La Bibliothèque , 1 ed. by James Dauphiné, Michel Mestre (review)

Abstract

MLR, 101.1, 2006 213 forportraying differenttypes of subjectivity: typically,the Aristotelian theory underwrites the representation of the poet/lover as passive victim of his lady's dominant gaze, while the Stoic doctrine lends support to descriptions of the penetrative power with which the lady's active glance is able to wound the lover's heart. The topos ofthe languishing male lover, lampooned in the Cliges of Chretien de Troyes, is sanctioned by association with Christian suffering; nevertheless, ceding dominance to a woman is unnatural and unmanly and control is ultimately retained by the poet, who imposes limits on his own passivity and dictates how his lady uses the authority ceded to her. In the poetry of the Sicilian School the personification of the lover's cognitive faculties dramatizes the process whereby the female image comes to take hold of his psyche and emphasizes his passivity and blamelessness in succumbing to love. While the man's eyes are points of entry for an image of beauty that leaves him vulnerable to pain, the woman's are weapons of subjugation whose use may incur blame and the threat of castigation. The paradox in this treatment of male and female vision is that, while it involves a reversal of roles, and the woman's gaze is all-powerful in its effects, she has no powers of perception and cognition, no psychology of her own, and serves merely as a pretext for the poet's self-exploration. In some ofthe Sicilian poets this activity involves a male gaze?an objectifying gaze, in contrast to the captivating gaze of the female?and the fantasy of extending control over the lady's image to con? trol over her body. In the case of Cavalcanti, however, the poet-lover exerts no such control over the object of his gaze, nor even over her image, which he cannot fully grasp: he undergoes the experience of love as patient, choosing rather to explore the negative potential of the erotic. At a time when the Aristotelian theory of vision had gained wide acceptance, Cavalcanti continued to exploit the range of available optical theories, as did Dante, forpoetic purposes. By this time these theories included those of the perspectivists Roger Bacon and John Pecham, which are more complex and in some ways combine features of the Stoic and Aristotelian accounts. A number of the themes addressed in Dana E. Stewart's book require fuller and more detailed development and demonstration. About the perspectivists, forinstance, too little is said to make clear their relevance foran understanding of Cavalcanti's and Dante's poetry; and without some examination of how their ideas figure (and came to figure) in the texture of these poets' culture, they provide at best interesting paral? lels. Precisely how, if at all, Cavalcanti's spiriti are related to Bacon's species remains to be determined. However, the tenor of the book suggests that Stewart's principal concern is to explore fruitfulavenues for furtherresearch in a field?the relationship in medieval culture between literature and science?in which it is too early to claim the last word; and in that respect her study offersa stimulating contribution. University of Manchester Spencer Pearce La Bibliotheque, i {-Babel, revue de litteraturefranfaise,generale etcomparee, 6 (2002)). Ed. by James Dauphine and Michel Mestre. Universite de Toulon et du Var, Faculte des Lettres et Sciences humaines. 2002. 270 pp. ?12. Each of the thirteen articles in this collection takes as its starting-point the notion of the library,whether real, imaginary, or metaphorical. While almost half ofthe contri? butions are historical, the rest may broadly be considered literary criticism, offering varying degrees of analytical insight. Anne Coudreuse focuses on one of the letters (no. 134) in Les Lettrespersanes describing Rica's visit to a library,in which Montesquieu's satire of dogmatism demonstrates the will of religious authorities to organize and con? trol the world. This presentation of the library as a microcosm of the world is deve? loped in a short series ofchapters dealing with Portuguese and Spanish writers,by way 214 Reviews of reference to Borges and his essay 'The Library of Babel': the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, the book is a...