Ãmilie Du Châtelet: éclairages et documents nouveaux by Ulla Kölving, Olivier Courcelle

MLR, 104.4, 2009 1145 speare for his transmission of history in a formwhich appealed to the aesthetic sensitivity ofhis readers or spectators, with theusual French caveats about his igno rance of'the rules'.Wynn includes a typical extract fromVoltaire's correspondence with Madame Du Deffand which well illustrates this frustrating ambivalence. Wynn has discovered an unknown critique of the play in the Bibliotheque nationale de France (ms fr.20837; extracts are helpfully reproduced inan appendix) and gives an informative account of itscontent and importance. The editor also makes the point that the intimacy created by reading drama, and hence circumventing themateri ality of performance, creates the ideal dramatic space but, in this instance, creates problems of focalization. The edition includes editorial notes, variants, and a useful selective bibliography. Francois gets an extra lease of lifeon page 10, and Neron's mother makes a Hitchcock appearance on page 18. This is a welcome edition and a particularly timely one in the context of the current reappraisal of theminores and consequent refinement of our picture of the French Enlightenment, and of the problematization of dramatic reception. University of Aberdeen John Dunkley Emilie Du Chdtelet: eclairages et documents nouveaux. Ed. by Ulla Kolving and Olivier Courcelle. Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d'Etude du xvme Siecle. 2008. 410 pp. 120. ISBN 978-2-84559-054-0. This volume is a collection of twenty-eight articles, most of them papers given at the 2006 Bibliotheque nationale de France colloquium celebrating the tercentenary of the birth ofMme Du Chatelet. Not all of them can be mentioned here. The passages in square brackets are my own additions. It begins with Ulla Kolving's account of the history of scholarship on Emilie and ends with her chronological bibliography. Two portraits are offered, a winsome one on the cover, the other less attractive (p. 340). Two elegant, ifunflattering, pen-portraits are also given, one by Elisabeth Badinter, the other by Charlotte Simonin, who compares her with Mme de Graffigny. [The letter toGleichen (pp. 67-68) isprobably apocryphal.] In evitably,much attention is given to Emilie's attempt to ground Newtonian physics inLeibnizian metaphysics both inher Institutions de physique (an excellent contri bution by Anne-Lise Rey) and in her commentary on her translation ofNewton's Principia (Michel Toulmonde), even deliberately giving false renderings ofNewton tomake him more Leibnizian (Linda Gardiner). JudithZinsser claims to present for the firsttime Ta theorie unitaire d'Emilie' (p. 219). Though her letters are few, Francois Bessire treats her qualities as a letter-writer, Jiirgen Siess the views she expresses inher scholarly correspondence on the equality of the sexes, and Beatrice Didier her letters as a 'journal intime'. Andrew Brown and Kolving examine lists of her books found inher inventaires apres deces as well as her annotations in Jean Boivin's Apologie d'Homere. Three articles discuss her fortunes abroad: her election to theAcademy of Bologna (Massimo Mazzotti), the reception inGermany of her Institutions de physique (Frauke Bottscher), and the paratext of Luise Gottsched's 1146 Reviews translation of the Institutions,which fornationalistic reasons takes sides with Emi lie against Mairan (John Iverson). Robert Adelson makes a good contribution on Emilie as a musician. [A letter ofDevaux, dated 20 November 1748, reports that she sang her part out of tune!] Franchise Douay-Soublin examines her Grammaire raisonnee, which, pace Wade, she finds owes more to theGrammaire of Port-Royal than to Locke. Bertram Eugene Schwarzbach, with his customary erudition, dis cusses her Examens de la Bible. The publication history of her translation of the Principia, including the role ofClairaut, is treated byOlivier Courcelle aswell as by Frederic Chambat and Dominique Varry. Among other articles, Jean-Daniel Can daux provides reports on her lifeand death found in a Swiss journal and Franchise Blechet her borrowings from theBibliotheque nationale. Beautifully produced, this is a fine addition to scholarship on all aspects ofMme Du Chatelet. Among the few misprints, my second forename isgiven as Eugene! University of Toronto David Warner Smith Le Systeme d'Helvetius. By Jean-Louis Longue. Paris: Champion. 2008. 538 pp. 95. ISBN 978-2-7453-1656-1. This is the firstcomprehensive non-Marxist treatment of Helvetius's ideas since the ground-breaking work...

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