An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry from France. (MLA Texts and Translations) by Gretchen Schultz

Abstract

248 Reviews science and artistic creation ismost visible. Novelists give an account of these tensions in theirworks and provide us with a rich landscape of a world in turmoil, unable fully to comprehend the nature of the progress that is being made. By careful analysis of a rich and well-defined corpus, the author has produced a study of the novel from an original perspective and given new insights into a world that was becoming evermore divided. University of Exeter Malcolm Cook An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry from France. Ed. by Gretchen Schultz. (MLA Texts and Translations) New York: Modern Language Association ofAmerica. 2008. xl-f-368pp. $11.95. ISBN 978-1 60329-029-6. In Les Progres de lapoesie francaise depuis 1830 (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), Theo phile Gautier devotes only three pages of a total hundred to female poets, grouping them alongside 'regional' poets fromBrittany and Provence. Catulle Mendes, defin ing poetry as a 'metier d'homme' in Le Mouvement poetique francais de 1867 a 1900 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1902), p. 200, dispenses with Lucie Mardrus, Anna de Noailles, Nicole Hennique, and Anne Osmont in a single page, concluding that 'la poesie des femmes ne devrait etre qu'un charme de plus dans lamaison' (p. 201). However, as Gretchen Schultz's biographies attest,many of the fourteen poets included here won prestigious literaryprizes in their lifetime despite fierce criticism from theirmale peers. Schultz's introduction to this excellent antho logy challenges the pernicious and reductive patriarchal forces which shape the creation of national literary canons, and their 'profound gendering of aesthetic values' (p. xviii), providing instead a refreshing selection of unjustly marginalized poets who, through intertextual dialogues, succeed in fostering a powerful sense of community and common purpose. The anthology is thus divided chronologically into three periods?Romantic (Desbordes-Valmore, Tastu, Gay de Girardin, Mer cceur, Colet), Parnassian (Ackermann, Blanchecotte, Michel, Siefert,Villard), and Symbolist (JudithGautier, Krysinska, d'Houville, Vivien)?and the texts selected display both intriguing correspondences with and striking divergences fromwhat literary history has come to regard as the dominant poetics of each movement. Familiar themes among the Romantics, for example, are love, beauty, sorrow, and loss, while the Symbolists articulate a sensual, ineffablemystery similar to that evident in theirmale counterparts. Themes uniting these diverse writers are theur gent search for an authentic and independent female poetic voice and the problem of inscribing a woman's memory and legacy among thegrands hommes de lapa trie;while their poetry often transcends gender to consider the human condition, Blanchecotte memorably cries 'Domptons l'homme, desarmons Dieu!' (p. 156). Indeed, several poets strike a forceful political tone, with Siefert's anti-Napoleon III polemic Les Saintes Coleres and Michel's anti-imperial tirades, while Vivien's dark, carnal lesbian verse, Vaillard's cynical satires, and Tastu's challenge to the MLR, 105.1, 2010 249 Church's inflexiblemodel of obedient femininity prove thatmother, daughter, and spouse are but three of the infinitelyvaried and complex visions ofwomanhood which these writers have to offer.This well-documented bilingual anthology, with a wide range of translation styles, is a first-ratepedagogical tool. Throughout, Schultz directs the reader towards the finest recent scholarship in the field (Adri anna Paliyenko, Aimee Boutin, Wendy Greenberg), and the current resurgence of academic interest in these writers suggests that themuch-needed reconsideration of the nineteenth-century canon, with all the benefits thatbrings to both teaching and research, iswell underway. University of St Andrews David Evans CEuvres poetiques completes, vol. ix. By Theodore de Banville. Ed. by Peter J.Edwards and Peter S. Hambly. Paris: Champion. 2009. 414 pp. 75. ISBN 978-2-7453-1876-3. Although substantial scholarly interest has eluded him, Banville's poetry inspired considerable debate during the nineteenth century, as the documents gathered here amply attest. Following a dozen minor poems discovered since the recent eight-volume critical edition of his complete poetic works, the editors present 350 pages of contemporary critical responses to Banville. As well as individual reviews of each of his seventeen verse collections bar only Amethystes and Roses de Noel, this includes a wide selection of vues d'ensemble, including well-known essays by Baudelaire (1861) and Mallarme...