FRENCH 17

ANDRAULT, RAPHAËLE. “Guérir de la folie. La dispute sur la transfusion sanguine, 1667-1668.” DSS 264 (2014), 509-532.

Analyzes the polemic surrounding transfusions in relation to contemporary conceptions of blood and its life-preserving properties. Summarizes the divergent points of view adopted during the debate while also highlighting the Journal des sçavans role in the diffusion of these texts. Argues that studying polemics like this one reveals the important, often tacit preconceptions held by given publics at a given time.

BAH-OSTROWIECKI, HÉLÈNE. Le Theophrastus redivivus. Érudition et combat antireligieux au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012.

Review: N. Gengoux in DSS 265 (2014), 740-742. A study of the anonymous text based on the author’s “pioneering” dissertation. The analysis centers on the text’s doxographical form, interpreted “comme le signe d’une position essentiellement polémique de l’auteur anonyme du Theophrastus lequel cherche moins à prouver la vérité de sa thèse naturaliste et athée qu’à opposer à la position chrétienne une position adverse aussi forte, qui en fixe les limites, en dénonce la relativité et permette de défendre la liberté qu’elle étouffe.” The reviewer objects to certain conclusions, but admires the style and the quality of the argumentation, as well as the originality of the evoked “parenté” between atheism and religious thought.

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.

BERTHIAUME, PIERRE. Matières incandescentes: problématiques matérialistes des Lumières françaises, 1650-1780. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014.

Review: I. Moreau in MLR 111.1 (2016), 256-257. The reviewer finds the work to be a “useful survey of the key issues and driving concepts that informed a materialist understanding of man and the world in the eighteenth century.” B. argues that materialism does not constitute “a unified discourse” but rather is the site for tensions emerging from theology and the life sciences; the construction of materialism must therefore be understood in relation to what it negates or calls into question (the Bible, God’s existence, miracles, the Revelation, etc). Despite what the title may suggest, the reviewer notes that the study focuses primarily on texts published between 1750 and 1780.

BISARO, XAVIER. Le Passé présent. Une enquête liturgique dans la France du début du XVIIIe siècle. Histoire Religieuse de la France 38. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2012.

Review: M. Lezowski in DSS 265 (2014), 733-734. “Ce livre relève du genre de l’‘enquête de l’enquête’: proposant une vue d’ensemble sur les recherches liturgiques d’un oratorien, Pierre Lebrun.” The work underscores “la crise de l’érudition liturgique ouverte par le concile de Trente.” L. praises the study for its concision and nuance, as well as its accessibility to non-specialists.

BLANCHARD, JEAN-VINCENT. “Beyond Belief: Sovereignty and the Spectacle of Martyrdom in Early Modern France.” SCFS 36.2 (2014), 94-108.

Thought-provoking article highlights the importance of the rhetoric and representation of the memory of pain to the formation of a body politic. Blanchard presents a reading of Corneille’s martyr play Polyeucte (1643) in light of the Jesuit Louis Richeome’s devotion book La Peinture spirituelle (1611) in order to demonstrate how the performative violence of martyrdom ultimately functions to create and sustain the idea of divinely appointed sovereignty.

BRAIDER, CHRISTOPHER. The Matter of Mind: Reason and Experience in the Age of Descartes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Review: H. Bjornstad in PFSCL XLVIII, 84 (2016), 109-111. A “challenge to the place of the dualist Cartesian subject as the crucial turning point on the way to modernity, countering not only accounts celebrating the Cartesian threshold moment (from Hans Blumberg to Jonathan Israel) but also decrying it (from Adorno to Foucault)" that is “supremely ambitious and utterly successful.” Following an introduction that “importantly shifts the emphasis from reasons to experience as the central concept that best enables us to grasp the major intellectual stakes of the period,” six chapters “so rich both in the breadth of their contextualizations and in the depth of their critical engagement as to contain the germ of a monograph of its own” analyze D’s Meditations, Poussinian art, Cornelian tragic poetry, the Moliéresque stage, Pascal’s Pensée, and Boileau’s “Sur l’Équivoque.”

Review: E. McClure CdDs XVI, 1 (2015), 109–111. Braider challenges the myth of Descartes as “tenacious idol to which most accounts of the early modern West pay homage” and instead centers his account of seventeenth-century French culture on the influence of Montaigne, "plac[ing] the age of classicism against the messiness of contingent embodiment rather than, say, against the geometric reflecting pools of Versailles." For Braider, "Descartes does, in the end, provide a useful framework through which to view the century, but only insofar as his aspiration for the clear, the distinct, and the universal is undercut by the inevitable pull of chaotic contingency." Poussin, Corneille, Molière, Pascal, and Boileau are important focus points for Braider and "the wide range of works considered, as well as the looseness of Braider’s theoretical apparatus, can at times lead the reader to wonder to what extent the conflict between universal and particular is specific to seventeenth-century France." In short, "Braider’s efforts to destabilize the classical canon, or, more accurately, to point to the ways in which the canon destabilizes itself" resonate with contemporary critical questions and "Braider’s provocative arguments, supported by readings that are often no less than ingenious, are a joy to read."

CAVAILLÉ, JEAN-PIERRE. Les Déniaisés. Irréligion et libertinage au début de l’époque moderne. Paris : Classiques Garnier, 2014.

Review: M.-F. Pellegrin in RPFE 141.2 (2016), 235-290. “ Avec cette grande somme sur le libertinage ”, l’auteur “ défend l’utilité d’une catégorie historiographique apparemment un peu désuète. … Cavaillé entend en montrer ainsi la pertinence pour comprendre des penseurs assez divers d’apparence, le plus souvent rejetés ou minorés comme incompatibles avec l’idéal classique et rationaliste du grand siècle. … Ce travail mêle études de cas et réflexion générale sur la notion même de libertinage avec une maîtrise et une force démonstrative constants, l’auteur reprenant parfois des réflexions déjà développées ailleurs ”.

COUSSON, AGNÈS. L’Écriture de soi: lettres et récits autobiographiques des religieuses de Port-Royal: Angélique et Agnès Arnauld, Angélique de Saint-Jean, Arnauld d’Andilly, Jacqueline Pascal. Préface par Philippe Sellier. Paris: Champion, 2012.

Review: F. Forner in S Fr 174 (2014), 591-592. Comprehensive and praiseworthy examination includes analyses of the epistolary in a religious institution in general as well as in Port-Royal in particular. Wide-ranging examination investigates importance of St. Augustine’s work, notably in relation to “amour-propre” and love for God, the style and length of the letters, the daily life of Port-Royal, the letter as means of defense of the community, the centrality of the letter, among other useful aspects. Numerous photographic reproductions of letters are included as is a genealogical tree of the Arnauld family.

CUMMINGS, BRIAN and FREYA SIERHUIS. Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

Review: E. Harvey in MP 113.4 (May 2016) E242-E245. The volume includes fifteen essays framed by an introduction and afterword coauthored by Cummings and Sirhuis. The collection encompasses diverse manifestations of subjectivity or the passions across a sweep of time (Montaigne to Hobbes), a range of disciplines (philosophy, politics, theology, art, literature, medicine, science), and a variety of approaches (philosophy, literary criticism, intellectual history). The final section of the volume, “Philosophy and the Early Modern Passions,” includes an essay by Stephan Laqué in which he considers Hamlet through the Cartesian mind-body divide. The reviewer states that “although the collection is a valuable addition to the debates on the passions, in its endeavor to rectify the somatic imbalance of its predecessor scholars, it ends up privileging through structure, method and topic the perspective of the mind.

DIONNE, VALÉRIE. “Le Sourire canin de Montaigne et de La Mothe le Vayer, ou la vertu cynique du libertin.” EMFS 37.1 (2015), 2-13.

“Le cynisme a suscité au cours de l’histoire de vives controverses. D’un côté, les partisans de cette philosophie justifient le cynisme des Anciens comme une pratique juste qui se présente sous la conduite de mère Nature. D’un autre côté, on entend la voix des détracteurs qui contestent la vie menée par ces philosophes cyniques comme inappropriée et indécente. En prenant part à ce débat, cet article montre que Montaigne et La Mothe Le Vayer revisitent l’opposition cynique entre nature et culture pour s’attacher plus particulièrement au thème de l’universalisme augustinien de la pudeur appartenant à la nature post-lapsaire de l’homme. Nos philosophes s’emploient à citer et représenter Diogène afin de déstabiliser cette perspective universaliste. Grâce aux cyniques, Montaigne et La Mothe Le Vayer peuvent ainsi exposer une nature pluraliste où les ‘lois naturelles’ sont spéculatives, complexes et souvent contradictoires. Cet essai établit que ces deux philosophes libertins recourent au cynisme dans le but de libérer les esprits et d’éveiller le jugement critique des citoyens afin qu’ils remettent en question les vérités dites universelles de ce qui est juste ou immanent à l’homme.”

DOOLEY, BRENDAN ed. A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 49. 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.

FRISCH, ANDREA. Forgetting Differences: Tragedy, Historiography, and the French Wars of Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015.

Review: G. Hoffman in MP 113.4 (2016), E239-E241. Although focuses primarily on the sixteenth century, this study will be of interest to dix-septièmistes for its interweaving of legal, religious, and literary history and the ways it sheds light on the rise of neoclassical tragedy and the modern era.

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 in the 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. I libri di Viella 159. 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.

GRÉGOIRE, VINCENT. “Malentendus culturels rencontrés par les missionnaires usulines en Nouvelle-France au XVIIème siècle.” SCFS 36.2 (2014), 109-124.

Grégoire’s study chronicles the difficulties experienced by a group of Ursuline sisters who established a convent in Nouvelle-France in 1639 with the intention of providing a religious and moral instruction for the young Native American girls. According to the author (who generously cites firsthand témoignages throughout the article), the sisters found the process of assimilation to the French culture, or “francisation,” to be much more challenging than anticipated, having underestimated the strong sense of cultural identity of the Native American population as well as of the Canadian daughters of French settlers.

GUERRINI, ANITA. The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris. Chicago: U Chicago P, 2015.

Review: P. Duris in FS 70.4 (2016), 598-599. Looks at the anatomical and physiological research carried out by the newly formed Académie royale des sciences in Paris from 1667 on. Focuses on human and animal dissection, including exotic species, for example an elephant at Versailles in 1681. Also explores circulatory systems, the discovery of which is considered to be one of the major scientific achievements of the era. Shows that such experiments and discoveries were objects of fascination not just to scientists, but to members of the court as well.

HOFMANN, CATHERINE and HÉLÈNE RICHARD, edsLes globes de Louis XIV. Étude artistique, historique et matérielle. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2012.

Review: R. Abad in E Cr 55.2 (2015), 1-3. The editors of the summer volume of E Cr introduce its focus, the notion of Genius. The impetus for the collection was a journée d’études held November 15, 2013 at the Maison française d’Oxford. The approach favored is the history of the notion “dans la longue durée” and in the great variety of constructions and uses, including, for example, quarrels and debates, political, economical, linguistic (and other) relationships. 17th c. specialists will appreciate studies on linguistic phenomena and on Descartes, for example.

KESSLER-MESGUICH, SOPHIE. Les études hébraïques en France: De François Tissard à Richard Simon (1508–1680). Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 517. 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.

KRAUSE, VIRGINIA. Witchcraft, Demonology, and Confession in Early Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015.

Review: W. Williams in FS 70.3 (2016), 430-431. An extensively researched yet concise study that makes a significant contribution to our ever-evolving understanding of early modern demonology. References both literature and law as it explores the crucial role of oral confession versus visible evidence in proving witchcraft cases. Accessible to specialists and lay readers alike.

KROUPA, GREGOR. “The Poets and the Philosophers: Genius and Analogy in Descartes and the Encyclopédie (Following Aristotle).” E Cr 55.2 (2015), 34-47.

Beginning with Aristotle’s statement that “‘the greatest thing by far’ for a poet is to be a master of metaphor: ‘It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others: and it is also a sign of genius [euphyía], since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars’” (qtd. from the Poetics), K. then turns his attention to Aristotle’s Rhetoric with its narrowing down of the definition of metaphor: “‘metaphors must not be far-fetched, or they will be difficult to grasp, not obvious, or they will have no effect.’” K.’s consideration of Descartes focuses on what he terms “unofficial texts” of the Cartesian canon, “to find heterogeneous analogies between the physical and spiritual domains—those better served by the genius of poetry than rational methods” (42). In the remainder of his essay, K. focuses on the Encyclopédie, concluding that “Diderot links genius to analogy in a way that echoes both Aristotle and Descartes, insofar as analogy is not primarily a didactic tool but a means of discovery” (45). This thoughtful and convincing article provides stimulating references in the notes and concludes that while the “century of genius” (the 17th) brought “so many new discoveries, [. . . the 18th c.’s task was] to bring order to the vast quantity of new knowledge.”

LAS HERAS, IGNACIO IÑARREA. “Étude des itinéraires français du pèlerinage de Compostelle des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle.” S Fr 172 (2014), 22-36.

This study examines the use of French routes to Compostela and their evolution, considering pertinent texts relevant to frequency of the route. Although Las H. indicates other secondary routes, he focuses on the following: La via Turonensis, La via Tolosana and the routes from Béarn towards Roncevaux, and La via Podiensis. Well documented article includes attention to other voyage literature and popular songs of the time.

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.”

MARAL, ALEXANDRE. Le Roi-Soleil et Dieu. Paris: Librairie académique Perrin, 2012.

Review: X. Bisaro in DSS 264 (2014), 573-574. The reviewer praises the author’s ability to succinctly and powerfully synthesize the complexity of the religious polemics during Louis XIV’s reign, as well as the originality of certain arguments and the multidisciplinary methodological approach. Despite mentioning several weaknesses (stylistic and substantive), B. concludes that the study proposes “un aperçu érudit et accessible du règne de Louis XIV, tout en en dévoilant des aspects aussi captivants que mal connus.”

MARTIN, CRAIG. Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History and Philosophy in Early Modern Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2014.

Review: S. Gaukroger in Ren Q 68.1 (2015), 267-268. Judged a “clear and careful book,” the volume includes chapters on the rise to prominence of the Jesuits along with cases of anti-Aristotelianism, such as Mersenne and Gassendi. The reviewer would have wished for an explanation as to why Aristotelianism was adopted in the 13th c. and why, after its 17th c. abandonment, it was revived in the 19th c.

MAURAN, PHILIPPE. “Le Ballet des Incompatibles (Montpellier-1655) ou l’état du Languedoc en 1655.” DSS 265 (2014), 691-707.

Argues that the libretto for the Ballet des Incompatibles can be analyzed as a pièce de circonstance reacting to events from the Fronde. Reviews some of the criticism on the question of authorship

MC GOWAN, MARGARET M. ed. Dynastic Marriages, 1612/1615: A Celebration of the Hapsburg and Bourbon Unions. European Festival Studies: 1450-1700. 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.”

MEERE, MICHAEL. “Theatres of Torture: Martyrs, Pagans, and the Politics of Conversion in Early Seventeenth-Century France.” EMFS 37.1 (2015), 14-28.

“This essay examines writing about and representations of pain and torture by looking specifically at two French Catholic martyr plays that appeared at the turn of the seventeenth century: Nicolas Soret’s La Céciliade (1606) and Jean Boissin de Gallardon’s Le Martyre de saincte Catherine (1618). It interprets these plays alongside Antonio Gallonio’s Trattato degli instrumenti di martiro (1591; 1594) and Richard Verstegan’s Théâtre des cruautez des Herectiques de nostre temps (1587; 1607). On the one hand, by analysing the representations of physical torture, this article investigates the relationship between religious violence in the real world and the significance of the martyr figure on stage in La Céciliade. On the other, it takes into account the crushing of the executioners’ bodies in Boissin’s play and in iconographical representations of St Catherine’s wheel of torture, arguing that representations of the martyrs’ and pagans’ injured bodies not only serve to profess publicly the truth of the Catholic faith but also act as vehicles for the Catholic Church’s politicization of martyrdom and conversion.”

MELION, WALTER S., JAMES CLIFTON, and MICHEL WEEMANS, eds. Imago Exegetica: Visual Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400–1700. Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 33. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Review: B. J. Noble in Ren Q 68.3 (2015), 994-995. This welcome and massive volume of over 1000 pages includes the work of both junior and senior scholars as it “examine[s] the relation between artistic practice and biblical hermeneutics.” Includes 24 color plates.

MENTZER, RAYMOND ed. Les Registres des consistoires des Églises réformées de France — XVIe–XVIIe siècles: Un inventaire. Geneva: Droz, 2014.

Review: D. C. Margolf in Ren Q 68.2 (2015), 723-725. More than an inventory, M.’s volume provides “a succinct history of the Reformed consistory, its archives and the methodologies that historians have used to interpret these sources.” Reminds us that many records are lost due to Louis XIV’s attempt to “eradicate all traces of Reformed churches.”

Review: M. Green in FS 70.2 (2016), 259-260. Uses extant documents to create an “inside view” that traces Reformed Church history back as early as the 1560s. A three-chapter essay introduces an inventory of consistories classified by place. Includes an index of places and names, but no thematic index. Reviewer declares it a useful research tool for those studying the history of the Reformed Church in France.

MILANESE, ARNAUD. “‘History as psychology’: de quoi est faite une psychologie empiriste chez Bacon?” DSS 265 (2014), 619-364.

Proposes a reconsideration of Francis Bacon’s thought by arguing that psychology articulates a fundamental link between philosophy and history: “la possibilité d’une psychologie cognitive pleinement philosophique passe … par une historiographie des savoirs, et d’abord de la philosophie.”

MONTOYA, ALICIA C. Medievalist Enlightenment from Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Medievalism Vol. 2. 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.

MURATORI, CECILIA and BURKHARD DOHM, eds. Ethical Perspectives on Animals in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period. Micrologus’ Library 55. Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013.

Review: P. F. Cuneo in Ren Q 68.3 (2015), 1030-1032. The result of two research projects, the volume’s goals are as follows: “To show that the materials revealing ethical perspectives on animals is richer and more complex than previously assumed; and to consider the development of ethical problems from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries without holding to the radical separation between a phase before Descartes and one after Descartes.” Both goals are capably met; 17th c. scholars will appreciate chapter 6, “Descartes on the Moral Status of Animals”. Highly useful both for animal studies and human identity and culture.

QUANTIN, JEAN-LOUIS. “‘Si mes Lettres sont condamnées à Rome... ‘Les Provinciales devant le Saint-Office.” DSS 265 (2014), 587-617.

Analysis of the condemnation of the Lettres provinciales and other Jansenist works based on archives from the Stanza Storica, including an appendix with transcriptions of primary documents. Provides details on the officials involved in the condemnation.

PASCHOUD, ADRIEN and NATHALIE VUILLEMIN, eds. Penser l’ordre naturel, 1680-1810. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2012.

Review: P. Balazs in S Fr 172 (2014), 142. An attestation to the semantic “malléabilité” of the term “l’ordre naturel,” this collection of essays responds to the question, “L’ordre de la nature réside-t-il dans les choses même ou bien dans leur modélisation scientifique?” Scholars examine aspects as varied as “la physico-théologie,” “le materialisme,” “la naufrage,” and “la poésie descriptive,” among others.

PETERSCHMITT, LUC. Espace et métaphysique de Gassendi à Kant Anthologie. Paris: Hermann, 2013.

Review: J. Walsh in RPFE 140.2 (2015), 246-248. “The volume is divided into fourteen sections, each devoted to either a philosopher or a group of related philosophers. Each section begins with a helpful short general introduction to the concept of space of each thinker, followed by useful comments on each excerpt of primary text, followed by the primary texts themselves.” In spite of some criticisms, the reviewer writes that this anthology “will be undoubtedly useful for any francophone interested in theories of space in the early modern period and especially for those teaching classes on the topic.”

POIRSON, MARTIAL. Les Audiences de Thalie. La comédie allégorique, théâtre des idées à l’âge classique. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013.

Review: P. Martinuzzi in S Fr 173 (2014), 361-362. Focusing on a vast corpus, largely unknown, P. demonstrates his pluridisciplinary competences, examining French dramatists who treated dramatic allegory from 1672 to 1795. Genres include: opéras-comiques, parody, pantomime, ballet, among others. Praiseworthy for its innovative critical horizons.

RANDALL, CATHARINE. The Wisdom of Animals: Creatureliness in Early Modern French Spirituality. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame Press, 2014.

Review: M. Senior in MP 113.3 (Feb. 2016) E148-E151. Randall argues that “religious writings and practices in early modern Europe reveal a shift toward increased compassion for animals that contributed directly to the animal rights movement and contemporary calls for animal liberation.” Randall examines François de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life (1608) at length, as well as the Protestant poet Guillaume Du Bartas’ La Semaine (1578) and Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant’s Amusement philosophique sur le langage des bêtes (1739). Other 17th century authors appearing in this work are Descartes and La Fontaine. The reviewer concludes that this is “a highly original contribution to the history of thinking about and thinking with animals.” The reviewer also praises Randall’s “poetic flair and economy that makes it a great pleasure to read.”

Review: L. Mackenzie in MLR 110.3 (2015), 860-862. A “welcome contribution to the growing scholarship on animals and early modern culture” (861), most notably for restoring the importance of theology to the discussion of the “animal turn” in the period. Analyzing texts by Montaigne, Du Bartas, de Sales, La Fontaine, and Jesuit priest Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant, the author examines what she calls a “theology of creatureliness” figuring animals as teachers and co-inhabitants of God’s created world. Unlike the more descriptive representations of animals in pre-Renaissance texts, these works complicate the relationship between animals, man, and God. The reviewer notes that R. could have further developed certain analyses, but overall praises the study for shedding important light on the “deep historical back-story” (862) to contemporary debates about the intelligence of animals and related ethical questions.

Review: P. Sahlins in Ren Q 68.2 (2015), 726-728. Focuses on two questions: “how animals are used as a means for humans to explore themselves and the meaning of existence, and how animals can be subjects in their own rights with their own minds.” 17th c. scholars will appreciate chapter 3 on François de Sales where R. demonstrates S.’s concept of animals as providing models for spiritual life. Confessional and chronological axes organize the volume. S. has praise for certain aspects and serious reserves for others such as R.’s remarks on La Fontaine and on salon culture.

Review: Jean Leclerc CdDs XVI, 1 (2015), 111–112. Randall surveys thought ranging from theological interpretation of the Bible and Thomas Aquinas to modern thought on animal rights (Keith Thomas, Diana Donald, Erica Fudge) in order to measure “les acquis quant à la perception des animaux, leurs structures sociales, leur capacité à communiquer, à sentir et à vivre des emotions.” This study focuses on Montaigne, Du Bartas, François de Sales, and Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant and spans the 16th through 18th centuries. The reviewer concludes in short: “un livre utile au champ des études interdisciplinaires du long XVIIe siècle, agréable à lire malgré quelques redondances, et solide sur le plan de la recherche malgré quelques oublis bibliographiques.”

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.”

ROUX, ALEXANDRA. “Robert Challe et Malebranche: de la recherche de la vérité à la recherche de la vraie religion.” DSS 265 (2014), 651-675.

Considers Robert Challe (whose works were only rediscovered in the 20th century) as a reader of Malebranche, specifically analyzing the ways in which Challe subverts Malebranche’s writings to articulate a Deist philosophy.

SCHAFFER, SIMON. “Fontenelle’s Newton and the Uses of Genius.” E Cr E Cr 55.2 (2015), 48-61.

Pertinent consideration of F. as “both emblem and protagonist of the cultural uses of genius.” The concept of both individual and national genius are examined and illustrated through numerous texts of F. and others, including the eulogies/éloges F. formally made in his roles in the academies and his correspondence with prominent Europeans. With references to Newton, Voltaire and others, S. demonstrates “the range of uses of genius in . . . public statements about the development and fate of natural philosophy [ . . . and how] questions of authorship and intellectual property were central in the establishment of the term’s sense.”

TONOLO, SOPHIE. “L’allégorie, en image et en texte, dans les almanachs d’époque Louis XIV conservés à Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France (1645-1690)” 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. 49-63.

“L’almanach apparaît donc comme un outil de communication puissant et l’allégorie se déploie comme un dispositif bien orchestré. Cependant, la virtuosité des nombreux artistes et artisans qui y travaillent enrichit peu à peu le processus propagandiste. Centre des pièces, la figure masculine de monarque est peu à peu supplantée par une représentation abstraite de la France, et de son peuple. La fin naturelle de l’allégorie, instruire le spectateur, se dote d’une dimension métadiscursive : une célébration des pouvoirs de l’allégorie ou une pédagogie de l’image.”

TRUE, MICAH. Masters and Students: Jesuit Mission Ethnography in Seventeenth-Century New France. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2015.

Review: V. Grégoire in FS 70.3 (2016), 435-436. A well-written (reviewer) work that has two main emphases. One is to investigate the ways the Jesuits used language and translation in their missions in New France. The other is to look at their written accounts of their mission project in the Relations annuelles published in Paris in the middle part of the seventeenth century. Shows that Jesuits behaved like colonizers, not just missionaries and ethnographers.

TUTINO, STEFANIA. Shadows of Doubt: Language and Truth in Post-Reformation Catholic Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Review: J. P. Sommerville in Ren Q 68.2 (2015), 671-672. European Catholic culture is the focus of T,’s work which extends into the 17th c. Praiseworthy, notably for its “impressive manuscript and printed primary sources.” Valuable for scholars and others interested in the culture and the ideas of the early modern.

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.”

VAN MIERT, DIRK, ed. Communicating Observations in Early Modern Letters (1500–1675), Epistolography and Epistemology in the Age of the Scientific Revolution. Warburg Institute Colloquia 23. London: The Warburg Institute, 2013.

Review: K. Reeds in Ren Q 68.3 (2015), 1015-1016. Eleven essays analyze content, presentation of observations, social protocols and materiality. 17th c. scholars will appreciate the contributions on Descartes and on Peiresc, among others. Highly recommended.

VINCIGUERRA, LUCIEN. La Représentation excessive. Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Pascal. Villeneuve d’Ascq : PU du Septentrion, coll. “ Philosophie moderne ”, 2013.

Review: P. Hamou dans RPFE 140.2 (2015) 249-251. L’auteur reprend “ la question de la représentation à l’Âge classique, interrogeant quatre figures philosophiques canoniques ”. Le critique trouve l’analyse de Descartes “ tout à fait remarquable, en particulier en ce qu’elle nous fait comprendre pourquoi nos problèmes (le dualisme, le voile des perceptions, les équivoques sceptiques du représentationnalisme) ne sont pas et ne pouvaient pas être ceux de Descartes ”. Par contre, “ les pages consacrées à Locke, Leibniz ou Pascal sont également très suggestives, mais parfois moins convaincantes ”.

WIENAND, ISABELLE and OLIVIER RIBORDY “La conception cartésienne de l’amour pour Dieu: amour raisonnable et passion.” DSS 265 (2014), 635-650.

Despite preconceptions to the contrary, Descartes does not entirely overlook love. The authors analyze Descartes’ reflections on intellectual or reasonable love, sensual or sensitive love, and love for God in his correspondence and in the Passions de l’âme, contending that each type is predicated upon the union of the body and soul. Suggests that his epistolary works are “de toute première importance pour l’intelligence de sa doctrine de l’amour.”