Le Cid Research Articles

A Message from the Margins: The Function of the Infante in Corneille’s Le Cid

A Message from the Margins: The Function of the Infante in Corneille’s <i>Le Cid</i>

L’absolutisme et la démocratie nobiliaire : la traduction du Cid par Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1662)

The study discusses the means used in the translation process by Jan Andrzej Morsztyn to transform Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid, so as to fit the cultural context of Polish Sarmatism and become an instrument of propaganda of the French presence on the Polish throne and reinforcement of the king’s power.

Graham Greene and the Issue of Obsessive Love: The Critical Analysis of the End of the Affair

Nowadays, human beings’ relationships take many forms. People are either parents, friends, colleagues, partners, lovers etc. As far as lovers are concerned, we sometimes observe excesses in their interactions. However, not everybody experiences love in the same way. Love, for some is joy, happiness while other people regard it as source of problems and sufferance. In Corneille’s Le Cid, Rodrigue and Chimène are paralyzed by love and suffering, while Romeo and Juliette get to the capital sacrifice for their intensive and polemical love affair in Shakespeare’s Romeo in Juliette. This study aims at exploring the concept of obsessive love and its consequences through the characters of Graham Green’s The End of the Affair. To succeed in this study apart from books on the selected topic, I have used psychoanalysis as literary theory to access the issue. I examined the difference between obsessive love and true love. Of the results I came up with I can briefly say but a few that obsession can be destructive namely for the obsessed. It can also negatively affect the other members of the family tissue. Obsessive love unfortunately often replaces true love. Ways and means are suggested to cope with any sorts of love.

Becoming a Francophile: A Half-Century Love Affair by Leonard Rosmarin

Reviewed by: Becoming a Francophile: A Half-Century Love Affair by Leonard Rosmarin Alice J. Strange Rosmarin, Leonard, Becoming a Francophile: A Half-Century Love Affair. Mosaic, 2019. ISBN 978-1-771614344. Pp. 241. In this memoir, a Canadian professor of French, retired from Brock University in Ontario, sets out to identify the forces that contribute to his identity as a Francophile. He spent extended periods in France as a student, director of a study abroad program, and visiting professor at Université de Perpignan. His descriptions of life in France are interesting but scarcely original. Conventional points are covered: first impressions, student life, French bureaucracy, housing issues, French friends, cultural sites, and, especially, his love of French history and literature. As an educator, he frequently compares French and Canadian educational institutions, illustrating his impressions with anecdotes. Unlike Canadian students, French university students like to present a challenging attitude toward a new professor. He enjoyed a sense of professional triumph when he gained their respect and became a popular professor. His command of French opened doors to friendships, often with teachers and administrators at his or his daughters' schools. He interacts with a privileged, educated segment of French society and rarely refers to larger social or political issues. French friends, whom he describes in detail, figure greatly in his positive memories. The most appealing sections of the work are his excursions into the Pyrénées-Orientales. This southeastern-most [End Page 250] department of France, nestled between the Mediterranean and the Spanish border, abounds in cultural interests. The French Catalan region is especially beautiful and rich in popular traditions. On the other hand, at several points in the text, Rosmarin abruptly switches his focus away from lived personal experience to insert basic historical facts and summaries of literary works with which he has a special connection. These digressions consist of information familiar to Francophile readers and seem at odds with his announced project. For example, he includes a digression on the life and achievements of Charles de Gaulle. At Versailles, he expounds on the life of Louis XIV. At a dramatic performance in Perpignan, he recounts in detail the plot of Corneille's Le Cid. In each case, these digressions disrupt the flow of his personal memories and seem detached from his undertaking. In addition, the Francophile reader may also feel startled when Rosmarin translates even the most basic French expressions into English. His concluding chapter is an analysis of love à la française, in the form of an academic discourse. Rather than refer to any personal experiences, he devotes the final chapter to an investigation of a French belief that passion and marriage are irreconcilable. To support this theory, Rosmarin summarizes La princesse de Clèves, Manon Lescaut, and Les liaisons dangereuses as examples of his view. Although the connection is not clear, the reader is left to assume that this belief contributes to his identity as a Francophile. Overall, this memoir seems intended for the author's family and associates, and readers unfamiliar with the basics of French language and culture. Some Francophile readers may enjoy comparing Rosmarin's experiences to their own, but they will find few original insights. Alice J. Strange Southeast Missouri State University, emerita Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy

Reviewed by: Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy Sharon Diane Nell Theresa Varney Kennedy. Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750). routledge, 2018. 202 pp. in la poétique (1639), the French dramatic theorist and playwright La Mesnardiére wrote that women on stage should not be portrayed as heroic or clever, since these characteristics contradicted the rules of vraisemblance or verisimilitude (qtd. in Kennedy 2). But, as Theresa Varney Kennedy demonstrates, women playwrights often did not follow his recommendations. Continuing the work of scholars such as Perry Gethner, Nathalie Grande, and Erica Harth, Kennedy focuses on heroines in plays by women from 1637 to 1761. Kennedy is particularly interested in rationality as a possibility for women and the ways in which this theme is developed in plays by women in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After a brief introduction, Kennedy launches into four chapters, each of which features one of four heroine types: irrational, dutiful, bold and brazen, and deliberative. In chapter 1, Kennedy analyzes the irrational heroine who derives from Jean Racine's female characters, particularly Phédre, but the irrational heroines in the plays that Kennedy includes are not all from tragedies, and not all of them are homicidal or suicidal or both. Also, the irrational actions of each are accompanied by an element of self-awareness, although these characters remain "one-dimensional" (46). Unlike the emblematic Phédre, Kennedy's irrational heroines are "free agents" (18) who wield authority usurped from the patriarchy (44) and, in the end, acknowledge their treacherous motives and take responsibility for their actions (45). For example, Tomyris—the female character penned by playwright Marie-Anne Barbier—fulfills the stereotype that women are unstable and, for that reason, should not wield political power. She also prioritizes her lustful desires over the security of her kingdom. Unlike Phédre, however, her "final violent act"—the execution of Cyrus—"does allow her to reestablish dignity and honor" (44, 30). Dutiful heroines, whose emblematic model is Pierre Corneille's Chiméne (55–56), are explored in chapter 2. Unlike Chiméne, who plays a secondary [End Page 299] role in Le Cid, the dutiful heroines that Kennedy analyzes are the main characters in their respective plays. They also exhibit intelligence and "leadership skills" (57). Yet, while they "challenge the norms and behavior traditionally associated with early modern women," the outcomes of the plays "reinforce patriarchal institutions" (91). For example, Théonise, in Françoise de Graffigny's La Fille d'Aristide (composed in 1758), stoically holds fast to her duty to marry a man she does not love; however, when she sells herself into slavery to save her beloved, the latter buys her from the slave trader and obtains her release from the man to whom she is betrothed so that the two can marry. Kennedy points out that "despite her show of independence and heroic sacrifice, Théonise still remains a commodity—an object of exchange between men" (90). Kennedy turns to bold and brazen heroines in chapter 3. The female leads in this chapter are studied together because they "act upon their emotions, especiallyin the name of romance" (128). All five of the plays that Kennedy analyzes in this chapter were either not performed at all or appeared in productions in "the salon, the théátres de société, and other venues outside Paris" (99). Whereas the irrational heroines of chapter 1 act impulsively out of "lust and vengeance," the bold and brazen heroines are motivated by love and desire (100). The results of their valiant actions are mixed. Triphine, in Françoise Pascal's Agathonphile martyr (published in 1655), defies the patriarchal system by refusing to marry the man chosen for her by her father and is executed (114). Even when things do work out well, as in the case of the Countess, who appears in Le Caprice de l'Amour by Mademoiselle Huau (also known as Madame La Grange de Richebourg), a play that was performed at the French Comedy in The Hague in 1739, not only does the play reinforce...

The Popular and the Academic: The Status of the Public’s Pleasure in the Quarrel of Le Cid.

The unprecedented success of Le Cid (1637) triggered a ferocious literary quarrel about the value of the judgement of the least “considerable” part of the theatre audience – the people. This article explains how the social and gendered distribution of the audience in the few Parisian theatres of the period could reveal the difference of the appreciation of various categories of the audience. The article then develops that at this time in France, the notion of the “public” does not refer to the audience but to the res publica, the edifying character of the plays meant to serve the public good. Indeed, the theatre was given a moral dimension, as an heritage to Horace’s Ars poetica in which the role of theatre was to please and instruct.This is followed by a discussion of two aspects of the quarrel. It was first set off by the fact that Corneille with his attitude disrupted the rules of the economy of cooptation in vigour in the Republic of letters, thus deeply shocking his peers. The second aspect of the quarrel pertained to the dramatic rules which were being established at the time. Le Cid transgressed some of these rules, in particular the rule of decorum. But the condemnation of the transgression of these rules put in question their purpose and their value. Corneille maintained that like Aristotle, he was concerned with the public’s pleasure and that Horace’s precept of moral instruction was secondary in theatre.The conjunction of the criticism of peers concerning the non-respect of the dramatic rules and the actual success with the public posed the question of the valid tribunal of literary works – peers or the public. Ultimately, the fact that the play had touched all categories of the audience – the people and the courtiers – facilitated the valorization of the people’s pleasure and the people’s judgement vis-à-vis the peers.

Pierre Corneille's Le Cid in Colonial Quebec

Pierre Corneille's Le Cid in Colonial Quebec

Queer Time on the Early Modern Stage: France and the Drama of Biopower

In mid-seventeenth-century France, newly precise timepieces offered an unprecedented richness to the experience of time: of time passing, of haste, and of slowness. Time governed affects and desires in new ways: from certain socio-sexual tempos (paces of courtship, reproduction) to the propriety of behavior onstage (in the unity of time). The theater, fast becoming a cornerstone of Absolutist statecraft, both modeled and contested new types of embodiment and new temporalities that were on the horizon. However, instead of analyzing the explicitly political uses of theater, I examine theater’s more subtle forms of managing the population through chrono-biopower. As Foucault argues, disciplinary power, rather than deciding on the right to live or to die, sought instead to manage bodies through the controlled flourishing or strategic diminishing of life’s capacities. One essential and overlooked component of biopower includes the sensation of time as dramatized onstage. Drawing upon examples from Benserade’s Iphis et Iante and Corneille’s Le Cid, I unearth the counter-hegemonic erotics, forms of intimacies, and circulations of affect that speeds and slownesses can reveal in the theater.

Pierre Corneille and Military Drama: Power, Potlatch, mérite

Pierre Corneille and Military Drama: Power, Potlatch, Mérite This article calls for a reappraisal of Pierre Corneille’s career-long treatment of military subjects. I contend that “military drama” represents a missing, yet essential part of conceptualizing his dramatic production, theory of tragedy, and heroic vision. I examine the case study of mérite, a key term in period martial culture indicating a cherished noble virtue and a patron-client relationship between king and grand capitaine . Analyses of Le Cid, Nicomède , and Suréna through anthropological theories of the gift (Derrida, Mauss, Gregory) and historical research on seventeenth-century military culture (Smith, Neuschel, Drévillon) illuminate the significance of mérite as a martial topos and exemplify Corneille’s crafting of military drama.

King and Colony in Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid

Pierre Corneille's tragicomedy Le Cid has often been interpreted as the story of medieval Castile's transition from feudalism to a strong monarchy, a story that clearly resonates with France's own domestic political concerns under Louis XIII. This article focuses instead on Castile's external political engagements in the play, and how they reflect France's efforts to establish colonies during the seventeenth century. It is argued here that reading Le Cid alongside France's record of colonization in North America allows the play to be understood not only as an exploration of a fraught moment in French domestic politics, but also as a reflection of the kingdom's efforts to maintain and expand control over foreign lands. Several aspects of Le Cid — Rodrigue's duel with Don Gomes and the events surrounding it, Castile's conflict with the Moors, and King Don Fernand's mostly ineffective efforts to maintain order — appear on close inspection to have implications for affairs external as much as internal, a feature of Corneille's tragicomedy that distinguishes it from the Spanish play that inspired it. More broadly, this article shows how accounting for France's colonization of the New World may help cast the famously insular French seventeenth century in a new and revealing light.

Slovenska recepcija Pierra Corneilla

The paper explores the Slovenian reception of Pierre Corneille, progressing from the first readers in the 17th century to the present. This topic is complemented through an analysis of the stanzas employed by Marija Javoršek in the Slovenian translations of Le Cid, Médée and Polyeucte, as well as Emil Filipčič’s productive reception of Psyché.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño: Philosophical Crossroads ed. by Andrés Lema-Hincapié and Conxita Domènech

Pedro Calderon de la Barca's La vida es sueno: Philosophical Crossroads. Ed. Andres Lema-Hincapie and Conxita Domenech. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 2014. 191 ppTheeditors' introduction to this collection of essays lays out the ambitious project of challenging the entrenched perception that rberia's Catholic orthodoxy and geographic isolation prevented the modern philosophical currents of Western Europe from taking root on the peninsula. To confront this contention, an eclectic group of philosophers and Hispanists demonstrates the interaction of philosophy with one symbolic Spanish text, La vida es sueno. As a point of departure, the focus on this play unifies what might otherwise be an incongruent volume in its consideration of philosophy written both on and off the peninsula before, during, and after the time of Calderon.Philosophers will find of great interest those essays that employ the play as a test case to examine modern philosophical arguments. The choice of this emblematic work of literature to evaluate Iberian philosophy immediately engages the book with a question answered valiantly by philosopher Jorge J. E. Gracia: Is La vida es sueno philosophy or literature? (65). His answer (spoiler alert: it is literature) relies on demonstrating the difficulty of adequately translating literary works, exemplified by La vida es sueno. Along similar lines, philosopher C. Ulises Moulines uses Segismundo and his fabricated dream experience as a thought experiment to answer the twentieth-century philosophical question of realism, that is, whether the external world is real (21). While the literary scholar may wish for greater attention to the established body of critical theory, these philosophical studies expand the interpretative possibilities of the play, giving ample food for thought as to its early modern and even modern philosophical undercurrents.The literary scholar will feel more at home in the chapters in which works of post-Calderon philosophy are used in more traditional hermeneutic analysis of the work. Philosopher Daniele Letocha demonstrates that a Hegelian reading of Segismundo distinguishes his character from the oft-compared Don Rodrigue from contemporary French playwright Pierre Corneille's Le Cid. Literary scholar Nelson R. Orringer drawls a comparison between the self-perception of Segismundo and the personal reality of Miguel de Unamuno, both of whom increasingly came to view their lives as dreams.Of particular note are those chapters that examine the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophical underpinnings that may have influenced the composition of the play. Andres Lema-Hincapie, versant in both literary studies and philosophy, investigates the similarities between Calderon's and Descartes's theories of doubt and sleep/wakefulness. Hispanists Conxita Domenech and Jennifer Brady interpret Segismundo as neither the ideal Christian nor the pure Machiavellian ruler, but the perfect Baroque prince according to the ideas of contemporary essayists, among them Baltasar Gracian. …

The Cornelian Ethics of Flight and the Case of Horace

Flight is simple dramatic action, one that lends itself to any number of different plots. Its implied movement can be represented on stage or merely recounted. So common is it that the words fuite and appear in every one of Corneille's 32 plays, from as infrequently as twice to as many as 32 times. (1) The two terms belong to broad semantic network including retraite, eviter, derober, echapper, partir, quitter, abandonner, but differ in their suggestion of abrupt, precipitous movement as well as the element of fear implied. Furetiere begins his definition of with Tascher d'eviter un peril en s'en eloignant force de jambes. The next sentence, however, immediately ties the term to issues of morality: Les braves aiment mieux perir que d'une bataille. Thus common, if at times startling, action has inherent ethical ramifications. Indeed, so central is morality to flight that careful examination of the words' occurrences throughout Corneille's oeuvre allows the construction of Cornelian ethics of flight, one whose rules are applied consistently throughout his plays. I propose to develop such Cornelian ethics of flight and to examine sole, glaring exception: Horace, figure whose ambiguity has given rise to both diverse and contradictory interpretations. (2) The rules governing flight are not overly complex. Two issues are central to this ethics: gender and heroism. As we shall see, the rules are often not the same for men and for women. As far as heroism is concerned, itself gendered concept, there is deep-rooted antagonism between heroism and flight. First and foremost, it is morally unacceptable for male to flee confrontation with another male. This preeminent rule is central to any notion of heroism and concerns only men. Flight is completely dishonorable in such circumstances, (as when Phinee flees Persee in Andromede [5.5] or when Dorante hastily abandons marriage, home, and father in the action bridging Le Menteur and La Suite du Menteur). It follows logically then that one male forcing another male to flee constitutes an essentially heroic action (such as Rodrigue's prowess causing the Mores to flee in Le Cid [4.3]). In similar vein, standing one's ground and refusing to flee is coded positively (as when Polyeucte rejects Nearque's advice to flee the site of the Roman altar [Polyeucte 2.6] or when Cinna refuses Emilie's entreaties to flee Auguste's summons at the end of the first act of Cinna). Corneille's men who flee confrontation deserve to be pursued (for example, Pompee's allies, as Cesar tells Cleopatre: En quelques lieux qu'on fuie, il me faut y courir [4.3.1331]). (3) Finally, returning after fleeing (as do Prusias and Flaminius in Nicomede [5.8] and Maxime in Cinna [5.3]) makes partial amends for the original shameful flight. Second, while fuite is dishonorable, fleeing negative is coded positively. Such flight is largely, but not exclusively, female domain. Sophonisbe will do anything to fuir l'indignite of being brought to Rome as spoil of war (Sophonisbe 3.6.1088); Heraclius and Pulcherie flee a l'egal de la mort union between them which they know to be incestuous (Heraclius 1.1.76), and Camille urges the eponymous Othon to flee in order to avoid attack (4.6.1470). Alice Rathe notes an interesting all-male variant of flight from negative: Clindor in L'Illusion comique, Dorante in La Suite du Menteur, and Don Sanche in Don Sanche d'Aragon substitute fuite for parricide (Tentation 320). Whether out of anger (Clindor), revolt (Dorante), or shame (Don Sanche), the men bolt instead of acting on their feelings toward their father more directly. (4) Third, no stigma is attached to fleeing confrontation if the one who flees is woman. Cornelie flees her husband Pompee's killers, as Pompee had urged before being killed (Songe prendre la fuite afin de me venger [2.2.472]); Didyme instructs Theodore to flee the brothel (Fuyez sous mon habit, [Theodore 4. …

Words of the “Wise Captain”: Pierre Corneille,Le Cid, and Fidelity

Previous articleNext article No AccessWords of the “Wise Captain”: Pierre Corneille, Le Cid, and FidelityChristy PichicheroChristy PichicheroGeorge Mason University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Renaissance Drama Volume 43, Number 1Spring 2015 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/681548 Views: 567Total views on this site © 2015 Northwestern University. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Beyond the ‘Affaire Tartuffe ’: Seventeenth-Century French Theatre in Colonial Quebec

Beyond the ‘Affaire Tartuffe’: Seventeenth-Century French Theatre in Colonial Quebec Micah True On December 31, 1646, the inhabitants of the fledgling French settlement of Quebec – missionaries, colonists, and Amerindians – assembled around a makeshift stage in the warehouse of the colony’s trading company to watch a tragicomedy, tentatively identified by most scholars as Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid (Journal des Jésuites 75). Surprising though such an event may seem to most students of seventeenth-century France, which often is thought of in scholarship as “enclosed within an insular, self-protective bubble” (Melzer 14), scholars of French America long have known that plays from the metropolitan stage sometimes found their way to audiences in New France. Most scholarly treatments of the phenomenon have been content, however, to reserve most of their analysis for a single well-documented and controversial moment in early Quebec’s theatrical history: the fight that erupted in 1694 between secular and religious authorities over a planned presentation of Molière’s searing comedy Le Tartuffe. This article examines instead the record of French plays that were actually presented in the colony, and attempts to glean from it lessons about the most basic aspects of the phenomenon – its extent, how plays may have been chosen, and their reception. The relative sparseness of this record makes it impossible, for the present, to draw many firm conclusions. And yet, close attention to examples aside from the oft-studied case of Le Tartuffe brings some potentially useful nuance to the conclusions that scholars typically have drawn about the place of theatre in colonial life, and points the way to further research that may have much to teach us not only about colonial New France, but also about its relationship to seventeenth-century France and its literature. Various accounts of life in New France record the performance there of plays from the Old World. The first was an unnamed tragicomedy that was [End Page 451] performed in 1640 to celebrate the birth two years earlier of the child who would become King Louis XIV, according to the Relations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France that were published annually from 1632 to 1673 (Campeau Vol. 4, 566). Next, the missionaries’ journal, written by several hands across more than two decades, testifies to the performance in 1646 of the above-mentioned tragicomedy, identifying it as “le Sit.” Scholars frequently have understood this to be a misspelling of Cid, although this identification must be regarded as speculative in the absence of further clues. It is made at least plausible, however, by the fact that Corneille’s iconic play was later performed in the colony, and that the Jesuit chronicler misspelled the title in that instance, labeling it “Scide.” According to the Jesuits’ journal, that performance took place on April 16, 1652 (166). The same source indicates that Corneille’s Héraclius was performed on December 4, 1651 (164), and that the anonymously-authored tragicomedy Le Sage Visionnaire, published in Paris in 1648, was performed twice in February 1668, in the span of only three days (358). Finally, the 1694 mémoire of colonial soldier Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac reveals that tragedies by Corneille and Jean Racine – Nicomède and Mithridate – found their way to the New France stage in 1693 and 1694.1 Apparently seeking to build on that success, the colony’s governor, Louis de Baude, Comte de Frontenac, reportedly sought in 1694 to stage a performance of Molière’s Le Tartuffe, a proposition that sparked a bitter feud between the colony’s secular and religious authorities and resulted in an outright ban on theatre there that seems to have lasted decades, even at least temporarily including pedagogical dramas in the colony’s religious schools (Grégoire 263). Theatre appears to have become acceptable again, at least in some cases, by the time the colony was transferred to British control in 1763. A few plays are known to have been performed in New France in the years leading up to the end of French rule, although it is unclear if any of them were imported from the Old World.2 None of the above-listed performances is unknown, but...

L’écrivain et son critique: une fratrie problématique éd. par Philippe Chardin et Marjorie Rousseau

Reviews 253 “le rapport au réel (référentiel, historique), le rapport au réel (autobiographique, biographique) [...] et enfin le rapport aux récits antérieurs, qui aboutit peut-être à une mise en question encore plus radicale du réel et du genre”(17). Five more sections of essays offer numerous examples of these negotiations with the so-called real.A first section, “Au regard du temps,” acknowledges novels with a relationship to history, especially recent history (World War II and Algeria, for instance). But unlike the novels of the 80s and 90s that accepted these histories as orthodoxy or reference, these newer narratives interrogate history, eschewing certainty in favor of ellipsis and even invention. The section titled “L’appel de la cité” stretches its thematic designation in order to accommodate essays on issues of individual and society, of “engagement”— including a more nuanced approach to the political and social responsibilities of the writer, of national identity (for pieds-noirs, for instance), and of human relationship to an increasingly alienated natural world. “Au miroir de soi” drills down on the question of intimacy revealed in autofictions; a polemic against exhibitionism is countered by other appreciations of the transformations of the“récit de soi”as it writes its own body. “Au miroir des livres” looks at quirky and erudite works in which the mind practices encyclopédisme, criticism or even erasure as it confronts texts ranging from library tome to tweeted ephemera.“À l’encre de la création”reports on renewed challenges to narrative authority, some offering a different approach to the écriture blanche of the last century, others exploiting the a-(chrono)-logical possibilities of electronic technologies. A final section, “Au (bon) vouloir des autres” offers a report on French texts translated and sold in the United States as a measure of literary reputation abroad followed by a second, somewhat playful essay: a “self-portrait” by Les particules élémentaires (Houellebecq’s 1998 novel) that comments self-knowledgeably and unapologetically on its own meanings. As the opening essay suggests, narrative is no simple matter when its relationship to the “real” cannot be pinned down, when authority is indiscernible, when the place of speaking is compromised, when“knowledge”is mediatized and digitized and de-categorized, and when familiar genres are cross-bred beyond recognition. If readers have doubted that the French novel has anything new to bring after the Nouveau and even the Nouveau Nouveau Roman, this collection will easily dissuade with its testimony to the scope, vitality, and intellectual challenges of the novel of the new millennium. Lawrence University (WI) Eilene Hoft-March Chardin, Philippe, et Marjorie Rousseau, éd. L’écrivain et son critique: une fratrie problématique. Paris: Kimé, 2014. ISBN 987-2-84174-650-7. Pp. 567. 35 a. This massive collection of forty-one articles discusses attempts by literary critics to influence creative writers; the actual influence of critical theory on literary production; and creative writers who have also functioned as critics. In principle, this set of subjects certainly merits serious attention; in practice, however, it seems overly ambitious. Unfortunately, the brevity of the chapters (nine to fifteen pages) precludes any substantial development,and most of them create the impression that Comparative Literature is an activity in search of a method. Contributions predominantly treat authors from the eighteenth century to the present. They touch upon novels, theater, poetry, and essays, mainly from Western Europe and Latin America. Quite a few of them are influence studies by comparatists. Among the highlights are Daniel-Henri Pageaux’s contrast of impressionistic and proscriptive criticism, focused on the Geneva School; Jean-Louis Hoquette’s survey of the influence of English authors on eighteenth-century France, emphasizing Voltaire, Milton, Shakespeare, and Dryden; and Catherine Dumas’s contrast between theater in France and Spain from 1620–40, leading, respectively, to the triumph of Neoclassicism or of the Baroque, despite Corneille’s tragicomic masterpiece, Le Cid, misjudged as a failed pure tragedy. Emmanuelle Kaës offers an insightful analysis of how Claudel portrays burlesque critics in Le soulier de satin, as a riposte to the literary establishment’s hostile,uncomprehending judgments of Tête d’Or, while contrasting the sea as a...

Rococo Fiction in France, 1600–1715: Seditious Frivolity by Allison Stedman (review)

Reviewed by: Rococo Fiction in France, 1600–1715: Seditious Frivolity by Allison Stedman Perry Gethner Allison Stedman . Rococo Fiction in France, 1600–1715: Seditious Frivolity. Lewisburg : Bucknell University Press , 2013 . 227 pp. This thought-provoking study aims to rehabilitate a branch of French prose writing that has been traditionally overlooked or treated with disdain. Characterized by generic hybridity, independence from political authority, and a passion for innovation, these texts fail to conform to the standard narratives of the evolution of seventeenth-century thought (absolutist ideas giving way to the Enlightenment) or literary genre (lengthy, digressive, historical/pastoral novels giving way to shorter, linear, psychological ones). The works that Stedman labels as rococo are quite diverse, including mélange collections that group together texts from a variety of genres, the duchesse de Montpensier’s collection of literary portraits, and most notably, Donneau de Visé’s gazette, Le Mercure galant, which mixed news (much of it relating to gossip and daily life) with literary works such as poems and short [End Page 166] stories. The last is especially remarkable in that it was aimed at a diverse public, in which no one was to be excluded on the basis of gender, social rank, nationality, or location. Montpensier likewise eschewed hierarchy in her portrait volume: in the early editions the king and royal family were not accorded pride of place, and even some of the author’s servants were included. In addition, both Montpensier and de Visé spurred readers to become participants, rather than passive recipients, in their collective enterprise as writers and critics. While Stedman uses the term rococo to cover genres often viewed today as marginal, the majority of the works she studies are novels or short stories. However, she notes that rococo fiction differs from salon-inspired fiction in its choice of characters and locales: instead of being limited to elite groups, these works include people from different social classes; they sometimes mix elegance with vulgarity and cover a wide variety of places. In many cases the characters consciously attempt (often successfully) to create their own society away from Versailles, following their own rules and priorities. Criticism of absolutist ideas, while frequently present, is carefully camouflaged, sometimes even masquerading as praise of the king. Stedman views Montaigne as the pivotal figure in the inception of the rococo aesthetic: his creation of a brand new genre reflected his need for self-expression and he realized that existing literary forms were inadequate for his purposes. Nonetheless, Montaigne in his Essais took a bifurcated approach to innovation: in the literary sphere, in regard to both form and content, novelty is to be prized, whereas in the areas of politics and religion it constitutes a danger to the stability of the state. This paradigm would be challenged during the first half of the seventeenth century, as reflected in a series of literary quarrels, especially that over Le Cid. In the view of Richelieu and the Académie française, realizing France’s cultural ambitions required the adoption of formal principles of regularity as criteria for literature. This development had its parallel in the increasing linkage between literary experimentation and freethinking in the areas of morality, politics, and religion; Stedman cites the pejorative connotation attached to words like “licence” as an example. Another of this book’s main arguments relates to the rise and fall of salon society during the course of the seventeenth century. The decline has often been linked to two developments that occurred simultaneously: the king’s insistence on controlling the nobility by herding them into Versailles and carefully regulating their activities; and the increasing prominence of women authors who entered the world of public authorship rather than [End Page 167] limiting their creativity to salon gatherings. According to Stedman’s theory, salons lost much of their relevance because the rococo notion of communities that created inclusiveness through texts (shared readership and participation in the Mercure or new books that appealed to the wider public) came to overshadow the notion of communities formed through spatial proximity (such as Versailles or the salons, where one had to be physically present in order to participate and be recognized). She further links the transformation of...

Corneille entré dans l’Histoire. Michelet lecteur du Cid

In the twelfth volume of his Histoire de France, Jules Michelet credits Corneille’s Le Cid with the rapprochement between Louis XIII and Anne of Austria and the paternity of the future Louis XIV. With this daring, not to say provocative theory, he gives the play and its reception a decisive historical role which serves his political views: by reversing the historical sequence of events - the work of art no longer accompanying or resulting from the historical event but on the contrary causing it - Michelet undermines the royal grandeur by tracing its origins to a work of dramatic art and destroys the sacred aura surrounding the mythical image of Louis XIV. In addition, the emphasis that Michelet places on Le Cid reflects Corneille’s importance during the first half of the nineteenth century, at which time he is seen as the precursor of the romantic writer and the inventor of the ideals of freedom and sublime espoused by the Romantics.

John D. Lyons The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French LiteratureThe Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature. John D. Lyons. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+211.

<i>John D. Lyons</i> The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature<i>The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature</i>. John D. Lyons. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+211.

The Liar by Writers Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: The Liar by Writers Theatre John Shanahan Review of The Liar by Writers Theatre. Written by David Ives, adapted from Le Menteur by Pierre Corneille. Directed by William Brown. May 21-July 28, 2013. David Ives writes that on first reading Pierre Corneille’s 1643 comedy Le Menteur to explore the possibility of adapting it “I found myself astonished. Exhilarated. Giddy. For, lying on the desk before me was one of the world’s great comedies. I felt as if some lost Shakespeare festival comedy on the order of Twelfth Night or Much Ado had been found. … The Liar is one of those plays that seem to be made out of almost nothing, yet ends up being about so much. “1 Indeed, this comic farce by a playwright known primarily to the English-speaking world for stolid love-and-honor drama (e.g. Le Cid, Cinna) or meta-theater in the vein of Calderon or Bernini (L’illusion Comique), is a reminder of the complexity to Corneille’s oeuvre. From the late 1620s to the early 1670s Corneille wrote more than a half-dozen comedies, and the occasion of Ives’ brilliant recasting of Le Menteur will I hope spur greater attention to Corneille’s less well known comic plays. When Dryden in his late poem to Congreve looked back with envy to the “giant race before the flood”—those playwrights before the English civil wars who seemed to him to have set the standards for great drama—he surely had in mind French writers like Corneille as well as English ones (though he credited overtly only the latter).2 Writers Theatre in Glencoe, IL seats about eighty-five people in a cozy semi-circle. The entire theater space, roughly an oval, was used creatively throughout the performance. The set was a well-conceived minimalism; its total color scheme royal blue with flourishes of gold baroque trim, and a large chandelier high at the center of the ceiling. Place names on antique placards in opposite corners identified the “Place Royale” and the Tuileries Gardens. The large forestage was constituted by a curved step up to a raised platform with a two-level oval structure not unlike a massive wedding cake at its center. This single prominent structure at mid-stage served at various times as a podium (for the prologue, for example, and several soliloquies throughout), as a seat for intimate conversations, and as a platform during a duel. Along the back of the stage two high-backed walls, also [End Page 89] baroque in style, featured benches and open lattices which proved perfect for the Cyrano-like wooing shenanigans near the end of Act One and the various episodes of impersonation, overhearing, and miscommunication at other times. Director William Brown fashioned an attractive mash-up of baroque and contemporary, mirroring Ives’ inventive remix of Corneille’s implied bawdy with winking nods to present-day romcom flicks and TV sex farces. Brown was aided here by the set design of Keith Pitts and costuming by Rachel Anne Healy. Costumes were a fun mixture of old and new. LaShawn Banks (Cliton), for instance, mixed seventeenth-century boots and breeches with a modern off-the-shelf knit cap, while the women sported period-appropriate floor-length dresses and curled hairstyles as seen in Lely’s or Kneller’s paintings. The men generally wore small, modest, powdered tie-wigs familiar in the mid- and later eighteenth century (if not in the seventeenth), lending still more period mash-up to the ensemble. The sound design (by Andrew Hansen) blended classical and contemporary, setting an early modern harpsichord-and-violin air to a bass-heavy disco beat. This punchy soundtrack returned at each set change, helped stress the flashy arrival and departure of the female leads Clarice (Laura Rook) and Lucrece (Kalen Harriman), and punctuated the frenetic moments of swordplay and erotic chase. Ives calls his two-act Liar a “translaptation” of Corneille’s five-act Menteur. By this Ives claims he has crafted a “translation with a heavy dose of adaptation,” trimming and modernizing Corneille’s script just as the French playwright had adapted in turn a 1634 Spanish source, Juan Ruiz de...