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  • La Syrinx au bûcher: Pan et les satyres à la Renaissance et à l'âge baroque
  • Jane Conroy
La Syrinx au bûcher: Pan et les satyres à la Renaissance et à l'âge baroque. By Françoise Lavocat. Geneva, Droz, 2005. 536 pp. Hb 140 SwF; € 105.00.

The image in the title is an emblem devised by the author to encapsulate the gradual demythification of Pan and the entire family of satyrs, satyresses and little 'satyreaux', in their many manifestations, over a period of some two hundred years. We are taken in considerable detail through the complexities of their Renaissance existence, after their promotion by Neoplatonism in the late fifteenth century, the early instability of their characteristics and symbolic uses, and then their demise as mythic figures accompanied by their integration into fiction; the conclusion sketches in their fate in the eighteenth century, notably at the hands of Voltaire and Rousseau, not surprisingly diametrically opposed on the topic. The organizing principle is not, however, the chronological tracking of the myth but an examination of the significance of its resurrection, the forms in which its many ramifications and modulations are developed, and its role in the emergence of new literary genres (p. 13). There are passages where the writing is so dense and laden with notes, concessive clauses, parentheses and 'pointes', that there is about it something of the 'forêt obscure et érudite' (Lavocat's description of A. Poliziano's Silves, p. 110). However, this is a volume which repays perseverance. Its complexity is imposed by the subject, for, as the author demonstrates, there is nothing simple about the way that Pan and the satyrs were charged with conflicting meanings by Renaissance writers in the service of a multiplicity of projects. Thanks to some dodgy etymology, Pan ('all'), the soul of the world, could be positively identified with Cosimo ('Cosmos') de' Medici or, indeed, with François Ier, before the French monarchy opted for the Apollonian rather than the Orphic myth to promote its image. Another measure of Pan's elasticity is the fact that on occasion, following Eusebius, he was identified with Christ, while elsewhere the news of his death, as originally narrated by Plutarch, was interpreted as signifying the victory of Christianity over paganism (chapter 3). Actual satanization came with Crespet followed by Hedelin and other demonologists, mainly through linking of bacchanalia and witches' sabbats. Meanwhile, thanks to their hybridity, the satyrs become mixed up in anthropological speculation about the borderline between man and animal, fuelled by travellers' observations of exotic species, including even fish. Two particularly rich literary terrains for Pan and satyrs are obviously the pastoral, where Lavocat is very much at home, and satire. As a comparatist, she is able to draw on several literary traditions to trace the transgeneric and transmodal adaptations involved in the shift from myth to fiction. Another of her strengths is the very revealing cross-referencing between literary and artistic representations, supported by some fifty illustrations. This is particularly successful in the section on the theatrical versions of satyrs, the only 'grotesques' to really make it as fully fledged, if nameless, stage characters requiring costuming, make-up and appropriate speech. In all, this scholarly volume provides a fine case study of the forms of assimilation of 'primitive' myth into modern European thought. [End Page 363]

Jane Conroy
National University of Ireland, Galway
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