French 17 FRENCH 17

2011 Number 59

PART III: PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION

ASCHE, MATTHIAS, MICHAEL HERRMANN and ULRIKE LUDWIG, eds. Krieg, Militär und Migration in der Frühen Neuzeit. (Herrschaft und soziale Systeme in der Frühen Neuzeit, Bd. 9.) Berlin/Münster: Lit 2008.

Review: U. Niggemann in HZ 290.2 (2010), 470-471. Focus of this collection of essays is war, the military and migration in the Early Modern. Wide-ranging essays investigate numerous factors of mobility in a highly informative volume which does not neglect economics. Soldiers and their families including Huguenot officers are studied.

BECK-CHAUVEAU, LAURENCE. La déréliction. L’esthétique de la lamentation amoureuse de la latinité profane à la modernité chrétienne, A.D.R.A. Nancy, 2009.

Review: J. Goeury in BHR 72.3 (2010), 715-716: L’intérêt principal de cette étude réside indéniablement dans cette exploration du corpus chrétien néo-latin, restraint au sous-corpus magdalénien du XVIe et du XVIIe siècle, presque exclusivement élaboré en terres catholiques dans le sillage de la Contre Réforme .

BERGIN, JOSEPH. Church, Society, and Religious Change in France, 1580 1730. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2009.

Review: W. Reinhard in HZ 290.3 (2010), 789-790. Welcome volume by renowned scholar of French history (earlier volumes authored on Richelieu, La Rochefoucauld, bishops and the crown). The present study examines numerous aspects of change including new orders and congregations, recruitment and other activities by bishops, sacramental practice, Jansenism and the dévots.

BIETENHOLZ, PETER G. Encounters with a Radical Erasmus. Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe. Toronto/ Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Review: M. Pohlig in HZ 290.2 (2010), 477-478. Praiseworthy for a rethinking and reassessment of Erasmus’s radicality. P. asks if radicality is destructive, subversive or if it can be affirmative. The changing notion is both useful and interesting. This study by the Erasmus expert B. is judged an instructive work as it asks two central questions: To what extent does Erasmus inspire radical thought and how radical was Erasmus himself? 17th c. French scholars will appreciate the pages on libertins érudits such as Bayle. Praiseworthy rethinking of the concept in the Early Modern, even if B.’s conclusion is manchmal ja, manchmal nein (478) [often yes, often no].

BISCHOFF, CORDULA and ANNE HENNINGS, eds.,Goldener Drache Weißer Adler. Kunst im Dienste der Macht am Kaiserhof von China und am sächsisch-polnischen Hof (16441795). München/Dresden: Hirmer/ Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, 2008. and

EIKELMANN, RENATE, ed., Die Wittelsbacher und das Reich der Mitte. 400 Jahre China und Bayern. München: Hirmer, 2009.

Review: M. Köhler in HZ 290.2 (2010), 419-422. Reviewed together, these collections of essays examine European intersections with China, notably through the numerous Jesuit missions undertaken in the Early Modern. Focus is on Germany but analyses of the intensive cultural, political and economic relations extend to those between Versailles and Siam. The reviewer would have appreciated more attention to the got chinois as it relates to the gardens.

BOISSON, DIDIER et YVES KRUMENACKER, éds. La Coexistence confessionnelle à l’épreuve. Etudes sur les relations entre protestants et catholiques dans la France moderne. Lyon: Equipe Religions, Sociétés et Acculturation (RESEA), 2009.

Review: A. Dufour in BHR 73.1 (2011), 246-249: Neuf communications d’une journée d’études tenue le 30 septembre 2006 à Lyon. Ce volume est très dense et riche d’informations sur une histoire du vécu protestant-catholique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, dans toute la France.

BRÉTÉCHÉ, MARION. De la mise à l’écart à l’écriture sur le monde: les mécanismes de l’exil aux Provinces-Unies des historiens-informateurs (vers 1680 vers 1720). PFSCL 37.73 (2010), 379-392.

Examines the issues involved in involuntary mise à l’écart’ in the case of nine French writers, in exile in the United Provinces after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, looking particularly at issues surrounding identity and socio-economic integration.

CARLINO, ANDREA and MICHEL JEANNERET, eds. Vulgariser la Médecine: Du Style Médical en France et en Italie. Cahiers d’humanisme et de Renaissance 89. Geneva: Librairie Droz S.A., 2009.

Review: D. Gentilcore in Ren Q 63 (2010), 238-239. This welcome volume of studies is the result of an international research project on the style and diffusion of knowledge during the period 1550-1700 (238). The collection is organized into sections as follows: Strategies of Seduction, Genre Games, and The Author and His Public. The volume is wide-ranging and includes, of particular interest to 17th c. French scholars, an examination of Théophraste Renaudot’s strategy. R. developed a questionnaire to be filled out by patients in rural areas and mailed to a physician, thereby rendering accessible medical knowledge and treatment. Index, illustrations, tables, and a bibliography.

CLARK, STUART. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Review: J. Partner in Ren Q 63 (2010), 968-969. Considered an impressive and authoritative contribution to the cultural history of sight, C.’s study is based on a wide range of sources from philosophy, anatomy, and art history among others (968). C.’s visual history leads him to argue that human subjects make’ the objects they perceive, fashioning them out of the qualities that belong intrinsically to perception, not to the objects themselves (C. 4). Physical mechanisms as well as the role of the mind are examined including additionally, in keeping with his 1999 Thinking with Demons, possible interference from malign spirits.

COHEN, LEONARDO. The Missionary Strategies of the Jesuits in Ethiopia (15551632). Aethiopistische Forschungen 70. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009

Review: H. Chen in Ren Q 63 (2010), 226-228. Praiseworthy study deals not only with Jesuit strategies and responses to their missions in Ethiopia but places these activities in a global picture of Jesuit missionary work. In addition to religious conversions, the volume includes perspectives on cultural transformations in their diverse expressions politics, theology, ritual, literature and art (C. 11). While the study includes a helpful index and bibliography, there is no glossary or map, apparatuses that the reviewer would have appreciated.

CONLEY, JOHN. The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France. Cornell UP, 2002.

Review: D. Picco in DSS 249 (2010), 784-787: Conley’s new work, portant sur les écrits de Mesdames de Sablé, Deshoulières, Sablière, Maintenon et de Mademoiselle de La Vallière les replace dans le contexte du discours de la Réforme catholique sur la philosophie morale et de la culture des salons parisiens o elles participèrent aux débats intellectuels du temps [ . . . ] L’un des apports essentiels de ce livre est de démontrer l’étroitesse du lien entre ces écrits féminins et la culture des salons du XVIIe siècle, monde clairement dominé, selon l’auteur, par les femmes.

COURSE, DIDIER. La Dévotion honnête du Père Le Moyne. OeC 35.2 (2010), 33-42.

Etude de l’oeuvre du P. Le Moyne: une oeuvre qui porte en elle-même les signes et les formes d’une dévotion nouvelle, qui si elle a osé s’appeler aisée’, relève avant tout d’un acte exigeant de synthèse et de réforme.

DARWIN, JOHN, After Tamerlane. The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 14002000. London: Penguin, 2008.

Review: D. Langewiesche in HZ 290 (2010), 145-146. Highly praiseworthy review of this wide-ranging analysis in terms both of periods and geographical areas covered. Judged brilliant, D.’s study examines global patterns of competition, collaboration and coexistence and includes investigation of economic, political and cultural forces both within and without Europe.

DASTON, LORRAINE and MICHAEL STOLLEIS, eds. Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe. Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy. Burlington: Ashgate, 2008.

Review: C. Zwierlein in HZ 291 (2010), 183-185. Praiseworthy volume includes essays focusing on antiquity through the 17th c. Case studies are found alongside observations of a certain unification of juridical concepts around 1650. Includes an essay on Malebranche and a conclusion by Jean-Robert Armogathe on Deus legislator.

DEKONINCK, RALPH. ’C’est la figure et non pas l’étoffe qui fait la gloire des Artisans’:

l’’iconoplastie’ jésuite à travers les Peintures morales de Pierre Le Moyne. OeC 35.2 (2010), 23-31. Le Moyne parvient ainsi à instiller discrètement son art de l’alchimie spirituelle, qui consiste à transmuer les peintures morales en peintures dévotes comme les passions profanes en passions spirituelles. Pour cela, le façonnage artistique des âmes impose une stratégie efficace: agir directement sur l’imagination qui, ainsi stimulée, aura vite fait de gagner le Coeur, siège de la puissance volitive et affective et moteur des passions.

DIEMLING, MARIA and GIUSEPPE VELTRI, eds. The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, Studies in Jewish History and Culture 17. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

Review: A. Berns in Ren Q 63 (2010), 206-207. Welcome both for its contribution to Jewish studies and to early modern European history. Wide-ranging essays will be useful for scholars in a number of fields in the arts and sciences. Overarching question examined is: How did early modern Jews react to the period’s increased emphasis on and interest in corporeality? (206). Volume is organized into sections as follows: The Body in Historical and Social Context, The Halakhic Body (concerned with law), Body, Mind and Soul, and The Body in Jewish-Christian Doscourse. Excellent introductory essay by Roni Weinstein relating theology, science and art, among other disciplines, to the new dynamics.

DINGEL, IRENE and WOLF-FRIEDRICH SCHÄUFELE, eds. Kommunikation und Transfer im Christentum der Frühen Neuzeit. (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abt. für Abendländische Religionsgeschichte, Beih. 74.) Mainz: von Zabern, 2007.

Review: T. Töpfer in HZ 290.2 (2010), 471-472. This praiseworthy volume of essays focuses on both possibilities and boundaries of early modern communication as it examines paradigms of cultural transfer. The study is organized into sections on religious communication (preaching, autobiographical writing, letters, translations, controversial writings), theological communication as it intersects with other branches of knowledge (rhetoric, history, law, medicine) and socio-historical perspectives of communication (identities, anti-Jesuit publicity).

DURU, AUDREY. Les Cantiques du Sieur de Maisonfleur, Une Anthologie Entre Deux Chaires’: Périple éditorial entre 1580 et 1621. BHR 73.1 (2011), 33-60:

. . . ce recueil crée, prescrit et suscite une expression poétique dans la lignée de la poésie nationale de cour et cependant associée à la confession réformée. Autrement dit, le recueil essaie moins d’unir les deux confessions, qu’il ne tente de concilier par la poésie le statut de sujet du roi de France et de fidèle réformée. Etude du contexte historique précis des neuf éditions connues des Cantiques.

FOISNEAU, LUC, ed. Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers. London and New York: Thoemmes-Continuum. 2008.

Review: A. Viala in FS 65.4 (2011), 528. Le Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers constitue une entreprise ambitieuse et impressionnante. Ambitieuse, parce que l’équipe éditoriale de cette entreprise a fait le choix d’inclure tous les aspects de la pensée. Il ne faut donc pas entendre ici philosophers’ comme philosophes’ au sens restreint, mais plutt selon la perspective du French Thought’ [ . . . ] Et entreprise impressionnante par l’ampleur de l’ouvrage: deux volumes de 640 et 674 pages; mais aussi par le soin apportés aux notices, copieuses, détaillées, nanties d’une excellente bibliographie des sources et d’une section Further Reading’ très bien faite. [ . . . ] Un tel livre servira donc d’ouvrage de référence en la matière. Il allie la précision de l’information et la clarté de l’exposé, qui en rend la consultation aisée.

GABRIEL, FREDERIC. Collectionner les saints: Hagiographie, identité et compilation dans les collections non-Bollandistes (XVIe-XVIIe siècles). FS 65.3 (2011), 327-336.

This article analyzes the conceptual richness of the wide variety of hagiographic compilations that pre-date the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists. The author looks at the compilations as collections that reveal une perpetuelle réécriture et réédition that creat a single corps mystique.

GERARD, AURELIE. Dom Calmet (1672-1757) et le monde arabe: une tolérance ambigu. Tr L 23 (2010), 115-127.

Precise study with numerous fascinating details reveals the paradoxical character of the Benedictine’s interest in le monde arabe. While his faith would not allow any possible dialogue with Islam, he bought un Alcoran arabe en portefeuille in 1713 (reproduction is in this article) and other Arabic books, encouraging his assistant dom Henry Faulques to learn Oriental languages and noted his progress with Arabic. G. details differences between dom Calumet’s 1703 dissertation Recherches sur les chiffres que l’on nomme arabes and the version printed in 1797 in the Mémoires de Trévoux. The second version, for example, recognized three types of numbers instead of two. G. refers to citations of dom C.’s exegetical works, notably his 23-volume Commentaire littérale sur tous les livres de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament, which indicate the Benedictine’s conviction of the usefulness of the study of Arabic civilization for the understanding of the Bible.

GERMAIN-DE-FRANCESCHI, ANNE-SOPHIE. D’encre et de poussière. L’écriture du pèlerinage à l’épreuve de l’intimité du manuscrit. Récits manuscrits de pèlerinages rédigés en Français pendant la Renaissance et la Contre-Réforme (1560-1620). Paris: Honoré Champion (Les Géograhphies du Monde XIII), 2009.

Review: V. Mellinghoff-Bourgerie in BHR 72.3 (2010), 747-752: De cet ouvrage compact et ambitieux, fondé sur une somme de travail dont on ne saurait contester l’énormité, le lecteur retiendra peut-être moins la thèse générale . . . que, srement, la matrise de l’analyse textuelle, rédigée en un style à la fois savant et aisé.

GILBY, EMMA. Descartes’s Morale par provision:’ A Re-evaluation. FS 65.4 (2011), 444-458.

This article offers a critical and philological survey of the term par provision in order to better understand its use in the Discours de la méthode. She focuses particular attention on Nicolas Peiresc. Ultimately, the author concludes: Descartes’s use of the term par provision leaves open the relationship of his maxims to the future end point of his moral thinking. Further, the morale par provision grants informality itself an ethical significance. His writings, as they forge their connections with previous and anticipated arguments, are shot through with concerns about the complexity of moral conduct in the face of the unpredictability of the external world.

GLOZIER, MATTHEW and DAVID ONNEKINK, eds. War, Religion and Service. Huguenot Soldiering, 16851713. Burlington: Ashgate, 2007.

Review: U. Niggemann in HZ 291 (2010), 207-208. Important and wide-ranging consideration of the Huguenot phenomenon as it relates to the military complements many other studies relating to artisans, manufacture and emigration. Various approaches, descriptive, narrative, biographical and case studies illuminate the international dimensions of the phenomenon.

GODDING, ROBERT, BERNARD JOASSART, XAVIER LEQUEUX, et al., eds. De Rosweyde aux Acta Sanctorum. La recherche hagiographique des Bollandistes à travers quatre siècles. Actes du Colloque international (Bruxelles, 5 octobre 2007). (Subsidia hagiographica, 88.) Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 2009.

Review: J.Bölling in HZ 291 (2010), 466-468. This publication celebrates the 400 year Jubilee with its ambitious historical project Fasti Sanctorum quorum Vitae in Belgicis Bibliothecis manuscriptae begun by Jesuit Father Heribert Rosweyde in 1607. Excellent scholarly apparatus includes images in color. 17th c. scholars will particularly appreciate Bart op de Beeck’s detailed reconstruction of the impressive Bollandist library at the end of the Ancien régime. Especially noteworthy volume for its interdisciplinary and international quality.

GOMEZ-GERAUD, MARIE-CHRISTINE. Arabe et Arabie: enquête sur les récits des pèlerins à Jérusalem (1550-1615). Tr L 23 (2010), 61-71.

Focusing on Renaissance and early 17th c. texts of French pilgrims to the Near East, G.-G. provides first a lexicological study of the term arabe to determine its significance for the early modern traveler. Denotations and connotations are investigated; G.-G. discovers that these récits expound on the langue arabe primarily in two situations: conflict and the inassimilable or the religious. Attentive to early modern geography, G.-G. notes that the pilgrims distinguish three Arabies: Petrée (qui recouvrait la zone comprise entre Syrie et égypte), Déserte (l’égypte et la peninsula arabique) et Heureuse (le Yemen) (65). G.-G. distinguishes and defines altérité in her corpus, citing, notably, Jean Boucher, who gives to various stereotypes in vogue a more literary and rich formulation (68 and n.).

GREGOIRE, VINCENT. Le meunier, la domestique et l’hospitalière: entre magie, possession’ et obsession’ en Nouvelle France au 17ème siècle. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 69-91.

Retraces a case of witchcraft in 1660 in Quebec and the subsequent execution of the (former) protestant man accused, and the reasons for this execution. The article sheds light on the struggles between the civic and religious authorities in Quebec in the early 1660s, as well as the battles against (former) Huguenots in the Nouvelle-France. In the second part, the article gives particular attention to the obsession case of Catherine de Saint Augustin and shows a growing skepticism toward possession cases on behalf of her contemporaries.

GRESHOFF, RAINER, GEORG KNEER, WOLFGANG LUDWIG SCHNEIDER, eds. Verstehen und Erklären. Sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. München: Fink, 2008. and

FRINGS, ANDREAS and JOHANNES MARX, eds. Erzählen, Erklären, Verstehen. Beiträge zur Wissenschaftstheorie und Methodologie der Historischen Kulturwissenschaften. (Beiträge zu den Historischen Kulturwissenschaften, Bd. 3.) Berlin: Akademie, 2008.

Review: S. Jordan in HZ 291 (2010), 439-440. Reviewed together, these collections are praised as important for the wide spectrum of methodologies analyzed. The volume edited by Frings and Marx presents itself as a plaidoyer for a dialogue between analytical philosophy, theory of knowledge and cultural history.

HARVEY, DAVID ALLEN. The Noble Savage and the Savage Noble: Philosophy and Ethnography in the Voyages of the Baron de Lahontan. French Colonial History 11 (2010), 161-91.

Suggests that while Lahontan is often declared to be one of the founders of the noble savage myth, his writings are just as much a critique of his own society as a foundational treatise for primitivism. The Voyages (1704) reveal a man literally caught between two eras and two worlds.

HÖFER, BERNADETTE. Psychosomatic Disorders in Seventeenth-Century French Literature. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: J. Campbell in FS 65.1 (2011), 96-97. Höfer focuses on the mind-body relationship. She brings psychiatry and the neurosciences to bear on the interplay between literature, philosophy, and medical science, examines the idea of psychological malaise and absolute repression, and argues that true self-understanding is grounded in the experience of the body. After an introduction that treats Descartes and Spinoza, she analyzes Jean-Joseph Surin’s Science experimentale as well as texts by Molière, Madame de Lafayette, and Racine.
Review: M. Meere in FR 84 (2011), 1024-25: This study asserts a connection between psychic distress and physiological dysfunction in 17th-century French representations of the self. Höfer makes use of contemporary medical concepts, but also situates texts within early modern debates about the mind and body. The reviewer laments the book’s lack of attention to Gassendi and its tendency to assume that modern science has achieved certain, complete knowledge about psychosomatic illness, but praises the work overall.
Review: H. Roberts in Ren Q 63 (2010), 578-579. Recommended to scholars, graduate students and advanced undergraduates alike, H.’s study is clearly written and includes a survey of philosophical and medical writing on mind-body relations in the 17th c. and later (578). Adopting both a synchronic approach (examining mind and body disorders and their representations) and a diachronic one, bringing her corpus into dialogue with present-day psychology and neuroscience (579), H. includes ambitiously examinations of Descartes, La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Jean-joseph Surin, Molière, La Fayette, and Racine.
Review: N. Arenberg in DFS 92 (2010), 145-146. Höfer’s work is an intricate study of maladies of the body and soul, focusing on the problematic issue of constraint under the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Somatic disorders such as melancholy, hypochondria, fever and anxiety were caused by widespread repression rooted in the overwhelming pressure to conform to the politics of absolutism. The author examines psychosomatic illness from a multidisciplinary perspective in the works of Surin, Molière, Lafayette and Racine.

HORN, CHRISTOPH and ADA NESCHKE-HENTSCHKE eds. Politischer Aristotelismus. Die Rezeption der aristotelischen Politik von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2008.

Review: A. Schmidt in HZ 290.2 (2010), 411-412. Wide-ranging collection contributes impressively to reception of criticism of Aristotle’s Politics. From political theory to contexts of monarchy and state formation, the contributing scholars provide important analyses of the Aristotelian presence at the intersection of central political debates. Indices.

HSIA, FLORENCE C. Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Review: M. Waddell in Ren Q 63 (2010), 945-946. Valuable for scholars of both European and Chinese history as well as for historians of science, the study carries us to foreign shores on the very borders of modernity, opening new and beautiful vistas for our exploration (946). Sections deal with both scientific personas and their various textual expressions, for example Guy Tachard’s Voyage de Siam (1686) which is at once a travelogue to garner support and an apologetic for the mission (946).

HÜBSCH, BRUNO. Le Ministère des Prêtres et des Pasteurs. Histoire d’une controverse entre Catholiques et Réformés français au début du XVIIe siècle. Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhne-Alpes, UMR 5190, 2010.

Review: N. Gueunier in BHR 73.1 (2011), 222: Un témoignage important sur l’histoire de l’oecuménisme ainsi qu’une recherche sur le genre et les thèmes de la controverse.

JACOBSON SCHUTTE, ANNE, SUSAN C. KARANT-NUNN, and HEINZ SCHILLING, eds. Reformation Research in Europe and North America: A Historical Assessment. Archive of Reformation History 100. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2009.

Review: G. Dipple in Ren Q 63 (2010), 948-949. Commissioned to celebrate the publication of the 100th volume of the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, this collections of essays focuses on the Long Reformation which is here understood as reaching to the middle of the 17th c. D. finds the essay on France by Christophe Duhamelle as one of the most intriguing in the volume as it advances historical and historiographical reasons for the lack of headway of the confessionalization thesis in the study of early modern French Catholics (949).

KENNY, NEIL and WES WILLIAMS, eds. Retrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural History. By Terence Cave. London: Legenda, 2009.

Review: E. Herdman in MLR 106.4 (2011), 1156-1157: Selected essays revised and translated in some instances for an Anglophone readership. In the fifth and final section of the volume, An antiperistatic resistances to influences that nevertheless define the self is traced in Pascal and Montaigne, echoing anxieties from imitation theory about individual poetic identity and intellectual property.

KETTERING, SHARON. Strategies of Power: Favorites and Women Household clients at Louis XIII’s Court. FHS 33.2 (Spring 2010), 177-200.

Shows how two minister-favorites of Louis XIII, Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes, and his successor, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, used their household clients to stay in power. The author analyzes cases of fourteen to fifteen noblewomen in each household.

KOCH, EREC. The Aesthetic Body: Passion, Sensibility, and Corporeality in Seventeenth-Century France. Newark: UP of Delaware, 2008.

Review: D. Fernandez-Nurdin in FR 84 (2010), 381-82: A detailed study of changing notions of the body and their impact on French culture. Koch identifies in early modern writings a new interest in the body, rather than the mind, as the source of passions and feeling. He examines writings by Versalius and Descartes, then moves on to chapters organized around the human senses of sight, hearing, taste, and touch. Koch is particularly interested in how aesthetic experiences, such as theater and music, were understood to affect the body. Recommended by the reviewer.

LECLERC LAFAGE, VALÉRIE. Montpellier au temps des troubles de Religion: Pratiques testamentaires et confessionnalisation (15541622). Paris: Honoré Champion éditeur, 2010.

Review: A. Tulchin in Ren Q 63.4 (2010), 1322-1323. Volume is praiseworthy for its rich content and elegant writing. Scholars of religion and identity formation will find it particularly useful. Chapters focus on history, methodology, social structure, literacy, and as the title indicates, practices of wills. Including both Catholic and Protestant practice, the database features 1,556 wills. While indicating some reservations concerning statistics, L. finds the book admirable and praises L. L. for her sensitive ear and overall conclusions (1323).

LEDUC, CHRISTIAN. La recherche canadienne actuelle sur la philosophie du XVIIe siècle. DSS 252 (2011), 543-562.

A comprehensive survey of Canadian research on seventeenth-century French philosophy.

LOTZ-HEUMANN, UTE, JAN-FRIEDRICH MIßFELDER and MATTHIAS POHLIG, eds. Konversion und Konfession in der Frühen Neuzeit. (Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, Bd. 205.). Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007.

Review: P. Burschel in HZ 291 (2010), 186-188. Wide-ranging investigation of conversion and confession in the Early Modern. Sixteen articles are organized into sections on religious authenticity and politics, indifference and radicality, and aesthetic and rhetorical strategies. 17th c. French scholars will appreciate the multi-dimensional examination of both Calvinist and Catholic histories in their political, spiritual and communicative aspects.

LYONS, JOHN D. and KATHLEEN WINE, eds. Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: T. Chesters in FS 65.3 (2011),386-387. Part I (Providence in Question) shows a number of early modern authors in dialogue with Augustine’s thesis, in De civitate dei, that the concept of chance is an expression of our fallen state and of our concomitant remoteness from grasping the divine plan. Part II addresses Poetics and the Aesthetics of Chance, while Part III (The Law and the Ethics of Chance) draws out the ethical and doctrinal implications of chance. [ . . . ] Finally, Part IV (Chance and its Remedies) pursues further the question of how we might think and act in the face of chance. A wide range of authors are covered: Montaigne, Rabelais, Gomberville, Racine, Malebranche, Descartes, and the Cardinal de Retz.
Review: J. Helgeson in Ren Q 63 (2010), 284-286. Welcome volume results from a colloquium held in Tours at the Centre d’études Supérieures de la Renaissance (2006) and from a panel held at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference (2006). Nine essays focus on 17th c. topics providing analyses on the intersection and tensions of providence and chance from perspectives of philosophy, theology and poetics. Reviewer regrets the paucity of mention of Pascal but notes with appreciation analyses on Malebranche, Racine, Descartes, Gomberville, the sublime, and the Cardinal de Retz. Index, illustrations, and bibliography.

MELISH, JACOB. Women and the Courts in the Control of Violence between Men: Evidence from a Parisian Neighborhood under Louis XIV. FHS 33.1 (Winter 2010), 1-31.

Author examines detailed court cases from a neighborhood during the time of Louis XIV to show how workingwomen routinely criticized and broke up men’s fistfights and other violent altercations.

MOSER-VERREY, MONIQUE, LUCIE DESJARDINS et CHANTAL TURBIDE. Le corps romanesque. Images et usages topiques sou l’Ancien régime. Actes du XXe colloque de la SATOR. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009.

Review: C. Roulston in UTQ 80.2 (Spring 2011), 580-586. Ce recueil impressionnant des actes du XXe colloque de la SATOR contient trente-cinq articles présentés en quatre catégories: le corps souffrant, le corps éloquent, le corps surprenant et le corps métaphorique. L’introduction de Moser-Verrey est lucide et détaillée et les textes offrent une série de perspectives inexhaustibles sur les corps de l’Ancien régime.

NOWOSADTKO, JUTTA and MATTHIAS ROGG, eds. Mars und die Musen. Das Wechselspiel von Militär, Krieg und Kunst in der Frühen Neuzeit. With SASCHA MÖBIUS. (Herrschaft und soziale Systeme in der Frühen Neuzeit, Bd. 5.). Münster: Lit, 2008.

Review: H. Thoß in HZ 291 (2010), 798-799. Praiseworthy interdisciplinary military history includes special attention to interconnections between literature, art, architecture and music, even psychological dimensions of military music in the Early Modern (the latter by Werner Friedrich Kümmel).

O’MALLEY JOHN W., S. J. et GAUVIN ALEXANDER BAILEY, éds. The Jesuits and the Arts (1540-1773). Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s UP, 2005.

Review: R. Dekoninck in BHR 73.1 (2011), 232-235: Synthèse de qualité; première étude d’envergure sur l’apport des jésuites dans les divers arts à travers le monde et l’émergence d’une culture visuelle moderne.

PEARSON, TIMOTHY G. Il sera important de me mander le détail de toutes choses": Knowledge and Transatlantic Communication from the Sulpician Mission in Canada, 16681680. French Colonial History 12 (2011), 45-65.

Studies the correpondence of the Saint-Sulpice mission both to examine the dissemination of knowledge in New France and to explore the connections between religious and political power and authority in the colony.

PITASSI, MARIA-CRISTINA et DANIELA SOLFAROLI CAMILLOCCI, éds. Les Modes de la Conversion confessionnelle, altérité et construction des identités religieuses. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Ed., 2010.

Review: A. Dufour in BHR 71.1 (2011), 225-229: Volume comprenant douze communications présentées à un séminaire de travail tenu à Genève les 23 et 24 novembre 2007: Spontanées ou forcées, les conversions ouvrent à l’historien des aperçus extraordinairement variés sur la façon dont les hommes et les femmes ont vécu leur religion, leurs convictions ou leur héritage spirituel.

POHLIG, MATTHIAS, UTE LOTZ-HEUMANN, VERA ISAIASZ, et al. Säkularisierungen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Methodische Probleme und empirische Fallstudien. (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Beih. 41.). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2008.

Review: H Klueting in HZ 291 (2010), 188-189. This collective volume on secularization takes up problems of methodology as well as case studies. P. understands secularization less as a loss of religion but rather as a process of transformation in the sense of a recasting of religious content recognizable as individual objects. Wide-ranging, with ramifications for the sociology of religion, philosophy, art history and the history of knowledge, the volume has as well examinations on the sacrality of French kings in the 17th c.

REGUIG, DELPHINE. Le Mensonge de Montaigne: La Référence aux Essais dans la logique de Port-Royal. DSS 249 (2010), 711-727.

Parce que Montaigne érige la passivité du jugement en philosophie raisonnable et l’extravagance du raisonnement en exacte nature, la référence aux Essais, malgré la discordance qu’elle introduit et cultive, du point de vue à la fois formel et intellectuel, possède, au sein d’une Logique, une pertinence et un profit philosophique que la divergence dans l’usage du terme de vraisemblance manifeste puissamment.

REGUIG-NAYA, DELPHINE. Le Corps des idées. Pensées et poétiques du langage dans l’augustinisme de Port-Royal. Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Mme de La Fayette, Racine. Paris, Champion, 2007.

Review: V. Kapp in PFSCL, 38.74 (2011), 252-255. Delphine Reguig-Naya combine ses connaissances théologiques et philosophiques avec une haute compétence en linguistique et un don admirable d’analyse littéraire. Elle va au centre des problématiques examinées et domine les riches matériaux à un tel point que le lecteur suit aisément ses analyses éclairantes’.

RIBARD, DINAH. Philosophies de ville au XVIIe siècle. PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 299-313.

Problematises the notion of an early modern philosophie de ville’. Argues that ce qui travaille dans les élaborations d’une possible philosophie de ville au XVIIe siècle, c’est la question politique de la littérature plus encore que celle de la philosophie’. Focuses mainly on the work of Louis de Leslache.

ROHRSCHNEIDER, MICHAEL. Reputation als Leitfaktor in den internationalen Beziehungen der Frühen Neuzeit. HZ 291 (2010), 331-352.

R.’s article adds reputation to the four forces named by Heinz Schilling in his 1991 study of international systems of the Early Modern: dynasty, confession, government interests and tradition. After a first section in which he sketches the situation of research and the terminology itself, R. delves into the importance of reputation as a factor in Richelieu’s political thought and action. Other sections treat reputation in the work of Diego Saavedra Fajardo and in the political thought of Frederic the Great (which demonstrates a continuity of the concept). Richly documented.

ROUVILLOIS, FRÉDÉRIC. L’invention du progrès, 1680-1730. Paris: CNRS éd., 2010.

Review: J. M. Goulemot in QL 1049 (du 16 au 30 novembre 2011), 19. L’étude de Rouvillois a été publiée pour la première fois en 1996. Selon le critique, elle possède l’immense mérite de rappeler une genèse qui embrasse les domaines les plus divers: les Beaux-Arts, la Politique, les Sciences, le Droit L’Œuvre couvre différents domaines pour mettre au jour non seulement le pourquoi et le comment, pour tenir compte de la complexité que recouvre l’idée du progrès, mais aussi pour expliciter les conditions de possibilité d’une telle apparition, de son acceptation et du développement de ses implicites

RUS, MARTIJN. Le Nol, miroir de la société. Du XVe au XIXe siècle. Neophil 94 (2010), 241-250.

Highly informative and agreeable to read, R.’s investigation of a little studied genre is wide-ranging and sensitive to theatrical as well as lyrical and musical dimensions. 17th c. noels often include references to classical mythology as well as Christ’s birth, although the latter is not the only subject sung (the creation, the annunciation, etc. are included). Noels can exhort Catholics to leave the so-called heresy of Calvin. Attentive to socio-economic context, R. notes specific references to cities, forests, gardens, fruits, etc. as well as to the circumstances of the people.

SARTI, RAFFAELLA. Europe at Home. Family and Material Culture 15001800. Transl. by ALLAN CAMERON. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2002.

Review: P. Münch in HZ 290.3 (2010), 779-780. Welcome translation of S.’s 1999 study under the title Vita di casa. Fascinating, sensitive and illuminating panorama of early modern European home and family life. Praised for its abundant and clear commentary.

SAUZET, ROBERT. Au Grand Siècle des âmes. Guerre sainte et paix chrétienne en France au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Perrin, 2007.

Review: M. Barral-Baron in DSS 249 (2010), 788-789: Le présent ouvrage propose une traversée passionnée et passionnante du XVIIe siècle religieux envisagé sous deux aspects annoncés par le sous-titre, la guerre sainte et la paix chrétienne. In a clear and perspicacious style, the author proposes eight chapters divided into two sections: Le premier se décompose en cinq chapitres consacrés à l’idée de croisade en France au XVIe et XVIIe siècles et en un sixième qui cherche à démêler la croisade mystique et la guerre sainte dans le monde de la Nouvelle-France. Le second temps, qui se divise en trois chapitres, aborde des problématiques typiques du XVIIe siècle, celle de l’intolérance, de la coexistence confessionnelle et de la persistance de l’humanisme chrétien, notamment érasmien, dans le royaume de France.

SHUSTERMAN, NOAH. Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon. Washington, DC: Catholic UP of America, 2010.

Review: M. Sage in FR 84 (2011), 835-36: A study of holidays divided into 2 major periods, before and after the French revolution. En se basant sur la notion de Politics of Time du philosophe Peter Osborne, à savoir a politics which takes the temporal structures of social practices as the specific objects of its transformative (or preservative) intent (17), Noah Shusterman montre qu’il existe des revendications de pouvoir et d’autorité au sein de toute réglementation du temps, qu’il soit liturgiquepolitiqueou social (835). Although the reviewer expresses some uncertainty about the audience for whom this work is intended, he praises its detail, systematicity, and high scholarly quality.

SIGNORI, GABRIELA, ed., Das Siegel. Gebrauch und Bedeutung. Unt. Mitarb. v. GABRIEL STOUKALOV-POGODIN. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007.

Review: J. Mötsch in HZ 290.2 (2010), 415-417. Judged illuminating for the information and analyses that the volume brings to the uses and meanings of the seal. Highly diverse, the interested reader will find essays on the role of the seal as a guarantee of authenticity and as relating to image and identity. Other focuses include university seals, Jewish seals and state seals. Indices and illustrations.

SMITH, PAMELA H. and BENJAMIN SCHMIDT, eds. Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 14001800. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Review: A. Mosley in Ren Q 63 (2010), 673-674. Welcome and diverse examination of knowledge production provides the reader with 14 essays that M. suggests are as many case studies which culmulatively convey lessons about the complexity of different epistemological practices, their interrelatedness and historical change (674). 17th c. French scholars will particularly appreciate Chandra Mukerji’s essay on Pyreneean women’s expertise which benefited the construction of the Canal du Midi (673).

SPERLING, JUTTA G. and SHONA KELLY WRAY, eds. Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property, and Law in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 13001800). Routledge Research in Gender and History 11. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Review: E. Dursteler in Ren Q 63. 4 (2010), 1325-1327. Wide-ranging and praiseworthy for its contribution to a truly Mediterranean history and its examination of gender through . . . [a] Mediterranean prism (1325). France is included in this collection of 16 chapters although Italy is the most heavily represented. D. finds both individual essays and the volume as a whole successful both as a study of gender and a work of Mediterranean history and considers it a model for future Mediterranean work (1327).

STIKER-METRAL, CHARLES-OLIVIER. Narcisse contrarié: l’amour-propre dans le discours moral en France (1650-1715). Lumiere classique 74. Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review S. Bold in FR 83 (2010), 862-63. This study begins with a detailed and painstaking history of the term amour propre (862), an analysis which gives the book the large, sweeping feel of Paul Bénichou’s Morales du Grand Siècle. Striker-Métral then moves on to analyze the rhetoric of moralist literature, stitching together rhetorical perspectives from a range of different kinds of writers. The volume concludes with an aesthetic tour de force, an excellent piece on La Fontaine’s homage to La Rochefoucauld, L’Homme et son image. Recommended by the reviewer.

THOMSON, ANN. Bodies of Thought. Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Review: C. Zwierlein in HZ 290.2 (2010), 496-497. Despite the title of this study which indicates T.’s focus on the early 18th c., scholars of the Grand Siècle will find useful discussions of late 17th c. themes, for example, concerning the diffusion of English discussion in France, French thinkers and the consideration of the Huguenot Exile. Particularly useful for students of cultural transfer.

TORERO-IBAD, ALEXANDRO. Libertinage, science et philosophie dans le matérialisme de Cyrano de Bergerac. Paris: Champion, 2009.

Review: M. Levesque in PFSCL, 37.73 (2010), 478-484. Despite some reservations, reviewer concludes that the volume is une rigoureuse mise au point sur la place et le rle de la philosophie matérialiste dans l’Œuvre cyranienne.

UPTON-WARD, JUDI ed. The Military Orders. Vol. 4: On Land and by Sea. Editorial Committee: Malcolm Barber, Peter Edbury, Anthony Luttrell et al. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.

Review: R. Czaja in HZ 291 (2010), 451-452. Selected presentations from a journée d’études at the London Centre for the Study of the Crusades, the Military Orders and the Latin East in St. John’s Gate. Wide-ranging volume in which essays examine both general issues and problems in the history of military orders as well as study the history of specific orders. France is among the geographical areas investigated; problems include the following: military organizations, spirituality, architecture, family relationships and receptions history. Judged a very necessary overview.

VAILLANCOURT, DANIEL. Les urbanités parisiennes au XVIIe siècle. Le livre du trottoir. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009.

Review : R. Roy in UTQ 80.2 (Spring 2011), 576-578. Une des grandes forces du livre est de convoquer un vaste échantillon de textes, comprenant des discours lexicographiques, proto-touristiques, technocratiques, les traits de civilité et les discours littéraires et philosophiques. La critique trouve les réflexions de l’auteur sur les notions de théâtre du monde et la théâtralisation de soi particulièrement intéressantes, mais elle regrette le style parfois lourd et jargonneux, ainsi que la tendance de l’auteur à se complaire dans des descriptions scatologiques et triviales.

VASOLD, MANFRED. Grippe, Pest und Cholera. Eine Geschichte der Seuchen in Europa. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008.

Review: M. Dinges in HZ 291 (2010), 738-740. Wide-ranging, voluminous overview of epidemics in Europe is welcome, especially given the recent modern examples of swine flu and in poor countries, tuberculoses and malaria. V.’s study includes both socio-historical and medical perspectives and is praiseworthy for its critical apparatus.

VÉLEZ, KARIN. A sign that we are related to you’: The Transatlantic Gifts of the Hurons of the Jesuit Mission of Lorette, 16501750. French Colonial History 12 (2011), 3144.

Describes five specially made wampum belts, one of which is still extant, that were offered to five Catholic communities in France, and how they helped establish this Catholic Huron mission as a community on equal footing with its European French counterparts.

WEISS, ALLEN S. Le jardin à la française et la métaphysique au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Seuil, 1992.

Review: J.-M. Kantor in QL 1040 (du 16 au 30 juin 2011), 23: Weiss met en relation le système de perspective, la disproportion, expression de l’orgueil démesuré du Roi, et les questions ontologiques liées à sa personne. Le système de perspective donne un poids autoréférentiel et narcissique au champ visuel, o le spectateur est lié au point de fuite, autrement dit à l’infini. En conclusion, le critique écrit que l’argumentation de Weiss, documentée par la lecture de Panofsky sur la perspective, de Baltrusaitis sur les anamorphoses et de Merleau-Ponty sur la critique de la vision chez Descartes, est souvent convaincante, parfois conjecturale.

WOSHINSKY, BARBARA R. Imagining Women’s Conventual Spaces in France, 1600-1800: The Cloister Disclosed. Farnham, England; Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2010.

Review: T. Carr in PFSCL, 38.75 (2011), 503-506. Volume makes a major and timely contribution to early modern literary studies in general as well as to convent studies. [ . . . ] Woshinsky’s gendered spatial perspective offers readings that bring out the full complexity of the works she treats. Her book also stands as a model to scholars who deal more directly with convent writing by the nuns themselves’.

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