Langue, littérature du XVIIIe et du XVIIIe siècles. Mélanges offerts à Frédéric Deloffre (review)

Reviews Roger Lathuillère, éd. Langue, littérature du XVIF et du XVIIP siècles. Mélanges offerts à Frédéric Deloffre. Paris: CDU et SEDES, 1990. 771pp. This massive volume of mélanges reflects die wide range of interests of the man in whose honour it was put together, Frédéric Deloffre, die literary historian from die Sorbonne who is best known for his editions of Guilleragues's Lettres portugaises and of die novels of Marivaux, as well as for his pioneering work on Robert Challe. The list of contributors to this volume reads like an international Who's Who of specialists in die field of seventeenth and eighteendi-century French narrative fiction, including such major figures as Henri Coulet and René Godenne. In addition to a large number of Deloffre's French colleagues, the authors represented in this impressive Festschrift include literary historians from England (V. Mylne and H. Mason), Germany (P. Koch), Italy (E. Caramaschi), the United States (L. Crocker and J. Brody) and Canada (B. Beugnot, D. Hayne). The topics range from d'Urie to Rousseau, from short studies of very specific biographical and bibliographical problems to wide-ranging thematic overviews of die evolution of narrative fiction in France from its origins to just before die Revolution. The viewpoints expressed in die sixty articles which make up this handsome volume represent a wide variety of methodological and ideological prises de position, many of which reflect Deloffre's own interests and biases. With respect to methodology, most of the contributions lean very heavily in die direction of traditional literary history: biographical details, questions of authorship and authenticity, problems of critical reception, and the dating and deciphering of manuscripts. A notable exception is Jules Brody's stimulating article on "Freud, Racine et la connaissance tragique" (pp. 225-43). Although a few articles are devoted to "Langue et versification," the majority of the studies commissioned for Ulis book come under one of five headings: "Auteurs, œuvres et styles, XVIIe siècle," "D'un siècle à l'autre," "Auteurs, œuvres et styles, XVIIIe siècle," "Thèmes et personnages," "Accueil et influences." Understandably, many of the articles are devoted to major figures, such as Marivaux, Diderot, and Voltaire, but others deal with EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 4, Number 2, January 1992 166 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 4:2 minor novelists and relatively unknown works. In a short but interesting article, for example , Yves Coirault discusses his recent discovery of a letter from Saint-Simon to Cardinal Fleury. Of die studies directly concerned with eighteenth-century French fiction, several are particularly worthy of note. There are two interesting articles on Robert Challe, one by Jean Mesnard on the historical and biographical background to Challe's Journal d'un voyage fait aux Indes orientales, the other a perceptive analysis of social values and class differences in Les Illustres françoises by Roger Francillon, the author of an important book on Madame de la Fayette. Laurent Versini provides a careful analysis of sentence structure in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, which he discusses in relation to die aesthetic üieories of die "Modernes." Georges May's contribution combines a discussion of narrative strategies in Galland's translation of die Mille et une nuits with an analysis of the techniques of oral expression on which the text depends so heavily. One of the most interesting articles in the entire volume is by Vivienne Mylne, who compares the various versions of the "Histoire de Mme de la Pommeraye" in Diderot's Jacques le fataliste, including Schiller's 1785 translation and the "retranslation" into French by Jean-Paul Doray de Langeais, published in 1793 under the title, Exemple singulier de la vengeance d'une femme. Mylne's analysis is a fascinating excursion into the byways of literary history. Some of the articles in the Festschrift are much wider in scope, notably René Godenne 's overview entitled "Turcs et africains dans les nouvelles de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle" (pp. 609—21). Occasionally, the focus changes from literary history to the history of illustrations, as in Françoise Rubellin's study of the engravings for Marivaux 's La Voiture embourbée. Some attention is given to...