Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d’une Péruvienne. Édition de Martine Reid

Abstract

Françoise de Graffigny’s remarkable novel, a huge success in her own time, has risen again in ours. In the last thirty years, half a dozen different scholarly editions have appeared. This one differs from most, however, by using the text of Graffigny’s original (and clandestine) publication of 1747, rather than the augmented version she published in 1752. One might also say that Martine Reid’s initial overview of the work, its author, and contexts is written with unusual elegance. The account is still systematic, but also fluent and evocative. Quotations from the text or from Graffigny’s own wonderful correspondence are nicely employed, beginning with an epigraph on ‘le plaisir d’être’ from the work’s final letter. Particularly useful is Reid’s suggestive heading ‘Dans l’atelier de la littérature’ (p. 11) to characterize the sociable process of ‘salon writing’ which stimulated Graffigny’s own literary ambition at court in her native Lorraine and then, more circumstantially, in the Quinault–Caylus circle and the ‘monde du livre’ in Paris (p. 14). Sections follow on major aspects of the work: epistolarity; the device of the stranger (still critical but now female and alienated); aspects of love (and the heroine’s final refusal of marriage); languages; and the ‘nouveauté’ of Graffigny’s heterogeneous combination of all these and more (cited, p. 23). The text of 1747, lightly annotated, is followed by an annexe of material added in 1752, including the four illustrations. There is also a chronology of Graffigny’s life, a notice on editions, and a selected bibliography. Due acknowledgment is made throughout of debts to Jonathan Mallinson’s outstanding critical edition (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002) and to the essential biography by English Showalter, Françoise de Graffigny: Her Life and Works (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004), as well as the same author’s indispensable Choix de lettres (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2001). There are nevertheless curious slips: Cénie is rightly described as a ‘comédie larmoyante’ but later as a ‘tragédie’ (pp. 10, 238); Graffigny is said to have made several visits to Voltaire at Cirey (pp. 11, 230) instead of one (notorious) visit. There is some overlap between editorial sections. But generally this is an informed, pleasingly written, and valuable edition. Finally, we might return to the choice of text. Other modern editions have opted to use the expanded version of 1752 largely because of its extra letters which offer a more trenchant social critique of luxury and of the situation of women in France, and its illustrations (of topics chosen by the author). It is also the case that Graffigny’s correspondence tells us much about the publication of the 1752 edition, whereas we have regrettably little information about that of 1747. Reid’s brief explanation of her different choice is also pragmatic, though more literary: she considers the extra critiques added in 1752 (composed with more confidence after the huge success of 1747) awkwardly long and heavy (pp. 33–34). But surely there is also an issue of principle. Should the base text for a scholarly edition be the last version known to have been approved by the author? This however may be (and indeed in the present case is) contingent. Alternatively, should it be the first published version — ‘original’ also in the sense of most authentic?