La pensée religieuse d'Agrippa d'Aubigné et son expression (review)

This book is a reissue of Marie-Madeleine Fragonard's 1981 thesis. Although some recent secondary references have been added, the original text remains unchanged, save for a ten-page "postface" in which the author reflects on the present state of d'Aubigné scholarship. Despite the burgeoning interest in d'Aubigné's writings beyond the Tragiques, attempts to come to terms with his œuvre as a whole have been rare. This, along with what the author rightly identifies as a "retour vers la littérature religieuse" in scholarship on the sixteenth century, is presumably why the distinguished seiziemiste has chosen to republish her previous work at this time, even though her own contributions to d'Aubigné studies since 1981 have been considerable.

In the book's introductory section, Fragonard insists on the relevance of sociocultural context to religious writings, and the study as a whole does much to elucidate what she calls the "situation de communication" or the "contexte d'énonciation" (44) pertinent to d'Aubigné's work. Her exhaustive investigation of d'Aubigné's intertexts encompasses reformed theology, patristic writings, religious polemic, love poetry, history, and much more. Of course, we know d'Aubigné's pensée religieuse largely through his own expression of it, and Fragonard's focus here is on the interdependence of thought and expression chez d'Aubigné.

Fragonard's study is divided into four large conceptual parts, the first of which revolves around the notion of the "image" — of God, of man in relationto God, and of the (reformed) universe. These images are analyzed first quan-titatively — several statistical tables show the frequency of specific lexical items and rhymes — and then, at some length and impressive depth, these data are interpreted in light of the relevant intertexts. This produces not only illuminating readings of d'Aubigné, but also a wealth of information on the religious culture of sixteenth-century France and some valuable insights into the rhetorical practices of the period. Fragonard makes the diversity and polyphony of d'Aubigné's writings one of the fundamental principles of her interpretation; as a consequence, her attention to detail serves rather than undermines the coherence of her presentation. She is not afraid to confront what from a contemporary perspective are the tensions and contradictions of d'Aubigné's works and of sixteenth-century culture more generally, and she is able to integrate them into larger arguments about both d'Aubigné's theology and his rhetoric.

This ability is well exemplified in the book's second section, which examines the ways in which d'Aubigné represents "le Mal." The author of the Tragiques is perhaps best known for his flamboyant descriptions of torture, war, and famine, and Fragonard dedicates well over 150 pages to his representations of the countless ways in which man perverts the Godly ideal. D'Aubigné's stylistic promiscuity rhetorically mirrors the proliferation of evil in the world; at the same time, it demonstrates the degree to which man needs God. This argument leads nicely into the book's third part, which explores the ways in which d'Aubigné's fallen man strives to come nearer to God. Fragonard emphasizes the primacy of suffering in d'Aubigné's beliefs about salvation, thus explaining his attachment to the figure of the martyr and his relative neglect of both the sacraments and the broader institutional structures of the Church in his writings.

The final section, "Vers l'union totale," studies the structures of time and space in d'Aubigné's writings from the perspectives of theology, philosophy, poetics, narrative, and grammar. In her conclusion, Fragonard suggests that d'Aubigné's powerfully individual literary style constitutes a gesture towards the transcendence that human language can never fully attain, just as d'Aubigné's prophetic poetic persona speaks for a God from which he necessarily remains distinct.

Fragonard's...