FRENCH 17

ARZOUMANOV, ANNA, ANNE REACH-NGO AND TRUNG TRAN, eds. Le Discours du livre. Mis en scène du texte et fabrique de l’oeuvre sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011.

Review: M. Mastroianni in S Fr 168 (2012) 552-553. Wide-ranging collection of essays examines editing and re-editing, transformations and illustrations. Studies are organized in sections as follows: "Le texte en représentation", "Politiques de réédition, codifications et mutations génétiques", and "réactualisations idéologiques et usages du livre." 17th c. scholars will particularly appreciate Claire Fourquet-Gracieux’s study on Port-Royal's editing of psalms.

DENIS, DELPHINE, MIRELLE HUCHON, ANNA JAUBERT, MICHAEL RINN, and OLIVIER SOUTET, eds. Au corps du texte. Hommage à Georges Molinié. Paris: Champion, 2010.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 166 (2012) 143. This valuable Festschrift by forty friends and colleagues of M. is organized in sections corresponding to the latter's predominant research interests. The first section, "Langages de la première modernité" renders homage to M.'s seminal thesis published in 1982 and republished in 1995, Du Roman grec au roman baroque: un art majeur du genre narratif en France sous Louis XIII. Analyses focus on 17th c. stylistic and aesthetic concerns as present in authors as diverse as La Fontaine and Massillon. The second and third sections retain the philological, rhetorical and literary dimensions but focus on other periods. Includes a bibliography of M.'s criticism.

FINOLI, ANNA MARIA. “Dalle riflessioni sul tradurre ai ‘combats pour la langue française’.” S Fr 168 (2012) 389-413.

Praiseworthy examination of translation in the humanist tradition. Although the focus here is on Etienne Dolet and his contemporaries, this very well-documented study will be of interest and use to 17th c. scholars, in particular those of Port-Royal and the instructors of the “Petites Écoles” who developed guidelines for translation and to whom we are indebted for many translated works.

Le Français préclassique, 1500-1650, 13 (2011).

Review: M. Mastroianni in S Fr 168 (2012) 559. This issue of the review of the Centre d’Études lexicologiques et lexigraphiques des XVIe et XVIIe siècles of the Université Lumière-Lyon 2, focuses on diverse semantic fields of the era ranging from medicine to the history of the word “opinion.”

FREIDEL, NATHALIE. “L’autre langue de Mme de Sévigné: l’italien dans la ‘Correspondance’.” S Fr 168 (2012) 404-413.

Careful examination of S.’s admiration of “le clinquant du Tasse” (II, 499). F. situates S. among other admirers of champions of “italianisme” as “un medium essentiel d’accès à la culture” (404). Although her focus is S., F. indicates the wide use of and debt to Italian prevalent in the epistolary genre as well as in the theatre and other genres. Sections on the following organize this short but well-documented and convincing study: “Une voie privilégiée d’accès des femmes à la culture”, “L’apanage d’une culture mondaine” and “Une langue à soi.” F. finds that Italian for S. “donne accès à la réalité intérieure” (411) permitting her, for example, to express her upset at successive separations by borrowings from Pastor fido (412).

GREENE, ROLAND. Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes. Chicago: U Chicago P, 2013.

Review: T. Gregory in MP 112.3 (2015) E234-E237. Spans nations and languages, including France/French; reviewer finds sections on English and Spanish strongest. The five words of the title, each the topic of a chapter, are invention, blood, language, resistance, and world, chosen because they are ubiquitous in the early modern period, defined here as 1525-1675. Analysis based in etymology, semantics, and textual analysis.

JACQUETIN-GAUDET, ALBERTE and COLETTE DEMAIZIERE, eds. Daniel Cachedenier. Initiation à la langue française. Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010.

Review: S. Lardon in S Fr 168 (2012) 558-559. Monumental edition “de grande valeur” (559) presents this grammar in facsimile, then translated and annotated. After a rich introduction, the volume is organized in three books as follows: “Des lettres”, “De la variation des mots”, and “De la syntaxe.” Bibliography, annexes and indices.

LECLERC, JEAN, éd. L’Antiquité travestie: anthologie de poésie burlesque (1644-1658). Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010.

Review: C. Carlin in DFS 101 (Spring 2014) 123-124. « Une anthologie et édition savant de textes exemplaires » du genre burlesque. « Chaque poème est précédé d’une notice, suivie d’un résumé de l’œuvre antique travestie et une analyse de son traitement en mode burlesque, y compris (parmi d’autres éléments) son inscription dans la société de l’époque. Un appareil critique complète [sic], avec tout ce qu’il faut pour comprendre la genèse du poème, est suivi d’un tableau récapitulatif montrant le plan de ses parties et de ses grandes articulations. […] Ces nombreux supports éditoriaux, y compris le commentaire bien développé sur la langue à la fin de l’introduction, permettraient même aux non-spécialistes d’apprécier ces documents fascinants, représentatifs de plusieurs dimensions de la vie socioculturelle et politique de l’époque. »

LEVESQUE, MATHILDE and OLIVIER PEDEFLOUS (dir). L’emphase: copia ou brevitas? (XVIe-XVIIe siècles). Paris: Presses Universitaires Paris-Sorbonne, 2010.

Review: A. Amatuzzi in S Fr 166 (2012) 136-137. The notion of emphasis is central to this collection of essays stemming from a 2009 journée d’étude on the subject. Perspectives include: the rhetorical, stylistic, semantic, and pragmatic. 17th c. foci take in love declarations in Racine, the epistolary (Mme de Sévigné) Cyrano’s expressivity and La Rochefoucauld’s concision.

MACLEAN, IAN. Scholarship, Commerce, Religion. The Learned Book in the Age of Confessions, 1560-1630. Cambridge (USA) et Londres: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Review: M. Engammare in BHR 75.3 (2013) 583-588. “L’auteur s’intéresse aux modes de transmission du savoir en choisissant l’un de ses vecteurs essentiels, le marché du livre érudit, ayant réuni les conférences qu’il donne à l’Université d’Oxford en mai 2010….”

SCHRÖDER, VOLKER. “Royal Prints for Princeton College: A Franco-American Exchange in 1886.” Princeton U Library Chronicle LXXVI, 1-2 (2014-2015) 12-50.

Looks at John Shaw Pierson’s role in the 1886 transaction between the BN and Princeton that led to the latter’s acquisition of a copy of hundreds of Cabinet du Roy engravings. Also investigates reception and use of the Cabinet at Princeton; includes exhibition “Versailles on Paper,” subject of this issue.

SCOTT, PAUL. Year’s Work in Modern language Studies. 75 (2015 [survey year 2013]) 42-59. London: Modern Humanities Research association, 2014.

Exhaustive list and brief summaries of books and articles covering topics of the French seventeenth century published in 2013.

STEDMAN, ALLISON. Rococo Fiction in France, 1600-1715: Seditious Frivolity. Lewisberg: Bucknell University Press, 2013.

Review: C. Carlin in DFS 101 (Spring 2014) 124-125. “These hybrid, experimental texts would not only influence the eighteenth-century novel; rococo’s rejection of universal, absolute truths, and its emphasis on individual uniqueness would support the dominant aesthetic of the Enlightenment in France across the arts. Stedman’s exploration of the phenomenon gives us a new lens for linking disparate texts across the seventeenth century. Although I have small quibbles (in ten pages on La Querelle du Cid, Stedman cites the 1898 Gasté compilation rather than Jean-Marc Civardi’s thorough critical edition published in 2004, and George Forestier’s name is misspelled throughout) Stedman’s impressive work represents an original contribution to the study of seventeenth-century French fiction.”

TRAN-GERVAT, YEN-MAI. Traduire en français à l’âge classique: génie national et génie des langues. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013.

Review: J.-A. Perras in FS 68.3 (2014) 392. Born of a 2011 conference on translation, this is a “prelude” to a work closely studies the practice of translation in the 17th-18th centuries. Looks at general questions surrounding literary translation into French in the context of the simultaneous rise of a national language and national identity. Divided into two parts, one on translating from ancient languages, the other from other European languages; shows that translation was the subject of considerable reflection and debate in the neoclassical age.