The Interdisciplinary Century: Tensions and Convergences in Eighteenth-Century Art, History and Literature by Julia V. Douthwaite, Mary Vidal

Abstract

MLR, IOI.2, 2006 537 the fragments according to their internal logic'. That said, Ariew as translator is good. His version is clear, easily readable, and generally accurate. If he does not make a distinction in some sections between words such as 'raison' and 'raisonnement' or 'bonheur' and 'felicite, other distinguished translators similarly have not done so. The introduction is short and efficient but not as detailed asA. J.Krailsheimer's (Har mondsworth: Penguin, I966) orAnthony and Honor Levi's introductions. As with all available translations, the notes are very brief, designed for the general reader rather than an academic readership. However, a joint Anglo-American scholarly translation of Pascal is in the pipeline (and, yes, I am part of that team, so read the final sentence with appropriate caution). Scholars may be tempted towait for that. GONVILLE & CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE NICHOLAS HAMMOND The Interdisciplinary Century: Tensions and Convergences inEighteenth-Century Art, History and Literature. Ed. by JULIA V. DOUTHWAITE and MARY VIDAL. (SVEC, 2005:04) Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation. 2005. xxxiv+3I2 pp. ?65. ISBN o 7294-o858-2. The volume opens with an outstanding introduction, written by its two editors. This provides clear summaries of the succeeding sixteen articles and, more impressively, a forceful and sophisticated polemic arguing for the virtues of interdisciplinarity. While there is no mistaking the enthusiasm for expansive scholarship, this is no simplistic encouragement to intellectual anarchy. It is surely right that here the En cyclopedie assumes a central role: on the one hand it is amonument to the taxonomic (disciplined) approach, yet it is precisely this characteristic that encourages creative associations across individual entries. Furthermore, its value endures. In her con tribution, Miriam Wallace suggests that 'even more than other period scholars, [we eighteenth-century specialists] have a tendency to replicate in our scholarship the epistemological assumptions of our objects of study'. Many of the essays make a virtue of this potentially limiting assertion. Interdisciplinarity has many origins. The multivalent term 'discipline' is examined by various contributors, giving due attention to both the nexus of control and pu nishment and to the essentially more positive axis of being a disciple. Even the latter, however, can have negative aspects. Isabelle Michel-Evrard's text includes more acronyms than a history of the Soviet secret service but behind these initials hides a series of institutions, funded by the French state and dedicated to furnishing the means for collaborative research. Yet the introduction notes a counter-example, also from France, where a university professor, committed to the interdisciplinary cause, was obliged to ring-fence his subject to protect the jobs of his disciplinary colleagues. These examples are 'real life', and none the less valuable for that; the majority of material ismore theoretical, although not narrowly so. Mimi Hellman provides an innovative study of those hybrid luxury items that might include, say, a clock, porcelain figurines, and bronze decoration and which delighted the rich in eighteenth-century France. These objects, made by a vari ety of individual artisans governed by strict guild regulations, were assembled by 'marchands-mercier', forbidden tomake anything themselves but uniquely allowed to amalgamate. The disparate nature of these artefacts surely demands the inter disciplinary approach to their analysis provided by Hellman but she acutely goes beyond this to suggest that interdisciplinary scholars could themselves emulate the 'marchand-mercier' in their eclecticism. Joan Schwarz and Lisa Graham both jux tapose and interrogate two very disparate sources. The former considers English property law concerning women in relation to Clarissa; as both a trained lawyer and 538 Reviews a professor of English literature she uses her formidable range of expertise to em phasize the foundational nature of the legal discourse inRichardson's text. Graham confronts Manon Lescaut and the Nogent Affair. The widowed Madame de Nogent's only daughter 'scandalously' began an affair with an eighteen-year-old servant, lead ing to her confinement in a convent via the dreaded 'lettre de cachet'. Graham's concern is not with the accidental connection between the 'scandalous' behaviour of Mademoiselle de Nogent and Des Grieux but rather with the similarities between Prevost's 'fictional' text and the 'factual' police dossier on the hapless heiress. Laurent Loty outstrips his fellow...