FRENCH 17

ABIVEN, KARINE. Le récit du monde: le discours narratif comme facteur de cohésion de la société mondaine. PFSCL 37.73 (2010), 291-302.

Article focuses on Tallemant’s Historiettes, Voiture’s letters and Racan’s La Vie de Malherbe. L’enjeu du présent travail est, d’une part, de mettre en lumière le dispositif social formé par ces textes qui fonctionnent en système. D’autre part, si l’on admet que l’événement n’a d’existence pérenne que si l’on en fait le récit, on peut avancer que la réalité même du groupe passe par sa mise en scène dans la narration’.

AïT-TOUATI, FRÉDÉRIQUE. Contes de la lune, essai sur la fiction et la science modernes. Paris: Gallimard, 2011.

Review: J.-M. Kantor in QL 1038 (du 16 au 31 mai 2011), 24: à partir de textes souvent étonnants, l’auteur développe une analyse technique de la notion de fiction, qui repose sur de fines distinctions des formes littérales du discours fictionnel. [ . . . ] Plutt qu’un schéma de bifurcation entre discours fictionnel et discours scientifique, l’auteur privilégie l’idée de parcours parallèles dont elle met à jour les spécificités, permettant des passages fusionnels entre science et fiction, sans domination de l’une sur l’autre, avant la rupture newtonienne. Cyrano de Bergerac avec son L’Autre Monde ou les états et Empires de la Lune et Fontenelle avec son Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes trouvent leur place dans cette Œuvre.

ARTIGAS-MENANT, GENEVIEVE, ALAIN COUPRIE, AND ELISABETH PINTO-MATHIEU, eds. L’Idée et ses fables: le rle du genre. Paris: Champion, 2008.

Review: R. Runte in FR 84 (2011), 802-03. This ambitious volume addresses the literary illustration of ideas, and attempts to identify a new field of study. The volume is not restricted by period, but does include some consideration of La Fontaine. The reviewer praises it as thought-provoking.

AYRES-BENNETT, WENDY and MAGALI SEIJIDO. Les Compilations raisonnées des remarques sur la langue française. FS 65.3 (2011), 347-356.

This articles offers a series of case studies (on the compilation of the Remarques of Vaugelas, the commentaries of La Mothe Le Vayer, Scipion Dupleix and an anonymous author published by Jean Macé in 1651; L’Art de bien parler françois (1696) by La Touche; and the Principes généraux et particuliers de la langue françoise (2nd ed. 1763) by Wailly) to show that by including the remarks in a different format, the compilations were able to erase their sociolinguistic dimension. The authors conclude that, Les remarques ne représentent alors plus les observations de simples témoins’, mais plutt des jugements prescriptifs et autoritaires o la notion même d’auteur se trouve gommée et o le ton est résolument plus dogmatique.

BARCHILON, JACQUES. Adaptations of Folktales and Motifs in Madame d'Aulnoy's Contes: A Brief Survey of Influence and Diffusion. Marvels & Tales 23.2 (2009), 353-64.

Examines identifiable tale types in 20 of Madame d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales. Shows how this contributed to the popularity of d’Aulnoy’s Œuvre both in the 17th century and in more recent times.

BEAULIEU, JEAN-PHILIPPE. La gloire de nostre sexe: savantes et lectrices dans Les dames illustres (1665) de Jacquette Guillaume. Etudes Françaises 47.3 (2011), 127-42.

A study of one of the many 17th-century collections devoted to illustrious women. Explains that the work is notable for its emphasis on women’s knowledge in a vast array of fields, including the typically male-dominated domains of theology and geography.

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 .

BEHRENS, RUDOLF. La maison en crise et les avatars du pouvoir domestique: une constellation de la comédie érudite’ italienne et ses échos chez Molière (Le Tartuffe). PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 427-440.

Examines the ways in which domestic power (in itself a metonymy for political power) is called into question in Tartuffe and the links between this and the sixteenth-century Italian commedia erudita’ tradition.

BERNARD, MATHILDE. Des escrits de tempeste’ au bouquet de printemps’: Les compilations polygraphiques de Simon Goulart. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 121-131.

Using polygraph in the sense of he who writes on several subjects’, analyses the link between l’action polygraphique’ and [le] concept d’auctorialité’ in Simon Goulart’s work.

BIET, CHRISTIAN and MARIE-MADELEINE FRAGONARD, dirs. Tragédies et récits de martyres en France (fin de XVIe-début XVIIe siècle). Paris: Classiques Garnier, Bibliothèque du XVIIe siècle), 2009.

Review: D. Cecchetti in S Fr 162 (2010), 545. B. and F., at the head of an international team, present here in a welcome modern edition theatrical and narrative works which relate to martyrdom. An exhaustive introduction of some 100 pages traces the development of readings and interpretations of the theme as well as giving literary and iconographical documentation of the concept. Texts are organized in the following sections: Les héros sanglants bibliques, Les martyrs chrétiens antiques et médiévaux, Les martyrs des guerres de religion, and Les martyrs catholiques au delà des frontières européennes (545).

BIRBERICK, ANNE, ed. The Art of Instruction: Essays on Pedagogy and Literature in 17th-Century France. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008.

Review: E. Welch in FR 84 (2010), 382-83: The essays in this edited volume look beyond literary texts’ trite avowals to deliver moral teachings. Rather, they broadly investigate the interplay between aesthetic forms and pedagogical agendas (382) and examine how texts transmitted cultural values. Essays cluster around questions of women’s education, the influence of pedagogical projects on literary form, and the presence of pedagogical aims in canonical texts. The essay by Anne Birberick is particularly praised by the reviewer. [A] rich, thought-provoking collection of great value (383).

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 162 (2010), 546-547. Individual contributions to this fine volume are praised for their solid documentation and the volume itself for its definite usefulness. The nine essays are dedicated to complementary aspects of the relation between pedagogy and literature and that between aesthetics and the transmission of knowledge. The volume is organized into sections on narrative (the exemplum in particular), the relation between aesthetic and didactic value and the political dimensions of instructive or moral discourse. R.’s review is unusually ample, commenting at some length on each of the essays, generally quite appreciatively.

BIRBERICK, ANNE L., ed. Perfection. Studies in Early Modern France. Vol 12, 2008.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 161 (2010), 355-356. Praiseworthy for its quality, diverse methodologies and comparative perspectives, this volume includes ten essays focusing on the esthetic category announced in the title. This rich collection of studies is organized in sections on political and ideological discourses, moral discourses, theatrical esthetics and the rhetoric of scientific discourse.

BLOCKER, DEBORAH. Instituer un art’: politiques de théâtre dans la France du premier XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009.

Review: G. Siouffi in FS 65.1 (2011), 91-92. The author seeks to show how the creation of theater as an art in the early seventeenth century was the result of political interventions by arguing that there is a link rather than a parallel between the elaboration of poetic doctrines of the period and Richelieu’s political project. The study focuses on the social and political positioning of the principal figures of this process: Chapelain, Scudéry, Sarasin, La Mesnardière, D’Aubignac, Corneille, and Richelieu.

BÖHM, R, A. GREWE and M. ZIMMERMANN, eds. Siècle classique et cinéma contemporain. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009. Biblio 17, 179.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 162 (2010), 550. Twelve essays analyze a wide array of recent films focusing on the 17th c. Sections treat architecture, festivities and ceremony; adaptations, for example, between literature and films; and historical and biographical cinematography. Highly useful both as academic criticism and as a sophisticated pedagogical instrument.

BOULERIE, FLORENCE, MARC FAVREAU and ERIC FRANCALANZA, eds. L’Extrême-Orient dans la culture européenne des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Actes du 7e colloque du Centre de Recherches sur l’Europe classique, Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3, 22 et 23 mai 2008. Biblio 17, no. 183. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009.

Review: G. Bosco in S Fr 161 (2010), 422-423. Wide-ranging collection features essays on philosophy and religion, languages, the literary and artistic imaginary and l’immense espace et les foisonnantes civilisations que firent connatre marchands et marins, voyageurs, missionnaires (Reviewer, 422). Contributions are organized along three axes: curiosity, alterity and identity. Essays are classed in four sections: Découverte et relations, Images, influence et rejet, Les arts and Langue, littérature et philosophie.

BRAZEAU, BRIAN. Writing a New France, 1604-1632: Empire and Early Modern French Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

Review: Holtz, G. in FS 65.2 (2011), 241. This study focuses on the history of the first years of colonization (in the works of Champlain, Lescarbot, Biard, and Sagard) and the question of Frenchness. It argues that New France offered a mirror for a post-War of Religion France to examine itself as well as channel energies into a colonial and missionary project shaped by the Counter Reformation. Particularly noteworthy are analyses of national genealogy, the concept of specularity, l’imaginaire agricole and the symbolism of wine, and linguistic colonization.

Review: A. Strange in FR 84 (2011), 1050-51: Brazeau uses writings from New World missionaries and traders to study the concept of New France and how it varied and transformed over time. Brazeau is interested in how travelers’ contact with new lands and their inevitable disappointment with the project led them to revise their expectations for New France. Contains subtle analysis and careful readings; intended for the specialist.

Review: A. Frisch in Ren Q 63 (2010), 903-904. Praiseworthy as a venture into the French colonial enterprise (less well examined than Spanish and English ones), the volume is organized into two sections, Land and Language, and Renewal and Religion. Identity, geography and communication are studied in the first and more abstract notions in the second as they relate to Frenchness (B. 17). F. would have appreciated more attention to rhetoric and readers, actual or intended, plus a fuller treatment of various important topics such as linguistic thought as exemplified by François de La Mothe Le Vayer. Although the reviewer cites various defects, he concludes that the study should encourage more scholars to explore the terrain (904).

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.

BROOKS, W. and R. KAISER, eds. Theatre, Fiction and Poetry in the French Long Seventeenth Century/ Le Théâtre, le roman et la poésie à l’âge classique. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 160 (2010), 137-138. This highly successful volume is a publication resulting from the 2006 conference Modernités/Modernities held at St. Catherine’s College of Oxford by the following societies: the Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies, the Société d’étude du XVIIe siècle, the Centre Méridional de Rencontres sur le XVIIe siècle, the Société d’études du XVIe siècle, the Centre International de Rencontres sur le XVIIe siècle and the North American Society for Seventeenth Century French Literature. Some twenty essays include examinations of Corneille, Molière and Racine as well as lesser known playwrights, novelists and poets. Challenges to the modernity of authors are found in addition to proven legacies.

BUNG, STEPHANIE. Une Guirlande pour Julie: le manuscrit prestigieux face au salon de la marquise de Rambouillet. PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 347-360.

Analysis of the Guirlande comparing it to the devises album of the duchesse de La Trémoille. Goes on to analyse the genesis of the manuscript, suggesting that the composition of the texts was conceived initially as un jeu de conversation. Aims to highlight the multiple functions of the Guirlande à l’intersection des pratiques sociales et esthétiques’.

CALL, MICHAEL. The Poet’s Vision and the Painting’s Speech: Molière and Perrault on the Sister Arts. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 124-140.

The author picks up Molière’s 1669 poem La Gloire du Val-de-Grâce, which is an extensive theoretical commentary on art theory and which was written in response to Charles Perrault’s 1668 poem La Peinture. It presents a fundamentally opposed vision of painting’s theoretical foundations and pointedly underlines the contradictions and ignorance present in Perrault’s work. In doing so, it also outlines its own unique vision of the relationship between painting and poetry, a relationship that determines many of the poem’s stylistic characteristics. Molière suggests his radical departure from Perrault’s idea of painting as a mechanical art and insists on the intellectual aspects of painting and on artistic apprenticeship.

CALOGERO, ELENA L. Ideas and Images of Music in English and Continental Emblem Books: 15501700. Saecvla Spiritalia 39. Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 2009.

Review: H. Binda in Ren Q 63 (2010), 964-966. Highly praiseworthy examination of allusions (poetic and pictorial) to music in an impressice corpus, including both familiar and lesser known authors. C.’s study is organized into sections focusing on the political resonances of music, music as a figure for love, and music and spirituality (965). Emblematic scholars will find many useful discussions including some on Cupid, the Sireons, emblems of vanitas in addition to C.’s articulation of the ideology of the human heart as itself a musical instrument (966).

CAMPBELL, JULIE D. and ANNE R. LARSEN, eds. Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.

Review: N. Tomas in Ren Q 63 (2010), 936-937. This welcome volume is judged an impressive work that develops new understandings about the transmission of early modern European women’s writings of all genres (937). The eleven contributors demonstrate a genuine involvement in literary communities as well as a wide dissemination across geographical and class boundaries. Communities includes national ones, virtual ones, and those based on shared interests, whether professional or social. The essays are organized into sections on continental epistolary communities, textual communities and use of print, and constructions of transnational literary circles (937).

CARLIN, CLAIRE. Représentations du sexe: une histoire de genre. DSS 252 (2011), 511-523.

The author offers a comprehensive survey of gender studies and the French seventeenth-century putting l’accent sur la contribution canadienne de la décennie 2000-2010, tout en tentant de la situer dans le contexte des recherches internationales sur le XVIIe siècle français.

CAVE, TERENCE. Retrospectives: Essays in Literature, Petics and Cultural History. Neil Kenny and Wes Williams, eds. Oxford: Legends, 2009.

Review: J. D. Lyons in FS 65.1 (2011), 93-94. This gathering of Cave’s most influential articles from 1970-2009 also includes sections from Pré-histoires: textes troubles au seuil de la modernité (1999) that have been translated into English. The collection allows for an appreciation of Cave’s independence in a career that has witnessed a succession of critical -isms and highlights his assertion that literary culture defies the easy categorization of periodization.

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.

CHAOUCHE, SABINE, DIR. Le Théâtral de la France d’Ancien Régime. De la représentation de soi à la représentation scénique. Paris: H. Champion, 2010.

Review: J.-M. Civardi in DSS 251 (2011), 423-425: A collection of 30 articles drawn from participants in the 2008 colloquium at Oxford on the Avatars du théâtral sous l’Ancien Régime. Half deal directly with the 17th c. and many add significantly to our understanding of the subject.

CHAPIN, CAROLE et DUMOUCHEL, SUZANNE. Conceptions et pratiques de la polygraphie dans les journaux littéraires russes et français du XVIIIe siècle. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 83-106.

A comparative analysis of the prefaces, book reviews and dissertations in Desfontaines’ and Granet’s Nouvelliste du Parnasse (1730-1732) and Tchoulkov’s Colporteur du Parnasse (1770).

CHARBONNEAU, FREDERIC. Mémoire écrite, de l'histoire aux souvenirs. DSS 252 (2011), 525-531.

L’historiographie et les Mémoires d’Ancien Régime ont longtemps été à toutes fins pratiques exclus des études littéraires et l’on doit aux thèses d’Yves Coirault, de Marie-Thérèse Hipp, d’André Bertière, et plus encore peut-être aux études séminales de Marc Fumaroli, de les y avoir définitivement réunis. Deux générations de chercheurs plus tard, les thèses qui prennent pour objet ce domaine d’étude en indiquent la durable fécondité en même temps qu’elles signalent, au Canada comme en France, l’arrivée d’une relève. Bien que le genre des Mémoires ait particulièrement bénéficié d’un tel regain d’intérêt, les autres formes de la littérature historique ne sont pourtant pas oubliées.

COMPARINI, LUCIE and MARC VUILLERMOZ, eds. Montrer/Cacher. La Représentation et ses ellipses dans le théâtre des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Chambéry: Université de Savoie, Laboratoire Langages, Littératures, Sociétés, 2008.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 160 (2010), 206-207. This collection of essays results from the 2006 international colloque held at the Université de Chambéry, 10-11 May 2006. Included are studies of individual cases, theoretical echos in modern times, comparative studies and adaptations, etudes d’ensemble such as Christian Biet’s on violence in the early 17th c., among many other valuable studies.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 161 (2010), 360-361. This volume of essays is constituted of selected proceedings from the May 2006 international colloque held at the Université de Chambéry. Axes of investigation include the theoretical elaboration of theatrical precepts and the relation between text and image. Rich collection includes studies on particular plays such as Corneille’s Médée as well as examinations of topoi such as la tragédie sanglante du premier XVIIe siècle (Christian Biet) and features such as gesture, declamation, and scenic treatment. Adaptations have an important place in this highly useful volume with studies by Daniela Dalla Valle, Laura Rescia and Véronique Sternberg.

CREMONA, NICOLAS. La polygraphie face à l’histoire: les histoires tragiques de Boitel au début du XVIIe siècle. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 133-43.

Examines how the career-path of Pierre Boitel de Gaubertin points to une stratégie polygraphique par excellence, qui consiste à reprendre un événement historique sous différents genres afin de satisfaire plusieurs types de public’. Focuses on the treatment of the Concini affair as an example.

CRUZ, ANNE J. and MIHOKO SUZUKI, eds. The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

Review: E. Lehfeldt in Ren Q 63 (2010), 194-196. Praiseworthy collection of eleven essays which are wide-ranging geographically and textually. The representation of female power, shared sovereignty and literary-historical depictions are analyzed admirably. 17th c. scholars will appreciate analyses of the representations of Elizabeth I in La Princesse de Clèves by Elizabeth Kerner.

DANDREY, PATRICK. Quand Versailles était conté: la cour de Louis XIV par les écrivains de son temps. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2009.

Review: C. Daniélou in FR 84 (2011), 1311-12: A promenade littéraire qui prend pour sujet la cour de Louis XIV. Dandrey adopts an offstage, in the wings’ perspective as a stance from which to view Versailles. He draws on a wide range of authors and deciphers texts carefully. The reviewer signals the work as highly admirable but dense, and advises reading it slowly.

DARNTON, ROBERT. The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Review: D. Brewer in FS 66.1 (2012), 95-96. Darnton’s object of analysis is the libelle. Staple of the underground book trade, these slanderous writings — such as Le Diable dans un bénitier.’ from which the book title is drawn — were tendentious, inaccurate, and indecent, as well as hugely popular. Part I provides close readings of four interlocking libels. With insight and vast contextual knowledge, Darnton analyses the workings of these libels, decoding them in the minutest of details. Libels, he claims, allowed readers to make sense of a complex world by reducing it to a simple narrative involving famous people and the clash of powerful personalities. Part II investigates the relation between libels and politics. Slanderous writing was not seditious or crypto-revolutionary, yet it was an effective weapon in power struggles, causing considerable concern in high places. [ . . . ] Parts III and IV pursue Darnton’s analysis of the textual workings of libels. Designed to bring to light the hidden and the secret, libels encouraged readers to ferret out buried truths and invisible causality. The anecdotal was seen as possessing a certain evidentiary power, and unveiling the hidden, private life of individuals was a way of unmasking desires and self-interest, understood to be powerful motors of events.

DE BUZON, CHRISTINE. Amadis de Gaule en français: Continuation romanesque, collection, compilation. FS 65.3 (2011), 337-346.

The Amadis corpus in French goes beyond simple translation: it is a textual corpus that expands through the addition of parallel texts such as illustrations and translators’ notes.

DEMAROLLE, PIERRE and MARIE ROIG MIRANDA, dirs. Les Genres littéraires de la mémoire dans l’Europe des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Europe XVI-XVII 12 (2008).

Review: M. Mastroianni in S Fr 160 (2010), 136. This issue published essays resulting from a colloque organized by the Groupe de recherche XVIe et XVIIe siècles en Europe of U de Nancy II. Welcome variety of explorations of the two concepts.

DOWD, MICHELLE M. and JULIE A. ECKERLE. Recent Studies in Early Modern English Life Writing. ELR 40.1 (2010), 132-162.

Successfully demonstrates the vibrancy of current criticism in life writing in the Early Modern. Although the focus here is England, numerous volumes and essays cited consider the several related genres through a wider lens, for example Thomas F. Mayer and D. R. Woolf’s (edited) The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra to Louis XIV (1995). Theories, critical approaches and debates, and individual genres (diaries, journals, etc.) are discussed often in a European context, for example in Rachel Langford and Russell West’s (edited) Marginal Voices, Marginal Forms: Diaries in European Literature and History (1999). Studies of individual topics include sections on religion and spirituality, women’s life-writing, including the reading of such in Sharon Cadman Seelig’s Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women’s Lives, 1600-1680 (2006). Identity formation, politics, economy, body and mind, as well as sections on individual authors round out this extensive and detailed bibliographic essay.

DUGGAN, ANNE E. An Interview with Jacques Barchilon: From Free French Soldier to Fairy-Tale Pioneer. M&T 25 (2011), 207-220.

Jacques Barchilon, the founding editor of Marvels & Tales, speaks with Anne E. Duggan about his work as a fairy-tale scholar as well as his experience in World War II. Barchilon's career takes us from the early stages of the field, when little research had been carried out on the important conteurs and conteuses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, to the foundation of Merveilles & contes/Marvels & Tales.

DUPRAT, ANNE. Vraisemblances: poétiques et theorie de la fiction, du Cinquecento à Jean Chaplain (1500-1670). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009.

Review: P. Mounier in FS 65.2 (2011), 243-244. This study focuses first on Italian poetics through 1611 and the publication of Daniel Heinsius’s Poétique in France and later develops into a comparative analysis of seventeenth-century France that highlights the work of Chapelain.

DUPRAT, ANNE. Politiques barbaresques, les états corsaires d’Afrique du Nord dans la littérature française du XVIIe siècle. Tr L 23 (2010), 83-94.

Convincing demonstration of noteworthy ambiguités in representative political utopias in the Early Modern. Attentive to the complexity of these utopias, D. finds that their idyllic descriptions are des tableaux organisés par un projet politique et moral explicite (85). The author focuses her close examination on two representative cases, Gomberville’s Polexandre and Guilleragues’s Histoire des révolutions de Tunis and demonstrates that for each it is not a question of l’emprunt d’un décor et de masques que l’on donnerait à l’expression d’une réflexion française sur l’art de gouverner, et sur le destin des nations. Bien au contraire, il met au centre du texte le principe meme d’une sortie de soi dont les enjeux sont d’autant plus philosophiques que leur mode d’expression reste romanesque (94).

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.

ESMEIN-SARRAZIN, CAMILLE. L’Essor du roman. Discours théorique et constitution d’un genre littéraire au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008.

Review: M.-G. Lallemand in DSS 249 (2010), 778-779: Cette étude synthétique, minutieuse et rigoureuse, s’appuie sur de nombreux travaux critiques, dont il est fait judicieusement état dans les notes. Une importante bibliographie critique complète ses notes. Esmein-Sarrazin propose de ce fait un bilan des recherches sur le roman du XVIIe siècle. Il s’agit là d’une étude d’un grand intérêt.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 160 (2010), 140-141. Highly useful, diverse and masterful study of this important genre. In addition to the opening section on economical and social conditions surrounding the birth of the novel, the definition of various types of narratives and their detractors, other sections include Les discours sur le roman, Héritages et généalogie des modèles, Vraisemblance et histoire, l’inventio, la disposito, l’élocution, and Statut de la fiction: acteurs, implications et enjeux. Very rich bibliography of sources and secondary cultural studies.

EVAIN, A., P. GETHNER and H. GOLDWYN, dirs. Théâtre de femmes de l’Ancien Régime, XVIIeècle. Saint-étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-étienne, 2008.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 160 (2010), 139. Welcome second volume dedicated to plays by 17th c. women (here: Françoise Pascal, la Soeur de La Chapelle, Madame de Villedieu, Anne de La Roche-Guilhen, and Antoinette Deshouilères). The reviewer reminds us of Perry Gethner’s two volumes Femmes dramaturges en France (1650-1750) in Biblio 17 (1993 and 2002) in which some of the plays may also be found. Bibliography and glossary.

FELSKI, RITA, ed. Rethinking Tragedy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2008.

Review: Anon in FMLS 46 (2010), 117. Seventeen essays are collected here, ten of which first appeared in New Literary History. The reviewer finds most to be heavyweight academic contributions by very distinguished scholars, but the final essay by Terry Eagleton is judged a caustic, highly disrespectful and sometimes ad hominem review of those essays that first appeared in NLH.

FORESTIER, GEORGES, EDRIC CALDICOTT and CLAUDE BOURQUI, dirs. Le Parnasse du théâtre. Les recueils d’Oeuvres completes de théâtre au XVIIe siècle. Paris: PUPS, 2007.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 160 (2010), 139-140. Praiseworthy volume with introduction by C. Bourqui includes 14 contributions resulting from the 2005 colloque of the Centre de Recherche sur l’Histoire du Théâtre of the U de Paris-Sorbonne, directed by Forestier. Sections include: Imprimer le texte de théâtre, Imprimer les ornements, Des précurseurs aux strategies individuelles, and a Postface by Alain Viala which reconstitutes the discussions and conclusions of the colloque and provides un vero e proprio manifesto del nuovo Parnasse dramatique (140).

FOURNIER, MICHEL. Généalogie du roman. émergence d’une formation culturelle au XVIIe siècle en France. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006.

Review: C. Dubeau in UTQ 80.2 (Spring 2011). L’Œuvre se concentre sur les années 1620 à 1680, soit les années de la définition et de la régulation du genre jusqu’au passage du roman héroïque au petit roman. Dubeau loue la richesse d’un ouvrage dont l’érudition et l’extrême densité rendent à vrai dire la lecture ardue, et elle admire les synthèses, les allers-retours entre divers champs de savoir et corpus qu’opère l’auteur pour mener à bien son projet.

FRAGONARD, MARIE-MADELEINE. Une prouesse honteuse. Nous sommes tous des polygraphes. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 13-32.

Comprehensive overview of the diverse definitions and understandings of the concept of polygraphie.

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.

GENS, JEAN-CLAUDE (dir.). La logique herméneutique du XVIIe siècle. J. C. Danhauer et J. Clauberg. Argenteuil: Le Cercle Herméneutique, 2006.

Review: E. Mehl in RPFE 4 (2009), 258-259: Cette histoire érudite et savante de la logique herméneutique’ se situe au point de (non-) rencontre entre le cartésianisme, les querelles confessionnelles de l’époque, et une philosophie scolaire soucieuse de produire des moyens formels de résoudre les conflits d’opinion.

GILBY, EMMA. Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature. Oxford: Legenda, 2006.

GILBY, EMMA, Ed. Pseudo-Longin. De la sublimité du discours. Chambéry: L’Act Mem, 2007.

Review: R. Scholar in FS 65.1 (2011), 92-93. This study and scholarly edition opens new perspectives on the reception of Longinus in seventeenth-century France by going beyond the study of Boileau to consider the importance of Longinus for Corneille, Pascal, and lesser-known authors. Gilby thus reads Boileau as the culmination of a generation of contemplation of the sublime rather than as a starting point. The edition of the previously unpublished translation of Longinus into French is filled with scholarly notes as well as a specially helpful consideration of the reception of Sappho. Gilby suggests that the author of this translation may be Tallemant des Réaux. A work of impressive erudition.

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.).

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.

GUELLOUZ, SUZANNE. Une fiction qui fait l’histoire: La Relation historique et galante de l’invasion de l’Espagne par les Arabes de Baudot de Juilly (1699). Tr L 23 (2010), 105-114.

Demonstrates the two-fold originality of B.’s nouvelle, the only one which focuses on the conquest of Spanish soil by Arabs coming from the Maghreb and the only one to have in its title the term relation and to associate historique and galante (106). Although pointing out that B. intends to be considered as an historian and that B.’s récit includes much history (allusions and detailed accounts), G.’s study reveals that la fiction . . . occupe la plus grande place dans le récit (108), love intrigues, true and false friendships, tournaments and festivals. B. notes important literary references and an abundance of maxims and reflections. G. finds that instead of a mere juxtaposition of the two directions of the nouvelle, B. mit chacune de ces deux conceptions [history, fiction] au service de l’autre (114).

GUION, BEATRICE. Du bon usage de l’histoire: histoire morale et politique à l’âge classique. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008.

Review: in H. Phillips in FS 66.1 (2012), 90. Guion’s aim, in broad terms, is to trace the transition from historical production as adhering to the rhetorical framework of exempla to the more modern idea of history as constituting a body of verifiable knowledge anchored in an anthropological approach. [ . . . ] Guion investigates in detail the slippery epistemological status of history writing as it varies between useful versions involving the promotion of prudence’, the tensions between idealism and pragmatism in what the examples of history offer, and the emergence in the second half of the seventeenth century of a history sceptical of moral and political partisanship, where attempts to construct universal laws of one sort or another yield to the recognition of historical specificities and to a sort of historical relativism [ . . . ] Those readers seeking a strong conceptual guidance in an understanding of classical history writing will be enormously disappointed. In many respects this volume tells it as the writers of history tell it, with accompanying comment, often enlightening certainly, on similarities and differences between them. But the approach according to categories of history suffers in a sense from the porousness of those very categories, leading to a great deal of repetition across the sections and within them, since Guion never trusts two or three similar opinions to stand for the rest. In addition, when Guion recognizes the importance of profound conceptual issues, they are left hanging without further elucidation. This is a very useful book in which the reading is thankfully done for us, but it requires patience.

Review: D. Dalla Valle in S Fr 160 (2010), 141-142. G. contests Paul Hazard’s characterization of the 17th c. as she analyzes and defines the use of history, its usefulness and connections with la morale and politics. Reflections on private history are particularly illuminating.

HAMMOND, NICHOLAS. Gossip, Sexuality and Scandal in France (1610-1715). New York and London: Peter Lang, 2011.

Review: J. Prest in TLS 5648 (July 1 2011), 26. Draws on many primary sources and culminates in a study of gossip in La Princesse de Clèves. Hammond argues that gossip remains mostly on the margins in seventeenth-century France and is at once devalued and privileged. One of gossip’s functions is to give taboo desires a voice and space in which to exist and act (Prest). Homosexual group la confrérie italienne given as an example of gossip’s benefits and dangers. A favorable review.

HAMPTON, TIMOTHY. Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

Review: H. Melehy in MLQ 72 (2011), 256-59: Hampton’s study examines the intersection between early modern literature and evolving institutions of diplomacy through the preoccupation of both with problems of representation and signification. Hampton demonstrates how political entities take shape in relation to diplomacy and fiction; the process of situating the latter two in history, with references to an imagined past and future, makes them rhetorically effective and therefore persistent in history (258). Scholars of 17th-century France will perhaps be most interested in this study’s examination of diplomatic scenes and drama’s promotion of the state in works by Corneille and Racine. Highly praised by the reviewer.

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.

IBBETT, KATHERINE. The Style of the State in French Theater, 16301660: Neoclassicism and Government. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009.

Review: H. Bilis in Ren Q 63 (2010), 576-578. Lauded for its new perspective and focus on the distinctly political significance of form (I. 21). Particular linking is demonstrated between vocabulary and practices of tragedy and the newly absolutist state (576). B. finds that the most compelling chapter is The Politics of Patience; Staging the Spectator due to its wide scope . . . mov[ing] from an analysis of martyr paintings to martyr tragedies. Although B. consistently praises I.’s complex and illuminating readings of Corneille, she would have liked I. to include discussions as to how other playwrights such as Rotrou or Tristan approached the relationship between the state and the theatre.

KELLER-RAHBE, EDWIGE. Pratiques et usages du privilège d’auteur chez Mme de Villedieu et quelques autres femmes de letters du XVIIe siècle. OeC 35.1 (2010), 69-94.

Cet examen du contrle sourcilleux, par l’écrivaine, de sa production imprimée, l’utilisation stratégique du privilège pour réorienter sa carrière, son partenariat étroit avec Claude Barbin et les manipulations éditoriales du couple auteur/libraire renouvelle l’approche des oeuvres de Mme de Villedieu.

KENNY, NEIL. La Collection comme mode discursive dans les relations de voyage françaises aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. FS 65.3 (2011), 357-369.

This article develops the notion of collection as a mode of discourse in the récit de voyage. Collecting is a means of producing and organizing information in these récits: it is the prism through which many authors present their travels.

KERN, MADELEINE. Corps et morale entre geste et parole: la représentation de la séduction dans la comédie humaniste française de la Renaissance. Geneva: Slatkine, 2009.

Review: K. Llewellyn in FR 85 (2011), 173-74: Although focused on the 16th century, Kern’s study of theatrical seduction extends into the early years of the Grand Siècle. It examines 26 humanist comedies which dramatize female seduction, though these plays do not place an embodied, seduced woman on the stage. The reviewer wishes that Kern’s study could have benefited from tighter editing, but recommends the book as well as the genre it examines.

Review: H.-T. Campangne in Ren Q. 63. 4 (2010), 1292-1293. K.’s work examines a corpus of 26 plays, considering various debates, disguises, rituals of marriage, law and judicial practice, the language of seduction and its rhetorical, poetical and esthetic effects (1292). Judged of use and interest to scholars both of theatre and history, K.’s study offers a valuable mise au point on key issues (1293).

Review: M. Mastroianni in S Fr 161 (2010), 354. Welcome examination from a social-historical perspective, K.’s study investigates 26 plays including some of the early 17th c. K.’s choices are based on Madeleine Lazard’s definition of comédie as une comédie à l’antique divisée en actes et comportant une intrigue amoureuse (cited by reviewer). K.s praiseworthy and original study is organized in the following sections: Définir la séduction: l’approche théorique et discursive de la séduction dans le prologue, Représenter la séduction: la dramaturgie du visible et de l’invisible et les rapports de violence, Dire la séduction: la représentation de la séduction par le langage.

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.

LA CHARITÉ, CLAUDE. La construction du public lecteur dans le Recueil des dames de Brantme et les dédicataires, Marguerite de Valois et François d’Alençon. Etudes Françaises 47.3 (2011), 109-26.

Emphasizes that Brantme actually published two very distinct volumes in Recueil des dames, one devoted to illustrious women, the other to gallant ladies. Corrects the tendency to misrepresent the work by focusing primarily on gallantry.

LAFOUGE, MARION. Le bestiaire des genres au XVIIe siècle. SCFS 33.2 (2011), 80-92.

Article sets out to analyse the use of, and importance of, animal and teratological paradigms in the theorization of genres in the XVIIth century.

LAVOCAT, FRANÇOISE. Témoignage et récit de catastrophe. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 32-48.

Studies how witnesses describe, through first-person narration, the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in 1631, as well as the Milanese and London plagues of 1629-32 and 1665. First-person narration adopts two functions: on one hand, it provides a critical perspective of the event that goes hand in hand with an attempt to rationalize the witnesses’ perception of the incident. On the other hand, it reveals the sympathy felt by the spectators. The article then emphasizes the increasing importance of fiction in narrating catastrophe.

LECLERC, JEAN. L’Antiquité travestie et la vogue du burlesque en France (1643-1661). Quebec: Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2008.

Review: G. Peureux in FS 65.1 (2011), 89-90. This study traces the history of burlesque from its development in an intellectual, political, and cultural milieu that favored badinage through the course aux Virgiles and the creation of new forms of the burlesque after the Fronde. The author proposes a poetics of the burlesque where he offers a new definition of the heroi-comic as a hybrid of the ancient and the modern rather than as a marginal, rebel genre.

Review: B. Hamon-Porter in FR 85 (2011), 174-75: This study examines 17th-century burlesque imitations and rewritings of classical texts. Leclerc considers the political context of such texts (such as their use in the Fronde), and details how such writings help infuse new life into classical texts. He also discusses the marginal place of these kinds of writings vis-à-vis 17th-century French literary production as a whole. The reviewer praises Leclerc’s lucid prose and use of examples.

Review: F. Assaf in PFSCL, 37.73 (2010), 464-468. Rather than a brief review, a full-length article would be needed to do real justice to this book, with its extensive research and masterful combination of authors, many of whom would be little-known or even unknown to all but the most committed researchers of burlesque writing. Despite the (few) perceived contradictions or unsupported assertions, there is enough first-class research in this work and enough information to make it the premier text on burlesque and travestissement poetry.’

Review: A. Génetiot in DSS 251 (2011), 432-433: En retraçant l’évolution du burlesque depuis un divertissement savant à l’usage d’un public mondain vers une écriture de la contestation politique, J. Leclerc, attentif à montrer la nature fondamentalement critique et subversive du burlesque, pointe une différence d’intensité mais non de nature entre le jeu littéraire du travestissement de l’antique et le libelle politique, dans une commune désacralisation des autorités.

LECLERC, JEAN. Trente années d'études canadiennes sur la parodie. DSS 252 (2011) 501-509.

The author looks at contributions of Canadian researchers to the study of French parody during the 17th century.

LEONARD, MONIQUE, XAVIER LEROUX, et FRANCOIS ROUDAUT, eds. Le lent brassement des livres, des rites et de la vie. Mélanges offerts à James Dauphiné. Paris: H. Champion, 2009.

Review: E. Berriot-Salvadore in BHR 72.3 (2010), 716-719: Volume d’hommage comprenant vingt nouvelles contributions sur les quarante-neuf rassemblées. Voir l’article de D. Aris sur Scarron qui peint le milieu des érudits et des libertins qui fréquentent le salon du Marais dans les années 1650.

LINTNER, DOROTHEE. Polygraphie comique chez Rabelais et Furetière. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 107-120.

While allowing for the considerable differences between the work of Rabelais and Furetière, analyses the extent to which the two authors agree in their understanding of polygraphy, and how, therefore, malgré l’écart temporel, ils mettent en tension la pratique polygraphique et l’écriture comique d’une façon assez semblable’.

LOCHERT, VERONIQUE. L’Ecriture du spectacle: les didascalies dans le théâtre européen aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Geneva: Droz, 2009.

Review: M. Hawcroft in FS 65.2 (2011), 244. This richly documented, interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional work of vast proportions is valuable not only for its focus on English, French, Spanish, and Italian drama, but also for how it broadens our thinking about important critical questions in the study of theatre. Lochert offers a historical and theoretical survey, followed by analysis of stage directions’ effects on actors and readers, typography, and the use of implicit and explicit directions.

Review: J.-Y. Vialleton in DSS 249 (2010), 783-784: In very favourable terms, the reviewer points out that, ce livre ne porte pas sur les seules indications scéniques, mais sur l’ensemble des procédés de présentation du texte dramatique [ . . . ] on n’a pas affaire ici à une longue monographie portant sur un objet mineur, mais à une étude fondamentale, puisqu’elle rend compte de rien de moins que de l’invention du texte de théâtre occidental.

LYONS, JOHN D. French Literature. A very short introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.

Review: O. Bonserio in S Fr 162 (2010), 610. This is a welcome addition to Oxford UP’s publication of over 299 titles of this nature since 1995 on historical, philosophical, literary, religious (etc.), themes. By an extremely well qualified expert, the volume benefits from his organization by protagonists and their relation to society. Careful to draw the historical, literary, political and social context of the various periods, L’s presentations of protagonists furnish una sorta di archetipi dell’umanità (610).

LYONS, JOHN D. From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature. FS 65.2 (2011), 156-173.

After briefly surveying the evolution of the concept of fortune, the author shows how it began to be associated with randomness (hasard). He examines Molière’s L’Ecole des femmes and Lafayette’s Zayde and La Princesse de Clèves to show how questions of chance allow for the development of a wide variety of poetic and philosophical themes. In conclusion, he notes that this study shows us the way people [ . . . ] must rework [their] image of the world when something happens to invalidate the earlier image, the growing importance of suspense as a feature of dramatic and narrative plotting, and the increased awareness of identification’ as part of the literary and dramatic experience.

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.

MAINIL, JEAN, ed. Féeries: études sur le conte merveilleux XVIIeXIXe siècle. Le Rire des conteurs. Grenoble: UMR Lire, 2008.

Review: Harold Neeman in Marvels & Tales, 24.1 (2010), 163-66: A collection of papers which address the use of irony, humor, comic devices, parody, satire, and more in a wide selection of tales. These include Madame d’Aulnoy’s L’le de la félicité, which receives special attention for the ways in which she makes use of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, a text that itself has ironic and parodic elements. Reviewer praises both the solid scholarship evident in the collection and the avenues these essays open for further research.

MARCHAL-WEYL, CATHERINE. Le Tailleur et le fripier. Transformations des personnages de la comedia sur la scène française (1630-1660). Genève: Droz, 2007.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 160 (2010), 138-139. Rotrou, Boisrobert, Scarron and their transformation of characters of the comedia of the Siglo de Oro are the focus of this welcome comparatist study which fills a lacune in French studies. Praiseworthy and ambitious, the volume includes a table of correspondencies between the Spanish comedias and the French plays as well as a bibliography and index.

MAURI, DANIELA. Il mito cristianizzato di Daniela Dalle Valle all’interno dei nuovi studi sul mito. S Fr 162 (2010), 491-496.

After drawing our attention to several recent examinations relating to various myths (Antigone, Psyché, Médée, Artemis, for example), M. focuses on Dalla Valle’s Il mito cristianizzato Fedra/Ippolito e Edipo nel teatro francese del Seicento, Berne: Peter Lang, 2006. M.’s article is a detailed review of this rich and highly valuable panorama of the fortunes of the two key myths of its title. Sections include: authors before Racine some of whom have received insufficient critical attention, variations of the myths such as Jean Auvray’s 1609 Innocence descouverte, transformations and adaptations of myths (D.V. focuses here on three elements: ombre, vanitas, and the transformation of classical myth in a story piu facilmente adattabile alla dimensione cristiana (D. V. 62), Racine’s Phèdre, works before Corneille focusing on Oedipe such as that of Jean Prévost (1614), variations of the myth such as Boisrobert’s 1639 Les Rivaux amis, Oedipe after Corneille (Tallemant de Réaux), and the novella of Jean-Pierre Camus, particularly interesting as la lettura del mito di Edipo si sovrappone all’interpretazione del mito di Ippolito (D. V. 212). D. V.’s seminal work impresses by its pertinent analyses and wide-ranging quality, often examining neglected but important texts. Appendix of relevant texts and rich up-to-date bibliography.

MAZOUER, CHARLES. Le Théâtre français de l’âge classique. II. L’apogée du classicisme. Paris: Champion, 2010.

Review: H. Baby in PFSCL, 38.75 (2011), 496-500. Very positive review of cet ouvrage dont la lecture est absolument nécessaire à qui voudrait comprendre et aimer le théâtre du XVIIe siècle’. Among other favourable aspects, the reviewer particularly appreciates the way in which Corneille, Racine and Molière are not isolated in separate sections but integrated into the main narrative.

MAZOUER, CHARLES, ed. Farces du Grand Siècle. De Tabarin à Molière. Farces et petites comedies du XVIIe siècle. Bordeaux: Presses de l’Université de Bordeaux, 2008.

Review: D. DallaValle in S Fr 160 (2010), 137. Very welcome re-publication of the 1992 out-of-print volume. Important additions and up-to-date bibliography.

MIOTTI, MARIANGELI. Il personaggio di Ester nella drammaturgia francese da Rivaudeau a Racine. Fasano: Schena Editore, 2009.

Review: D. Cecchetti in S Fr 160 (2010), 136-137. Welcome volume by M. who has edited a number of Renaissance plays and who is a member of the team which published the Théàtre français de la Renaissance founded by E. Balmas and M. Dassonville. Among the 17th c. plays included in the volume reviewed are Antoine de Montchrestien’s Aman, Pierre Mainfray’s La Belle Hesther, the anonymous Tragédie nouvelle de la perfidie d’Aman, Du Ryer’s Esther and Racine’s Esther. Sermons (Pierre Merlin’s from 1594) and poems (Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin’s) round out the volume. Illuminates in several sections the personage of Esther as one important explanation for the remarkable fortune of the subject both in the Renaissance and in the 17th c. Rich and highly useful bibliography.

MOREAU, ISABELLE. Voyage et dépaysement: Les récits de voyage à l’épreuve du libertinage. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 49-67.

The article shows how travelers described the new by relying on something already known to them. La Mothe Le Vayer’s travel narration is not different from that principle but his primary focus is to adopt a position of skepticism and to express his particular judgment. Le Vayer is less preoccupied with veracity but with revealing his skeptical philosophy. He chooses whatever topic interests him to demolish dogmatic views. The principal preoccupation and primary motivation behind his travel narratives thereby prefigures 18th-century travel narratives.

MOREAU, ISABELLE. Guérir du sot. Les strategies d’écriture des libertins à l’âge classique. Paris: Champion, 2007.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 161 (2010), 358-359. Rich and important volume is also of significant current scholarly interest. Proposes meaningful revisions to classical (A. Adam and others) and more recent studies (J.-P. Cavaillé, for example). Based on a corpus of some 250 works and focuses on La Mothe le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé, Charles Sorel and Cyrano de Bergerac. Sections examine the concept of libertinage, the problem of censure, philosophical and pragmatic concerns such as epistemological consequences of ambiguity, esthetic dimensions and the role of language, historical prise and récits de voyage, Naudé’s esthetics and theatrical vraisemblance, libertine pedagogy and an esthetic of la dissonance (358-359). Excellently documented and with extensive bibliography.

MASTROIANNI, MICHELE. Lungo I sentieri del tragic. La rielaborazione teatrale in Francia dal Rinascimento al Barocco. Vercelli: Edizioni Mercurio, 2009.

Review: M. M. Dogli in S Fr 161 (2010), 353-354. Seminal work is rich and wide-ranging as it offers un illuminante prospettiva del panorama letterario della drammaturgia francese classica e barocca (354). Includes investigations on interpretations and translations, contemporary history, classical and biblical references, the grotto as topos (Tristan’s Le Promenoir des deux amants and Corneille’s Illusion comique, for example).

NASSICHUK, JOHN ed. Vérité et fiction dans les entrées solennelles à la Renaissance et à l’âge classique. Les collections de la République des Lettres. Québec: Les Presses de L’Université Laval, 2009.

Review: N. Russell in Ren Q 63. 4 (2010), 1324-1325. Selected essays from a 2006 conference on truth and fiction in ceremonial entrées during the Early Modern is a rich body of studies which focuses on the question of truth and fiction itself as well as supplying details on several lesser known albums. Relationship of entrées to criteria of truth and verisimilitude is examined as is the various uses of the entrées, political and propagandistic, for example. Marie-Claude Canova-Green demonstrates that entries may even be invented as in the case of the 1626 supposed entry by the Duc de Rohan.

NELTING, DAVID. Autorisation poétique et poésie lyrique française dans le contexte de la cour et de la ville (Malherbe, Saint-Amant). PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 361-376.

Analysis of lyric poetry focussing particularly on Malherbe and Saint-Amant. Concludes: ou la poésie lyrique au dix-septième siècle s’approche de l’honnête désindividualisation de la cour et de la ville, renonçant ainsi à l’autorisation poiétique’ basée sur une forte individualitè du poète, ou elle actualise ce dispositif d’autorisation, s’opposant ainsi aux bienséances culturelles’.

NEUHAUS, HELMUT, ed. Die Frühe Neuzeit als Epoche. (Historische Zeitschrift, Beihefte, NF., Bd. 49.) München: Oldenbourg, 2009.

Review: W. Behringer in HZ 291 (2010), 513-515. Wide-ranging and attentive to international and interdisciplinary scholarship, this volume is judged a milestone in the historiography of the Early Modern. Essays treat main questions concerning the beginning and endings of periods as well as the relevance of periodization to all areas of life, culture and geographical areas. Essays examine numerous disciplines such as music, scholarship, the baroque, painting, law, theology and early modern globalization.

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).

ODDO, NANCY. Logique polygraphique et politesse mondaine. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 47-61.

Examines the polygraphic genre of narrative fiction, through an analysis of des écrits de vulgarisation scientifique et spirituelle qui participent à l’élaboration d’une civilité entre la fin du XVIe et le début du XVIIe siècle’.

OIRY, GOULVEN. Entre révérence et impertinence: la cour au miroir de la ville dans la comédie des années 1629-1635. PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 409-425.

Examines the ambiguous representation of the courtisan in ten plays published between 1629-1635, and the light it throws on the relationship between la cour and la ville under Louis XIII. Plays include works by Corneille, Du Peschier, Mairet, Du Ryer, Discret, and Mareschal.

PAINE, SKYE LANDELL. Rupture: The Fear of Discontinuity in Seventeenth Century France. DAI 3428948 (2011).

Paine analyzes the forces of rupture that undermine the mechanism of order inherent in seventeenth-century absolutist centralization. He examines works by Corneille (Rodogune), Molière (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) to study political rupture in different genres (tragedy, comedy) and separate political eras (the interregnum and Louis XIV’s reign). Familial and political ruptures are closely intertwined, and questions of monarchy and patriarchy are raised. The dissertation then turns to a close reading of Les Remarques, by Vaugelas before concluding with Racine’s Andromaque and Pascal’s Pensées.

PARSONS, JOTHAM. Etat Présent: Socio-Economic Approaches to French Literature, c. 1540-1630. FS 65.1 (2011), 74-81.

A survey of recent work in socio-economic criticism of Renaissance literature. Dix-septièmistes will appreciate the attention focused on préciosité, Corneille, and Sorel’s Francion.

PENSOM, ROGER, Rhythme et sens: De La Fontaine à la Séquence de Sainte Eulalie. Poétique 165 (2011), 53-72.

An exploration of how French verse might contain more meaningful variation in rhythm than has been acknowledged. Downplaying the question of syllables, their number and division, Pensom examines variations in accent and shows how early poets appear to have used changes in accent patterns to create particular effects. Pensom works backward in time toward medieval texts but begins with a close reading of La Fontaine’s Le Lion et le chasseur.

PETEY-GIRARD, BRUNO. Henri IV Padre delle buone lettere’? S Fr 162 (2010), 442-455.

Masterful, extremely rich and well-documented examination answers the question announced in the title with a resounding yes. P.-G. points first to the silence on the patronage aspect as generally found in texts of praise of Henri. Celebrated principally as a valiant warrior who brought peace to the realm, H. may receive a general type of praise for his support of collèges, des arts et du commerce (Jérme de Bénévent, cited on 442). P.-G. places H.’s actions and image in the context of events of the late 16th and early 17th c., then discovers praises of H. and texts which demonstrate that le roi demeure celui vers qui nombre de lettrés tournent leur regard (444). H.’s portrait is traced, Nicolas Rapin submits to H. his project of restoration of la poésie mesurée (445) and Henri d’Urfé resumes the sentiment of the day: Recevez la [l’Astrée] donc (SIRE) non comme une simple Bergere: mais comme une oeuvre de vos mains, car veritablement on vous en peut dire l’Autheur: puisque c’est un enfant que la paix a fait naistre, et que c’est à vostre Majesté à qui toute l’Europe doit son repos, et sa tranquillité (dédicace, cited by P.-G. on 446). P.-G. discovers the contribution of frontispieces such as that of Blaise de Vigenère’s translation of Philostrate (with engraving by Jasper Isac), the ornamentation of royal palaces (and their theoretical formulations), and images of the queen in allegorical portraits emphasizing cultural renewal made possible by peace. P.-G.’s essay brings a rich array of texts and descriptions of images to bear on his argument, convincing us that le règne d’Henri IV . . . marque en fait une étape majeure dans l’image royale de protection des Lettres et dans les conditions même d’existence des Lettres à proximité du trne (454).

PIEJUS, ANNE, ed. Plaire et instruire: le spectacle dans les collèges de l’Ancien Régime. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2007.

Review: J. Laroche in FR 84 (2010), 398-99: A collection of 20 essays on theater in early modern schools, collected from a conference on the subject organized by the Bibliothèque Nationale. Essays in the collection examine which kinds of plays schools tended to choose, what financial means they had available for staging theater, how theatrical productions overlapped with civic and political spectacle, and how schools’ use of theater related to Jesuit teaching methods. [L]’ouvrage brille par son écriture claire (399).

Review: M-T. Mourey in PFSCL, 37.73 (2010), 472-475. On ne peut que souligner les mérites de l’éditrice Anne Piéjus d’avoir exploré, avec beaucoup de constance, ce champ relativement nouveau de la pratique spectaculaire’.

PINSON, GUILLAUME et MAXIME PRÉVOST, éds. Penser la littérature par la presse. études littéraires. 40.3 (Automne 2009).

Review: V. Frigerio in DFS 90 (Spring 2010), Ce numéro d’études littéraires se propose d’aborder les rapports entre la littérature et [ . . . ] la presse, dont l’émergence graduelle nourrit bien des débats, du XVIIe au XXe siècle. Le seul article o il s’agit du XVIIe siècle est celui de Annie Cloutier qui écrit d’un polygraphe du XVIIe siècle, Louis Sébastien Mercier.

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.

REQUEMORA-GROS, SYLVIE. La Circulation des genres dans l’écriture viatique: la littérature’ des voyages du nomadisme générique, le cas de Marc Lescarbot. OeC 36.1 (2011), 67-74.

Une etude de la circulation des genres du voyage entre 1492 et 1615 correspond au désir d’appréhender cette voie qu’emprunte la littérature française vers la modernité en liant les recherches actuelles sur les voyages à celles sur l’hybridité des genres.

RIFFAUD, ALAIN. Répertoire dramatique du théâtre français imprimé (1630-1660). Genève: Droz, 2009.

Review: M. Pavesio in S Fr 162 (2010), 548. Indispensable work reconstructs the creative activity relating to the theatre of the years indicated in the title. Other aspects reported are theatre production, re-editions and locations in French libraries. All manner of helpful materials and information is included here, for example, typographical practices and illustrations.

RIZZONI, NATHALIE, JULIE BOCH, et NADINE JASMIN, eds. L'âge d'or du conte de fées: De la comédie à la critique (1690-1709). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007.

Review: R. Bottigheimer in M&T 25 (2011), 371-374: A volume of criticism and three staged fairytales by Charles Rivière Dufresny and Claude-Ignace Brugière de Barente (Les Fées, ou Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oie), Florent Carton Dancourt (Les Fées), and Le Mariage du Prince Diamant et de la Princesse Perle whose author is unknown.

ROSSET, FRANÇOIS, Le langage du fantastique: Stratégies et fatalité du réemploi. Poétique 166 (2011), 203-14.

Briefly situates Charles Sorel, Jean-Pierre Camus, and poets such as Saint-Amant within a larger discussion of the fantastic as a genre. Rosset particularly mentions these writers’ work of collecting and assembling fantastic material.

ROYE, JOCELYN. La Figure du pédant de Montaigne à Molière. (Travaux du Grand Siècle, 31). Geneva: Droz, 2008.

Review: J. Prest in FS 66.1 (2012), 88-89. This work takes a global approach: it traces the history of the pedant back to the late medieval period before focusing on a variety of literary texts (satirical poems, novels, and theatre). Excessive generalizations and problematic analyses make for a dry read. [ . . . ] Towards the end of the book, Royé puts forward an interesting hypothesis whereby the exclusively male, university-based savant, who spoke Latin and led a solitary existence, came to be opposed, during the course of the seventeenth century, to the sometimes female mondain (based at court or in the salons), who relied on the vernacular and on a group setting.

Review: J. Serroy in DSS 249 (2010), 775-776: Il y a comme un malin plaisir à lire l’ouvrage que Jocelyn Royé consacre au personnage du pédant: celui de découvrir ledit personnage, incarnation même du savoir érudit cloué par la tradition comique au piloris du ridicule pédantesque, érigé en héros d’une étude universitaire empruntant les voies d’une érudition jamais à l’abri de devenir elle-même l’illustration des travers de son suet d’observation. This original work is near exhaustive covering près d’une centaine de personnages et d’un corpus dense d’une cinquantaine de comédies, d’une trentaine de romans et d’autant de pièces satiriques.

SAFTY, ESSAM. L’autre figure d’Héraclès dans la tragédie baroque: dramaturgie, éthique et idéologie dans l’épisode de la démence meurtrière. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 219-235.

Provides an overview of critical interpretations of Hercules’ madness in Baroque tragedy before proposing his own, according to which: [L’épisode de la folie criminelle] dit en somme le tragique de la condition des mortels, dont l’action est sujette à de terribles actes de représailles de la part des divinités: la force contraignante d’un destin aveugle et implacable traduit en l’occurrence la démission de la volonté humaine face aux arrêts du sort; en même temps, devenu de ce fait instrument commis à l’exécution de la volonté divine, le héros se vit investi d’une fureur démoniaque qui le porta nécessairement à agir dans l’inconscience’.

SCHAPIRA, NICOLAS. Le salon écrit par les professionnels des lettres (France-XVIIe siècle). PFSCL 38.75 (2011), 315-327.

Contribution to the historiography of salons. Examines the representation of the salon as it is constructed in the anecdotes, correspondence and memoirs of contemporary men of letters, and the light it throws on the relationship between cour and ville. Particular attention is given to Faret’s Honneste homme and to Tallemant’s Historiettes.

SCOTT, VIRGINIA. Women on the Stage in Early Modern France: 1540-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.

Review: F. Londré in CHOICE 48 (2011), 1299: Scott examines apparent exchanges of influence between early modern actresses and playwrights, while also attending to these women’s private lives, working conditions, and myths surrounding their existence. Attends to women such as Madeleine Béjart, Mlle Du Parc, La Champmeslé, and Mlle Molière. Recommended by the reviewer despite slight reservations about the author’s inclusion of superfluous details.

Review: M. Leon in ThR 36.2 (2011), 179-80. Scott gives actresses new voice as she penetrates the obscurity of the historical record to show the significant role of women in the growth and stabilization of French theatre. Uses legal contracts and civil records, but also plays themselves to engage in intelligent inference about the place of women. For the 1630s, for instance, Scott analyzes the roles written for actresses to speculate about their importance in the troupes. Study concludes with a chapter on biographical depictions of famous French actresses in film and on the stage

SEIFERT, LEWIS and DOMNA STANTON, eds. and trans. Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers. Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011.

Review: C. Kerr for CHOICE 48 (2011), 2101: A collection in English of tales from the major conteuses of the 17th century. Well selected, the tales vary in length and tone, and are fleshed out through scholarly notes, illustrations, and a concise, engrossing introduction (2101). Recommended by the reviewer for all readers; this book is a joy (2101).

SEIFERT, LEWIS. Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Review: A. Duggan in FR 84 (2011), 807-08: Through an examination of civility manuals, salon literature, polemical texts, and narratives about cross-dressing, Seifert highlights the precariousness of the seventeenth-century masculine subject, which continually needed to be reiterated through relations to other men and to women. Moving from the production of normative masculinities to the production of marginal masculinities, Seifert demonstrates the delicate balancing act male subjects performed to maintain their normative or non-normative subject positions.Manning the Margins opens up the scope of early modern gender studies and breaks new ground (807-08).

Review: P. Zoberman in PFSCL, 38.74 (2011), 255-260. Volume is a very stimulating contribution both to the exploration of early-modern culture and to gender studies, supported by a vast knowledge of the scholarship in both domains’.

Review: Gary Ferguson in Ren Q 63 (2010), 574-576. Judged welcome and innovative, S.’s investigation adopts Pierre Bourdieu’s Masculine Domination as his principal theoretical framework (575). Organized in two parts, Civilizing the Margins, and Sexuality and the Body at the Margins, S.’s wide-ranging discussions include examinations of honnêteté, relationships between the masculine and the feminine, galanterie, and satirical songs, among other topics. Individual figures and authors receive important focus as well, such as Voiture, Madeleine de Scudéry, Théophile and the Abbé de Choisy.

SHAPIRO, NORMAN R. French Women Poets of Nine Centuries. The Distaff & the Pen. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Review: M. Bishop in DFS 89 (Winter 2009), In spite of being disappointed with the absence of a number of twentieth-century poets, the reviewer is grateful for Shapiro’s fine work of translation. A number of women poets from the seventeenth century are present in this volume, including Madeleine de Scudéry, Henriette de Coligny de la Suze, Antoinette Deshoulières, and Marie-Catherine Desjardins de Villedieu. The reviewer writes that it is impossible to do justice to such immensities and sensibilities, such intelligences and graces, as this cornucopia lays before us.

SHOEMAKER, PETER. Powerful Connections: The Poetics of Patronage in the Age of Louis XIII. Newark: UP of Delaware, 2007.

Review: B. Hamon-Porter in FR 84 (2010), 380-81: This well-written and highly readable study offers a useful complement to past works on the subject of patronage. It is best at showing the shifting position occupied by patronage and how it created dynamic communities, promoting creativity rather than limiting it (381). Examines writers such as Guez de Balzac, Malherbe, Théophile de Viau, Corneille, and Mairet.

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.

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.

SURGERS, ANNE AND FABIEN CAVAILLE. La scénographie du théâtre baroque en France: quand le comédien n’était pas enfermé dans une cage. CdDS 13.1 (2010), 92-123.

This article turns to theatrical space in baroque theater. It first addresses in detail the scenographic conditions of an emblem-theater throughout Europe. It then turns to the comedian and his relationship to his theatrical space. Il s’agit . . . d’examiner le rapport entre le comédien et la scène, la façon dont il occupe le plateau en se demandant si le jeu du comédien dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle obéit lui aussi à certaines conventions spatiales, voire à des lieux de mémoire.

Théories et pratiques de la traduction aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Actes de la journée d’études du Centre de recherche sur l’Europe classique. Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3, 22 février 2008. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2009.

Review: F. Forcolin in S Fr 161 (2010), 423. Concentration of texts examined is literary and sacred. Contributions include comparative studies, specific authors, texts and problems. Introduction by Charles Mazouer and presentation by Michel Wiedemann. 17th c. scholars will appreciate studies on Scarron, Furetière, Perrault, Comenius and la poésie précieuse.

TRICOCHE-RAULINE, LAURENCE. Identité(s) libertine(s), l’écriture personnelle ou la creation de soi. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009.

Review: R. Ganim in FS 65.1 (2011), 95-96. Tricoche-Rauline presents the libertins as heirs to Montaigne who value self-inquiry, experience, and epistemological questions: they privilege an écriture personnelle that challenges cultural norms in the pursuit of personal truth. Authors studied include Théophile de Viau, Tristan L’Hermite, Cyrano de Bergerac, Dassoucy, and La Fontaine.

Review: L. Rescia in S Fr 161 (2010), 359. First person poetry and narrative is the focus of this examination of 17th c. libertine strategies. Includes investigations of texts of Théophile de Viau, La Fontaine, Tristan l’Hérmite, Charles Sorel, Cyrano de Bergerac and Charles Dassoucy. T.-R.’s study is organized into sections on identité (public and private spheres, publications, esthetic and linguistic innovations, rehabilitation of amour-propre, the libertine confession or manifesto (rhetorical features, sensualities, dissimulation, etc.) and relations of literary practice and philosophical thought (ideological bases, doubt, vraisemblance, political consequences, etc.).

TURNOVSKY, GEOFFREY. The Literary Market: Authorship and Modernity in the Old Regime. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Review: J. Phillips in FS 65.3 (2011), 391-392. This well-researched and densely argued study represents an important contribution to our knowledge of the history of authorship and publishing in France. Focusing on the evolution of the writer’s status and relationship with a growing print industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Turnovsky proposes a radically new analysis of this process. Rejecting the more simplistic view according to which writers of the period were increasingly able to wean themselves off patronage and live on income from their books, he persuasively argues that changes in the ways in which authors were perceived by the aristocrats who had hitherto supported them played an equally important role.

Review: P. Stewart in FR 84 (2011), 1025-26: Turnovsky argues that the relationship of writers with both the book industry and their reading public needs to be recast without the usual reliance on the notion of literary property. He argues that the privilège was not primarily about ownershipbut a credentialing device thatallowed them to project an image of themselves as socially integrated and enjoying the king’s favor, since it was issued in the monarch’s name (80). The reviewer expresses enthusiasm for the work but laments a lack of attention to relevant texts and scholarship, as well as to questions of early modern journalism and censorship.

VASILIEVA, EKATERINA. Antoich Kantemir: la polygraphie au service d’un écrivain-diplomate. PFSCL 38.74 (2011), 63-81.

Analyses the use of polygraphy as a deliberate strategy on the part of the Russian writer-diplomat Antoich Kantemir to attract the widest possible audience.

VIALA, ALAIN. La France galante. Essai historique sur une catégorie culturelle, de ses origines jusqu’à la Révolution. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008.

Review: J. Lyons in DSS 249 (2010), 777-778: Recognizing the author’s extraordinary contribution to the field, the reviewer sees this new and expansive work as le fruit de ses recherches et des réflexions dans un excellent ouvrage de synthèse. [ . . . ] Encyclopedic in nature and eminently accessible, the fifteen chapters begin with an etymological analysis and merge into a study of l’émergence du galant comme phénomène littéraire et social important et dynamique dès les années 1650 [ . . . ]

VUILLEUMIER LAURENS, FLORENCE and PIERRE LAURENS. L’âge de l'inscription: La rhétorique du monument en Europe du XVe au XVIIe siècle. Le Cabinet des Images 2. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010.

Review: T. Lansford in Ren Q 63.4 (2010), 1259-1260. Praiseworthy for its genuine wealth of material . . . and generous breadth of coverage(1260), V.’s examination is of particular interest and value to scholars of Neo-Latin, Renaissance and Baroque Studies. Organized in chapters on the birth of modern epigraphy, its original use, its link with politics, the rise of the elogium, and the 17th c. debate on the linguistic form of inscriptions.

WELCH, ELLEN. A Taste for the Foreign: Worldly Knowledge and Literary Pleasure in Early Modern French Fiction. Newark: UP Delaware, 2011.

Review: C. Campbell in CHOICE 49 (2011), 510: Welch examines how the fashion for (artificial) foreignness manifested itself in the production of prose fictionand how it inspired formal innovations as well as new settings for fictional content (510). This study of French literary exotisme tackles a range of genres, including the roman héroïque, city guides, secret memoirs, and novels centered in both Paris and lands abroad. Recommended by the reviewer.

ZAISER, RAINER. Introduction. Le XVIIe siècle: l’âge de l’écrivaine. OeC 35.1 (2010), 3-8.

Article introductoire au numéro des Oeuvres & Critiques consacré aux Ecrivaines du XVIIe siècle. Selon Z., . . . les résultats obtenus par les études féminines imposent la tâche de créer a new literary landscape’ ou une nouvelle cartographie’ de la littérature française du XVIIe siècle, cartographie mettant en relief la richesse de la création littéraire féminine de l’époque. Les onze contributions [voir les articles de Carr, Divincenzo, Longino, Lallemand, Grande, Keller-Rabbé, Vos-Camy, Sanz, Gethner, Böhm, et Trinquet] visent à faire natre une image représentative de cette diversité qui est propre à la plume féminine de l’âge classique.

ZONZA, CHRISTIAN. Les Mémoires du capitaine Foucques: un témoignage-avertissement’ à l’adresse du roi. Tr L 23 (2010), 71-81.

In his close examination of this fourteen page in octavo historical account known as Foucques’s memoir, Z. underscores its interest due to 1) its quality as an example des discours des capitaines et surtout des éloges des actions des grands capitaines and to 2) its place in une littérature encomiastique liée aux valeurs de l’héroïsme in the Early Modern (74). Z.’s investigation includes a study of the structure, the justification, and the rhetoric of the memoir. Z. finds the narration théâtricalisé and the anecdotes, typically with precise sources and references, to be exempla which viennent diversifier et animer le propos du capitaine, tout en offrant la garantie de ce qui apparat bien comme la réalité contemporaine (77). Z.’s interpretation of F.’s vehement passages on the enslavement of Europeans is particularly striking as it is essentiellement le résultat d’un scandaleux commerce international (80). F. had predicted that Christianity would be destroyed unless France acts and le royaume du lys deviendra ainsi . . . une extension de la Barbarie (80).