À l'écoute de la lecture by Bertrand Gervais (review)

166 LEITERS IN CANADA 1994 The papers in this volume make it clear that legal criticism is only part of the enterprise, however. Only three of the twelve contributors come from law backgrounds. While the works of these others may well be of use to legal scholars, there is no indication that challenging intemalist legal criticism is particularly central to most of their interests. Law can instead be for them a vehicle to consider other matters of interest, rather than the subject itself. While somewhat different from McGillivray's starting point, it is not entirely inconsistent with her view of law and literature as a 'multi-disciplinary endeavor mining the limitless motherlodes of the arts and humanities, popular culture and formal law, seeking connection over·closure.' While this opens the door to a refreshing variety of approaches, it does make the papers difficult to assess for a general readership, and it is difficult to know what standard to bring to them. Specialists from other disciplines may find their own intemalist discourses given rather short shrift, suggesting that they will find these papers more useful as starting points than as definitive statements, but that is perhaps inevitable in work which is interdisciplinary. The disparate approaches do mean that the resulting papers have little to unify them, or to define a field. Alexander Forbes writes a stimulating piece on eighteenth-century natural law in its intellectual context, relying on Chambers and Johnson's edition of Blackstone, but apart from Johnson 's reputation as a literary figure, there is little in the piece which makes the piece particularly suited to 'law and literature,' as distinctfrom intellectual history or indeed legal history. Similarly, Betty Travitsky's piece on Margaret Vincent, who murdered two of her children in 1617, relies on letters, the brief trial record, and a prose broadsheet to consider the situation of mothers in the seventeenth century, but it is difficult to see it as particularly different from an historical essay. Interestingly, she seems even to avoid the literary issues of the genre of broadsheets, and the fact that her accoimts of motherhood are written by men. This of course does not mean it is a bad paper, but it does suggest an elastic view of 'law and literature.' In the result, I must admit I am somewhat less sure of what 'law and literature' 'is' than I was when I started the book. Does it matter? A number of the papers are reasonably good, after all, and perhaps that should be enough. Indeed, if law and literature is to be seriously interdisciplinary , perhaps its lack of definition is the point. (PETER BARTLETT) Bertrand Gervais, A l'ecoute de la lecture Montreal, VLB editeur, colI. Essais critiques, 1993, 238 p., 19,95$ Pendant longtemps, Ie texte a ete presente conune un absolu de significations preetablies, que Ie lecteur aurait pour tache de retrouver et HUMANITIES 167 d'actualiser. Cette conception a ete ebranlee par les travaux qui ont tente . d'appliquer a la lecture Ie schema de la communication. Les recherches de type cognitif ou philosophique ont montre a leur tour les insuffisances de ce modele et donne une place croissante a l'activite du sujet. A la suite de Gilles Therien, Bertrand Gervais adopte une perspective resolument constructiviste et examine Ie texte non pas comme un en-soi, mais comme un objet sur lequel Ie lecteur pourra appliquer un travail d'un certain type. La nature de ce travail dependrait de trois grandes variables. La premiere est Ie mandat que se donne Ie lecteur et dont la nature serait toujours Ie resultat d'un compromis entre «Ies deux economies fondamentales de tout acte de lecture, la progression a travers Ie texte et la comprehension du texte». Ces deux economies n'auraient pas toujours coexiste. Pendant longtemps, Ie modele dominant a ete celui de la lecture intensive, privilegiee par la culture savante et par l'ecole: ce modele, qui valorise la comprehension du texte et la relecture, au detriment de la lecture cursive et superficielle, aurait ete quasiment Ie seul mode connu jusqu'au XVIlle siecle, si I'on en croit les travaux de Chartier et d'Engelsing sur lesquels s'appuie...