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REVIEWS 177 Malcolm Cook. Lesage: GU Blas. London: Grant and Cutler (Critical Guides to French Texts no. 72), 1988. 75pp. £3.25. Part of a series diat aims to introduce students to individual masterpieces of French literature from the Middle Ages to die most recent past, this slim volume features die superb approach to teaching cultivated at die British universities. Malcolm Cook is a specialist in French eighteenth-century fiction, but his study, aimed essentially at heightening die reader's appreciation of Lesage's novel, is mercifully free from die jargon diat obscures much contemporary criticism. Of course, it is impossible to do full justice to Gil Bias in sixty pages, but several fruitful approaches are outlined, and a selective and concise critical bibliography at the end points the way to further reading for the advanced student. The first problem that Cook confronts is the unplanned composition of three consecutive segments of the novel at widely separate periods, which effectively precludes a steady view ofthe world. However, some of die objections voiced by recent critics may be disposed of by emphasizing a changing narrative perspective. Cook argues against the interpretation of die work as a picaresque novel, pointing out that this is merely a shell and part of a superficial Spanish disguise for a satire on French society. He does, however , weaken his own case by demonstrating that die protagonist is never really in control of his own fate, a trait diat surely smacks of the traditional picaro. A major point in Cook's defence of die novel is his emphasis on die structural element provided by minor figures whose periodic reappearances attenuate die episodic character typical of the earlier European novel and so annoying to die modern reader. These unlikely recurrences may detract from die novel's once-vaunted realism, but they do much to enhance our enjoyment, as does die satire of a variety of social groups, which constitutes die principal comic element. It is in dûs that Cook sees die novel's greatest merit, and, like odier critics, he makes much of the scenes where figures from die literary world, and, above all, from the tiieatre, are the butt of the novelist's verve. Here and here only does what Cook regards as essentially a comic novel approach die later French roman de mœurs. As for die interpolated stories, die notorious tiroirs, tiiey can be said to add a needed dimension to die radier bare story of a basically uninteresting protagonist. Still, what he lacks as a hero, Gil Bias makes up for as an early instance of die self-conscious narrator, as long as he can maintain a critical distance from his earlier persona, an advantage mat he loses progressively as die time of the events recounted coincides widi the account given. Despite his own claims to tiie contrary, Gil Bias is far from having attained die sophistication, let alone die audienticity, on which he prides himself. It is in this distinction between die narrator's defective self-analysis and the perceptive reader's judgment of him, and in die resulting opposition of appearances and reality, diat Cook sees die novel's deepest significance. Paul H. Meyer University of Connecticut ...

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