Involuntary Confessions of the Flesh in Early Modern France. By Nora Martin Peterson.

Abstract

Inspired by Foucault’s conceptions of ‘confession involontaire’ and ‘confession de la chair’ in Histoire de la Sexualité, i (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), Nora Martin Peterson’s coinage of ‘involuntary confessions of the flesh’ proves extremely rich in this thoughtful examination of ways in which the early modern self was inextricably — and messily — tied to the body. In each of the three parts of the book, she juxtaposes one cultural discourse (religious confession manuals, judicial treatises on torture, courtly handbooks) with one literary text (Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, Montaigne’s Essais, Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves). In the first chapter, Martin Peterson confronts the ways in which confession manuals written for priests ‘highlight the prevalence of the vocabulary of the body in a genre purportedly concerned with the soul’ (p. 4), arguing that religious and involuntary confessions need to be considered from the perspective of both priest and penitent in order to understand the complexities and disturbed boundaries of spiritual and fleshly narratives. In Chapter 2, various nouvelles of the Heptaméron are shown to highlight both verbal and bodily confessions. Drawn from traditions of religious and secular confession, but never being completely one or the other, these examples create what Martin Peterson sees as a new kind of literary confession, which is at all times bodily. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the limits of the body and the increasingly difficult relationship between torture and truth, first through various (mainly seventeenth-century) treatises on torture and then in the Essais, with particular emphasis on ‘De la conscience’ (ii, 5), in which Montaigne explicitly discusses torture, and ‘Des boyteux’ (iii, 11). Although Martin Peterson’s conclusion to Chapter 4, that ‘reading Montaigne is an active, corporeal process’ (p. 89), is persuasive, it is surprising that she does not contemplate that most body-centred chapter of the Essais, ‘De l’experience’ (iii, 13). The final two chapters juxtapose the French legacy of Castiglione’s concept of sprezzatura (the capacity to conceal artifice by making what one says in the company of others seem nonchalant and effortless) with the Princesse de Clèves, which is concerned above all with confession and dissimulation. Mastery of the self both verbally and bodily in courtly manuals leads to what Martin Peterson calls ‘a dissatisfying impasse’ (p. 113), where involuntary confessions of the flesh would seem to have no place in a courtly context. The choice of La Princesse de Clèves to conclude the book is an excellent one, because many of the themes of the early chapters are brought to the fore here. Moreover, Martin Peterson’s analysis of both the famous aveu scene and blushing reveals genuinely fresh insights. Her argument — that the princess’s verbal confession to her husband of her love for another man is the direct consequence of the deathbed refusal of Mme de Chartres to allow her daughter (having already betrayed herself on a bodily level) to confess her love for Nemours — is particularly inspired. If this impressive book, the first of a series entitled ‘The Early Modern Exchange’, is a sign of things to come, we can look forward to some excellent offerings by other authors.