Coupling the Novel: Reading Bodies in La Morlière's Angola

Coupling the Novel: Reading Bodies in La Morlière's Angola Thomas M. Kavanagh Why has as provocative, witty, and innovative a work as Jacques Rochette de La Morlière's Angola, histoire indienne (1746) received so little critical attention? In his history of the French novel, Henri Coulet dismisses it in little more than a sentence as poorly done Crébillon, a "féerie orientale sans grande originalité." Robert Mauzi describes it as "un univers de carton," interesting only for the baroque scene towards the end of its story where tired and undone revellers stumble out ofa masked ball into the harsh light ofmorning. Philippe Laroch rises to a tone of almost ecclesiastical outrage to castigate a work he sees as "peuplé d'aimables parasites occupés àdilapider leurfortune pour séduire des filles qu'ils n'envisageront pas un instant d'épouser." Even Angola's most astute commentator, Raymond Trousson, defers to the consensus and relegates La Morlière to the status of an "écrivain du second rayon."1 1 Henri Coulet, Le Romanjusqu'à la Révolution (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), p. 387; Robert Mauzi, l'Idée du bonheur dans la littérature et la penséefrançaise au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965), p. 442; Philippe Laroch, Petits-Maîtres et roués: évolution de la notion de libertinage dans le romanfrançais du XVIIIe siècle (Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 1979), p. 157; Raymond Trousson, "Le Chevalier de La Morlière: Un aventurier des lettres au xvme siècle," Bulletin de l'Académie royale de langue et de littérature française 68 (1990), 218. Trousson's article is the best work yet done on La Morlière. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, volume 13, numéros 2-3, janvier-avril 2001 390 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION To a larger extent than most critics admit, Angola's, dismissal grows out of a strong distaste for La Morlière as its author. The successive waves of la nouvelle critique, structuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism may seem to have consigned to mothballs the premises of any /'homme et l'œuvre approach. The fact is, however, that one finds repeated in every study of this novel the regret that everything we know about La Morlière the man hardly corresponds to any acceptable version of the significant author. His role as the organizer of the most aggressive and mercenary theatrical claques of the late 1740s and 1750s (which Voltaire did not hesitate to use) invites an image of him as cultural bully, if not terrorist. La Morlière also treated women shabbily, never hesitating to use seduction as the shortest path to a father's or a husband's fortune. Even a sympathetic preface-writer for the 1895 edition of Angola refers to La Morlière as "ce chef de cabale effronté, libertin et débauché."2 Those shortcomings pale, however, in comparison to the effect on La Morlière's reputation of Diderot's ferocious portrait of him in Le Neveu de Rameau. For Diderot, La Morlière is a blustering hothead always ready to hurl an insult or grab for his sword at the slightest provocation, someone "qui semble adresser un défi à tout venant." Diderot turns the sharpest of knives as he unmasks those histrionics as pathetic self-deception: "Que fait-il? Tout ce qu'il peut pour se persuader qu'il est un homme de cœur; mais il est lâche ... une longue et habituelle singerie de bravoure lui en avait imposé. Il avait tant fait les mines qu'il se croyait la chose."3 What we know about La Morlière the man is so heavy an albatross that Raymonde Robert took the not unexpected step of suggesting we accept as fact the period's dubious rumour that La Morlière did not write Angola at all, that he stole the manuscript from the duc de la Trémouille. This, as Robert sees it, would tidy things up considerably. With La Morlière as its author Angola can only be "la révolte d'un arriviste furieux des barrières qui se dressent devant son ambition." Attributing the work to...