Bibliographie du voyage français en Italie du moyen âge à 1914 by Vito Castiglione Minischetti, et al (review)

Abstract

506 Reviews a political one. And indeed, the second half ofthe twentieth century marks the passing ofthe 'moment grammatical'. This is clear in the work of Barthes, where grammatical criticism is replaced by semiotic analysis. For Philippe, Barthes's paradox is that he tries to produce a non-grammatical description of literature, knowing all the while he cannot fully succeed as literature has a grammatical base. Overall, this volume shows a wonderful depth and breadth of knowledge, and is written in a stimulating manner. It will be of great interest to grammarians, linguistic historians, and literary scholars. University of Wales Swansea Dulcie M. Engel Bibliographie du voyage francais en Italie du moyenage a 1914. By Vito Castiglione Minischetti, Giovanni Dotoli, and Roger Musnik. (Biblioteca Della Ricerca, Bibliographica, 3) Fasano: Schena Editore; Paris: Presses de l'Universite de Paris-Sorbonne. 2002. 541pp. ?33. ISBN 88-8229-309-2 (Schena); 2-84050233 -x (Paris-Sorbonne). Defining a corpus of travel literature is often a process of salvaging what Margaret Cohen has dubbed (referringin her case to fiction) the 'great unread' (The Sentimental Education of the Novel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)). Most travel narratives are by their very nature ephemeral, capturing the contemporary mo? ment with varying degrees of documentary accuracy, but then rapidly replaced by subsequent accounts. Some travel accounts manage, however, to achieve a status that might be deemed canonical, and a number ofthese are included in this substantial new bibliography of works by French travellers to Italy. As a result, texts by Montaigne, Stendhal, Chateaubriand, and Barres are absorbed into the rich and uneven archive that constitutesthis resource together with works by much lesser-known authors. The compilers' principal criterion remains a pragmatic one and ignores debates about the uneasy relationship between travel accounts and fiction: 'nous avons repere tout texte, toujours des livres, exceptionnellement des articles, qui soit le resultat d'un voyage reel en Italie, et qui ne se presente pas comme un texte de creation' (p. 10). As a result, travel literature is presented here as a complex, catholic genre, encompassing not only travel narratives, but also guide books, memoirs, and other accounts covering fields as diverse as history, medicine, archaeology, and entomology. The introduction is brief, and the volume presents itselfmodestly as being primarily a research tool. As such, it will complement detailed studies of its subject, such as Marie-Madeleine Martinet's Le Voyage d'ltalie dans les litteratures europeennes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996). The entries in the bibliography reveal nevertheless perceptible shifts: whereas the earlier texts reflect a retrospective, antiquarian interest and a denial of coevalness that pay scant attention to the actual country through which their writers travelled, works published 1801-1914 (which unsurprisingly make up two-thirds of the entries) suggest an increased attention to contemporary Italy. The choice of 1914 as a cut-offdate is expedient, although the explanation given (namely that the twen? tieth century is 'une epoque ou le voyage change de perspective et de valeur', p. 13) is not wholly convincing, and Sophie Basch's study of contemporary French travellers in Greece (Le Voyage imaginaire: les ecrivains francais en Grece au xx0 siecle (Paris: Hatier, 1991)) would suggest the potential value of a similar exploration of recent French travel to Italy. Travel literature has enjoyed a recent revival of interest in both anglophone and francophone scholarship. Whereas the former has been characterized by postcolonial concerns, the latter has focused on generic and poetic issues. The two traditions meet, however, in their foregrounding of intertextuality,a phenomenon that links scholar? ship as seemingly diverse as that of Edward Said and Christine Montalbetti. If it is MLR, 99.2, 2004 507 accepted that travellers move through both space and the accounts of their predecessors , then bibliographies such as this fulfilan essential role. The volume is aware of its own limits and inconsistencies: dates of birth and death are provided erratically, and annotation is included only forworks in the earlier periods. For scholars active in this area, however, this bibliography will prove invaluable in their effortsto explore the complexity of this particular field of travel?to cite its authors, 'la meme operation serait souhaitable pour les voyageurs...