Questions of Interpretation in "La Princesse de Clèves" (review)

508 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 9:4 John Campbell. Questions ofInterpretation in "La Princesse de Clèves". Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996. 249pp. HA175; US$50.00. ISBN 90-5183-950-2. Scholarship and critical acumen go hand in hand in this excellent book. Taking the aspects of the princesse de Clèves's story that have attracted intense critical attention, John Campbell painstakingly analyses the world created by Mme de Lafayette in her novel: the relationship between me heroine and her mother, her husband, and her lover; the society in which the story is set; and the nature of the passion of which the three main protagonists are victims. Cutting through the thicket of criticism that has grown up around this elusive masterpiece over the last thirty years, Campbell proceeds to confront the various interpretations arrived at by other scholars with the text itself. The definition of La Princesse de Clèves as "a novel of experience and refusal" (p. 7) aptly indicates the problems facing critics, evoking both the question of the heroine's "éducation sentimentale" and the motives that prompt her final rejection of Nemours. Taking as his starting point the twin concepts of passion and appearance, which he identifies as forming the thematic foundation of the novel, Campbell goes on to examine their nature and role in the novel and, most important, to point out their symbiotic nature. In his reading of the text, we understand that Mme de Clèves's perception of love is not necessarily the outcome of her mother's repressive education, but is equally based on her observation of the violence of passion both in herself and in her husband. Campbell effectively points out the violence of the emotions portrayed beneath the brilliant surface of court life. He deals equally well with the background of the Court—the emotional turbulence and moral turpitude lurking behind its glossy exterior— which informs the view of the world that Mme de Chartres conveys to her daughter. Campbell's discussion of the nature of love and of truth, towards oneself and others, is filled with brilliant insights, as when he comments on the ironic use, in a text dealing with appearance, of the term "véritable" as applied to love. His discussion of the different levels of knowledge and different types of truth presented in the story makes absorbing and thought-provoking reading, as does his examination of the question of the unknowable nature of truth, placed as it is in a context where spying is the universal pastime of the Court. In his analysis of issues made more complex by the distance in time separating late-twentieth-century readers from the world of Mme de Lafayette, Campbell's technique is particularly effective. Since its publication in 1678, Mme de Clèves's confession to her husband has been one of the novel's most notorious episodes. Campbell's reading of it as an act of desperation rather than an exercise of will, one which is moreover incomplete (as well as counterproductive ), is a persuasive addition to a continuing debate. Equally interesting is his assertion that the real confession—the frank avowal of the truth as Mme de Clèves perceives it—occurs in her last encounter with Nemours. Here Campbell sees evidence of his own interpretation of the nature of passion in La Princesse de Clèves: that passion and happiness are indeed irreconcilable and that truth can only be grasped when passion has been rejected. Such a text as REVIEWS 509 La Princesse de Clèves will provoke further debate as each generation reads its own message into this story where appearance beckons one into a hall of mirrors . Campbell's study is an invaluable guide to realities that lie behind these "jeux de miroirs." Shirley Jones Day University College London Melvyn New, ed. The Sermons ofLaurence Sterne: The Text. The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, vol. 4. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. 424pp. US$49.95. ISBN 0-8130-1385-2. Melvyn New, ed. Notes to the Sermons. The Florida Edition of the Works ofLaurence Sterne, vol. 5. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. 517pp. US$49.95 ISBN...