Contes et autres écrits (review)

REVIEWS 615 imprison their enemies, destroy their property, murder their rivals, and enjoy themselves inordinately while having so much fun. In The Double Vision (1995), Northrop Frye wrote: "Primary concerns are such things as food, sex, property, and freedom of movement: concerns that we share with animals on a physical level. Secondary concerns include our political, religious, and other ideological loyalties. All through history ideological concerns have taken precedence over primary ones" (p. 6). But not in Jane Austen's juvenilia. They are her most naked evocations of the human desire for food, sex, property, and freedom of movement. When she writes her novels, however, she assimilates these primary concerns to a code of manners that express secondary concerns. And the enduring genius of the novels is their dramatization of the tensions between a code of manners and the raw desires that they manage, more or less, to keep in place. But in her early stories, Jane Austen, so to speak, lets it all hang out. And it is a joy to see! Joseph Wiesenfarth University of Wisconsin—Madison Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Contes et autres écrits. Ed. Barbara Kaltz. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000. 192pp. ISBN 0-7294-0705-5. Barbara Kaltz opens her anthology with the words, "De nos jours, l'œuvre de Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont est pratiquement inconnue du grand public" (p. vii), and then proceeds to rectify this situation by offering the reader an accessible edition of some of Mme de Beaumont's contes and other writings. Kaltz claims that this author's work will appeal to readers interested in the history of feminism, women's literature, and the history of education in France. For her anthology Kaltz has chosen chronologically arranged texts which reflect the evolution ofthe author's thought as well as the variety ofgenres in which she wrote. The critical reception of Mme de Beaumont's work and its diffusion throughout Europe is demonstrated through a meticulously documented survey ofthe number of reprintings and translations available. More information on the translations is promised in Kaltz's forthcoming biography of Mme de Beaumont, but, in the meantime, in the preface to this anthology, she corrects inaccuracies in Mme de Beaumont's biography which have been perpetuated over the years. Almost half of the book consists of a detailed introduction which provides the reader with a comprehensive background to each of the seven texts of the anthology, outlining the historical and cultural context in which each was written. It would perhaps have been preferable to place the relevant introduction before each text instead of grouping them all together in the longer introduction. Kaltz draws parallels between the texts, establishing commonthreads which characterize Mme de Beaumont's work and show its overall consistency. She also gives us an indication of the impact of Mme de Beaumont's work on contemporary readers. 616 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 13:4 This format encourages today's reader to discover texts of Mme de Beaumont not included in this anthology and to appreciate the complexity of a writer known primarily for her version of La Belle et la bête. The reader also comes to appreciate her early contribution to feminism, largely ignored except by Joan Hinde Stewart. The first text of this collection, the Lettre en réponse à l'Année merveilleuse, was written in 1748 when Mme de Beaumont, separated from her husband and forced to earn her living, began her literary career. When she moved to England she founded a monthly magazine, the Nouveau Magasinfrançois, "l'un des premiers périodiques en français dirigés par une femme," "une presse des Dames pour les Dames" (p. 9), which contained many of her own contributions. Kaltz points out that Mme de Beaumont used the journal's success as a means of publicizing her own works, offering extracts for her readers to ponder. In her introduction, Kaltz stresses the importance of Mme de Beaumont's pedagogical theories, a recurrent theme in the author's work. The Education compiette, the preface to which is the third selection, offers a guide to history for young readers . Adopting a question-and-answer technique later used to great effect by...

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.