Indeed, there is defamation in this exchange, but Dr. Deflaux (or should I take his lead and call him "Mr."?) is unquestionably the guilty party. My comments on his work are "fair comment" while he, in a time-discredited fashion, makes a personal attack in which what is published here is nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps, if Dr. Deflaux expects to leave the publishing womb of Aix en Provence, and especially if he wants his work recognized in North America where honest peer evaluation and mutual respect are a given in the scholarly world, he may have to learn to accept criticism without trying to do the critic in.

Deflaux's unexpected understanding of "true scholars" and "unquestionable experts," as including by implication only people who praise his work, is ludicrous. While some of the reviews he mentions are either positive or indifferent, his reading of a favorable review in American Literary Scholarship evidences a serious case of wishful thinking. But this is not really at issue. Each reviewer has his own standards and relies on them in evaluating the work of others.

Against his innuendo that I am no true scholar or expert, I would simply place my scholarly record—two books (and two more forthcoming), several chapters in other scholars' books, more than thirty articles in refereed journals, numerous books reviews, and ten years of editorial work.

North American scholarly journals do not normally review dissertations, nor are dissertations distributed as books without having been rewritten as such, evaluated, and accepted by a scholarly publisher. Didier Erudition no longer seems to fit in that category since it has largely become a distributor for a service of theses reproduction. I evaluated Deflaux's work as a scholarly book, not as the dissertation presented for the Doctorat d'Etat and accepted by Roger Asselineau (a distinguished scholar), Maurice Gonnaud, Pierre Marambaud, André Poncet, and André Martel. [End Page 302]