Transformations du genre romanesque au xviif siècle ed. by English Showalter (review)

Abstract

196 Reviews Towards the end of Chapter 1 Dauphin is at pains to point out that the variety and pluridisciplinarity of the object of study justifies some liberties with chronology, where musical works are concerned, but the works chosen sometimes fitawkwardly with the theoretical works in question. More serious is the anachronistic use of musi? cal and rhetorical terms, and particularly a seeming conflation of dessein with unite de melodie (p. 27). Chapter 2, which considers the place of music in the orders of know? ledge, devotes space to the central question of imitation yet is dogmatic in its assertion that Rousseau is instrumental in the breakdown of referential mimesis. In the fol? lowing chapter ('La dissonnance des nations') Dauphin addresses '[l]a problematique des styles nationaux', which, he claims, 'constitue la toile de fond du present essai' (p. 12), but unfortunately, because Dauphin is committed to the view that the origi? nality of Enlightenment musical thought is the emancipation of musicography from 'referential' imitation (and hence presumably a fortiori from the replication of text), the complex linguistic and philosophical theory which underlies Rousseau's writings on the specificity of national musics, not to mention the rich field of research on this subject, is given only a brief paraphrase (p. 70), and the fundamental question ofthe accent is neglected. Worse, any possible evolution in Rousseau's musical thought is ignored, the Encyclopedie and Dictionnaire being treated equivalently and sometimes interchangeably. Much specialized research is ignored in the bibliography: Thomas Christensen on Rameau, Philip Robinson on Rousseau, Downing Thomas on music and the origins of language, John Neubauer on the emancipation of music fromlanguage, and Robert Wokler. Dating is awkward, whether contradictory?as with the Lettre sur la musique francaise, given as both 1752 and 1753, and the Dictionnaire (1767 and 1768)?or unconvincing, as when the chronology and genesis of Rousseau's musical works are supported only by uncritical quotations fromthe Confessions. All in all, the uninitiated will find this a confusing book to read, whereas the specialist will frequently find less than he knew already. University of Nottingham Mark Darlow Transformations du genre romanesque au xvnf siecle. Ed. by English Showalter. {Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 13.2-3 (January-April 2001)) Toronto: University of Toronto Press for McMaster University. 499 pp. $30. ISSN 0840-6286. This special number of Eighteenth-Century Fiction is without question required read? ing for anyone interested in the French eighteenth-century novel, with a list of con? tributors that includes many of the period's most influential critics of the last fifty years. The essays have been arranged in four approximate groups: general views of the field; examinations of specific issues of genre and subgenre; thematic readings of various texts; and, finally,studies of reading practices from the eighteenth century to the present. While Georges May's opening essay surveys the rise of eighteenthcentury novel studies rather than the rise of the eighteenth-century novel itself, the latter provides the subject of Philip Stewart's 'The Rise of /'. Although Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957) seems rather too easy and too old a target these days, Stewart finds arhple evidence to support the argument that the emerging novel was characterized not by realism but by the widespread use of first-person narrative. Of the other general surveys, Jean Sgard's essay will be of particular interest for its thoughtful review of the intriguing question as to how and why the term roman survived in France, a question rendered all the more intriguing by the contrasting fortunes ofthe term romance in England. Joan Dejean meanwhile provides an eloquent reminder of the dangers of periodization as she argues against MLRy 99.1, 2004 197 the common practice of treating the French eighteenth century as if it began in in 1715 and ended in 1789. Malcolm Cook neatly illustrates Dejean's point with an essay that studies the impact of political events upon the evolution of short fiction in the 1790s, while exploring the complex ongoing debate over the labels conte and nouvelle. Cook is not alone in focusing upon other forms of narrative than the novel: while Jean Terrasse bravely attempts...