The Ravishment of Persephone: Epistolary Lyric in the Siècle des Lumières , and: Epistolary Fiction in Europe, 1500-1850 (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews Julia K. De Pree. 77i« Ravishment of Persephone: Epistolary Lyric in the Siècle des Lumières. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1998. Pp. 166. Thomas O. Beebee. Epistolary Fiction in Europe, 1500-1850. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1999. Pp. χ + 277. These two new books on epistolary writing take as their point of departure similar questions about the survival of the form through at least three centuries of European literature. Both evoke myth in úieir introductions, Beebee referring to an epistolary "muse" invented in the eighteenth century, and De Pree proposing the myth of Persephone as an allegory of the disappearance of the lyric and its reemergence in epistolary form, in the same period. Beebee's study proceeds to examine how epistolary fiction has crystallized social relationships in a variety of ways at different historical moments in Spain, Germany, France, England, and Italy. De Pree is focused exclusively on France, and she is concerned more with esdietics than cultural history, calling for a rejection of the commonly held notion of the eighteendi century as a "siècle sans poésie." In considering the poetics of epistolary writing, Julia De Pree argues against the usage of the term "novel" in discussions of letter fiction, and proposes that the letter form may be read as a hybrid of the dramatic monologue and the prose poem. The blank spaces in epistolary writing function poetically in ways similar to dramatic and poetic texts, like the imaginary hors scène of classical dramaturgy. The epistolary silences in works by Rousseau, Charrière, Graffigny, and others grew out of a theatrical tradition: high action in epistolary fiction takes place off-page. De Pree compares other celebrated epistolary novels (particularly the shorter, more frequently monophonic texts written by female authors) to prose poems. She examines how terms usually applied to the visual arts in the eighteenth century ("rococo," "the serpentine line") might be applied to an analysis of epistolary form. Her readings of specific texts are suggestive, original, and sometimes also debatable, as in the visual charts she produces to illustrate the serpentine structure of two letters from Ricoboni's Juliette Catesby. While De Pree's historical survey of French lyric may be oversimplified—she accepts me most traditional definitions of "the classical tradition" in poetry and drama, for example—her notion of a repressed lyric impulse that resurfaced in prose forms is quite engaging and at times elegantly presented. This is a book designed to invite conversation, inspired by the author's resistance to traditional discussions of the epistolary genre that do, indeed, bear reexamination. Epistolary Fiction in Europe is, as its title suggests, a historical study, and its author's familiarity with epistolary literature is encyclopedic. Beebee begins with a discussion of the ars dictaminis of the Renaissance and the "power relations that drove the epistolary machine," and ends with a chapter on "the ghost of epistolarity" in me nineteenth-century novel. Along the way he weaves into his readings a remarkable range of examples from literary history and criticism, including a rich array of critical discussions of epistolary writing. He traces the place given to letters in the history of French education and discusses a number of functions the letter has assumed at different moments in the development of epistolary fiction, starting with an early focus on the materiality of the letter and its "self-reflexive" quality. He examines how published letters—both fictional and real—worked to "defamiliarize" readers wim their own world, as throughout the eighteenth century letter fiction chose as its locale an increasing number of distant (non-European ) places. A chapter on "the lettered woman" traces the gradual disappearance of the tradition of humanist letters by women, and the rise of the notion of a woman writer's propensity for private , disordered, "natural" letter writing. Beebee examines images of the French Revolution in epistolary fiction, including a fascinating short discussion of representations of the "lettre de 96 Winter 2000 Book Reviews cachet" as an example of the "one-way communication of tyranny," contrasted with the reciprocal economy of affection structuring most epistolary novels. Beebee's is a very dense and informative study, which also offers...