FRENCH 17

ARNDT, JOHANNES. Der Dreißigjährige Krieg 16181648. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2009.

Review: A. Karsten in HZ 291 (2010), 203-204. Welcome volume should be appreciated by both lay persons and students as it is well-organized and extensive. Includes perspectives of cultural media history.

ASCHE, MATTHIAS, MICHAEL HERRMANN and ULRIKE LUDWIG , eds. Krieg, Militär und Migration in der Frühen Neuzeit. (Herrschaft und soziale Systeme in der Frühen Neuzeit, Bd. 9.) Berlin/Münster: Lit, 2008.

Review: U. Niggemann in HZ 290.2 (2010), 470-471. Focus of this collection of essays is war, the military and migration in the Early Modern. Wide-ranging essays investigate numerous factors of mobility in a highly informative volume which does not neglect economics. Soldiers and their families including Huguenot officers are studied.

BACCAR, ALIA BOURNAZ. La Représentation des Arabes chez Madame de Lafayette. Tr L 23 (2010), 95-104.

Detailed demonstration of numerous aspects of le monde arabe in Zaïde, including a well-defined geographical space, a maritime omnipresence, a reconstitution of une atmosphere guerrière (both tyrannical and admirable), characters complete with their Arabic first names and their portraits, customs all developed by an author with pour son temps une bonne connaissance du monde arabe (102). B. notes Lafayette’s souci d’exactitude, sur le plan géographique, historique, ethnographique, architectural et religieux (102). B. underscores the important role of the novel for the public who did not travel: son monde arabo-musulman annonce l’Orient romanesque et galant que se plairont à peindre, avec la plume ou le pinceau, les Orientalistes quelque deux siècles plus tard (104).

BEIK, WILLIAM. A Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Review: A. Quinney in DFS 91 (2010), 138-139. The reviewer praises Beik’s research and his writing style, saying that he makes 16th and 17th century France come alive. Beik focuses on life outside Paris and deals only briefly with the king and life at the court. The author also includes comments on the latest scholarship of this period.

BENHAMOU, REED. Regulating the Académie: Art, Rules and Power in Ancien Régime France. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2009.

Review: C. Chaguinian in FR 84 (2010), 397-98: A history of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Half of Benhamou’s study charts and summarizes changes in the Academy, trying to give a sense of its institutional culture. The other half, which will primarily interest art historians, presents documentary sources pertaining to the Academy.

BENIGNO, FRANCESCO. 'Mirrors of Revolution: Conflict and Political Identity in Early Modern Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010.

Review: T. Worcester in SCN 69 (2011), 160-163: The reviewer notes that much of this book was published previously in the 1990s and has now been collected and translated from Italian. Although deemed less than user-friendly due to a lack of index, etc., it is worth noting a well-researched section on the Fronde of 1648-52 in which the author considers foreign influence in prompting it as well as its legacy leading up to the French Revolution.

BERGIN, JOSEPH. Church, Society, and Religious Change in France, 1580 1730. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2009.

Review: W. Reinhard in HZ 290.3 (2010), 789-790. Welcome volume by renowned scholar of French history (earlier volumes authored on Richelieu, La Rochefoucauld, bishops and the crown). The present study examines numerous aspects of change including new orders and congregations, recruitment and other activities by bishops, sacramental practice, Jansenism and the dévots.

BERNARD, MATHILDE. Le Colloquium heptaplomeres ou l’exil de la tolérance. PFSCL 37.73 (2010), 395-406.

Examines the fictional situation écartée et claustrée’ of the Colloquium heptaplomeres, the different types of isolation at play, and the ways in which any broader communication with the outside world, and the resultant spread of tolerance, are hinted at.

BERTEAU, CAMILLE ET AL. Familles et parrainages: l’exemple d’Aubervilliers entre les XVIe et XVIIe siècles. DSS 249 (2010), 597-621.

Situating the study in the longue histoire du parrainage familial, dont on ne pressent encore que les grandes lignes, nous nous proposons d’observer les choix des parents à Aubervilliers dont l’histoire particulière de la paroisse et l’état de conservation des registres font un objet d’étude intéressant. Entre XVIe et XVIIe siècles, au moment même o la normalisation du parrainage sous la direction des clercs se mettait en place, nous interrogerons la place de la parenté parmi les parrains et marraines et celle de certaines familles en tentant de distinguer l’avant et l’après de la réforme catholique.

BIRBERICK, ANNE, ed. The Art of Instruction: Essays on Pedagogy and Literature in 17th-Century France. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008.

Review: E. Welch in FR 84 (2010), 382-83: The essays in this edited volume look beyond literary texts’ trite avowals to deliver moral teachings. Rather, they broadly investigate the interplay between aesthetic forms and pedagogical agendas (382) and examine how texts transmitted cultural values. Essays cluster around questions of women’s education, the influence of pedagogical projects on literary form, and the presence of pedagogical aims in canonical texts. The essay by Anne Birberick is particularly praised by the reviewer. [A] rich, thought-provoking collection of great value (383).

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 162 (2010), 546-547. Individual contributions to this fine volume are praised for their solid documentation and the volume itself for its definite usefulness. The nine essays are dedicated to complementary aspects of the relation between pedagogy and literature and that between aesthetics and the transmission of knowledge. The volume is organized into sections on narrative (the exemplum in particular), the relation between aesthetic and didactic value and the political dimensions of instructive or moral discourse. R.’s review is unusually ample, commenting at some length on each of the essays, generally quite appreciatively.

BISCHOFF, CORDULA and ANNE HENNINGS, eds., Goldener Drache Weißer Adler. Kunst im Dienste der Macht am Kaiserhof von China und am sächsisch-polnischen Hof (16441795). München/Dresden: Hirmer/ Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, 2008.

and EIKELMANN, RENATE, ed., Die Wittelsbacher und das Reich der Mitte. 400 Jahre China und Bayern. München: Hirmer, 2009.

Review: M. Köhler in HZ 290.2 (2010), 419-422. Reviewed together, these collections of essays examine European intersections with China, notably through the numerous Jesuit missions undertaken in the Early Modern. Focus is on Germany but analyses of the intensive cultural, political and economic relations extend to those between Versailles and Siam. The reviewer would have appreciated more attention to the got chinois as it relates to the gardens.

BITSCH, CAROLINE Vie et carrière d’Henri II de Bourbon, prince de Condé (15881646). Exemple de comportement et d’idées politiques au début du XVIIe siècle. Paris: éditions Honoré Champion, 2008.

Review: M. Wrede in HZ 291 (2010), 200-202. As the subtitle indicates, B.’s biography of the third Condé embraces 17th c. behavior and political ideas as well. W. points out numerous noteworthy qualities of B.’s richly informative study. With its abundant citations of sources. despite at times summary proofs, W. finds the study significant as it presents the chaos of the early 17th c.

BJORNSTAD, HALL. Boileau et Racine ont-ils composé les inscriptions de la Galerie des Glaces à Versailles? DSS 250 (2011), 149-156.

As the title suggests, the author undertakes a re-evaluation of the authorship of the inscriptions that accompany Le Brun’s paintings in the great gallery.

BLOCKMANS, WIM, ANDRÉ HOLENSTEIN and JON MATHIEU, eds. Empowering Interactions. Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe 13001900. In collaboration with DANIEL SCHLÄPPI. Burlington: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: C. Zwierlein in HZ 291 (2010), 454-455. This volume combines conceptual essays and case studies of state-building from below. Political communication is no longer seen as unidirectional. Essays are wide-ranging, for example, analyzing local political life as well as the power of corporations. Judged an important contribution to the historiography of the State in the 17th and 18th c.

BÖHM, R, A. GREWE and M. ZIMMERMANN, eds. Siècle classique et cinéma contemporain. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009. Biblio 17, 179.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 162 (2010), 550. Twelve essays analyze a wide array of recent films focusing on the 17th c. Sections treat architecture, festivities and ceremony; adaptations, for example, between literature and films; and historical and biographical cinematography. Highly useful both as academic criticism and as a sophisticated pedagogical instrument.

BOURQUIN, LAURENT. La Noblesse du XVIIe siècle et ses cadets. DSS 249 (2010), 645-656.

Cet article entend proposer un état des lieux, certes, mais en s’appuyant aussi sur un corpus cohérent: les cadets de la noblesse seconde champenoise, que nous n’avions pas étudiés en tant que tels [ . . . ] Nous effectuerons tout d’abord une pesée globale, en évaluant le nombre de cadets [ . . . ] Puis, en nous appuyant sur ce bilan démographique, nous verrons quelle est la place des cadets dans leur famille, en particulier leur taux de nuptialité, leur part d’héritage et ce que nous pouvons discerner des relations qu’ils entretiennent avec leur ané. Enfin nous envisagerons leurs perspectives de carrière, en distinguant déterminisme familial et choix individuels.

BRAZEAU, BRIAN. Writing a New France, 1604-1632: Empire and Early Modern French Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: Holtz, G. in FS 65.2 (2011), 241. This study focuses on the history of the first years of colonization (in the works of Champlain, Lescarbot, Biard, and Sagard) and the question of Frenchness. It argues that New France offered a mirror for a post-War of Religion France to examine itself as well as channel energies into a colonial and missionary project shaped by the Counter Reformation. Particularly noteworthy are analyses of national genealogy, the concept of specularity, l’imaginaire agricole and the symbolism of wine, and linguistic colonization.

Review: A. Strange in FR 84 (2011), 1050-51: Brazeau uses writings from New World missionaries and traders to study the concept of New France and how it varied and transformed over time. Brazeau is interested in how travelers’ contact with new lands and their inevitable disappointment with the project led them to revise their expectations for New France. Contains subtle analysis and careful readings; intended for the specialist.

Review: A. Frisch in Ren Q 63 (2010), 903-904. Praiseworthy as a venture into the French colonial enterprise (less well examined than Spanish and English ones), the volume is organized into two sections, Land and Language, and Renewal and Religion. Identity, geography and communication are studied in the first and more abstract notions in the second as they relate to Frenchness (B. 17). F. would have appreciated more attention to rhetoric and readers, actual or intended, plus a fuller treatment of various important topics such as linguistic thought as exemplified by François de La Mothe Le Vayer. Although the reviewer cites various defects, he concludes that the study should encourage more scholars to explore the terrain (904).

BRÉTÉCHÉ, MARION. De la mise à l’écart à l’écriture sur le monde: les mécanismes de l’exil aux Provinces-Unies des historiens-informateurs (vers 1680 vers 1720). PFSCL 37.73 (2010), 379-392.

Examines the issues involved in involuntary mise à l’écart’ in the case of nine French writers, in exile in the United Provinces after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, looking particularly at issues surrounding identity and socio-economic integration.

BROSENS, KOENRAAD. Poussin and Tapestry. Burlington 1303 (2011), 693-95.

Review of one of a number of smaller exhibitions celebrating the newly refurbished Galerie des Gobelins, which celebrated its 400th anniversary back in 2007. Specifically, the exhibition includes tapestries based on paintings by Poussin and resurrects a debate begun by Colbert as to whether the painter’s work translates well into such a large format.

CALL, MICHAEL. The Poet’s Vision and the Painting’s Speech: Molière and Perrault on the Sister Arts. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 124-140.

The author picks up Molière’s 1669 poem La Gloire du Val-de-Grâce, which is an extensive theoretical commentary on art theory and which was written in response to Charles Perrault’s 1668 poem La Peinture. It presents a fundamentally opposed vision of painting’s theoretical foundations and pointedly underlines the contradictions and ignorance present in Perrault’s work. In doing so, it also outlines its own unique vision of the relationship between painting and poetry, a relationship that determines many of the poem’s stylistic characteristics. Molière suggests his radical departure from Perrault’s idea of painting as a mechanical art and insists on the intellectual aspects of painting and on artistic apprenticeship.

CALOGERO, ELENA L. Ideas and Images of Music in English and Continental Emblem Books: 15501700. Saecvla Spiritalia 39. Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 2009.

Review: H. Binda in Ren Q 63 (2010), 964-966. Highly praiseworthy examination of allusions (poetic and pictorial) to music in an impressice corpus, including both familiar and lesser known authors. C.’s study is organized into sections focusing on the political resonances of music, music as a figure for love, and music and spirituality (965). Emblematic scholars will find many useful discussions including some on Cupid, the Sireons, emblems of vanitas in addition to C.’s articulation of the ideology of the human heart as itself a musical instrument (966).

CAMPBELL, JULIE D. and ANNE R. LARSEN, eds. Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.

Review: N. Tomas in Ren Q 63 (2010), 936-937. This welcome volume is judged an impressive work that develops new understandings about the transmission of early modern European women’s writings of all genres (937). The eleven contributors demonstrate a genuine involvement in literary communities as well as a wide dissemination across geographical and class boundaries. Communities includes national ones, virtual ones, and those based on shared interests, whether professional or social. The essays are organized into sections on continental epistolary communities, textual communities and use of print, and constructions of transnational literary circles (937).

CAVAZZINI, PATRIZIA. Claude Lorrain: Paris and Haarlem. Burlington 1300 (2011), 494-95.

Reviews an exhibition of drawings by France’s most successful landscape painter of the seventeenth century. Admires the way the exhibition brings out the painter’s passion for nature and the relationship between his drawings and paintings. Also praises the catalog for asking intelligent and provocative questions.

CAVAZZINI, PATRIZIA. Claude Lorrain: Oxford and Frankfurt. Burlington 1306 (2012).

Reviews the exhibition Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape and compares it favorably with the Paris-Haarlem exhibition of Lorrain's drawings. Appreciates the curators’ questions into the role of Lorrain’s many highly finished drawings and the selection of paintings that chart well Claude’s changes in style over time.

CAZES, HÉLÈNE. Histoire d’enfants. Représentations et discours de l’enfance sous l’Ancien Régime. études réunies et éditées par Hélène Cazes. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008.

Review: C. Dubeau in UTQ 79.1 (Winter 2010), 151-154. Une collection d’une vingtaine d’études interdisciplinaires portant sur des textes du Moyen âge au XVIIIe siècle avec une belle et fort utile introduction de Cazes. Le but des collaborateurs est une enquête sur les discours et les images qui fournissent une histoire des définitions de l’enfance.

CHENY, ANNE-MARIE. Humanisme, esprit scientifique et études Byzantines: la bibliothèque de Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. DSS 249 (2010), 689-709.

While analysing Peiresc’s intention in amassing his collection, cette étude souhaite [ . . . ] souligner l’apport des bibliothèques privées dans le développement des études byzantines en France. Elle s’appuie sur l’inventaire après décès de la bibliothèque de Peiresc et sur sa correspondance [ . . . ] à 5400 volumes dont environ 130 manuscrits.

CLARK, STUART. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Review: J. Partner in Ren Q 63 (2010), 968-969. Considered an impressive and authoritative contribution to the cultural history of sight, C.’s study is based on a wide range of sources from philosophy, anatomy, and art history among others (968). C.’s visual history leads him to argue that human subjects make’ the objects they perceive, fashioning them out of the qualities that belong intrinsically to perception, not to the objects themselves (C. 4). Physical mechanisms as well as the role of the mind are examined including additionally, in keeping with his 1999 Thinking with Demons, possible interference from malign spirits.

CRUZ, ANNE J. and MIHOKO SUZUKI, eds. The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

Review: E. Lehfeldt in Ren Q 63 (2010), 194-196. Praiseworthy collection of eleven essays which are wide-ranging geographically and textually. The representation of female power, shared sovereignty and literary-historical depictions are analyzed admirably. 17th c. scholars will appreciate analyses of the representations of Elizabeth I in La Princesse de Clèves by Elizabeth Kerner.

CULLINAN, NICHOLAS et al. Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian painters. London: Holberton, 2011.

Review: J. Hall in TLS 5654 (Aug 12 2011), 17-18. Catalogue of 2011 exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Poussin juxtaposed with twentieth-century American painter who admired him. Reviewer finds this juxtaposition counterintuitive, given Twombly’s abstract expressionism. Despite Cullinan’s discussion of themes and experiences common to both artists, the comparison remains unconvincing. The value of the exhibition, Hall finds, is that it leads us to reflect on how Poussin became an artistic ideal.

DAHLERUP, TROELS and PER INGESMAN, eds. New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Selected Proceedings of Two International Conferences at The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen in 1997 and 1999. (Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser, 104.) Kbenhavn: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 2009.

Review: A. Würgler in HZ 290 (2010), 136-138. Wide-ranging volume includes several essays useful to 17th c. scholars. Trends in theory are examined as are specific investigations such as the origin of modern states, crises and threats, and gender history.

DANDREY, PATRICK. Quand Versailles était conté: la cour de Louis XIV par les écrivains de son temps. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2009.

Review: C. Daniélou in FR 84 (2011), 1311-12: A promenade littéraire qui prend pour sujet la cour de Louis XIV. Dandrey adopts an offstage, in the wings’ perspective as a stance from which to view Versailles. He draws on a wide range of authors and deciphers texts carefully. The reviewer signals the work as highly admirable but dense, and advises reading it slowly.

DARNTON, ROBERT. The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Review: D. Brewer in FS 66.1 (2012), 95-96. Darnton’s object of analysis is the libelle. Staple of the underground book trade, these slanderous writings — such as Le Diable dans un bénitier,’ from which the book title is drawn — were tendentious, inaccurate, and indecent, as well as hugely popular. Part I provides close readings of four interlocking libels. With insight and vast contextual knowledge, Darnton analyses the workings of these libels, decoding them in the minutest of details. Libels, he claims, allowed readers to make sense of a complex world by reducing it to a simple narrative involving famous people and the clash of powerful personalities. Part II investigates the relation between libels and politics. Slanderous writing was not seditious or crypto-revolutionary, yet it was an effective weapon in power struggles, causing considerable concern in high places. [ . . . ] Parts III and IV pursue Darnton’s analysis of the textual workings of libels. Designed to bring to light the hidden and the secret, libels encouraged readers to ferret out buried truths and invisible causality. The anecdotal was seen as possessing a certain evidentiary power, and unveiling the hidden, private life of individuals was a way of unmasking desires and self-interest, understood to be powerful motors of events.

DARWIN, JOHN, After Tamerlane. The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 14002000. London: Penguin, 2008.

Review: D. Langewiesche in HZ 290 (2010), 145-146. Highly praiseworthy review of this wide-ranging analysis in terms both of periods and geographical areas covered. Judged brilliant, D.’s study examines global patterns of competition, collaboration and coexistence and includes investigation of economic, political and cultural forces both within and without Europe.

DASTON, LORRAINE and MICHAEL STOLLEIS, eds. Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe. Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy. Burlington: Ashgate, 2008.

Review: C. Zwierlein in HZ 291 (2010), 183-185. Praiseworthy volume includes essays focusing on antiquity through the 17th c. Case studies are found alongside observations of a certain unification of juridical concepts around 1650. Includes an essay on Malebranche and a conclusion by Jean-Robert Armogathe on Deus legislator.

DE POL, ROBERTO DE ed. The First Translations of Machiavelli's Prince: From the Sixteenth to the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 133. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010.

Review: M. A. Youssim in Ren Q 63. 4 (2010), 1350-1351. Important collection contributes to many areas including the history of the circulation of political ideas and myths (1350). Books themselves along with their translations are another important area of the study. French scholars will appreciate the essay by Nella Bianchi Bensimon which focuses on the first French translation of The Prince. The volume includes considerations of manuscripts, originals and translations, correctness, intent of editors and uses made in political, intellectual, cultural and linguistic contexts (1351).

DICKINSON, JOHN A., L'historiographie du XVIIe siècle canadien depuis 1992. DSS 252 (2011), 533-541.

Les thématiques privilégiées par les dix-septièmistes canadiens concernent les Amérindiens, les rapports entre ceux-ci et les colonisateurs ainsi que les tentatives de conversion par des missionnaires catholiques. Près de la moitié de toutes les publications depuis 1992 touche ces problématiques. La richesse des sources ecclésiastiques (Relations des jésuites, lettres et écrits spirituels de l’ursuline Marie de l’Incarnation, récits des récollets, annales des différentes maisons religieuses, correspondance entre Saint-Sulpice de Paris et le séminaire de Montréal) y sont pour beaucoup, mais il y a aussi la fascination qu’exerce le monde autochtone sur les chercheurs et notamment sur de jeunes Français venus faire des études au Québec dans le cadre des accords France-Québec.

DIEMLING, MARIA and GIUSEPPE VELTRI, eds. The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, Studies in Jewish History and Culture 17. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

Review: A. Berns in Ren Q 63 (2010), 206-207. Welcome both for its contribution to Jewish studies and to early modern European history. Wide-ranging essays will be useful for scholars in a number of fields in the arts and sciences. Overarching question examined is: How did early modern Jews react to the period’s increased emphasis on and interest in corporeality? (206). Volume is organized into sections as follows: The Body in Historical and Social Context, The Halakhic Body (concerned with law), Body, Mind and Soul, and The Body in Jewish-Christian Doscourse. Excellent introductory essay by Roni Weinstein relating theology, science and art, among other disciplines, to the new dynamics.

DINGEL, IRENE and WOLF-FRIEDRICH SCHäUFELE, eds. Kommunikation und Transfer im Christentum der Frühen Neuzeit. (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abt. für Abendländische Religionsgeschichte, Beih. 74.) Mainz: von Zabern, 2007.

Review: T. Töpfer in HZ 290.2 (2010), 471-472. This praiseworthy volume of essays focuses on both possibilities and boundaries of early modern communication as it examines paradigms of cultural transfer. The study is organized into sections on religious communication (preaching, autobiographical writing, letters, translations, controversial writings), theological communication as it intersects with other branches of knowledge (rhetoric, history, law, medicine) and socio-historical perspectives of communication (identities, anti-Jesuit publicity).

DOUSSET, CHRISTINE. Familles paysannes et veuvage féminin en Languedoc à la fin du XVIIe siècle. DSS 249 (2010), 583-596.

Relying heavily on demographic analysis, the author investigates the social history of widowhood in a particular village in upper Languedoc in an effort to move beyond generalised comprehension of the status of the seventeenth-century widow. In taking a microcosmic approach, the author seeks to reconstituer des trajectoires individuelles et familiales, en associant données démographiques et indications juridiques et économiques, qui permet de mieux éclairer les comportements familiaux et d’en comprendre si possible les ressorts.

DRESCHER, SEYMOUR. Abolition. A History of Slavery and Antislavery. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2009.

Review: C. Retzlaff in HZ 291 (2010), 122-123. Original and many-layered, D.’s volume begins with the 15th c. and includes 20th c. examples of sex slavery. France is included as part of his focus on European powers. Sensitive to legal, moral and religious perspectives, D. presents a multi-dimensional picture of Europe.

DUITS, REMBRANDT et FRANCOIS QUIVIGER, éds. Images of the Pagan Gods. Papers of a Conference in Memory of Jean Seznec. London/Turin: The Warburg Institute/Nino Aragno Editore, 2009.

Review: G. Demerson in BHR 73.1 (2011), 193-196: Actes d’un colloque d’une équipe de savants qui choisit le même champ d’étude que J. Seznec, auteur de La Survivance des dieux antiques: la réception des traditions antiques dans l’Europe moderne.

DULL, JONATHAN. The Age of the Ship of the Line: The British and French Navies, 1650-1815. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Review: J. Thomas in FR 84 (2011), 834-35: The author of two award-winning histories of the French navy, Dull addresses the background, course, and results of the seven wars between the British and the French (834). The study familiarizes readers with the meaning of line warfare at sea, and is said to excel at peaking readers’ interest at the end of one chapter so that he/she will read the next (834). Praised by the reviewer as knowledgeable and engaging.

DUPRAT, ANNE. Politiques barbaresques, les états corsaires d’Afrique du Nord dans la littérature française du XVIIe siècle. Tr L 23 (2010), 83-94.

Convincing demonstration of noteworthy ambiguités in representative political utopias in the Early Modern. Attentive to the complexity of these utopias, D. finds that their idyllic descriptions are des tableaux organisés par un projet politique et moral explicite (85). The author focuses her close examination on two representative cases, Gomberville’s Polexandre and Guilleragues’s Histoire des révolutions de Tunis and demonstrates that for each it is not a question of l’emprunt d’un décor et de masques que l’on donnerait à l’expression d’une réflexion française sur l’art de gouverner, et sur le destin des nations. Bien au contraire, il met au centre du texte le principe meme d’une sortie de soi dont les enjeux sont d’autant plus philosophiques que leur mode d’expression reste romanesque (94).

EIBACH, JOACHIM and HORST, CARL, eds. Europäische Wahrnehmungen 1650 1850. Interkulturelle Kommunikation und Medienereignisse. (The Formation of Europe/Historische Formationen Europas, Bd. 3.) Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2008.

Review: W. Schmale in HZ 290.3 (2010), 729-730. Praiseworthy for its wide-ranging observations which include essays relating to social, spatial and transnational perspectives. Innovative and important contribution to the history of the formation of Europe.

ENGELS, JENS IVO, ANDREAS FAHRMEIR and ALEXANDER NÜTZENADEL,eds. Geld Geschenke Politik. Korruption im neuzeitlichen Europa. (Historische Zeitschrift, Beihefte, NF., Bd. 48.) München: Oldenbourg 2009.

Review: W. Reinhard in HZ 290 (2010), 141-143. This collection of essays focuses on gold, gifts and politics—in other words, on corruption in modern Europe. Diverse group of articles includes studies of a theoretical nature as well as case studies from the early modern and the modern eras.

GLOZIER, MATTHEW and DAVID ONNEKINK, eds. War, Religion and Service. Huguenot Soldiering, 16851713. Burlington: Ashgate, 2007.

Review: U. Niggemann in HZ 291 (2010), 207-208. Important and wide-ranging consideration of the Huguenot phenomenon as it relates to the military complements many other studies relating to artisans, manufacture and emigration. Various approaches, descriptive, narrative, biographical and case studies illuminate the international dimensions of the phenomenon.

GOULET, ANNE-MADELEINE. Le cercle de la princesse des Ursins à Rome (1675-1701), un foyer de culture française. SCFS 33.2 (2011), 60-71.

Drawing on hitherto neglected letters, this article documents the activities of the French-inspired salon of Marie-Anne de La Trémoille, princesse des Ursins, in the Orsini palace in Rome in the last decades of the seventeenth century. Goes on to analyse the Ursins salon as an example of cultural transfer.

GREEN, TONY. Poussin’s Humour. Milverton: Paravail, 2009.

Review: H. Phillips in FS 65.1 (2011), 88-89. This poorly written and constructed book seeks to correct academic interpretations of Poussin that focus too much attention on the interpretation of content by instead emphasizing the painter’s humour, wit, and intelligence.

GREINER, FRANK. Echos de la Rose-Croix: rumeurs et roman. OeC 36.1 (2011), 111-122.

Comme toutes les rumeurs, nous semble-t-il, le mouvement des Rose-Croix appartient peut -être moins à ceux qui l’ont lancé qu’à cette voix collective qui se l’est rapidement approprié pour en parachever l’histoire légendaire. C’est là l’hypothèse fondatrice de cette étude portant sur sa réception française lors de l’affaire des placards affichés à Paris en 1623 par de mystérieux Invisibles’.

GUELLOUZ, SUZANNE. Une fiction qui fait l’histoire: La Relation historique et galante de l’invasion de l’Espagne par les Arabes de Baudot de Juilly (1699). Tr L 23 (2010), 105-114.

Demonstrates the two-fold originality of B.’s nouvelle, the only one which focuses on the conquest of Spanish soil by Arabs coming from the Maghreb and the only one to have in its title the term relation and to associate historique and galante (106). Although pointing out that B. intends to be considered as an historian and that B.’s récit includes much history (allusions and detailed accounts), G.’s study reveals that la fiction . . . occupe la plus grande place dans le récit (108), love intrigues, true and false friendships, tournaments and festivals. B. notes important literary references and an abundance of maxims and reflections. G. finds that instead of a mere juxtaposition of the two directions of the nouvelle, B. mit chacune de ces deux conceptions [history, fiction] au service de l’autre (114).

GUION, BEATRICE. Du bon usage de l’histoire: histoire morale et politique à l’âge classique. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008.

Review: in H. Phillips in FS 66.1 (2012), 90. Guion’s aim, in broad terms, is to trace the transition from historical production as adhering to the rhetorical framework of exempla to the more modern idea of history as constituting a body of verifiable knowledge anchored in an anthropological approach. [ . . . ] Guion investigates in detail the slippery epistemological status of history writing as it varies between useful versions involving the promotion of prudence’, the tensions between idealism and pragmatism in what the examples of history offer, and the emergence in the second half of the seventeenth century of a history sceptical of moral and political partisanship, where attempts to construct universal laws of one sort or another yield to the recognition of historical specificities and to a sort of historical relativism [ . . . ] Those readers seeking a strong conceptual guidance in an understanding of classical history writing will be enormously disappointed. In many respects this volume tells it as the writers of history tell it, with accompanying comment, often enlightening certainly, on similarities and differences between them. But the approach according to categories of history suffers in a sense from the porousness of those very categories, leading to a great deal of repetition across the sections and within them, since Guion never trusts two or three similar opinions to stand for the rest. In addition, when Guion recognizes the importance of profound conceptual issues, they are left hanging without further elucidation. This is a very useful book in which the reading is thankfully done for us, but it requires patience.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 160 (2010), 141-142. G. contests Paul Hazard’s characterization of the 17th c. as she analyzes and defines the use of history, its usefulness and connections with la morale and politics. Reflections on private history are particularly illuminating.

GRESHOFF, RAINER, GEORG KNEER, WOLFGANG LUDWIG SCHNEIDER, eds. Verstehen und Erklären. Sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. München: Fink, 2008. and

FRINGS, ANDREAS and JOHANNES MARX,eds. Erzählen, Erklären, Verstehen. Beiträge zur Wissenschaftstheorie und Methodologie der Historischen Kulturwissenschaften. (Beiträge zu den Historischen Kulturwissenschaften, Bd. 3.) Berlin: Akademie, 2008.

Review: S. Jordan in HZ 291 (2010), 439-440. Reviewed together, these collections are praised as important for the wide spectrum of methodologies analyzed. The volume edited by Frings and Marx presents itself as a plaidoyer for a dialogue between analytical philosophy, theory of knowledge and cultural history.

HAMMOND, NICHOLAS. Gossip, Sexuality and Scandal in France (1610-1715). New York and London: Peter Lang, 2011.

Review: J. Prest in TLS 5648 (July 1 2011), 26. Draws on many primary sources and culminates in a study of gossip in La Princesse de Clèves. Hammond argues that gossip remains mostly on the margins in seventeenth-century France and is at once devalued and privileged. One of gossip’s functions is to give taboo desires a voice and space in which to exist and act (Prest). Homosexual group la confrérie italienne given as an example of gossip’s benefits and dangers. A favorable review.

HAPGOD, PASCALE ANNICK. Le pouvoir dans les jardins. DAI (2011),

This dissertation retraces the evolution of royal power in the public gardens and Parisian spaces from the end of the 16th century to the Revolution. Hapgod argues that the concept of classical gardens starts in fact already with Henry IV and grows out of profound societal changes at the end of the 16th century, namely, the emergence of a new elite of bourgeois background. The dissertation then studies public gardens, as well as gardens built by individuals during the period of Louis XIV up to the Revolution.

HOCHMUTH, CHRISTIAN and SUSANNE RAU, eds. Machträume der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt. (Konflikte und Kultur Historische Perspektiven, Bd. 13.). Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006.

Review: M. Schalenberg in HZ 291 (2010), 191-193. Welcome volume on areas of power in the early modern city. Articles vary, examining at times the general, at other times, the particular. Praised for its detailed notes and multi-dimensional quality of the research, including the social, religious, military, architecture and history. Useful and attractive study.

HOEFER, BERNADETTE. Enseigner le dix-septième siècle: Au-delà du dualisme. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 155-176.

The article focuses on new course designs to teach the seventeenth-century mind/body question from an interdisciplinary perspective with a particular emphasis given to literature and French canonical writers (Molière, Lafayette, Racine). Hoefer provides the instructor with a great number of sources/texts that could be incorporated and also includes in her investigation the visual arts, medical thinking, philosophical voices, and film. She shows how research in other fields can inform our teaching and provide new challenges and outcomes for our instruction in the French classroom.

HORN, CHRISTOPH and ADA NESCHKE-HENTSCHKE eds. Politischer Aristotelismus. Die Rezeption der aristotelischen Politik von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2008.

Review: A. Schmidt in HZ 290.2 (2010), 411-412. Wide-ranging collection contributes impressively to reception of criticism of Aristotle’s Politics. From political theory to contexts of monarchy and state formation, the contributing scholars provide important analyses of the Aristotelian presence at the intersection of central political debates. Indices.

IBBETT, KATHERINE. The Style of the State in French Theater, 16301660: Neoclassicism and Government. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009.

Review: H. Bilis in Ren Q 63 (2010), 576-578. Lauded for its new perspective and focus on the distinctly political significance of form (I. 21). Particular linking is demonstrated between vocabulary and practices of tragedy and the newly absolutist state (576). B. finds that the most compelling chapter is The Politics of Patience; Staging the Spectator due to its wide scope . . . mov[ing] from an analysis of martyr paintings to martyr tragedies. Although B. consistently praises I.’s complex and illuminating readings of Corneille, she would have liked I. to include discussions as to how other playwrights such as Rotrou or Tristan approached the relationship between the state and the theatre.

JEWITT, JAMES R. Weaving Together an Identity in Nicholas Poussin’s Landscape with an Anchorite Saint. Burlington 1298 (2011), 307-11.

Based on iconography and evidence found in this and other paintings, as well as the circumstances surrounding its creation, conjectures that the saint in this particular work is Saint Paul the Hermit, not Saint Jerome, as previously supposed.

KIENTZ, GUILLAUME. Philippe de Champaigne c. 1630: A Rediscovered Pentecost’ for the Carmelites in rue Saint-Jacques, Paris. Burlington 1305 (2011), 797-802.

Describes the church attached to this Carmelite convent. Asserts that it must have been one of the most important monuments of seventeenth-century Paris. Explores the fortunes of the church’s art post-Revolution, including the piece identified here as Champaigne’s Descent of the Holy Spirit.

KLESMANN, BERND. Bellum solemne. Formen und Funktionen europäischer Kriegserklärungen des 17. Jahrhunderts. (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abt. für Universalgeschichte, Bd. 216.) . Mainz: von Zabern, 2007.

Review: J. Burkhardt in HZ 291 (2010), 204-206. Forms and functions of European declarations of war in the 17th c. is the focus of K.’s volume. Wide-ranging in its consideration of the decisive acts or arguments (economic, religious, political) behind these declarations, K.’s study establishes an interesting typology of arguments from formulas of tolerance to formulas of evidence and illusion. Illuminating study of key words, rituals and constraints.

LANDRY, NICOLAS. Les défis procéduriers d'un commerçant de La Rochelle en Acadie: Nicolas Denys, 16361684. French Colonial History 12 (2011), 9-30.

As the author states, this piece does not aim at a full biographical sketch, but rather strives to give him [Denys] a more appropriate place within the business historiography of colonial Acadia and New France by examining his opponents’ attacks, the trials in which he was involved, and the role played by French administrators in his bankruptcy.

LANO, FRÉDÉRIQUE AND OLIVIER LEFEUVRE. The Collection of Paintings of Abel-Jean Vignier (1639-1700), the Elusive Marquis d’Hauterive. Burlington 1298 (2011), 206-306.

Art collectors in early modern France are a relatively recent subject of inquiry. Article identifies the Marquis d’Hauterive as Abel-Jean Vignier, explores the saga of his personal life, and describes the contents of his considerable art collection which was largely conventional and included a noteworthy number of Caravaggesque paintings.

LAVOCAT, FRANÇOISE. Témoignage et récit de catastrophe. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 32-48.

Studies how witnesses describe, through first-person narration, the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in 1631, as well as the Milanese and London plagues of 1629-32 and 1665. First-person narration adopts two functions: on one hand, it provides a critical perspective of the event that goes hand in hand with an attempt to rationalize the witnesses’ perception of the incident. On the other hand, it reveals the sympathy felt by the spectators. The article then emphasizes the increasing importance of fiction in narrating catastrophe.

LE FAUCONNIER-RIPOLL, CAMILLE. Sublet de Noyers: la disgrâce d’un ministre au XVIIe siècle. Une zone d’ombre de l’histoire, une zone grise de la société. PFSCL 37.73 (2010), 367-377.

Sets out firstly to examine the events surrounding Sublet de Noyers’s exile and his own attitude towards it. Secondly, examines the complexity surrounding the notion of disgrace at the time, a more complex affair than simple exile from court.

LEMAIGNAN, MARION. Des femmes dans les lieux du collectif: trajectoires déviantes et interstices sociaux au XVIIe siècle. PFSCL 37.73 (2010), 319-333.

Examines the figures of two Parisian noblewomen, Madame de Vézilly and Madame de Montarbault, who do not fit into the usually accepted understanding of marginalised’. These women are not hors le monde mais dans le monde à part du non intelligible, du non pensable, du non catégorisable’. Hence, Peut-être alors faut-il plutt essayer de penser des réagencements de l’acceptable plutt que des mondes à part, en prenant en compte l’instabilité et le mobilité des frontières et en travaillant l’enjeu que représentent au XVIIe siècle les définitions des espaces, des identités et de l’acceptabilité.’

LYONS, JOHN D. and KATHLEEN WINE, eds. Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: T. Chesters in FS 65.3 (2011), 386-387. Part I (Providence in Question) shows a number of early modern authors in dialogue with Augustine’s thesis, in De civitate dei, that the concept of chance is an expression of our fallen state and of our concomitant remoteness from grasping the divine plan. Part II addresses Poetics and the Aesthetics of Chance, while Part III (The Law and the Ethics of Chance) draws out the ethical and doctrinal implications of chance. [ . . . ] Finally, Part IV (Chance and its Remedies) pursues further the question of how we might think and act in the face of chance. A wide range of authors are covered: Montaigne, Rabelais, Gomberville, Racine, Malebranche, Descartes, and the Cardinal de Retz.

Review: J. Helgeson in Ren Q 63 (2010), 284-286. Welcome volume results from a colloquium held in Tours at the Centre d’études Supérieures de la Renaissance (2006) and from a panel held at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference (2006). Nine essays focus on 17th c. topics providing analyses on the intersection and tensions of providence and chance from perspectives of philosophy, theology and poetics. Reviewer regrets the paucity of mention of Pascal but notes with appreciation analyses on Malebranche, Racine, Descartes, Gomberville, the sublime, and the Cardinal de Retz. Index, illustrations, and bibliography.

MALETTKE, KLAUS. Die Bourbonen. Bd. 1: Von Heinrich IV. bis zu Ludwig XIV. 15891715. Bd. 2: Von Ludwig XV. bis zu Ludwig XVI. 1715 1789/92. Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2008.

MALETTKE, KLAUS. Die Bourbonen. Bd. 3: Von Ludwig XVIII. bis zu Louis Philippe 18141848. Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2009.

Review: M. Wrede in HZ 290.3 (2010), 726-729. Three important volumes by M. examine French politics from 1588 to 1848. M. is renowned for his fine studies of early modern French history, including internal structure as well as external strategies. M’s panorama does not neglect the visual testimony of the Bourbons (portraits, medals, memorials).

MARCHAL, GUY P. Schweizer Gebrauchsgeschichte. Geschichtsbilder, Mythenbildung und nationale Identität. 2., unver. Aufl. Basel: Schwabe, 2007. and

HEAD, RANDOLPH C. Jenatsch’s Axe. Social Boundaries, Identity, and Myth in the Era of the Thirty Years’ War. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008.

Review: I. Schmidt-Voges in HZ 290 (2010), 138-141. Head’s reconstruction of the almost mythical event is widely useful for the light it sheds on social, political, economic and cultural aspects of the early modern era. French scholars of Richelieu and the Duc de Rohan will find this comprehensive examination of interest. Discussion of popular perceptions and fictions along with known facts provide a fascinating and impressive study.

MARTIN, A. LYNN. Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder in Traditional Europe. Early Modern Studies 2. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2009.

Review: K. Albala in Ren Q 63 (2010), 628-630. M.’s examination of the European record from 1200 to 1700 investigates patterns of consumption and culture. France receives considerable attention. Violence seems to result less from the amount of alcohol consumed than from the place and its clientele. A. appreciates the many new ways to think about alcohol in literature and the arts opened up by this study.

MARTIN, MEREDITH: Dairy Queens: The Politics of Pastoral Architecture from Catherine de’ Medici to Marie-Antoinette. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2011.

Review: L. Matteson in CHOICE 48 (2011), 2084: Situates Marie-Antoinette’s dairy-hamlet at Versailles within a longer tradition of French queenship and draws out the political underpinnings of such gestures. Martin shows that dairies helped vulnerable queens ally themselves with notions of fertility, purity, and maternity. Marie Antoinette’s seemingly frivolous exercise in peasant rusticity, then, should be seen as a continuance of elitist expressions of virtuous behavior (2084).

MCCLELLAND, JOHN and BRIAN MERRILEES, eds. Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe / Le Sport dans la Civilisation de l'Europe Pré-Moderne. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009.

Review: A. Arcangeli in Ren Q 63.4 (2010), 1329-1330. Considered a valuable reference on the history of sport in Europe, the collection developed from a 2004 conference on the theme. The volume is bilingual in order to make more widely available the work of scholars who typically publish in other languages. Sport is widely understood from hunting to tournaments, the regulation of play, and literary and historical aspects. 17th c. French scholars will particularly appreciate Michael Flannery’s essay on rules for playing pall-mall.

MINVIELLE, STEPHANE. Marie Bonfils, une veuve accusée d’infanticide dans le Bordelais de la fin du XVIIe siècle. DSS 249 (2010), 623-643.

Looking from various perspectivs at the minute details of the criminal proceedings surrounding one particular widow accused of infanticide, the author asks us to retenir comment, à la fin du XVIIe siècle, l’infanticide était un moyen de contrle des naissances, mais également une solution à laquelle certaines femmes avaient recours pour préserver leur honneur et éviter la forte réprobation sociale attachée aux relations hors mariage.

MIROW, JÜRGEN. Weltgeschichte. München/Zürich: Piper, 2009.

Review: W. Reinhard in HZ 291.1 (2010), 117-118. Praiseworthy volume is lauded as a lot of history for little money. Recognizing the complexity of the world’s culture as an ensemble and a developmental process, M.’s achievement in writing a history of the world from its beginning to the 2009 financial crisis is as precise as it is remarkable.

NASSICHUK, JOHN ed. Vérité et fiction dans les entrées solennelles à la Renaissance et à l’âge classique. Les collections de la République des Lettres. Québec: Les Presses de L’Université Laval, 2009.

Review: N. Russell in Ren Q 63. 4 (2010), 1324-1325. Selected essays from a 2006 conference on truth and fiction in ceremonial entrées during the Early Modern is a rich body of studies which focuses on the question of truth and fiction itself as well as supplying details on several lesser known albums. Relationship of entrées to criteria of truth and verisimilitude is examined as is the various uses of the entrées, political and propagandistic, for example. Marie-Claude Canova-Green demonstrates that entries may even be invented as in the case of the 1626 supposed entry by the Duc de Rohan.

NEITZEL, SÖNKE and DANIEL HOHRATH eds. Kriegsgreuel. Die Entgrenzung der Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. In Verb. mit dem Arbeitskreis Militärgeschichte e.V. (Krieg in der Geschichte, Bd. 40.) Paderborn/München/Wien: Schöningh, 2008.

Review: D. Langewiesche in HZ 290.3 (2010), 722-723. Judged an important contribution to the history of power and the atrocities of war. Wide-ranging analyses of conflicts from the Middle Ages through the 20th c. No one definition of atrocity is given. Cultural perspectives abound as does attentiveness to the formation of European countries

NEUHAUS, HELMUT, ed. Die Frühe Neuzeit als Epoche. (Historische Zeitschrift, Beihefte, NF., Bd. 49.) München: Oldenbourg, 2009.

Review: W. Behringer in HZ 291 (2010), 513-515. Wide-ranging and attentive to international and interdisciplinary scholarship, this volume is judged a milestone in the historiography of the Early Modern. Essays treat main questions concerning the beginning and endings of periods as well as the relevance of periodization to all areas of life, culture and geographical areas. Essays examine numerous disciplines such as music, scholarship, the baroque, painting, law, theology and early modern globalization.

NOWOSADTKO, JUTTA and MATTHIAS ROGG, eds. Mars und die Musen. Das Wechselspiel von Militär, Krieg und Kunst in der Frühen Neuzeit. With SASCHA MÖBIUS. (Herrschaft und soziale Systeme in der Frühen Neuzeit, Bd. 5.). Münster: Lit, 2008.

Review: H. Thoß in HZ 291 (2010), 798-799. Praiseworthy interdisciplinary military history includes special attention to interconnections between literature, art, architecture and music, even psychological dimensions of military music in the Early Modern (the latter by Werner Friedrich Kümmel).

OIRY, GOULVEN. Entre révérence et impertinence: la cour au miroir de la ville dans la comédie des années 1629-1635. PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 409-425.

Examines the ambiguous representation of the courtisan in ten plays published between 1629-1635, and the light it throws on the relationship between la cour and la ville under Louis XIII. Plays include works by Corneille, Du Peschier, Mairet, Du Ryer, Discret, and Mareschal.

O’MALLEY JOHN W., S. J. et GAUVIN ALEXANDER BAILEY, éds. The Jesuits and the Arts (1540-1773). Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s UP, 2005.

Review: R. Dekoninck in BHR 73.1 (2011), 232-235: Synthèse de qualité; première étude d’envergure sur l’apport des jésuites dans les divers arts à travers le monde et l’émergence d’une culture visuelle moderne.

PICCO, DOMINIQUE. La Perception de l’éducation reçue à Saint-Cyr (1686-1719). DSS 249 (2010), 729-746.

A detailed, statistical analysis of Saint-Cyr, its reputation, education, and students.

PIEJUS, ANNE, ed. Plaire et instruire: le spectacle dans les collèges de l’Ancien Régime. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2007.

Review: J. Laroche in FR 84 (2010), 398-99: A collection of 20 essays on theater in early modern schools, collected from a conference on the subject organized by the Bibliothèque Nationale. Essays in the collection examine which kinds of plays schools tended to choose, what financial means they had available for staging theater, how theatrical productions overlapped with civic and political spectacle, and how schools’ use of theater related to Jesuit teaching methods. [L]’ouvrage brille par son écriture claire (399).

Review: M-T. Mourey in PFSCL, 37.73 (2010), 472-475. On ne peut que souligner les mérites de l’éditrice Anne Piéjus d’avoir exploré, avec beaucoup de constance, ce champ relativement nouveau de la pratique spectaculaire’.

PITTION, J. P. and STÉPHAN GEONGET, eds. Droit et justice dans l'Europe de la Renaissance. Centre d’études Supérieures de la Renaissance 17: Le Savoir de Mantice. Paris: Champion, 2009.

Review: J. Soll in Ren Q 63 (2010), 636-637. Although S. has serious concerns about the unevenness and lack of cohesion in this collection, he does laud several very fine erudite articles. Ian MacLean’s history of the doctrine of proof in late 17th c. witch trials in Lorraine is deeply learned and extraordinarily well-documented, filling an important lacuna in scholarship.

POHLIG, MATTHIAS, UTE LOTZ-HEUMANN, VERA ISAIASZ, et al. Säkularisierungen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Methodische Probleme und empirische Fallstudien. (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Beih. 41.). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2008.

Review: H Klueting in HZ 291 (2010), 188-189. This collective volume on secularization takes up problems of methodology as well as case studies. P. understands secularization less as a loss of religion but rather as a process of transformation in the sense of a recasting of religious content recognizable as individual objects. Wide-ranging, with ramifications for the sociology of religion, philosophy, art history and the history of knowledge, the volume has as well examinations on the sacrality of French kings in the 17th c.

POLLAK, MARTHA. Cities at War in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.

Review: L. Attreed in CHOICE 48 (2011), 1993: An historian of architecture, Pollak traces the connections between artillery siege warfare and the design of European cities between 1550 and 1700. This study examines spaces within the modern city, the ways in which both war and peace were expressed within urban space, and how artists and publishers developed techniques for representing urban space within military treatises and other writings. Illustrated in detail; recommended by the reviewer.

PROBES, CHRISTINE MCCALL. Controversy and Consolation: The Animal in the Royal Court, Madame and her Spaniels. SCFS 33.1 (2011), 16-23.

Article explores in the letters of Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz, Princesse Palatine, the contours of the controversy over l’animalité, the borderlines of the human, human/animal relationships, and the important role of animals, notably dogs, in her daily life. [It considers] among other points Madame’s philosophical and theological reflections concerning animals, Mignard’s lost portrait of her favourite dog, physical and affective comfort, true friendship (comparisons between the friendships of humans and that of dogs), and finally, Madame’s dogs as actors in anecdotes she relates to her correspondents.’

ROHRSCHNEIDER, MICHAEL. Reputation als Leitfaktor in den internationalen Beziehungen der Frühen Neuzeit. HZ 291 (2010), 331-352.

R.’s article adds reputation to the four forces named by Heinz Schilling in his 1991 study of international systems of the Early Modern: dynasty, confession, government interests and tradition. After a first section in which he sketches the situation of research and the terminology itself, R. delves into the importance of reputation as a factor in Richelieu’s political thought and action. Other sections treat reputation in the work of Diego Saavedra Fajardo and in the political thought of Frederic the Great (which demonstrates a continuity of the concept). Richly documented.

ROUSSILLON, MARINE. Les carrousels: configurer l’espace social de la noblesse. PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 377-390.

Analyses the ways in which the spectacle of the carousel contributes to the construction of a nobiliary social space. Examines an account of a 1648 course de bague, the issues surrounding the 1662 and 1664 royal carousels, and the theatrical representation of a carousel in Thomas Corneille’s Le Triomphe des Dames (1676).

ROYE, JOCELYN. La Figure du pédant de Montaigne à Molière. (Travaux du Grand Siècle, 31). Geneva: Droz, 2008.

Review: J. Prest in FS 66.1 (2012), 88-89. This work takes a global approach: it traces the history of the pedant back to the late medieval period before focusing on a variety of literary texts (satirical poems, novels, and theatre). Excessive generalizations and problematic analyses make for a dry read. Towards the end of the book, Royé puts forward an interesting hypothesis whereby the exclusively male, university-based savant, who spoke Latin and led a solitary existence, came to be opposed, during the course of the seventeenth century, to the sometimes female mondain (based at court or in the salons), who relied on the vernacular and on a group setting.

Review: J. Serroy in DSS 249 (2010), 775-776: Il y a comme un malin plaisir à lire l’ouvrage que Jocelyn Royé consacre au personnage du pédant: celui de découvrir ledit personnage, incarnation même du savoir érudit cloué par la tradition comique au piloris du ridicule pédantesque, érigé en héros d’une étude universitaire empruntant les voies d’une érudition jamais à l’abri de devenir elle-même l’illustration des travers de son suet d’observation. This original work is near exhaustive covering près d’une centaine de personnages et d’un corpus dense d’une cinquantaine de comédies, d’une trentaine de romans et d’autant de pièces satiriques.

RUS, MARTIJN. Le Nol, miroir de la société. Du XVe au XIXe siècle. Neophil 94 (2010), 241-250.

Highly informative and agreeable to read, R.’s investigation of a little studied genre is wide-ranging and sensitive to theatrical as well as lyrical and musical dimensions. 17th c. noels often include references to classical mythology as well as Christ’s birth, although the latter is not the only subject sung (the creation, the annunciation, etc. are included). Noels can exhort Catholics to leave the so-called heresy of Calvin. Attentive to socio-economic context, R. notes specific references to cities, forests, gardens, fruits, etc. as well as to the circumstances of the people.

SARTI, RAFFAELLA. Europe at Home. Family and Material Culture 15001800. Transl. by ALLAN CAMERON. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2002.

Review: P. Münch in HZ 290.3 (2010), 779-780. Welcome translation of S.’s 1999 study under the title Vita di casa. Fascinating, sensitive and illuminating panorama of early modern European home and family life. Praised for its abundant and clear commentary.

SCHILLING, LOTHAR, ed. Absolutismus, ein unersetzliches Forschungskonzept? Eine deutsch-französische Bilanz/L’absolutisme, un concept irremplaçable? Une mise au point franco-allemande. (Pariser Historische Studien, Bd. 79.) München: Oldenbourg, 2008.

Review: M. Wrede in HZ 291 (2010), 516-517. These studies originated with a 2005 journée d’étude at the Deutschen Historische Institut in Paris which focused on the controversial concept of Absolutism and French and German perspectives on the subject. After initial essays on each perspective, however, the remaining essays are heavily focused on French perspectives. Very valuable volume includes studies by outstanding scholars of the Early Modern such as Denis Crouzet. This welcome volume is highly informative and includes a semantic metahistory by Armelle Lefebvre.

SCHLÜTER, GISELA. Discrétion/indiscrétion au XVIIe siècle: un aperçu de la sémantique historique des concepts. PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 289-297.

Article sets out to provide a historical overview of the concepts of discrétion and indiscrétion and to analyse the particular rle the seventeenth century played in the modern understanding of the concepts.

SCOTT, VIRGINIA. Women on the Stage in Early Modern France: 1540-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.

Review: F. Londré in CHOICE 48 (2011), 1299: Scott examines apparent exchanges of influence between early modern actresses and playwrights, while also attending to these women’s private lives, working conditions, and myths surrounding their existence. Attends to women such as Madeleine Béjart, Mlle Du Parc, La Champmeslé, and Mlle Molière. Recommended by the reviewer despite slight reservations about the author’s inclusion of superfluous details.

Review: M. Leon in ThR 36.2 (2011), 179-80. Scott gives actresses new voice as she penetrates the obscurity of the historical record to show the significant role of women in the growth and stabilization of French theatre. Uses legal contracts and civil records, but also plays themselves to engage in intelligent inference about the place of women. For the 1630s, for instance, Scott analyzes the roles written for actresses to speculate about their importance in the troupes. Study concludes with a chapter on biographical depictions of famous French actresses in film and on the stage

SEIFERT, LEWIS. Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Review: A. Duggan in FR 84 (2011), 807-08: Through an examination of civility manuals, salon literature, polemical texts, and narratives about cross-dressing, Seifert highlights the precariousness of the seventeenth-century masculine subject, which continually needed to be reiterated through relations to other men and to women. Moving from the production of normative masculinities to the production of marginal masculinities, Seifert demonstrates the delicate balancing act male subjects performed to maintain their normative or non-normative subject positions.Manning the Margins opens up the scope of early modern gender studies and breaks new ground (807-08).

Review: P. Zoberman in PFSCL, 38.74 (2011), 255-260. Volume is a very stimulating contribution both to the exploration of early-modern culture and to gender studies, supported by a vast knowledge of the scholarship in both domains’.

Review: Gary Ferguson in Ren Q 63 (2010), 574-576. Judged welcome and innovative, S.’s investigation adopts Pierre Bourdieu’s Masculine Domination as his principal theoretical framework (575). Organized in two parts, Civilizing the Margins, and Sexuality and the Body at the Margins, S.’s wide-ranging discussions include examinations of honnêteté, relationships between the masculine and the feminine, galanterie, and satirical songs, among other topics. Individual figures and authors receive important focus as well, such as Voiture, Madeleine de Scudéry, Théophile and the Abbé de Choisy.

SHUSTERMAN, NOAH. Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon. Washington, DC: Catholic UP of America, 2010.

Review: M. Sage in FR 84 (2011), 835-36: A study of holidays divided into 2 major periods, before and after the French revolution. En se basant sur la notion de Politics of Time du philosophe Peter Osborne, à savoir a politics which takes the temporal structures of social practices as the specific objects of its transformative (or preservative) intent (17), Noah Shusterman montre qu’il existe des revendications de pouvoir et d’autorité au sein de toute réglementation du temps, qu’il soit liturgiquepolitiqueou social (835). Although the reviewer expresses some uncertainty about the audience for whom this work is intended, he praises its detail, systematicity, and high scholarly quality.

SIEGEL, STEFFEN. Tabula. Figuren der Ordnung um 1600. Berlin: Akademie, 2009.

Review: B. Steiner in HZ 290.2 (2010), 474-475. Mixed review of this study which is inspired by the prominence of the word and concept of tableau chez Foucault. S. continues the emphasis of several critics such as Horst Bredekamp and Gottfried Boehm on techniques of visualization knowledge, here described as Bild des Alphabets, Ikonotexte, and visuelle Strategien (102-133). Sources are lauded, but reviewer would have appreciated a more critical stance and stringent argument.

SIGNORI, GABRIELA, ed., Das Siegel. Gebrauch und Bedeutung. Unt. Mitarb. v. GABRIEL STOUKALOV-POGODIN. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007.

Review: J. Mötsch in HZ 290.2 (2010), 415-417. Judged illuminating for the information and analyses that the volume brings to the uses and meanings of the seal. Highly diverse, the interested reader will find essays on the role of the seal as a guarantee of authenticity and as relating to image and identity. Other focuses include university seals, Jewish seals and state seals. Indices and illustrations.

SIKORA, MICHAEL. Der Adel in der Frühen Neuzeit. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2009.

Review: K. Murk in HZ 291 (2010), 802-803. Useful book focusing on the poor in the Early Modern. Perspectives addressed include social formation, employment prospects, environment, way of life and the church, among others. Highly readable.

SMITH, PAMELA H. and BENJAMIN SCHMIDT, eds. Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 14001800. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Review: A. Mosley in Ren Q 63 (2010), 673-674. Welcome and diverse examination of knowledge production provides the reader with 14 essays that M. suggests are as many case studies which culmulatively convey lessons about the complexity of different epistemological practices, their interrelatedness and historical change (674). 17th c. French scholars will particularly appreciate Chandra Mukerji’s essay on Pyreneean women’s expertise which benefited the construction of the Canal du Midi (673).

SOLL, JACOB S. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System. Cultures of Knowledge in the Early Modern World. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Review: J. Spangler in Ren Q 63 (2010), 657-659. Praised for its fine research and engaging writing, S.’s study employs both clear reasoning and an excellent grasp of wider historical content (657). Valuable for its compelling examination both of state intelligence and library science as well as for its perspectives on the Colbert-Louis XIV relationship and humanism itself.

SONKAJÄRVI, HANNA. Qu’est-ce qu’un étranger? Frontières et identifications à Strasbourg (16811789). Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2008.

Review: P. Fuchs in HZ 290.3 (2010), 798-799. Judged interesting and instructive as S.’s volume examines varying definitions and historical identifications of the foreigner in Strasbourg. Women, children, foreign students are included in the study which states: Pouvoir jouer avec les différentes notations d’étranger constitue en effet un important moyen dans les luttes sociales pour exclure des personnes ou des groupes concurrents (177).

SPERLING, JUTTA G. and SHONA KELLY WRAY, eds. Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property, and Law in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 13001800). Routledge Research in Gender and History 11. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Review: E. Dursteler in Ren Q 63. 4 (2010), 1325-1327. Wide-ranging and praiseworthy for its contribution to a truly Mediterranean history and its examination of gender through . . . [a] Mediterranean prism (1325). France is included in this collection of 16 chapters although Italy is the most heavily represented. D. finds both individual essays and the volume as a whole successful both as a study of gender and a work of Mediterranean history and considers it a model for future Mediterranean work (1327).

SPANGLER, JONATHAN. The Society of Princes: The Lorraine-Guise and the Conservation of Power and Wealth in Seventeenth-Century France. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009.

Review: B. Sandberg in Ren Q 63 (2010), 655-657. Welcome examination of the Lorraine-Guise family after the religious wars. Based on legal records and important materials in French archives, the study demonstrates that the princes étrangers were part of the fabric of the tapestry that was the public face of the French monarchy (39-41). Includes several in-depth studies of individual family members such as Louis de Lorraine, comte d’Armagnac and Henri II de Lorraine, duc de Guise. Reviewer is especially appreciative of S.’s focus on the transnational dimension of the family (656).

STEIGERWALD, JÖRN. La cour et la ville: esquisse de la relation historique entre pratique sociale et esthétique au XVIIe siècle (1630-1680). PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 273-287.

Examines the evolution of the relationship between cour and ville from a historical perspective (commenting on four fêtes royales), from a social perspective (commenting on the evolution of concepts of urbanité and le galant homme), and in terms of the popularity of certain literary genres.

TALLETT, FRANK and DAVID J. B. TRIM, eds. European Warfare, 13501750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Review: James R Smither in Ren Q 63 (2010), 921-923. Judged an unusually coherent and comprehensive [anthology] and a valuable addition to the literature on the topic (923). The collection includes a variety of approaches from syntheses of previously published texts to analysis of primary sources; topics are similarly wide-ranging and demonstrate a remarkable connectedness between essays. France is included along with less often found geographical dimensions in this domain.

TURNOVSKY, GEOFFREY. The Literary Market: Authorship and Modernity in the Old Regime. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Review: J. Phillips in FS 65.3 (2011), 391-392. This well-researched and densely argued study represents an important contribution to our knowledge of the history of authorship and publishing in France. Focusing on the evolution of the writer’s status and relationship with a growing print industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Turnovsky proposes a radically new analysis of this process. Rejecting the more simplistic view according to which writers of the period were increasingly able to wean themselves off patronage and live on income from their books, he persuasively argues that changes in the ways in which authors were perceived by the aristocrats who had hitherto supported them played an equally important role.

Review: P. Stewart in FR 84 (2011), 1025-26: Turnovsky argues that the relationship of writers with both the book industry and their reading public needs to be recast without the usual reliance on the notion of literary property. He argues that the privilège was not primarily about ownershipbut a credentialing device thatallowed them to project an image of themselves as socially integrated and enjoying the king’s favor, since it was issued in the monarch’s name (80). The reviewer expresses enthusiasm for the work but laments a lack of attention to relevant texts and scholarship, as well as to questions of early modern journalism and censorship.

UPTON-WARD, JUDI ed. The Military Orders. Vol. 4: On Land and by Sea. Editorial Committee: Malcolm Barber, Peter Edbury, Anthony Luttrell et al. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.

Review: R. Czaja in HZ 291 (2010), 451-452. Selected presentations from a journée d’études at the London Centre for the Study of the Crusades, the Military Orders and the Latin East in St. John’s Gate. Wide-ranging volume in which essays examine both general issues and problems in the history of military orders as well as study the history of specific orders. France is among the geographical areas investigated; problems include the following: military organizations, spirituality, architecture, family relationships and receptions history. Judged a very necessary overview.

VASOLD, MANFRED. Grippe, Pest und Cholera. Eine Geschichte der Seuchen in Europa. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008.

Review: M. Dinges in HZ 291 (2010), 738-740. Wide-ranging, voluminous overview of epidemics in Europe is welcome, especially given the recent modern examples of swine flu and in poor countries, tuberculoses and malaria. V.’s study includes both socio-historical and medical perspectives and is praiseworthy for its critical apparatus.

VIALA, ALAIN. La France galante. Essai historique sur une catégorie culturelle, de ses origines jusqu’à la Révolution. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008.

Review: J. Lyons in DSS 249 (2010), 777-778: Recognizing the author’s extraordinary contribution to the field, the reviewer sees this new and expansive work as le fruit de ses recherches et des réflexions dans un excellent ouvrage de synthèse. [ . . . ] Encyclopedic in nature and eminently accessible, the fifteen chapters begin with an etymological analysis and merge into a study of l’émergence du galant comme phénomène littéraire et social important et dynamique dès les années 1650 [ . . . ]

VUILLEUMIER LAURENS, FLORENCE and PIERRE LAURENS. L’âge de l'inscription: La rhétorique du monument en Europe du XVe au XVIIe siècle. Le Cabinet des Images 2. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010.

Review: T. Lansford in Ren Q 63.4 (2010), 1259-1260. Praiseworthy for its genuine wealth of material . . . and generous breadth of coverage(1260), V.’s examination is of particular interest and value to scholars of Neo-Latin, Renaissance and Baroque Studies. Organized in chapters on the birth of modern epigraphy, its original use, its link with politics, the rise of the elogium, and the 17th c. debate on the linguistic form of inscriptions.

WINKLER, HEINRICH AUGUST. Geschichte des Westens. Von den Anfängen in der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. München: Beck, 2009.

Review: W. Reinhard in HZ 291.1 (2010), 118-120. Reviewer has numerous concerns with this study including the definition of the West itself. Found stringently normative with notions of progress and modernization as well as conveying considerable American and European arrogance. Some errors of fact are noted as well.

WOLFE, MICHAEL W. Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the Early Modern Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Review: M. Vester in Ren Q 63 (2010), 652-654. Praised as significant and engaging, W.’s examination of the role of towns in the process of French state-building focuses on fiscal, territorial, political and cultural perspectives (652). 17th c. French scholars will be most interested in the section entitled The Walls Come Down (1600-1750). Civic pride was showcased under Sully as open squares and broad avenues were developed (653).

ZONZA, CHRISTIAN. Les Mémoires du capitaine Foucques: un témoignage-avertissement’ à l’adresse du roi. Tr L 23 (2010), 71-81.

In his close examination of this fourteen page in octavo historical account known as Foucques’s memoir, Z. underscores its interest due to 1) its quality as an example des discours des capitaines et surtout des éloges des actions des grands capitaines and to 2) its place in une littérature encomiastique liée aux valeurs de l’héroïsme in the Early Modern (74). Z.’s investigation includes a study of the structure, the justification, and the rhetoric of the memoir. Z. finds the narration théâtricalisé and the anecdotes, typically with precise sources and references, to be exempla which viennent diversifier et animer le propos du capitaine, tout en offrant la garantie de ce qui apparat bien comme la réalité contemporaine (77). Z.’s interpretation of F.’s vehement passages on the enslavement of Europeans is particularly striking as it is essentiellement le résultat d’un scandaleux commerce international (80). F. had predicted that Christianity would be destroyed unless France acts and le royaume du lys deviendra ainsi . . . une extension de la Barbarie (80).