FRENCH 17

AKKERMAN, NADINE and BIRGIT HOUBEN, eds. The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting across Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Review: J. Van Der Steen in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 313-314. Welcome volume brings new light to early modern court politics as it focuses on princesses. The collection is organized geographically and includes “lucid” essays on the French court of Anne d’Autriche which reveals that “gender differences did not necessarily disadvantage women in patronage networks.”

ASSAF, FRANCIS. “Louis XIV, sa propre allégorie?” in Pioffet, Marie-Christine, Anne-Élisabeth Spica, eds. S’exprimer autrement: poétique et enjeux de l’allégorie à l’Âge classique. Actes du colloque du Centre International de Rencontres sur le 17e siècle. Tübingen : Gunter Narr Verlag, 2016. 199-214.

“Qu’est-ce qui n’a pas été écrit sur Louis XIV, de son vivant et pendant des siècles après; et jusqu’aujourd’hui? Peut-être la notion qu’il est devenu – même de son vivant –sa propre allégorie. S’il existe de nombreuses figures allégoriques de la gloire, de la grandeur, de la magnanimité, de la victoire, Louis XIV est la synthèse de toutes. Les gravures L’Admiration des Nations et Temple de la Gloire (dont il est à la fois l’idole et le Grand-Prêtre) le montrent bien.”

BERETTA, MARCO and MARIA CONFORTI, eds. Fakes!? Hoaxes, Counterfeits, and Deception in Early Modern Science. Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2014.

Review : S. J. Rabin in Ren Q 68.4 (2015), 1376-1377. Lauded as a beginning, the collection investigates fake gems, astronomers, etc. and includes an examination of the early modern culture of curiosity such as the 17th c. French physician Pierre Borel’s curiosity cabinet.

BERNIER, MARC-ANDRÉ et al., eds. Jesuit Accounts of the Colonial Americas: Intercultural Transfers, Intellectual Disputes, and Textualities. Toronto: U Toronto P, 2014.

Review: M. Harrigan in FS 69.4 (2015), 525-526. Studies two centuries’ worth of letters, histories, and missionary documents across nations and languages, with a heavy focus on French and Spanish. Divided into three sections: ‘Intercultural Transfers,’ ‘Intellectual Disputes,’ and ‘Textualities,’ all of which remind the reader of the Jesuits’ key role in disseminating information about the Americas.

BIEN, DAVID. Interpreting the Ancien Régime. Rafe Blaufarb, Michael S. Christofferson, and Darrin M. McMahon, eds. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014.

Review : C. Pichichero in FS 70.1 (2016), 104-105. A collection of Bien’s nine most important English-language essays, of which only three are readily available elsewhere. Also includes an interview transcript and heretofore unpublished article. The anthology highlights Bien’s resolutely empirical methodology, his contributions to a revisionist understanding of the French Revolution, and his insights as to what distinguishes the French nobility from that of other European nation-states.

BLUM, ANNA. La Diplomatie de la France en Italie du nord au temps de Richelieu et de Mazarin. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014.

Review: M. K. Williams in Ren Q 68.4 (2015), 1408-1409. Praiseworthy study offers “many useful insights into the era’s diplomatic practices.” Highly readable account is organized into two sections, one on political intrigues of the mid-17th c. and one on diplomatic practice and networks.

CALABRITTO, MONICA and PETER DALY, eds. Emblems of Death in the Early Modern Period. Geneva: Droz, 2014.

Review: D. Graham in Ren Q 68.4 (2015), 1369-1370. Includes much new materials but is found disappointing for its lack of specificity and unevenness as concerns any consistent understanding of what an emblem of death is.

CAVAILLÉ, JEAN-PIERRE. Les Déniaisés: Irréligion et libertinage au début de l’époque moderne. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013.

Review: R. Ganim in Ren Q 68.4 (2015), 1475-1477. Judged “enormously insightful,” C.’s is praised for its “exhaustive analysis of the sources of libertinism.” Wide-ranging, chapters investigate and illustrate moral, political, religious and critical subversion. 17th c. scholars will appreciate sections on Théophile de Viau, François de Maynard, Claude Le Petit and Christine de Suède. Missing is a conclusion and a comprehensive bibliography.

DIDIER, BÉATRICE and MENG HUA, eds. Miroirs croisés Chine-France (XVIIe-XXIe siècles). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2014.

Review: S. Menant in FS 70.1 (2016), 105. A collaborative effort, involving approximately ten contributors from each country, that explores the mutual effect the Chinese and French cultures have had on each other from the seventeenth century to the present. Divided chronologically into four sections, each with its own introduction that provides historical and cultural context. Acknowledges the difficulty inherent in achieving true intercultural understanding, while also taking a significant step toward achieving this goal.

DU BOSC, JACQUES. L’Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women. Eds. Sharon Diane Nell and Aurora Wolfgang. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014.

Review: R. Wilkin in Ren Q 68.3 (2015), 1067-1068. Important volume for translation of Du B.’s 1658 and 1642 editions of the two works in the title. They counsel women’s education, particularly moral philosophy. Includes a highly readable, well-documented introduction, notes, index, and wide-ranging bibliography.

BOULERIE, F., ed. La Médiatisation du littéraire dans l’Europe des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Tübingen: Narr, 2013 (Biblio 17, 205).

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 172 (2014), 138. The seeming anachronism of the title is well justified by Ch. Mazouer whose contribution focuses on the reevaluation of the place of literature in the public and social life of the Early Modern. The volume is organized in the following sections: “Stratégies publicitaires,” “Débats esthétiques,” “Instrumentalisations politiques,” and “Consécrations auctoriales.”

CANOVA-GREEN, MARIE-CLAUDE and JEAN ANDREWS, eds. Writing Royal Entries in Early Modern Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.

Review: L. M. Bryant in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 291-292. The twenty articles in this collection, originally presented at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies in London in December 2007, aim “to explore an hitherto little-studied aspect of the subject, namely not only the status of the printed text as a record of the entry, but also the nature and the uses of its appropriations by a variety of literary and polemic works.” Masterful demonstrations of the multipurpose entries and their evolution includes notes, bibliographies and index. Highly useful and authoritative.

CHAOUCHE, SABINE. La Mise em scène du répertoire à la Comédie-Française (1680-1815). Paris: Champion, 2013. 2 vols.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 174 (2014), 593-594. Wide-ranging study of the Comédie-Française’s staging from its inception to the early 19th c. Praiseworthy attention to previously unpublished documents of the 17th c. Involves examination of the concept of mise en scène itself, the position of actors on stage, costumes and other features of the aesthetic. Includes an iconographic apparatus, annexes, tables of productions, a glossary, an extensive bibliography and an index of names.

CHAOUCHE, SABINE. “Stratégies économiques et politiques de programmation à la fin du XVIIe siècle. Les spectacles à l’heure des barbouilleurs et des amuseurs.” DSS 265 (2014), 677-690.

Studies the economic foundations of the theater in the Old Regime, too often overlooked according to the author (although C. notes the Registres de la Comédie-Française project currently in progress). Combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the interdependence between commercial strategies and dramatic productions to understand the increasing commercialization of the theater from the end of the 17th century.

COHEN, HENRY. "Racine’s Esther: In Praise of Historiographers and Historians." CdDs XVI, 1 (2015), 77–92.

Racine represents Esther as a historian of sorts, in that she offers up narratives of events for use by those who have ordered them to be chronicled. Assuérus thus becomes a student of history, and historiography rather than divine intervention becomes the agent of liberation of the Jews of Persia. Racine's own experience as a royal historiographer adds an additional layer to his contemplation of the importance of history for governing the state.

CONSTANT, JEAN-MARIE. Gaston d’Orléans, prince de la liberté. Paris: Perrin, 2013.

Review: S. Duc in DSS 265 (2014), 744-745. “Une synthèse approfondie […] visant à réévaluer la vie du fils cadet d’Henri IV.” Paradoxically admired in his lifetime and misunderstood or forgotten by history, Gaston d’Orléans nevertheless merits our attention, among other reasons because of his interactions with important political figures from his time. The reviewer praises in particular the careful archival research undertaken in this biography.

CORBO, CLAUDE, ed. Monuments intellectuels de la Nouvelle-France et du Québec ancien: aux origines d’une tradition culturelle. Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014.

Review: R. Chapman in MLR 111.1 (2016), 250-251. An edited volume featuring 27 works representing the intellectual life of La Nouvelle-France and early Quebec between 1609 and 1898, the study features 14-page contributions from a variety of disciplinary fields: geography/ethnology; history; literature and culture; the social sciences; scientific works on entomology; geology; medicine; and philosophy and theology. Each entry offers information on the author, the text (argument and style), and on its reception. The reviewer finds the volume somewhat lacking as work of intellectual history but potentially useful as a reference book.

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.

DOOLEY, BRENDAN ed. A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Review: S. J. Rabin in Ren Q 68.2 (2015), 659-661. Wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary essays relate astrology to science, literature, art and music. R. reminds us that acceptance of astrology only began to decline in the mid-17th c.

ENGLEBERT, ROBERT and GUILLAUME TEASDALE, eds. French and Indians in the Heart of North America, 1630-1815. Winnipeg: U of Manitoba Press, 2013.

Review: R. S. Sheffield in UTQ 84.3 (Summer 2015), 293-294. “Taken as a whole, Englebert and Teasdale’s collection is intended to examine the complexity and multiplicity of the French-Indian encounter in ways that move beyond the paradigms of métissage and the middle ground. This edited book largely succeeds in its purpose because of the generally high quality of the contributions, despite their quite diverse nature. The eight essays range across a broad temporal, geographical, and cultural expanse, organized in loosely chronological order.”

FAURE-CARRICABURU, EMMANUEL. “La domination de l’allégorie en peinture : les ambivalences d’un mode de représentation transgénérique” in Pioffet, Marie-Christine, Anne-Élisabeth Spica, eds. S’exprimer autrement: poétique et enjeux de l’allégorie à l’Âge classique. Actes du colloque du Centre International de Rencontres sur le 17e siècle. Tübingen : Gunter Narr Verlag, 2016. 29-48.

“En contrepoint au discours officiel énoncé dans la préface aux conférences, l’étude des ambivalences du grand décor de la galerie des Glaces permet d’identifier une résistance de l’œuvre aux attendus sous-tendus par l’institutionnalisation de la hiérarchie des genres. Cette classification élaborée par Félibien en 1667, qui s’inscrivait dans le cadre d’un projet au service de la célébration du roi, est ici doublement ébranlée; d’une part, parce que ce décor éblouit mais qu’il peine à remplir l’autre aspect de sa mission politique qui consistait à faire comprendre au plus grand nombre les conquêtes royales ; d’autre part, parce que l’allégorie mêlée à l’histoire contemporaine brouille les limites d’un cadre que Félibien proposait d’officialiser comme genre ; enfin, parce que les personnifications occupent une place anecdotique dans le compositions, ce qui contrebalance la supériorité conférée à ce langue placé au sommet de l’édifice présenté dans la préface.”

FERREYROLLES, GÉRARD, et al., eds. Traités sur l’histoire (1638-1677). La Mothe Le Vayer, Le Moyne, Saint-Réal, Rapin. Paris : Champion, 2013.

Review: V. Kapp in PFSCL XLVIII, 84 (2016), 118-122. Anthology of 17th c. historical treatises, arguing that history in the period be considered not only with respect to historiographes, but also historiologues, “notion par laquelle il [Ferreyrolles] désigne les ‘auteurs des traités sur l’histoire’ dont ce volume réunit quatre des plus importants de l’époque.” Although reviewer notes that the editors seem to feel compelled to make arguments “sans pouvoir toujours prouver leur pertinence,” he applauds Ferreyrolles’s 100-page introduction which assess: 1) “les enjeux de la charge d’historiographe du roi de France,” 2) the porous border “entre érudition profane et érudition ecclésiastique,” 3) “les affinités et les conflits entre la codification de l’historiographie et les préceptes rhétoriques du style" (119). Reviewer concludes that “Aucun critique qui s’occupe de le poétique du XVIIe siècle, ne pourra plus contourner la problématique littéraire de ce genre.”

FUMAROLI, MARC. La république des lettres. Paris: Gallimard, 2016.

Review: J. Rogister in TLS 5875 (Nov 6 2015), 27. This “stimulating and allusive book” examines the République des lettres from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Fumaroli shows how Amsterdam, London and Paris became three great centers of this republic. He pays much attention to Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and the brothers Dupuy, then traces the origins of a new République as French replaces Latin.

GARGAM, ADÉLINE. Les Femmes savantes, lettrées et cultivées dams la littérature française des Lumières ou la conquête d’une légitmité (1690-1804). Paris: Champion, 2013. 2 vols.

Review: R. Bochenek-Franczakowa in S Fr 174 (2014), 594-595. Important for its contribution to the understanding of the place and role of women in the (late) 17th and 18th centuries’ literary and intellectual history. Includes documentation of over 500 women, real and fictive, literary and scientific. Of major importance for our grasp of the access of women to knowledge and the obstacles they faced. G. has organized her study into three parts: “Les femmes savantes, lettrées et cultivées: approches littéraires, historique et sociologique,” “Femmes et savoirs dans les débats scientifiques et littéraires” and “Les femmes savantes, lettrées et cultivées dans les fictions narratives et théâtrales.” Rich voluminous examination includes imposing and precise bibliography.

GIANNINI, MASSIMO CARLO ed. Papacy, Religious Orders, and International Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Rome: Viella, 2013.

Review: C. Schneider in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 332-334. Found uneven yet useful in its case studies, the collection focuses on members of religious orders and power politics. The editor’s essay on the Dominican order and Franco-Spanish enmity of the 1640s is judged “one of the best” in the volume. S. particularly appreciates its attention to primary sources.

GIRAULT-FRUET, ARLETTE. “Promenades sur le tillac dans les navigations d’autrefois (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles).” Tr L 28 (2015), 63-73.

“La promenade sur le pont du navire” is explored here and the dock itself as “l’unique lieu de divertissement à bord.” G.-F. notes the several types of entertainment from sea animals such as flying fish to sharks, the ship itself, stars, socialization and conversation with other travelers. Fascinating excerpts from accounts include some by 17th c. writers such as Thomas Herbert, François de l’Estra, François Pyrard de Laval and Jean Mocquet, personal doctor of Henri IV.

HADDAD, ELIE. “Kinship and Transmission within the French Nobility, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Case of the Vassé.” Trans. William A. S. Brown. FHS 38.4 (October 2015), 567-591.

Haddad uses a case study of the Vassé family to show that “money, power, rights, and symbolic and material goods circulated through women as well as men and, together, helped to structure families by providing their essence, which they endeavored (for the most part) to transmit.” Haddad cautions that historians must not “retroject” on the nobility of the sixteenth century the constructed representation of ancienneté and patrilineage that the nobility of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries adopted.

HARAI, DÉNES. Gabriel Bethlen Prince de Transylvanie et roi de Hongrie, 1580-1629. Coll. Histoire Hongroise. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013.

Review by: J. Bérenger in DSS 265 (2014), 746-747. Biographical study of a prince whose importance in Central Europe has perhaps been overlooked, H.’s work blends archival research and offers syntheses of studies previously published in Hungarian.

JEANNERET, MICHEL. Versailles, ordre et chaos. Paris: Gallimard, 2012.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 172 (2014), 140-141. Highly engaging itinerary demonstrates the rich, multifaceted and diverse esthetics of Versailles and the Grand Siècle. Visual arts, music, theatre and other literary productions are included in this highly readable and well-illustrated examination.

LAPORTA, KATHRINA. “Diverting the Reader: Novel Strategies in the Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696).” EMFS 37.2 (2015), 135-146.

“The anonymous pamphlet Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696) subjects French monarch Louis XIV to scathing ridicule and denunciation. Interestingly, however, the pamphleteer frames his critique of absolutist politics within an entertaining narrative that deploys tropes from contemporary literary genres such as the historical novella and the historico-satirical novel. A poetics of diversion subtends the work, readable at the level of the plot as well as in the satirical mechanism employed in the text: not only does the Conseil privé de Louis le Grand incorporate scenes focusing on courtly diversions, but it also diverts readers in a more literal way by transforming the monarch into a source of amusement. Absolutism becomes grist to the mill of pamphleteering, and the king a product of authorial fantasy. The pamphleteer figures Louis the Great's privy council as a harem — a world of corruption, weakness, and ineptitude where the monarchy is painted in its imagined and unimaginable excesses. Studying this text through the lens of diversion offers a case study affirming the power of fiction as a weapon in the pamphleteer's arsenal.”

LAVOCAT, FRANÇOISE. ed. Le Mariage et la loi dans la fiction narrative avant 1800. Louvain: Peeters, 2014.

Review: Anon. in FMLS 51.2 (2015), 235. Welcome volume examines links (“ethical, aesthetic and existential”) between the topic and “each literary production and its context.” Organized into sections on “the relation between marriage and the law,” “texts which reject marriage” and “the poetics of the topos of marriage,” the collection also demonstrates convincingly the “power of fiction by exploring the nature of its relation to the real world.”

LECONTE, THOMAS, ed. Les Fées des forêts de Saint-Germain, 1625. Un ballet royal de ‘bouffonesque humeur.’ Turnhout: Brepols, 2012.

Review: M. Demeilliez in DSS 265 (2014), 737-739. An edited volume offering a comprehensive analysis of the 1625 performance of Les Fées des forêts de Saint-Germain at Louis XIII’s court from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Contributions include studies of the sociocultural context for the performance (section 1), of the costumes and related material historical inquiries (section 2), analyses of the mise-en-scène (section 3), and of the dances, poetry, and music (section 4). The final sections present representations of the costume design and a “reconstitution musicale et poétique du ballet.” The reviewer praises the beauty of the book-object itself.

LEMERLE, FRÉDÉRIQUE and YVES PAUWELS. Architectures de papier: La France et l’Europe (XVIe–XVIIe siècles). Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.

Review: S. Galletti in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 256-258. Welcome volume focusing on 16th and 17th c. architectural treatises. the authors also curated an online database including image and text hosted by the CESR. Filling a definite lacuna, the volume includes two bibliographies and an index complementing eight chapters on various pertinent aspects including reception, editions and prints, among others.

LE ROUX, NICOLAS. Le roi, la cour, l’état: De la Renaissance à l’Absolutisme. Époques. Seyssel: Champ Vallon Editions, 2013.

Review: M. P. Breen in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 304-305. Although B. is “frustrated by Le R.’s reluctance to explain some of the changes he describes,” he finds the study both a fine introduction and an impressive synthesis, if not innovative. Organized in three sections focusing on the Valois court, its “aristocratic factionalism and confessional divides” and the early days of Louis XII’s reign, the study offers several reevaluations such as the Colloque de Poissy and Henri IV’s accession.

LOSKOUTOFF, YVAN, ed. Héraldique et numismatique I: Moyen Âge—Temps Modernes. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013.

Review: J. Cunnally in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 262-263. Wide-ranging first volume focuses on coins (second planned on the use of heraldry in seals. Studies on coats of arms on coins, medals, royal iconography, medallic history, including that of imaginary medals, round out this useful and diverse collection. 6 color plates.

LUCIANI, ISABELLE. “Ordering Words, Ordering the Self: Keeping a Livre de Raison in Early Modern Provence, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries.” Trans. Lukas Ovrom. FHS 38.4 (October 2015), 529-548.

With her analysis of 87 livres de raison written by both men and women Luciani examines the “specific written and textual procedures that enabled the appropriation of the social world and the self through domestic writings.” She concludes that in early modern livres de raison “the ordering of the real via language not only is an increasingly familiar tool in the rational organization of quotidian life but also represents a space in which writers define their social interactions.”

MCCLARY, SUSAN. Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2013.

Review: M. Reeves in UTQ 84.3 (Summer 2015), 193-195. This collection of thirteen essays addresses “a remarkably diverse array of primary sources, including treatises, travel writing, letters, prophecy, visual art, poetry, and various musical forms. What ties these essays together is their common interest in tracing structures of feeling in written, visual, and performative art produced within various cultures across western Europe and the Americas during the seventeenth century.” The critic notes that this is a scholarly work, not an introductory text, which succeeds in promoting the seventeenth century as a period worthy of study in its own right.

MCCLIVE, CATHY. Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

Review: V. Worth-Stylianou in FS 70.2 (2016), 260-261. A thorough study of “references to a bodily function that in early modern France was less private than we might have assumed.” Reviewer recommends reading in conjunction with Sara Read’s 2013 Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England, as Read’s work focuses more on literary works, while McClive’s is more medical, legal, and theological in emphasis. Together, they form a detailed picture of the understanding and representation of the female reproductive body in the early modern period.

MC GOWAN, MARGARET M. ed. Dynastic Marriages, 1612/1615: A Celebration of the Hapsburg and Bourbon Unions. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

Review: J. Todorovic in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 290-291. Praiseworthy for its originality, its interdisciplinarity, its rich bibliography of both print and digitized primary sources, and the fourteen detailed analyses it provides. Stage and costume design, festival books, chivalric tradition, these and other aspects are lauded, all gathered here, thanks “to the credit of [the volume’s] prudent editor.”

MONTOYA, ALICIA C. Medievalist Enlightenment from Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013.

Review: M. Roussillon in DSS 265 (2014), 739-740. A study inscribed in a body of research examining the ways in which the medieval period was imagined or “constructed” in subsequent periods, the author examines the reception of the Middle Ages in the 17th and 18th centuries (during the “Crisis of the European Mind”). “A. C. Montoya montre que le médiéval n’est pas tant utilisé comme une catégorie historique que comme une catégorie morale et esthétique.” Divided into three sections (Conceptualizing the Medieval, Reimagining the Medieval, and Studying the Medieval), the study analyzes both aesthetic and fictional works, concluding that the medieval period reveals contradictions and tensions that are perhaps intrinsic to the development of modernity.

Review: J.-P. De Nola in S Fr 172 (2014), 143. Wide-ranging and particularly attentive to areas that earlier critics on the subject (Gustave Cohen, Nathan Edelman, Lionel Gossman, and others) had left largely untreated, M.’s work focuses on the chronological lacune of 1690-1740. Praiseworthy for its careful examination of texts and theories such as contrasting views of “le bon vieux temps” and chronological perfectibility.

MORRIS, HERBERT. "The Absent and Present Serpent in Nicolas Poussin’s Spring." CdDs XVI, 1 (2015), 63–76.

Poussin's decision not to include an image of a serpent in Spring's representation of Adam and Eve in Eden is unusual, especially considering the symbolic importance of serpents in his work, especially in Winter, a companion piece to Spring in his cycle of the four seasons. The author argues that Poussin "gains something from non-representation of the Serpent," and that the serpent is indeed present "in the Tree of Life, offering a deceptively appealing illusion." Finally, he concludes that Poussin in Spring offers "a radical and illuminating revision of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve from a Stoic perspective on life."

MOTSCH, ANDREAS. “De l’allégorie ethnographique à l’ethnographie allégorique: le cas de l’Amérique” in Pioffet, Marie-Christine, Anne-Élisabeth Spica, eds. S’exprimer autrement: poétique et enjeux de l’allégorie à l’Âge classique. Actes du colloque du Centre International de Rencontres sur le 17e siècle. Tübingen : Gunter Narr Verlag, 2016. 271-301.

Seeks to develop James Clifford’s observations on the function of allegory in the discourse of anthropology as a point of departure for reading textual and visual representations of the new world. The article argues that allegory played a constitutive role in early accounts of the indigenous peoples of North America. This observation is evidenced by the reoccurring themes in the frontispieces and engravings of the travelogues of Samuel de Champlain, Gabriel Sagard, and Thomas Harriot among others.

MUNS, JESSICA et al., eds. Aspiration, Representation and Memory: The Guise in Europe, 1506-1688. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

Review: D. Parrott in FS 70.3 (2016), 433-434. Explores the influence of one of Europe’s most (in)famous dynasties. Surveys the history of the Guise family and its ancestors from the Middle Ages on. Focuses on the seventeenth century, with a particular emphasis on Henri II, the fifth duc de Guise, whose grandiose visions and failures are studied in considerable detail.

NANCY, SARAH. La Voix féminine et le plaisir de l’écoute en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 172 (2014), 141. Informed by theories of the pleasure of listening, this examination focuses on relationships between feminine voices, music, word and spectacle. Impressive both for its engagement with primary sources and today’s critics, N.’s study is well documented, an example of interdisciplinarity imbued with serious scholarship.

NEVILE, JENNIFER. “Decorum and Desire in Renaissance Europe and the Maturation of a Discipline.” Ren Q 68.2 (2015), 597-612.

Dedicated to the memory of Barbara Sparti who “contributed so much to the development of early dance, and who never stopped questioning the boundaries of the discipline,” this comprehensive review essay includes ramifications for other disciplines: “music, theater, festivals, visual arts, costume, gesture, literature, garden design, political processes, and intellectual movements as well as questions of identity, order and moral virtue.” N. reminds us of numerous important contributions such as Margaret Mc Gowan’s monograph on dancing, Dance in the Renaissance (2008) and her La dance à la Renaissance (2012), the latter extremely useful for 16th and early 17th c. sources. N. also singles out for its “complexity and sophistication” the 1630 analysis of movement in Thibault’s Académie de l’espée. N.’s essay icludes a useful bibliography of several pages.

PROBES, CHRISTINE. " 'La Vie' selon les emblématistes : les sens et les significations." CdDs XV, 2 (2014), 18–32.

A comparative study of "la vie" that focuses on the role of the senses in the work of Jean-Jacques Boissard (Emblemes, 1584, 1593, 1595 ; and Theatrum vitae humanae, 1596) and Jean-Baptiste Chassignet (Sonnets franc-comtois, c. 1615). In addition to their consistent application of the senses, the two emblematists also evoke a tension between the senses and reason. By appealing to the eyes, the intellect, and the memory, their work "réunit l'utile à l'agréable, visant à plaire et à instruire."

REEVES, EILEEN. Evening News: Optics, Astronomy, and Journalism in Early Modern Europe. Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Review: W. Rothman in Ren Q 68.3 (2015), 1017-1018. Impressive for its range of primary sources, including a sonnet by a teenage Descartes and for his comparing of sensory impressions to engravings which are “the most successful, and best suggest an object when they resemble it less.”

RESIDORI, MATTEO, HÉLÈNE TROPÉ, DANIELLE BOILLET, and MARIE-MADELEINE FRAGONARD, eds. Vies d’écrivains, vies d’artistes: Espagne, France, Italie, XVIe–XVIIe siècles. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2014.

Review: E. Guerra in Ren Q 68.4 (2015), 1489-1490. This result of two research projects, “Formes et idées de la Renaissance au Lumières” and “Les Cultures de l’Europe méditerranéenne occidentale,” analyzes biographies, their writing processes and relation to societies including readers. Wide-ranging, the project also addresses the pedagogical role of biographies and confirms that “the biography is a precious instrument that . . . helps us further understand Renaissance societies.”

REYNAUD, CÉCILE and HERBERT SCHNEIDER, eds. Noter, annoter, éditer la musique – Mélanges offerts à Catherine Massip. École Pratique des Hautes Études: Sciences historiques et philologiques. Genève: Droz, 2002.

Review: M.-C. Schang in DSS 264 (2014), 575-576. The 44 articles presented in homage to the longtime fixture in the Department of Music at the BN are united only by their variety on several counts: linguistic (articles written in French, Italian, German, and English), methodological (contributions from researchers, musicians, archivists) and temporal (extending from the Middle Ages to the 20th century). While the volume may have benefited from thematic organization, the reviewer praises the diversity of approaches applied to source material that are presented.

SABATIER, GÉRARD. Le Prince et les arts. Stratégies figuratives de la monarchie française de la Renaissance aux Lumières. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2010.

Review: J.-M. Civardi in DSS 265 (2014), 735-737. A comprehensive study of the monarchy’s politicization of the arts from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment, including comparative analyses with other European countries. Divided into four sections, Part 1 treats the “Stratégies de la représentation,” Part 2 the “Résidences royales et énonciation,” Part 3 the “L’icône royale,” and Part 4 the “Cérémonial et culte monarchique.” The reviewer praises the subtlety of S.’s analyses and notes in particular the very valuable bibliography.

SCHUWEY, CHRISTOPHE. "Le Mercure galant: un recueil interactif." CdDs XVI, 1 (2015), 48–62.

This article looks at the Mercure as a "livre perpetuel"––a book constantly being written and rewritten––and shows how modern concepts of journalism are foreign to the seventeenth-century understanding of its editorial practice which considered the Mercure a "receuil." The author concludes that "Il constitue ainsi une plateforme à la plasticité maximale, idéale pour imprimer, diffuser, et surtout, conserver une série de contenus qui ne pourraient trouver place ailleurs : en cela, il participe à l’immense entreprise d’écriture de l’histoire du siècle de Louis le Grand. Mais la pérennité de sa republication lui permet en outre de susciter des productions, et de les imprimer ensuite, en une sorte de mouvement perpétuel: le Mercure galant est interactif."

SEIFERT, LEWIS C. and REBECCA M. WILKIN, eds. Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

Review: L.J. Burch in FS 70.4 (2016), 594-595. A collection of essays that explores friendship in a variety of guises, both as practiced in the world and as a source of creativity. Addresses gender, sexuality, and power relations “across multiple geographical, political, social, and religious spaces.” Reviewer finds collection both rigorous in its scholarship and accessible to a variety of readers. Suggests too that the collection not only teaches us about past notions of friendship, but also points to inspiring possibilities for relationships in our own present and future.

SENKEVITCH, TATIANA. “The Portrait of the King’s Minister and the State of Collaboration.” EMFS 37.1 (2015), 29-48.

“The essay examines The Allegorical Portrait of Minister Colbert, engraved by Van Schuppen after Le Brun’s design, in 1664, the year of Colbert’s appointment as the Chief Administrator of Buildings, Arts, and Manufactures in France. It locates the print’s programme within the context of the new administrative system for the arts in France implemented by the Minister and interprets it as an inventive conjuncture of pictorial genres. Either as a frontispiece or as an impresa, Le Brun’s design for the print linked Colbert’s political virtues with the new, collective forms of artistic enterprises. The theme of the collaborative relationship among the arts exemplified by Colbert’s institutional reforms calls attention to the emerging variance between the individual and the institutional in the creation of the national style urged by Colbert’s administration. The print demonstrates how the distillation of collective authorship can be achieved through the remediation of the specific arts — painting and tapestry in this case — based on the unifying role of disegno and the efficiency of print in translating ad vivum the generic characteristics of different media.”

SOUNAC, FRÉDÉRIC, ed. La Mélophobie littéraire. Toulouse: PU de Mirail, 2012.

Review: R. Sapino in S Fr 173 (2014), 424-425. This volume of Littératures contributes to the understanding of literary melophobia through ten articles of wide generic, chronological and geographical variety. 17 th c. scholars will appreciate Michèle Rosellini’s “Les singes de La Fontaine” which focuses on the symbol of the irrational cruelty and stupidity which is yet “portatrice di una forma di sagezza paradossale.” The volume includes a section of comptes-rendus.

STANTON, DOMNA C. The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France: Women Writ, Women Writing. Farnham: Ashgate. 2014

Review: S. Genieys-Kirk in MLR 111.1 (2016), 251-252. By analyzing cultural and literary representations of women, S. engages with Butler and Foucault to argue that gender norms constitute “sites of contested meaning” in 17th-century France. The first part of the book (“Women Writ”) studies works penned by male authors, engaging with recent scholarship that analyzes notions such as “classicism” as semi-mythical constructs. Part Two (“Writing Women”) turns to works by female authors, revealing the complex subversion of gender norms that figure in female literary production from the period. A “rich study” combining “literary and gender theories, psychoanalysis, and feminist epistemology,” the reviewer finds that the work sheds “new light on the complex ‘dynamics’ of the ‘Querelle des femmes et des hommes.’”

STERNBERG, GIORA. Status Interaction During the Reign of Louis XIV. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014.

Review: P. Scott in FS 70.1 (2016), 103-104. Provides a nuanced view that enhances modern understandings of individual status at the court of Louis XIV. The study covers everything from who handles a signatory plume, to clothing –for example the mantle–, to correspondence, and much more. Notes that status interactions did not always take place in the presence of the monarch and were not necessarily uniform and unchanging, but rather the product of precedent and custom.

TESSIER, ALEXANDRE. Réseaux diplomatiques et République des lettres: les correspondants de Sir Joseph Williamson (1660-1680). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015.

Review: R. Maber in FS 70.3 (2016), 432-433. A weighty volume (800 pages) of extensive research into the possible connections between scholarly and political correspondence. Concludes, based on Williamson’s letters, that the overwhelming tendency was to keep the two spheres separate. Although Williamson is British, he traveled to France and many of his correspondents were French, rendering the work of interest to French seventeenth-century scholars.

THOMAS, DANIEL. “The Final Years of the Constable of France, 1593-1627.” FHS 39.1 (2016), 73-103.

The author demonstrates that the actual power held by the person in the role of constable depended on royal favor, the administrative duties of the role, and nobles’ high regard for the office. However, the office was weakened by the changing realities of European warfare during the time of study. The author concludes that at the time of its abolition the office of constable had outlived its usefulness to the crown and its leading ministers.

TIKANOJA, TUOMAS. Transgressing Boundaries: Worldly Conversation, Politeness and Sociability in Ancien Régime France, 1660-1789. Helsinki: Unigrafia, 2013.

Review: C. Crowston in MLR 111.1 (2016), 253-254. An “ambitious” study tracing the emergence of the terms sociabilité and social in the eighteenth century, T.’s book examines a wide range of primary texts (works by salonnières, court manuals, treatises) to set out the argument that a “new high society constituted itself in the late seventeenth century as a self-conscious alternative to the absolutist court.” Arguing against recent works by Antoine Lilti and Steven Kale, T. defends Dena Goodman’s thesis that the salons “played a central role in the development of an autonomous public sphere.” The reviewer congratulates the author for “weaving together a rich and fascinating set of reflections” on the topics, but criticizes T.’s methodology for taking primary sources at face value.

TREZISE, SIMON, ed. The Cambridge Companion to French Music. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015

Review: M. Downes in TLS 5906 (June 10 2016), 22: A recurring theme in this volume is the contested status of French music, which tends to define itself in opposition to musical traditions that are seen as more coherent or more culturally dominant. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the musical “Other” is Italy. The volume also treats the influence of social institutions and of monarchs, including Louis XIV, on French music.

TRIBOUT, BRUNO. Les récits de conjuration sous Louis XIV. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Lanval, 2010.

Review: K. Laporta in RR 104.3/4 (2013), 392-395. Ambitious study of prose narratives published during the second half of the seventeenth century that address the controversial subject of revolt. Author examines the paradoxical nature of fictional representations of uprising during the reign of the Sun King, observing that whereas the readers are encouraged to identify and sympathize with the conspirators, the act of revolt is denounced, and the texts ultimately adopt a pro-monarchical stance that cautions against tyranny. According to the reviewer, Tribout’s pre-revolutionary corpus (not specified in the review) converges around “the pleasure of witnessing monarchical rule threatened and reestablished within the safe haven of fiction.” Reviewer admires Tribout’s meticulous research, but regrets that the author did not include a discussion of early modern theories of tragedy, or further develop his definition of the sublime noir, both of which would have strengthened his argument.

VAN DER LINDEN, DAVID. Experiencing Exile: Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Republic, 1680-1700. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

Review: M. van der Lugt in FS 70.2 (2016), 261-262. A three-part work that uses primary sources such as first-hand testimonies and sermons to explore diverse refugee experiences following the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Careful research allows the author to challenge certain idées reçues and expand current understanding of this significant moment in French religious, social, and political history. Despite gaps, notably the near-exclusion of Bayle, reviewer declares this an “exquisite piece of scholarship.”

VOISIN, PATRICK, ed. La Valeur de l’oeuvre littéraire, entre pôle artistique et pôle esthétique. Paris: Garnier, 2012.

Review: A. Schellino in S Fr 172 (2014), 205-206. This extremely wide-ranging investigation into the esthetic and artistic value of literature includes explorations organized into sections on general reflections, poetry, novel and literature and politics. Several theoretical chapters are followed by diverse inquiries into theatre, both textual and in the eye of the spectator. 17th c. scholars will appreciate two chapters on Racine’s Phèdre.

WADE, MARA R., ed. Gender Matters: Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014.

Review: M. Carter in Ren Q 68.3 (2015), 1105–1106. Wide-ranging collection “explores the intersectionality of multiple frameworks of gender construction and their expression as violence” in ramifications with disciplines such as theatre, literature, history, art and music. Transnational and with a global perspective which is also highly interdisciplinary. Recommended for educators (for several possible courses) and for scholars on violence and gender. Literature and visual art are particularly well-represented.

WHITE, SOPHIE. Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians, Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

Review: B. Evans in DFS 102 (2014)125-127. “From start to finish, this two-part study… testifies to impeccable research, remarkable ability to establish connections between archival findings, and profound understanding of the social forces under examination. White’s examination of the ‘process of racialization in colonial Louisiana,’ which focuses on ‘placing clothing at the center of cross-cultural relations and speaking of the vitality of cultural exchanges made visible on the body,’ elucidates very cogently the extent to which ‘Frenchification theories were clearly premised on the malleability rather than the fixedness of Indians’ identity’”.

DE WICQUEFORT, ABRAHAM, ed. Les gazettes parisiennes de l’année 1653: Suivies de L’état de la France en 1654. Ed. Philippe Mauran. Paris: Champion, 2014.

Review: A.Pettegree in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 307-308. Welcome continuation of Claude Boutin’s 2010 edition of the 1648-52 newsletters (it had been thought that the later issues were too water damaged to be useful). De W.’s weekly newsletters written in service to Augustus of Braunschweig-Lüneburg presented political and diplomatic events and assessed powers and the process of decision making at court.