Le Sopha, and: Crébillon fils ou la politique dans le boudoir, and: Songe, illusion, égarement dans les romans de Crébillon (review)

REVIEWS 123 gender roles could also serve as a diversionary tactic making room for a more subversive Utopianism. And, paradoxically, the endless, insistent repetition of those nostalgic ideals in fact reveals that they were unattainable; and so hints at the persistently open, potentially subversive, Utopian nature of the desires that run through the texts. This impressive study provides great insight into not only the Marvellous and the conte de fées, but also into issues of sexuality and gender under the ancien régime and at times of cultural transition and unease in general. It is a compelling tale, well told. Mererid Puw Davies Magdalen College, Oxford Crébillon fils. Le Sopha. Préface par Raymond Trousson. Paris et Genève: Fleuron (Éditions Slatkine), 1996. 358pp. FFr45. ISBN 2-05-101462-0. Colette Cazenobe. Crébillon fils ou la politique dans le boudoir. Avantpropos de Henri Coulet. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1997. 210pp. ISBN 2-85203-612-6. Jean Sgard, éd. Songe, illusion, égarement dans les romans de Crébillon. Grenoble: ellug (Université Stendhal), 1996. 330pp. FFr130. ISBN 2902709 -99-4. That contemporary readers continue to be captivated by the promiscuous amatory practices of the French pre-Revolutionary aristocracy is borne out by the appearance of yet three more books on or by Crébillon fils. From 1772 until 1929 (the date of Pierre Lièvre's edition of his basic works) the writer was mainly a curiosity piece, a rara avis for dilettante bibliophiles. What undermined the prestige ofa novelist who, even at the nadir of his career, could be hailed by his contemporary Dorat as "the profound painter of frivolity"? History, we know, hardly lacks examples of writers who, after a season of high esteem, fall from public favour for extended periods of time. The reason for Crébillon's disesteem is complex. The creator of the genre known as the roman libertin plied his craft to depict and analyse thefatuité (the term commonly employed in his time to denote libertinism) of the petit maître, as well as the sexual intrigues that vitalized the indolent existence ofthe members of aristocratic society. Too intimately associated with a way of life that the Revolution would bring to an abrupt end, the situations and characters dear to Crébillon came to be seen as frivolous and lacking in respectability. What were some of these? An uninhibited nobleman chatting with a lady in her bedroom suddenly jumps into her bed, pretending that the climate for conversation is more propitious under warm covers (La Nuit et le moment). A philanderer renowned for his conquests 124 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 11:1 turns out to be impotent (Le Sopha). Expectably, such characters espouse a moral ideology consonant with their behaviour. So Versac, the accomplished rake of Les Egarements who is unwilling to involve himself with a woman for more than twenty-fourhours, argues that a great passion is undoubtedly most respectable; yet does it lead anywhere but to mutual boredom? The uninhibited nobleman tells his lady friend that relationships between the sexes must be limited to pure physical magnetism, for it is common knowledge that familiarity would more than likely breed contempt. The accomplished rake has a compulsive need to seduce, but is fundamentally loveless and lacking in desire. The publication oî Les Liaisons dangereuses in 1782 announced both the apogee and demise of the genre libertin. In Merteuil and Valmont libertine ideology attained such a level ofzeal that literature had exhausted its possibilities. As an additional factor, the resurgence of sentimentalism, for which Rousseau was mainly responsible, dealt it a staggering blow by re-establishing ethical principles deeply hostile to theLebensartit endorsed. These principles were to take a firm hold on the nineteenth-century ethos, leaving nothing but scorn for the gallant amorous practices enjoyed by the bygone idle society. As the subject matter so highly praised by the novelist Dorat fell into disgrace, so did the "profound painter of frivolity." Demoded and dishonoured, the rakes and petites-maîtresses that peopled Crébillon's world no longer aroused the reading public. Their hedonistic preoccupations came to be viewed as unsubstantial, and the texts that depicted them were swept away in the same wake...