Princesse De Research Articles

Zur Rezeption der Oratorien Haydns in Paris zwischen 1800 und 1850: Institutionelle und ästhetische aspekte

In German speaking countries Haydn’s oratorios, and particularly TheCreation , have played an important role in the repertoire of choral societies and music festivals since the 1810s. However, in France, and also in Paris — “the capital of the 19th century” —, Haydn’s oratorios were performed only on rare occasions, and then they were given mostly in parts. The reasons for these circumstances can be seen in the institutional and esthetical context of the Parisian concert life. With respect to professional concert societies, like the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire , rigid obstacles were on the one hand the enormous financial risk of a complete oratorio performance. On the other hand the established type of concert programmes with its varied mixture of vocal and instrumental pieces functioned as a barrier. Most important was a lack of mixed amateur choral societies, which developed in Paris quite late, primary in the 1840s, and then only little by little. Since oratorio performances lasted to be mostly a private affaire in the first half of the 19th century, it is not surprising, that Haydn’s oratorios were studied in aristocratic salons of Princesse de Belgiojoso and Baron Delmar with the intention of both education and entertainment.

VOLTAIRE: OEuvres completes de Voltaire, 28A. OEuvres de 1742-1745 (I)

Volume 28A is another stunning volume from the Complete Works of Voltaire team that will give great physical pleasure to readers for centuries to come. It boasts lovely paper, editorial excellence and a wonderful sense of permanence. One element alone detracts from it: the title Œuvres de 1742–1745 (I) camouflages the fact that this volume houses many fascinating works of Voltaire's mid-career. Unless proper, detailed indexing is urgently provided by the Voltaire Foundation on a future state-of-the-art website, readers may inadvertently overlook the gems contained within volume 28A and similar compilation volumes, and this would be a terrible shame. Russell Goulbourne takes a fresh, prefatory look at 1742–1745, or Voltaire's pre-Versailles years, as the philosophe curries favour to become a courtier of Louis XV. David Williams presents the short Fragment sur la corruption du style, where Voltaire argues that ‘le mélange des styles’ is the antithesis of good literary practice. Only fragments remain of Voltaire's farcical comedy Thérèse. Goulbourne notes how during its conception D'Argental warned Voltaire that Thérèse was in poor taste; it was subsequently withdrawn and never performed. Olivier Ferret unravels the labyrinthine editorial history of the brief, but caustic, A M.***sur le mémoire de Desfontaines, highlighting the fact that Voltaire hides behind the persona of Malicourt in order to insult Desfontaines with greater vehemence. Within the short essay Sur la police des spectacles, Williams situates the venomous irony with which Voltaire denounces the Gallican church's hypocrisy in excommunicating actors of the Comédie-Française, effectively placing them on a par with witches. Voltaire's comédie-ballet La Princesse de Navarre was first performed at a 1745 royal wedding, receiving a positive contemporary reception, but only after myriad teething difficulties between Voltaire and the notoriously temperamental Rameau. Goulbourne traces the opera's unhappy and labour-intensive genesis, contrasting this with its royal propagandistic values, propelled by themes of victory, honour and love. The similarly court-commissioned opera-ballet Le Temple de la Gloire was another work of royal propaganda for Louis XV's court, which fused history with mythology, and which, as Goulbourne notes, Voltaire lived to regret. Intended as a celebration of Fontenoy, this was the final collaboration between Voltaire and Rameau and the allegory was a great success with the king, who was implicitly compared with emperor Trajan. Ralph A. Nablow presents the final section of this collection, subtitled Shorter verse of 1742–1745 and housing nearly 40 poetic pieces, dedicated to a range of personages, including Mme Du Châtelet, Swedish princesses, duchesses, King Frederick of Prussia, a Frisian poet, and the marquise de Pompadour. They include typically humorous offerings, often in quatrains, such as the cheeky Vers sur un dindon à l'ail. Voltaire's adoring character-sketch of Émilie, ‘les livres, les bijoux, les compas, les pompons’, figures in Étrennes à madame Du Châtelet. Some rather gushing poetry addressed to various royal figures, not least the sycophantic couplet Impromptu sur une rose que le roi de Prusse donna à Voltaire, reflects Voltaire's eagerness to curry royal favour and recognition throughout these key, if rather whirlwind, years.

The princesse de Conde at the head of the Fronde des Princes: modern Amazon or femme pretexte?

We are accustomed to the contrast drawn between the flamboyant Amazons de la Fronde—the duchesses de Montpensier, Longueville and Chevreuse-and other, duller, women, who seem to have simply acted as foils for the factions which they represented. The princesse de Conde is very often included in the latter category. However, a careful scrutiny of the texts produced on and about her involvement in the Fronde des Princes, from April to October 1650, proves that she was not simply a femme pretexte, or puppet, in the hands of those who headed the struggle for the liberation of the princes. As events transpired, she slipped out of the Amazon costume in which she had been decked out and forged a public persona for herself that was less conventional, more complex and closer to her own personality. With steely pragmatism the princess alternated, as the situation required, references to the highly aristocratic Amazon and those appealing to more popular images, such as the feeble woman in search of protection or the merciful Virgin.

Madame d’Aulnoy Charms the British

In 1969, a graduate student at the University of Maryland wrote a potentially groundbreaking dissertation on the reception of French literature in England in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Curiously, it was not a study of Madame de Lafayette, or Charles Perrault, nor even Montesquieu or Antoine Galland. The subject of Melvin Delmar Palmer's dissertation, entitled Madame d'Aulnoy in England, was the infamous countess at the court of Louis XIV who was best known in France as a writer of fairy tales. Palmer set out to show that Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy had transformed England's literary landscape in the first decades of the eighteenth with her innovative work in prose fiction; namely, romantic novels, fairy tales, and nouvelles. (1) According to Palmer, d'Aulnoy inspired the British sensibility for the fairy tale, laying the groundwork for the philosophical tale. She contributed, more than any other French writer, to the developing form of the novel of sensibility, and had also been the source of inspiration, from the exotic setting to the macabre detail, for the earliest gothic novelists, such as Walpole. In short, Melvin Palmer argues that Madame d'Aulnoy may have done more than any other writer in France (or in England for that matter) to influence the forms and popularity of the modern English novel. His claim seems extraordinary, but his arguments are persuasive. English translations of d'Aulnoy's books saw more eighteenth-century reprints than the combined total of translated editions of Madame de Lafayette's Princesse de ClOves and Antoine Galland's Mille et une nuits in the first 30 years of their publishing history. The British editions of D'Aulnoy's ten works number thirty-six before 1740 (Palmer, diss. 4). (2) In addition, at least half a dozen other stories attributed to her in England saw multiple reprints during this period. Her popularity in England was, as Palmer puts it, nothing short of remarkable--more remarkable, in fact, than her popularity in France, if we use the number of assumed editions as a guide. Furthermore, three translations (with several reprints) of Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy tales were published before Charles Perrault's Histoires et contes du temps passe (1695) were translated in 1729. As Palmer puts it, Mine d'Aulnoy's fairy tales constitute a major chapter [...] in the late seventeenth-century French vogue for fairy tales, but she constitutes almost the entire history of the corresponding though less ambitious vogue in England in the early eighteenth century (diss. 25). As for her popularity in the latter part of the century, he points out that Clara Reeves acknowledged d'Aulnoy's enduring renown as late as 1785. Both Alexander Bicknell and Horace Walpole arguably borrow plot details from her work, while Ann Radcliff appears to have taken the names if not the sensibilities of her hero and heroine in the Sicilian Romance from d'Aulnoy's first romantic/historical novel, Histoire d'Hypolite, comte de Duglas (179-180, 182). Yet, few critics today cite d'Aulnoy in discussions of the gothic novel or reference Melvin Delmar Palmer and his unorthodox history of English prose fiction. Indeed, Palmer's dissertation (3) still represents a unique attempt to account for the popularity of d'Aulnoy's novels and fairy tales in England. (4) In this article, I return to Palmer's claims to sketch out d'Aulnoy's eighteenth-century British personae and what they might tell us about her role in the eighteenth-century British fascination with French literature. (5) My argument focuses specifically on the prefaces to the early eighteenth-century translations of d'Aulnoy's novels and fairy tales and how publishers characterized the French author and marketed her stories to English readers. (6) The aim is to understand how her personae were constructed and reconstructed, and what the enduring success of her stories can tell us about the role ascribed to France in the formulation of bourgeois aesthetics in England. …

Finding their Wings: Yan-Zi and the Princesse's Journey from Object to Subject in Ying Chen's L'ingratitude and Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves

Finding their Wings: Yan-Zi and the Princesse's Journey from Object to Subject in Ying Chen's L'ingratitude and Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves

Maîtrise esthétique de la passion féminine. Fonctionnement topique du pavillon dans La Princesse de Clèves.

When La Princesse de Cleves was published in 1678 it was celebrated as a literary achievement by some readers but criticized by others, in particular by some of the most reknowned and influential critiques of the time Jean-Baptiste Henri du Trousset Valincour and Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, as an attack on the ideals of plausibility and moral decency. It was notably the two scenes known as “The Confession” and “The Dream”, both taking place in the pavilion at the Cleves estate La Coulommiers, that appeared indecent and implausible in the eyes of the two critiques. Taking the multiple symbolique connotations of the pavilion as a starting point, this article will argue that the accusations of implausibility and indecency should be understood as ideological reactions to the novel's negociations of desire, aesthetics and power.

Zayde: A Spanish Romance (review)

Reviewed by: Zayde: A Spanish Romance Claire Carlin Marie-Madeleine Lafayette . Zayde: A Spanish Romance, ed. and trans. Nicholas D. Paige. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xxix+210 pp. US$18, £11.50 (pb). ISBN 978-0-226-46852-5. Since its inception, "The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe" series from the University of Chicago Press has made available women's writings from Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, many for the first time in English. The selections are often unavailable in modern, affordable paperback editions even in their original language, a situation that fortunately is changing, perhaps under the impetus of the Chicago series. The French women writers already featured in the collection are Marie Dentière, Louise Labé, Mme de Maintenon, Madeleine de Scudéry, and Marie-Catherine Desjardins (Mme de Villedieu); two treatises by Gabrielle Suchon and a selection of fairy tales are the next French volumes projected. The choice of Zayde among the works of Mme de Lafayette is consistent with the effort to bring lesser-known works to a wide readership. While other Lafayette novels (La Princesse de Montpensier, La Comtesse de Tende, to say nothing of La Princesse de Clèves) have been published in recent, inexpensive paperback editions in France, Zayde has not appeared in print in French since 1990 (though it is available on the Gallica site of the Bibliothèque Nationale); the only English translation dates from 1678. Nicholas Paige's edition situates the novel in seventeenth-century French culture and in the history of the [End Page 252] genre so that North American undergraduates, along with an audience of educated readers outside the academy, will be able to appreciate fully the particularities of this work. The subtitle "A Spanish Romance" signals the importance of genre in this case. The unlikely plot twists, the imbricated tales, the heroic characters of the sprawling Baroque novels popular until around 1660 have been set in a new frame, compressed to fewer than 200 pages. Of all the attempts to remake romance in a condensed form in the final decades of the century, Zayde, first published in 1669, proved to be the only commercial success. Paige explains its subsequent disappearance from the canon as a key element in the history of the novel: as romance became feminized, associated primarily with women readers and writers, it was increasingly devalued, and by the nineteenth century it was eliminated from the realm of "serious" literature in favour of the realist strain, which was perceived as more than mere escapism. Paige helps the non-specialist reader to realize how Zayde questions and subverts the romance genre even as it takes full advantage of romance conventions. Rather than a parody in the manner of Sorel or Marivaux, "Zayde is the last great French romance" (13) in the sense that it links the embedded stories, using them to create "a sort of taxonomy of unhappiness in which heroes and heroines are separated not by real, external obstacles—an earthquake, a father's interdiction, an uncertain birth, a rival's challenge—but rather by different psychological bents" (18-19). The characters' inability to interpret narrative because of their own flawed vision requires the reader to recognize and interpret gaps in understanding caused by human frailty. Lafayette's genius in renewing the conventions of romance was little appreciated after the eighteenth century as "the realist prejudice has rewritten our conception of what the novel is and made it nearly impossible to appreciate the other novelistic genres to which early modern women made a particularly active contribution" (2). After having exposed the broad context in which Zayde must be situated in order to be appreciated, Paige's translation and its accompanying notes continue to bolster the reader's understanding of French culture in 1670. Helpful glosses on notions such as admiration, inclination, attachement, engagement, and galanterie, for example, explain the resonance of these words in salon culture. Notes are also provided when Paige wishes to elucidate his choices for other complex concepts, such as esprit, fortune, humeur, or patrie. The elegant translation balances the "charming archaism" (32) associated with romance (even for early modern readers) with the need to appeal to twenty-first...

Platée: Ballet bouffon en un prologue et trois actes, RCT 53 (review)

Reviewed by Lois Rosow Ohio State University Jean-Philippe Rameau. Platée: Ballet bouffon en un prologue et trois actes, RCT 53; livret de Jacques Autreau; révisé par Adrien-Joseph Valois d'Orville et Balot de Sovot. Version 1749; version 1745 (compléments). Édition de M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet. Bonneuil-Matours, France: Société Jean-Philippe Rameau; distribution mondiale: Kassel: Bärenreiter Verlag, [End Page 360] c2005. (Opera omnia, sér. 4: Musique dramatique, vol. 10.) (Musica Gallica.) [Gen. pref. in Eng., Fr. (Sylvie Bouissou), p. vii–viii; contents, p. ix; introd., p. xi–lxxx; livret in Fr., p. lxxxi–xcii; roles, etc., p. xciv; table of contents for the score, p. xcv–xcviii; score (version of 1749), p. 1–257; score (version of 1745), p. 258–327; crit. apparatus in Eng., p. 329–400; annexes, p. 401–21; facsims., p. 424–34; prospectus for Rameau Opera omnia, p. 435. Cloth. ISMN M-006-52787-8; pub. nos. SJPR-OOR IV.10, BA 8852. €398.] Jean-Philippe Rameau. Platée: Ballet bouffon en un prologue et trois actes, RCT 53; livret de Jacques Autreau; révisé par Adrien-Joseph Valois d'Orville et Balot de Sovot. Version 1749; version 1745 (compléments). Édition de M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet; réduction clavier-chant de François Saint-Yves. Bonneuil-Matours, France: Société Jean-Philippe Rameau; distribution mondiale: Kassel: Bärenreiter Verlag, c2005. (Opera omnia, sér. 4: Musique dramatique, vol. 10.) (Musica Gallica.) [Avertissement in Fr., Eng., p. v; table of contents for the score, p. vi–x; roles, etc., p. xi–xii; vocal score (version of 1749), p. 1–260; vocal score (version of 1745), p. 261–352. ISMN M-006-52788-5; pub. nos. SJPR-OOR IV.10r, BA 8852a. Duration: ca. 3 hrs. €47.95.] Elizabeth Bartlet's critical edition of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Platée appeared in print in 2005, the year of her death, which followed a long battle with cancer. This edition is a brilliant achievement, and it is certainly fortunate for the rest of us that she was able to complete it before her final illness. Platée was a last-moment addition to the elaborate festivities at Versailles during February and March of 1745 for the marriage of Maria Teresa, infanta of Spain, to Louis, dauphin of France. It replaced Pandore, the planned five-act tragédie en musique by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer, with a livret by Voltaire, that the composer was unable to complete in time. Another new work by Rameau (also with a text by Voltaire), La princesse de Navarre, performed on the eve of the royal wedding on 23 February and repeated on the 27th, served as the centerpiece of the festival. Rameau had been preparing Platée for the Académie Royale de Musique (the Opéra) in Paris for the late summer or fall, and only a modest amount of work remained when the call came to offer it to the royal court instead. Its premiere at Versailles marked the end of the festivities on 31 March. In May of 1745, Louis XV showed his appreciation for both works by naming Rameau compositeur de la musique de la chambre du roi. The resultant court commissions kept Rameau very busy, so it is not surprising that the Paris premiere of Platée was further delayed. That premiere eventually took place on 9 February 1749, with numerous revisions (as was normal when an opera returned to the stage after several years, especially with a change of venue). Additional productions at the Opéra occurred in February of 1750 and 1754, and in later years the prologue enjoyed an independent existence at the Opéra, brought together with individual acts from other works to make an evening's entertainment. Platée holds a unique place in the oeuvre of Rameau: it is a farce (ballet bouffon), in which Jupiter pretends to love the ugly nymph and marsh queen Platée in order to...

Emilia Galotti and La Princesse de Clèves

We know, from statements Lessing made, that the catastrophe at the end of Emilia Galotti was based on a classical source, Livy’s account of the murder of Virginia by her father. However the sequence of events and the psychological forces that bring about this tragic conclusion in the play are not part of Livy’s text, nor are they inspired by the other dramatic treatments of the Virginia story with which Lessing was familiar. In his examination of Emilia Galotti, Gustav Kettner claims that Lessing drew on Richardson’s novels, in particular Clarissa, to develop his source material. The present article agrees that prose fiction was an important factor in Lessing’s new approach in this tragedy, but argues that rather than Clarissa, it was Mme de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Cleves, a novel Lessing also knew, that helped shape his artistic choices. The numerous parallels between the French novel and Lessing’s play in relation to setting, configuration of the plot, the portrayal of the heroine and the exploitation of visual art are too numerous to be merely coincidental and suggest that Lessing’s ‹modernisierte ... Virginia’ owes as much to this work as to Livy.

Cartesian Modernity and thePrincesse de Clèves

AbstractBy reading Madame de Lafayette's novel against Rene Descartes's Passions de l'âme and Principes de la philosophie, I demonstrate that the Princesse de Cleves is a sophisticated reflection on embodied human selfhood that directly engages with Cartesian philosophy. Madame de Lafayette explores the possibilities for change and even heroism in a world devoid of the sovereign will that, for Descartes, distinguishes the human from the substance etendue of physical matter. Caught in the vortices of passion and interdependence, the novel's characters are unable to act with intentionality. Instead, their actions are reactions occasioned by changes in their environment, as when the future princess makes her first appearance. In this context, the princess's decision to conserve the memory of her dead husband represents the only possibility for partially escaping the dense materiality of life at court.

A Quarrel inLa Princesse de Clèves: Ancient Princess and Modern Nemours

Centuries of eloquent debate on the efficacy or absence of religion in La Princesse de Clèves have not yet brought resolution. A reasonable hypothesis is that the novel, without being read as a philosophical roman à thèse by any means, may productively be interpreted as reflective of a Zeitgeist in which issues of moral theology and the history of ideas have considerable currency, even if in the novel they are not visible as such on the level of motif. The protagonist adheres to a code of morality which derives from the Platonic and Augustinian (and more proximately to the novel's writing, Jansenistic) tradition. The Duc de Nemours, on the other hand, gives voice to values situated more closely to the Aristotelian thought of Thomas Aquinas, and the moral conflict in the novel's action depicts a contest between these positions. The final meeting between the two characters provides an illustration of this moral argument, with the heroine speaking for an absolute and unchanging code while Nemours advocates a morality more attuned to the standards of a modern world. Seen in the context of ideas, this is something of a philosophical quarrel of Ancients and Moderns.

Mecenes et Musiciens: Du salon au concert a Paris sous la IIIe Republique (review)

Reviewed by: Mécènes et Musiciens: Du salon au concert à Paris sous la IIIe République Michael Strasser Mécènes et Musiciens: Du salon au concert à Paris sous la IIIe République. By Myriam Chimènes. Paris: Fayard, 2004. [776 p. ISBN 2-213-61696-5. €30.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Wealthy patrons have always played an important role in Western musical life, but while the contributions of a Louis XIV or a Count Esterházy might seem readily apparent, the story of musical patronage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has seemed largely peripheral to a historical narrative that has concentrated on composers' increasing individuality and independence. Except for a few obvious exceptions (Wagner and King Ludwig of Bavaria, for example) there has been little scholarly interest in the relationships between musicians and wealthy individuals in the years after 1800. Scholars have recently begun to look more closely at the importance of wealthy patrons to the development of music and musical life during the past two centuries. A growing number of studies have been devoted to important individuals (e.g., Sylvia Kahan, Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princess de Polignac [Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003]) or to the role of patrons in general (e.g., Ralph P. Locke and Cyrilla Barr, ed. Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activities in America Since 1860 [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997]). The latest contribution to this expanding field of inquiry comes from Myriam Chimènes, who has written an important documentary study of musical patronage in Paris during the Third Republic. Chimènes' book is especially welcome, for the salon culture of nineteenth-century Paris provided for an unusual (if not unique) amount of interaction between musicians and their admirers and supporters. Salons provided a venue for musicians to interact with each other as well as with painters, writers, and other intellectuals. Wealthy music lovers staged formal concerts and even opera productions in their homes, organized concert series in public venues, and provided support for struggling young composers. Some even participated in the performance of new works, both in private and (occasionally) in public settings. Chimènes has wisely decided to divide her immense study of this multi-faceted culture into two parts, the first dealing with "private spaces" (i.e., salons and other musical activities in private homes) and the second with "public spaces" (i.e., the activities of wealthy patrons in the realm of public music making). After a brief introduction to the world of amateur music lovers and an overview of the role they played in Parisian musical life, the author moves in the first part to an in-depth examination of the personalities and activities of several of the most important musical patrons on the Parisian scene, including such figures as Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux, Winnaretta Singer, the [End Page 963] comtesse Greffulhe, and Misia. Following these extended portraits one finds several chapters devoted to different types of salons, beginning with those hosted by musical amateurs, who often organized salons and concerts so that they could indulge their desire to perform in either solo or ensemble settings. There were formal and informal concerts presented by music lovers who simply wanted to listen to music in their homes, and salons hosted by musicians (or their families), artists, and writers: all are cataloged in the same methodical fashion by Chimènes. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the presence of musicians became almost a requirement at a Parisian salon, and there is even a chapter devoted to the use (or, rather, misuse) of musicians as "adornments" at fashionable gatherings. In her desire to be as comprehensive as possible, Chimènes sometimes risks overwhelming the reader in these chapters with an endless procession of names, dates, and titles. She does an admirable job of preventing her prose from disintegrating into a formulaic, encyclopedic style but it is inevitable that one begins to feel a certain sameness in the description of so many salons, many of which are distinguished only by the presence of different individuals. Many readers might well be tempted to read the introduction to each chapter in...

Epiphanies: The Narrative Effect of the Woman's Spying Gaze in Lafayette's Princesse de Clèves and Tencin's Mémoires du Comte de Comminge

This article demonstrates that the woman's spying gaze in Lafayette's Princesse de Clèves and Tencin's Mémoires du Comte de Comminge has a different narrative function from that ofthe conventional male hero in the novel of the turn of the eighteenth century. While the man's gaze serves to satisfy his desires and move the plot along in a linear trajectory, when the woman spies in these two works, what she sees leads her to experience an epiphany, a moment of self-knowledge that radically changes the direction of the plot. The epiphanies experienced by the Princesse and Adélaüde help explain the unconventional "unhappy" endings of these two works.

ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS: THE SEARCH FOR AN IDEOLOGY IN LA PRINCESSE DE CLÈVES

This article considers various attempts to identify a clear structure of ideas, and their philosophical antecedents, in La Princesse de Cleves. These attempts arise naturally from the wide variations in interpretation that result from this novel's ambiguities. Many critics have made sense of the heroine's rejection of the man she loves by placing it in a religious framework, with roots in Augustinian/Jansenist thought, and thus in Neoplatonism. The influence of neo-Stoicism is also evident, for example in the mother's teaching and in her daughter's resistance to passion. However, these two currents of thought offer irreconcilable perspectives on free will. The situation is further complicated by the existence of an Epicurean dimension, in the value placed on prudence and on the retreat from emotional strife. Another element is Pyrrhonism, with its emphasis on the fragile basis of opinions and convictions. None of these ideologies offer an entirely persuasive explanation, yet they coexist uneasily. The difficulty of picking out totally convincing candidates from this identity parade necessarily leaves critics of this novel with questions as to the identity of our own hermeneutic endeavour.

Lettres de femmes: textes inédits et oubliés du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle ed. by Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, Colette H. Winn

846 Reviews Lettres defemmes: textes inedits et oublies duXVIe auXVIIIe sie'cle. Ed. by ELIZABETH C. GOLDSMITH and COLETTEH. WINN. (Textes de la Renaissance, 89) Paris: Champion. 2005. xlii+448pp. E83. ISBN 2-7453-II23-9. Common sense dictates that when Marguerite de Navarre mentions her daughter (p. I7), she is not pregnant with her. The footnote iswrong. Is she pregnant with her son (is the date of the letter wrong?)? Is she even pregnant? Mlle de Nantes was not Montespan's second child by Louis XIV (p. 294) but her third, following Maine and Vexin. Such errors ('i 670, au debut du regne de Louis XIV', p. xxxix), too numerous for comfort, betoken carelessness, and shake the reader's confidence. What can be believed, and what must one verify? Elsewhere, insufficient diligence is employed. How can the assistant editor who declares thatMlle deMursay 'n'apu etre identifie[e]' (p. 293) fail to recognize Mme deMaintenon's so-called niece, laterMme de Caylus? Another editor avers that Suzanne Necker's correspondent Schomberg 'n'apparait dans aucun dictionnaire biographique' (p. 345), a poor excuse for not tracking down Voltaire's friend Gottlob Louis, comte de Schomberg. All this vitiates the genuinely authoritative erudition on display elsewhere, even before account is taken of such questionable strategies as the use of privileges to establish primacy of publication, especially in defiance of explicit contradictory evidence (p. xvi). A privilege is not an acheve d'imprimer. The Nassau sisters discuss family business, Necker supplements literary and intellectual themes with a dash of travel writing, Jeanne des Anges (she of the scandal of Urbain Grandier) unsurprisingly contributes devotional material, and an anonymous account of Eleonore de Roye, princesse de Conde, praises the manner of her death. It goes unnoticed by the editors that a disproportionately large number of these fascinating writers were politically or religiously suspect, but what ismost conspicuous is the heartwarming friendship that characterizes every letter, including those by the other women here represented: Louise de Bourges, Louise de Coligny, Mme du Houx, Mme de Scudery (three of her letters restored thanks to good detective work), and Mme de Meinieres. The confidently stated editing principles are not always applied but fall prey to the idiosyncrasies of the individual assistant editors -ven the subtitling and indentations are inconsistent and the footnote about the positioning of source references on page I3 is falsified by the practice adopted. The enterprise deserved firmer general editorial control but the letters themselves are riveting and the anthology will be an essential primer until overtaken by the fuller individual studies of these women's eloquent correspondence that Elizabeth C. Goldsmith and Colette H. Winn presumably intended to provoke. UNIVERSITYOFBATH WILLIAM BROOKS L'iEuvre libertine de Bonaventure de Fourcroy. Ed. by MIGUEL BENITEZ. (Libre pensee et litterature clandestine, 27) Paris: Champion. 2005. 673 pp. E85. ISBN 2-7453-I262-6. Miguel Benitez here provides scholars of libertine and clandestine authors with an extremely detailed presentation of the works of Bonaventure de Fourcroy, who was born around i662 and imprisoned between I698 and I704 because of his writings. A general introduction into the life and work of the author is followed by five carefully edited texts, each of which is introduced and analysed in turn: Doutes Sur laRelligion Proposes aMss les docteurs de Sorbone (Fourcroy's major work), La Vie d'Apollonius natif de Thiane, Les trois stiles dans toute sorte d'ouvrages d'eloquence et de poesie, La Bride du Pape, and the encoded writings brought together as Sur laMagie: les documents chiffres. Benitez has based his edition on Fourcroy's manuscripts, which are on occasion in ...

Retazos de novela sentimental castellana: Hacia La Princesse de Clèves

This article reviews the Spanish sentimental novels preceding La Princesse de Clèves (1678), which enjoyed great success in France in its multiple and frequently editions and translations first in the 16th century and then throughout the 17th century. The author of the article sorts out slight hints, literary resources or basic narrative strategies of those remote novels which were emerging onto the scene within the new context of 17h century France so as to analyse the refined sophistication with which those resources were to be employed by the Countess de La Fayette. Other relevant contributions of this study concern the investigation of historical sources for the princess's lover and the comprehensive and innovative interpretation of the French masterpiece thanks to the discoveries related to its sources.

Balzac, peintre de corps: La Comedie humaine ou le sens du detail (review)

Reviewed by: Balzac, peintre de corps: La Comédie humaine ou le sens du détail Hollie Markland Harder Borderie, Régine. Balzac, peintre de corps: La Comédie humaine ou le sens du détail. Paris: SEDES-VUEF, 2002. Pp. 243. ISBN2-7181-9439-1 In her study, Régine Borderie explores the innovative role that physical depictions of characters play in Balzac's novels. She demonstrates how the writer, dissatisfied with descriptions that seem merely to confirm stereotypes, uses corporeal details in order to inform readers about the health, passions, and morality of fictional figures in the Comédie humaine; these portraits also serve to situate the origins, trace the pasts, and even anticipate the futures of these personnages. Moreover, this inventive approach enables Balzac to tell stories about diverse individuals from a number of narrative perspectives, and in the process, to lend more precision to "l'art de connaître des hommes" (14) in early to mid-nineteenth-century France. In the first section of her book, Borderie presents a thorough overview of the history of la physiognomonie, a discipline that claims to predict character based on physical traits, and one that strongly influences Balzac's keen attention to details. In his work, the novelist assumes a direct rapport between appearances and interior qualities, but he widens the range of items worthy of interpretation to include such elements as colors, language, voice, place of residence, clothing, and gait. In this "univers humain saturé de sens" (53), Balzac underscores the paradoxes that arise when internal and external traits seem mismatched, inspiring the creation of a gamut of complex and intriguing figures. Borderie then examines the ways in which Balzac's approach to description reflects socio-economic changes in post-revolutionary France. As classes intermingle, char-acteristics previously associated with various social and economic ranks are blurred, [End Page 409] and past conventions no longer hold true. To compensate, the novelist develops a kind of "physiognomonie sociale" (58) that relies on "les signes de la profession" (69) appearing on the body, in manners, and on clothing to illustrate physical and moral traits. Balzac also introduces new types of personnages that frequently embody opposing qualities, such as the young genius of humble origins or the convict who displays "la grandeur" of evil (82), figures who could not have existed under the political, social, and esthetic constraints of the ancien régime. In these textual portraits, Borderie recognizes a certain notion "du moderne, et de sa fragilité" (74), which she compares to that of Baudelaire. The third section of Borderie's book focuses on the role of beauty and ugliness in Balzac's descriptions. Rather than evoke beauty in idealized form, as one finds for example in La Princesse de Clèves, he depicts its many forms and degrees, frequently highlighting instances when physical perfection fails to correspond to high morals. Balzac's taste for blending what he sees as opposing traits may explain in part his interest in androgynous characters as well as his creation of a new convenance, where an ugly trait serves to highlight a figure's attractiveness, as though "les lois internes l'emportent sur les lois externes" (117). As with beauty, this novelist often disas-sociates ugliness from morality, creating esthetic mismatches that mirror the social mésalliances in La Comédie humaine. Borderie next explores Balzac's use of description to suggest, if not recount, a character's past experiences and to anticipate events to come. At the center of her analysis lies the notion of the unreliable narrator who, in keeping with Balzac's fondness for variation, guides the reader using several techniques: he may present false details to color the reader's view, he may give misleading details, or he may blend truth and falsehood. The role of the fictional observer and his place in the creation of the narrative also come under Borderie's scrutiny. She underscores the subjectivity of the observer and therefore his ability to destabilize the reader's understanding of characters by introducing ambiguity and incertitude. In the final section, Borderie addresses the notions of individualism and determinism in La Comédie humaine. Given that Balzac uses physical...

The Return to Romance: Love Stories in Recent French Women's Writing

The Return to Romance: Love Stories in Recent French Women's Writing Diana Holmes LOVE AND DESIRE ARE CENTRAL to literature and to storytelling . Happy, mutual love perhaps lends itself more to poetry or music than to narrative (or as Colette put it, "L'amour parfait se raconte en trois lignes: 'Il m'aima, je /'aimai, Sa présence supprima toutes les autres présences; nous fumes heureux'".1 However, the unfulfilled desire for love's object drives a narrative of quest that is both hermeneutic (everything about the beloved is interesting and invites interpretation) and adventurous (the quest to win the beloved, to overcome obstacles, rivals, rejections in the pursuit of happiness is the stuff of stories from fairy tales to Harlequin romances). If love has figured more prominently and consistently in women's than men's writing over the centuries, this is unsurprising since in most cultures and at most levels of the social hierarchy women's lives—until quite recently—have been largely restricted to the private domain, and their dramas of self-discovery and the quest for happiness have necessarily been played out on a domestic and private stage. Though there are many remarkable exceptions , the plot of courtship, marriage, adultery has been the mainstay of women's writing through the centuries, from La Princesse de Clèves to George Sand and on to Françoise Sagan, taking in the durable form of the popular romance. Women's desires to explore the world and to live intensely have often been figured through narratives of passionate love. Throughout the twentieth century, women in Western societies entered the public world in increasing numbers. As their lives played out on a wider canvas, marriage, or even unmarried coupledom, ceased to be so powerful an imperative. The love story no longer seems to be the essential plot of female lives. Second wave feminism contested the "ruling myths of female sexual dependency and sexual availability"2 and downplayed the romantic love-plot in favor of a script of sexual liberation in which marriage spelt oppression, women's desire was by nature neither uniquely heterosexual nor monogamous , and True Love was shown to be an ideology that served to legitimize oppressive relations at both domestic and state level. In most serious or literary French women's writing of the late 1960s and 1970s, the heterosexual romance fades away or is carefully deconstructed. Annie Leclerc (at least in her most influential work Parole de femme), Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray Vol. XLV, No. 1 97 L'Esprit Créateur re-define female sexuality as profoundly different from male sexuality, but are little concerned with the dynamics of attraction to male otherness.3 Christiane Rochefort's heroines follow the socially prescribed script of the love story only to find out that romance is the sugar on the pill of female dependence and powerlessness, and moreover that marriage is the antithesis of eroticism.4 Rochefort's preferred model of heterosexual relations plays down otherness and emphasizes a comradely, sensual bond without commitment. Marie Cardinal is fully aware of the attraction of the romantic hero, and of the origins of this attraction in early relations with the father. Her novels acknowledge the power of romantic attraction but also treat it with great caution, locating the heroine's self-realization elsewhere.5 Duras's writing, it is true, deals persistently with love, revealing both a fascination with sexual difference and the attempt to disrupt it. The theme of love and desire does not disappear from women's writing at this period, but it is either marginalized or very self-consciously problematized. So what becomes of the female-authored love story in a postmodern, some would say a post-feminist, age?6 There is no doubt that the romance remains most women readers' preferred form of fiction. Harlequin France, the "leader de roman d'amour" as its website claims, is the second largest paperback publishing company in France, publishing over 500 new titles and selling 12 million books each year. Though a new collection is about to extend Harlequin's range beyond the "roman sentimental," the vast majority of its immensely popular novels are heterosexual love...

Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac (review)

Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac Bonnie Jo Dopp Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac. By Sylvia Kahan . Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003. ( Eastman Studies in Music.) [ xxii, 547 p. ISBN 1-58046-133-6. $49.95.] Appendices, index, bibliography. Attending concerts in the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress as a college student made me at least unconsciously aware of women as music patrons, so decades later perhaps Coolidge's example inspired my commissioning a piece—actually, I could afford only an arrangement—from a composer I knew, played on a regularly-scheduled chamber music concert. My small experience as a patron of composers (there was one other arrangement, from another composer friend, this time performed in my living room) taught me something about the challenges of this activity and gave me some of the pleasures one imagines other composers' patrons feel: the joy of supporting creative efforts with beautiful results and the peace of "owning" things that take up no space, need not be insured, and are best held in memory among friends, with just printed programs and inscribed scores as souvenirs. A "bragging rights" snob factor was not completely absent, either. Ralph P. Locke in the final essay in Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists Since 1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) presents a case for a positive spin on the "misapprehensions" of historical female patrons doing cultural work as an excuse to throw lavish parties, adopt favorite composers as pets, and promote themselves when they might rather have contributed to overcoming the ills of society. Among other things, even if their work in music directly supported the creation of few lasting masterpieces of the repertoire, the cumulative effect of their efforts gave many in the world of art music real opportunities to grow as performing musicians, composers, and audiences, and their example gave rise to more artistic patronage from others. Though she was born in Yonkers, Winnaretta Singer cultivated music in Paris and Venice and is not considered in Locke and Barr's book. A brief précis of her patronage as Princesse de Polignac appears in Mona Mender's appreciative survey, Extraordinary Women in Support of Music (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997). An inaccurate, footnote-free biography of this expatriate American princess appeared in 1978, during the late twentieth-century "women's movement" when writings by and about lesbians were relatively new to the popular nonfiction market and those that made much of a subject's sexual adventures were welcomed: The Food of Love by Michael de Cossart (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978). Sylvia Kahan's 1993 dissertation, "The Princesse Edmond de Polignac (1865-1943): A Documentary Chronicle of Her Life and Artistic Circle" (D.M.A., City University of New York) was an extensive [End Page 780] scholarly study of Singer-Polignac's life, and the book under review, an expansion of that thesis, is now the most authoritative published source of information about her. The essential problem in Singer-Polignac research is that her will dictated that her personal papers be destroyed, and they were. Thus, any scholar attempting to bring her to life must rely on copious testimony from other primary sources: letters she wrote that are in various archives (some privately held), whatever exists in the public record of her day, including published reviews and articles in the press, and interviews with people who knew Singer-Polignac, who died in 1943. Numerous anecdotes concerning her appear in secondary sources as well, for she knew many prominent people and their memoirs often reveal just how memorable a person she was. Kahan's investigation of Singer-Polignac's life included interviews with family members. It required travel to libraries and private archives in France, the United States, and Britain and perusal of over 400 books, articles, and dissertations listed in her bibliography in addition to news clippings in family scrapbooks cited in notes. Fully one-third of Kahan's book consists of apparatus (appendices, notes, bibliography, index, etc.) so simply as a source for information on Winnaretta's modernist milieu, it is a valuable...

Charriere's Untimely Realism: Aesthetic Representation and Literary Pedagogy in Lettres de Lausanne and La Princesse de Cleves

Charriere's Untimely Realism: Aesthetic Representation and Literary Pedagogy in Lettres de Lausanne and La Princesse de Cleves