Le Dialogue à la Renaissance: Histoire et poétique by Eva Kushner

Abstract

506 Reviews instance, Lefevre scrutinizes the dedicatory page, fromwhich she decodes a series of signs that indicate both Antoine's lineage and his future: she examines a coat of arms of thede La Sale family,she compares the signature on thepage with other signatures known to be byAntoine, and she evaluates Antoine's personal devise: 'il convient'. Lefevre also writes in detail about Antoine's La Salade, arguing that this text is richer than other critics have allowed. In fact, shemaintains that it is the very eccen tricitiesand anomalies of the work that make itunique andworth examining. She notes that theconceit ofLa Salade-a text thatcomprises various styles-demonstrates An toine's ability tomove across genres. La Salade also exemplifies Antoine's authorial dexterity-at times he makes his presence apparent, and at times he masks it-a capability thatmakes La Salade amore impressive work than others have conceded. The second part of the book is a detailed case study ofAntoine's short textLe Traite des anciens et des nouveaux tournois.The majority of this section is devoted to a discussion of themanuscript, a short textual analysis, and a very detailed discus sion of the house of Luxembourg, in particular Jacques de Luxembourg-the man towhom Antoine's text isdedicated. Also included is a discussion ofRene d'Anjou's Livre de tournois.By examining the relationship between thehouses ofLuxembourg and Anjou, aswell as details common toboth texts,Lefevre convincingly argues that Rene d'Anjou was inspired byAntoine's text.This section ends with Lefevre's own edition of the Traite, which isaccompanied by a useful glossary. Although the detail in this book is impressive, themeticulousness with which Lefevre treats each family's history and genealogy does not always seem essential to the point at hand. Furthermore, because there are numerous tables which chart the genealogies of themain families and nobilities in question, attention to such de tail seems excessive and detracts from themain thread of the author's argument. At the same time,while many tables and charts are provided, they are not always adequately exploited: placing the genealogies, the timeline ofAntoine's life,and the table ofmanuscripts at the beginning of the textwould have been more useful. But notwithstanding these details, through her careful examination of texts and manu scripts Lefevre provides compelling evidence that until now, Antoine de La Sale's artistic skill has been seriously undervalued and understudied. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SANDRABIALYSTOK Le Dialogue a laRenaissance: histoire etpoetique. By EVA KUSHNER. (Cahiers d'Hu manisme etRenaissance, 67) Geneva: Droz. 2004.3 I2 pp. SwF 48. ISBN 978 2-600-oo9o6-5. This volume brings together a collection of articles written over a period of thirty years, focusing on dialogue in the Renaissance principally, but not exclusively, in France. They are sensibly divided into different sections on themes of periodiza tion and poetics, as well as on specific authors, including Bonaventure des Periers, Montaigne, Erasmus, and Pontus de Tyard. The book as awhole has the advantage ofmaking many of the individual pieces more readily available than theywould be otherwise. However, it is regrettable that the separate articles (sixteen inFrench, three inEnglish) were not brought together inmore of a synthesis.Admittedly, in reading them together some key questions and features of Renaissance dialogue become ap parent, including the issue of theirdegree of dialogicity or openness toanother's point of view, their use ofmimesis, and their imitation of three principal ancient models (namely Plato, Cicero, and Lucian). Nevertheless, lack of synthesismeans that these lines of argument are not as developed as theymight have been in amonograph, and there is a good deal of repetition of both argument and examples between articles. MLR, I02.2, 2007 507 Given this approach, the analysis of individual texts tends to be underdeveloped. Even when a given dialogue or set of dialogues is singled out for special attention, themethodology adopted isoften a longway from close reading: thehelpfulness of a discussion of dialogue form in theCymbalum mundi, which does not contain a single citation from thework which is thepurported object of study, is curtailed from the outset. This is a shame, because more focused discussions of Pontus de Tyrard's dialogues, and of the role ofRonsard...