FRENCH 17

BRITTON, DENNIS AUSTIN. “Recent Studies in English Renaissance Literature.” ELR 45.3 (2015), 459-478.

As to be expected, the focus of this very useful article and bibliography is English. However, several books and essays referenced include the continent and the early modern stage, the making of early modern identity, cross-cultural encounters and race in the early modern, Finally, there is an entire section of the bibliography devoted to “Work in Related Fields” which contains some thirty references.

CAMPANINI, MAGDA. In forma di lettere. La finzione epistolare in Francia dal Rinascimento al Classicismo. Venezia: Supernova, 2011.

Review: M. Mastroianni in S Fr 172 (2014), 135-136. Wide-ranging and heterogenous volume analyzes texts relevant to eloquence, “lettres d’amour” and “lettres galantes.” The analysis demonstrates that the letter is “una forma già matura e completa nei suoi elementi costitutivi che sono gli stesse che continueranno ad animarla nel Settecento.” Careful attention to cultural influences is evident throughout this solid and useful examination.

DEMETRIOU, TANIA and ROWAN TOMLINSON, eds. The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500-1660. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Review: P. Hammond in FS 70.2 (2016), 258-259. An essay that demonstrates how translation can never be truly or fully separated from interpretation and what this signifies in the early modern era. Largely addresses canonical texts translated from French into English, and most pieces are by scholars in the UK. Reviewer suggests a second volume to include a greater diversity of scholars and to study texts translated from English to French.

DION, NICHOLAS, STÉPHANIE MASSÉ and ANDRÉE-ANNE PLOURDE, eds. Le Cosmopolitisme: influences, voyages, échanges dans la République des Lettres (XVe-XVIIIe siècles). Paris: Hermann, 2014.

Review: A. Mattana in S Fr 174 (2014), 651-652. Understanding “cosmopolite” as “citoyen de l’univers,” these acts of a conference of CIERL examine the subject with esssays focusing on the stated period. Organized into four sections: “D’une cour à l’autre,” “L’ailleurs. Entre perceptions et voyages,” “Portée et enjeux des voyages” and “Périples du texte et de la langue.” The volume includes essays on a 17th c. diplomat, on Fénelon, on the comédiens italiens, and on language.

GROS, GÉRARD, ed. Les Raisons du livre: du statut de l’œuvre écrite à la figuration du symbole (XIIe–XVIIe siècles). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015.

Review: A. Spencer-Hall in FS 70.3 (2016), 436-437. Examines book descriptions, images in and of books to show that the book as object has almost limitless meanings and symbolic potential. Covering a span of some 500 years, the book is divided into two equal halves: pre- and post-Gutenberg. Reviewer finds collection “stimulating and valuable,” even if quality of essays is uneven.

HOLTZ, GRÉGOIRE ed. Nouveaux aspects de la culture de l’imprimé: Questions et perspectives (XVe–XVIIe siècles). Geneva: Droz, 2014.

Review: K. D. Peebles in Ren Q 68.3 (2015), 1100-1102. This collection, the result of a 2010 conference in Toronto, evaluates the current state of the scholarship in question: book trade, shaping of forms, circulation between manuscript and print. Highly useful for diverse disciplines such as cultural studies and reception studies, among others. Laudable presentation.

Review: D. McKitterick in FS 69.3 (2015), 384-385. A collection of essays born of a 2010 conference that seeks to address the specifically French questions of writing, publishing, authorship, and circulation/selling of texts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Addresses mostly literary texts, including Ronsard, Montaigne, and La Fontaine; includes an essay on medical publishing as well.

KESSLER-MESGUICH, SOPHIE. Les études hébraïques en France: De François Tissard à Richard Simon (1508–1680). Geneva: Droz, 213.

Review: M.-L. Demonet in Ren Q 68.4 (2015), 1472-1474. Welcome praiseworthy reexamination of the study of Hebrew in the early modern. The corpus of the study is well chosen and includes materials from authors, printers and clergymen including Counter-Reformation Jesuits and educators such as Nicolas Clenard whose method was language immersion. Chapter 9 focuses on the 17th c. and includes both Protestant and Catholic Hebraists.

KJØRHOLT, INGVILD HAGEN, “Appropriations of the Cosmopolitan in Early Modern French Literature.” FMLS 51.3 (2015), 287-303.

Focuses on the origins of the Greek term and its transformations in early modern France. After a careful consideration of kosmopolites as illustrated by Diogenes, K. turns to 16th and 17th c. French texts to demonstrate the term’s appropriation. Although K. has a section entitled “The 16th and 17th centuries: the cosmopolitan as author,” and several 16th c. examples are given, the only 17th c. one is that of a Polish alchemist, philosopher and medical doctor. Yet before turning to the next section, “The 18th century: the cosmopolitan philosopher,” K. remarks that the term in 16th and 17th c. French “is usually employed as a pseudonym or sobriquet.” While appreciative of this article’s attentiveness to 16th and 18th c. uses of the concept under study, we would concur with K. that, at least as regards the 17th c., “further research” is merited.

DE LESCLACHE, LOUIS. La Rhétorique ou l’éloquence française by Louis de Lesclache. LE GUERN, MICHEL, ed. Paris: Garnier, 2012.

Review: A. Sort-Jacotot in DSS 265 (2014), 743-744. Critical edition featuring an introduction with details on the attribution of the work to Lesclache and on the years of the treatise’s composition (c. 1652 -1660), as well as situating Lesclache’s place in the history of rhetoric. A glossary and two indices supplement the critical apparatus.

PERRAS, JEAN-ALEXANDRE. “Genius as Commonplace in Early Modern France.” E Cr 55.2 (2015), 20-33.

P.’s article is the introductory one for this issue of E Cr which focuses on the concept of genius: “Thinking Genius, Using Genius / Penser le génie à travers ses usages,” directed by Ann Jefferson and Jean-Alexandre Perras. P’s exploration of the opposition “between genius and the commonality” begins with attention to definitions, the first being that of 1606 in Jean Nicot’s Thrésor de la langue françoise tant ancienne que moderne which focuses on the individual, in contrast with that of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s 1801 Néologie: “Genius: A mind superior to that of other men: but by how much? That is the question?” P.’s study includes consideration of “the authority of ethical and esthetic models inherited from antiquity” and the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. Other important contributors to the development and use of the notion examined here include Perrault and Boileau, as well as several key figures of the 18th c. Well documented and with illustrations including examples of Roman and French coinage representing the concept.

SCOTT, PAUL. Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies. 76 (2016), 35-53.

London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2016. Exhaustive list and brief summaries of books and articles covering topics of the French seventeenth century published in 2014.

SIOUFFI, GILLES. “Le ‘génie de la langue’ au XVII et au XVIIIe siècle: Modalités d’utilisation d’une notion.” E Cr 55.2 (2015), 62-72.

S.’s fascinating essay retraces from its first attestation (1635 in a discourse by Amable de Bourzeis) the notion on through significant usages such as Bernard Lamy’s (1688) and others. S. analyzes each stage and its contexts, more and more international and “rationalist” until today when the notion is hardly used. S. then proceeds to analyze the modalities (technical, instrumental, epistemological and cultural) of the term’s use and posits several interpretations.

VERSELLE, VINCENT. Faire dire, pour décrire. Caractérisation langagière des personnages et poétique du récit dans la littérature comique et satirique (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle). Metz: U de Lorraine, 2012.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 173 (2014), 360. Interdisciplinary approach, privileging the linguistic-semiotic aspect provides literary exegesis of a large corpus of works by Sorel, Scarron, Furetière, Marivaux and Diderot. First part of the volume concentrates on the theoretical confronting Aristotelian theory with modern semiotics while the second section applies theoretical apparatus to a novella of Sorel.

VOLPILHAC, AUDE. ‘Le Secret de bien lire’: Lecture et herméneutique de soi en France au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015.

Review: I. Maclean in FS 70.2 (2016), 257-258. An in-depth study of intensified efforts to restrict the availability of reading materials considered to be morally, politically, or religiously suspect during the Fronde and surrounding period. Although reviewer finds index incomplete and suggests that author’s analysis would benefit from streamlining, he praises the work for its thorough inclusion and documentation of primary sources and its “rich and varied” conclusions.

WEST, WILLIAM N. “Encircling Knowledge.” Ren Q 68.4 (2015), 1327-1340.

Analyzes the concept of “encyclopedia” as it asks its relation to early modern scholarship. Discusses attempts at definition, formal features and scope. As W. examines the notion and history of encyclopedism, he creates a kind of bibliography, indicating recent books which illustrate ideals of Renaissance encyclopedism. The article includes a bibliography of some thirty sources from the 20th and 21st centuries which have tackled the subject, such as Alain Rey’s 2007 Miroirs du monde. Une histoire de l’encyclopédisme.