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Once There Were Two True Friends: Idealized Male Friendship in French Narrative from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment

2005; Oxford University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/fs/kni270

1468-2931

Simon Gaunt,

Renaissance Literature and Culture

By E. Joe Johnson. Birmingham, AL, Summa, 2003. 272 pp., 11 b&w plates. Hb $48.95. This book seeks ‘to see the constant flux in patterns of idealized male friendship with respect to male homosocial desire, homosexuality, and the status of women’ in ‘French narratives over a broad stretch of time’. Arguing for a ‘complex continuum’, E. Joe Johnson devotes a chapter each to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Ages of Absolutism and Enlightenment, selecting three texts for close readings from each, to wit: Ami et Amile, Yvain, parts of the Prose Lancelot; Blaise de Monluc's Les Commentaires, selected stories from the Heptaméron, Montaigne's ‘De l'amitié’; François de Rosset's Histoires tragiques, La Fontaine's ‘Les deux amis’, La Princesse de Clèves; Manon Lescaut, Marmontel's ‘L'amitié à l'épreuve’, Saint-Lambert's ‘Les deux amis, conte iroquois’. There is also ‘A Second Empire Postlude’, which recaps on the various strands, while suggesting that the tradition of interest in male friendship continues beyond the Revolution. There are a number of threads to the analyses that are offered: for instance, the tension between male friendship and heterosexual love, the search for happiness through friendship, the homoerotic potential of narrative treatments of friendship, the tendency to situate ideal friendship in a space temporally and spatially removed from France. Any given reader of a book with such a sweeping scope is likely to have a better knowledge of some of the areas treated than others and as a series of close readings of texts, some of which I did not know at all, this was an enjoyable and often rewarding read: Johnson presents his material clearly and in a stimulating manner; his choice of texts is invariably interesting. However, by and large (and tellingly), I preferred the sections on the texts I did not know and the chapters on the periods with which I am least familiar. This probably points to an underlying problem with the methodology adopted. How can three texts possibly be representative of an extensive period within a literary tradition? And how useful is it to argue for the kind of ‘continuum’ Johnson seeks to establish other than on the most general of levels? The concern to historicize is everywhere evident (with potted histories opening several chapters), but a book of this length and scope struggles to historicize convincingly, particularly when the author's knowledge is patently uneven. Similarly, whereas some of the texts are treated knowledgeably in a broader literary context, this is not always the case. For instance, several remarks in the discussion of Ami et Amile indicate patchy knowledge of the chansons de geste more generally; the account of Gauvain's friendship with Yvain makes no reference to the abundant tradition of Gauvain narratives (nor indeed to Gauvain's role in other romances by Chrétien, which certainly informs Yvain); finally, some comments on the position of the Prose Lancelot in the Lancelot-Grail cycle — and on its manuscript tradition — are misleading. Such imprecision mars appreciation of some perceptive and potentially interesting interpretations. I also regretted that the extremely stimulating and suggestive remarks about space and locality had not been further developed.