FRENCH 17

ASSAF, FRANCIS. “Quel honneur y a-t-il en pédanterie?” PSCFL XL.79 (2013), 366-78.

A study of the character of the know-it-all in Première journée (Théophile de Viau, 1623), Francion (Sorel, 1623, 1626, 1633), and Les Avantures (Dassoucy, 1677). Although the pédant is the antithesis of the holder of true knowledge, he remains significant as a stock comic character.

BOEHRER, BRUCE THOMAS. Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Review: K. Steel in Ren Q 64.1 (2011), 325-326. Wide-ranging study focuses more on English than on French literary representations of animals from 1400 to 1700. The parrot may be represented as an “emblematic papist,” for example, lacking spiritual understanding. S. would have appreciated more attention to animal satire and fables as well as more engagement with religious and philosophical teaching. Index, illustrations, bibliography.

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

Review: A. Maggi in M&T 28.1 (2014): 180-82. An anthology that seeks to highlight the literary (as opposed to oral) nature of tales by d’Aulnoy and others by re-placing them in their context as literature. This includes an analysis of forwards, afterwards, and author commentary, which are all too often omitted from translated anthologies of the tales, as well as a study of the origins and influences for various tales, with a focus on Giambattista Basile. Reviewer: “an original and necessary volume that raises important and timely questions.”

BOUTEILLE-MEISTER, CHARLOTTE, AND KJERSTIN AUKRUST, eds. Corps sanglants, souffrants et macabres, XVIe-XVIIe siècle. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010.

Review: S. Guyot in Ren Q 64.1 (2011), 232-233. Wide-ranging, rich, and highly interdisciplinary, these analyses examine “the history of a visual fascination with violated bodies” (B-M. and A. 351). Additionally they call for a reconsideration of the baroque, its contours, both historically and conceptually. Sections include studies which consider the moral, the erotic, ethics, body metaphors, practices of devotion, judicial ruling, actual and theatrical scenes of horror, wounds as propaganda, and so forth. The 17th c. scholar will not want to miss Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard’s essay on the Anatomical Works of Riolan which demonstrates its relation not only to the spread of his medical practice but also to the “discipline” of feminine bodies (G. 232). Index, illustrations, bibliography.

CHARNLEY, JOY . “Introduction: Representations of Age in European Literatures.” FMLS 47.2 (2011), 121-125.

Praiseworthy introduction to the issue which focuses on “Ageing” as it is represented in language and literature. The approach is wide-ranging and cross-cultural. Essays on theory complement others on specific genres and the sexes. Although the issue concentrates on the 20th and the 21st c., one essay treats the 17th c. (O’Brien).

DELEHANTY, ANN. Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France: From Poetics to Aesthetics. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2013.

Review: C. Braider in CdDS 15.1 (2013): 96-99. Delehanty's study is to be considered a counter-narrative to the "myth" of the "era's near universal subscription to la doctrine classique." The author shows how the discourse of feeling becomes increasingly important with the inauguration of Louis XIV’s reign in 1661 and how "transcendence" is not a concept of the Enlightenment but reaches back into the Neoclassical Age. The reviewer praises that this study exposes, in a convincing way, the emergent role of transcendence in Boileau's L'Art Poétique. Furthermore, it skillfully and dynamically grounds Boileau's "transcendent" ideas on the writings of Pascal and Bouhours.

DESBLACHE, LUCILE. La Plume des bêtes: les animaux dans le roman. Paris: L’Harmattan, collection “Espaces Littéraires,” 2011.

Review: A. H. Puleo in E Cr 51.4 (2011), 116. Welcome contribution explores both English and French works, analyzing the various roles of animals and methods of presenting them. Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, the investigation extends from the medieval bestiary to post colonial literature, not forgetting classicism.

DROUET, PASCALE et YAN BRAILOWSKY, éds. Le banissement et l’exil en Europe aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Review: Y. Loskoutoff in BHR 75.1 (2013), 210-13: Recueil interdisciplinaire qui comprend quatorze études portant “par ordre décroissant de fréquence, sur la littérature anglaise, l’histoire, la littérature française, la philosophie politique.” Voir les articles de J. Tamas (“L’imaginaire de la clôture à travers le cloître et la maison close au XVIIe siècle: la femme et la mise au ban de la société française”); S. Houmard (“Bannis, exiles, migrants: la figure de l’expatrié dans le théâtre de Georges de Scudéry”); M. Lemoine (“Le banissement de la cour: caractères et enjeux de la disgrâce chez les mémorialistes de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle”); et P. Bonnet (sur deux ouvrages de Henri de Rohan, Le Parfait capitaine [1636] et De l’Intérêt des Princes [1638]).

FOULIGY, MARY-NELLY et MARIE ROIG MIRANDA, sous la direction de. Europe XVI-XVII, no. 13, Mémoires et découvertes: quels paradigmes? Actes du colloque national organisé à Nancy (15, 16 et 17 novembre 2007). Nancy: Université de Nancy II, 2009.

Review: M. Marin in BHR 75.2 (2013), 378-80: “Les auteurs des communications analysent ces termes paradigmatiques ‘mémoire’ et ‘découverte’ et mettent en évidence leur importance concernant la transmission des saviors et l’évolution du monde européen au XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” Des contributions portant sur la littérature française, italienne et espagnole de la période.

FROMMEL, SABINE and FLAMINIA BARDATI, eds. La Réception de modèles cinquecenteschi dans la théorie et les arts français du XVIIe siècle. École pratique des hautes études: science historiques et philologiques 5. Hautes études médievales et modernes 96. Geneva: Droz, 2010.

Review: T. Senkevitch in Ren Q 64.1 (2011), 196-198. Focusing on exchanges and the role of models between Italy and France in the Early Modern, the 17 essays here examine a variety of aspects of these exchanges including, for example, cross-fertilization. Interdisciplinary, essays may at times relate music to architecture, and painting to tapestry. Highly useful both for new understandings, even of the etymology of “modèles,” and for specific studies of artists in cultural intersections. Praiseworthy for the rigor of its research and stimulating examinations. Illustrations, bibliography.

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

Review: ANON in FMLS 47.1 (2011), 108. G.’s perspective on the sublime bases it as “rooted in the vagaries of ordinary human experience.” She reconsiders the concept, focusing on Corneille, Boileau, and Pascal. Her “close, nuanced readings” offer “greater insights into the century generally.”

GOULBOURNE, RUSSELL. “Conversations with the Dead in Early Modern France.” MLR 108.1 (2013), 90-108.

“It is the trajectory of that metaphor—reading as a conversation, and in particular a conversation with the dead, often the dead authors of classical antiquity—that I want to map out, at least partially, in the first part of this article.” Beginning with Montaigne’s Essais, the second part of the article explores “what the topos of reading as a conversation might actually mean in terms of textual practice” in selected 18th-century French texts.

GRÉLÉ, DENIS. “Les Mémoires de Madame de la Guette ou l’art de se reconstruire une vie.” Neophil 95 (2011), 165-175.

Thought-provoking and convincing examination focuses on what G. would suggest calling “autobiographie utopique” (166). Capably demonstrates the singular quality of the récit of the title since “il n’existe pas canoniquement parlant d’auteurs féminins d’utopie en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles” (166). G,’s article includes pertinent observations on Paul de Musset’s 19th c. short story Madame de La Guette and indicates helpfully for the interested reader the online location. G. points out various “mystifications” notably on money which is viewed as decisive and yet derided. It is finally a genuine pleasure to read this article which is at once erudite and accessible.

GRIFFITHS, KATE and DAVID EVANS, eds. Haunting Presences: Ghosts in French Literature and Culture. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009.

Review: T. Chesters in MLR 108.1 (2013), 306-08: In two-part volume (‘Ghostly Antecedents’ and ‘Modern Ghosts’), see article by Joseph Harris: “… penetrating analysis of Orestes’ madness in Andromaque ends by echoing Revel Elliott’s remark on ‘le caractère moderne’ de certaines parties d’Andromaque (quoted on p. 71). Here the perceived modernity again consists in Racine’s refusal to grant any ontological status to the ghosts of Pyrrhus and Hermione, whom Oreste thinks he sees. Harris echoes Zizekian conclusion (on the fetish character of modern ghost belief) when he writes of how Racine induces ‘a complex play of belief and unbelief’ (p. 72) in the spectators of the play.”

HARRIGAN, MICHAEL. "Métissage and Crossing Boundaries in the Seventeenth-Century Travel Narrative to the Indian Ocean Bassin." CdDS 15.1 (2013): 19-45.

The article discusses intercultural encounters and, especially, the question of "métissage," of narrative hybridity and circuits of knowing, in the encounter of Europeans with other populations both East and West. Travel narratives "reflect the attempt to encapsulate difference in recognizable forms of text, and the interactions of contemporary—potentially widely disseminated—formulations of human difference with intertextual tradition."

HARRISON, DAVID. “Comic Epitaphs: Lucian, Scudéry, and Boileau.” SCFS 35.1 (2013), 38-53.

“This article seeks to redefine the relationship between Boileau’s Dialogue des héros de roman and Madeleine de Scudéry’s Clélie. While Boileau wishes to use his text to erase Scudéry from memory, a close reading of the Dialogue and its Lucianic model reveals Scudéry’s influence on Boileau’s wit. Indeed, the character of Amilcar from Clélie embodies the spirit of Lucianic satire that Boileau hopes to use against Scudéry. Ultimately, Boileau is indebted to a form of enjouement that is inscribed within and popularized by Clélie, and it is this debt that Boileau tries unsuccessfully to make his reader forget in his Dialogue.”

HEIDMANN, UTE AND JEAN-MICHEL ADAM. Textualité et intertextualité des contes. Paris: Éd. Classiques Garnier, 2010.

Review: L. Seifert in M&T 28.1 (2014), 196-99. Each in a separate section, the authors take on certain idées reçues in Perrault scholarship without, unfortunately–according to the reviewer–, engaging those ideas directly. Heidmann concentrates on highlighting the literary and intertextual nature of the tales, drawing focus away from the oral tradition, while Adam uses a meticulous close reading to show that elements such as capitalization and punctuation contribute to the ways in which the text was meant to be read, and that these elements should be preserved in modern anthologies.

HILLS, HELEN, ed. Rethinking the Baroque. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.

Review: I. Sapir in Ren Q 65.1 (2012), 212-214. Wide-ranging collection is to be welcomed by cultural critics as well as by literary and art historians. Its contributors reexamine the key concept, its “complex historical interaction between past and present, or between different pasts” (S. 212) and its stylistic elements. Reviewer does not specifically mention the French 17th c., but the serious quality of the essays recommends the volume to scholars of late Renaissance and early 17th c. France.

HOLTZ, GRÉGOIRE. L’ombre de l’auteur: Pierre Bergeron et l’écriture du voyage au soir de la Renaissance. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 480. Geneva: Droz, 2011.

Review: N. Médevielle in Ren Q 65.1 (2012), 253-255. Praiseworthy, well-documented investigation into this “ghost writer” (editor, rewriter) of numerous French travelers’ accounts. H. organizes his study to include B.’s background and publishing, his role as a colonial propagandist and historian of French colonialization, his collaborations with Pyrard de Laval’s Voyages (1615 and 1619) and Moquet’s 1617 récit, as well as the less successful rewritings of Vincent Leblanc and Malherbe. H.’s conclusion presents B.’s rhetorical model of discourse such as his borrowing from the picaresque novel and invitations to the reader to reflect on his relationship to God.

JOHNSON, CHRISTOPHER D. Hyperboles: The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature 52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Review: C. Braider in Ren Q 64.1 (2011), 234-236. Highly appreciative review notes that J.’s exploration of hyperbole extends far beyond the figure of speech to the very “nature of language, of imaginative conception and so of thought as a whole” (B. 234). Chapters on the theory of hyperbole from Antiquity to the baroque provide a rich backdrop against which well-informed close readings examine several relevant genres. For France, chapters on Descartes and on Pascal explore the figure in its relation to literature, doctrine, theology, and apologetics. Highly recommended for “as wide and enthusiastic readership as hyperbolic praise can give it” (B. 236).

KARSENTI, TIPHAINE. Le Mythe de Troie dans le théâtre français (1562-1715). Paris : Champion, 2012.

Review: A. Riffaud in PSCFL XL.79 (2013): 398-401. Takes a hermeneutic approach to the evolution of the political, philosophical, and aesthetic treatment of Trojan myth in French theater of the late 16th to early 18th centuries. The inventio, dispositio, interpretations, and aesthetics of each play are systematically analyzed. Reviewer finds conclusions are clearly and effectively drawn and that the work is “[u]n excellent outil.”

KENNEDY, THERESA V. "Gender Performance in Seventeenth-Century Dramatic Dialogue: From the Salon to the Classroom." CdDS 15.1 (2013): 1-18.

Salon women, in particular Scudéry and her female predecessors found a fruitful ground for their writing in the genre of dramatic dialogue. They used dramatic dialogue to express a woman's point of view in their writings. Initially, dramatic dialogue was primarily used as a source of entertainment and pleasure. At the end of the century, with Durand and Maintenon's dialogues, there is a clear shift from the salon to the classroom: both female authors emphasize how women should conduct themselves and provide them with models of behavior. The use of dramatic dialogue in women's writing exposes shifting codes of behavior toward the turn of the century.

LA CHARITE, CLAUDE and ROXANE ROY, sous la direction de. Femmes, rhétorique et éloquence sous l’Ancien Régime. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2012.

Review: R. Reynolds-Cornell in BHR 75.1 (2013), 201-205: Twenty-eight contributions to this volume that is “part of l’école du genre, a collection of interdisciplinary studies directed by Eliane Viennot to promote the increasingly rich field of research in gender issues.” Three sections: “Pedagogy, Theories and Rhetorical models”; “Eloquence and Epistolary practices”; Pratiques rhétoriques, sociabilité et politique.” Extensive bibliography.

LYONS, JOHN D. The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012.

Review: K. Wine in MP 111.4 (2014): E411-E414. An examination of the question of chance, or fortune, in an era that strives for, as the reviewer says, “timeless intellect, order, and perfection of form.” Chapters are devoted to well-known as well as lesser-known works by Corneille, Pascal, Lafayette, La Bruyère, Bossuet, and Racine. Although the reviewer regrets the limitations imposed by restricting the authors and works studied, she finds the work still offers a valuable and innovative perspective on the grand siècle.

MARTIN, JEAN-PIERRE et CLAUDINE NEDELEC, eds. Traduire, trahir, travestir: études sur la réception de l’antiquité. Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2012.

Review: E. Herdman in MLR 108.3 (2013), 144-148: Among the twenty-six contributions to this volume of conference proceedings “on the reception and interpretation of the classical heritage in European (but mainly French) literature from the Middle Ages to the present day” see J. Leclerc’s “presentation of a burlesque version of Homer in the seventeenth century [that] is thus usefully situated within the wider context of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes….”

MAXWELL, RICHARD. The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Review: ANON in FMLS 47.1 (2011), 113. Wide-ranging and erudite, M.’s work reconsiders the genre and its evolution “through a comparative analysis of French and Anglophone literary practice.”

MILLER, CHRISTOPHER. The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2008.

Review: ANON in FMLS 47.1 (2011), 11. Filling an important lacuna, M.’s “facts-based overview of French slavery and the slave trade” examines literature and film from the mid-17th c. to our day. Despite high recommendations, the reviewer notes the paucity of references to secondary sources outside the US.

MORIARTY, MICHAEL. “Love and love of self in early modern French writing.” SCFS 35.1 (2013), 80-97.

“This is the text of a lecture given in March 2012 at Queen Mary, University of London, in honour of the late Malcolm Bowie. The lecture explores the portrayal of love in French writing (fiction, drama, and moral reflection) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and especially the way in which love for another person is represented as stimulated and nourished by love of one’s self. The text has not been altered from the original lecture format. A list of works cited follows.”

PAIGE, NICHOLAS D. Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Review: M. Ganofsky in MLR108.4 (2013), 1285-86: “By mapping literary history as he does, Paige makes a major contribution to the scholarly endeavour to reveal early modern fiction as something other than the first faltering steps of the modern novel. Rather than writing another history of the ‘rise’ or ‘invention’ of the novel (p. xii), Paige presents late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century novels not as inferior to their modern counterparts but as intrinsically different, belonging to another ‘regime’ of fiction defined by its own aesthetics and conceptions of literature, and initiated in the 1670s by a transformation in Western poetics.”

PELLEGRIN, MARIE-FRÉDÉRIQUE. “La ‘Querelle des femmes’ est-elle une querelle? Philosophie et pseudo-linéarité dans l’histoire du féminisme.” SCFS 35.1 (2013), 69-79.

“Cet article part du constat selon lequel la catégorie de ‘querelle des femmes’ constitue un outil historiographique essentiel et pourtant problématique. Dès lors, il faut en retracer l’histoire pour voir comment cette catégorie s’est imposée. Cela amène à adopter un point de vue décalé, mobilisant la philosophie et non seulement la littérature, pour en éprouver la pertinence. Ce travail critique permet en définitive une autre lecture des rapports entre les querelles lettrées et la question des femmes jusqu’à la fin de l’Ancien Régime.”

PETEY-GIRARD, BRUNO. Le sceptre et la plume: Images du prince protecteur des lettres de la Renaissance au Grand Siècle. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 466. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2010.

Review: N. Hochner in Ren Q 64.2 (2011), 630-631. Praiseworthy volume of over 600 pages with a rich bibliography and “invaluable” index, P.-G.’s study is organized in the following sections: “Quelles théories pour une protection royale des Lettres,” and “Deux siècles d’images royales.” Nuanced examination challenges the oft-cited “evolutionist narrative” as the carefully argued book dashes myths such as that of “a continuous tradition of French kings as exceptional patrons, but also the myth of the literary elite’s manipulation of one of their concerted propagandist ventures” (H. 631). Impressive for its erudition and “wealth of non-canonical sources” (H. 631). Highly useful to historians of the monarchy, political thought, and literary production. Index, bibliography.

RANDALL, CATHERINE, ed. Black Robes and Buckskin: A Selection from the Jesuit Relations. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.

Review: T. G. Pearson in Ren Q 64. 3 (2011), 983-984. R. has here updated selected Jesuit texts of the Relations from the Canadian missionary work, published in French (1632-1673) and in the 1898-1902 English edition of Reuben Gold Thwaites. R.’s volume includes a historiographical essay on the theology, work and relations with the aborigines, introductions to the chapters, and an essay on translation issues. R,’s translations/paraphrases are generally praised as a “welcome change to the Thwaites edition (P. 983), but the reviewer includes problematic examples and would have appreciated a critical analysis of the Jesuits’ inculturation. Illustrations, bibliography.

ROCHE, BRUNO. Le Rire des libertins dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Paris : Champion, 2011.

Review: J. Leclerc in PSCFL XL.79 (2013): 408-11. Combines research on the burlesque and comic novel with inquiries into literature by libertines to create a simultaneously formal and philosophical study of the texts in question. Shows that more unites than separates “le libertinage de mœurs et de pensée.” Reviewer points out some typographical errors, some unevenness in the treatment of different texts, and the absence of some studies–especially American-authored ones–from the bibliography, but nonetheless concludes this is a rigorous and relevant study.

RUBLACK, ULINKA. Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Review by: Ann Rosalind Jones in Ren Q 64.3 (2011), 921-922. Although R.’s focus is dress in early modern Germany, she “includes thought-provoking material about Italian and French discourses on fashion, the treatment of clothing in literary texts [such as in travel literature]” (J. 922). Valuable socio-historical examination demonstrates how dress intersects with numerous aspects of life including religion and occupation. Index, illustrations, bibliography.

SCHOLAR, RICHARD AND ALEXIS TADIÉ, ed. Fiction and the Frontiers of Knowledge in Europe, 1500–1800. Burlington: Ashgate, 2010.

Review: J. Helgeson in FS 67.2 (2013): 257-58. A collection born of two workshops held in Oxford in 2007. Reviewer: “a useful compendium of recent approaches to the question of literary, legal, and philosophical ‘fictions.’” Focuses on France and Britain, with occasional reference to Italy or Germany. French dix-septièmistes will be particularly interested in Isabelle Moreau’s treatment of the different meanings and connotations for the term “fiction” and Wes Williams’s close reading of uses of the conditional in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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

Review: S. D. Nell in Ren Q 64. 2 (2011), 563-565. Praiseworthy examination both for the detailed information it provides on the subject and for the challenge it offers to stereotypes. After two chapters investigating negative images and how they arose, the volume is organized chronologically and includes material of personal and professional nature on individuals such as Du Parc and Champmeslé as well as discussions on the theatre itself. Index and bibliography. Recommended for both women’s history and theatre scholars.

Review: L. Imantoan in TDR 57.3 (2013): 182. Scott sets out to write a history of actresses that does not rely on stereotypes. She opens her study by exploring difficulty of undertaking this task when evidence consists primarily of anecdotes. In chapter two, she gives a history of social attitudes towards actresses, “particularly attitudes associating actresses with prostitution” (Imantoan). In chapter three, she looks at the lives of Paris actresses in 1629 and 1631. In chapters four and five, she studies the relationships between actresses and playwrights, fame and obscurity. The last two chapters critique evolving acting styles and approaches to theatre.

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

Review: J. Cherbuliez in CdDS 14 (2012): 142-144. "Seifert's project is to elucidate the ways in which masculinity, despite its constitutive pretense to dominion, instead is defined dialectically—between dominance and submission—and therefore appears “variable, multiple, and contingent” (2) in its meanings and forms. Seifert focuses on historical figures, selected texts, and the historical record. The first part analyzes elite construction of masculinity through the figure of the honnête gentleman and salon masculinity. The second section explores marginal sexuality practices, placing "the seventeenth century's own contestation of marginal sexualities in conversation with our own". This study is also a model of literary history that offers a thorough critique of concepts in regards to the Classical Age.

SEIFERT, LEWIS C. AND DOMNA C. STANTON (Eds. and trans.) Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century Women Writes. The Other Voices in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, vol. 9. Toronto: CRRS, 2010.

Review: C. Trinquet du Lys in CdDs 15.1 (2013). This English translation of selected fairy tales is dedicated to women writers of the 1690s: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Catherine Bernard, Charlotte-Rose Caumont de La Force, Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon and Henriette-Julie de Murat. Biographical information, annotations, and clarifications help the reader to understand the background and thematic and narrative features of each fairy tale. In addition, the introduction provides useful background information on the genre and the reception theory.

Review: C. A. Jones in Ren Q 64. 3 (2011), 945-946. Highly appreciative review on many counts: for its welcome and useful filling of an important lacuna in pedagogical materials, for its survey of recent literary criticism, for its situation of the stories and their authors in accessible introductions for the uninitiated, and for the high quality of the translations and annotations. J. finds particularly noteworthy the inclusion of two opposed “contemporaneous views of the nascent genre . . . [thus] bringing the Republic of Letters to life” (J. 946). Index, appendix, illustrations, bibliography.

THOURET, CLOTILDE. Seul en scène: Le monologue dans le théâtre européen de la première modernité (1580–1640). Travaux du Grand Siècle 37. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2010.

Review: M. Meere in Ren Q 64. 2 (2011), 569-571. Judged authoritative and stimulating, T.’s study examines both theoretical and practical developments of the monologue. Focusing on English, French, and Spanish early modern theatre, T. discusses the monologue as a structural component, its role in the action, and its mimetic representation of the psyche. T. “argues . . . that the emergence of a modern subject concomitant with new political and social orders (e.g. absolute monarchy) leads to the crisis of these very subjects” (M. 570). Although the reviewer would have appreciated the inclusion of non-canonical authors, M. finds the study masterful and “a fructuous contribution to scholarship” (M. 570).

VITULLO, JULIANN and DIANE WOLFTHAL, eds. Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.

Review: S. Deng in Ren Q 64. 2 (2011), 625-626. While this volume’s breadth is impressive, in the subjects (disciplines of history, art history, literature and musicology are included), genres, and geography covered, the reviewer would have appreciated more attention to the “complex relations between economy and morality in this key transitional period of European history” (D. 626). French scholars will benefit from Kathleen Ashley’s essay on the motives of the French philanthropist Abigail Mathieu. Index, illustrations, bibliography.