The Cambridge Introduction to French Poetry (review)

This book is a model of what an introduction of this sort ought to be. Mary Shaw claims on the first page not to provide a history of French poetry but rather a 'synthetic appreciation of the main forms, techniques, and traditions informing great poems written in French'. We should be careful to clarify that there is an important and deep historical dimension to this book, with Shaw showing, for instance, how 'the first liberties modern poets took in composing free verse were often the last freedoms relinquished before the Classical period' (p.16). Readers of this book will undoubtedly take away a strong sense of the history of French poetry, but it is indeed appreciating, or interpreting, poetic texts that truly constitutes the armature of Shaw's book. By explaining with impressive expertise and insightful choice of examples a great many features of verse, Shaw points not to the antagonism we might infer from the chapter title 'Verse and Prose' but edifyingly to the fruitful readings we can mobilize by blurring the frontier between the two. And in the following chapter, 'Forms and Genres', Shaw traces Petrarch's influence on Maurice Scève but also explores how the sonnet persists in much later periods because its formal rigidity serves as a template for stylistic transformations. The meaningfulness of form within and across time is often the organizing principle of this book, and this is consistent with the mission of the chapter 'Words and Figures', in which Shaw steers the reader away from taxonomy, arguing that what matters is 'that we learn to appreciate the ways in which figurative language transforms the meaning of poetic texts, and poetic texts play on the figurativeness of language' (p. 77). Despite the massive erudition that undergirds the book, Shaw never strays far from the practice of reading and interpreting poetic texts, and doing so exceedingly well. Billed as an introduction to poetry, this text seems to present itself to students alone, and if that is the case, then Shaw has a high opinion of the students she has in mind, not to mention high ambitions for the types of reading students ought to produce. Whether discussing the metaphysical implications of Mallarmé's swan or, on the subject of Ponge and Deguy in the chapter 'Poetry and Philosophy', the rejection of the 'the notion that there is an inside or an outside to poetic language' (p. 171), Shaw sustains a sophisticated though accessible discussion throughout her book, consistently plural and rich in its premises and conclusions. Although it can function as a kind of manual (with a useful glossary at the back), this book guides its readers toward a penetrating and complex understanding of texts and the French tradition. It is of serious interest to teachers of French poetry, reminding us of what it is we teach and how we might go about doing so.