The Subversive Tradition in French Literature, Volume I:1721-1870 (review)

REVIEWS 273 Leo Weinstein. The Subversive Tradition in French Literature, Volume 1: 1721-1870. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1989 (Twayne World Authors Series), xvi + 199pp. US$24.95. This study is the first of two volumes examining "opposition or protest literature during the 250 years between 1721 and 1971." In the introduction, entitled "L'Art de Rouspéter," the author traces the history of "criticism or ridicule of the authorities" in French literature since the Middle Ages, explains his method, and justifies his choice of examples. The works selected for analysis "attack specific conditions or acts rather than general vices," but have enough literary merit to transcend the unimportance for posterity of some of the issues they treat. In the eight chapters, each of which covers a period of fifteen to twenty-five years, the author first surveys the "eventful and changing patterns of French life seen through the eyes of the literary opposition" (p. xi) and offers a briefchronology of historical and literary events. In his lively accounts he does not hesitate to use modem parallels (Crébillon's Tanzaï is "a Japanese Joe McCarthy" [p. 30]), colloquial expressions (Pangloss "comes off on the short end" [p. 46]), and advertisers ' grammar ("like" is used for "as," even in translations of Chénier [p. 93]). Historical errors are few—the duc de Bourbon was never regent (p. 7); before 1790 there were far more than thirty-five editions of La Nouvelle Héloïse (p. 25); and Helvétius was not a contributor to the Encyclopédie (p. 38). He then analyses one or two literary works for each period surveyed. For the years 1721-1813 (chapters 1-5) these are Montesquieu, Lettres persanes; Crébillon fils, L'Écumoire; Voltaire, Candide; Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro; Chénier, ïambes; Mme de Staël, Delphine and Corinne; and Béranger, Le Roi d'Yvetot. Liberal quotations from these works are given, all translated "for better or for worse" by the author. The translation of Chénier's "Que la Nuit de leurs noms embelisse [sic] ses voiles" as "Let Night emboss their names in its veil" (p. 92) could certainly be bettered, while the misquoting of Voltaire's "Nos prêtres ne sont point [this word is omitted by Weinstein] ce qu'un vain peuple pense" leads to a mistranslation: "Our priests are only what unsuspecting people think" (p. 41). Portraits of the authors treated are included, not always with the name of the artist. Readers will have to wait for the conclusion which will appear at the end of volume 2. The four-page bibliography of secondary sources lists no book on the novel published in the last ten years. The back of the jacket has laudatory previews of the book by Jules Brody, René Girard, Henri Mitterand, JeanFran çois Revel, and Michel Serres, the last declaring it "an excellent arbiter of the everlasting dispute between the conservatives and the subversives in France." This book seems intended not for literary theorists but for the general reader. D.W. Smith University of Toronto ...