Quil A Research Articles

La ‘Varietas’à la Renaissance : Actes de la journée d’étude organisée par l’École nationale des Chartes (Paris, 27 avril 2000) ed. by Dominique de Courcelles (review)

MLR, 97.4, 2002 959 La 'Varietas'd la Renaissance: Actes de lajournee d'etude organiseepar I'Ecole nationale des Chartes (Paris, 27 avril 2000). Ed. by Dominique de Courcelles. (Etudes et rencontres de I'Ecole des Chartes, 9) Paris: Ecole des Chartes. 2001. 267 pp. 124.50 F; ?19. Of the ten essays in this volume, four are specifically concerned with texts in Latin (Raphaele Mouren on 'La varietas des philologues au xvie siecle: Entre varia lecta et variae lectiones', Jean-Marc Mandosio on Poliziano, Isabelle Diu and Alexandre Vanautgaerden on Erasmus's Adagia, Marie-Dominique Couzinet on Cardano and Bodin), three with Italian and/or Spanish writings (Giuseppe Grilli on Poggio and the Lazarillo, Paola Vassali on Equicola and Villalon, Dominique de Courcelles on John ofthe Cross's Cdntico espiritual), just one with French literature (Ulrich Langer on the (Euvres morales of Jean des Caurres, 1575), the other two being devoted to matters architectural (Yves Pauwels on ' Varietas et ordo en architecture: Lecture de l'antique et rhetorique de la creation') or musical (Frank Dobbins on 'La variete dans la musique de la Renaissance'). Although the collection suffers from defects common in this type of volume (no bibliography and no index), it manifestly reflects, by its very disparate nature, the theme that it develops: 'la notion de varietas apparait comme un principe majeur des formes de pensee, d'ecriture et de vie qui prevaudront jusqu'a l'age classique, comme l'ordonnateur de toute la culture humaniste' (p. 3). The concept is especially familiar to us through its relationship with the notions oivariatio, imitatio, and copia and other forms of creative transformation (as recently described, forexample, by Michel Jeanneret in his Perpetuum mobile: Metamorphoses des corps et des oeuvresde Vinci a Montaigne (Paris: Macula, 1997; see MLR, 94 (1999), 529-30), and carries within itsimilar tensions. The pursuit of'variety' is certainly an attempt to imitate nature and successful imitation therefore reflectsan overarching (but hidden) order, but this is achieved through processes of disorder at work both in formal expression and in the individualpursuing it('et lejugeant et le juge sont en continuelle mutation et branle', as Montaigne tells us). One ofthe most stimulating and suggestive items is that of Mouren (pp. 5-31) on the philologists' varietas as variant reading and their collections of variae lectiones (called thus by Muret, for example, but also annotationes, miscellanea, and later adversaria) which in themselves lead nowhere, but can ultimately serve as repositories to be exploited by others. For his part, Langer signals the prevalence of the notion of variety in later sixteenth-century moral works (Horace's famous bee image crops up most appositely here) before discussing the 'banquet de savoir heterogene' (p. 129) to which we are invited by Des Caurres. Specialists in the differentdisciplines we associate with 'Renaissance studies', 'qui ca, qui la, voletans a leur aise', will all find something of interest in this volume. University of Wales, Lampeter T. Peach Poetique de la Renaissance: Le Modele italien, le monde franco-bourguignon et leur heritage enFrance au XVle siecle. Ed. by Perrine Galand-Hallyn and Fernand Hallyn. Preface by Terence Cave. (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 348) Geneve: Droz. 2001. xvii +786 pp. 120 SwF. This is a work conceived on the grand scale, with the aim of throwing light on the evolution over two centuries of French Renaissance poetic theory from its classical, ltalian, and medieval French origins. It proceeds by studyingprimarily the successive formulations of theorists with differingperspectives, and secondarily ideas on poet? ics expressed in poetry itself. The editors have assembled an international team of fifteenscholars, from America as well as Europe, whose combined expertise enables ...

Theorizing the Good Society: Hermeneutic, Normative and Empirical Discourses

Abstract: This paper examines two fundamentally different ways that recent philosophical thinkers have theorized the good society and demonstrates that each tradition has engaged in revisionist efforts that brings it toward its rival tradition. Rawls and Habermas represent the of this contemporary effort, establishing neo-Kantian positions in the sixties and seventies that represent an initial effort at theorizing the good society in terms of an historically unsituated, free floating universalism. The contemporary versions of the hermeneutic, communitarian approaches emerge in response, with thinkers like Walzer, Boltanski and Thevenot, Taylor, and Young arguing for the situated self, community based standards, cultural specificity, and relativism. It is demonstrated, however, that within each of these works there is a decisive space that is, or must be, given to some more universalizing sphere of justice. Responding to this possibility, against these communitarian and hermeneutic approaches, there developed internal revisions of the neo-Kantian, externalist approach, beginning with the large shift manifest in the Rawls of Political Liberalism. Similar changes are demonstrated in the works of thinkers like Benhabib, Honneth, and even in Habermas himself. Just as the communitarians move back, with difficulty, toward universalism, so do these universalists seek to move back, with difficulty, to particularism. In the concluding section of this paper, I argue that if we look empirically at the actual nature of the discourses about the good society that circulate in Western societies, we will see both of these discourses, the universalist and the particular, acting side by side. I try to explain how they actual intertwine in a systematic way, as what I call a binary discourse of civil society. Resume: Ce document examine deux manieres fondamentalement differentes que les philosophes d'aujourd'hui utilisent pour elaborer des theories sur la societe ideale. Ce document demontre aussi que chaque tradition a adopte des vues revisionnistes qui la rapproche de sa rivale traditionnelle. Rawls et Habermans representent la base de cet effort contemporain quia jete les assises des positions neo-kantiennes dans les annees soixante et soixante-dix, marquant un premier effort de theories sur la societe ideale dans le cadre d'un universalisme libre et non situe dans l'histoire. Des versions contemporaines de cette demarche hermeneutique et communautarienne surgissent alors avec des penseurs tels que Walzer, Boltanski et Thevenot, de meme que Taylor et Young qui defendent le sol localise, les normes axees sur les collectivites, la specificite culturelle et le relativisme. On prouve par ailleurs que dans chacun de ces travaux, il existe un espace decisif qui doit, ou devrait, etre laisse a une justice plus universelle. Reagissant a cette possibilite, a l'encontre des demarches communautariennes et hermeneutiques, des revisions internes de la demarche externaliste neo-kantienne sont apparues en commencant par le manifeste radical du Everywhere we look today, certainly in philosophy and even in a great deal of social science, we see a decided turn to ethical and moral concerns, not only as an empirical object but as a practical goal towards which empirical and theoretical investigations aim. It has not always been so. In the two decades after World War II, it was widely believed that morality -- value orientation in Weber's influential formulation -- did not need to, and should not be allowed to, play a direct role in social science or even in much of philosophy. In social science, it seemed possible to uphold this position because the moral seemed imminent to the progressively unfolding historical progress that functionalists called modernization and Marxists called socialism or the welfare state. In the decades preceding the Second World War, of course, this optimism would have seemed totally absurd. In the unstable and threatening time between the two world wars, philosophers and sociological theorists struggled to expand their understandings of action and order so that notions of moral responsibility could become more central and the relation of theorizing to political action more concrete. …

Chambre sourde: L'antiesthétique de Malraux (review)

Book Reviews cations coming about within traditional prosody; secondly on newly developing form (l'impair, free verse, stanzaic change, rhyme); and finally on die merging of prose and poetry, as well as die increased focus on significance and typography. There are purposeful and plentiful examples diroughout and, if it is perhaps bom regrettable and understandable diat no reference is made to excellent pertinent scholarship by British and American critics, good reference is made to pronouncements at once by French scholars and poets diemselves. Altogether, die work is most welcome , especially at its relatively modest price. Laurent Fourcaut's Lectures de la poésie française moderne et contemporaine possesses, equally, many worthy qualities and is, largely, very conscious of what it does not accomplish. "Ni une histoire de la poésie française, même succincte, ni un tableau des grands courants qui la traversent , ni un inventaire systématique des ses mêmes. Pas davantage de mises au point tiiéoriques sur la versification, la musique du vers ou la sémiologie de l'image." Rather, Fourcaut claims to examine, via a series of textual analyses of individual poems—Michaux's "La cordillera de Los Andes," Char's "Évadné," Prévert's "Promenade de Picasso," Bonnefoy's "Vrai corps," Jaccottet 's "On peut nommer cela horreur," an excerpt from Claude Royet-Journoud's Les Objets contiennent l'infini, and, finally, what is termed an extract (but is in fact a suite of individual texts) from Esmer Tellermann's Distance de fuite—what he calls the poeticity of each selected text: "cette résultante encore mal élucidée de toutes les spécificités du texte poétique." Such poeticity is broadly, but well, mapped out in an introductory "reader's guide": its elements range from "sound effects," rhythm, poetic ends, relationship of text to page, lexicality, intertextuality, myth, and so on, including die imbrication of poetry and die sacred. As can be seen, Fourcaut's book is by no means merely formalistic in its orientation. The conceptual dimension of poeticity has, perhaps surprisingly for some, but most appropriately, a significant role to play in analyses that yet remain happily anchored textually. It is good to see Prévert given a place so often denied him, and good, too, mat Esther Tellermann is chosen to "represent"—without really any banner being flown—a younger generation rife wim talent, new and challenging perceptions of the poetic. If, again, as with Aquien's/Honoré's book, it would have been good to see included, at least in the bibliography, some recognition of excellent criticism in English, Fourcaut's accomplishments remain insightful, eloquent and eminenüy worth the 49 francs. Michael Bishop Dalhousie University Jean-François Lyotard. Chambre sourde: VAntiesthétique de Malraux. Paris: Galilée, 1998. Pp. 113. Revising mis review, I hear of Jean-François Lyotard's death. I would like to dedicate tiiis short text to his memory, and to his friends and students, henceforth Ien alone wim the echoes of his silent, questioning laughter. It is tempting to reduce die work of André Malraux to an impatient fantasy of authorship and self-monumentalization. The transfer of his ashes to the Panméon seems a metaphysical and political undertaking of literary apotheosis. Yet, in challenging mat national-aesthetic reduction, Lyotard's Chambre sourde gives me autfior of Antimémoires another chance, and shows diat writing undermines any ideological project. Chambre sourde, so titled as a discreet homage to Bardies' Chambre claire, is Lyotard's second unforeseeable encounter witii Malraux. What in De Gaulle's minister of culture seduces die philosopher of "post-modernity" and die "différend," die former militant of "Socialisme ou barbarie"? Lyotard perceives a writer who participates in me "désœuvrement nauséeux" affecting post-war literature, and thus radically displaces the common reception of Malraux, re-placing him in die company of Céline, Bataille, Artaud, and Camus. In 1945, God is more dead man ever, and so is humanism, buried beneadi the ashes of Auschwitz. What's next? Nothing, an "ontologie du Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3 99 L'Esprit Créateur néant." We hear Bataille's phrase: "La souveraineté n'est...

Mise en Abyme and the Abyss: Two Paintings in Ernesto Sabato's Trilogy of Novels

. rnesto S6bato's three novels-El tuinel (1948), , Sobre heroes y tumbas (1961), Abadd6n el exterminador (1974)-comprise a unique kind of trilogy.' This is not a conventional sequence of three more or less equal, consecutive units. Instead, the three novels are successively placed *Q abyme in relation to one another, thus evincing that construction defined by Lucien Daillenbach as tout enclave entretenant une relation de similitude avec l'oeuvre qui la contient (15). In other words, there exists between S6bato's novels a relationship of internal duplication, in virtue of which each novel is absorbed by the one succeeding it. This creates in effect one single work, and it is from this perspective that I wish to consider S6bato's trilogy. Although many critics have mentioned S6bato's use of mise en abyme, there has been little extended discussion of it.2 Much re-

Charlotte Brontë as Governess

Aquila non capit muscas. Charlotte did not like being a governess. This one frankly owns.

XXIII. On the microscopic structure of the scales and dermal teeth of some ganoid and placoid fish

At an early period after the invention of the microscope, the structure of the scales of fish attracted the notice of observers. At that time, little was known respecting the important group to which M. Agassiz has since applied the term "Ganoid;” their attention was consequently directed to the other subdivisions, and especially to the "Cycloid” forms; the object aimed at being to account for the concentric circles on the surface of the scale, which had been noticed by Barellus in 1656. Hooke touches upon them in his ʻMicographia,’ published in 1667. Five years later, the accurate Leeuwenhoek submitted them to a careful examination, and concluded, according to M. Mandl, “Qu’il se forme chaque année, une nouvelle écaille au dessous de l’ancienne, qui la déborde, de sort que l’on aperçoit sur l’écaille le bord de l’ancienne écaille, et qu’on peut ainsi en comptant dans une section transversale le nombre des couches, déterminer I’âge du poisson et le nombre d’écailles accessoires, qui forment l’écaille entière.” During a century subsequent to this discovery, but little new light appears to have been thrown upon the subject; and though Mandl, in the memoir just quoted, cites the names of Reaumur, Roberg, Petit, Schæffer, Baster, Ledermuller and Brousonnet, as having directed their attention to it, they appear to have left it pretty much where they found it.