Comptes d’auteurs, Tome I: études statistiques, de Rabelais à Gracq by Étienne Brunet

Abstract

the bulk of their observations for variation in morpho-syntax, commenting on properties in flux––such as past participle agreement, verb complement structures , and negation––that continue to vary in usage today. Unfortunately, AyresBennett and Seijido present their comparative analyses of how the texts judge matters of usage in a series of tables, rather than in prose. These tables lack legends, occasionally rendering them difficult to interpret. This volume is the product of assiduous research. Astonishingly comprehensive in its scope, it reaches forward to provide an overview of the evolution of the remarqueur tradition to the present day as well as stretching back to consider the influence of Greek and Latin grammarians on the genre. The volume will appeal most and be most accessible to an audience that is already well versed in the history , culture, and intellectual movements of the seventeenth century. Copiously footnoted, it provides a wealth of detail about the form and content of its corpus. Overall, however, this contribution is stronger on documentation than it is on interpretation . Consequently, how we are to understand the various stances of the remarqueurs remains to be discovered. For example, while we learn that Vaugelas was often more accepting of variation and less prescriptive than many of his successors, we glean few insights into why this should be so. Despite certain shortcomings, this volume provides crucial and definitive information about the influence of the remarqueurs on the evolution of the French language that cannot be ignored. University of Texas, Austin Barbara E. Bullock BRUNET, ÉTIENNE. Comptes d’auteurs, Tome I: études statistiques, de Rabelais à Gracq. Paris: Champion, 2009. ISBN 978-2-74532-019-3. Pp. 395. 75 a. As the title suggests, the articles reprinted here offer statistical analyses of various features of discourse in literary texts from a wide swath of authors. This volume includes a DVD (for Windows) that contains a corpus of literary texts: “l’œuvre de trente écrivains majeurs français s’y trouve concentrée et traitée par le logiciel Hyperbase” (8). This software makes it possible to examine single lexical items, grammatical features, and co-occurrences, among other things. The first chapter provides some insight into the types of analyses that will be subsequently found. For example, it quantifies and compares lexical diversity, richness, and stability in poetry from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It then demonstrates the potential importance of closely examining the distribution of a single lexical item. As a continuation of this line of inquiry, Brunet also shows how a correlation coefficient can be used, for example, in the work of Du Bellay, to measure frequent vocabulary from texts produced during different periods as a way of demonstrating the progression or regression of lexical items. The results of this analysis of substantives indicate that “l’inspiration du poète tend à s’écarter du paysage poétique [...] et des images corporelles [et] il se tourne vers les préoccupations morales et spirituelles [...] en même temps que Rome s’efface devant la France et ses symboles” (24). Overall, this chapter—like the others— includes an impressive array of approaches and techniques that can be used to study (literary) texts from a quantitative perspective, and the writing is amply supported by the numerous tables and graphics that provide helpful and mostly easy-to-follow visual representations of results. Other chapters cover such topics Reviews 1009 as religious vocabulary in selected novels published during the eighteenth, nineteenth , and twentieth centuries; strategies for treating a relatively smaller corpus, namely the writings of Rimbaud; and an extension of previous comparisons of Proust and Giraudoux. Since each chapter is the product of a previously published article, the reader can explore them in any order. It would also be possible, in some cases, to identify a single type of analysis across chapters; this task would be somewhat difficult, however, given the lack of an index. Nonetheless, the variety of texts analyzed and the wide range of methodological and analytical strategies provide the reader with an enormous amount of valuable information at the intersection of literary studies and corpus linguistics. Although many technical terms are explained, this volume will mainly be accessible to faculty and advanced graduate students...