Seventeenth-Century French Research Articles

The Borel Manuscript: A New Source of Seventeenth-Century French Harpsichord Music at Berkeley

During the summer of 2004 John H. Roberts, the head of the music library at the University of California, Berkeley, was able to acquire for our new Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library a particularly interesting seventeenth-century manuscript of French harpsichord music. This article is a preliminary report, concentrating on certain details of the manuscript's makeup and contents, with a brief discussion of the composers named in the source. The Hargrove Music Library already has a series of over a dozen fine French harpsichord manuscripts from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, acquired by Vincent Duckles from the collection of Everett Helm in the late 1960s.1 The new volume (Hargrove Music Library MS 1365) is a significant addition to this set and seems to date from a slightly earlier period than the other volumes. It was formerly in the collection of the French pianist and conductor Alfred Cortot (1877–1962), a substantial portion of whose music library is also now in Berkeley; the manuscript later passed into the collection of antiquarian music dealer Albi Rosenthal in London.2 Twenty-seven of the more than one hundred pieces are ascribed to composers in the manuscript, leaving about three quarters of the works given anonymously. A handful of further pieces can be identified from concordances. However, most of the contents, including the majority of the works ascribed to a particular composer, seem to be unique to this source. There are new pieces by five of the most famous musicians of [End Page 18] the period: d'Anglebert, Chambonnières, Dumont, de La Barre, and Thomelin. There are several new works by de La Pierre, and new versions, including one new title, for known pieces by Louis Couperin. The manuscript also contains works ascribed to five other musicians: Madame de Bieule, Bouat, Brochard, Bremon, and Depins. While it is natural to focus at first on these works by named composers, the anonymous compositions that make up the vast majority of the source's contents are also of exceptional musical value and scholarly interest. On the cover is the title Liure d'Espinettes (Book for the Espinettes), a phrase amplified on the title page to Liure contenant Plusieurs Pieces D'Espinette (Book containing Various Pieces for the Espinette). In late-sixteenth-century and early-seventeenth-century France, espinette, or épinette, was a standard name for various kinds of keyboard instruments with plucked strings; somewhat like the word "virginals" in England, it was also used in the plural, as here on the cover.3 The court keyboard player in the late sixteenth century was the Joueur d'espinette de la Chambre du Roy (Spinet Player to the King's Chamber), whereas by the 1670s the terminology had shifted to Claveciniste du Roy (Harpsichordist to the King). It would be unwise to imagine that the works in this manuscript were composed for a small instrument just because they are said to be for espinette(s). As we shall see, although everything remains playable on the harpsichord a few of the pieces are equally suitable for organ; some are perhaps even primarily intended for violin or other solo instruments, to be played with keyboard accompaniment. Borel At the bottom of the title page there is an elegantly written name, "Borel." It appears to refer to the first—or at least an early—owner, who may or may not have also been the copyist. MS 1365 is therefore now referred to as the "Borel Manuscript." [End Page 19] Several references to musicians of this name are known, although they all seem a little later than the apparent date of the manuscript. On 30 July 1678, a Jean Borel identified as an académiste and musician in L'académie des opéras became godfather to a girl called Anne Fontange. He lived in Paris, in the parish of Saint-Sulpice, in the rue Sainte-Marguerite "dans le carrefour de...

Knowledge as commodity in the Republic of Letters, 1675-1700

"Knowledge as commodity in the Republic of Letters, 1675-1700." Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 27(1), pp. 197–208

Economies of Gender and of the Foreign in the Pastoral: Hair, Habits and the African Satyr in the 'Histoire de Diane' ofL'Astrée

"Economies of Gender and of the Foreign in the Pastoral: Hair, Habits and the African Satyr in the 'Histoire de Diane' of L'Astrée ." Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 27(1), pp. 13–27

La Bruyére Gives His Two Cents: Financial Language and Ethical Ideals

"La Bruyére Gives His Two Cents: Financial Language and Ethical Ideals." Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 27(1), pp. 163–173

From the Editor

From The Editor Interest is continually building around the fairy tale in early modern French Studies, in part thanks to scholars like Holly Tucker. The editors initially saw this special issue on "Reframing the Early French Fairy Tale" grow out of a session Tucker organized at the annual Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, entitled "Fairies and Enchantments/Fées et féeries" (October 2002). At this same conference Tucker gave an exciting talk about the popularity of fairy-tale courses at her university. Through her activities at conferences and other types of forums, not to mention through her own scholarly work, Tucker has proven to be a great advocate for the teaching and study of the early modern French fairy tale. In her own work, notably Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France (2003), Tucker herself has worked to reframe our approach to the genre by carrying out readings of literary tales grounded in sociopolitical, medical, and popular knowledge about childbirth. As Guest Editor, Tucker has assembled scholars who challenge current paradigms used to approach the study of the fairy tale. The essays in this volume demand that we question the "Frenchness" of French literary tales, that we acknowledge the hybridity of the genre, and that we reconsider the nature and function of fairy-tale violence and voyeurism. These essays highlight tensions between literary and folk traditions, frame narrative and tale, punitive and transformational violence, the human and the monstrous, and the salon and the freak show. The editors of Marvels & Tales are grateful to Holly Tucker for serving as Guest Editor of this special issue. We also want to take this occasion to acknowledge two colleagues who are joining the editorial team of Marvels & Tales with this issue. Sadhana Naithani of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi joins the journal's Editorial Board, to which she brings her multidisciplinary expertise in German studies, folklore, and the folktales of India. From Wayne State University, R. Seth C. Knox comes aboard as Assistant Editor to contribute his editorial skills to the journal's ever-growing editorial operation. We welcome them both. Copyright © 2005 The Wayne State University Press

"A Nation Born to Slavery": Missionaries and Racial Discourse in Seventeenth-Century French Antilles

Catholic missionaries accompanied the first French colonial ventures into the Antilles in the seventeenth century and reported on their experiences in manuscript and published accounts. The first generation of these accounts, from the 1640s and 1650s, focused primarily on Carib Indians; where African slaves were mentioned, it was in the most denigrating terms. As the plantation system took hold and the number of forced African immigrants increased and as Caribs made their resistance to Catholic conversion clear in prolonged warfare, missionaries shifted their attention to the increasingly creolized slave population. Later missionary accounts, from the 1660s–1680s, portray African descended slaves in much more positive, if paternalistic, terms. For the missionaries, religious conformity remained the overriding evaluative measure; black slaves could be whitened through conversion to the Catholic faith.

Arms and Letters: Novella, Pastoral and the Pedagogy of Love in Molière'sL'École des femmes

(2004). Arms and Letters: Novella, Pastoral and the Pedagogy of Love in Moliere's L'Ecole des femmes. Seventeenth-Century French Studies: Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 115-125.

Orientalism in French Classical Drama by Michèle Longino (review)

MLR, 99.1, 2004 193 Rome and the Republic, with her personal grief for her loved ones being a reflection of a greater grief forthe fate of Rome itself,and the loss of liberty.All in all, this is an excellent edition of one of Garnier's least-known and least-studied tragedies. Penarth Richard Griffiths Orientalism in French Classical Drama. By Michele Longino. (Cambridge Studies in French) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000. xii + 275pp. ?47-5?ISBN 0-521-80721-2. The key word in this title is 'classical', and its precise meaning in context is crucial to Michele Longino's thesis. For this is indeed an essai a these,and any reader hoping to broaden the range of his or her knowledge of oriental works written forthe stage in the French seventeenth century will bedisappointed. 'Classical', rather,means something adopted by the French nation as a tool of self-definition and, indeed, of self-assertion, and what the seven canonical plays treated are deemed to effectis an understanding of Frenchness as mediated by and yet superior to the 'Other', as incarnated by the Muslim Turk. Longino begins by presenting Corneille's Medee as offeringlessons for new merchant-travellers and diplomats in the scholarly figure of Pollux, as opposed to the plunderer Jason. Two motifs of the whole series of essays are also introduced at this stage: the role of Medee as a foreign woman, seen thereby as doubly an outsider; and the subliminal mental preparation which the ethos of such plays affords for subsequent colonialist expansion. Le Cid is then interpreted as containing a commentary on contemporary politics, with Fernand as absolute monarch, and Rodrigue, like a seafaring merchant, standing up against the age-old threat of the piratical Moors. The single comedy treated, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, is taken back to its origins in recent memoirs, in particular those of the 'envoye extraordinaire' D'Arvieux, charting as they do the developing if fragile French trading links with the Ottoman empire. The two Berenice plays offerstudies in 'gendered geography' (p. 163), and here Longino convincingly demonstrates parallels between East/West and female/male polarities. Within that pattern, France sees itself reflected in Rome as a 'phallic centre', Racine's Antiochus is emasculated, and 'the East [is] a woman, good for the having' (p. 177). There are caveats to be expressed about some details of this chapter, but as a whole it carries conviction. The same is less true ofwhat follows, as Longino investigates occurrences of the word 'detour' in Bajazet and Mithridate, and concludes somewhat opaquely that the two plays offer'a one-way detour through the "Other" in order to arrive at "France"' (p. 223). Yet here too there is fascinating contemporary material about the encoding of letters, a persuasive argument that Bajazet is fundamentally a play about communication, and a reassertion of the staging of political issues in Mithridate, in the figure of whose hero the ambiguity of French attitudes towards Turkey is incarnated. Overall, the mastery of the complex etat present which informs the whole area of debate is impressive, as is the range of contemporary material cited. Plot summaries are provided at the head ofeach chapter, together with a quaintly pedagogical list of 'questions to ponder'. And if on several occasions Longino's arguments seem to be straining at their limits, this is none the less a book which has the merit of acknowledging its more tendentious hypotheses, and at the very least of offeringa cumulatively argued sequence of 'answers to ponder'. St Catherine's College, Oxford Richard Parish ...

Bérulle and Olier: Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary

After the disruption of French Catholicism during the Wars of Religion of the second half of the sixteenth century, the Catholic revival of the seventeenth century famously involved a restoration of Marian piety. When the second monarch of the new Bourbon dynasty, Louis XIII, had dedicated the kingdom to the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1637, the long- and anxiously-looked-for male heir to the throne, the future Louis XIV, was finally born in 1638, easing a sense of crisis which was as much political and religious as purely familial. The widowed Queen Anne of Austria, regent for her son from 1643, subsequently ordered the building of the great Parisian shrine of Val-de-Grace. Yet the conspicuous Marian devotion of the French Catholic revival did not emerge in isolation, but rather in relation to a new and intense Christocentric piety. Central to the latter was the leading figure of the revival, Pierre de Berulle (1575-1629), founder of the French Oratory, and subsequently cardinal. The nature of his piety also led to concentration on the priesthood, seen as an essentially male imitation of Christ. In that further context a second major figure must also be considered, Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-57), who was certainly influenced by Berulle. But in one historic interpretation that influence was altered, in the direction of a Christian pessimism, by the process of transmission via a third figure, Charles de Condren (1588-1641). Yet the relations between these persons and their priestly and pastoral piety may be open to another interpretation, and one in which the place of a complementary Marian devotion has considerable implications for the much-debated history of seventeenth-century and subsequent French Catholicism.

Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale (review)

Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. By Catherine Orensiein. New York: Basic Books, 2002. xiii + 289 pp. Catherine Orenstein's book is a delightful venture into the European and North American textual tradition of Little Red Riding Hood. Beginning with Charles Perraults seventeenth-century French text and ending with Matthew Bright's 1996 American movie adaptation, Freeway, Orenstein explores the tales manifestations in jokes, cartoons, post cards, dolls, poetry, short stories, advertising, television, and movies, in addition to academic and popular collections of fairy tales and popularly marketed chapbooks and children's books. Along the way, she draws on eclectic mix of critical and theoretical approaches to the tale (social and historical, psychological, structural, and feminist, as well as the discourse on gender and sexuality) in order to develop a thesis that acknowledges the tale's timeless and qualities, but which ultimately is far more interested in the tale's culturally specific adaptations to time and place. As Orenstein explains, her purpose regarding the figure of Red Riding Hood is to explore some of her multitude of reincarnations, not in search of universal truths, but on the contrary, as evidence of how human truths (5). book is composed of Introduction, Cloaking the Heroine, Epilogue, Under the Cloak, and ten chapters, each focused on a different text or related set of texts and each mapping a cultural change in the representation of Red Riding Hood and the wolf. Each chapter is prefaced with one of the texts (verbal or visual) that will be analyzed in that chapter, a feature of the book that is particularly handy if one is thinking about adopting it for use in a folklore or literary course. first four chapters focus respectively on Charles Perrault's 1697 French text, Little Red Riding Hood, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's 1812 German text, Little Red Cap, Paul Delarue's published version of a French oral tale, The Grandmother's Tale, collected in 1885 by Achille Millien, and a 1590 pamphlet entitled The Trial of Stubbe Peeter, Werewolf. Each text is historically situated. For example, Perrault s text is read in relation to the social history of the French court at Versailles, sexually charged and notorious for its excesses, a playground for seduction in an age of institutionalized chastity (36). Grimms' text is read against the background of German and English, middle-class, Victorian, family values: discipline, piety, primacy of the father in the household and, above all, obedience (55). Set side by side the two texts, Orenstein argues, represent a shift from sexual parable to family fable (56), while also marking a shift in audience from adult to child and from upper to middle class. The Grandmother's provides Orenstein the opportunity to introduce a range of topics: male versus female narrators, printed literary texts versus oral texts, and the representations of Red Riding Hood as passive victim versus active heroine. Also addressed in this chapter are the benefits and detriments of universalist theories and interpretations of the tale (Emile Nourry, Arthur Lang, Erich Fromm, Bruno Bettelheim, Arnold van Gennep, Carl Jung, Otto Rank, Lord Raglan, Joseph Campbell) and of historically situated interpretations (Robert Darnton). At the center of this chapter is a discussion of the significance of the Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index and the historic-geographic method in providing a point from which to critique universalist interpretations that too often have been based solely on a particular text, motif in a particular text or self selected set of texts, as well as to critique methods that treat any given text primarily as historical document, thus losing whatever meaning might exist in its broader folkloric patterns (75). A chapter on The Trial of Stubbe Peeter shifts focus from the figure of Red Riding Hood to the figure of the wolf and its premodern antecedent in the werewolf. …

:Mannerism and Baroque in Seventeenth-Century French Poetry: The Example of Tristan L'Hermite

:<i>Mannerism and Baroque in Seventeenth-Century French Poetry: The Example of Tristan L'Hermite</i>

Les Dieux désenchantés: la fahle dans la pensée française de Huet à Voltaire (1680–1760) by Julie Boch (review)

986 Reviews Les Dieux desenchantes: la fable dans la penseefrancaise de Huet a Voltaire (1680-1760). ByJuLiEBocH. Paris: Champion. 2002. 573 pp. ISBN 2-7453-0543-3. One of the enduring questions of intellectual history asks how and why it happened that the social and cultural world of the French seventeenth century, pickled in re? ligion and steeped in the awe of the past, could have turned within a few decades at the beginning of the eighteenth century to a secular logic of the present. Julie Boch's thesis neither takes issue with this standard observation nor attempts to modify it; instead, itasserts that the attempts by Huet, Fontenelle, Bayle, Voltaire, and others of interest to specialists of the period to read the fables of the ancients are a particularly sensitive and revealing index to this about-face. Like much else, that is, in the midst of the foment, the fable, understood both as theological error and as literary fiction, exited the field of sacred history and made inroads into the concerns of the nascent human sciences. This argument takes as a given the eminently eighteenth-century notion of i'esprit humain', as in 'Bayle a largement contribue a [. . .] faire passer [la question de la fable] du champ de l'histoire religieuse au champ de l'histoire de I'esprit humain' (p. 412), as did the argument of Jean Dagen in L'Histoire de I'esprit humain dans la pensee francaise de Fontenelle a Condorcet (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977), as, indeed, did that of Condillac: 'Notre premier objet [. . .] c'est l'etude de I'esprit humain' (Essai sur I'origine des connaissances humaines). It has much to do with the problematic of the imagination, which is literally its last word, and which forms its pivot in the discussion of Freret's thoughts on historical proof. There are chapters on the Querelle des anciens et des modernes, including the Querelle d'Homere, on De Brosses and the fetish, and on the unfortunate assertion of identity between ancient people and distant people ('Des grecs aux hurons: nouveau paganismes'). Detail is admirably controlled, although Orest Ranum will undoubtedly be much amused to find that the bibliography has turned him into Ramus. That the fable's legibility or lack thereof is an important and fascinating instance of a floating signifier in the struggle with the problem of meaning is a point which this argument secures. But the study itself is little given to formulation and much inclined to summary, quotation, and paraphrase. The level of the text is rarely engaged. We are leftwith an elaborate menu of writings which clearly bear somehow upon the problem, but which may stand in relation to it as cause, effect,accidental conjunction, or innocent bystander. This study does not set out to explain but simply to register,and so on this particular chapter of Gotterdammerung, we await enlightenment. University of Glasgow Amy Wygant Saint-Evremond: A Voicefrom Exile. Newly Discovered Letters toMadame de Gouville and theAbbe de Hauteville(i6gy-iyoi). Ed. by DenysPotts. Oxford: Legenda. 2002. 91 pp. ?19.50 ($29.50). ISBN 1-900755-50-5. This book is a delight on a number of levels. First, previously unknown or inaccessible letters by Saint-Evremond, all written towards the end of his life while he was exiled in London, are now available to a wider readership. Moreover, the exemplary introduction and notes by Denys Potts offer far more than one might expect: not only do we learn about the context of the letters themselves, but we are also given an erudite yet highly readable account of Saint-Evremond's life and his importance as both thinker and stylist. The analysis by Potts of Saint-Evremond's attitude towards Christianity is characteristically acute: 'Saint-Evremond was [. . .] a sympathetic, if critical, observer whose aim was to convince Christians of whatever denomination that they should reorientate their beliefs, not abandon them' (p. 11). Although the let? ters are largely concerned with Saint-Evremond's financial affairs,the stylistic verve ...

Les Dieux désenchantés: la fahle dans la pensée française de Huet à Voltaire (1680–1J60) by Julie Boch (review)

986 Reviews Les Dieux desenchantes: la fable dans la penseefrancaise de Huet a Voltaire (1680-1760). ByJuLiEBocH. Paris: Champion. 2002. 573 pp. ISBN 2-7453-0543-3. One of the enduring questions of intellectual history asks how and why it happened that the social and cultural world of the French seventeenth century, pickled in re? ligion and steeped in the awe of the past, could have turned within a few decades at the beginning of the eighteenth century to a secular logic of the present. Julie Boch's thesis neither takes issue with this standard observation nor attempts to modify it; instead, itasserts that the attempts by Huet, Fontenelle, Bayle, Voltaire, and others of interest to specialists of the period to read the fables of the ancients are a particularly sensitive and revealing index to this about-face. Like much else, that is, in the midst of the foment, the fable, understood both as theological error and as literary fiction, exited the field of sacred history and made inroads into the concerns of the nascent human sciences. This argument takes as a given the eminently eighteenth-century notion of i'esprit humain', as in 'Bayle a largement contribue a [. . .] faire passer [la question de la fable] du champ de l'histoire religieuse au champ de l'histoire de I'esprit humain' (p. 412), as did the argument of Jean Dagen in L'Histoire de I'esprit humain dans la pensee francaise de Fontenelle a Condorcet (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977), as, indeed, did that of Condillac: 'Notre premier objet [. . .] c'est l'etude de I'esprit humain' (Essai sur I'origine des connaissances humaines). It has much to do with the problematic of the imagination, which is literally its last word, and which forms its pivot in the discussion of Freret's thoughts on historical proof. There are chapters on the Querelle des anciens et des modernes, including the Querelle d'Homere, on De Brosses and the fetish, and on the unfortunate assertion of identity between ancient people and distant people ('Des grecs aux hurons: nouveau paganismes'). Detail is admirably controlled, although Orest Ranum will undoubtedly be much amused to find that the bibliography has turned him into Ramus. That the fable's legibility or lack thereof is an important and fascinating instance of a floating signifier in the struggle with the problem of meaning is a point which this argument secures. But the study itself is little given to formulation and much inclined to summary, quotation, and paraphrase. The level of the text is rarely engaged. We are leftwith an elaborate menu of writings which clearly bear somehow upon the problem, but which may stand in relation to it as cause, effect,accidental conjunction, or innocent bystander. This study does not set out to explain but simply to register,and so on this particular chapter of Gotterdammerung, we await enlightenment. University of Glasgow Amy Wygant Saint-Evremond: A Voicefrom Exile. Newly Discovered Letters toMadame de Gouville and theAbbe de Hauteville(i6gy-iyoi). Ed. by DenysPotts. Oxford: Legenda. 2002. 91 pp. ?19.50 ($29.50). ISBN 1-900755-50-5. This book is a delight on a number of levels. First, previously unknown or inaccessible letters by Saint-Evremond, all written towards the end of his life while he was exiled in London, are now available to a wider readership. Moreover, the exemplary introduction and notes by Denys Potts offer far more than one might expect: not only do we learn about the context of the letters themselves, but we are also given an erudite yet highly readable account of Saint-Evremond's life and his importance as both thinker and stylist. The analysis by Potts of Saint-Evremond's attitude towards Christianity is characteristically acute: 'Saint-Evremond was [. . .] a sympathetic, if critical, observer whose aim was to convince Christians of whatever denomination that they should reorientate their beliefs, not abandon them' (p. 11). Although the let? ters are largely concerned with Saint-Evremond's financial affairs,the stylistic verve MLR, 98.4, 2003 987 and imaginative flightsof fancy which punctuate most of the letters maintain a wider interest: he wishes he had a Pegasus to flyover the Channel to join Mme...

The Rhetoric of Ostentation in the Representation of Versailles: La Fontaine's Grotto of Thetis

(2003). The Rhetoric of Ostentation in the Representation of Versailles: La Fontaine's Grotto of Thetis. Seventeenth-Century French Studies: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 235-245.

Border Crossings: French Painting and the Public

Robert W. Berger, Public Access to Art in Paris: A Documentary History from the Middle Ages to 1800Todd P. Olson, Poussin and France: Painting, Humanism and the Politics of StyleHumphrey Wine, National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth Century French Paintings

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland. Change, Convergence and Divergence. Edited by Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot. Goethe and the English‐Speaking World. Essays from the Cambridge Symposium for his 250th Anniversary. Edited by Nicholas Boyle and John Guthrie. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics and Culture. An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727. By William E. Burns. Etudes sur les Journaux de Marivaux. Edited by Nicholas Cronk and François Moureau. Vif. Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles. By John Earman. National Gallery Catalogues: The British School. By Judy Egerton. National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth‐Century French Paintings. By Humphrey Wine. Voicing Desire: Family and Sexuality in Diderot's Narrative. Edited by J. E. Fowler. Vif. Jane Austen and Religion. Salvation and Society in Georgian England. By Michael Giffin. Cross‐Currents in Religion and Culture. Lettres d'une Péruvienne. By Françoise de Graffigny. Edited by Jonathan Mallinson. Vif. Italy in the German Literary Imagination: Goethe's ‘Italian Journey’ and its Reception by Eichendorff, Platen and Heine. By Gretchen L. Hachmeister. Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity. By Jonathan M. Hess. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Eighteenth‐Century Society. Essays from the DeBartolo Conference. Edited by Regina Hewitt and Pat Rogers. Peter the Great. A Biography. By Lindsey Hughes. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. By David Hume. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. The Clarendon Edition of The Works of David Hume. Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress. By Colin Jones. Anne Vallayer‐Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie‐Antoinette. By Eik Kahng and Marianne Roland Michel, with contributions by Colin B. Bailey, Claire Barry, Laurent Hugues, and Melissa Hyde. Die Collegia der Insulaner, Vertraulichen und Wohlgesinnten in Zurich, 1679–1709. By Michael Kempe and Thomas Maissen. The Sermons of Charles Wesley. A Critical Edition with Introduction and Notes. Edited by Kenneth G. C. Newport. Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Making of a Myth: A Study in Portraiture 1720–1892. By Robin Nicholson. Queenship in Britain 1660–1837. Royal Patronage, Court Culture and Dynastic Politics. Edited by Clarissa Campbell Orr. Britain and Ireland in the Eighteenth‐Century Crisis of Empire. By Martyn J. Powell. Reading Goethe. A Critical Introduction to the Literary Work. By Martin Swales and Erika Swales. Glorious Causes: The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789 to 1833. By Julia Swindells. Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies. By Helen Thomas. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 38. There are No Letters Like Yours. The Correspondence of Isabelle de Charriere and Constant d'Hermenches. Translated and edited by Janet Whatley and Malcolm Whatley. European Women Writers Series.

Solutions and Dissolutions of the Absolute in Seventeenth-Century French Thought and Politics: Studies in Pascal and Descartes

Solutions and Dissolutions of the Absolute in Seventeenth-Century French Thought and Politics: Studies in Pascal and Descartes

Le Système des objets dans le théâtre français des années 1623–1650: Corneille, Mairet, Rotrou, Scudéry by Marc Vuillermoz

458 Reviews Le Systeme des objets dans le theatrefranpais des annees 1623-1650: Corneille, Mairet, Rotrou, Scudery. By Marc Vuillermoz. (Travaux du Grand Siecle, 17) Geneva: Droz. 2000. 333 pp. ?53.50; 84 SwF. ISBN 2-600-00443-2. We do not need the remerciementto situate Marc Vuillermoz and his work in the lineage of Georges Forestier, for it is immediately apparent that the author has set out to apply to the theatrical object the kind of analysis his distinguishedpredecessor undertook for the play within the play and for disguise. However, unlike his acknowledged maitre, Vuillermoz chooses not to opt for exhaustiveness. Instead, he limits himself to the study of the plays of four dramatists working in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. This still provides him with a substantial corpus of eighty-three texts. Yet, if the scope is circumscribed in one way, it is quite astonishingly wideranging in another. Thus Vuillermoz includes not only those objects that actually appear on the stage as either props or elements of set dressing but also those to which textual reference is made. Moreover, he extends the definition of the theatrical object to include elements of decor and costume when these either have a symbolic value or else affect the outcome of the action. The system by which Vuillermoz seeks to define the functioning of these disparate objects is based, as he himself admits, on the semiology of the text rather than of its performance, considering objects essentially as signs. Their use is categorized in terms of such rhetorical devices as metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, litotes, metaphor, apostrophe, antithesis, oxymoron, and so on. While this approach is not always helpful, there being a tendency to state the obvious in convoluted terms, the accompanying analyses of scenes are frequently re? vealing, ifoccasionally a little difficultto follow when taken out of context. The author also sometimes slips into examining the situations in which objects appear, rather than their actual deployment. Vuillermoz next turns to the function of the object with regard to structural considerations (exposition, noeud, denouement, and the creation of suspense). Here again, the perspective is textual. For example, the object as 'ornement ' is perhaps surprisingly defined with regard solely to 'le morceau d'eloquence' and 'le suicide empeche'. Indeed, it is only in the final chapter that the author moves on to situate the object in the purely theatrical context of Tespace du jeu'. The as? sertions made here would, though, carry more conviction ifbacked up with reference to research on staging in the period. John Golder's articles on the use of the decor simultane are particularly striking omissions ('L'Hypocondriaque de Rotrou: un essai de reconstitution d'une des premieres mises-en-scene de 1'Hotel de Bourgogne', Revue d'histoire du theatre, 31 (1979), 247-70; 'The Stage Settings of Corneille's Early Plays', Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 7 (1985), 184-97). One might also wonder at the surprisingly large number of typographical errors and suggest that the work would have benefited froma furtherstage ofproof-reading. None the less, this remains an admirable study, in terms both of its scope and of its execution. For ifthe system itselfis perhaps not always entirely convincing, the analyses to which it gives rise have the benefit of providing us not only with some intriguing new looks at old favourites, but also with stimulating introductions to works which deserve to be better known. University of Durham Jan Clarke Tartuffe. By Moliere. A new translation by Ranjit Bolt. Introduction by Nicholas Dromgoole. London: Oberon Books. 2002. 111pp. ?7.99. ISBN 1-84002260 -4. This volume is attractively produced, with uncluttered text and a suitably unctuous photograph of Martin Clunes as Tartuffe on the frontcover. The translation was the centrepiece ofthe splendid 2002 Lindsay Posner production at the National Theatre. ...

:Pierre Bayle's Reformation: Conscience and Criticism on the Eve of the Enlightenment

Study of the seventeenth century French Huguenot philosopher Bayle and his influence on modern constitutional government

Education and Transformation: Marianist Ministries in America since 1849 (review)

Education and Transformation:Marianist Ministries in America since 1849. By Christopher J. Kauffman. (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company. 1999. Pp. xvii, 366. $29.95.) Since the publication of Tamers of Death: The History of the Alexian Brothers (1973), Professor Christopher J. Kauffman of the Catholic University of America has demonstrated a wonderful excellence in relating the histories of American Catholic religious communities and their service the Church. This most recent book addition with its focus on the Marianist ministries in this country since 1849 reveals his most robust and full-fledged demonstration of, what may be called, the emerging integrative pattern for American Catholic institutional historiography. Building on eleven archival visits here and in Rome, Kauffman powerfully integrates appropriate thematic discussions of the national context, the founder of the community and his spirituality the growth of community, various apostolic directions and episcopal negotiating, the broadening ecclesial contextualism relating the community's assimilation of American customs and ever increasing interest by Vatican authorities, and most recent responses the Second Vatican Council. In other words, this work is an excellent interpretive model for the very demanding task of appropriately accounting for the external and internal forces that shape the history of a religious community. The Reverend Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M., in his praiseworthy foreword puts this task for the historian very well: a project that points an understanding of a religious group as a mediating institution in the context of church and society (p. xv). Echoing Cardinal Newman's famous ecciesiological realpolitik on the university's role as a way station between the Church and the world, Chinnici's historical clarity of the community's journey and Kauffman's superb retelling offer the knowledgeable reader a delightful intellectual treatise. Similar his 1997 entry on the Marianists for The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, Kauffman's organizational structure here follows the major transformations of the community: its founding, developments in France, missionary work in the United States, national expansion, internal conflicts between the apostolic and religious piety at the turn of the twentieth century, Americanization pressures on its German-speaking members, struggles in adopting the American high school model, international missionary activities, and adapting the norms of the Second Vatican Council. In his other works, especially on the Sulpicians, and in this one, he knowledgeably explains initially the seventeenth-century French and Spanish spiritual roots of this lay sodality, as derived from the pieties of Ignatius Loyola and later of Jean Jacques Offer and Cardinal Pierre de Berulle in the prologue. Founded by William Joseph Chaminade (1761-1850), a sodality began with five lay in 1817, devoted Mary Immaculate and the Sacred Heart. This group was transformed eventually into the religious Society of Mary, dedicated ministering young people (pp. 6-8). The laity, brothers, and priests formed this apostolic community to evangelize `from below' (p. 18) through education in parish churches initially and later in Catholic schools in postrevolutionary Enlightenment France. While dressed in secular clothing, thereby not inciting the then prevalent anticlericalism among the populace, its members sought their own perfection and encouraged others to lead a Christian life (p. 23). They became a major educational force in the country by 1850 with sixty-two mostly elementary schools. Had the thirty-three year old founder lived beyond that year, he would have subsequently witnessed how the new liberte d'enseignement with the French lot Falloux allowed Catholic religious communities establish their own secondary schools. Taking advantage of this law, the Marianist community established rapidly fifteen secondary schools with some 2,200 students. …