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  • Contes immoraux du xviiie siècle
  • James Fowler (bio)
Nicolas Veysman, ed. Contes immoraux du XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2009. 1312pp. 31€. ISBN 978-2-221-11057-7.

In his concise and useful preface, Michel Delon argues that the contes immoraux of the Enlightenment era deserve to be better known and appreciated (8–27). The collection will surely help to achieve this increased recognition. Nicolas Veysman groups his selection of contes under the headings: “Licences poétiques” (that is, contes immoraux in verse form), “Le Boudoir des fees” (fairy-tale variants of the genre), and “La Culbute immorale” (late-century contes immoraux). In the general introduction, Veysman compares and contrasts the conte immoral that stretches back to La Fontaine with the “conte moral inventé en 1755 par Marmontel et continué après 1765 par ses nombreux épigones” (48). He then suggests that as the conte immoral assumed a succession of forms, its relationship to traditional morality changed. The conte en vers, with its subversive “immoralité oppositionnelle,” comes first; its peculiar immorality is founded on “un choix délibéré de l’immoraliste pour le vice et le plaisir lubrique.” The conte [immoral] en vers is succeeded in the course of the first half of the eighteenth century by the fairy-tale version, which promotes an “immoralité substitutive,” an alternative (im)morality tending towards social harmony. Finally, in contes written after the middle of the century, but especially around the tournant of the eighteenth and nineteenth, we discover an “immoralité problématique,” which “[rend] impossible tout partage entre le bien et le mal, impraticable toute censure, invalide tout jugement et impossible toute repression” (49–50). Adopting a more formalist perspective, Veysman then asserts that the conte immoral is intrinsically better suited than the novel to show “les mutations de la philosophie morale.” He claims that it shares this characteristic with the conte moral; for these shorter forms more readily (or necessarily?) present characters as vehicles of ideas rather than as complex or developing individuals (52). Correlatively, he argues that any key character in a conte immoral/ moral is “doté de qualités hyperboliques. Non pas seulement moral ou immoral mais prodige de moralité ou d’immoralité” (52).

The placing of the “prodige” at the centre of the phenomenon is an excellent insight that reinforces the editor’s historically informed and nuanced overview of the conte immoral. Veysman distinguishes between “prodiges événementiels,” that is, extraordinary occurrences that may defy the normal course of nature or simply lack a known cause, and “prodiges identitaires.” The latter term refers to extraordinary characters, but usually in a sense opposed to traditional morality (as in “un prodige de cruauté”). Veysman forcefully argues that “chaque conte immoral élabore un prodige spécifique” (55). The verse variety contains only the “prodige événementiel”; this generally involves [End Page 741] “un stratagème mis en place par le protagoniste immoral, destiné à confondre la crédulité d’un mari ou à séduire un jeune tendron” (55). The conte féerique contains the “prodige événementiel” as well as the “prodige identitaire,” since in that genre supernatural beings disrupt the laws of nature in order to serve extremes of human passion. Finally, the late-century conte [immoral] vraisemblable contains the “prodige identitaire” alone; it depicts characters who are “prodigies” only in the sense that they display extraordinary characteristics. It mirrors the conte moral in this respect, for “le prodige immoral est un être d’exception qui fait l’expérience des limites de la nature humaine; non plus exploration des limites de la bonté humaine, comme chez Marmontel, mais exploration de celles de la jouissance et de la cruauté, comme chez Sade” (55).

The editor also brings out the fact that, however comical and subversive most contes immoraux might have been, they were part of a highly serious Enlightenment trend. For as the Grand Siècle recedes, “moralistes et immoralistes sont amenés à repenser la morale, à la considérer, non plus [...] comme un rapport naturel et réflexif de soi à soi, mais désormais comme le résultat culturel d’un rapport social de soi avec les autres” (51). Having framed the problem in...

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