The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European Literature (review)

Posner's study explores literary representations of the nobility in the late Renaissance. Focusing on Castiglione, Montaigne, Bacon, Corneille and La Bruyère, Posner argues that the tension between literary images of the noble and the changing historical role of the nobility brings about a new kind of noble self that is engaged in a continual performance of noble virtues. Though such a performance seeks to echo the essentialist ethos of the older nobility, it eventually comes to destabilize the notion of noble identity itself.

The book's strength lies in its close readings, and there are some stellar passages here that open up new debates about the text in question; the chapter on Corneille, with its attention to the significance of shared idioms, is particularly fruitful. Posner's attention to the social significance of various formal literary properties is exemplary. Nonetheless, it would have been useful at times to have a sense of the crisis of nobility as it might be played out in non-literary domains, or to have a more engaged sense of historical change. In the conclusion to the final chapter, for example, Posner mentions the tension between nobility's "claim to be permanent" and its "obvious historical contingency" (208), but he nowhere explicitly addresses the terms of such contingency. Likewise, Posner's frequent invocation of the "private self" might have benefited from relation to a larger historical narrative of private and public. I would also have welcomed some attempt to reckon with different geographical or national identities; despite the move from Italy to France to England and back again, little is made of how the literature of nobility might alter from country to country.

Posner's arguments are particularly clear when he sketches out his relation to other critics, and in each chapter he sets out an impressive literature review that will prove useful for any student of the period. In the introductory chapter (on Castiglione and courtesy manuals) he sketches an account of recent studies of the Renaissance that have explored the construction of the self and its relation to society and state. Posner is an astute commentator on others' work (his immensely useful endnotes are also a joy to read) and he notes here that in these accounts "each critic's subject seems to become, in that critic's hands, the inventor of modern interiorizing subjectivity" (4). There is surely a hint here of resistance to that model, and indeed Posner's readings are characterized by a sometimes refreshing and sometimes frustrating refusal of such major claims; the wealth of close readings are often simply too dense to permit much sense of a controlling argument.

Posner's second chapter looks at Montaigne as both writer and courtier, and seeks to understand what it means for those two roles to overlap. Posner argues that Montaigne's readings of classical texts are informed by his awareness of the awkward status of the noblesse de robe, and that the Essais demonstrate noble identity to be a paradoxical performance of the natural. Through a series of persuasive close readings, Posner suggests that Montaigne's nuancing of noble identity ultimately upsets what he terms the "épée ethos" (35). Posner explores the complexities of noble speech and representation of that speech; I would cite especially a reading of Montaigne's claims that "je me jette naturellement à un parler sec" (37). Often, however, the stimulus of these detailed readings seems hard to sustain over the length of the chapter. I felt that the chapter was full of insight but sometimes failed to sustain an argument. As the longest and densest chapter of the book, it seems to unbalance the whole.

Posner's third chapter ("Mask and error in Francis Bacon") takes up the significance of Bacon's banality, tracing the performative function of Bacon's "apparent glibness and superficiality" (99). Thus Posner argues that Bacon "uses the attention-grabbing (and assent-commanding) power of the aphorism to start...