Louise Colet ou l'éclectisme littéraire: une écrivaine parmi des hommes éd. par Thierry Poyet

Abstract

Reviewed by: Louise Colet ou l'éclectisme littéraire: une écrivaine parmi des hommes éd. par Thierry Poyet Mary Rice-DeFosse Poyet, Thierry, éd. Louise Colet ou l'éclectisme littéraire: une écrivaine parmi des hommes. Minard, 2020. ISBN 978-2-406-10576-3. Pp. 347. This collection consists of a series of analyses of Louise Colet's writing in a number of genres, as l'éclectisme in its title indicates. A volume on a range of Colet's works is long overdue. As Poyet indicates in his introduction, Colet the writer has often been studied through a lens colored by assessments of the author's personality as well as her relationships with friends, correspondents, and lovers, chief among them Gustave Flaubert. Like a number of her literary sisters in nineteenth-century France, Colet was compelled to take up the pen in many genres to earn her living, yet the volume's subtitle also communicates her stature as a writer who held her own among male contemporaries, especially in the genre of poetry. Antoine Piantoni's essay is a powerful overview of Colet's poetic production and an adept and refreshing presentation of her esthetics as they evolved over time. All the analyses in this volume are meticulously researched, well written, and often break new ground. Of particular note are those by René Sternke, on the irony in the comedy La jeunesse de Goethe, and by Amélie Caldérone, on the politically motivated publication of several dramas about the French Revolution that appeared in the press rather than onstage in order to reach a broader audience. Several essays address Colet's works on Italy, including her enthusiastic support of the Risorgimento, her portraits of important Italian women, and her anticlericalism. Colet often focused on the condition of women and children. María Vicenta Hernández Álvarez explores her criticism of women's education in the narrative poem La servante. There are analyses on the theme of childhood in Colet's poetry, her biography of Émilie du Châtelet, and her reception in Portugal thanks to a translation of Enfances célèbres, a work for children aimed at their moral edification. Not all assessments of the writer are positive. Poyet presents the writer's novels as flawed by both artificiality and self-interest, but also suggests that her autofictions prefigure the novels of today. Éric Le Calvez contributes a meticulously detailed essay on Flaubert's critiques of Colet found in his correspondence, advice she often did not heed. There is a certain tension in this book, as it appears in a series of studies devoted to minor writers (minores), usually polygraphs who never achieved major status. Yet as a whole, this volume attests to Colet's gifts not only as a poet, but also as a playwright, biographer, and essayist. She also emerges as a fascinatingly modern writer, especially in the hybrid genres found in her accounts of travels in Italy or her native Midi, or the defense of women's rights evident in her written response to a defamatory article about her written by Alphonse Karr. This last piece, introduced by Poyet at the very end of the collection, gives Colet herself the final word. The volume includes a useful bibliography, indices of names cited and works cited, and abstracts. [End Page 237] Mary Rice-DeFosse Bates College (ME) Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French