La Poésie à l'âge baroque: 1598–1660 (review)

Well known for his work on theatre, from the pastoral to Molière, Corneille and Racine, as well as on 'prosateurs' such as Guilleragues (see FS, LV (2001), 542-43), Fontenelle, himself an anthologist, and various 'mémorialistes', Alain Niderst brings to his task a comprehensive understanding of the wider literary scene. He stresses the empirical as prelude to the theoretical, and literary theorists may be a little discouraged by the fact that, after discussing a variety of twentieth-century definitions of 'the baroque', and apparently favouring the notion that baroque expressivity had its origins in the persuasive rhetoric of Counter-Reformation propaganda, he opts to revert to nineteenth-century analyses of such seventeenth-century terms as 'précieux', 'galant', 'coquet' and 'burlesque' as being closer to the texts and less anachronistic. Following normal practice, and in contrast to Jean Rousset's inspirational but disorientating thematic anthology (1961), this volume is arranged as chronologically as the uncertainty of dating allows. It is divided into four sections, delimited by political rather than literary events, the most substantial being devoted to the period from 1646 to 1660, traditionally thought of as the last peak of nondramatic poetry in France before it petered off towards the prose-dominated Enlightenment. Although the general introduction recognizes that the human mind does not conform to such 'soubresauts de la chronologie' (p. xiii), the effect of this sectioning is to suggest moments of discontinuity, transition or innovation linked to historical events, a linkage which the brief individual introductions cannot fully document.

In keeping with the pattern of Laffont's 'Bouquins' series, the emphasis is on providing a maximum of primary text and paring back the commentary. The result is the most extensive florilegium currently available, featuring over 120 poets. They range from Passerat to early La Fontaine, Brébeuf and Gilbert; some, like the durable Du Ryer, or Maynard, appear in two or three sections. Together they give some measure of the magnitude of a creative phenomenon, when poetry was embedded in social interaction and could as easily serve ambition as inner impulsion, whether in the hands of 'poètes du Louvre', or numerous ecclesiastics 'aussi capables de chanter le roi que le Seigneur' (p. xi), or the many 'indépendents' and assorted free spirits. In general, it is easy to find omissions in anthologies. One may regret the absence of Montchrestien, and disagree that the exclusion of dramatic poetry should include 'choeurs', or the fact that Regnault's Métamorphoses françoises (1641), although listed in the bibliography (and attributed to the wrong publisher), is not quoted. These are minor quibbles. Overall this, is a splendid and very welcome volume, well balanced between the most admired and the most obscure, the trivial and the moving, the erotic and the reverential. There will continue to be a need for collections like David L. Rubin and Robert T. Corum's revised edition of La Poésie française du premier XVII^e siècle (2004), with the substantial support that its essays provide, but this new anthology, by offering the widest panorama possible in one volume, gives a powerful sense of a period when almost any topic was materia poesis and 'presque tout le monde [écrivait] des vers' (p. viii).