Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature by Emma Gilby

Abstract

MLR, I03.3, 2oo8 85I The book's very fullbibliography, that includes often-ignored German and Dutch scholarship and cross-lists studies bymultiple authors, is a veritable treasure trove. Kelly's footnotes are especially rich and dense, sometimes summing up in a few lines virtually all themajor studies on particular points, and often documenting multiple subjects. The book's index is unusually thorough in that it includes references to modern critics. A fewminor criticisms can be made. The fourth chapter on Christine's changing ideas about courtly love could have been developed furtherby including theDebat de deux amans, thatpresents opposing views on the ennobling powers of love.Addition ally, some aspects ofKelly's analyses could be disputed. For example, one could find his interpretation of theopening part of theCity ofLadies over-literal, as it isdifficult to imagine Christine's claim to have been swayed bymisogynist views as anything other than a rhetorical pose. Moreover, Kelly's discussion of theChemin de longestude as a rejection of self-interest does not explore thepolitical overtones in thatwork. One notes, inaddition, some blurring of historical considerations inChapter 5 (especially p. 147), the inconsistent use of the capital for the allegorical figureFortune (pp. 3, I5, i6, 20, 50, 75, etc.), and the presentation as factof the quite likelybut unproved assumption thatChristine spent her finalyears in theDominican convent inPoissy (p. 147 etc.). These areminor flaws in a rich, careful, original, and well-written study thatmakes frequent use ofmedieval terminology and that accomplishes its aim of showing how a latemedieval audience might have understood Christine de Pizan's vast and varied works. VASSARCOLLEGE CHRISTINEM. RENO Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature. By EMMA GILBY. London: Le genda. 2006. I6opp. ?45. ISBN 978-1-904350-65-I. This cryptically entitled book is, the author explains from theoutset, not aword his toryof the sublime, nor a straightforward account of the reception ofLonginus's the ory inearlymodern France. Nor is itconcerned with the rhetorical sublime style,nor indeed exclusively with loftygenres such as tragedy. Instead, Emma Gilby's task is to identify theLonginian sublime as a kind of successful literarycommunication, and to see how concepts related to itappear in thewritings ofCorneille, Pascal, and Boileau. In Chapter i she reminds the unwary reader thatLonginus's sublimity, despite the 'height' implicit in itsGreek and Latin terminology, should not be read primarily as a simple synonym forgrandness. Longinus is concerned with themoment that meaning is conveyed brilliantly and exquisitely to the reader, a moment inwhich cognition and recognition (of real-life images and contingency) are privileged over ecstatic transcendence. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4 Corneille comes under scrutiny.Gilby looks in turn at his dissatisfaction with aspects ofAristotelian poetics and plot structure in theDiscours, his rewriting of theOedipus play, and critical reactions to his drama. In Cinna's apprehension of human unpredictability and in themultiplication of plot strands in (Edipe, she persuasively detects the imprintofLonginian concerns. She furthermore illustrates how earlymodern attacks on iEdipe (and modern Corneille scholarship) betray thedreaded attempt toequate the sublime with grandeur, heroic magnanimity, and admiration. In Chapters 5, 6, and 7Gilby moves from literary fiction toconsider Pascal. Here even more than in the preceding chapters Longinus becomes a conceptual intertext rather than source of direct inspiration. Gilby boldly reclaims Pascal's high regard for reason, and shows how his understanding of its relationship to spiritual experi ence ismodelled by the structures of the Longinian sublime. These arguments are 852 Reviews also mobilized to illuminate Pascal's defence ofMontaigne in the face of criticswho rejected theyoking of loftytranscendence tohuman rationality. In the book's thirdpart (Chapters 8 and 9) Gilby turns toBoileau, evoked fleet ingly inChapter 4 as a perceptive judge of theCornelian sublime. As in previous chapters, she is committed to showing the priority of 'horizontal' communicative movement over 'vertical' loftiness: to Boileau, translating Longinus's treatise into French in i674, and to another (anonymous) translator of the I640s, thispoint has particular pertinence. The strands ofGilby's argument thus farare brought together as she shows Boileau grappling with the idea of successful communication, and the anonymous translatormaking explicit connections between the sublime, persuasion, and, controversially, the vraisemblance of action-packed plots. In her final chapter, on theQuerelle...