Devis d’amitié: mélanges en l’honneur de Nicole Cazauran ed. by Jean Lecointe, et al (review)

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186 Reviews on Anne Waldman. This form of renegotiation is also a sustained feature of Nicole Cooley's excellent (and moving) essay on Kathy Acker's last texts, while Ron Silliman 's close readings of poems by Rae Armantrout function to locate them within conventional idioms. Some of the essays are informative in the straightforward sense of making much more available than before a body of writing that often seems forbiddingly inaccessible, even when (and this is not always the case) it is materially available to us. Some readers may be disappointed that there is considerably less emphasis on per? formance poetics than the book's full title suggests. When it is mentioned, it fails to cohere significantly with the overall insistence on the printed word and with finding connections between experimentation and existing literary and philosophical tradi? tions. Thus in Carla Harryman's description ofperforming 'Walking Backwards with the Maintains' ('I gave people domestic tasks to do while I read Clark Coolidge's long poem The Maintains, walking backwards' (p. 117)), the effect is of wilful eccentricity bordering on preciousness rather than of serious and sustained conceptual exploration. Although these essays are not of a uniformly high quality, this is an important and timely collection, a distinguished addition to an increasingly indispensable series, Hank Lazer and Charles Bernstein's Modern and Contemporary Poetics. Trinity College, University of Dublin Stephen Matterson Devis d'amitie: melanges en I'honneur de Nicole Cazauran. Ed. by Jean Lecointe, Catherine Magnien, Isabelle Pantin, and Marie-Claire Thomine. (Colloques , congres et conferences sur la Renaissance, 28) Paris: Champion. 2002. 965 pp. ISBN 2-7453-0617-0. The fifty-twocontributions to this volume reflectthe breadth of interests of a distinguised seiziemiste, and testifyto the high esteem in which she is held. The firstsection contains essays on narrative literature, including a few on medieval texts. There are interesting analyses of the emerging art of the nouvelle in the short version of the Prose Tristan (Francine Mora), of the social conflicts evident in Jehan de Saintre (Pierre Servet), and of the merveilleux in Artus de Bretagne (Christine FerlampinAcher ). There is also a controversial study of Aucassin et Nicolette, in which the author (Simonetta Mazzoni-Peruzzi) attempts to demonstrate that it was written by Jean Renart. The remaining essays in this section are on sixteenth-century texts,often neglected or little-known ones, such as the Bergeries de Juliette by Nicolas de Montreux (Michel Bideaux), or the Avantures de Floride by Beroalde de Verville, which incorporates in fictional formthe real-life story of Mademoiselle du Luc, who stabbed her lover when he betrayed her honour (Sylviane Bokdam). Marguerite de Navarre then has a section to herself, with essays covering her religious position in relation to the reformists in the Dialogue enforme de vision nocturne (Marguerite Soulie) and her presentation of the Virgin in the Comedies bibliques (Christine Martineau-Genieys), as well as essays on the Heptameron (Sylvie Lefevre, Gisele Mathieu-Castellani, and Francoise Charpentier) and an unusual account of the works of Marguerite which were in stock in a Parisian bookshop in 1561 (Annie Parent-Charon). The third sec? tion, on spirituality, deals mostly with religious poetry, and again brings into play some less well-known works, such as Jean Salmon Macrin's ode on the death of his wife (Perrine Galand-Hallyn), the poems of Anne de Marquets on the colloque de Poissy (Andre Gendre), or those of Scevole de Sainte-Marthe (Jean Brunel). There is also a study of d'Aubigne's freely adapted paraphrases of the Psalms (Veronique Ferrer), and of Jean de Sponde's meditations on the Psalms, which link them to the MLRy 99.1, 2004 187 religious struggles of the day (Sabine Lardon). The final section consists mostly of essays on pamphlets written in the turbulent years of the late sixteenth or early se? venteenth centuries, and covers debates not only on religious issues, but also on the question of the powers and status of the monarchy. Overall this volume contains a wealth of scholarship, which the dedicatee can feel proud to have inspired. University of Birmingham Leslie C. Brook Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends. By Jody Enders. Chicago and...