FRENCH 17

ANACLETO, MARTA TEXEIRA. Infiltrations d’images: de la réécriture de la fiction pastorale ibérique en France (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.

Review: K. Wine in FR 85.6 (2012), 1156-1157. Anacleto examines the series of rewritings and translations of Montemayor’s Diana. She treats translation theory as well as the adaptations that replace Spanish love discourse with a French interest in l’honnête homme as well as other examples of the suppression of the foreign as the Spanish pastoral is absorbed into French. "it is difficult to read. Prone to abstract theoretical formulations, Anacleto does not always supply the needed illustrative example.

Angeli, Giovanna. Tradizione e contestazione I- La Letteratura di trasgressione nell’Ancien Régime/ La Littérature de transgression dans l’Ancien Régime. Firenze: Alinea, 2009.

Review: F. Forcolin in S Fr 163 (2011), 230-231. These acts of a 2008 conference held in Florence bring together the first of four volumes which will be dedicated to a project on canonical and non-canonical French literature from the Classical Era to our day. Criteria are examined as are contested cases such as the Cid. Includes an index of names.

Anguissola, Alberto Beretta. Ombres de l’utopie: essais sur les voyages imaginaires du XVIe au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011.

Review: E. Ouesslin in FS 67.1 (2013), 93-94. "Dans un livre consacré au filon apparemment inexhaustible qu’est l’utopie, le premier chapitre, ’Les Cités de l’ombre’, surprend en établissant une ’intime fraternité´ entre imagination utopique et instinct de mort’ (p. 18 ), en associant d’emblée, selon une optique freudienne, la quête utopique à une sorte de processus de régression de la création littéraire, en butte au principe de réalité´. […] A travers les huit chapitres de cet ouvrage, l’auteur explore de façon fort personnelle ou idiosyncratique un corpus littéraire de taille impressionnante, examinant par exemple les racines bibliques du genre utopique, les façons dont les figures parentales y sont représentées, les langues parlées dans divers pays utopiques, et la prédominance de la couleur rouge dans de nombreux textes."

ARZOUMANOV, ANNA. "Parler XVIIe siècle: étude d’une fiction linguistique dans deux romans d’Anne-Marie Desplat-Duc." PFSCL 77 (2012), 321-32.

Article examines the imitation of archaic language in Colombes du Roi-Soleil and L’Enfance du Soleil. Instances of "paleologism" fall into two categories: purely stylistic (including archaic words and syntax) or necessitated by the representation of the earlier period’s civilization. The author concludes that archaic language, although "incoherently" used in the novels, is part of the pleasure of the text for its targeted readers.

BARBAFIERI, CARINE. Atrée et Céladon. La Galanterie dans le théâtre tragique de la France classique (1634-1702). Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. "Interférences", 2006.

Review: L. Michel in DSS 253 (2011), 791-2. The book examines the inscription of galanterie in dramatic theory and in tragic theater from the 1630s to the end of the century. Contrary to previous studies which dated the origins of the "tragédie galante" to the 1660s, Barbafieri demonstrates that the "tentation galante" was omnipresent in French tragedy from the beginning of the Classical age and analyzes the evolution of a "pathétique tendre" across the century. Reviewer praises the book’s detailed literary analysis as well as the originality of its argument.

BAYARD, MARC. Feinte baroque. Iconographie et esthétique de la variété au XVIIe siècle, Collection d’histoire de l’art, Académie de France à Rome-Ville Médicis. Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2010.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 164 (2011), 401. Focus of analysis is Mahelot’s Mémoires, staged by the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Important especially for theatrical representation of the 1630s and 40s, the debates on regularity and irregularity and the Querelle du Cid.

BOCHET, MARC. L’âne, le Job des animaux. De l’âne biblique à l’âne littéraire. Paris: Champion, 2010.

Review: G. Bosco in S Fr 164 (2011), 475. B. focuses on the positive characterizations of the donkey from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday through artistic and literary history. Organized in sections as follows: "Souffrance," "Sagesse," "Courage," and "Beauté," the volume includes analyses of the donkey chez La Fontaine. Iconographical and bibliographical apparatus.

BOMBART, MATHILDE. Guez de Balzac et la querelle des Lettres. Ecriture, polémique et critique dans la France du premier XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré-Champion, 2007.

Review: N. Schapira in DSS 253 (2011), 793-5. This book, revision of the author’s doctoral thesis, examines the publication of Balzac’s 1624 Lettres and the ensuing quarrel as an "event": "La querelle des Lettres joue le rôle d’un creuset expérimental de la littérature comme ensemble d’institutions, de valeurs : comme champ de forces dont cette étude donne à voir la naissance comme au ralenti, par l’attention donnée à l’évolution et au rythme de la polémique." Reviewer praises this methodological approach as well as the book’s multifaceted analyses of the texts of the quarrel and its exploration of the "dynamique de la polémique."

BONARDI, MARIE-ODILE. Les Vertus dans la France baroque. Représentations iconographiques et littéraires. Paris: Champion, 2010.

Review: V. Fortunati in S Fr 165 (2011), 635. Important for its contribution to the criticism of art, ideas and mentalities; for the abundance of material taken into account; and for the clarity of its convincing argumentation. B.’s rich study demonstrates the diversity of 17th c. expression of "les vertus," as she examines Descartes, d’Urfé, de Sales, La Rochefoucauld and others. Rich bibliography and iconographic appendix.

BOTTIGHEIMER, RUTH B. Fairy Tales Framed: Early Forewords, Afterwords, and Critical Words. SUNY Press, 2012.

Review: S. Bernardo in CHOICE (Dec. 2012). "An an anthology of writings by Italian and French fairy tale authors from the 16th through the 18th centuries. The selections include prefaces, letters, forewords, and miscellaneous commentaries. Modern editions of these authors’ fairy tales do not include these ’para-texts.’ The absence of para-textual elements in contemporary printings of these stories has led to the generally accepted belief that all fairy tales are part of the corpus of folklore. The pieces in this anthology help show this assumption about the relationship between folklore and fairy tales is, in many cases, incorrect. The selections include pieces by such writers as Giovan Francesco Straparola, Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault, and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, in addition to less familiar writers. In addition to the original texts, Bottigheimer and a team of scholars provide informative introductory material that contextualizes the writers and their writing."

BOUTEILLE-MEISTER, CHRISTINE and KRISTIN AUKRUST. Corps sanglants, souffrants et macabres XVIe-XVIIe siècles. Paris: PU Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010.

Review: C.-L. Morand Metivier in FR 85.4 (2012) 746-747. Acts of the conference "Corps sanglants" held in 2008 at the University of Oslo. "Ce receuil, de par la grande diversité des sujets traits, ainsi que par l’abondante bibliographie qui l’accompagne, apparaît comme une lecture incontournable pour quiconque s’intéresse à une etude pluridisciplinaire de cette question."

Review: S. Turner in MLN 127.4 (2012), 945-46. Interdisciplinary volume of conference proceedings focused on "the depiction of the suffering body in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe" within various contexts "whether religious (the Wars of Religion), medical (the new anatomical discoveries) or political (the use of propaganda)...."

Review: M. Bernard in DSS 255 (2012), 371-2. Acta of a conference that took place in Oslo in 2008, the volume contains 22 articles on the representation of the suffering body in art, literature and spectacle in France, England, Holland, Spain, Italy, and Canada. The volume is unified in its reflection on authors’ and artists’ attempts to infuse suffering with meaning and to see universal significance in individual pain. Reviewer sees the volume as marking the beginning of a productive vein of research and particularly praises the book’s program of illustrations.

BRUSCHI, ANDREA. "Litterae et arma: l’aspiration à l’encyclopédisme des premières académies nobiliaires françaises (1598-1612)." SCFS 34.2 (2012), 133-142.

"Inspirés de l’idéal humaniste de l’encyclopédisme et fondés sur le binôme ’armes et lettres’, les programmes d’études élaborés dans les premiers projets d’académies pour gentilshommes (fin du XVIe-début du XVIIe siècle) associent à la pratique d’activités physiques l’érudition et l’éducation dans des disciplines théoriques. De telles propositions sont éloignées des exigences d’une noblesse désireuse de trouver dans l’académie non pas un parcours pédagogique complet, mais un lieu de sociabilité et d’apprentissage des exercices chevaleresques. Les tentatives de création d’écoles nobiliaires à vocation encyclopédique sont donc destinées à rester lettre morte ou tout au plus à donner lieu, comme dans le cas des académies de Jacques Bourgoing et de David Rivault de Flurance, à des institutions éphémères. L’importance de ces expériences réside dans l’aspiration à un véritable renouvellement du second état par le biais de l’éducation, dans le but de faire de la noblesse un groupe compétent et en mesure d’agir pour le bien du royaume."

CAËTANO, MARIE-LAURENTINE. "La Palantine, une princesse hors du commun dans la littérature pour la jeunesse." PFSCL 77 (2012) 433-47.

In six recent young adult novels, Elisabeth-Charlotte de Bavière is presented as a sympathetic figure, on due to her position as a relative outsider at court, her strong personality, her tolerance, and her education.

CANOVA-GREEN, MARIE-CLAUDE. Ballets pour Louis XIII. Danse et politique à la cour de France (1610-1643). Toulouse: Société de Littératures Classiques, 2010.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 165 (2011), 634. Judged highly useful, C.-G.’s edition documents the presence of a genre greatly appreciated in the Baroque era, the constant literary contact between Italy and France, and political ramifications. After a short but diverse introduction, eighteen ballets are presented. Reviewer notes that among the authors are to be found illustrious poets such as Tristan, Boisrobert and Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin. She does however regret the absence of any mention of the famous critic Jean Rousset.

GAMBELLI, DELIA. Vane Carte. Scritti su Molière e il teatro francese del Seicento. Roma: Bulzoni, 2010.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr163 (2011), 162. Vane Carte brings together essays on Molière and the 17thc. theatre by D. Gambelli, her scholarly reviews and acts of conventions. Highly useful and diverse reference.

DAGEN, JEAN and BARROVECCHIO, ANNE-SOPHIE. Le Rire ou le Modèle? Le Dilemme du moraliste. Paris: Champion, 2010.

Review: A. Schellino in S Fr 165 (2011), 698-699. Vast (nearly 700 pages) and praiseworthy collection investigates exemplarity and the laughter of French moralists from the 15th to the 18th c. and includes philosophers and literary authors as well (Pascal, Descartes, Bayle, Corneille, and Molière, for example). Highly interdisciplinary, the volume is comprised of essays on both literary and artistic portraits, theatre, the novel, history and even jurisprudence. A genuine treasure trove for the 17th c. scholar who will delight in numerous essays such as Laurent Thirouin’s "éclats de rire pascaliens" (363-390) and Dominique Bertrand’s "L’imaginaire du rire dans ’Les Caractères’ de La Bruyère" (489-520). The volume closes with a triptych including Louis Van Delft’s essay on "rires philosophiques" and Jean Dagen’s "Que philosopher c’est apprendre à rire.

DANDREY, PATRICK. Quand Versailles était conté: La cour de Louis XIV. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2009.

Review: O. Ranum in PFSCL 77 (2012), 550-56. Unlike recent studies by Christian Jouhaud or Olivier Chaline which have aimed "to breathe new life" into our images of the 17th c by bringing new sources and historical perspectives to light, Dandrey’s book turns back to traditional literary and moralistic sources to reproduce a well-worn critique of court life. The reviewer is disappointed by the "cliché-ridden" interpretations.

DEKONINCK, RALPH, AGNES GUIDERON-BRUSLE, and NATHALIE KREMER. Aux limites de l’imitation: l’ut pictura poesis à l’épreuve de la matière (XVIe-XVIIe siècles). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.

Review: S. Genieys-Kirk in FS 66.4 (2012), 46-547. "Cet ouvrage collectif propose une fascinante étude de l’émergence progressive d’un concept longtemps dénigré: celui de la ’matière’ ou de la matérialité inhérente à toute oeuvre. Aux seizième et dix-septième siècles, la matière constituant ’un impensé de la thèorie de l’art’ (p. 7 ) est quasi absente sous la plume des théoriciens. La matière en tant que paradigme digne d’inclusion dans le langage théorique est incompatible avec une vision de l’art qui ne saurait déroger aux principes sacrés de la mimesis dont l’ultime fonction est de donner à voir le beau sous sa forme la plus parachevée, éliminant toute trace de l’acte créateur, mû par le modus vivendum horatien de l’ut pictura poesis."

DONAWERTH, JANE. Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women’s Tradition, 1600-1900. Southern Illinois, 2012.

Review: T.B. Dykeman in CHOICE (July 2012). "This book’s central argument is that women constructed theories of rhetoric based on conversation rather than on public speaking. Donawerth gathers evidence from women’s writings over three centuries. She contends that in treatises, dialogues, conduct and elocution handbooks, and publications on women’s education and preaching, women argued that rhetorical power is gained and developed through conversation. Whether discourse is devised to cultivate the feminine, defend rights, or perform in the parlor or on the public stage, it originates in conversation. Donawerth cites writings by Madeleine de Scudéry, Bathsua Makin, Mary Astell, Margaret Fell, Hannah More, Lydia Sigourney, Ellen Stewart, Hallie Quinn Brown, Frances Willard, and many others. Emphasizing the positive in a history of women rhetoricians restricted in education and constrained from public space, Donawerth changes the discussion from women as practitioners of rhetoric to women as theorists of rhetoric."

DUGGAN, ANNE E. "The Revolutionary Undoing of the Maiden Warrior in Riyoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles and Jacques Demy’s Lady Oscar." Marvels & Tales 27.1 (2013) 34-51.

Studies maiden warrior tales in French and Chinese folk and literary traditions. Divides tales in two groups: those which challenge the dominant order and those which uphold it. References tales by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Marie-Jeanne l’Héritier, and Henriette Julie de Murat.

DUPRAT, ANNE. Vraisemblances: Poétiques et théorie de la fiction, du Cinquecento à Jean Chapelain (1500-1670). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009.

Review: C. Gossip in PFSCL 76 (2012) 261-2. The book offers a thorough examination of early modern theories of fiction in relation to rhetoric, as imitation of nature, and as a source of readerly pleasure. Duprat analyzes the reception of Aristotle’s poetics by Cinquecento authors such as Tasso in comparison with Scaliger, Heinsius, and Chapelain. Reviewer calls the book an "indispensable instrument de travail" for scholars of theories and origins of fiction.

Review: H.-T. Campagne in FR 85.6 (2012), 166-1167. Of interest to dix-septièmistes will be "les derniers chapitres […] consacrés aux poéticiens français du dix-septième siècle et en particulier à Jean Chapelain, dont l’oeuvre, par l’attention qu’elle porte à la vraisemblance et à l’ensemble des formes de la representation, s’inscrit dans le sillage de la réflexion entamée par les théoriciens italiens […] du Cinquecento."

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 164 (2011), 400. Attentive first to diverse meanings and uses of "fable" as revealed in Furetière’s dictionary, D. then analyzes fiction in poetry, "Les lumières d’Italie" (15th and 16th c.), before concentrating on "Poétiques de la vraisemblance (1560-1660)". A rich bibliography and useful index of names accompanies this welcome study.

FAZIO, MARA and PIERRE, FRANTZ. La Fabrique du théâtre. Avant la mise en scène (1650-1880). Paris: Desjonquères, 2010.

Review: M.G. Porcelli in S Fr 165 (2011) 639-640. This volume brings together thirty-four studies focusing on the concept of "mise en scène," the birth of the expression, and an illuminating case on Racine’s Athalie. The collection is organized in sections as follows: "La mise en scène avant la mise en scène: traces," "Les auteurs et la mise en scène," "L’intervention des acteurs et directeurs de troupe," "Les décorateurs et les scénographes," and "Opéra, musique et danse." 17th c. specialists will particularly appreciate Ch. Mazouer’s essay "Corneille et l’espace" (107-116) and Jeanne-Marie Hostiou’s "La fabrique des spectacles au miroir des comédies des comédiens. études d’une réécriture de ’L’impromptu de Versailles’ de Molière" (82-94), among others.

FERRIER, BERTRAND. "Quatre filles et une couronne: le XVIIe siècle, un révélateur de l’identité du roman contemporain pour la jeunesse." PFSCL 77 (2012) 361-72.

Author analyzes the first volume of A.-M. Desplat-Duc’s Colombes du Roi-Soleil, which he characterizes as historical "chick lit" (367) demonstrating how its vision of the 17th c is highly mediated by its positioning in the literary marketplace.

FINN, THOMAS "Women of the Raison d’Etat." CdDS 13.2 (2011), 31-55.

The focus is placed on those female protagonists in seventeenth-century theater who do not adhere easily to the ideology of sacrificing their personal interests to those of the State. These heroines underline the dubious or tenuous connections between personal sacrifices for the raison d’etat. The author turns to four plays: Jean Rotrou’s L’innocente infidélité, Jean Racine’s Bérénice, Catherine Bernard’s Laodamie reine d’épire and Marie-Catherine Desjardin’s Nitétis. He seeks to span the entire era and offers examples of tragedy and tragic-comedy.

FREYHEIT, MATTHIEU "Aventuriers de la mer: histoire parallèle d’un Siècle d’or." PFSCL 77 (2012) 531-43.

The article surveys several young adult novels (by Daniel Vaxelaire, Alain Surget, A.-M. Desplat-Duc, Yves Heurté) that depict piracy in the second half of the 17th c. The major themes of these works include the relationship of the individual to larger historical forces, the possibility of self-reinvention through travel, and the social position of the outsider. They mix history and legend and valorize the rebel in a way that appeals to a young/teen-aged audience.

GAILLARD, A. and J.-P. SERMAIN. Féeries. études sur le conte merveilleux XVIIe - XIXe siècle, Grenoble: ELLUG, 2010.

Review: V. De Santis in S Fr 165 (2011) 637-638. This issue of the annual review published by the research group LIRE (Littérature, idéologie, représentations) focuses on the genres of the conte and the fable. The essays are also available on line at http://feeries.revues.org/ and include diverse perspectives such as comparative analyses with medieval and modern contes, La Fontaine’s "évolution" which is seen as a "révolution herméneutique" (P. Dandrey), and his unity of inspiration counterbalanced by an essential generic difference (F. Corradi), among others.

GANIM, RUSSELL and THOMAS CARR, JR. Origines. Actes du 39e Congrès annuel de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 10-12 mai 2007. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 163 (2011), 161-162. This refereed volume contains 28 of the 70 communications presented at the 2007 NASSCFL conference and is divided into six sections the titles of which demonstrate the diversity of the volume. Sections include articles on Descartes, farce, Molière, the Gazettes and the Mercure Galant, women’s writings, the importance of erudition, libraries, and varia (the latter including essays on Corneille, Boileau, d’Urfé, Camus and Théophile).

GIRAULT-FRUET, ARLETTE. Les voyageurs d’îles: sur la route des Indes aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Garnier, 2010.

Review: E. Welch in FR 86.1 (2012), 80-181. In this catalogue of commonplaces used in 17th- and 18th-century travel writing we find an "essentially structuralist analysis" of some one hundred texts written by over seventy-five European authors shows how the works depended on the repetition of conventional elements to demonstrate their veracity. The final section examines the theme of the fallen island paradise that has been corrupted by European presence. "An admirably thorough exposé of a relatively uncharted body of literature."

HASKETT, KLESEY and HOLLY FAITH NELSON. French Women Authors: The Significance of the Spiritual (1400-2000). Rowman & Littlefield, 2013.

Review: W. Edwards in CHOICE (Apr. 2013). "Taken together, the essays in this volume […] trace the waning social influence in France of Christianity and the institutional church (though not necessarily of God), even as they highlight the frequency with which individual Francophone women turn to the spiritual as a means of personal expression and literary resistance. […] Trading religious orthodoxy for spiritual fulfillment, Marguerite de Navarre, Madame de Lafayette, George Sand, Simone Weil, and Marguerite Duras (and other less canonical writers) are presented here as pioneers forging unconventional paths toward God."

HEINER, HEIDI ANN. The Frog Prince and Other Frog Tales from Around the World; Rapunzel and Other Maiden in the Tower Tales from Around the World; Sleeping Beauties: Sleeping Beauty and Snow White Tales from Around the World.

Review: H. Pilinovsky in Marvels & Tales 27.1 (2013), 127-129. Pilinovsky reviews three self-published casebooks, each on a particular tale type, by Heidi Ann Heiner, creator of the SurLaLune Fairy Tale Website. While circumventing traditional media and academic publishing, Heiner brings her careful, thorough research to a wide audience in both electronic and print form

HENIN, E. Les Querelles dramatiques à l’âge classique (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles). Louvain and Paris: Walpole-Peeters, 2010.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 165 (2010), 635. These acts of a 2006 conference organized at Reims by the Centre de Recherche sur la Transmission des Modèles Littéraires et Esthétiques is a work of synthesis on the question. The 17th c. sections are organized as follows: "Le modèle des autres polémiques: de l’Italie à la France de Richelieu," "émergence d’un public et stratégies d’auteurs: Racine et Molière," and a section which examines the relationship between querelle and theatrical form. The remainder of the volume treats 18th c. querelles. Index of names.

HILLMAN, RICHARD. French Origins of English Tragedy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.

Review: N. Hammond in FS 66.4 (2012), 552-553. "Richard Hillman has produced a succinct but wide-ranging book exploring the correlation between ’diverse French discourses and particular aspects of English tragedy’ (p. 12). He does not aim for a comprehensive overview, nor does he attempt to prove various English playwrights’ familiarity with the French source material, but he settles instead on a variety of examples." Works and authors examined include Pierre Matthieu’s La Guisiade (as a source for Shakespeare’s Richard II), Garnier, Du Bartas, Du Rosier, and Fleury (and their relation to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy , Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus , Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, and Jonson’s Sejanus.

HODGSON, RICHARD G. Libertinism and Literature in Seventeenth-Century France. Actes du colloque de Vancouver, The University of British Columbia, 28-20 septembre 2006. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 163 (2011), 162-164. These sixteen essays demonstrate the rich quality of the 2006 conference as they are devoted to primary authors (Molière, La Fontaine, La Mothe le Vayer and Cyrano), to the relation between libertinage and literary genres and to intersections of libertinage, literature and society. This lengthy review highlights each of the sixteen essays, allowing the reader to appreciate the diverse yet coherent contribution of the volume.

HOLTZ, GREGOIRE. L’Ombre de l’auteur: Pierre Bergeron et l’écriture du voyage à la fin de la Renaissance. Geneva: Droz, 2011.

Review: A. Blair in FS 67.1 (2013), 92. "This richly contextualized study of the career and work of Pierre Bergeron (d. 1637 ) focuses on the genres and methods of composition of narratives of travel, especially to the East Indies, in the late Renaissance. […] Bergeron wrote some occasional poetry and travelled himself, leaving manuscript accounts that were printed long after his death. He put his name on two works, on the colonization of the Canaries (1629 ) and on recent travellers to Tartary (1634 ), in which he called for increased French colonial expansion, but his vision gained little traction at the time. Instead, Bergeron was most successful as a ghostwriter, who would turn a written or oral travel report into a publishable narrative that would appeal to the tastes of the gens du monde. […] On Grégoire Holtz’s account, Bergeron is interesting not because he was exceptional but precisely because he was not. From the Middle Ages until the end of the eighteenth century (when Romantic writers sought inspiration from travel), ghostwriting was common in the production of travel narratives. Beyond its main theses this superlative work of scholarship offers many thought-provoking sidebars - for example, on genres of history writing (and how Spain favoured universal histories), on different forms of writing for hire, or on the significance of ’&c.’."

IBBETT, KATHERINE. The Style of the State in French Theater, 1630-1660. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: J.D. Lyons in MP 110.1 (August 2012), E42-E45. Ibbett’s book is "an extremely original and thoughtful book about political and dramaturgic theory and practice in France during the crucial midpoint of the seventeenth-century." This study "weaves together gender theory, biopolitics, governmentality, colonial history, neoclassical poetics, the theory of the reason of state, history of religion, and iconography. All is exquisitely documented..." The reviewer especially appreciates Ibbett’s final chapter in which she "brilliantly stages an attack on the persistent malady of studies in seventeenth-century French theater, the almost universal insistence on teaching and studying the plays only within a framework of "rules."

Review: E. McClure in MP 110.3 (February 2013), E182-E185: "Ibbett’s book is less an exhaustive reassessment of French theater from 1630 to 1660 than a provocative summons to new lines of questioning that are less overdetermined by the ideological pressures of French cultural politics that date back to the sixteenth century and continue to influence criticism today. Her call for scholarly subtlety and quietness in many ways mirrors the activity of the mourning spectators that take center stage in the period’s martyr plays; as she announces in the opening pages, ’I hope not to put off my reader at this early stage if I say that this is a book interested not in dazzle but in something more humdrum: in how the practical concerns of government are taken up by the practice of the stage.’"

Review: J. Peters in FR 85.3 (February 2011), 55-556. "Ibbett […] turns to different ends the practice of reading the seventeenth-century theater. She alters the perspective on the familiar character-based readings of Corneille’s tragedies and crucially reframes the neoclassical stage as a tactically sophisticated engagement with, rather than transparent reflection of, political theory. The Style of State is a subtle reconsideration of a theater tradition that has, over time, become increasingly difficult to see directly."

JOHNSON, CHRISTOPHER D. Hyperboles: The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010.

Review: A. Sheeran in MLN 126.5 (August 2011), 1130-1133. Five-part work represents "an important contribution to the study of the Baroque as a literary phenomenon." Focus of chapters 12-15 is on the hyperbolic rhetoric of Descartes and Pascal: "Johnson argues that Descartes’ hyperbolic doubt is ’both heuristic and structural’ (366), and that his willingness to abandon hyperbolic thinking once his basic principles are established signals that his use of it is at least somewhat disingenuous, and therefore distinct from the ludic, telescopic suspensions of disbelief in authors like Shakespeare and Góngora." J. argues that "Pascal uses hyperbole to ’astonish us into rethinking conventional truths’ (419) and to move readers toward ’transcendence’ (441). The extensive analysis of Pascal’s contemporaries and interpreters illuminates the cultural context and shows how widely opinions on hyperbole continued to differ."

JONES, CHRISTINE A. "Thoughts on "Heroinism" in French Fairy Tales." Marvels & Tales 27.1 (2013) 15-33.

Coins the term "hero-in-ism" to discuss tales by d’Aulnoy, where she focuses on "active women," and Perrault, whose heroines have "linguistic competence." Posits that the primary difference between the two types is not gender, but "pageantry."

KAPP, VOLKER "Baroque et classicisme dans la philologie romane de langue allemande." DSS 254 (2012) 109-116.

German scholarship tends to classify 17th-century French literature as Baroque rather than Classical, studying in in relation to Spanish and Italian literature of the same period. This article comments on the influence of this aspect of German scholarship on French scholarship in the 2000s.

KELLER-RAHBÉ, EDWIGE. Les arrières-boutiques de la littérature: auteurs et imprimeurs-libraires aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Toulouse: PU du Mirail, 2010.

Review: E.E. Thompson in FR 85.5 (2012), 952-953. A valuable introduction contributes to the general lack of studies on seventeenth-century printers. The collection of essays will interest dix-septièmistes working on Jean-Pierre Camus, Parnasse satyrique, the burlesque, and the historical novella. The collection is thoroughly scholarly with an excellent detailed bibliography.

KELLER-RAHBÉ, EDWIGE and MARIE PÉROUSE-BATTELO "Représentations du XVIIe siècle dans la littérature pour la jeunesse contemporaine: Patrimoine, symbolique, imaginaire." PFSCL 77 (2012) 307-319.

This introduction to a special issue of PFSCL, the acta of a conference on representations of the 17th-c in children’s literature held in Lyon in 2011, proposes some hypotheses to explain the recent outpouring of these texts: pedagogical reasons, the "romanesque" character of the 17th c., the allure of Versailles, and the radical difference between that historical period and the present.

KOLL, RENATE "La poésie des Précieuses. Un genre nouveau?" DSS 254 (2012) 73-82.

Explores "comment la notion poésie précieuse, jusqu’alors utilisée et acceptée d’une manière générale, peut être différenciée et précisée en vue de la contribution lyrique des femmes poètes par le concept d’une poésie des Précieuses."

KORNEEVA, TATIANA "Rival Sisters and Vengeance Motifs in the contes de fées of d’Aulnoy, L’Héritier and Perrault." MLN 127.4 (2012) 732-753.

Article explores "the elements of subversion in order to demonstrate the process of the redefinition of femininity in the female-penned fairy tales and the extent to which the characters described by Mme d’Aulnoy and Mlle Lhérititer exhibit a psychology comparable with that of late seventeenth-century novels and dramatic texts." Through close reading of Mme dAulnoy’s Finette Cendron, K. examines "the motif of the rival sisters and of the theme of vengeance in the tale’s moralité in comparison with Perrault’s Cendrillon and Le Petit Poucet and with Lhéritier’s L’Adroite Princesse ou Les Aventures de Finette."

KRAUSE, VIRGINIA "Toward a Poetics of Adventure: Amadis de Gaule." Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine, Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.

Asks whether or not the notion of aventure can serve as a link between medieval romance and Amadis de Gaule; analyzes how in the end humanist and market concerns demystify chivalric romance.

KRUMENACKER, YVES "La mémoire du protestantisme dans les romans de littérature pour la jeunesse." PFSCL 77 (2012), 469-81.

The author located seven recent young adult novels (by A.-M. Desplat Duc, Annie Pietri, Dominique Joly, Fred and Siegrid Kupferman, and éliane Itti ) that depict the experience of Protestants (and Jews) in the 17th c. The novels depict their Protestant protagonists as victims of persecution (although Krumenacker sees this as anachronistic) accentuate the austerity of their lifestyle, and sometimes illustrate religious sectarianism through romances between Catholic and Protestant characters.

LAVOCAT, FRANÇOISE. La Théorie des mondes possibles. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2011.

Review: F. Forcolin in S Fr 164 (2011), 479. Without diachronic restrictions, this fruit of a 2005-2006 seminar at the Université de Paris-Diderot presents a first study in French on the subject applied to all literature and visual arts. Organized in three sections, the first deals with genres of fictions, the second with historical perspectives examining "façons de faire des mondes," and the third with effects of reading or "les mondes du texte." 17th c. scholars will appreciate diverse theoretical and stylistic perspectives (see, in particular, Christine Noille-Clauzade’s "Considérations logiques sur de nouveaux styles de fictionalité: les mondes de la fiction au XVIIe siècle" (171-188), as well as a rich bibliography and the closing essay of Thomas Pavel, "Univers de fiction: un parcours personnel" (307-314).

LECLERC, JEAN. L’Antiquité travestie: anthologie de poésie baroque (1644-1658). Quebec: Presses de l’ Université de Laval, 2010.

Review: C. Nédélec in PFSCL 77(2012), 556-7. A welcome and well-prepared edition of a selection of burlesque poems by Sarasin, Brébeuf, Colletet, and anonymous authors. A rich glossary, helpful introduction, and organization of the texts allows the reader to appreciate the style and substance of the poems, their status as (often parodic) adaptations or translations of Classical works, and therefore their "désacralisation" of Antiquity. Reviewer’s only complaint is that Dassoucy is not included in the anthology.

LINTNER, DOROTHÉE "L’héroïsme comique: l’influence des histoires comiques du XVIIe siècle sur la littérature de jeunesse contemporaine." PFSCL 77 (2012), 333-46.

Young adult novels by Florence Thinard, Annie Pietri, and Anne-Sophie Sylvestre are compared to comic works by Scarron, Sorel, Furetière, and others to show parallels between their approaches to characterizing the comic hero.

LOCHERT, VALÉRIE. L’écriture du spectacle. Les didascalies dans le théâtre européen aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Genva: Droz, 2009.

Review: P. Gethner in Fr F 36.2-3 (2011), 269-273. Theatrical traditions of four European countries are examined in L.’s "remarkable study" which G. judges "by far the most complete treatment of the subject to date and [which] should prove definitive for a long time to come" (269). Finding that didascalies are provided for readers as well as for actors and tracing their rise from notations in medieval liturgical books, L. underscores particularities such as a predominance of didascalies relating to speech in France. L.’s study is rich and the definition of her subject expansive, including paratexts. A comprehensive and well organized bibliography adds to the value of L.’s study as a reference tool (273).

LOSADO, GOYA, JOSÉ MANUEL. Métamorphoses du roman français. Avatars d’un genre dévorateur. Leuven: Éditions Peeters, 2010.

Review: O. Bonserio in S Fr 163 (2011), 233. Responding to the question "Pourquoi et sous quelles formes le roman (en général, en tant que genre et ici français) se transforme-t-il?" (307), the volume is wide-ranging, with essays examining the novel from the Middle Ages through Postmodernity. 17th c. scholars will particularly appreciate the essay of Delphine Denis focusing on "scrupules sur le style" (77-87) and the one of Frank Grenier on "le roman converti" (63-76).

LOSFELD, CHRISTOPHE. Politesse, morale et construction sociale. Pour une histoire des traités de comportement. Paris: Champion, 2011.

Review: S. Gallegos Gabilondo in S Fr 165 (2011), 640. Praiseworthy for its competence and clarity, L.’s work analyzes manuals which elaborated the Italian tradition of Castiglione. Social distinction and a certain normalization converge as L. takes account of a secularization of the concept. Political resonances are considered along with social relationships.

LYONS, JOHN D. "The Poetry of Friendship." SCFS 34.1 (2012), 17-25.

"Using the chapter ’De l’amitié’ from Montaigne’s Essais as a guide to the qualities of friendship, this article compares, on one hand, the qualities of seventeenth-century poems of direct address in which the poet assumes a position of friendship with respect to the person addressed to the qualities, on the other hand, of poems claiming love as the basis of the relationship between speaker and explicit reader. Though a category ’poetry of friendship’ is not so widely accepted as ’love poems’, this brief note suggests that such a type of poem does exist and that it is dominated by themes of consolation and admonition."

MAROT, PATRICK. Les Textes liminaires. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires de Mirail, 2010.

Review: G. Bosco in S Fr 163 (2011), 229-230. Wide-ranging and highly diverse due in part to the very nature of liminary texts, the volume includes M.’s introduction which presents an historical overview, examines various functions (authorial, pragmatic, didactic, hermeneutic and monumental) and rules of the genre described narratologically. 17th c. scholars will particularly appreciate the first section of the volume, "De l’Antiquité à la fin de la période classique."

MEERE, MICHAEL. "Social Drama, Cultural Pragmatics, and Louis XIII’s Performativity: La Victoire du Phébus (1617)." 85.4 (2012), 672-683.

Employing theatrical semiotics and cultural pragmatics, the author examines the anonymous "performance text" La Victoire du Phébus that appeared in Rouen following the assassination of Concini and the arrest of Leonora Galligay in order to show how it strengthened royal legitimacy and affirmed the king’s image as "Louis le Juste.

MERCIER-FAIVRE, ANNE-MARIE "Les deux visages de la sorcière: l’affaire des poisons (1679-1681) dans le roman historique pour la jeunesse." PFSCL 77 (2012), 415-31.

Author proposes that historical crime and horror novels across several genres - those depicting the Affair of the Poisons but also those set in Salem - offer an alternative portrait of the witch quite different from that found in fairy tales. Although not generally positive, these images of witchy figures stress their independence, political savvy, and knowledge of medicinal arts.

MERLIN-KAJMAN, HÉLÈNE "La fiction ’classique’: le plaisir du dépaysement et de l’interrogation morale (La Désobéisance de Pyrame)." PFSCL 77 (2012), 505-19.

Merlin-Kajman discusses her own young adult novel, La Désobéissance de Pyrame, commissioned for Belin’s Charivari series. She recounts her process planning and writing the novel as well as her conversations with an editor of young adult literature to reflect on issues of pedagogy, "civility," and literature both in the 17th c and today.

MONGENOT, CHRISTINE "Jeunes filles du XVIIe siècle pour jeunes lectrices d’aujourd’hui, ou la fabrique du féminin en littérature de jeunesse." PFSCL 77 (2012), 385-413.

Article surveys an ample selection of young adult novels aimed at girls to show how the depiction of female characters, emotions, romantic heroes, and sex in the 17th-c context reinforces a vision of femininity familiar from older sentimental novels and even Harlequin romance.

NÉDÉLEC, CLAUDINE. "Le XVIIe siècle dans De Cape et de Crocs." PFSCL 77 (2012), 347-59.

The comic book series De Cape et de Crocs not only represents a 17th-c Mediterranean setting but reflects a period aesthetic "à la fois baroque et burlesque/grotesque, ou plutôt héroï-comique." The article examines the comic’s approach to history, including its use of anachronism, as well as its style and humor.

NORMAN, LARRY F. The Shock of the Ancient: Literature & History in Early Modern France. Chicago & London: U Chicago Press, 2011.

Review: H. Bilis in PFSCL 76 (2012), 266-70. Norman’s ambitious yet nuanced study "charts nothing less than the process through which literature gained autonomy from the constraints of rational-scientific method." Organized thematically rather than chronologically, Norman’s careful reassessment of the texts of the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns reveals how the two "sides" of the debate in fact overlapped on many key issues, most especially the distance of the ancients from their own culture. The parties differed both in how they periodized Antiquity and in how they articulated the significance of this "chiasmic remoteness" of the past. The reviewer would have appreciated an expanded commentary on the Crown’s approach to the quarrel. Her overall assessment is admiring: "Beyond its convincing and erudite character, the study is beautifully written and a pleasure to read.

Review: C.M. Reno in CHOICE (Jan. 2012). "This exploration of the ’quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns’ and its aftermath takes into its purview the long span of history from Homer to the early-19th century. Norman […] aims to tease out the complexities and ambiguities of the arguments advanced by both camps, highlighting the paradoxes involved. In so doing, he turns many received notions of literary history upside down. He shows how the moderns’ attachment to propriety and to "unitarian systems"--be they aesthetic, political, religious, or epistemological-are ultimately conservative, and how the ancients’ preference for literary realism, their appreciation of the cultural differences between old and new, and their emotional approach to literature paved the way for modern cosmopolitanism and the new field of aesthetics. This dialectical analysis, which demands the reader’s full attention, pauses over a variety of related topics, for example, early-modern historiography, 17th-century sociability, Louis XIV’s choice of propaganda models, the birth of mythology, the rise of empiricism, Molière’s comic figures, Racine’s Pyrrhus, and Virginia Woolf’s ’On Not Knowing Greek’; earlier studies of the quarrel are woven in throughout."

Review: R. Howells in MLR 107.3 (2012), 936-937: Three-part study is "an ambitious but carefully constructed reading of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, gradually centring on the seminal idea of the Sublime." The first part "argues that French classical thinking was not comfortably ’universalist’ but embraced the concept of cultural di?erence over time (and place). Historical change was a?rmed in the Querelle not only by the Moderns (who proclaimed the pre-excellence of the age of Louis XIV) but more notably by their opponents (who defend the writing of ancient Greece and Rome)." The second part "considers how each side addresses the contradiction between the world of Homer and their own time." The third part, entitled "The Ine?able E?ect," deals with aesthetics and "draws on Boileau’s Longinian Traité du sublime (published in the same year as his Art poétique), and its resonances in the underrated works by Longepierre in praise of antiquity (1687, in the ?rst Querelle) and by Boivin on Homer (1715, in the second)."

PARISH, RICHARD. Catholic Particularity in Seventeenth-Century French Writing: ’Christianity is Strange’. Oxford: OUP, 2011.

Review: N. Hammond in MLR 108.1 (2013), 302-303: "Taking as his starting-point Pascal’s statement ’Le christianisme est étrange’, Richard Parish examines the compatibility and incompatibility of thought contained in the work of a number of seventeenth-century French Catholic writers, showing the various ways in which ’Christianity is unfamiliar, strange, and counter-intuitive’ (p. 5). In addition to Pascal himself, well-known ?gures such as Bossuet, St François de Sales, Fénelon, Pierre Corneille, and Madame Guyon loom large, but other less familiar names, such as Jean Rotrou, St Margaret-Mary Alacoque, Antoinette Bourignon, Jeanne des Anges, and Jean-Joseph Surin, make regular appearances over the course of the book. While Parish does not aim to cover all writers on religion of the age (Malebranche, Bérulle, and Nicole are perhaps the most notable absentees, and Protestant thinkers do not form part of his remit), the range of his analysis is remarkably diverse."

PICCO, DOMINIQUE. "L’éducation des enfants du Grand Siècle au prisme de la littérature de jeunesse contemporaine." PFSCL 77 (2012), 483-503.

Article examines the representation of boys’ and girls’ educations in children’s and young adult literature set in the 17th c. Through a census of a broad selection of novels (22 in all, listed in an appendix) the article demonstrates that this corpus shows education to be a marker of social prestige and a means of enforcing gender roles.

PIOFFET, MARIE-CHRISTINE. "La Nouvelle-France dans les écrits de Cartier et de Champlain: de la dénégation au ’descouvrement’." Tr Lit 24 (2011), 25-38.

Penetrating analysis of key passages of Cartier and Champlain’s "relations" or "récits" reveal not only their aspirations and visions, but also their fixations such as Cartier’s "morphologie insulaire [qui] répond à une volonté d’isoler l’eldorado saguenéen du reste du pays, [et qui] fait de tout le Canada une construction en archipel" (26-27). If similarities in both "découvreurs" may be found, for example in their perspective of North America as "un lieu d’approvisionnement et de relâche" (28), their differences are also remarkable. While "une euphorie palpable" and the use of hyperbole characterize Cartier’s observations, Champlain’s vision is so pragmatic and prosaic that the critic Michel Bideaux has called Des Sauvages an "antirelation de voyage" (29). As P. explores these impressionistic visions, she brings to the fore "le rêve de transmuer le Canada en une autre France" (32) and a shared optimism of "une cohabitation harmonieuse avec les indigènes" (36). Revealing deliberate fabrications and theatricality in the narrations which introduce "le topos du bon sauvage jovial et amical" (35), P. concludes that "l’histoire des premières expéditions en Nouvelle-France en est une de duperie et de mystification" (37).

POSTERT, KRISTEN. Tragédie historique ou Histoire en Tragédie? Les sujets d’histoire moderne dans la tragédie française (1550-1715). Tübingen: Narr, 2010.

Review: Perry Gethner IN CdDs 13.2 (2011), 206-209. Postert wants to show that the "subgenre" of historical tragedy was neither unacceptable at the time nor rare, but demonstrates its importance, its aesthetic aspects, the polemics surrounding the genre, and the practical difficulties of writing historical tragedy. Instead of approaching the usual question of fidelity to historical sources, Postert tries to determine how each of the playwrights concerned viewed history in general, his/her reasons for manipulating the factual material, and why certain subject matters were chosen. While the book deserves our attention, its main flaw is lack of careful proofreading.

QUELLIER, FLORENT. "Le discours sur la richesse des terroirs au XVIIe siècle et les prémices de la gastronomie française." DSS 254 (2012), 141-54.

Article exposes the emergent discourse on terroir in 17th-c. food culture, focusing particularly on its role in gift exchange practices. In addition to examining the language of terroir in literary discussion of food (Saint Amant, Furetière, Boileau) and in texts on gardening and agriculture, the article considers the importance of geographical provenance and quality in food gift exchange. Its role in the development of a gastronomic culture explicitly marked as French permits the author to treat terroir as "déclinaison et illustration du thème politico-économique de la richesse des terroirs du royaume."

RAYNARD, SOPHIE The Teller’s Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers. SUNY Press, 2012.

Review: E.R. Baer in CHOICE (May 2013). "Raynard provides concise biographies of well-known fairy tale writers--Francesco Straparola, Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen--and of several French and German women whose names are less familiar. The sketches are generally four to five pages long and are followed by complete bibliographies of the author’s publications and a welcome bibliography of secondary materials on that author."

ROBERTS, HUGH, ANNE BIRBERICK and ROBERT J. GANIM. EMF, Studies in Modern France, Vol. 14. Obscenity. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 2010.

Review: F. Fassina in S Fr 165 (2011) 633. Focusing on the Renaissance and the 17th c., the essays of this volume examine the title’s concept from the literary point of view, analyzing relationships of French examples with Latin, Italian and English ones. Other related concepts are treated such as sensuality, scatology, violence and the medical.

ROUTISSEAU, MARIE-HÉLÈNE. "Oublie-nous, les paradoxes de la mémoire à l’épreuve de la littérature." PFSCL 77 (2012), 521-30.

The author reflects on her young adult novel Oublie-nous, written for Belin’s Charivari series in relation to the creation of "un savoir intergénérationnel nourrissant la mémoire collective" (530).

ROYÉ, JOCELYN. "D’or et de dentelles: les représentations du XVIIe siècle sur les couvertures de romans." PFSCL 77 (2012), 373-83.

. A study of about 60 young adult novels reveals a high degree of homogeneity in the way the 17th c is represented in cover art. The illustrations’ content relies on décor and costume to establish the period setting while the techniques emphasize a sense of mystery and high drama.

RUGGERI, MARC. "Didon à Port-Royal." DSS 253 (2011), 763-89.

Through analysis of the translation and reception of the Aeneid by Jansenist thinkers, the article shows that par "une version aussi fidèle que pédagogique, la traduction par Pierre Nicole et Le Maistre de Sacy du Livre IV de l’énéide programme une lecture anatomique de la passion et offre à qui souhaite exercer son jugement l’inventaire de tous les " lieux " investis par la concupiscence."

SCHAKER, JENNIFER. "Fairy Gold: The Economics and Erotics of Fairy-Tale Pantomime." Marvels & Tales 26.2 (2012), 151-77.

Focuses on "British fairy-tale pantomime, specifically, panto productions inspired by the literary tales of prerevolutionary France." Though focused on 19th-century England, contains substantial references to d’Aulnoy and Perrault. Shows how pantomime is "a significant means of transmitting and adapting the genre of the fairy tale."

SCOTT, PAUL. Le Gouvernement présent, ou éloge de son Eminence, satyre ou la Miliade. London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2010.

Review: P. Shoemaker in MLR 107.2 (2012), 618-620. Welcome critical edition of the Miliade, which "weaves together political dissent, parody, gossip, and chanson populaire, and touches on a broad variety of subjects" associated with Richelieu. S. argues for attribution of the poem to Jacques Favereau. "More generally, Scott’s astute analysis of the political and literary signi?cance of the poem will be of broad interest to scholars who work on the political and cultural history of early modern France."

SEIFERT, LEWIS C. and DOMNA C. STANTON and trans. Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010.

Review: A. Duggan in PFSCL 76 (2012), 270-2. This anthology of tales by Catherine Bernard, Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon, d’Aulnoy, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, and Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, comtesse de Murat also includes critical texts by L’Héritier and Pierre de Villiers. Many of the tales are made available to Anglophone readers for the first time. The editors’ introduction not only situates the conteuses in their own literary and historical context but also shows how they set the stage for more recent work in the fairy tale genre by authors such as A.S. Byatt and Angela Carter. Reviewer finds that this edition will be of use not only to an Anglophone audience but also to specialists of French fairy tales.

Review: B.V. Le Marchand in Marvels & Tales 26.2 (2012), 266-69: Collection of 8 fairy tales by Catherine Bernard (1), Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier (1), Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy (2), Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force (2), and Henriette-Julie de Murat (2); most not previously translated into English. Features black-and-white illustrations, extensive introductory essay on the genesis of the ’contes de fées,’ appendix with English titles of some 60 tales, extensive notes, and closing section called ’Critical Texts on the Contes de Fées’ that features 2 texts from the 1690s. Le Marchand: "a useful overview of the literary fairy-tale vogue in the seventeenth century as well as a basic reference for scholars."

SHAPIRO, NORMAN and trans. French Women Poets of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Review: D.L. Baker in Fr F 36.1 (2011), 131-136. Wide-ranging selection and translation of over 600 poems by fifty-six French-speaking women poets from the Middle Ages to the present. S.’s volume includes a preface, biographies, literary appreciations, notes and source guides, a forward by the American poet Rosanna Warren, a selected bibliography and three critical introductions. B. praises S.’s "approach to translation itself, which privileges a ’fidelity’ to communicating not only message, but tone, and to incorporating the rhythms, rhyme schemes, and poetic devices of the original works. His sustained capacity, from medieval to contemporary verse, to reproduce the integral voice of each poet is nothing short of remarkable" (131-132). 17th c. women poets included are Madeleine de Scudéry, Henriette de Coligny de la Suze, and Marie-Catherine Desjardins de Villedieu. B. characterizes the anthology as a "double gift" to readers: "[S.] has brought many of these poets out of obscurity; and he has himself labored -indefatigably-to reveal and celebrate their luster" (136).

SOULARD, DELPHINE. "L’œuvre des premiers traducteurs français de John Locke: Jean Le Clerc, Pierre Coste et David Mazel." DSS 253 (2011), 739-62.

Examines how three French translators adapted the rhetoric, style, and content of Locke’s philosophical writings for a French audience.

SOUTHWOOD, JANE and BERNARD BOURQUE. French Seventeenth-Century Literature. Influences and Transformations. Essays in honor of Christopher Gossip. Bern: Peter Lang, 2009.

Review: C. Mainardi in S Fr 163 (2011), 165-166. The thirteen essays of this volume in honor of Professor Gossip focus on areas of his research: the revival of themes of Antiquity in 17th c. French literature, the adaptations of subjects and the influence of certain writers of the 17th c. on the following period. M. helpfully gives highlights of each essay.

STEDMAN, ALLISON. Rococo Fiction in France, 1600-1715: Seditious Frivolity. Rowman & Littlefield/Bucknell University Press, 2013.

Review: C.B. Kerr in CHOICE (Jun. 2013). "In this compelling, well-documented study of experimental texts written from the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the reign of Louis XIV, Stedman argues for re-periodization of the rococo and reaffirmation of its fundamental values of nonconformity and tolerance. She posits that the relationship of the rococo with the classical-baroque is dialectic rather than sequential and that its origins lie not in the plastic arts and Versailles but rather in hybrid literary productions from social constructs as diverse as salons, convents, prisons, and print shops. This fascinating approach sheds light on authors such as Montaigne, Corneille, de Visé, d’Aulnoy, Lhéritier, Murat, and Durand, whose eagerness to experiment opened new frontiers, encouraged readers to take pleasure in generically heterogeneous literary creations, and ultimately led to the most important intellectual and political currents of the Enlightenment. By focusing on innovative publishing strategies and texts celebrating individual creativity rather than absolutist values, the author reinvigorates the field of early modern studies. Her perceptive analysis of the rococo as a 17th-century phenomenon that celebrated freedom in an era of growing authoritarianism invites scholars today to adopt the same independent spirit in their approach to other areas of history and literature."

STERNKE, RENÉ. "Les classicismes comme systèmes culturels de référence." DSS 254 (2012), 117-29.

This article charts how German critics and scholars have understood the concept of classicism from the 18th century to the present and explores the possibility of a "Berliner Klassik" or Berlin-centered Classicism in the late 18th- to early 19th century.

TEULADE, ANNE. Reflets du Siècle d’Or espagnol. Modèles en marge. Nantes: Université de Nantes, 2010.

Review: D. Dalle Valle in S Fr 163 (2010), 162. This comparatist volume includes essays on the reception of the picaresque novel in France, adaptations of Caldéron, Cervantes, and on hybridity itself.

THOURET, CLOTILDE. Seul en scène: Le monologue dans le théâtre européen de la première modernité (1580-1640). Geneva: Droz, 2010.

Review: M. Cuénin-Lieber in PFSCL 76 (2012), 279-82. This study of French, English, and Spanish drama considers the poetics and staging of the monologue, as well as its implications for the representation of psychological interiority in the baroque period. Reviewer praises the comparative approach as well as the "densité" of the scholarship.

Review: N. Hammond in FS 66.4 (2012), 547. "Clotilde Thouret sets herself the ambitious task in Seul en scène of charting the poetic, historical, and philosophical foundations and developments of the monologue in early modern theatre from France, Spain, and England. Drawing on work on the early modern self by such critics as Terence Cave and Charles Taylor, Thouret is convincing in her suggestion that the monologue reveals a new kind of interiority on the threshold of modernity […] overall this volume represents a magnificent achievement and surely will remain as the benchmark study on monologues for many years to come."

WALLIS, ANDREW. Traits d’union: L’anti-roman et ses espaces. Tübingen: Narr, 2011.

Review: N. Freidel in CdDS 13.2 (2011), 211-213. While tackling three major authors of the century, Sorel, Scarron, and Furetière (but also giving attention to Tristan l’Hermite and other lesser known texts), the author seeks to classify their novels as anti-romanesque. The author defines anti-romanesque as a hybrid genre, e.g., an in-between space that opened the door for the modern novel. The attention paid to detail and the particular attention given to metaphor are great assets of this study while the passage on madness in le Berger extravagant is not totally convincing. Yet Wallis liberates himself from traditional perceptions and his book opens the door for a new debate on these novels which is stimulating.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 165 (2011), 634. Focusing on the period from 1620 to 1666 (date of the publication of Furetière’s Roman bourgeois), W.’s study devotes special attention to Sorel’s Berger extravagant. W.’s organization includes sections on "L’espace anti-romanesque," "Fou et héros, héros fous: sur le personnage," and "Parasites." Although the reviewer contests here and there terminologies, she appreciates certain originalities as well as the heterogeneous and knowledgeable bibliography furnished on the subject.

WELCH, ELLEN R. A Taste for the Foreign: Worldly Knowledge and Literary Pleasure in Early Modern Fiction. Newark, DE: UP of Delaware, 2011.

Review: S. Toczyski in FR 86.2 (2012), 399-400. "Welch develops a ’poetics of foreignness’ used by authors of the long seventeenth century to recreate the pleasurable experience of Otherness through consumer goods, that is, objects of foreign origin and those domestically manufactured. Welch’s reader-centered approach leads her to examine both forme and fond, locating engagement with foreignness in structure (through innovative aesthetic choices) and content (novels set in foreign and/or invented lands as well as domestic scenesviewed through foreign eyes.)" This study focuses on heroic romance, city guides and Parisian novels, fictive memoirs, and tales of extraordinary voyages. "Welch’s study […] is convincing in its assertion of a well-developed ’taste for the foreign’ in seventeenth-century France even as it challenges us to recall that ’knowledge about the Other is always, to some degree, a fiction.’"

WOSHINSKY, BARBARA. Imagining Women’s Conventual Spaces in France, 1600-1800: The Cloister Disclosed. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010.

Review: H. Bostic in FR 85.6 (2012), 176-1177. "One of the delights of Woshinsky’s book is its treatment of little-known texts together with canonical works. Alongside the pleasure of discovering relatively unknown texts, this book offers the opportunity to encounter fresh reading of familiar ones. The author skillfully uses the motif of the convent to draw together disparate works. The analysis includes texts by many women writers who are finally making inroads toward the canon (into its parloir if not its cloître)." Authors treated include Mlle de Montpensier, Margaret Cavendish, Mme de Lafayette, Hortense and Marie Mancini, Mme de Villedieu, Marivaux, Chateaubriand, and Claire de Duras. A chapter examines the male appropriation of the persona of the nun in Les lettres portugaises and Diderot’s La religieuse. Woshinsky offers "a window on the past while reminding us of the enduring importance of history, its repression and representations."