L'Espace et scène: dramaturgie de la tragédie française, 1691-1759 by Renaud Bret-Vitoz

Abstract

1156 Reviews publication ofMadame de Lambert's Traite de Vamitie (1732) and ofRousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise (1761), allowing the reader to grasp the perpetually transforming idea of friendship in theworks of the likes ofMontaigne, Mademoiselle de Scudery, La Rochefoucauld, and Madame de Stael. Philosophic de Vamitie brings together fictional and philosophical works on the topic of friendship in such a way that itwill interest scholars working on the Enlightenment period as well as readers intrigued by the evolution of the notion of friendship. Fauskevag concludes on the thought that friendship, having sublimated sexual desire, could be 'la voie ethique de l'amour' (p. 311). University of Toronto Joelle Papillon VEspace et la scene: dramaturgic de la tragedie francaise, 1691-1759. By Renaud Bret-Vitoz. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. 2008. x+345 pp. ?65. ISBN 978-0-7294-0950-6. Despite the important work of Jean-Pierre Perchellet (VHeritage classique: la tragedie entre 1680 et 1814 (Paris: Champion, 2004)), Pierre Frantz (Esthetique du tableau dans le theatredu XVIII6 siecle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998)), and a few others over the last decade or so, tragedy still remains something of a blind spot in eighteenth-century French studies. Renaud Bret-Vitozs new study is thus awelcome addition to a small but growing body ofwork on the field. As Bret-Vitoz cogently demonstrates, French tragedy underwent a crisis in the first half of the eighteenth century that compelled dramatists to rethink the status of dramatic space and its relationship to various factors: history, performance, the spectator, and the off-stage world more generally. Bret-Vitoz is helpfully attentive to both the variety of works produced in the period and the complex relationship between tragic practice and contemporary dramatic theory. Indeed, rather than simply?and predictably?presenting the period as one dominated by tragicmodels inherited either from dramatists of the past (Corneille, Racine) or their self-appointed successors (Crebillon, Voltaire), Bret-Vitoz insists that early eighteenth-century tragedy is characterized above all by 'la coexistence de differents procedes dramatiques' in the absence of any 'modele' or chef-d'oeuvre caracteristique' (p. 1). Appropriately, given the range and variety of tragic production in the period, Bret-Vitoz chooses a helpfully broad corpus of a hundred primary texts, all ofwhich meet certain criteria of popular dramatic success. The study falls into three parts. The first?and perhaps most interesting?traces eighteenth-century experimentations in terms of the settings of tragedy. As tragedies became both more varied and more historically and culturally specific in their locations, Bret-Vitoz demonstrates, the genre developed new conceptions of history and of historical agency more generally. As he puts it inhis conclusion, the eighteenth-century stage space is open laterally onto a resolutely human outside world rather than being, like its forebears, Verticalement ecrase sous le pouvoir divin' (p. 313). Furthermore, he argues, as tragedies shift in location away from the corridors of power tomore public arenas, the spectators own role changes MLR, 105.4, 2010 1157 from that of un observateur distant, qui epie les secrets du pouvoir' into that of un executant au coeur d'une histoire en devenir' (p. 10). The second part opposes two distinct eighteenth-century discourses on space?the theoretical discourse of dramatic critics and commentators attempting to redefine dramatic illusion, and the functional discourses of dramatic characters in their role as mediators of off-stage actions. Finally, the thirdpart focuses on the period's increased attention to the resources of the stage itself?the attention both of dramatists eager to exploit the stage's potential and of spectators, forwhom the physical world on stage introduces an element 'duhasard, du mystere et du sens dans une universalite abstraite' (p. 201). This is an ambitious book, bringing together a wide range ofmaterial yet remaining sensitive to the specificities of individual texts. Indeed, for the most part, Bret-Vitoz handles his material very skilfully, interweaving dramatic theory and tragic practice, close readings and general reflection,modern theoretical perspectives and eighteenth-century writings. Occasionally, he could be accused of overlooking the complexities of classical' (that is, seventeenth-century) tragic practice, forwhich he reserves some of his grander, more boldly abstract and less immediately comprehensible claims?such as...