in Avignon by Marie de Medici and Louis XIII. It shows how the image of the monarch’s divine character was not only constructed but even transformed, according to the political climate of the time. The ultimate construction is that of Louis XIII as image of God.

GAMBELLI, DELIA et LETIZIA NORCI CAGIANO, eds. Le Théâtre en musique et son double (1600—1762). Actes du Colloque “L’Académie de musique Lully, l’opéra et la parodie d’opéra,” Rome, 4—5 février 2000. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005.

Review: L. Naudeix in DSS 244 (2009), 555—556: Although this colloquium took place at a time when this field of research was still rather unmined, the delay in publication has rendered it “un peu anachronique.” “Le corpus étudié est large, puisqu’il embrasse les spectacles mixtes de Molière et Lully [. . .], le théâtre à divertissement musical de la seconde moitié du règne de Louis XIV, durant l’application du fameux privilège obtenu par Lully, les tragédies en musque elles-mêmes.” The reviewer also remarks on some errors in the manuscript as well as a certain informality in the transcription of some of the less structured papers delivered at the colloquium.

GARRAWAY, DORIS. The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2005.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 44.1 (2008): 92. Welcome multidisciplinary analysis of cultural contacts based on “subtle and revealing literary interpretations of early modern histories, fictions, engravings, legal documents and travel writings.” The study, infused with methodology drawn from “historiography, anthropology and psychoanalysis,” will be useful to “students and specialists of the Early Modern period, colonial history, women’s studies and postcolonial studies” (92).

GELY, VÉRONIQUE. L’invention d’un mythe: Psyché. Allégorie et fiction, du siècle de Platon au temps de La Fontaine. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006.

Review: C. Barbafieri in DSS 242 (2009), 182—183: In an augmented version of her thesis, “V. Gély se propose de montrer comment l’histoire de Psyché est progressivement devenue un mythe, comment elle a pris place dans le champ des discours mythologiques pour finalement apparaître dans les dictionnaires savants à la fin du XVIIe siècle.”

GETHNER, PERRY. “Female Friendships in Plays by Women Writers.” CdDS 12.2 (2009): 31—41.

Gethner turns to four aspects of friendship in drama written by women writers: what types of friendships exist between female characters, in what light they are presented, their importance to the plot and their challenging of social order. He concludes that on the one hand, female friendships were revealed to be doomed to failure, due to political conspiracies or ruthless schemes. On the other hand, female friendships enhanced the sense of personal worth and autonomy in women, demonstrating them capable of virtues, such as esteem, loyalty, altruism and sincerity.

GIAVARINI, LAURENCE, ed. Construire l’exemplarité. Pratiques littéraires et discours historiens (XVIe—XVIIIe siècles). Dijon: Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 2008.

Review: L. Luison in S Fr 156 (2008): 716—718. Welcome volume focusing on the example as both object and method. Studies are organized into sections on “Pouvoirs et leurres de la rhétorique. Comment servent les exemples?,” “Corps d’exemples, configurations d’exemplarités” and “L’exemplarité politique et sociale, entre histoire et fiction.” 17th C scholars will appreciate here essays on tragedy, history, testimonies, stories, récits and biographies, among others.

GILBY, EMMA. Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature. Oxford: Legenda, 2006.

Review: D. Sedley in SCN 66 (2008), 72—75: “In her book Emma Gilby formulates a theory of the sublime and applies it to a series of key authors and texts of French classicism. The result is a solid contribution to the study of early modern sublimity and a useful rethinking of several episodes in the literary history of seventeenth-century France.”

GILBY, EMMA. “‘Émotions’ and the Ethics of Response in Seventeenth-Century French Dramatic Theory.” MP 107.1 (Aug. 2009), 52—71.

The author examines d’Aubignac’s writings with those of Pierre Corneille’s to show that Corneille, unlike d’Aubignac, is able to equate humanly accessible “vérités” and “grandes et fortes émotions.”

GOSSIP, CHRISTOPHER J. “Chappuzeau and the Performance of French Classical Drama.” SCFS, 31.1 (2009), 3—13.

Examines the differences between the 1673 draft manuscript of Chappuzeau’s work Le Théâtre françois and the printed edition of 1674, highlighting how the former “offers evidence of the author’s more robust references to Catholic clergy and greater exuberance in his comments on authors and their works and on the acting profession.”

GRIMM, JURGEN. “La mort de Colbert: Une date pour la périodisation? Plaidoyer pour une périodisation historique de l’histoire littéraire.” PFSCL XXXVI, 70 (2009), 139—148.

Provides an overview of some of the limitations inherent in periodization by traditional literary categorizations (Baroque, classical, rococo) or by the history of events (histoire événementielle), and argues in favour of a different type of periodization which would focus on “une histoire dans lesquelles les événements sont enchevêtrés intimement les uns avec les autres, où les différences entre causes et effets disparaissent.” Article first appeared in De la mort de Colbert à la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes, ed. Louise Godard de Donville (Marseille: CMR 17, 1984), 347—353.

GRIMM, JURGEN. Französische Klassik. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2005. Lehrbuch Romanistik.

Review: R. Zaiser in RF 120.3 (2008): 378—381. Welcome and impressive synthesis of French Classicism by this recognized master. Comprehensive, the volume treats not only the literature of the era, but also historical, social, institutional and aesthetic conditions (vii). It is therefore a cultural history of the 17th C and focuses on religious, philosophical and scientific literature as well as political and social history of the “long XVIIe siècle (1589—1715).” The baroque is not limited to the first third of the century but is seen as a complementary phenomenon, in dialectic, as the reverse side of classicism. In addition to chapters focusing on the emphases indicated above, other chapters examine the arts in service of the monarchy, the status of salon culture, “honnêteté,” and literary forms and themes. In the latter, G. examines individual authors and themes. Praiseworthy bibliography completes this literary history which is highly recommended to students, scholars and the cultivated public alike.

GUARDIA, JEAN DE and MARIE PARMENTIER. “Les yeux du théâtre: Pour une théorie de la lecture du texte dramatique.” POETIQUE 158 (2009), 131—47.

Attempts to revisit the practice of reading theater, particularly in the wake of disciplinary changes which have valorized the study of theater as performance. De Guardia and Parmentier borrow Molière’s suggestion that reading theater is only advisable for those who have “des yeux pour découvrir dans la lecture tout le jeu du théâtre” (132). The article develops this notion of reading as a “mise en scène mentale” (132) and contrast it to a practice of reading theater as one might read a novel (a stance passingly allied with d’Aubignac).

GUELLOUZ, SUZANNE. Le Classicisme. Paris: Gallimard, 2007.

Review: M. Sweetser in FR 82 (2008), 392—93. Along with a number of other recent books, Guellouz takes up the project of reassessing classicism, addressing her subject from range of perspectives: historical, political, philosophical, religious, anthropological and social. Within this approach, there also emerges detailed treatment of several major figures: La Fontaine, Molière, Mme de La Fayette and Racine. “Les enseignants trouveront dans cet ouvrage dense et exhaustif une approche contemporaine sur la naissance d’un classicisme historique” (393).

HIGGINS, IAN. “Where the Added Value is: On Writing and Reading Translations.” FMLS 44.3 (2008): 231—257.

This excellent essay qualifies as an apology for translation, both in se and as deserving “full recognition not only by the cultured public in general, but also by academic committees assessing quality in research” (abstract 231). Detailed examples from a wide-variety of genres and periods illustrate “compensation in literary translation” between English, French and German. Six pages focus on Ted Hughes’s 1998 translation of Phèdre and analyze techniques such as the elaboration of an image, abandonment of rime for function and mediation itself (between cultures). One might also qualify this remarkable and highly compelling essay as the best kind of pièce de circonstance, since the author’s impetus is “uninformed” and “astonishing” assessment committees, and in the case of the doyenne of translation studies, Susan Bassnett, “unpardonable.” (Students and scholars alike benefit from her volume Translation Studies, now in its third edition—1980, 1991, 2002).

HOWE, ALAN. Ecrivains de Théâtre, 1600—1649: Documents du Minutier Central des Notaires de Paris. Paris: Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, 2005.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 44.1 (2008): 92. Highly useful, provides “an analysis, and for many of them [the playwrights], an integral transcription, of 173 actes, regarding 15 French playwrights [well-known and lesser-known] in the first half of the Seventeenth Century” (92). H.’s volume has many merits—many of the actes are here published and interpreted for the first time and his analyses clarify various important points regarding chronology, performances and bibliography.

IBBETT, KATHERINE. “Pity, Compassion, Commiseration: Theories of Theatrical Relatedness.” SCFS, 30.2 (2008), 196—208.

Examines the distinction between pity and compassion that emerges in seventeenth-century dramatic theory as theorists move away from Aristotle’s poetics. Argues that “Pity is understood as a part of the great machine of catharsis that serves as a schooling for the purged self, whereas compassion ushers in a broader vision of the social, where theatre is prized not because it schools the individual but because it gives rise to a commonality of experience.” Focuses on d’Aubignac, La Mesnardière, Corneille and Rapin.

JACQUEMOND, RICHARD,dir. Ecrire l’histoire de son temps (Europe et monde arabe): L’Écriture de l’histoire. Vol. I. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005.

Review: L. Luison in S Fr 154 (2008): 237—238. Wide-ranging, this first of two volumes collects the communications from a 2004 colloquium of the U of Cairo and of the Centre Français de Culture et de Coopération of the capital and focuses on both literary and historical writings. Interdisciplinary and intercultural, scholars examine writings (and film) from the classical period to our day. The collection of essays illustrates and verifies the diverse representations of the world and society itself. Genres are also examined, in particular, biography and memoir. In French and in Arabic (the latter, pages 259—327).

JAFFARY, NORA E., ed. Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Review: J. R. Ottman in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 545—546. Welcome collection of eleven essays which “illustrate the kaleidoscopic variety of ways in which gender, race and religion interacted in the early modern Americas [rather] than to support the construction of any overarching synthesis” (545). Organized in thematic sections as follows: “Frontiers,” “Female Religious,” “Race Mixing” and “Networks,” the essays are wide-ranging geographically and perspectives include the spiritual, the political and gender, among others. 17th C French scholars will appreciate Susan Broomhall’s examination of the chronicle of the Benedictine nuns in Tours and its minimization of ethnic differences.

JOSTOCK, INGEBORG. La Censure négociée: Le contrôle du livre à Genève 1560—1625. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 430. Geneva: Droz, 2007.

Review: R.M. Kingdon in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 582—583. “Meticulous and thoughtful,” J.’s study is judged “a major contribution to. . .the history of printing and of censorship in Geneva” (582—683). Censorship is found to be “a process, a result of negotiation among the interested parties [governmental, ecclesiastical, authors, printers and publishers]” (582). Chronological analysis, index, appendix and bibliography.

JOUHAUD, CHRISTIAN. Sauver le Grand-Siècle. Présence et transmission du passé. Paris: Seuil, 2007.

Review: H. Stenzel in RF 120.4 (2008): 503—510. Welcome transdisciplinary work with important epistemological and memorial dimensions. J.’s position is “métacritique, celle d’observer et d’analyser une série d’entrées” (505). Two methodological decisions structure J.’s analyses, an explicit one: “brouiller le statut des textes” (23), and an implicit one: “un regroupement thématique de l’analyse de ces deux types de textes [témoignages ou mémoires et des textes historiographiques] sous des sujets globaux [par ex. “Commémorations]” (505—506). Finding J.’s work “stimulant” et “provocateur,” S. underscores that for J. the “transmissions ‘salvatrices’ du XVIIe siècle [sont] celles qui se détournent des portes majestueuses de ce lieu de mémoire et qui inventent des brèches” (510).

JUALL, SCOTT D. “Rewriting Self and Other in Early Modern French Travel Literature.” E Cr 48.1 (2008): 1—4.

The introduction to this special issue of E Cr on “Encounters with Alterity in Early Modern French Travel Literature” demonstrates how the 16th C image, created by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, of an Amerindian chief consulting a sorcerer illustrates the several and varied topics of the volume. J. resumes the volume in this manner: “[It is] devoted to studies of a variety of early modern French travel narratives and visual materials that depict encounters with alterity during a period of discovery, exploration and colonization of lands—mostly unfamiliar—across the globe.” Religious, political and socio-cultural perspectives complement the literary in the récits de voyage examined.

KOCH, EREC. “Perfect Pitch: Sound, Aurality, and Rhetoric from Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle to Bertrand Lamy’s La Rhétorique, ou l’art de parler.” EMF 12 (2008): 185—213.

How do aurality and vocal sound produce an affective response in the auditor? Koch studies this question by looking at questions of pitch, accent, tone and inflection. He further extends his study to see how rhetoric converged with physiology and mechanics. The question was no longer that of an individual audience but that of determining universal laws at work in vocal sound and its action on the ear.

LAVOCAT, FRANÇOISE, PIERRE KAPITANIAK and MARIANNE CLOSSON, eds. Fictions du diable: Littérature et démonologie de saint Augustin à Leo Taxil. Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance 81. Geneva: Droz, 2007.

Review: H. Kallendorf in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 932—934: Praised as “a solid contribution to the study of demonology in the Renaissance and beyond.” Fiction and literature’s relation to treatises on demonology is examined. Sponsored both by a 2003 conference held at Paris—7 Denis Diderot and an interdisciplinary team under the auspices of the Ministère de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur, the volume is organized into sections focusing on “writing strategies of demonologists,” the “cross-fertilization of demonological treatises and literary texts,” and “the contributions of demonology to the history of ideas” (933). Useful in itself and stimulating for future scholarship.

LONG, KATHLEEN P. Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

Review: G. S. Eschrich in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 620—622. Judged “rich and revealing,” L.’s study analyzes a wide variety of documents from scientific treatises to novels and poetry. Chapters include examinations of the role of the hermaphrodite in alchemy, gendered representation and alchemical writings, the lyric hermaphrodite, portrayals of Henri III and his mignons and Thomas Artus’s novel Description de l’Isle des Hermaphrodites. Praiseworthy for its “helpful framework” and “significant contribution to gender studies” (622).

LOSADA GOYA, JOSE MANUEL. “Les écrivains français du XVIIe siècle à l’école du Quichotte: les nouvelles intercalées.” TL 22 (2009): 161—168.

Focusing on translations and adaptations of nouvelles in Cervantes’s novels, L G. demonstrates their role and assimilation in France as well as their varied interpretations. L G.’s panorama and analyses of techniques take us to Scarron, Richard de Romany, Pichou, Guérin de Bouscal, Nicolas Baudouin, Brosse “Le Jeune,” Marcel, Vital d’Audiguier, Charles Cotolendi and anonymous writers. As L G demonstrates, C.’s nouvelles contribute to the inspiration of several genres: comedy, tragi-comedy, the novel and conversations in salons (reported by Tallemant des Réaux, par example).

LYONS, JOHN D. “The Case for Reasonable Love.” SCFS, 31.2 (2009), 97—110.

Examines Le Cid, Phèdre and Clélie as works in which the choice of the love object is shown not to be irrational, as it is frequently perceived, but on the contrary “to be a matter of rational choice,” in the sense described in Descartes’ Passions de l’âme. Argues that “the rational-choice position leads potentially to much more pessimistic outcomes than the anti-rationalist opposition.”

MACDONALD, KATHERINE. Biography in Early Modern France 1540—1630: Forms and Functions. London: Legenda, 2007.

Review: B. Bowen in FR 82 (2009), 1312: Though primarily concerned with 16th-century texts, MacDonald also includes discussion of D’Aubigné’s 1629 Sa Vie à ses enfants. Praised by the reviewer.

MAHER, DANIEL. “Corrompre la perfection—de la Carte de Tendre aux Royaumes d’Amour.” EMF 12 (2008): 58—77.

Maher studies the cartography of love, starting with Madame de Scudéry’s La Carte de Tendre as a model of perfection in the world of sentiment. He then discusses contestations, corruptions and rejections of that topography in the works of Tristan L’Hermite, d’Aubignac and Paul Tallemant.

MALINOWSKI, WIESLAW MATEUSZ. “‘Tête rasée et sabre au flanc.’ Les Sarmates polonais et leur royaume aux yeux des écrivains français du XVIIe siècle.” TL 22 (2009): 193—202.

From stereotypical praise to more discerning expression of sentiments such as those of Mme de Motteville, M. examines the rich and varied literary representations in France following the 1645 visit of ambassadors to negotiate the marriage between the Polish King Ladislas IV and Louise-Marie de Gonzague, daughter of the duc de Nevers. M. discovers both repulsion and fascination, along with a systematic comparison of Polish and French clothing (St. Amant). M. reviews the long 17th and 18th C debate on Poland from d’Aubigné’s “modèle opposé à la monarchie française” to La Fontaine’s epistle of 1669 incorporating both praise and irony. M. notes that more lucid developments on Poland’s political institutions are found in Jean-François Regnard’s late 17th C Voyage de Pologne, not published until 1731, and calls for further study of R.’s “tableau” of Poland.

MARCHAL-WEYL, CATHERINE. “Les Adaptations de comedias du Siècle d’Or dans le premier XVIIe siècle: effet de mode ou influence réelle?” TL 22 (2009): 169—177.

Welcome study contributes to a better understanding of the “particularité” of the influence of Spanish comedias in early 17th C France. Examining historic differences of critical views from 19th C comparatists to specialists of our day, M.-W. makes a valiant attempt to understand why the influence remains so controversial and proposes useful avenues “pour essayer de déceler si, derrière le succès des adaptations, se cachent les marques d’un apport réel” (171). M.-W. underscores the abundance of adaptations performed and published, the longevity of the movement (from 1630 to 1670) and “particularités” such as situations, plots, themes, structures, “le recours au ‘masque’” (175) and comic figures, among others. She finds that the influence is “ni supercifielle ni radicale, mais subtile et discrète, puisqu’elle accompagne l’évolution du théâtre français, par ses apports structurels et thématiques, vers une forme qui est tout opposé de l’esthétique dont est issue la Comedia” (177).

MATHIEU-CASTELLANI, GISELE. Eros baroque. Anthologie thématique de la poésie amoureuse. Nouvelle édition. Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 154 (2008): 177. Praiseworthy new edition of “un’antologia. . .molto preziosa” with a fine introducion. Especially welcome in our period of reconsideration of the French baroque.

MAZOUER, CHARLES, ed. Les lieux du spectacle dans l’Europe du XVIIe siècle, Actes du colloque du Centre de recherches sur le XVIIe siècle européen, U Michel de Montaigne—Bordeaux III, 11—13 mars 2004. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2006.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 155 (2008): 446. This collection attests fully to the 17th C as “il secolo dello spettacolo”—theatrical, musical, religious and in both public and private spaces. Highly international and interdisciplinary, the volume represents seven European countries and a wide variety of disciplines, including architecture, art history, literature, theatre, religion and music.

MAZOUER, CHARLES. Le Théâtre français de l’âge classique. Vol. I: Le premier XVIIe siècle. Paris: Champion, 2006. Dictionnaires & Références, 16. and

MAZOUER, CHARLES. Molière et ses comédies-ballets. Nouvelle édition revue et corrigée. Paris: Champion, 2006. Lumière classique, 75.

Review: J. Grimm in RF 120.2 (2008): 256—258. Highly laudatory review of M.’s new wide-ranging book and of the re-edited volume on Molière. Referring to Mazouer as the renowned specialist of all of French theatre from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 18th C, G. retraces admiringly M.’s various publications before turning to Vol. 1 of these new ones. Well-organized with extensive and clearly presented information, it is both readable and absorbing. G. cites M.’s contention that the main feature of the theatrical 17th C is a “[profonde] imbrication de la vie théâtral dans la vie sociale et son lien au pouvoir” (9). Organized in sections as follows: “L’époque d’Alexandre Hardy. 1610—1628” and “le premier classicisme. De 1629 à la Fronde.” The volume contains significant foci such as “le théâtre du rire,” “la tragi-comédie,” “la pastorale,” “la tragédie,” and treats as well Richelieu and the theatre, the Church and the theatre, the theatre as an institution, the public, theatre poetics, and authors and their careers. Extensive bibliography of both primary and secondary texts, indices, illustrations. The 2006 re-edition of M.’s monograph on Molière’s comédies-ballets is welcome as it continues to verify the hypothesis: “L’union des trois arts fait sens: l’intervention de la musique et de la danse n’est pas simplement ornamentale: elle complète, enrichit, nuance, contredit, éventuellement, et de toutes les façons transforme la signification de la comédie récitée, trop souvent privée de ces deux arts dans nos théâtres” (319). M. insists that to interpret correctly and appreciate Molière “il faut lire et analyser conjointement les partitions de Lully ou de Charpentier et le texte de Molière, sans tout à fait oublier les danseurs de Beauchamp qui, avec les acteurs, évoluaient dans les décors d’un Vigarani” (322). Updated bibliography also includes a “Discographie” and it is noteworthy that 5 of 7 here are from 1997, “a convincing demonstration of the vitality of this important and fascinating part of Molière’s theatre” (trans. of G. 258).

MERLIN-KAJMAN, HÉLÈNE. “Le texte comme don public.” EF 45.2 (2009), 47—67.

Discusses the role of works created specifically for artistic and literary patrons, the question of “stratégies sociales” as they related to these works and the relationship between writer and patron.

MOREAU, I. and G. HOLTZ, eds. “Parler librement.” La liberté de parole au tournant du XVIe et du XVIIe siècle. Lyon: ENS Editions, 2005.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 154 (2008): 178—179. These essays are the result of some journées d’étude organized by the ENS of Lyon from 2002—2003. Erudite libertinism is the subject of the volume which focuses on the pamphlet and strategies of dissimulation. The literary and historical dimensions are privileged in sections devoted to “auctoritas” and the ideological.

MOUYSSET, SYLVIE. “De mémoire, d’action et d’amour: les relations hommes/femmes dans les écrits du for privé français au XVIIe siècle.” DSS 244 (2009), 393—408.

“[L]es sources narratives, telles que mémoires ou journaux de voyage, laissent à l’historien la liberté de penser, et même d’imaginer les relations hommes/femmes dans un espace familial élargi à l’entourage, voire au-delà, dans le cadre d’une vie itinérante aux horizons plus ouverts. Autre piste possible—et la liste n’en sera pas close—, les livres de raison offrent à celui qui s’apprête à dépasser l’aridité d’une source comptable et fragmentaire, l’opportunité d’approcher la réalité de liens pourtant figurés seulement ici en quelques mots brefs.”

NIDERST, ALAIN. “Clefs et mécènes.” PFSCL XXXVI, 70 (2009), 149—155.

A commentary on Ivan Loskoutoff’s article “Le mécénat littéraire du président de Maisons” (XVIIe siècle, No 233, octobre 2006).

ORWAT, FLORENCE. L’invention de la rêverie. Une conquête pacifique du Grand Siècle. Paris: Champion, 2006.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 155 (2008): 447. Praiseworthy for filling an important lacune in 17th C scholarship. After a first section delineating the concept of “rêverie” lexicographically and lexicologically and focusing on representative texts illuminating the idea, O. proceeds to a second section which examines various literary genres (poetry and the novel receive more attention than the theatre). Of particular interest are analyses of “rêve” in l’Astrée, le Page disgracié, and in the writing of the précieuses. Spaces of reverie themselves, private and psychic, also come into consideration.

PAVEL, THOMAS. “La mesure de la pastorale.” EF 45.2 (2009), 13—24.

Shows how the tension between human imperfection and the aspiration toward an ideal are reflected in the pastoral novel’s oscillation between prose and poetry. Demonstrates that from these extremes, pastoral writers manage to create an impression of delicate balance.

PENDERGAST, JOHN. “‘Comedies for Commodities’: Genre and Early Modern Dramatic Epistles.” ELR 38.3 (2008): 483—505.

Although the focus of P.’s study is 17th C English theatre, french scholars will benefit from his careful consideration of the usefulness of paratexts, in particular the epistle and the preface “which mark the move from stage to page” (487) and reveal the “new professionalism of early modern dramatists” (491). P. concurs with John Fletcher’s suggestion in his prefatory epistle to Faithful Shepherdess (1609) that “the generic characteristics of a play are only formally controlling until the play finds life on the stage, at which point audience expectations, reactions and other ‘communal concerns’ take over” (494).

PERRIN, JEAN-FRANÇOIS, et al., eds. Féeries: le conte, la scène. Issue 4. Grenoble: Ellug, 2007.

Review: I. Dyckman in FR 82 (2009), 1053—54: An issue of Féeries devoted to fairy tales adapted to the stage. Many of the stage works in question seem to be situated in the 18th Century. Perrault emerges as the author most adapted in this regard. The volume also includes a chronology of the theatrical works in question, and synopses of the articles.

POSTER, CAROL and LINDA C. MITCHELL, eds. Letter-writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the Present. Historical and Bibliographic Studies. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2007.

Review: E. J. Polak in Ren Q 61.2 (2008): 611—612. Praiseworthy “premier volume on the history of treatises and guides on the art of letter-writing” (611). Well-documented with notes, bibliographies and appendices. Although noting omissions particularly as regards recent scholarship, the reviewer is largely appreciative and lauds the “compiling [of] historical and bibliographic materials” promoting the recognition of letter-writing as a distinct discipline within rhetoric (611).

RADULESECU, DOMINICA. “Caterina’s Colombina: The Birth of Female Trickster in Seventeenth-Century France.” TJ 60 (2008): 87—113.

Article discusses how Caterina Biancolelli, one of the actresses of the Ancienne Troupe de la Comédie Italienne, created a Colombina who provides a “superb illustration of transgressive humor, subversive performance and improvisational comedy.” Argues that this version of Colombina depends both upon oral tradition and upon the comic genius of this specific actress.

RIGGS, LARRY. “Teaching the Seventeenth Century: Modernity, Motives, and Further Reflection on Critical Theory.” CdDS 12.2 (2009): 71—86.

Study centers on major problems of epistemology and interpretation of both seventeenth-century literature and critical literacy. Authors discussed are Montaigne, Molière and Lafayette, and questions explored are objects of desire, control, lack or loss, and the issue of interpretation, of reading.

RIZZONI, NATHALIE and JULIE BOCH, eds. L’âge d’or du conte de fées: de la comédie à la critique (1690—1709). Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 156 (2008): 658. This fifth volume of the Bibliothèque des Génies et des Fées illustrates the dramatic dimension of the genre and includes a theoretical discussion of the conte itself. Three plays are edited by R.: Les Fées ou les Contes de Ma Mère l’Oie (1697) bu Dufresny and Brugère de Barante, Les Fées (1699) by Dancourt, and La Fée bienfaisante (1708) by the Chevalier de La Baume. These plays are accompanied by a general preface as well as one for each work focusing on culture and theatrical concerns. B. furnishes in the second part a series of critical texts by some seven authors including Charles Perrault and Catherine Durand. Each author receives examination and commentary in B.’s introduction. Judged highly interesting for its consideration of the extension of the conte to other genres and for its attention to the poetics of the genre itself.

ROLET, STÉPHANE, ed. L’Emblème littéraire: Théories et pratiques. Littérature 145. Paris: Larousse, 2007.

Review: D. Graham in Ren Q 61.1 (2008): 230—232. Despite inadequate proofreading (there are unfortunate misspellings and typos), this edited collection is judged a worthwhile contribution to the field. Varied subjects treated range from the conception and edition of emblem books, sources, emblem as propaganda, symbolism, along with case studies. Particularly noteworthy is Daniel Russell’s “Nouvelles directions dans l’étude de l’emblème français” which considers emblem not only as form but as “mode of thought and reading” (232).

ROY, ROXANNE. L’art de s’emporter. Colère et vengeance dans les nouvelles françaises (1661—1690). Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2007, Biblio 17—169.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 156 (2008): 657. This doctoral thesis (U of Montréal, 2004) examines a vast corpus of galant and historical nouvelles from the year that Mlle de Scudéry abandoned the romance for the nouvelle to the year in which the mode changed to mémoires and other forms. R.’s approach is cultural and anthropological. Includes a presentation of the corpus and a definition of the genre, analyses of the representation of anger and the desire for vengeance, considered in relation to the art of love and the art of living in society.

ROY, ROXANNE. “Éloquence du corps et jeu des passions. Le cas de la colère féminine dans les nouvelles galantes et historiques.” DFS 85 (2008), 51—61.

L’auteure propose “d’examiner quels sont les savoirs convoqués dans la représentation physiologique de la colère féminine, quels usages les nouvelles galantes et historiques font de la rhétorique des passions dans cette représentation, et quelles en sont les finalités.” Ensuite elle examine comment “cette rhétorique se déploie à l’intérieur même de la nouvelle, quels sont les mises en scène et les jeux plus problématiques auxquels la représentation du corps féminin en colère donne lieu.”

ROYE, JOCELYN. La figure du pédant de Montaigne à Molière. Genève: Droz, 2008.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 156 (2008): 654. Reviewer would have appreciated a wider examination of a comparative nature with archetypes of Scroffa and Belo, but the debt of French literature to these and to the figures of the commedia dell’Arte is recognized. Clear and convincing treatment combines the descriptive with the suggestive and interpretative. The pédant’s language is analyzed as it the veritable emergence of the gallant society and its aesthetic codes.

SHOEMAKER, PETER W. Powerful Connections: The Poetics of Patronage in the Age of Louis XIII. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2007.

Review: L. Seifert in Ren Q 61.3 (2008): 898—899: Praiseworthy for providing a broad and “multifaceted account of both the rhetoric and the practice of literary patronage “during the early 17th C. Chapters focus on “ambiguities and paradoxes of the patron-client relationship,” Guez de Balzac’s letters as “an ideal of the autonomous self, “a poetic corpus drawn from Régnier, Sigogne and Malherbe illustrating “authorship shared with the patron,” libertine writers (St. Amant, Théophile, Sorel), the theatre (Corneille, Mairet, DuRyer) and others “sponsored by Richelieu,” and the Académie Française (S. sees the academy as “both a beneficiary of Richelieu’s patronage [and] an institutional patron”). Highly recommended for its valuable perspectives on authorship, the development of literary fields and the reading public.

STEFANOVSKA, MALINA. “Exemplary or Singular? The Anecdote in Historical Narrative.” SUBSTANCE 38 (2009), 15—30.

The article addresses 17th- and 18th-century uses of the anecdote, the sources of historians’ ambivalence toward it, and the ways in which anecdotes lead writers like Saint-Simon to narrow their scope toward a focus on the singular. Contains detailed consideration of Saint-Simon and Voltaire’s Le Siècle de Louis XIV. Variously compares the anecdote to a collectable, a Proustian moment of the real and Barthes’ notion of the punctum, nicely synthesizing literary-formal analysis with historical reflections about the genre.

STRIKER-METRAL, CHARLES-OLIVIER. Narcisse contrarié: l’amour-propre dans le discours moral en France (1650—1715). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007.

Review: F. Greiner in DSS 243 (2009), 369—372: Of this impressive and comprehensive study, the reviewer concludes that “[o]n sort inévitablement admiratif de ce beau livre qui réussit la performance de faire le tour d’un sujet complexe et touffu sans jamais rencontrer les écueils des approximations et des aperçus hâtifs, et sans jamais se perdre dans le labyrinthe des analyses ponctuelles. C’est là sans doute sa principale qualité: faire en sorte que le détail se marie toujours harmonieusement aux réflexions de portée générale, que les précisions monographiques convergent en définitive vers la constitution d’une véritable synthèse.”

SUBHU, MUKERJI and RAPHAEL LYNE, eds. Early Modern Tragicomedy. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK.: Brydell and Brewer, 2007.

Review: J. Ridpath in TLS 5505 (Oct 3, 2008): 26. Contains essays on tragicomic dramas of France, Spain, England and Ireland. Review gives no detail on coverage of French material.

THIROUIN, LAURENT. L’Aveuglement salutaire. Le réquisitoire contre le théâtre dans la France classique. Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 156 (2008): 658. Reviewer agrees with T. that “on est certes en droit de refuser cette condamnation du théâtre par Nicole et ses amis, mais on ne peut que se réjouir de l’installation du débat sur un plan philosophique et morale” (n.p.). Highly appreciative review notes the extensive treatment citing authorities such as Church Fathers and specific problems and texts which are examined from varied perspectives (philosophical, religious, moral, metaphysical, for example). Rich and suggestive work includes useful annexes, a chronology of the Querelle du théâtre and the Querelle des Visionnaires and a selective bibliography.

VAN DELFT, LOUIS. Les Moralistes: une apologie. Paris: Gallimard, 2008.

Review: R. Tobin in E Cr 48.1 (2008): 130—131. T. finds that Van D.’s latest volume is “like the fifth act of a classical tragedy,” and adopts a method much like Montaigne’s; it “is the sum and the synthesis of his [Van D.’s] reflections on the moralists.” Highly interdisciplinary, Van D. “notes the trace of the moralistes in neuroscience, anthropology, the social sciences, phenomenology and rhetoric.” T. finds that to listen to Van D.’s reflections as to those of the moralists, “opens a world of pleasure and prudence” (131).

Review: S. Bertière in DSS 243 (2009), 373—375: “C’est là un livre ambitieux, passionné, point d’aboutissement de toute une vie de recherche et cri d’alarme devant la désaffection qui frappe aujourd’hui les moralistes. Au terme d’une carrière de comparatiste parmi les livres mais aussi sur le terrain dans des universités étrangères, nul n’était plus qualifié que Louis Van Delft pour tenter de faire le point sur un genre qui fut universellement pratiqué et pour en plaider la cause auprès d’une ingrate postérité. L’ampleur du champ est immense, dans le temps et dans l’espace. Au centre, les deux siècles d’or de la réflexion morale, le XVIIe et le XVIIIe, assortis d’incursions en amont, vers l’Antiquité et la Renaissance, et, en aval, vers « notre modernité » .”

VAN DELFT, LOUIS. Les spectateurs de la vie. Généalogie du regard moraliste. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005. Les collections de la République des Lettres: Etudes.

Review: W. Helmich in RF 120.2 (2008): 226—229. Extremely favorable review praises numerous aspects of this latest volume by the renowned expert on the moralistes. Judged extraordinarily instructive, the volume gathers material from the best of Van D.’s previous publications (1971, 1982, 1993, 1997, 2004), supplementing it with new insights and rich perspectives. Focuses include recurrent representations, portraits of prominent observers such as Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, and mnemonic techniques and the spectator (with numerous examples of images and text). Particularly noteworthy are: the remarkably high philological standard of the volume, the copious bibliography, the rich iconographical material and generally the profusion of information.

Review: M. Bouvier in DSS 243 (2009), 372—373: While placing it in the extraordinary context of Van Delft’s contribution to literary scholarship, the reviewer remarks a certain uneven quality to this particular book, noting the introduction and conclusion “tentent de faire un livre de ce qui n’en reste pas moins un ensemble d’études d’abord autonomes; la qualité de ces études ne saurait tout à fait cacher ce défaut, surtout sensible dans les deux premières parties, où les redites et les artifices de liaison gênent. La troisième partie se défend mieux de cette faiblesse, et le très remarquable chapitre 11, « Poétique du fragment » , conclut l’ouvrage de manière magistrale.”

VUILLEMIN, JEAN-CLAUDE. Theatrum mundi: désenchantement et appropriation. POETIQUE 158 (2009), 173—99.

Situates the topos of the theatrum mundi within baroque theater and within the era’s Augustinian religious ideas, which emphasized ephemerality and uncertainty. Vuillemin asserts that “[d]avantage qu’esthétique, le Baroque—mon Baroque—est épistémologique” (179); it is something which takes stock of the world’s perceived decadence and mankind’s disorientation about knowledge. The article allusively situates baroque theater within paradigm-shifting scientific discoveries about the cosmos, and questions the idea that baroque religious plays such as Le Véritable Saint Genest truly underscore the transcendence of God. Engaging and well written.

WALFARD, ADRIEN. “Justice et passions tragiques. Lectures d’Aristote aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” POETIQUE 155 (2009), 259—281.

Examines the reception of a portion of Aristotle’s Poetics dealing with justice and the suffering protagonist. For Walfard, early modern debates about whether just heroes should be included in tragic theater “signalent l’ambiguité de la notion de tragique à l’époque prémoderne. Certains poéticiens refusent d’exclure du genre tragique la representation du malheur des justes. . .D’autres poéticiens. . .tente de preserver l’idée d’une culpabilité problématique du personnage tragique” (263). Includes discussion of Corneille, La Mesnardière and Le Père Rapin.

WILD, FRANCINE. Naissance du genre des Ana (1574—1712). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001.

Review: J. Perlmutter in SCN 66 (2008), 246—249: “Adapted from the author’s doctoral thesis, this is an exhaustive, seminal work on the once popular, but now little-known genre called the “ana.” Wild clearly sets forth her goals in her introduction: she will first establish a definition based on the original form of the ana and will then trace its subsequent diversification following both a diachronic and synchronic approach. A study of the word “ana” will complete this description of the genre. In her concluding chapter, Wild will raise some questions about the ana’s relationship to society, politics and literature.”

ZONZA, CHRISTIAN. La Nouvelle historique en France à l’âge classique (1657—1703). Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 156 (2008): 656—657. This rich study analyzes a vast corpus of historical nouvelles (dating from the publication of Segrais’ Nouvelles françaises) which represents the theorization and practice of a new romance aesthetic (1703 is the date of the criticism of the Journal de Trévoux and marks the beginning of the genre’s decadence. Wide-ranging study provides generic considerations, analyses of style and function, treatment of ideology, representations of a new heroism, among other subjects. Nine annexes allow chronological classification as well as by characters and recurring situations. Rich bibliography and index of authors.

ALBANESE, RALPH (U. Memphis, TN).

• Book:
  • Corneille à l’Ecole Républicaine. Du mythe héroïque à l’imagination politique en France 1800—1950. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009. Collection Espaces littéraires. ISBN: 978-2-296-06639-7.