Nouvelles du XVIIIe siècle ed. by Henri Coulet (review)

Abstract

MLRy 99.1, 2004 197 the common practice of treating the French eighteenth century as if it began in in 1715 and ended in 1789. Malcolm Cook neatly illustrates Dejean's point with an essay that studies the impact of political events upon the evolution of short fiction in the 1790s, while exploring the complex ongoing debate over the labels conte and nouvelle. Cook is not alone in focusing upon other forms of narrative than the novel: while Jean Terrasse bravely attempts to disentangle the generic knots occasioned by Diderot's less than systematic labelling of his own shorter works, Henri Coulet ex? amines the conte moral, and in so doing finds another body of texts that evades strict generic definition. In addition, Monique Moser Verrey, in her explorations of the body, offersan impressive survey of a highly varied corpus of short fiction from Les Illustresfrancaises (1713) to La Sorciere de Verberie(1798). The elaboration ofsubgenres continues with Michel Delon's lucid exploration of the libertine 'roman-liste', a form of fictionthat with Sade is increasingly stripped of its educative and redemptive qualities to become a uniquely destructive catalogue of sexual exploits. Libertinage is a recurrent topic in this volume, and the concluding article by Nancy Miller on the cover art of recent editions of eighteenth-century novels reveals the crucial part it has played in the recent marketing of works from the period. Perhaps the greatest attraction of this volume, however, is that alongside articles on canonical texts, such as Janet Gurkin Altman's revealing dissection of the complex juxtapositions at work in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (1721), the door has been opened to hitherto ignored or underrated texts. Raymond Trousson provides, for example, a lively reading of the enduring presence of Rousseau in Loaisel de Treogate's Dolbreuse (1783), while Thomas Kavanagh offersa convincing reappraisal and analysis of La Morliere's^4?gola (1746). This is in short a highly rewarding collection of essays: the contributors have generally sought to have not the last word but the first,and in so doing, have opened up some intriguing new fields of enquiry for others to explore still further. Queen Mary, University of London Will McMorran Nouvelles du xvuf siecle. Ed. by Henri Coulet. (Bibliotheque de la Pleiade) Paris: Gallimard. 2002. Ixi+i55ipp. ?59.90. ISBN 2-07-011405-8. This anthology demonstrates once more Henri Coulet's unrivalled knowledge of eighteenth-century French fiction. The collection comprises no fewer than eighty short works, covering the period from 1704 to 1795. For each nouvelle or its author an informative and judicious 'notice' is provided, along with brief bibliographical data, and textual notes. Critical bibliographies, however, are not always up to date. (For Prevost's Pour et contre(p. 1364), missing is Shelly Charles, Recit et reflexion(Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 298: Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1992). For Retif (p. 1481) a work in English from 1967 is listed, but not David Coward's Philosophy ofRestifde La Bretonne (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 283: Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1991), or Peter Wagstaff's Memory and Desire (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996).) The anthology also includes an appendix of 'Ecrits theoriques', consisting mainly of extracts from paratexts. In a substantial general introduction, Coulet attempts to define the subgenre ofthe nouvelle in this period. It seems?unsurprisingly?that the term was used with little precision. There is considerableoverlap with the catch-all titleoihistoire, and with the conte,especially after 1755 with the conte moral (see Katherine Astbury's recent study of the latter, The Moral Tale in France and Germany iy^o-iy8g, SVEC 2002.07 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002)). The nouvelle is in effect a short narrative, usually of a 'historical' or quasi-realist character. This allows the exclusion of contes defee. Libertine fiction is also excluded here, because it is covered in another Pleiade 198 Reviews anthology. Verse tales are not represented. Deliberately left aside too are the classic short narratives by the best-known authors (Voltaire, Diderot). The result is a quite different set of texts from those in Jacqueline Hellegouarch's anthology, Nouvelles francaises du xvnf siecle, 2 vols (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1994). Coulet's collection is...