(review)

MLR, 96.4, 200 MLR, 96.4, 200 La Vengeance dans la Litteratured'AncienRegime. Ed. by ERIC MECHOULAN. (Paragraphes ).Montreal:Departement d'EtudesFranCaises, Universitede Montreal. 2000. 191 pp. $20. Revenge is omnipresent in French literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From tragedy to novel, from memoir to short story; from duel to assassination, from restoring a reputation to defending one's honour, the theme occurs in countless incarnations across most types of writing. And yet important changes take place, over thisperiod, in literaryattitudestowardsrevenge. In order to head offthe cycle of revenge killing,justice becomes increasinglythe prerogative of civilized State, ratherthan furiousindividual. Even a Saint-Simon, memorably convinced that his aristocratichonour has been impugned by the elevation of royal bastards,has to seekredressbyjudicial means. These ten essaysseekto examine the changing face of revenge in the literaryworksof the period. We have studiesof the legal status of seventeenth-century revenge and of the role of consciousness in revenge; we have the rhetoric of revenge, the link between rank and revenge and the scope for satisfactory revenge achieved through the courts; and we have Diderot's symbolic use of the word 'vengeance' to characterize the moral equality between 'savages'and conquering Europeans,whereas in realityonly equals could take revenge on each other. Perhaps the most unexpected and in some ways the most interestingof these essaysis Rachel Lauthelier's'Pathologieet vengeance dans quelques tragedies de la premiere moitie du I7e siecle'. Studying revenge in the context of humoral medicine, the author demonstrates the association, in writers such as Hardy, Rotrou and Tristanl'Hermite, between atrabiliousmelancholy and a morbid desire for vengeance. She might also have mentioned the more familiar case of Oreste, in Racine's Andromaque, but that would be a quibble. As an antidote to TheThree Musketeers, thiscollection workswell. We areallowed to view frommany angles the dynamic of the moment when the duel fell from grace as a means of seeking revenge;when honour became a purely personal matter and fightingfor it with sword or pistol came to be regarded as an archaic expression of vanity and presumption. If the hero of Horacecan justify taking bloody revenge on his own sister,Candide reactsto provocation by cultivatinghis garden. UNIVERSITY OFLEEDS DAVIDSHAW Moliere, Le Mariageforce. Ed. by JULIA PREST. (Textes Litteraires, 109) Exeter: University ofExeter Press. 999. xxxiv + 58 pp. ?I2.99. Although Claude Abraham and Stephen Fleckhave swept away the old truismthat comedies-ballets represent a paving stone on the road from respectable theatre to deviant opera, modern scholarsstilldo not commonly engage with the issuesraised by dance and song. Setting aside Raymond Picard'sdefeatistassertionthat they lie beyond the apprehension of literary scholars, Julia Prest discusses what can be gleaned from the admittedly incomplete musical and choreographical evidence in respect of Le Mariage force, Moliere's second comedie-ballet, and offers what I am inclined to call the firstholistic appreciation of it. In the course of her study, Prest not only demonstrates that Moliere conceived it as an integrated whole, in other words, not as a play with crudelyinterpolatedballet interludes,but also shows how much its reliance on the fusion of differentart formswas designed to please Louis XIV. So importantwas thatfusion, indeed, that, when Moliere performedthe work in his own theatre in I664 and found the expense of employing dancers and musicians too great, he chose to withdraw it rather than scale it down. When he La Vengeance dans la Litteratured'AncienRegime. Ed. by ERIC MECHOULAN. (Paragraphes ).Montreal:Departement d'EtudesFranCaises, Universitede Montreal. 2000. 191 pp. $20. Revenge is omnipresent in French literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From tragedy to novel, from memoir to short story; from duel to assassination, from restoring a reputation to defending one's honour, the theme occurs in countless incarnations across most types of writing. And yet important changes take place, over thisperiod, in literaryattitudestowardsrevenge. In order to head offthe cycle of revenge killing,justice becomes increasinglythe prerogative of civilized State, ratherthan furiousindividual. Even a Saint-Simon, memorably convinced that his aristocratichonour has been impugned by the elevation of royal bastards,has to seekredressbyjudicial means. These ten essaysseekto examine the changing face of revenge in the literaryworksof the period. We have studiesof the legal status of seventeenth-century...

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