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514 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 9:4 porte chercher une fille pour l'épouser!" (p. 324). In spite of himself, history catches up with Faublas, who discovers that his beloved Sophie is Lovzinski's lost daughter. One can really wonder, as Delon does in his erudite introduction, about the role in the novel played by the Polish episode, which became the most popular with the reading public. In the first volume, this tragic story is riddled with comic scenes: the stupid marquis de B*** arrives suddenly and interrupts Lovzinski's dramatic account of how Lodoïska was locked up in a tower and threatened by fire. It is obvious here that Louvet mocks romantic love and dramatic stories. But in the two following volumes, it seems that Louvet becomes increasingly aware of the illegitimacy of libertinage. According to Michel Delon, it appears that it is libertinage itself, and not true love, which is an illusion of adolescence (p. 8). Lovzinski's seriousness and sense of responsibility may well be the novel's lesson. Indeed, even light libertinage becomes more serious in La Fin des amours de Faublas. Faublas is still torn between two women—the recipe for the first volume's success. Instead of searching everywhere for his adored wife Sophie, who was abducted by her father, he spends all his time in Eleonore de Lignolle's bed. But now Louvet feels the need to justify Faublas's sentiment for Mme de Lignolle: he does not love her simply because she is pretty but also because she has an excellent heart (she cares for her peasants and defends their interests), and when she becomes pregnant with Faublas's child, he cannot abandon the mother of his future son. So, little by little, this long and repetitive third volume, in which the gaiety, evident in the first volume, seems to be somewhat forced, leads to the triumph of moral values: responsibility, fidelity, and fatherhood. The two mistresses sacrifice themselves: to protect her young lover, Mme de B*** throws herself onto her enraged husband's sword, while the desperate Mme de Lignolle, who wanted to keep Faublas for herself, commits suicide. Without having to choose, Faublas is left with only one woman, his legitimate wife Sophie, who, after months of constant care, manages to save him from madness and bears him a son. The bourgeois moral order is safe and we are happy that the novel is finally over. Catherine Cusset Yale University Medha Nirody Karmarkar. Madame de Charrière et la révolution des idées. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. ix + 241pp. US$48.95. ISBN 08204 -2660-1. La publication de ses Œuvres complètes (1978-81, éd. G.A. van Oorschot) a enfin permis à Isabelle de Charrière d'accéder au statut d'auteur. Avant les années REVIEWS 515 quatre-vingt, les critiques s'intéressaient moins à son œuvre, en partie inaccessible , qu'à sa vie, qu'ils évoquaient bien souvent dans le cadre d'études portant sur des auteurs plus connus, tels Benjamin Constant ou Germaine de Staël. Mme de Charrière et la révolution des idées vient s'inscrire dans la lignée d'études récentes entièrement consacrées aux œuvres de Charrière. Notons, dans la même série que le présent volume, et pour nous limiter à l'Amérique, le livre de Kathleen M. Jaeger, Male and Female Roles in the Eighteenth Century (1994), ou encore, celui de Jenene J. Allison, Revealing Difference: The Fiction of Isabelle de Charrière (1995). La monographie de Medha Nirody Karmarkar a le mérite de ne pas se limiter aux romans, et d'aborder la partie politique, encore très peu explorée de l'œuvre de Mme de Charrière entre 1788 et 1799. Son étude s'appuie sur celle d'Isabelle Vissière, Isabelle de Charrière, une aristocrate révolutionnaire: écrits 1788-1794 (1988), tout en la complétant puisqu'elle consacre la partie centrale de son analyse à «l'effet auteur» dans Trois Femmes, roman conçu et publié sous différentes formes entre 1795 et 1798. Cherchant à se démarquer par rapport à Vissière, qui borne...

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