Silhouettes de l'ironie by Pierre Schoentjes

Abstract

870 Reviews on the family,detailing the observations and prescriptions of an impressive range of cultural figures from the period, including arch-royalist Louis de Bonald, Fourier, Leroux, Michelet, and perennially under-studied Catholic sociologist Frederic Le Play, the closest thing the intellectually pallid Second Empire had to a great soci ological and economic mind. The author deals less polemically than Reid with the development of a set of sentimentalized 'familyvalues' in the earlier part of the cen tury,yet retains an awareness of the continuing relevance of that shift?the end of each thematic section projects the issue at hand forwards into the family politics of the twenty-firstcentury. Perhaps surprisingly given Bernard's distinguished career as a literarycritic, the ideas of novelists are addressed only in so faras' [les] hommes de lettres se veulent hommes de savoir, et [. . .] opinent doctement sur les affaires du monde' (p. 23), which effectivelyexcludes from consideration themore symbolic 'thought' of the literary textproper. Indeed, Bernard's literaryallusions tend to refer only to plot?this novel contains a divorce, this a successional disagreement, and so on?without suggesting how novelistic treatments of such themesmight encode more than themere historical fact that divorce and successional disagreements ex isted.Yet this is doubtless a quibble, since literary criticism is clearly not a central aim of the book; Penser lafamille rather sets out to create an indispensable, three dimensional working model of thenineteenth-century family,and in this it ismore than successful. St John's College, Cambridge Andrew J.Counter Silhouettes de Vironie. By Pierre Schoentjes. Geneva: Droz. 2007. 372 pp. 51.61. ISBN 978-90-70489-16-8. This study is a follow-up to the author's previous book on irony, Poetique de Vironie (Paris: Seuil, 2001). More precisely, they are very much complementary studies: whereas Poetique de Vironie gave pride of place to theoretical developments, Silhouettes de Vironie takes a more pragmatic approach and consists of, at least in the firsthalf, a close textual analysis ofworks by nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers: Balzac, Jules Janin, JulesVerne, Huysmans, Gide, Vercors, Camus, Albert Cohen, Kourouma, Toussaint, and Echenoz. The second half of the book (Accents historiques' and 'Contours') focuses respectively on the interplaybetween ironyand history and on the interdisciplinary nature of irony (with, among other topics, a verywelcome foray intophotography). The chosen texts/authors are varied and often highly original. For example, in a study of the two francophone writers Kourouma and Toussaint, Schoentjes sheds light on the complex links between Trancophonie' and irony.The analysis of irony inHuysmans's A rebours is perhaps less innovative (and more predictable) in so far as ithad already been studied, notably, among others, by Daniel Grojnowski inAux commencements du riremoderne: Vespritfumiste (Paris: JoseCorti, 1997): see in particular his chapter on Tronie laforguienne', pp. 125-32. The fact that Grojnowski isnotmentioned in this study is clearly an oversight. MLR, 104.3, 2009 871 Schoentjes insists that ironybelongs to three distinct fields: rhetoric, hermeneu tics, and ethics. One of the great virtues of the book is that itdraws our attention to the 'modulations' or 'inflections' of irony, that is to the differentways inwhich ironic potentialities can be perceived/identified and to thevarious factors (historical or other) on which theydepend. The third part concentrates on the politics and ethics of irony (by stressing the common philosophical ground between irony and anarchy), as well as on the massive popularity of irony infin de siede culture and thinking (see the lengthy discussion of thepros and cons ofAlcanter de Brahm's 'point d'ironie'). The analysis iswide-ranging and stimulating. Irony is shown tobe a very fluid and ever-evolving concept. Finally, Silhouettes de Vironie offers a survey of the various ways inwhich irony shapes literature, (popular) culture, art forms, and of how it informs key twentieth-/twenty-first-centuryintellectual debates. A bibliography, updating thevery useful one included inVoetique de Vironie, and an index would have been welcome additions, but overall, Silhouettes de Vironie makes for indispensable reading for all researchers and studentswith an interest in irony,nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and culture, intertextuality,and reader-response criticism. It is a very useful tool indeed as itseeks to shake up some of our preconceptions...