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.”