Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction (review)

In this admirably conceived project, which unites, ambitiously, history of science, philosophy, criticism, and theory, Andrea Goulet investigates the way the evolution of narrative form in nineteenth-century France is intertwined with shifting notions of visual perception. Situating her study in the context of the growing number of interdisciplinary works devoted to the history of vision, and displaying an impressive familiarity with post-Enlightenment physiological optics, Goulet broadens the concept to include the related field of visual perspective, in order to demonstrate the centrality to the period of a predominantly visual epistemology. In charting the various positions adopted with regard to vision, she demonstrates, with notable precision and discrimination, not only those shifts and twists that mark a telling non-coincidence between theory and practice, but also the fundamental tensions and ambivalences within the post-Cartesian debate. The extent to which novelists absorbed the complex perspective of contemporary scientists may surprise, even though Bouvard and Pécuchet were ready and waiting to provide Goulet with her opening sentence. What is important, however, is not what creative writers 'believed' to be the scientific truth, but the fact of their being drawn to vision as inherently problematic. At the heart of Goulet's discussion lies the detective stories of Poe, Gaboriau, Leroux and Conan Doyle. She shows that their claims to make use of deduction were often accompanied, in practice, by contrasting responses to the visual evidence. These central chapters are preceded by a fresh and highly pertinent consideration of eight novels and stories by Balzac (significantly, all from the period 1829–1838), and are followed by striking analyses of 'optogram fictions' by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Verne and Claretie. A brief epilogue fast-forwards us to Claude Simon's Triptyque. The dense textual analysis is rich in insights, while the central focus is sharply maintained throughout. The end-notes provide a stimulating complementary discussion reminiscent of the seminar. The combined breadth and depth of the treatment preclude exhaustiveness, especially with regard to Balzac, whose works could easily, though with considerable loss, have formed Goulet's sole corpus. The Balzacien may, nonetheless, regret the absence of an overview establishing the extensiveness of Balzac's concern with vision, down to studied mentions, for example, of garde-vue or Mlle Michonneau's defective eyes. Despite reference to Régis Messac's 1929 thesis (previously highlighted in Walter Benjamin's discussion of the flâneur and the detective), there is no acknowledgment, beyond a passing reference to Une ténébreuse affaire, of the ways in which Balzac's practice foreshadows the roman policier. The names of Fenimore Cooper and Vidocq are, thus, conspicuous by their absence. As for Balzac's interest in 'second sight', it derived as much from Scott as from Thomas Reid. Alongside the occasional misspelling of a scholar's name in an otherwise mainly accurate text, Madeleine Fargeaud and Madeleine Ambrière are given separate identities. The author of the Causeries du Lundi is, nonetheless, abbreviated, unacceptably, to 'St.-Beuve'. A missing word presumably explains a puzzling reference on p. 92. To be cherished, however, are the aliases 'Sir Author Conan Doyle' and 'Sir Arthur Canon Doyle'.