Literary Fortifications: Rousseau, Laclos, Sade by Joan DeJean (review)

Book Reviews Joan DeJean. L itera ry Fo r t ific a t io n s : R o u ssea u , L a clo s, Sa d e . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. xii + 355. This exciting and extremely original study locates in the myth of Vauban’s supposedly impregnable fortresses a metaphor—indeed an entire metalanguage—for what the author refers to as the “defensiveness” of the classical text: its resistances to the interpretive free­ dom of the reader, its claim to definitive greatness. Literary Fortifications is not, however, a simple reduction of literary history to its military analogue, an uncritical application of Vaubanian siegecraft to textual analysis. Instead, Joan DeJean proposes an impressively subtle extension of certain of Vauban’s principles (obliqueness, pré carré, etc.) to the reading of texts obsessively informed by the classical myth of order and control. This exten­ sion is mediated by psychoanalytic models of ego defense, the Bloomian notion of “ anxiety of influence,” and the author’s own critique of a pedagogy whose classical variant turns out to be a form of self-defensive aggressiveness. The result is something very different from a classical theory of the classical literary fortress. DeJean’s approach is more that of a bricoleur (a figure invoked throughout the book) who borrows tools from a variety of theories and uses them as needed to blow apart the monumental ruses hidden beneath the text’s imposing façade. This ingenious sapeur’s touch makes for an astounding sensitivity to the particularities of each text studied, and an ability to account for the development of mutually conflicting readings as effects of the text’s own self-defensive equivocalness vis-àvis its menacingly classical forebears. The late eighteenth-century texts of Rousseau, Laclos, and Sade “speak simultaneously with two voices, a voice of liberation and a voice of control” precisely because their “textual enterprise is driven by the desire to make their territory secure” (pp. 4-5). The book’s magisterial centerpiece, a reading of Rousseau’s reading of “Le Corbeau et le renard,” persuasively demonstrates how Rousseau’s critique of La Fontaine’s implicit depiction of the pedagogue as a crafty and oppressive master turns out also to depict Rousseau’s own educational theories. Rousseauian pedagogy as put forth in Emite and Julie appears as a deviously defensive strategy to prevent the student’s deviation from the master’s plan. Laclos’s defensive moves are twofold. As a military man, he confronts Vauban’s theories with Montalembert’s; as a novelist, he must write out from under the legacy of Rousseau. In a brilliant reading, DeJean shows how the ever problematic morality of Les Liaisons dangereuses issues from the deployment of rhetorical tactics (most notably the pastiche of Rousseau) which leave “ no one behind the words to take responsibility for them” (p. 252). As for Sade, not only does Les 120Journées de Sodome tell the story of its libertine heroes’ “fortifying mania” but the novel’s attempt to “replace natural develop­ ment with systematic logic” (p. 302) bears witness to Sade’s aggressive appropriation of¡’esprit classique in order to bring classicism to its culmination (and end) with his own textual production. The difficulty of summing up this very rich, textually sensitive, and witty study does point, nevertheless, to the indefiniteness of its theoretical borders. The use of psycho­ 104 Su m m e r 1986 Book R eviews analysis, for instance, is reserved, even “oblique.” Does Freud merely provide a her­ meneutic or way to break into the literary fortress, or does his topological elaboration of the psyche’s defenses not itself remain entrapped within a Vaubanian siege mentality? The book’s historical limits also remain somewhat open, as evidenced by the acute timeliness of certain remarks made about the aggressivity of current nuclear defense planning. Finally, the persistent theme of calculation and tabulation found in Vauban and echoed in the novelists studied cannot help but suggest, at least to a Marxist reader, the economic analogue to the fortress: mercantilism, that aggressively defensive stage in the development of capitalism. Might not the textual economy of classicism owe as much to Colbert as to Vauban? On the other...