Séduction et dialogue dans l’œuvre de Crébillon by Geneviève Salvan (review)

Abstract

492 Reviews lish Showalter, Literary Advisor to the Correspondance project, in collaboration with other members ofthe team. The texts assembled here are rich in interest. Graffigny's activity as reader, theatre-goer, and salon hostess, coupled with her capacity for acute observation, produces revealing insights into the cultural life of the mid-eighteenth century: her sharp portraits of Maupertuis, Buffon, Rameau, or Rousseau; her enthusiastic evaluation of Diderot's Pensees philosophiques, 'livre male, energique, concis, lumineux' (p. 127); her instinctively creative response in March 1753 on hearing the story ofthe nun Marguerite Delamarre, 'qui feraitun bien bon roman' (p. 232); or, at the end of her life,her fascinated reaction to new and controversial texts?Helvetius's De I'esprit, Diderot's De la poesie dramatique, and Rousseau's Lettre a d'Alembert. But there is also a strikinglypersonal side to these letters. We can trace the tentative beginnings of a literary career, from early pride in her fairytale La Princesse Azerolle, to increasing confidence in the importance of her Lettres d'une Peruvienne. We see fre? quent changes of mood: depression at her seemingly limitless debts or the difficulties of establishingherself, boredomand despair, even in 1746, when she still misses lifein the provinces; or,just a few years later,the almost incredulous realization that she is fa? mous. This direct, unaffected quality extends also to her most intimate life: her anger at the betrayal of her lover, her astonished discovery of orgasm at the age of fortyeight , her reflections on menopause. At the heart of this correspondence lies Graf? figny's powerful personality, by turns outspoken, resigned, ironic, passionate, but the significance of her letters extends beyond the personal; her experiences offerunique insight into the struggles of a woman to find independence, recognition, a voice. This is an invaluable anthology. A succinct commentary situates each letter in the context of Graffigny's life, and the unobtrusive, illuminating annotation allows the reader to appreciate contemporary allusions, or to identify the countless pseudonyms through which the writer, forvarious reasons, refers to the people she evokes. It will be an essential resource for students and specialists alike who work on Graffigny,on the intellectual life of the eighteenth century, on correspondences, and on women's writing. Trinity College, Oxford Jonathan Mallinson Seduction et dialogue dans Voeuvrede Crebillon. By Genevieve Salvan. (Bibliotheque de Grammaire et de Linguistique, n) Paris: Champion. 2002. 378 pp. ?62. ISBN 2-7453-0559-x. Specialists in historical linguistic studies and scholars of Crebillon will be pleased by the appearance of Genevieve Salvan's text as part of the series directed by Olivier Soutet. Salvan's work has an interesting premiss: while scholars have remarked upon the significant presence of dialogues in many of Crebillon's works, relatively littleana? lysis has been undertaken of their relation to a recurring theme of libertine narrative? seduction. Salvan argues that seduction, an extremely ritualized social and discursive practice, functions at a dual level in Crebillon's work: both on certain characters within the novels themselves and on the reader who enjoys them. Through her linguistic analysis of the dialogues, along with the role of argumentative rhetoric, Salvan argues for the significant contribution of Crebillon's novels to Enlightenment discourse. Salvan's introduction includes a solid discussion of much of the Crebillon scholar? ship through the mid-1990s. She outlines her approach as that of 'semiostylistique' (p. 16), favoured by her dissertation adviser Georges Molinie. It is an approach which, in her view, permits applying the template of modern linguistic study and semiotics to eighteenth-century works by respecting the 'archeologie des textes et leurs conditions de production' (p. 16). In her discussion of the debate over seduction MLR, 99.2, 2004 493 in Crebillon's work, Salvan raises several interesting points, most especially her focus on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century definitions of seduction, where the sexual connotation is frequently secondary or entirely absent. The book is divided into three sections, which in turn are subdivided into chapters, allowing the reader to locate specific points with relative ease and giving the study both the look and the feel of a reference work. The firstsection, 'Seduction et con? versation: une pratique mondaine, une forme...