Le sang du récit: essai sur les passions romanesques du XVIIe au XIXe siècles par Jean Goldzink et Florence Chapiro
2021; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 95; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tfr.2021.0292
ISSN2329-7131
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Analyses
ResumoReviewed by: Le sang du récit: essai sur les passions romanesques du XVIIe au XIXe siècles par Jean Goldzink et Florence Chapiro John T. Booker Goldzink, Jean, et Florence Chapiro. Le sang du récit: essai sur les passions romanesques du XVIIe au XIXe siècles. Garnier, 2020. ISBN 978-2-406-09221-6. Pp. 264. Analyzing passion in a canonical novel may seem rather unsophisticated these days, as the authors acknowledge at the outset, but then their understanding of the term is broad enough to include the likes of "la tranquillité, ou la fuite, ou l'émulation" (7). The approach is essay-like, in any case, with no pretense of engaging systematically with existing criticism on a series of novels—"chefs-d'œuvre archi-commentés" (9), for the most part—from Sorel's Histoire comique de Francion to Flaubert's Éducation sentimentale. Although the volume appears to be co-authored, a footnote indicates that Goldzink is responsible for all but one chapter plus part of another. His starting point in the Francion is the Cartesian concept of "l'étonnement" (12), while Chapiro, working with La princesse de Clèves, challenges the preoccupation of critics with love: "[I]l n'existe nul amour vrai et unifié dans cette fiction" (24). The volume privileges eighteenth-century texts, starting with Marivaux's Paysan parvenu, "sans doute le premier grand roman français sur l'humiliation" (46). The impulse to flee is the focus in Prévost's Cleveland, with brief looks as well at Les liaisons dangereuses and Candide. An expansive chapter, "Quand les femmes résistent à l'amour," revisits La princesse de Clèves, takes up Prévost's Histoire d'une Grecque moderne (a novel that deserves more critical attention, in Goldzink's eyes), Les liaisons dangereuses again, and then Diderot's Religieuse. The gendered nature of libertinage in Crébillon's Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit leads to a final look at Les liaisons dangereuses, focused now on Mme de Merteuil's famous autobiographical letter. Goldzink sees her, not as a proto-feminist, but rather someone "en guerre contre tous, hommes et femmes" (129), intent solely on maintaining her own superiority. Rousseau merits a chapter of his own. Goldzink finds the opening pages of Les confessions "d'une complexité inégalée dans les romans d'alors" (163), while Shapiro, working with La nouvelle Héloïse, highlights the "amitié hors du commun, quasi sororale" (173) between Julie and Claire. The last third of the volume moves into the nineteenth century, starting with Mme de Staël's Corinne, "magnifique roman sur l'art et la douleur" (195). A final chapter underscores the relentless ambition that drives the plot in both Le rouge et le noir and Le père Goriot, and then contrasts Flaubert's attempt in L'éducation sentimentale to "faire du beau avec du médiocre, du terne, du mou, du vague, du tiède, du vide" (248). There is a chapter as well on two lesser-known works, Joseph Fiévée's Dot de Suzette and Balzac's Bal de Sceaux, and here and there, at the end of different chapters, brief consideration of works such as Les infortunes de la vertu, Le lys dans la vallée, and La confession d'un enfant du siècle. The volume incorporates, in revised form, some material published previously. In an ambitious undertaking of this nature, a more substantial conclusion would have been welcome, but certainly anyone interested—passionately, one hopes—in the evolution of the French novel will find something of interest here. [End Page 234] John T. Booker University of Kansas Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French
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