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132 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 chez Ie lecteur potentiel, procedes entrant tous dans une tentative globale de seduction. Pour ce qui est de la presentation, a part une ou deux erreurs typographiques (67, 72) et quelques passages estompes a l'imprimerie (100, 124), Ie travail d'edition a ete tres soigne. L'appareil critique (notes, bibliographie, index) rend cette etude maniable et fort utile. En depit de quelques tics de langage, tel un 'notre auteur' qui revient une fois la page, cet ouvrage se lit tres agreablement, tant Ie style et la langue y sont de haute qualite. On sent la un talent d'ecrivain, et ce n'est pas Ie moindre des charmes de ce livre. Aujourd'hui que la critique litteraire se penche sur les 'frontieres du recit,' que la notion de texte supplante celle d'auteur, cette etude est particulierement bien venue, car elle souligne la modernite de Stendhal, experimentateur 'sans Ie savoir' dans les domaines de l'ecriture et de II/oeuvre ouverte.' La notion contemporaine d'intertexte permet, en particulier, de situer les 'emprunts' stendhaliens dans une perspective nouvelle et fructueuse. L'etude de Jean-Jacques Hamm interessera donc, non seulement les stendhaliens, mais aussi ceux qui, d'un point de vue theorique, travaillent sur les notions de fragments, de parodie, d'intertexte et d'ouverture de l'oeuvre. (CHANTAL BERTRAND-JENNINGS) Chantal Bertrand-Jennings. Espaces romanesques: Zola Editions Naaman. 167 This is a most timely book, published at a time when Zola's fiction is being subjected to the most rigorous of analyses, complementing, as it does, Auguste Dezalay's 'essai de rythmologie romanesque' (L'Opera des Rouqon Macquart 1983) and the more recent edition by Henri Mitterand of the novelist's 'carnets d'enquetes' (1987). Chantal Bertrand-Jennings is refreshingly work(wo)manlike with theoretical matters - there is, for instance, only one, passing reference to Bakhtin -relying upon certain malleable concepts as a basis for a studywhich she defines as 'une analyse interne des lieux comme systeme de signes,' from the point of view of 'Ie sens de leur agencement et du rapport qu'ils entretiennent avec Ie personnage principal au niveau synchronique de chaque roman,' as well as from the standpoint of 'I'evolution de cet agencement et de ces rapports a l'echelle diachronique de l'oeuvre entiere' (15-16). In the first instance space becomes variously - and somewhat disconcertingly - places, objects, environments, atmospheres; and, at times, the study shifts more abstractly into the conventional modes of thematic criticism. But the author consistently and most skilfully draws the analysis back into the framework of diagetic spatial configurations and dynamic oppositions, notably in the excellent central chapter, HUMANITIES 133 entitled 'Conflits,' where a variety of thematic issuances (political, ethical, metaphysical, economic) are explored in relation to conflictual spatial articulations. However, in a study ranging across the full extent of the novelist's fiction, it is in the demonstration of a developing pattern of these works that this book takes on its most rigorous developments, a demonstration for which it is most to be recommended. From the first phase of their submission to the claustrophobic and oppressive presence of their ambient world (in the section 'Fermetures'), through the different aspects of the conflictual phase in various novels of the Rouqon-Macquart series ('Luttes'), then on into the triumphal phase of the conquest of space ('Ouverture'), most evident in Zola's last fictional works, the novelist's characters are shown to be engaged upon a single struggle for and against 'space.' Indeed, ultimately, the subject of this book is territoriality, not surprisingly so in Zola's so-called'epics ofhuman animality,' set in an age of rampant capitalism, speculation, social mobility, and colonial expansion . In her conclusion, the author briefly suggests a number of explanations for this development (generic change, a subconscious authorial project, socio-economic structures, ideological dispositions), a number of territories which need to be further explored, but for which this study impressively provides a most thoroughgoing survey. (DAVID BAGULEY) Joseph Ferdinand. Gionisme et pantheisme. La Re-creation de l'homme par Jean Giono Editions Naaman, Collection 'Theses ou recherches' no 25. 272 Face a la question des deux 'manieres' gioniennes d...

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