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Sonoma State University |
Modern Language Association |
UNL Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
2012 Number 60
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."
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."
BOUTIER, JEAN. Etienne Baluze, 1630-1718. Erudition et pouvoirs dans l’Europe classique. Limoges: Presses universitaires de Limoges, 2008.
Review: J.-L. Quantin in DSS 253 (2011), 795-7. Acts of a conference on Baluze held at Tulle in 2006, this volume examines the work of the cleric, editor, historian, and librarian in his social context. Positive review overall despite mixed assessment of individual contributions. Reviewer especially praises the rich bibliography, inventory of Baluze’s correspondence, and helpful index.
BAYLE, PIERRE. Correspondance de Pierre Bayle. Elisabeth Labrousse and Antony McKenna, eds. 8 vols. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999-2012.
Review: I. Moreau in FS 66.4 (2012), 50-552. "Cette première édition critique moderne de la totalité´ connue de la correspondance active et passive de Bayle a pour point de départ l’Inventaire critique de la correspondance de Bayle par élisabeth Labrousse (Paris: Vrin, 1961 ). Entre l’état des lieux original et ces huit volumes, il y a toute la distance d’une révolution éditoriale. Cette édition - qui comportera douze volumes et plus de 1600 lettres, dont bon nombre d’inédites - présente en effet la strate médiane du texte élaboré dans la base de données Arcane, désormais accessible pour les volumes I à VI depuis le site de l’Université de Saint Etienne. L’édition électronique complémente utilement l’édition classique sur papier, dont on soulignera d’emblée l’exceptionnelle qualité tant du point de vue philologique qu’eu égard aux exigences de la maison d’édition. Le corpus est composé d’autographes, de copies manuscrites et d’imprimes. Chaque volume comprend glossaire(s), bibliographie critique, diverses listes dont celle des lettres perdues, concordance et index. L’annotation proprement dite est un modelé du genre: précise, érudite, remarquablement complète. Elle est à la fois critique, portant sur l’état du manuscrit et de l’écriture, et explicative. Elle permet de cerner la culture de Bayle en proposant des identifications bibliographiques et des éclaircissements sur les sources utilisées (le traitement est diffèrent selon qu’il s’agit d’une référencé å la Bible, å l’Antiquité gréco-latine ou à des ouvrages plus récents). Elle tisse tout un réseau de renvois internes, explicitant les allusions et renvoyant å l’actualité de la République des Lettres. Une telle édition, et de cette qualité, constitue un évènement. Son intérêt pour les études bayliennes est évident: la correspondance de Bayle permet de mieux connaître son auteur, son milieu, ses lectures - Bayle communiquant régulièrement à ses frères la liste de ce qu’il lit. Elle permet de suivre l’homme dans ses enthousiasmes mais aussi ses crises, au moment de sa conversion au catholicisme, lorsqu’il obtient un poste à Sedan ou s’exile à Rotterdam […] C’est aussi un témoignage de première main sur la réalité de cette République des Lettres européenne qui tisse un réseau d’amitiés et de relations professionnelles par delà les frontières politiques et confessionnelles."
Review: J.-P., Cavaillé in RPFE 1/2013, 131-132: "Antony McKenna et son équipe poursuivent leur patient travail d’établissement de la correspondance générale de Pierre Bayle. [...] L’édition est toujours aussi impeccable avec son gros travail d’annotation, ses glossaires, index, tables et appendices. Un travail remarquable, désormais indispensable pour tout lecteur de Bayle un tant soit peu exigeant."
DE ROBERT, PHILIPPE. Le Rayonnement de Bayle. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010.
Review: F. Corradi in S Fr 164 (2011), 402-404. These highly useful acts of an international congress on the occasion of the Tricentenary of the death of Pierre Bayle include an important biographical dimension, examinations of themes, reception and B.’s correspondence. The volume is organized in sections as follows: B.’s life, vision and the cultural history of his time; his correspondence; the concept of tolerance; philosophical reflection; and finally death itself in B.’s Dictionnaire. Lengthy review includes assessments of each essay in the volume.
GROS, JEAN-MICHEL. Les Dissidences de la philosophie à l’âge classique. Paris: Champion, 2009.
Review: A. Schellino in S Fr (2011) 697-698. Judged a convincing parcours with special emphasis on Pierre Bayle throughout but most particularly in the introduction (7-46) and in the second section, "Bayle ou le règne de la critique," where analyses of key concepts and questions are undertaken such as tolerance, excommunication, "l’art d’écrire" and the political function of religion. Wide-ranging and stimulating intersections are examined between Bayle and/or dissident philosophy and other thinkers such as Leibniz, La Mothe Le Vayer and Cyrano.
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.’."
SANZ, AMÉLIA. "Présences in absentia: les Amériques du XVIIe siècle." Tr Lit 24 (Spring 2011), 39-54.
S. offers a rich parcours of "un univers de représentation élargi par des découvertes qui ont mis en circulation d’autres entités épistémologiques, imaginables et, pour autant, lisibles" (39), allowing us to discover in a variety of texts the diversity of 17th c. "Amériques." Accepting the challenge to "abandonner les prémisses et les démarches qui privilégient la sédentarisation des cultures fixes et locales au profit d’une anthropologie du déplacement et de la circulation" (45), S. examines diverse, alternative modalities of authors "pour dire le monde," finding a global vision in works of Pyrard de Laval’s 1611 Discours du voyage de François aux Indes orientales and of Pierre Bergeron’s 1648 Voyages fameux du sieur Vincent Leblanc, the "roman total" of Gomberville’s 1629 L’Exil de Polexandre et d’Ericlée, and the "nouvelle" with its "solution galante" attributed to Anne de La Roche-Guilhem in L’Amitié singulière of 1710 (46, 47, 51-52). Numerous other 17thc. authors, canonical or not, are mentioned as S. challenges us to read and reread "tant de mémoires . . . qui revalorisent le petit, le quotidien, l’insignifiant, les traits anecdotiques et fugitifs en quête de ces présences des Amériques [du 17e siècle]" (53).
LYONS, JOHN D. "Sublime Accidents." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine. Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 95-109.
Discusses the different views of the sublime and of chance held by Boileau on the one hand and by Huet and Rapin on the other, concluding with a discussion of the sublime and of chance in Pierre Corneille’s view of tragedy.
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.
WOLFGANG, AURORA and NELL, SHARON DIANE. "The Theory and Practice of Honnêteté in Jacques du Bosc’s L’honnête femme (1632-36) and Nouveau recueil de lettres des dames de ce temps (1635)." CdDS 13.2 (2011), 56-91.
The question raised in this study is whether women were seen to participate in the model of honnêteté throughout the seventeenth century. While Nicolas Faret included women in his model, Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel of 1690 made a distinctive split between l’honnêteté of men and women. The focus is placed on two works written chronologically between Faret and Furetière, written by Jacques du Bosc in order to argue that women’s honnêteté was key, and that it referred to women’s intellectual cultivation and writing and not merely to chastity and morality.
REGENT-SUSINI, ANNE. Bossuet et la rhétorique de l’autorité. Paris: Champion, 2011.
Review: R. Parish in FS 67.1 (2013), 4-95. "If the whole of Bossuet’s posthumous reputation seems to be contained in summary within the terms of Anne Régent-Susini’s title, it is worth stressing that this meticulous piece of scholarship is not a general study of his pulpit oratory, but rather a precise and comprehensive investigation into the specific links between the acts of writing, preaching, and teaching as practised by the Bishop of Meaux, and the scriptural, sacramental, and formal justification for their impact. Régent-Susini explores the multiple resonances of her key terms with respect to a vast range of Bossuet’s oeuvre, and includes, in so doing, many seminal texts that have not made it into the anthologies (notably the so-called Logique du Dauphin ). […] The book is very clearly written, and both the multiple subdivisions of the material and the extensive annotation (whereby unfamiliar rhetorical terms are carefully defined and differentiated) help to keep the grandes lignes of the argument precise and uncluttered."
DURON, JEAN. André Campra (1660-1744), Un musicien provençal à Paris. Wavre: Mardaga, 2010. AND
DURON, JEAN. Le Carnaval de Venise d’André Campra et Jean-François Regnard. Wavre: Mardaga, 2010.
Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 164 (2011), 405. This review considers together the two volumes which focus on Campra. The first is composed of a series of essays on his activities and importance, while the second includes comments by diverse authors, and the libretto of the text. Of particular interest for the history of spectacle, music and literature. Richly illustrated.
PIOFFET, MARIE-CHRISTINE. "La Nouvelle-France dans les écrits de Cartier et de Champlain: de la dénégation au ’descouvrement’." Tra 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).
CORIMER, JACQUES. L’atelier de Robert Challe (1659-1721). Paris: PUPS, 2010.
Review: J. Morgante in S Fr 164 (2011), 405. C.’s volume brings together numerous perspectives on Challe, including a veritable "histoire de la création challienne," and a rich section on aspects of C.’s work. Annexes include a comprehensive bibliography. A noteworthy balance of stylistic and thematic analysis gives the reader an opportunity to better appreciate the great diversity of C.’s production.
CORIMER, JAQUES. "Les Amériques de Robert Challe." Tr Lit 24 (2011), 55-64.
Exploration of C.’s journals and unfinished memoirs demonstrates significant differences of treatment in his two experiences, his long stays in Acadia versus his stay of a month in the Antilles. Underscoring the "lien affectif très fort avec ce Canada dans lequel il [Challe] vécut ses premières années de jeune adulte" (57), Cormier evokes Challe’s seduction by the project of a new France which would be an ideal society embodying values that France had lost and a harmony that followed the model of Télémaque (58-59). Economic, political and metaphysical reflections, the latter in the words attributed to an Iroquois chief, contrast with Challe’s focus on the natural beauty of the Antillean women, "bien faites . . . d’un sang plus pur que nos Françaises" (cited by Cormier 64).
PIOFFET, MARIE-CHRISTINE. "La Nouvelle-France dans les écrits de Cartier et de Champlain: de la dénégation au ’descouvrement’." Tra 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).
CHAUVIGNY DE LA BRETONNIERE. La Religieuse en chemise et Le Cochon mitré. John Sgard. Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-étienne, 2009.
Review: C. Mainardi in S Fr 164 (2011), 404. Important for its introduction by S. and as a modern edition of the two works: the first, a philosophical and pedagogical dialogue, and the second, a violent pamphlet. The latter, because of its content, caused C. to be sent to the Bastille, tortured, and then for the remainder of his life, sent to the prison of Mont Saint-Michel.
SOLL, JACOB. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
Review: Ellen McClure in CdDS 13.2 (2011), 201-203. McClure praises Soll’s well- researched and engagingly written book in which he argues that Colbert innovated not only "in the methods that he used to organize information, but in the very information that he chose to gather" (201). Colbert intended to create knowledge through his loyal intendants who were sent to the countryside. Soll not only points out Colbert’s many successes but is careful to note the minister’s failures, as well, in particular in relation to the French colonies. McClure merely finds fault with Soll’s use of "absolutism," a term fallen out of use in recent scholarship due to its anachronism.
BILIS, HELENE. "Corneille’s Cinna , Clemency, and the Implausible Decision." MLR 108.1 (2013), 68-89.
"… Cinna constitutes an attempt at ’getting it right’, a progression in Corneille’s thinking on how to stage royal judgement on the seventeenth-century tragic stage. Auguste … represents a profound departure from Clitandre’s nameless monarch and the less digni?ed royal judges of Le Cid and Horace. As the tragic genre gains social prestige and political anchoring, the sovereign judge’s decision moves to the centre of the plot, with the fate of all the characters hanging on it; the plot itself becomes a waiting game for royal decisionmaking. Furthermore, Cinna engages with the juridical-political anxieties surrounding royal judgement in the Richelieu era."
CORNEILLE, PIERRE. Cinna. Tragédie, 1643. RIFFAUD, ALAIN. Geneva: Droz, 2011.
Review: J.-M. Civardi in FS 66.4 (2012), 548-549. "L’origine de ce livre se trouve peut-être à la fin du volume dans les quelques pages sur l’ Actualité de Cinna’ au regard d’événements politiques tout à fait contemporains. Pour le reste, c’est une édition de très bon aloi. Alain Riffaud a retenu le texte - en orthographe modernisée - de l’édition de 1682, la dernière revue par Corneille, et en cela c’est un choix différent de celui de Georges Couton dans la collection de la Pléiade."
HAWCROFT, MICHAEL. "Punctuating Dramatic Dialogue: Corneille’s Suspension Points." MLR 107.1 (2012), 124-142.
"Scrutiny of Pierre Corneille’s suspension points takes us to the heart of crucial developments in the construction of dramatic dialogue in early modern European drama. Focusing on the evolution of suspension points in editions published during Corneille’s exceptionally long dramatic career, this article deals with a phenomenon that links the development of dramatic activity and the development of print in seventeenth-century France." Plays: Mélite, Horace, Le Menteur, Œdipe, Suréna.
GOSSIP, CHRISTOPHER J. "Thomas Corneille, précurseur de Racine." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 100-109.
Discusses La Mort de l’empereur Commode, Camma, Ariane, and Stilicon as possible sources of inspiration (ideas, structures, character traits) for the young Racine.
CHRISTIAN, MARTIN. "’Je ne crois de sorciers’: l’incredulité de Cyrano." PFSCL 76 (2012), 97-110.
This article examines the treatment of skepticism in Bodin’s Démonomanie des Sorciers and Cyrano de Bergerac’s letters for and against the existence of witches. Cyrano goes further than Bodin (or Montaigne) in asserting his disbelief. Yet, Martin frames this shift not as a "revolution in thought" but as a "nouvelle inflexion" in a continuous skeptical tradition (109-10). He also suggests that the discourse on demonology can serve as an important source of insight on what early modern authors meant when they wrote about belief.
SANZ, AMÉLIA. "Présences in absentia: les Amériques du XVIIe siècle." Tr Lit 24 (Spring 2011), 39-54.
S. offers a rich parcours of "un univers de représentation élargi par des découvertes qui ont mis en circulation d’autres entités épistémologiques, imaginables et, pour autant, lisibles" (39), allowing us to discover in a variety of texts the diversity of 17th c. "Amériques." Accepting the challenge to "abandonner les prémisses et les démarches qui privilégient la sédentarisation des cultures fixes et locales au profit d’une anthropologie du déplacement et de la circulation" (45), S. examines diverse, alternative modalities of authors "pour dire le monde," finding a global vision in works of Pyrard de Laval’s 1611 Discours du voyage de François aux Indes orientales and of Pierre Bergeron’s 1648 Voyages fameux du sieur Vincent Leblanc, the "roman total" of Gomberville’s 1629 L’Exil de Polexandre et d’Ericlée, and the "nouvelle" with its "solution galante" attributed to Anne de La Roche-Guilhem in L’Amitié singulière of 1710 (46, 47, 51-52). Numerous other 17thc. authors, canonical or not, are mentioned as S. challenges us to read and reread "tant de mémoires . . . qui revalorisent le petit, le quotidien, l’insignifiant, les traits anecdotiques et fugitifs en quête de ces présences des Amériques [du 17e siècle]" (53).
BRAIDER, CHRISTOPHER. The Matter of Mind: Reason and Experience in the Age of Descartes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Review: E. Ousselin in FS 66.4 (2012) 53-554. "While the first chapter of The Matter of Mind provides a detailed analysis of Descartes’s Méditations sur la philosophie première (first published in Latin in 1641), the other five chapters are devoted to Boileau, Pascal, Molière, Corneille, and the painter Nicolas Poussin. In the process, Christopher Braider’s stated objective of decentring Descartes’s dualist separation of mind and body as the underpinning concept of modern rationality evolves into broader commentaries on seventeenth-century literature and painting. […] Instead of Descartes’s systematic formulation of abstract reason, Braider posits Montaigne’s experience-based scepticism as having permeated early modern thought. In this respect, the author of Discours de la méthode (1637) seems less than central to what Braider nevertheless calls in his subtitle the ’Age of Descartes’. […] Whether he [Braider] succeeded in toppling the idol of Cartesian dualism will be for each reader to judge. All of them will most likely be impressed with the intellectual range and critical acumen displayed by Braider throughout this highly stimulating study."
CARRAUD, VINCENT. L’invention du moi. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2010.
Review: Y. Onishi in DSS 253 (2011) 798-800. Examines Descartes and Pascal in light of, and as precursors to, Heidegger’s concept of the irreducible, existential self. Reviewer praises "la richesse et le détail des arguments mobilisés" and states that although the premise of the book might at first appear teleological, in fact it succeeds in shedding "une nouvelle lumière sur la constitution du Dasein à partir du concept qu’inventent Descartes et Pascal."
GILBY, EMMA. "The Language of Fortune in Descartes." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine, Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 155-167.
Analyzes Descartes’ interest in fortune and his attempts to grapple with chance as opposed to method, as seen in his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth and in his Passions de l’âme; shows how he both denies that chance exists and encourages us to master it.
GUENANCIA, PIERRE. Descartes et l’ordre politique. Critique cartésienne des fondements de la politique. Paris: Gallimard, 2012.
Review: P. Dumont in RPFE 1 (2013) 134-135. " Pierre Guenancia continue, par cette réédition de l’ouvrage paru en 1983 [...] une œuvre originale, en marge de l’histoire de la philosophie, où le cartésianisme ne se ferme pas sur lui-même en une scholastique érudite : sa lecture de Descartes ne cherche pas la place de la politique dans ce système de pensée, mais revisite un objet que celui-ci, à toute époque, nous permet d’éclairer de façon différenciée. "
JAMES, TONY. Le songe et la raison: essai sur Descartes. Paris: Hermann, 2010.
Review: S. Bold in FR 86.5 (2013) 1034-1035. "Although this book must be classified as a study on Descartes, it is in fact more a case study of dream interpretation as applied, in this case, to a classical thinker. Moreover, despite the author’s erudition, this brief study is not a systematic study but the rather personal ’essai’ that its subtitle announces […] The threads, notions, and terms of this study do come together in the final chapter and conclusion to present some new perspectives on Descartes and his dreams."
KAMBOUCHNER, DENIS. Les Méditations métaphysiques de Descartes. Introduction générale. Première Méditation. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2005.
Review: M.-F. Pellegrin in RPFE 1/2013, 132: " L’intérêt de ce travail est double : il propose une lecture fouillée et véritablement philosophique du texte cartésien ; il rappelle les grands débats et les principales interprétations auxquels il a donné lieu. L’auteur s’insère ainsi dans des discussions précisément décrites et il y ajoute sa propre vision. "
KOLESNIK-ANTOINE, DELPHINE. Descartes. Une politique des passions. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2011.
Review: P. Dumont in RPFE 1/2013, 133-134: " Après un historique des réappropriations politiques du cartésianisme (Maurras, Thorez) et un renvoi à d’autres ouvrages sur le sujet (P. Guenancia, Descartes et l’ordre politique, Puf, 1983), l’auteur inscrit Descartes dans l’âge classique où ’la théorie des passions domine le discours politique’ et où gouverner, c’est tenir compte des hommes non raisonnables. " Le critique donne ensuite un résumé de chacune des quatre parties de l’œuvre : " Humeurs gouvernées et humeurs gouvernantes ", " Le jeu de l’amour et de l’estime ", " Une efficacité politique de la rhétorique ", et " étudier la politique en physicien ".
ROBIN, JEAN LUC. "Y a-t-il des robots au XVIIe siècle? Descartes et l’invention de l’automatisme." CdDS 13.2 (2011), 110-129.
Turns to the problematic relationship between man/machine and the questions already raised by Descartes about the nature of machines, as well as his attempt to show the difference between man and machine. Robin explains the mechanistic principles behind Descartes’s philosophy of matter.
STRAEHLI, BENJAMIN. "Conscience et réflexion chez Descartes." RPL 110 (2012), 203-229.
"Descartes soutient-il une thèse absurde en prétendant que nous sommes conscients de toutes nos pensées? Si la conscience se définit par la réflexion, il semble que oui. C’est pourquoi des commentateurs affirment que la notion de conscience chez Descartes se distinguerait de la réflexion. Le présent texte soutient que c’est là une erreur et que la doctrine de Descartes concernant la conscience n’offre pas de réponse à une telle objection."
CAYE, PIERRE. " ’ Car je prétends être dans un pays de liberté… ’ : Félibien ou la politique de la peinture." DSS 254 (2012), 155-65.
Article reconsiders André Félibien as a "political" art theorist who emphasized the importance of two kinds of artistic freedom in his criticism: "la liberté du projet," or the mastery and transformation of the world through art, and the "liberté de l’artiste," or the freedom of the artist to exceed or evade the project of art and achieve something more sublime (through "grâce," "force de l’esprit," or "feu").
ARZOUMANOV, ANNA. "’Oui, de l’auteur ou du lecteur, méritera le titre de satirique?’ Les Aventures de Télémaque face à leurs clefs." DSS 253 (2011), 725-37.
A study of the competing, contradictory keys that permitted readers to uncover satirical valences of Fénelon’s Aventures de Télémaque. Concludes that "la clef n’est plus seulement un instrument qui permet d’actualiser le sens scandaleux d’une œuvre, elle devient elle-même le support d’un discours contestataire."
TRÉMOLIÉRES, FRANÇOIS. Fénélon et le sublime: littérature, anthropologie, spiritualité. Paris: Champion, 2009.
Review: V. Kapp in PFSCL 76 (2012) 282-86. This study argues for a "Fénelon moraliste" by using the author’s concept of the sublime to draw out a coherent literary, moral, and theological program in his works. The reviewer finds the approach to Fénelon’s texts narrow and overly reductive, particularly lamenting the author’s choice not to engage with Fénelon scholars who do not share his views.
Review: R. Racevkis in FR 85.2 (2011), 67-368. "At the beginning of this substantial and original study of the sublime in Fénélon, Trémolières recognizes the difficulty of his subject […] The approach throughout this carefully argued and meticulously documented book remains asymptotic, as Trémolières traces the complex contours of Fénélon’s thought without drawing any simple or synthetic conclusions […] As the book’s title indicates, the focus is simultaneously on spirituality, literature and (to a lesser degree) anthropology, while philosophical and theological issues are relegated to a vast apparatus of footnotes that outweighs the main body of the text."
FERRAND, JACQUES. De la maladie d’amour ou mélancolie érotique. Beecher, Donald and Massimo Ciavolella, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010.
Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 163 (2011), 161. Important modern edition of this 1610 summa on the idea of love as illness is of wide interest as it presents perspectives from Antiquity to the late Renaissance and has scientific, philosophical, literary and historical ramifications. Includes a rich introduction focusing on the author, the work, its reception and religious views, along with a highly useful bibliography.
MULLET, ISABELLE. Fontenelle ou la machine perspectiviste. Paris: Champion, 2011.
Review: F. Aït-Touati in FS 67.1 (2013), 95-96. "A partir du point d’observation privilégié que constituent les Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686) de Fontenelle, Isabelle Mullet propose une étude d’une ambition intellectuelle remarquable. D’une part, parce qu’elle renouvelle profondément les études fontenelliennes, en proposant une unification de l’oeuvre trop longtemps diffractée entre l’oeuvre sérieuse, savante, et l’oeuvre littéraire, galante. D’autre part, parce qu’elle définit et situe le ’perspectivisme’ de Fontenelle dans l’histoire longue de ’la construction mutuelle et perspective d’un sujet, d’un objet et d’un discours’ (p. 204 ), entre la fascination baroque pour la dissimulation et le goût des Lumières pour la transparence supposée de la nature à elle-même. Fidèle à son objet, l’ouvrage ressaisit Fontenelle en perspective et observe ’comment il s’inscrit dans l’histoire de la reconfiguration du visible qui découle du décentrement copernicien, des découvertes galiléennes et de la théorie cartésienne de la connaissance’ (p. 18 )."
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.
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.
GASPARD, DOMINIQUE. Mercuriade. Tragédie (1605). Alain Cullière. Genève: Champion, 2009.
Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 163 (2011), 161. Important modern edition of an early 17th c. example of didactic theatre which focuses on a contemporary personage and theme, staged in religious institutions. Praiseworthy for its fine critical apparatus which includes a rich introduction and syntactical, historical, geographical and literary notes. Exemplary bibliography, exhaustive glossary and index of proper nouns.
TAUSSIG, SYLVIE. "Entre rhétorique et philosophie: un art de l’emblème chez Gassendi?" PFSCL 76 (2012). 159-74.
The article examines Gassendi’s citation of the story of Pericles and the solar eclipses as a political and philosophical exemplum in several works (La Logique, a letter to Louis de Valois, the Institution astronomica). The author proposes that the exemplum may be treated as the "équivalent verbal de l’emblème" (159) and that the exemplum serves to link the past and present in Gassendi’s works.
MARIN LE ROY DE GOMBERVILLE. La Doctrine des moeurs. B. Teyssandier. Paris: Klincsieck, 2010.
Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 164 (2011), 401. Praiseworthy as an elegant edition of the beautiful volume of emblems which was a gift to the young king Louis XIV. Based on three copies of the work housed in the Troyes library, the volume includes a study by T. entitled "Le prince à l’école des images," as well as an appendix with translations of the Greek and Latin textual elements.
SANZ, AMÉLIA. "Présences in absentia: les Amériques du XVIIe siècle." Tr Lit 24 (Spring 2011), 39-54.
S. offers a rich parcours of "un univers de représentation élargi par des découvertes qui ont mis en circulation d’autres entités épistémologiques, imaginables et, pour autant, lisibles" (39), allowing us to discover in a variety of texts the diversity of 17th c. "Amériques." Accepting the challenge to "abandonner les prémisses et les démarches qui privilégient la sédentarisation des cultures fixes et locales au profit d’une anthropologie du déplacement et de la circulation" (45), S. examines diverse, alternative modalities of authors "pour dire le monde," finding a global vision in works of Pyrard de Laval’s 1611 Discours du voyage de François aux Indes orientales and of Pierre Bergeron’s 1648 Voyages fameux du sieur Vincent Leblanc, the "roman total" of Gomberville’s 1629 L’Exil de Polexandre et d’Ericlée, and the "nouvelle" with its "solution galante" attributed to Anne de La Roche-Guilhem in L’Amitié singulière of 1710 (46, 47, 51-52). Numerous other 17thc. authors, canonical or not, are mentioned as S. challenges us to read and reread "tant de mémoires . . . qui revalorisent le petit, le quotidien, l’insignifiant, les traits anecdotiques et fugitifs en quête de ces présences des Amériques [du 17e siècle]" (53).
WINE, KATHLEEN. "Random Trials: Chance and Chronotope in Gomberville’s Polexandre." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine, Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 81-94.
Critiques Bakhtin’s treatment of Greek and baroque romance and uses that critique to analyze Scudéry and Gomberville’s differing positions on the aesthetics of chance.
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."
LYONS, JOHN D. "Sublime Accidents." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine. Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 95-109.
Discusses the different views of the sublime and of chance held by Boileau on the one hand and by Huet and Rapin on the other, concluding with a discussion of the sublime and of chance in Pierre Corneille’s view of tragedy.
GRIFFEJOEN, CONSTANCE. "Otium voluptuosum. Les délices de la retraite dans les poésie de du Marquis de la Fare." DSS 255 (2012), 353-70.
The poems of libertine writer La Fare construct for the poet the ethos of the "gentilhomme de plume insoumis."A neo-Epicurean aesthetic of voluptuousness (especially in poems on wine and on erotic love) dominates in the space of retraite and éloignement evoked in La Fare’s poetry. This space is represented as an oppositional or subversive alternative to court life.
GANIM, RUSSELL. "Male Models: Galanterie and Libertinage in La Fayette and Laclos." FR 85.6 (2012), 124-1134.
Ganim compares Nemours and Valmont to show how social and erotic mores are transformed as the galant becomes a libertine. This article offers insightful observations on the interplay between two novels that are not frequently juxtaposed: particularly valuable is the treatment of conversation and verbal depth displayed by both characters. Female characters are also analyzed.
MADAME DE LAFAYETTE. La Princesse de Montpensier. Frederico Coradi Rome: Portaparole, 2011.
Review: P. Dandrey in DSS (2012), 376. An "inspired" bilingual (French/Italian) edition of Lafayette’s novella effusively praised by the reviewer for its precision and elegance.
MILLER, MICHELLE. "The Jilted Friend: Omniscient Narration in Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves and L’Histoire d’Henriette d’Angleterre." SCFS 34.1 (2012), 38-51.
"This article offers a new reading of La Princesse de Clèves by refracting it through Lafayette’s earlier Histoire d’Henriette d’Angleterre and that work’s subtext of jilted friendship and offset social perspective. Lafayette’s experience of having a prestigious younger friend, Princess Henriette, commission a memoir of her life, only to drop the project partway through, pushed Lafayette to recognize how much she had already discerned about the princess even without the latter’s insider information. Drawing on trenchant observations culled from the sidelines of the court, Lafayette developed narrative techniques that valorized what she had observed from afar and from below."
PETERSON, NORA MARTIN. "The Choreography of Courtly Life: Competing Codes in the Princesse de Clèves." RR 103.1-2: 233-253.
The main topic considered is what the author calls "involuntary confessions of the flesh" (234), signs of the interior that are displayed involuntarily onto the body. The article studies the relationship between these involuntary confessions and the dissimulative behavior at court, showing how they create tension for the "self". Peterson seeks to reveal the true moments of self-presentation in the princess which come from spontaneous outbursts that do not adhere to the general masking procedure, and she contends that they trouble seventeenth-century modes of thinking: they disrupt the civilization process.
SCHLIEPER, HENDRIK and LIESELOTTE STEINBRÜGGE. "The Female Threshold: On Paratext and Gender in Lafayette’s La Princesse de Montpensier." PFSCL 76 (2012), 141-58.
The authors argue that the original paratexts to La Princesse de Montpensier - particularly the preface "Du libraire au lecteur" - prepares the reader to perceive and appreciate the novel’s political commentary. By suppressing the preface or by confining it to a footnote, modern editors efface the novel’s political content and emphasize instead its psychological dimension.
WELCH, ELLEN R. "Strangers Among Us: Aliens and Alienation in Lafayette’s Zayde, histoire espagnole." DFS 96 (Fall 2011), 3-14.
The author "proposes to examine the novel’s unusually sensitive representation of the experiences of its alien characters in the light of shifts in the political status and cultural definition of the étranger in mid seventeenth-century France" in order to broaden "our perception of seventeenth-century France’s conceptions of political and cultural alterity."
COLLINET, JEAN-PIERRE. Visages de La Fontaine. Paris: Garnier, 2010.
Review: R. Racevkis in FR 86.4 (2013), 20-821. Twenty-eight chapters comprised of Collinet’s articles, lectures, and interviews display Collinet’s remarkable conceptual range. "While there is no single overarching argument, most of the essays touch on the idea of a Janus-faced La Fontaine, a poet known for a depth and seriousness that somehow coexists with, and is even facilitated by, a fundamentally ludic poetic practice."
FOURNIER, MICHEL "Le tombeau de la superstition : poétique de l’irrationnel et métamorphose de la croyance dans Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon." DSS 254 (2012), 167-85.
Against a literary theoretical context that included critiques of fiction as a form of idolatry, La Fontaine’s Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon rewrites irrational belief as a form of literary affect - a response to fiction. Author argues that "on peut voir dans le roman de La Fontaine un véritable tombeau de la superstition qui, en s’affirmant comme œuvre d’art, se fait le lieu d’une métamorphose de la croyance en expérience esthétique."
GRISE, CATHERINE. Jean de La Fontaine: Tromperies et illusions. Tübingen: Narr, 2010.
Review: Anne Birberick in CdDS 13.2 (2011), 203-205. Birberick praises the interdisciplinary approach of this study, which blends close readings of the texts with "a consideration of seventeenth-century debates in science, philosophy, theology, and culture" and thus shows how La Fontaine’s works reflected and engaged in the issues of his time. She deplores that the second part entitled "Paroles piégées et détournements" lacks a clear, coherent structure but asserts that, in general, the study bears witness to a deep understanding of La Fontaine and his writings, and that many of Grise’s readings are remarkable.
Review: F. Corradi in S Fr 165 (2011), 636-637. If G. is found less convincing in ascribing to La Fontaine a skeptical relativity in toto (637), her analysis penetrates the wide-ranging perspectives of the poet who demonstrates a multiplicity of types of relativity, including the egocentric, the moral and the socio-cultural, among others. C. draws attention to a particularly interesting chapter where G. analyzes the Contes, demonstrating their "pervasività del linguaggio della casuistica" (636).
CHARIATTE, ISABELLE. La Rochefoucauld et la culture mondaine: portraits du coeur de l’homme. Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier, 2011.
Review: J. Campbell in FS 66.4 (2012), 49-550. "This book, which has its origins in a 2004 Bâle University thesis, outlines the socioliterary context (the term ’culture mondaine’ of the title) that helped to shape La Rochefoucauld’s celebrated Maximes, and is set in the context of the pioneering work of Louis van Delft, to whom Isabelle Chariatte loyally declares her debt. She begins by recalling that it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that the term ’moraliste’, that handy tag for the genre-hungry literary historian, came to be used to designate writers whose task was to unmask the subterfuge, hypocrisy, and blindness of the human self in society. For La Rochefoucauld, this enterprise meant exposing the reality of passion and self-interest behind the mask of apparent virtue, rationality, or Senecan impassivity. Chariatte illustrates this point at the outset by showing how the frontispiece of the Maximes, which she places in the context of similar examples, derides Stoicism as a mere social mask to be stripped away. Montaigne, Pascal, and others had of course been there before, and Chariatte constantly reminds her readers that the Maximes came from elements that were part of the contemporary honnête homme’s cultural baggage: La Rochefoucauld is not the lone and perhaps embittered Jansenist author some might imagine."
PHILIPS, JOHN. "Some Observations on La Rochefoucauld’s Mémoires I-II." PFSCL 76 (2012), 111-39.
The article argues that we should not read the two parts of La Rochefoucauld’s Mémoires as a story of disillusionment, failed retraite, and subsequent betrayal of the author’s chivalric ideals by his participation in the Fronde. Rather, we should see this work as a consistent and coherent justification for political action against ministers of state.
ROTH, OSKAR. "La Rochefoucauld : de l’anthropologie pessimiste à la recherche d’un goût vrai et autonome ." DSS 254 (2012), 59-71.
Examines the Maximes and Réflexions diverses of La Rochefoucauld in relation to Nietzsche, Pascal, and Malebranche as expressions of a "negative anthropology." Focuses particularly on La Rochefoucauld’s "théorie du goût."
SANZ, AMÉLIA. "Présences in absentia: les Amériques du XVIIe siècle." Tr Lit 24 (Spring 2011), 39-54.
S. offers a rich parcours of "un univers de représentation élargi par des découvertes qui ont mis en circulation d’autres entités épistémologiques, imaginables et, pour autant, lisibles" (39), allowing us to discover in a variety of texts the diversity of 17th c. "Amériques." Accepting the challenge to "abandonner les prémisses et les démarches qui privilégient la sédentarisation des cultures fixes et locales au profit d’une anthropologie du déplacement et de la circulation" (45), S. examines diverse, alternative modalities of authors "pour dire le monde," finding a global vision in works of Pyrard de Laval’s 1611 Discours du voyage de François aux Indes orientales and of Pierre Bergeron’s 1648 Voyages fameux du sieur Vincent Leblanc, the "roman total" of Gomberville’s 1629 L’Exil de Polexandre et d’Ericlée, and the "nouvelle" with its "solution galante" attributed to Anne de La Roche-Guilhem in L’Amitié singulière of 1710 (46, 47, 51-52). Numerous other 17thc. authors, canonical or not, are mentioned as S. challenges us to read and reread "tant de mémoires . . . qui revalorisent le petit, le quotidien, l’insignifiant, les traits anecdotiques et fugitifs en quête de ces présences des Amériques [du 17e siècle]" (53).
CONROY, DERVAL. "Description ou prescription? Verbal Painting in Pierre Le Moyne’s Gallerie des femmes fortes (1647)." Fr F 36.2-3 (2011), 1-18.
Persuasive analysis of Le M.’s gallery-book with its twenty-one copperplate engravings and its various types of verbal paintings (prose, sonnet, éloge, réflexion morale, question morale, etc.). C. convincingly argues that "Le M. tries to ensure the ’appropriate’ reception of his volume and hence fulfill his aim of the edification of women" (2). C. details his numerous strategies designed to move the reader by appealing to shared cultural values, memory and so forth. Particularly well done are C.’s reflections on Le M.’s simultaneous portrayal of passions and concern for bienséance. C. concludes with a series of questions relating to Le M.’s success in "instructing" and "edifying" and suggests a further avenue of investigation relating to the dedicatee, Anne d’Autriche.
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.
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."
ASSAF, FRANCIS. "Le corps souffrant au XVIIe siècle (à travers le Journal Des Sçavans)." CdDS 13.2 (2011), 1-30.
This article studies "l’envers du grand siècle": not the splendor or joy of the century, but the great number of illnesses from which the population suffered throughout the 17th-century, from the plague to cancerous tumors, and the treatments prescribed by the medical doctors of its time. Assaf bases his study on the Journal des Sçavans from its beginnings in 1665 to the death of Louis XIV in 1715. A particular emphasis is placed on individual cases of illness, as well as on Louis XIV’s own suffering.
ZIEGLER, HENDRIK. Der Sonnenkönig und seine Feinde. Die Bildpropaganda Ludwigs XIV, in der Kritik. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2010.
Review: J. Schillinger in DSS 254 (2012), 187-190. Art historian Ziegler’s book examines art works produced for Louis XIV as "propaganda," designed not only to project the king’s grandeur and majesty but also to display a "programme politique précis" to a foreign audience. The book examines three case studies: solar imagery, the monument erected at the Place des Victoires, and Le Brun’s cycle of paintings for the Galerie des Glaces. Ziegler focuses on the European reactions to each of these art works through statesmen’s writings, pamphlets, and the construction of rival monuments by foreign princes. The reviewer praises this "bel ouvrage, abondamment et judicieusement illustré," noting that it succeeds in demonstrating the complexity of propaganda and the mediating function of art.
ARNASON, LUKE. "L’humour dans les tragédies en musique de Jean-Baptiste Lully." CdDS 13.2 (2011), 130-159.
While Lully’s operas don’t seem openly humoristic and the strict division of genre did not allow for comical episodes in tragedy, there are ludic elements in Lully’s work that merit a detailed study. Arnason’s analysis focuses on the principal action (not the divertissements). Aspects studied are the Italian influence, the ambiguous humor of the "disputes entre amoureux," and the demonic as a ludic element. The author closes on an explanation of the function of the comical elements and on the progressive decline of the comical in French opera during the century.
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.
BABY, HÉLÈNE, JEAN-MARC CIVARDI, and ANNE SURGERS. Théâtre complet. Tome III: La Virginie, Les Galanteries du duc d’Ossonne vice-roi de Naples, L’Illustre corsaire. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010.
Review: P. Gethner in PFSCL 76 (2012), 255-58. Three "enjoyable" plays, including two tragicomedies and his only comedy, whose baroque aesthetics challenge the image of Mairet as an uncomplicated "pioneer of Classicism." Reviewer praises the helpful introductions to the plays which include background information about performance history and reception. The notes and glossary are also helpful, but the reviewer laments the "inadequate proofreading."
BUZON, FRÉDÉRIC DE. "Littérature et fiction: Leibniz et Malebranche." DSS 255 (2012), 241-56.
A comparison of Malebranche’s and Leibnitz’s conceptions of the novel in light of their theories about "possible worlds." Although both agree that novels can be a source of pleasure, Malebranche condemns them for encouraging the rational mind to submit to bodily emotions while Leibnitz appreciates them (particularly Scudéry’s Clélie) for their sense of harmony and image of universal justice.
GENY, VINCENT. "Malebranche lecteur de Bernard Lamy ou la physique de la parole." DSS 255 (2012), 227-39.
Article examines the influence of Bernard Lamy’s La Rhétorique ou l’art de parler on Malebranche’s understanding of the mechanism of imaginative contagion in De la recherché de la vérité. Persuasion is understood as a physical process, a movement of the soul through text.
GUION, BÉATRICE. "Existe-t-il un malebranchisme littéraire?" DSS 255 (2012), 257-71.
Article examines Malebranche’s influence on writers in the Modern camp. In the Parall#232;le des Anciens et Modernes, Fontenelle’s Nouveaux dialogues des morts, among other texts, Modern authors echo the critique of erudition put forth by Malebranche in his Logique ou l’art de pensée. In addition, the the quarrel of "sacred eloquence" takes many of its points of departure from La recherche de la vérité.
MORIARTY, MICHAEL "Malebranche and the Laws of Grace." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine, Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009, 141-152.
Analyzes the particularities of Malebranche’s attempt to maintain the traditional doctrine of God’s grace freely given while adducing the notion of law into that doctrine such that chance is the effect or appearance of God’s design and natural law.
PELLEGRIN, MARIE-FRÉDÉRIQUE. "Lecteurs et auteurs: Des maladies contagieux?" DSS 255 (2012), 215-25.
An analysis of the status of the visionary, the reader, and the writer in De la recherché de la vérité, the article argues that Malebranche believed literature was a vector of "imaginative contagion," but also that his own writing could act as a "vaccine" to protect the reader’s powers of reason.
TRÉMOLIÈRES, FRANÇOIS. "Malebranche moraliste. La lecture du jeune Rébelliau." DSS 255 (2012), 273-83.
Presentation of the unpublished Malebranche scholarship of the 19th-century critic Alfred Rébelliau.
WIEL, VÉRONIQUE. "Écrire comme n’écrivant pas... ou de l’usage de la littérature chez Malebranche." DSS 255 (2012), 205-14.
Despite the "magnificence" of Malebranche’s prose, he is a self-effacing author who uses the art of writing to bring his readers closer to the Logos: God or Interior Truth.
LOCHERT, VÉRONIQUE. André Mareschal, Comédies. Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010.
Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 165 (2011), 633-634. L. has provided here the second volume of M.’s theatre in the collection Bibliothèque du théâtre français, directed by Charles Mazouer (the first volume included La Généreuse Allemande, edited by Hélène Baby). L.’s edition is comprised of Le Railleur ou la satire du temps and Le véritable capitaine Matamore ou le fanfaron. These comedies provide excellent examples from the 1630s theatre and are inspired by the Italian theatrical tradition. While Le Railleur had enjoyed the earlier 20th c. annotated editions of G. Dotoli, the other play is published here for the first time in a modern edition. Praiseworthy critical apparatus includes two rich introductions focused on the genesis, representations and originality of the plays; a glossary; an abundant bibliography and an index of names.
MARESCHAL, ANDRÉ. Tragicomédies, Tome I: La Généreuse Allemande. BABY, HÉLÈNE. Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010.
Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 164 (2011), 400. Important critical edition includes a modernized text, an introduction, a presentation of the play, a glossary, as well as a rich bibliography and an index of names. Particularly valuable for M.’s preface, demonstrating an important step in the history of 17th c. theatre criticism.
ALBANESE, RALPH. "Misogynie et déshumanisation à travers le bestiaire moliéresque." FR 86.3 (2013), 23-534.
Albanese focuses on L’école des femmes and Les femmes savantes to show how animal motifs are applied to female characters in order to portray them as dehumanized and inferior both morally and intellectually.
GAMBELLI, DELIA. Vane Carte. Scritti su Molière e il teatro francese del Seicento. Roma: Bulzoni, 2010.
Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 163 (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.
GAINES, JAMES F. Molière and Paradox: Skepticism and Theater in the Early Modern Age. Tübingen: Narr, 2010.
Review: S. Romanowski in FR 86.2 (2012), 87-388. This study begins by examining the skeptical paradox of Molière the playwright, actor, and director of a theatrical troupe. "Le mérite de ce livre est de rapprocher les critiques formulées dans les pièces des modes d’argumentation sceptiques présentés dans les ouvrages de Sextus Empiricus et de plusieurs auteurs sceptiques contemporains, principalement Mothe Le Vayer et Gassendi […] sans vouloir faire de Molière un philosophe, ce qu’il n’est pas, et sans forcer les textes." Individual chapters on L’école des femmes, Dom Juan, Le misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Le malade imaginaire. "Autant dire que toute l’oeuvre de Molière est illuminée par des analyses d’un style agreeable, libre de tout jargon, ayant trait aux aspects dramaturgiques, mais aussi à des considérations plus générales."
Review: M. Call in CdDS 13.1 (2010), 177-179. The reviewer praises this study, which "persuasively argues that Molière’s theater is built upon paradox and a skeptical resistance to supposedly self-evident truths, combating dangerous tendencies towards dogmatism with a search for acatalepsia, the Classical skeptic’s freedom from entrenched opinions." Gaines sheds new light on the intellectual climate and tradition of the plays, and on Molière’s dramaturgy. Robert McBride had already turned to the question of traditional skeptic suspension of belief. Gaines ostensibly enters into a dialogue with McBride, revisits major plays and includes new ones, as well, the most notable additions being consecrated to L’Ecole des femmes and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. The reviewer merely deplores the absence of a thorough introduction that would have explained the various forms of Classical and early modern skepticism.
Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 165 (2011), 635-636. Judged stimulating and impressive, G.’s study includes semantic and dramatic perspectives. R. notes the problematic quality of the concept of paradox to which G. devotes much attention, especially in relation to M.’s Misanthrope. R. would have appreciated references to M. in French rather than in English as well as scholarly notes.
KHADRAOUI, SOPHIA et SANDRINE SIMEON. "Une imposture peut en cacher une autre: un frontispice de Tartuffe démasqué." CdDS 13.2 (2011), 160-183.
The authors take a closer look at the frontispiece by Brissard for the edition of Tartuffe in œuvres complètes de Molière (1682) and read the iconographic text in parallel to the spectacular text and the dramatic text (and vice versa) in order to show the totality of the mechanisms involved. The frontispiece problematizes the expectations of the reader/spectator in relation to the veritable identity of the "impostor." Far from being transparent, the frontispiece allows for a rich interpretation on who is the real impostor of the play.
OIRY, GOULVEN. "Molière: le rire des trétaux. Entretiens avec Christian Schiaretti (Directeur du Théâtre National Populaire." PFSCL 76 (2012), 193-213.
Presents a series of interviews with the theater director Christian Schiaretti conducted in 2007-2010. Schiaretti discusses his theatrical influences, his approach to staging Molière and the farce genre, and his understanding of "popular" theater.
THIROUIN, LAURENT. "Tartuffe raconté aux enfants: exercices d’idéologie." PFSCL 77 (2012), 449-68.
Fictions by Denis Kerbraz, Sylvie Dodeller, Michel Laportem and Jeanne Albrent depict Molière’s life and literary career. Their admiration for the dramatist become most clear in their partisan narratives of the controversy over Tartuffe.
WELCH, ELLEN. "Going behind the Scenes with Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme: Staging Critical Spectatorship at Louis XIV’s Court." FR 85.5 (2012), 848-860.
Welch examines how the comédie-ballet "plays with the conventions of court ballet in order to unveil the manipulative politics inscribed in the aesthetics of the genre." Moreover, she analyzes the role of the patron and artist represented in the play as a discourse on the "relations between patrons and spectators and of the role of entertainment in the struggle for political, economic, and social influence." Focusing on the play’s mise-en-abyme and the representation of theatre within theatre, she concludes that Molière offers a model of critical, detached spectatorship.
MONTPENSIER, MADEMOISELLE DE. Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La Grande Mademoiselle). P.J. Yarrow. London: MHRA, 2010.
Review: J. Cherbuliez in MLR 107.4 (2012), 1253-54: "Montpensier’s style is rendered in slightly sti? prose that remains overall faithful to the original, forsaking only occasionally some of her writing’s idiosyncratic charm. Most remarkable is this volume’s paratextual material. The task of representing a 4-volume work in an a?ordable edition is achieved through bracketed summaries of omitted passages. The volume also includes a Bourbon family tree, a Chronological Table, a section dedicated to ’Further Reading’, a precious index of names and places, and historical notes throughout the text."
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.
CONROY, DERVAL. "Description ou prescription? Verbal Painting in Pierre Le Moyne’s Gallerie des femmes fortes (1647)." Fr F 36.2-3 (2011), 1-18.
Persuasive analysis of Le M.’s gallery-book with its twenty-one copperplate engravings and its various types of verbal paintings (prose, sonnet, éloge, réflexion morale, question morale, etc.). C. convincingly argues that "Le M. tries to ensure the ’appropriate’ reception of his volume and hence fulfill his aim of the edification of women" (2). C. details his numerous strategies designed to move the reader by appealing to shared cultural values, memory and so forth. Particularly well done are C.’s reflections on Le M.’s simultaneous portrayal of passions and concern for bienséance. C. concludes with a series of questions relating to Le M.’s success in "instructing" and "edifying" and suggests a further avenue of investigation relating to the dedicatee, Anne d’Autriche.
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.
CABRERA, ADRIANA. "Les Voyageurs français et le fleuve Amazone." Tr Lit 24 (2011), 173-184.
Accompanied by a wonderful reproduction of a 1717 map of Samuel Fritz of the "fleuve Maragnon" (otherwise known as the Amazon), C.’s study examines French accounts of explorations to the Amazon, contrasting their perspectives with those of the Spanish and the Portuguese. After considerable attention to early 15th and 16th c. accounts, aspects of discovery and tentatives of colonisation are investigated by C., emphasizing navigation, commerce and the desire to found a French colony by annexing the Amazon. The support of Richelieu, Louis XIII and others is referenced as is the important mid-century tableau provided Blaise François de Pagan in his 1655 Relation historique et géographique de la grande rivière des Amazones dans l’Amérique: "l’unique et merveilleux détroit enflé de tant de grandes rivières, des plaines les plus fertiles de l’univers" (chap. 13, 36)
BJØRNSTAD, HALL. Créature sans créateur: pour une anthropologie baroque dans les Pensées de Pascal. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010.
Review: E. Ousselin in DFS 95 (Summer 2011), 104: "L’étude de Hall Bjørnstad prend en quelque sorte à rebours le projet apologétique-inciter l’homme à se consacrer, de toute urgence, à la recherche de la grâce divine-qui constitue le soubasssement doctrinal et didactique des Pensées. [...] Court, mais d’une densité remarquable, le livre de Bjørstad intéressera tous ceux, spécialistes ou non, qui se replongent régulièrement dans la lecture de Pascal."
Review: A. Régent Susini in PFSCL 77 (2012), 547-9. An original study of the first half of Pascal’s Pensées as a reflection on the "homme ’baroque.’" The reviewer describes the book’s first part as an examination of Pascal’s portrait of a man without God in light of Rousset’s dichotomy between "inconstance noire" and "inconstance blanche." The second part reads the Pensées as an anthropology which allows the author to reconsider Pascal as an anti-humanist. Although she suggests that some readers might wish Bjørnstad had continued his study into the second half of the Pensées, the reviewer appreciates that his approach opens a "dialogue fécond" between Pascal and modern thinkers such as Auerbach and Benjamin.
CARRAUD, VINCENT. L’invention du moi. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2010.
Review: Y. Onishi in DSS 253 (2011) 798-800. Examines Descartes and Pascal in light of, and as precursors to, Heidegger’s concept of the irreducible, existential self. Reviewer praises "la richesse et le détail des arguments mobilisés" and states that although the premise of the book might at first appear teleological, in fact it succeeds in shedding "une nouvelle lumière sur la constitution du Dasein à partir du concept qu’inventent Descartes et Pascal."
GHEERAERT, TONY. "’Les accidents de la vie’: Maladie, traumatisme et création chez Blaise Pascal." DSS 255 (2012), 285-308.
Does creativity stem from melancholia? Article traces attempts to psychologize Blaise Pascal based on his writings and biography from the 17th century to today in the light of this common theory about human creativity. Gheeraert explains the tendency to see Pascal’s work in this way through an examination of the fabrication of his biography, through a consideration of the role of illness (including mental ailments) in augustinian theology (as a tool for self-correction), as well as through a survey of the important role of melancholy or trauma is various narratives of genius and creativity throughout the modern era.
PARISH, RICHARD. "Pascal’s Useful Friends." SCFS 34.1 (2012), 77-87.
"Although the biographical Blaise Pascal seems progressively to have shunned friendships, the two major personae which he adopts in the course of his writing are not only more accepting of the relationship, but indeed depend significantly on it both as a structuring device and as a source of exemplary material for their persuasive strategies. The Lettres provinciales are predicated on a correspondence, first between friends, and then between enemies. In the first phase of the campaign, Montalte’s exchanges with the ami provincial and dialogues with the ami Janséniste initiate a fictive device which was to become a landmark in polemical writing, even if friends in the remaining letters are both more restricted and more consistent in their functions. Turning to the Pensées, we find that, although the term ’ami’ occurs relatively rarely, this infrequency is countered by the fact that it is found in three of the most centrally important fragments: S 39, an organizational fragment, devoted to an epistolary friend; S 681, which invites the reader’s evaluation of a putative non-friend, who serves as one of Pascal’s most striking counter-examples; and the second exemplary friend, who appears in the wager argument (S 680), showing how certain of the less irretrievable values of the unbeliever are espoused in an active campaign of persuasion. In these ways the strategic efficacy of friendship remains indispensable as one of the most convincing of Pascal’s arts de persuader."
SELLIER, PHILIPPE. Port-Royal et la littérature: Pascal. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010.
Review: L. Thirouin in PFSCL 76 (2012) 272-76. This paperback, pocket-sized re-edition of an earlier collection of Sellier’s work on Pascal is also enhanced by 12 new essays. The reviewer praises Sellier’s ability to match detailed, attentive close readings to discussions of very large theological questions: "Dense, informé, et suggestif, il confirme son statut de référence fondamentale pour les études pascaliennes" (276).
WOSHINSKY, BARBARA. "Tropes at Play: Rhetoric and concupiscence in Pascal’s Pensées." PFSCL 76 (2012) 48-61.
The article shows how Pascal’s structurally fragmented text is founded on a consistent set of rhetorical "hypertropes" including negation, repetition, parataxis, restriction, and chiasmus. The rhetorical character of the Pensées makes it a pleasurable, entertaining work, which would seem at odds with Pascal’s moral and theological imperatives, particularly his critique of divertissement. Finally, Woshinsky seeks to restore an attention to "play" in our reading of the Pensées.
CANOVA-GREEN, MARIE-CLAUDE. "D’une culture l’autre: Charles Perrault et le Labyrinthe de Versailles." SCFS 34.2 (2012), 143-157.
Dès les années 1660, les jardins de Versailles ajoutèrent aux joies de la promenade celles de la découverte d’un monde où l’art rivalisait avec la nature pour la plus grande gloire du monarque. Si fontaines et jets d’eau témoignaient de prouesses techniques jusqu’alors inégalées, si Orangerie et Ménagerie offraient aux curieux le spectacle d’espèces animales et végétales rares, le Labyrinthe, lui, proposait un parcours culturel menant le visiteur à une plus grande connaissance de soi et du monde. Mais aux leçons éprouvées de la sagesse ésopique, qu’incarnaient les animaux de plomb peint décorant les fontaines et les rondeaux de Benserade qui les accompagnaient, s’ajoutaient aussi, pour qui savait les déchiffrer, les tout derniers conseils en matière de galanterie. Conçu très certainement par Charles Perrault, le Labyrinthe était enfin une autre manière de dire la supériorité des Modernes sur les Anciens que proclamaient le château et les jardins dans leur ensemble.
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."
MCSORELY, BONNIE "Antonio Buero Vallejo’s Almost a Fairy Tale: A Gloss of Perrault, in Three Acts." Marvels & Tales 26 (2012), 63-109.
A translation of Buero’s play, Casi un cuento de hadas based on a story by Perrault. The text is preceded by an introduction situating both authors and the modern interest in adapting Perrault’s 17th c. fairy tale.
PERRAULT, CHARLES. The Complete Fairy Tales. Christopher Betts. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.
Review: Shyamala Mourouvapin in Marvels & Tales 26.2 (2012) 264-66: Although reviewer finds this edition more suited for classroom use than scholarly research, she does praise the introductory essay, the quality of the translation, the appendix, and the attention paid to the symbolic meanings embedded within each tale. Reviewer would like to see more attention to work such as Angela Carter’s, but overall, "a good starting point for fairy-tale enthusiasts as well as beginning-level students."
BARATAY, ÉRIC. "Claude Perrault (1613-1688), observateur révolutionnaire des animaux." DSS 255 (2012), 309-20.
Article proposes that Claude Perrault should be considered an important founder of modern zoology. Overview his work with the royal menageries at Vincennes and Versailles and discusses the emphasis Perrault placed on first-hand observation of live animals to learn about different species. This empiricism broke with the tradition of relying on received knowledge, travel accounts, or direct observation of bones and other animal parts, making Perrault a predecessor of Linneas and other 18th-c biologists.
HÄFNER, RALPH. "Pierre Poiret et la ’science des saints’ : le problème de l’évidence de la contemplation mystique face à la Querelle du pur amour." DSS 254 (2012), 131-40.
Article examines theologian Pierre Poiret’s reception and translation of mystical literature by adherents of the Philadelphian Society, especially Jane Leade and Jacob Boehme.
MOCHIZUKI, NORIKO. "Mars et Vénus de Nicolas Poussin: Sa réception de l’art antique et de la poétique de Martino." DSS 255 (2012), 341-51.
A close reading of Poussin’s painting Mars et Venus (ca 1627-30) in comparison to depictions of the same mythological scene by Botticelli, Rubens, and on Renaissance sarcophagi. Argues that another important source for the painting was the poem Adone by Giambattista Marino. In particular, Poussin seems to mimic visually Marino’s use of concetti, or metaphor by analogy, in his recounting of Ovid’s version of the myth.
ALBANESE, RALPH W. "Le Dynamisme Spatio-Temporel dans Athalie." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 32-42.
Discusses the sacred space of the temple and Joad’s mastery of this space and of time.
BARNWELL, H.T. "Enclosure, Closure: A Note on Racine’s Tragic Circles." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 43-50.
Uses the circle as a metaphor for the dramatic action of Racine’s plays, asking whether in the final analysis the dénouement brings closure to the circle or not.
BERTAUD, MADELEINE "Àpropos d’une mise en scène récente d’Andromaque: quelques réflexions sur la permanence de Racine." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 167-175.
In light of her experience participating in journées d’étude on Andromaque with the troupe Les Tréteaux de Port-Royal, high school students, and drama professors, the author reflects on the enduring appeal of Racine.
BOMBART, MATHILDE. "Déchiffrer la tragédie racinienne ? La Fable tragique à l’épreuve de la lecture à clé." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 156-166.
Discusses three different lectures à clé of Esther, one from the early 18th century, one from the second half of the 19th century, and one dating to 1689; argues that despite its problematic nature this type of interpretation constitutes a part of the play’s life, showing how individuals and institutions interpreted it for their own ends.
BROOKS, WILLIAM. "Revivals of Racine at the Guénégaud Theater." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 123-132.
Re-examines La Grange’s Registre and the Guénégaud’s own registers, concluding that "every play given by the independent Guénégaud company from September 1678 whose title might indicate it to be by Racine was indeed by Racine. No one has previous shown this to be so." (130).
BROOKS, WILLIAM. "Pylade, ami d’Oreste, and the Critics." SCFS 34.2 (2012), 90-101.
"More than half a century’s worth of generalisztions about the confidants in Racine’s plays have led to a situation in which they are denied any characteristics as individuals. Some, however, are invested by the playwright with more than just a function. An examination of Pylade, ’ami d’Oreste’ in Andromaque, shows that critics’ responses to the role have varied between the nugatory and the inconsistent. In fact, in Pylade, Racine has created a confidant who has both a rounded character of his own and a palpable effect on the action of the play. The re-assessment of Racine outside the straitjacketed approach of the late twentieth century is at last beginning, and Racine’s confidants can and should be re-evaluated and differentiated."
BURY, EMMANUEL. "Racine, ’héros’ du classicisme français ? Les fondements philologiques d’un mythe littéraire (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 144-155.
Examines the commentaries of 17th and 18th century philologists and grammarians whose praise of Racine’s use of the French language contributed to the playwright’s status of the ideal classical writer.
CAMPBELL, JOHN "Chance in the Tragedies of Racine." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine, Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 111-122
Argues that the appearance of chance plays an important role in Racine’s tragedies, and analyzes how the playwright puts the tension between the unpredictable and the probable to work.
CLOONAN, WILLIAM. "Rethinking the Canon: John Campbell’s Questioning Racinian Tragedy." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 176-183.
Examines the commentaries of 17th and 18th century philologists and grammarians whose praise of Racine’s use of the French language contributed to the playwright’s status of the ideal classical writer.
DECLERCQ, GILLES. "Rhétoricité et théâtralité raciniennes: Réflexions sur une scène inutile (Iphigénie V.4)." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 51-63.
Analyzes the staging and the esthetics of overwhelming passions in Act V, Scene 4 of Iphigénie through the lens of rhetoric, as well as the spectator’s relationship to the staging of such passions.
EMELINA, JEAN. "Ironies raciniennes." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 64-75.
Discusses examples of dramatic, comic, and tragic irony in a variety of texts by or about Racine, including prefaces, letters, and Louis Racine’s memoirs.
FORMAN, EDWARD. "Amy, qu’oses-tu dire?’ Friendship, Support and Challenge in Racinian Tragedy." SCFS 34.1 (2012), 68-76.
"Analyses of the roles of Pylade, Antiochus and Théramène suggest that Racine, alongside his exploration of erotic love, has insight into the workings of friendship in the face of impending catastrophe. Friends are asked to lend support to the protagonists of tragedy, where their more helpful and constructive response might be to challenge the protagonists’ self-image and correct their flawed decision-making processes. All attempts which the friends make to save the protagonists from themselves, however, seem doomed to failure in the bleak Racinian universe, as he demonstrates not only the defeat of reason by passion, but the defeat of friendship by self-centred desire."
FORESTIER, GEORGES. "Racine et Molière : quelles relations, quelles enjeux?" In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 133-143.
Discusses the complexities and contradictions of Grimarest’s account of the Molière-Racine collaboration, Racine’s own account in his letters, asks how Grimarest came to write his version; ends by asking whether the two playwrights were ever "en bonne intelligence" (141), in light of what we know now about the Molière-Corneille collaboration.
GIFFORD, PAUL. "Racine, Valéry, and the Poetic Voice." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 86-99.
Explores the "naiveté of [Valéry’s] rediscovery" of Racine 25-30 years after his first encounter with the playwright, as a student at the Collège de Sète; cites and analyzes passages from Valéry’s Cahiers where the poet discusses Racine.
GOSSIP, CHRISTOPHER J. "Thomas Corneille, précurseur de Racine." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 100-109.
Discusses La Mort de l’empereur Commode, Camma, Ariane, and Stilicon as possible sources of inspiration (ideas, structures, character traits) for the young Racine.
HAWCROFT, MICHAEL. "Racine and his Readers: The Theory and Practice of Scene Division." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 1-10.
Analyzes the complexities and inconsistencies of scene division in print in order to better understand the reader’s experience as compared to the viewer’s.
LYONS, JOHN D. "The Inner Eye of Racine’s Characters." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 21-31.
Analyzes key aspects of the faculty of the imagination with respect to Andromaque, Alexandre le Grand, Mithridate, focusing in greater detail on Phèdre and the character of Hippolyte.
PEUREUX, GUILLAUME "Le ’vers racinien’ en question." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 76-85.
Questions the two general categories of received ideas on the "vers racinien," whether seen as classical, pure, and balanced, or fluid, theatrical, and naturally rhythmic; calls for further work in the vein of V. Beaudoin’s quantitative metrical analysis of Racine and Corneille.
RACEVSKIS, ROLAND. Tragic Passages: Jean Racine’s Art of the Threshold. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2008.
Review: Ellen Welch in CdDS 13.1 (2010) 179-182. The reviewer welcomes this study that blends close textual readings with literary theory, in particular Derrida, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, as it makes the case that Racine reveals a "poetics of the threshold" in which the characters are "poised between past and future, action and inaction, subjection and sovereignty, life and death." Each of the nine short chapters focuses on one of the secular tragedies, while exemplifying how the problem of "liminality" is played out individually in each case. Welch particular welcomes that the author pays attention to the question of liminary aesthetics in selected tragedies. She praises this compelling book which is not only well written, but articulates theoretically sophisticated readings.
RACINE, JEAN. Phèdre. 2013.
Review: M. Le Roux in QL 1081 (2013) 26: Le mythe est situé dans une Grèce quasi-contemporaine. " Les règles de l’alexandrin sont respectées; mais elles ne le semblent pas, quand les vers, parmi les plus célèbres de la langue française, résonnent parfois comme les propos d’une conversation quotidienne, avec le naturel d’une diction à mi-voix. " La critique n’apprécie pas la musique " omniprésente " qui empêche parfois d’entendre les comédiens. " ...quelques gestes de mise en scène superflus risquent de perturber la réception d’un spectacle cohérent par rapport à des partis pris contestables, mais clairement manifestés et justifiés dans le cas d’une pièce du répertoire ; d’un spectacle très beau visuellement et défendu par une superbe distribution. "
TOBIN, RONALD W. "Stage and Off-Stage in Racine’s Early Plays." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 11-20.
Discusses the weaknesses of Racine’s use of physical space (the wings; interior spaces referred to but not seen; the plains) and imaginary space in La Thébaïde and Alexandre le Grand, to better understand his mastery of these spaces in subsequent plays
ZAISER, RAINER. "Alexandre le Grand relu à la lumière de Cinna ou la clémence d’Auguste : La question de la magnanimité du souverain chez Racine et Corneille." In Tobin, Ronald W. and Angus J. Kennedy. Changing Perspectives: Studies on Racine in Honor of John Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2012. 110-122.
Questions the received idea that Alexandre le Grand is a "Cornelian" play; analyzes the key differences between the portrayal of the monarch’s magnanimity in that play and in Cinna, given that Alexandre is motivated by amour and Auguste by gloire.
LYONS, JOHN D. "Sublime Accidents." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine. Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 95-109.
Discusses the different views of the sublime and of chance held by Boileau on the one hand and by Huet and Rapin on the other, concluding with a discussion of the sublime and of chance in Pierre Corneille’s view of tragedy.
DURON, JEAN. André Campra (1660-1744), Un musicien provençal à Paris. Wavre: Mardaga, 2010. AND
DURON, JEAN. Le Carnaval de Venise d’André Campra et Jean-François Regnard. Wavre: Mardaga, 2010.
Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 164 (2011), 405. This review considers together the two volumes which focus on Campra. The first is composed of a series of essays on his activities and importance, while the second includes comments by diverse authors, and the libretto of the text. Of particular interest for the history of spectacle, music and literature. Richly illustrated.
STEFANOVSKA, MALINA "Cardinal de Retz’s Memoirs: Encountering Fortune and Taking Timely Steps." In Lyons, John D. and Kathleen Wine. Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 183-195.
Uses the notions of démarche, rencontre, and contretemps in Retz’s Memoirs in order to shed light on how chance is at work in both the Memoirs’ subject matter and writing style.
BLANCHARD, JOHN-VINCENT. Éminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the rise of France. Walker & Company, 2011.
Review: J.W. McCormack in CHOICE (Apr. 2012). "Blanchard’s new biography of Richelieu emphasizes the cardinal’s ’sense of opportunity, amazing decisiveness, and courage’ in order to counterbalance the classic picture of a nefarious, Machiavellian political genius. […] The author draws on both the best recent scholarship and an array of vivid memoirs, partisan pamphlets, and personal letters, including a number of manuscripts."
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."
ROOSE, ALEXANDER. "Saint-Evremond : contre le ’vain fracas des périodes oratoires’ des lettrés, contre les ’méditations creuses’ des théologiens." PFSCL 76 (2012), 34-47.
Throughout his works, Saint-Evremond offers stylistic commentary on other writers, philosophers, and theologians. By piecing together and analyzing these diverse remarks, the article’s author reconstructs Saint Evremond’s preferred prose style, which also sheds light on his ideal modes of thought and behavior: "une éthique raisonnable de la médiocrité heureuse, de l’hic et nunc généreux, d’une civilité delicate" (47).
PIGGOZO, FRANCESCO. "La double exigence éthique dans les Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon." FS 67.1 (2013), -14.
The author seeks to go beyond the opposition of beauty and intelligence, artistry and thought, and literature and ideology that he sees as shaping approaches to Saint-Simon. He proposes then an optic that sees esthetics and ideology as inextricably linked and developed through Saint-Simon’s focus on the "la norme et l’écart" in the Mémoires. Pigozzo applies Max Weber’s adaptation of the Kantian notion of gesinnungsethik to explain the inherent contradictions in all public action.
RACEVKIS, ROLAND. "Abundance and Waste in Scarron’s Le roman comique: Early Modern Environments and Terrocentric Identity." FR 86.1 (2012), 24-135.
This article adopts an "environmental approach" to focus attention on "Scarron’s representations of material reality and on the characters’ dwelling within this reality." The author foregrounds Scarron’s treatment of the earth, animals, and the physical environment and highlights the character Ragotin "whose repeated loss of humanity coincides meaningfully with proximity to the earth."
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.
BURCH, LAURA. "A Modest Proposal: Reframing the Frontispieces of Madeleine de Scudéry’s Conversations (1680-1692)." SCFS 34.1 (2012), 52-67.
"This paper focuses on the last of five frontispieces from Madeleine de Scudéry’s ten-volume set of works known collectively as the Conversations (1680-1692). At first glance, these frontispieces appear to simply flatter the royal patrons to whom the works are dedicated. However, closer attention reveals that the ’horizon of expectations’ set by the last image prepares readers to enter in to a new kind of cultural space, largely defined by a (necessarily oblique) challenge to sovereign forms of literary production and consumption. I argue that the object of the final volumes of the Conversations is twofold: to persuade the royal reader of his desire for self-renewal, and to convince him that the singular space of that self-renewal lies within the pages of the book itself. Occurring at the intersection of the verbal and the visual, the final frontispiece figures Louis XIV as an integral part of the book. He is both royal dedicatee, and the ideal, exemplary interlocutor in the type of conversations the volumes propose."
FREIDEL, NATHALIE. La conquête de l’intime: public et privé dans la correspondance de Madame de Sévigné. Paris: Champion, 2009.
Review: A.R. Larsen in FR 85.6 (2012), 170-1171. This socio-literary approach highlights the letters’ generic intermingling: it treats the transformation of the private/public divide, friendship networks, self-fashioning, and intimate writing’s "mélange of dissimulation, allusions, and prudent avowals." The reviewer was "struck especially by the breadth and subtlety of the analysis in part one on the public and private."
SOREL, CHARLES. Polyandre. Histoire comique, Patrick Dandrey and Cécile Toublet. Paris: Klincksieck, 2010.
Review: M. Rosellini in DSS 255 (2012), 372-5. This new edition of Sorel’s comic novel about the curious, creative bourgeois protagonist is praised for its clear, thorough introduction (by Dandrey) which emphasizes the coherence and unity of Sorel’s oeuvre. Notes (by Toublet) reveal Sorel’s integration of contemporary scientific and occult knowledge into his fiction and point out possible source texts and intertextual references. Reviewer classifies this book as a welcome addition to a recent spate of new editions of Sorel’s work.
THEOBALD, ANNE. "In Francion’s Shadow: ’Ethos’-based Failure in Charles Sorel’s Polyandre." PFSCL 76 (2012) 65-78.
Article ascribes the comparatively poor reception of Polyandre in the 17th century to a problem of ethos or character: The relatively passive character Polyandre - described here as a "disengaged observer" (77) - failed to conform to readers’ expectations based on their experience of the playful, seductive, manipulative Francion.
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.
NIDERST, ALAIN. "Un grand méconnu: Adrien-Thomas Perdou de Subligny." PFSCL 76 (2012) 215-52.
Niderst offers a biography and a (rather speculative) overview of the literary career of the "méconnu" author Subligny. The article proposes that Subligny influenced or possibly collaborated with the authors of Les Lettres portugaises, Journal amoureux, La Nouvelle Clélie, and Les Illustres Françaises.
STANTON, DOMNA C. and REBECCA M. WILKIN. and trans. Gabrielle Suchon, A Woman Who Defends All the Persons of Her Sex: Selected Philosophical and Moral Writings. London: U Chicago Press, 2010.
Review: A. Jacobson Schutte in PFSCL 76 (2012), 277-9. The editors present a selection of passages from Suchon’s Traité de la morale et de la politique (1693) and Du célibat voluntaire (1700) translated into English. The reviewer notes that the passages are well chosen and translated, coherently presented, and thoroughly annotated. However, she finds that the approach to the edition is not a good fit for the Other Voices Series: The degree of erudition and the emphasis on the "unoriginal, tedious" Traité de la morale rather than the more engaging Du célibat voluntaire make the book more appropriate for professional scholars of intellectual history rather than for undergraduates and teachers of French Studies, the audience targeted by OVS.
VALENCE, FRANÇOISE DE. Voyage en Europe 1652-1662, édité d’après le manuscrit M 3217. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal à Paris. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010.
Review: V. Duché in PFSCL 76 (2012) 286-9. This here-to-fore unpublished work by the travel writer Jean de Thévenot is described as a "texte passionnant" (288) combining vivid description with amusing cultural commentary. The reviewer unfortunately finds fault with the edition: It includes only a brief introduction and seems to lack a coherent editorial approach with regard to spelling, punctuation, and annotation.
CHANG, DOROTHY. "Honoré d’Urfé Mythographer and Realist: A Study of the Narrative Unity of L’Astrée." PFSCL 76 (2012) 81-95.
The author finds a unified structure in L’Astrée based on its "overarching mythical framework" focused on the theme of rebirth (93). At the same time, the work displays a consistent preoccupation with the "realistic" or practical dimension of life in the fictional world it portrays
DENIS, DELPHINE. Honore d’Urfé. L’Astrée. Première partie. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011.
Review: V. Kapp in PFSCL 76 (2012) 258-61. This first part of a projected complete edition of Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral romance was prepared by Jean-Marc Chatelain, Delphine Denis, Camille Esmain-Sarrazin, Laurence Giavarini, Frank Greiner, Francoise Lavocat and Stephane Mace, working under the direction of Delphine Denis. The reviewer has nothing but praise for this well-prepared edition of L’Astrée which includes a thorough introduction, explanatory notes, and helpful indexes such as tables of poetry and intercalated stories in the text. The reviewer contends that this edition (as well as the electronic edition being prepared in conjunction with it) will make d’Urfé’s work more accessible to modern readers.
Review: K. Wine in MLR 107.4 (2012), 1252-1253: First of five volumes from a distinguished team is praised as an outstanding resource for seventeenth-century scholars. General introduction "sets L’Astrée between its humanistic past and classical future. It succinctly contrasts Gomberville’s continuation with the conclusion composed by Urfé’s secretary Baro upon the writer’s death."
WELCH, ELLEN. "Of Flatterers and Fleas: Tristan L’Hermite’s Le Parasite and Baroque Theater’s Problem of Truth." SYM 66.1 (2012), 31-40.
W. explores appearance and reality in Baroque theater through the figure of the parasite in Tristan’s comedy and its use by Serres, and Derrida.
MARZYS, ZYGMUNT. Remarques sur la langue françoise. Genève: Droz, 2009.
Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 163 (2011), 162. Praiseworthy critical edition of V. due to its excellent quality allows the reader the possibility to compare the text of the first edition of 1647 with manuscript 3105 of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. R. notes a particularly interesting variance concerning the famous formula of "bon usage" and praises the edition for its remarkable bibliography and index, the latter including proper nouns, themes, words and linguistic forms.
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