La sociabilité des coeurs: pour une anthropologie du roman sentimental by Paul Pelckmans

Abstract

xv)? Can one refer to the slim corpus as “literature”? Still, this volume fills a dire lack; as such and intended as a “point of departure” (xv), it is a must-read. Eastern Connecticut State University Michèle Bacholle-Bošković Pelckmans,Paul. La sociabilité des cœurs: pour une anthropologie du roman sentimental. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. ISBN 978-90-420-3724-3. Pp. 278. 76 a. This volume comprises some twenty articles concerning the roman sentimental in France, most of which have appeared in print elsewhere. The book’s strength thus derives not so much from its originality but from the fact that it brings together original scholarship on works extremely popular in their day and seeks to understand its popularity, given their almost complete neglect today. The first chapter situates the genre within the broader socio-historical transformations consequent to the rise of modern individualism. Drawing on Louis Dumont’s distinction between holistic and individualistic societies, he argues that the roman sentimental participates in the move away from the former—in which the individual is embedded and to which he is subordinated—by privileging the expression of individual sensibility, a feature of the latter. For the cœurs sensibles populating the genre, this expression, based on personal preference rather than social convenances,constitutes a veritable libération individualiste (13),and thus resonates with Philippe Ariès’s notion of an Enlightenment-era révolution du sentiment. Before discussing the roman sentimental itself, the author devotes the first section to several late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century novels— including Charles Sorel’s La sœur jalouse, Madeleine de Scudéry’s Histoire d’Artaxandre (from her Clélie), and Robert Challe’s Les illustres Françaises—in order to establish what he calls an Ancien Régime de la sensibilité. These works provide the backdrop against which the emergence of the roman sentimental may be charted insofar as they remain anchored in a conception of society—and exhibit a conception of love—in which social codes, rather than individual desire, determine amorous comportment, which assumes the allure of a performance. The subsequent sections trace the development of the roman sentimental during the eighteenth century and into the early post-Revolutionary period. Part two focuses on l’abbé Prévost and the genre’s birth, and includes a chapter on Baculard d’Arnaud’s Liebman, a reworking of the former’s Cleveland according to Pelckmans. The final part examines novels ranging from Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloïse to Germaine de Staël’s Delphine. This is, properly speaking, the apogee of the genre. In both sections, Pelckmans shows how this corpus reflects the changes in affective behavior that occur during the Enlightenment; henceforth love, no longer bound by traditional social constraints, is experienced as the spontaneous expression of individual sensibility. Indeed, one central feature of the roman sentimental is the desire of the cœurs sensibles to flee a corrupt—and corrupting—society. Pelckmans also notes an incipient fantastique as well as the 232 FRENCH REVIEW 89.4 Reviews 233 origins of Romanticism in these works. In the final analysis, the collection functions more as a propaedeutic than a comprehensive study of the genre, a fact the author acknowledges (5). It would also have benefitted from a comprehensive bibliography. Further,since each chapter essentially stands alone,the reader will note fairly numerous repetitions. While some chapters are not as strong as others (e.g., the chapter on Prévost’s Campagnes philosophiques), this volume should nevertheless be welcomed by anyone interested in the birth and evolution of the roman sentimental. University of Oklahoma Michael Winston Perrin, Jean-François. Rousseau, le chemin de ronde. Paris: Hermann, 2014. ISBN 978-2-7056-8855-4. Pp. 271. 26 a. Both Rousseau’s contribution to the French language and his understanding of its evolution are among the major themes of this monograph, which seem to be ostensibly paradoxical given one of the primary ways in which this philosophe uses language according to Perrin: to access man’s forgotten nature, indelibly linked to the bon sauvage’s primal state. This rich text is both a philosophical and literary inquiry that examines Rousseau...