Les paraphrases bibliques aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (review)

This volume — the result of a conference held in Bordeaux in September 2004 under the aegis of the Centre Montaigne of the University of Bordeaux and the Centre Jacques-Petit of the University of Besançon — contains twenty-three essays, all in French, a number of appendices following certain articles, and a selective bibliography. The essays cover a rich variety of approaches, including theological, liturgical, literary, and musical, to the analysis of biblical texts, and explore the rich context of proliferation of the paraphrase, a form of rewriting that includes exegesis, translation, sermons, imitation, and poetry.

In his introduction to the book, the author of Poésie et tradition biblique au XVI^e siècle: Les paraphrases des Psaumes de Marot à Malherbe (1969), a work to which contributors often refer, Michel Jeanneret, instead of attempting to give a reductive definition of the paraphrase, warns the reader not to be repelled by the "frigorific" (frozen) appearance of the text and to reach beyond the simple technical exercise of reformulation corresponding to the practice of the imitatio in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Again, according to Jeanneret, the biblical paraphrase distinguishes itself from the biblical commentary by its combination of the pedagogical objective of the Bible's message — docere — and a more affective goal — delectare, movere — explaining, because of their poetic form and their lyricism, the popularity of the Psalms with the practitioners of the biblical paraphrase — les paraphrastes — during the early modern period.

The essays are arranged in four sections, of which the first concerns the history of the practice of the paraphrase and its function in biblical exegesis. Max Engammare opens with an informative survey covering the practice of the paraphrase in general and in biblical exegesis before Erasmus. He is followed by Guy Bedouelle, who explores the pedagogical role of the paraphrase in Lefèvre D'Étaples's work as a biblical translator and commentator. Jean-François Cottier, Daniel Ménager, and Jean-Claude Margolin consider the work of Erasmus on the paraphrase and as a paraphraste. Noëlle Balley closes this section with a contribution dealing with the reception and condemnation leading to censorship of Erasmus's Paraphrasis by the Sorbonne's theologian, Noël Beda.

The next section surveys various aspects of the biblical literary paraphrase, including a "réflexion" on this practice by Christophe Bourgeois. The essays in this second section are mostly concerned by the paraphrase in verse. Michele Mastroianni examines the use of the paraphrase in Chassignet's Le Mépris and Jean Brunel in the poetry of Scévole de Sainte-Marthe. Samuel Junod offers a contribution on the evolution of the figure of the prophet Jeremiah in works of various forms (prose, poetry, and tragedy), and Véronique Ferrer on the poetic paraphrases based on Ecclesiastes. On the side of the prose, Anne Mantero analyzes the works of Antoine Godeau based on the Pauline Epistles.

The third section is concerned with the paraphrases of the Psalms. Jean-Michel de Noailly opens this section with the presentation of the Bibliographie des Psaumes Imprimés en Vers Français which constitutes an important contribution to the field of the history of the book with its compilation of 3,250 editions, more than 16,800 Psalters, published between 1525 and 1900. One recurrent preoccupation found in this third group of essays is the evolution of the paraphrases of psalms, in the context of the Reformation, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, with Clément Marot, to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 (Isabelle Garnier-Mathez, Eliane Engelhard, Julien Goeury, Inès Kirschleger). In their essays, Bruno Petey-Girard, Christian Belin, and Stéphane Macé offer a view of the Catholic counterpart of the paraphrase of the...