Representing Judith in Early Modern French Literature by Kathleen M. Llewellyn (review)

The violence of Judith’s story — that of a chaste widow who takes it upon herself to save the besieged Jews of Bethulia by first seducing and then beheading Holofernes—is indicative of the various ways in which this troublingly independent biblical heroine stands at odds with Renaissance models of feminine virtue. In this thoughtful examination of early modern representations of Judith, Kathleen Llewellyn considers five case studies addressing the tension between Judith’s courage and the wilfulness that threatens the social cohesion of her people even as she rescues them. The distinct angles of analysis in each study broaden the book’s scope and largely avoid repetition across the successive re-examinations of Judith’s tale in epic poetry, sermons, and plays. Jean Molinet’s Mystère de Judith et Holofernés is shown to legitimize Judith’s actions by portraying them as part of a theatrical performance that ends as soon as she steps out of her temporary role as heroic warrior. Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas’s La Judith is studied in the light of its ekphrastic descriptions, which invite reflection on the nature of visualization while controlling the narrative focus on Du Bartas’s heroine. Gabrielle de Coignard’s Imitation de la victoire de Judich is presented as highlighting the importance of community, both within her epic poem, as the small, feminine ‘community’ of Judith and her servant Abra saves the larger community of Bethulia, and beyond it, through the circumstantial parallels between Judith and Coignard. Finally, questions of gender and exemplarity inform the study of Pierre Heyns’s Miroir des vefves, with its emphasis on aspects of Judith that make her an ideal model for Heyns’s audience of young female students, and of the early modern sermons in which a discreetly Christianized Judith is lauded as an inspirational example of religious devotion. Throughout the book there is a pleasing concentration on close textual analysis, although this is occasionally distorted by mistranslation. When Molinet’s Vagao comments, of the starving Judith, ‘Elle porte assez bonne trongne/Pour ung amoureux afamé!’ (ll. 1811–12), he is callously ignoring her physical hunger as no obstacle to her satisfaction of the metaphorical hunger of Holofernes’s sexual desire; in contrast, ‘She’s got a pretty good figure/For someone who’s a famished lover!’ (p. 39) suggests a reaction of sarcastic disbelief, based on a crude assessment of Judith’s body as both corpulent and sexual. Similarly, when Heyns’s Judith recounts Holofernes’s request that she eat and drink with him, mistranslation of Holofernes’s reported speech (‘il m’a requis […] et qu’à cet effet’, ll. 1247–48) as Judith’s own determination to dine with and intoxicate him skews the subsequent analysis of her as duplicitous (p. 106). These isolated examples aside, this book makes a valuable contribution to the study both of Judith and the more salient features of her character — her femininity, with its disturbing beauty and autonomy; her Judaism and its implications for exemplarity in a Christian era—and of these works, which exemplify the popularity of her story in early modern France.