Robert Challe: A Utopian Voice In The Early Enlightenment by Sister Lois Ann Russell, S.H.C.J. (review)

174ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW similar to a description of clothing and, indeed, the two may be paired to indicate a person's character or mood. The concluding chapter focuses on the multiple transformations in the Conde Olinos, in which the young lovers' souls change into embracing plants, then into birds, a healing spring and finally a shrine. In some versions the last stage predominates , in an obvious attempt to emphasize the Christian motif, while giving rational explanations to the supernatural elements. A minor point that may be noted is the bizarre use, for English, ofthe misleading and long discredited term "Indo-Germanic" (p. 136) in place of Indo-European. In addition, it would have been a welcome service to provide, whenever possible, the original versions of ballads from less common languages, which appear in the text only in translation. Finally, a more substantial introduction than the useful but sketchy five pages offered would have been helpful to tie together the six images discussed. In particular, one sorely misses a preliminary theoretical statement stating precisely how the author interprets the terms image and imagery, symbol, motif, and theme, which sometimes appear to be used virtually interchangeably. The dust jacket promises that this book will make "available important new critical tools sure to have significant results for ballad scholarship." This may be its most serious long-term aim, for which it is certain to be of great value, but it also offers the scholar and advanced student alike new, richer interpretations of many well-known ballads and it does so in a most lively, readable style. LOUISE VASVARI FAINBERG, S.U.N.Y., Stony Brook & University of California at Davis Sister Lois Ann Russell, S.H.C.J.: Robert Challe: A Utopian Voice In The Early Enlightenment: Potomac, MD: José Porréia Turanzas, 1979. 164p. Although long in obscurity, Robert Challe has, since 1966, been the subject of numerous articles and books (well over sixty). Many critics maintain that both French Realism and Romanticism owe a great debt to this precursor, notwithstanding the fact that no major eighteenth-century writer and only a very few nineteenth-century writers have even referred to him or to his novel, Les Illustres Francoises. Moreover, to date the vast majority of critics have dealt only with his novelistic career. Now, Sister Lois Ann Russell has appeared basing her book on seemingly new and excellent ground: Robert Challe, more than a one-book novelist, also represents the roots of the Enlightenment in France. To understand his true rôle in early eighteenth-century philosophical thought, she believes the reader, while not excluding valuable information to be found in his novel, must study Challe's nonfiction. Consequently, in support ofher thesis, she has consulted his correspondence, journals, andofficial reports, as well as contemporary documents by persons who either worked with Challe or were his friends. Challe emerges as a practical and capable administrator who believed in "l'utilit é générale," and who espoused many surprisingly modern ideas: Divine right must be tempered with intellect and responsibility, "...un retour de devoirs du souverain à ses sujets, etde ceux-ci au souverain..." (p. 26); man is capableofprogress (p. 102) and virtue, his chief goal must be "...bienfaisance envers le prochain..." (p. 121); women are viewed as free and independent members of society (p. 143); the church is necessary to society but it must be "at the service of the people" (p. 103). BOOK REVIEWS175 Sister Lois Ann Russell's valuable and carefully written study concludes that Challe's "truly human spirit" clearly represents "the evolving epoch of Enlightenment " (p. 143). OWEN A. WOLLAM, Arizona State University Russian Poetry: The Modern Period. Edited by John Glad and Daniel Weissbort. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1978, lxii + 356p. This, the sixth and largest volume in the Iowa Translation Series under the general editorship of Paul and Hualing Nieh Engle, is an undertaking of ambitious scope. Glad and Weissbort's design is nothing less than to give the reader an Englishlanguage exposure to the whole of Russian poetry in the twentieth century, including all three generations of émigré work as well as the work of Russians writing in the Soviet Union. This...