Le rayonnement de Bayle ed. by Philippe de Robert, et al

Abstract

half of the twentieth century is serious and solid. The work is well illustrated, with 26 colored plates and eleven images. Despite its high cost, this is a good read for anyone interested in French and Belgian colonial history or in the history of the well-respected ninth art. Indiana University-Purdue University, Rosalie A. Vermette Indianapolis, emerita ROBERT, PHILIPPE DE, CLAUDINE PAILHÈS, et HUBERT BOST, éd. Le rayonnement de Bayle. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7294-0995-7. Pp. ix + 319. $115. Pierre Bayle is not widely known by American students of French nowadays , and more is the pity. Even the few pages of the Dictionnaire historique et critique that previous generations usually read could remind the budding scholar of how topical this laborious and erudite writer was, with his love of justice, pleas for toleration, ideals of community, and his irony. Bayle is also a direct link between the late seventeenth-century current of freethinkers and the eighteenthcentury philosophes, with most of the latter acknowledging him as a major source of their new way of thinking, and with the editors of the Encyclopédie beholden to him as the model for an ingenious way of concealing bold ideas in footnotes . But the rayonnement of the title is not specifically concerned with such cases of immediate literary influence. Rather, approximately half of the essays in this collection give evidence of a longer-distance radiance, that of Bayle’s thought on modern scholars. The other half concentrate on biographical and historical contexts that elucidate the formation of that thought. It should be stressed, however , that all the essays consider both aspects to some degree. On Bayle’s thought, Pierre Joxe and Jean Baubérot credit him with preparing the way for modern secular culture, the former by presenting Bayle’s objective stance towards Islam, the latter in an intriguing comparison between the overt violence of the seventeenth century and the covert violence present in our own consumer society. Olivier Abel examines Bayle’s attempts to reconcile Hobbes’s insistence on the supremacy of political power with Milton’s on religious belief. Marianne Carbonnier-Burkard studies accounts of dying in the Dictionnaire. The relation to the Other and its consequences in societies composed of idolators or atheists is examined by Isabelle Delpla. The stances of one Other, Bayle’s adversary Jurieu, are discussed by Patrick Cabanel, who makes the standard negative portrait of Jurieu more nuanced. While many of the essays in the collection touch in some way on religious toleration, two offer specific analyses. Ghislain Waterlot approaches the notion of general toleration from the perspective of the individual conscience, and Jean-Michel Gros recounts two particular cases of Protestant non-toleration. On the biographical and historical contexts of Bayle’s thought, several contributors turn to his correspondence for insights. Antony McKenna and Annie Leroux explain the database Arcane and use it to construct networks of the young Bayle’s relations. Relations with a friend of Bayle, Du Rondel, and with his brothers, are the subjects of the pieces by Edward James and Hubert Bost; Ruth Whelan offers an analysis of friendship in general in Bayle’s work. The significance of place is studied in Luc Daireaux’s account of Bayle’s stay in Normandy 406 FRENCH REVIEW 86.2 in 1674–75 and in Hans Bots’s examination of Bayle’s mixed feelings about Holland, where he lived in exile. Feelings were not mixed about his much-loved native region (Foix), whose culture, society, and economy are described in illuminating detail in Claudine Pailhès’s article. On a broader scale, Bayle’s reaction to major political events on the European scene and his vision of a cosmopolitan Protestant civilization are treated in the pieces by Philippe Joutard and Myriam Yardeni. Finally, Robert gives an explication of the deathbed message in which Bayle states that he dies “en philosophe chrétien.” This volume includes a bibliography of publications on Bayle from 2010 back through 1900. It is of great interest to libraries supporting a graduate program. Georgia State University Kathleen Hardesty Doig SHAW, MATTHEW. Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV. Rochester, NY...