French Women Authors: The Significance of the Spiritual (1400–2000) ed. by Kelsey L. Haskett, Holly Faith Nelson

Abstract

manuscript or a narrator who witnessed personally the events portrayed, bolstered by constant “attestations de véracité du narrateur” (107). She points out repeatedly the (well-known) use of these techniques by all of the novelists in her study and finishes by attempting to demonstrate, rather unconvincingly, that Diderot uses similar strategies in his art criticism. Hakim tries, moreover, to persuade the reader that the blatant incoherence and the incompletion of Sandras’s novels, as well as minor inconsistencies and chronological mistakes in the other novels, are actually done on purpose to let readers know they are reading a work of fiction.Although pure conjecture , this is the principal theoretical contribution of her study. In a rather short final chapter, Hakim discusses the metaleptic character of these works, which all blur the line between fiction and reality,and suggests that this“remise en question des frontières entre les deux mondes” (236) produces extreme anguish in the reader. Hakim’s study is well written and contains a good summary of some of the best thought on the body of fiction presented here. It offers, however, few original insights and proposes a highly fragile thesis that she herself is moved to put into question in her conclusion, suggesting that what she has presented (at great length) as signs of fiction might in fact be, on the contrary, proof of historical authenticity (258). This rather nonchalant pirouette at the end seems to be an attempt to short-circuit highly foreseeable criticism of her thesis, but it only serves to make her critical position more tenuous. Davidson College (NC) Alan J. Singerman Haskett, Kelsey L., and Holly Faith Nelson, eds. French Women Authors: The Significance of the Spiritual (1400–2000). Newark: UP of Delaware, 2013. ISBN 978-1-61149-428-0. Pp. xiii + 208. $70. This collective work traces the enduring presence of spirituality in the lives and writings of a selection of French women authors, as well as its evolution across the centuries.The spiritual journeys and writings of the authors included in these essays are firmly located in their social, cultural, and political milieu. Holly Faith Nelson and Katharine Bubel describe the complex interdependence of the spiritual and the worldly in Christine de Pizan’s writings. They maintain that Pizan’s religious convictions are manifested even in her ‘lighter’ works, and that the central concern in the major part of Pizan’s writings is ethics. Sinda Vanderpool examines Marguerite de Navarre’s devotional poem,“Le miroir de lame pecheresse,”situating the poem within Marguerite de Navarre’s reformist vision, revealing her reflections on her own sinfulness and spiritual transformation,and her desire to teach and evangelize.Mme Guyon forged her own spiritual path in seventeenth-century France,and described that path in her prayer manual, Le moyen court et facile de faire oraison, in order to guide her readers. Deborah Sullivan-Trainor describes Guyon’s life and her commitment to quietism, as well as the turmoil in which she became involved by her public and published commitment to 232 FRENCH REVIEW 88.1 Reviews 233 this form of mysticism. Hadley Wood considers spirituality in Mme de Lafayette’s Princesse de Clèves, and sees the novel’s central concern as the tension between virtue and the court. She contends that the Princess’s struggle and its resolution would have a clear religious resonance for Lafayette’s contemporaries. Joanne M. McKeown considers four novels by eighteenth-century female authors, whose characters face overwhelming problems on the domestic front. Those who are able to bear their situation do so by turning to God, either through what McKeown calls ‘home-based spirituality,’or by entering the religious life.These authors thus refute Diderot’s reliance on reason. Kelsey L. Haskett examines two of George Sand’s novels in which religion plays a transformative role in human affairs. She demonstrates Sand’s search for spirituality in Indiana and her quest for social reform in Le compagnon du Tour de France. In another essay, Haskell focuses on the spiritual undercurrents of Marguerite Duras’s works.She observes the longing for spiritual transformation that inhabits many of Duras’s characters, which is manifested in personal transformation and...