A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. II: L-Z by Alison Adams , Stephen Rawles , Alison Saunders (review)

Abstract

810 Reviews by two differentauthors with reference to the same protagonist; the 'contingent figure' of Fortune herself as she appears in the discourse of Reason; and the 'knowledge of contingency' as it emerges from Nature's lengthy discussion of free will, divine foreknowledge, and moral responsibility. There is no question that these themes are important to the text overall, and Heller-Roazen's book helps to redress a very real gap in modern critical coverage of this much-debated poem. I must admit to a disagreement with his reading of the famous midpoint scene in which the God of Love names the two poets and foretells Guillaume's death and Jean's birth. HellerRoazen asserts that while both poets are named and their respective contributions to the poem identified, Love's interlocutor here, the narrator of the poem, cannot be either Guillaume or Jean. Yet ifone consults the text, it is clear that the God of Love is addressing his troops rather than the Lover, and that the narrator-protagonist of whom he speaks is none other than Guillaume de Lorris, identified explicitly as such in line 10496 of Lecoy's edition. Heller-Roazen's analysis thus needs, in my view, some nuancing; while the poetic subject(s) and voice(s) of the Rose are unquestionably shifting and complex, the situation is not, I would argue, quite as he says it is. Another quibble, less serious, involves mistranslations. One, 'lad' for 'lady' (p. 134), is undoubtedly a simple typographical error. The other is more mysterious: on page 127 Heller-Roazen translates Nature's 'Onques ne fisriens pardurable' as 'God never made anything everlasting', when it clearly means 'I [nature] never made anything everlasting'. Perhaps this too results from some undetected typographical glitch, since Heller-Roazen's analysis of the passage does not sufferfrom the distortion that this might suggest. In all, this book allows fora richer appreciation of the intellectual traditions that helped shape the Rose: a poem, in Heller-Roazen's elegant formulation, that is 'dedicated, through its language, its form, its rhetoric, and its organization, to an exploration ofthe many forms of its own possibility and actuality' (p. 131). Pembroke College, Cambridge Sylvia Huot A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. ii: L-Z. By Alison Adams, Stephen Rawles, and Alison Saunders. Geneva: Droz. 2002. xxii + 762pp. SwF 142; ?103.95. ISBN 2-600-00676-1. Only three years after the appearance of Volume 1 of this massive bibliography, the second and final volume has been published. Covering authors beginning with the letters L-Z , it continues to use the excellent principles of description established in the firstvolume (see my review in MLR, 97 (2002), 423-24). The introductory pages contain firsta list of twenty-three further libraries visited, together with an acknowledgement of information received from colleagues since the publication of the first volume; there is then a full list of the libraries cited in Volume 11. The catalogue itselffollows; once again there are occasional introductory passages relating to particularly significant authors such as Georgette de Montenay. As promised in the firstvolume, there is a substantial list of additions and corrections (pp. 653-705); in many cases these relate to additional copies examined, but there are also several examples of editions not previously known. The system of numbering allows these to be readily integrated into the main sequence. There is an admirable series ofindexes: a consolidated index of names and titles,followed by one of principal authors and titles, and then more specialized indexes of editors, commentators, translators, and other supplementary authors; artists; dedicatees; printers/publishers; places ofpublication; dates ofpublication. Once again, one is struck by the careful attention paid to ensuring maximum usefulness to the reader. This splendid production will become an essential MLRy 100.3, 2005 811 tool that should find its place in the reference section of any library holding early modern books, and no doubt also on the shelves of many individual scholars. University of Durham Jennifer Britnell WebsofAllusion: French Protestant Emblem Books ofthe Sixteenth Century. By Alison Adams. (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 378) Geneva: Droz. 2003. x + 324 pp. SwF 92.20; ?62.42. ISBN...