Actualité de Jeanne Flore: dix-sept études (review)

This volume brings together seventeen articles on the Comptes amoureux, or on their putative author, all of which were first published or written between 1988 and 2002. They thus illustrate the continued critical interest in Jeanne Flore ever since the excellent edition of the seven nouvelles overseen by Gabriel-André Pérouse in 1980. Indeed, the useful bibliography of secondary studies runs to six pages and now includes several doctoral theses. This collection of studies owes its existence to a session on Jeanne Flore at the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in 2000, hence most of the contributors are affiliated to universities outside France. However, in justifying their decision to publish all the papers in French, even though approximately half were originally written in other languages, the editors express a concern to take back to the 'public français' — for which read seiziémistes — debates generated by a text towhich the latter now rarely return. The auteur-e-s adopt a variety of criticalapproaches, as is evident from the summary of their contributions at the end of the volume (a serviceable tool, but tantamount to a recognition that only the most diehard Florisant(e)s will plough through all 300 pages?). Diane Desrosiers-Bonin's account of the critical reception of the work, especially since 1980, sees it as emblematic of our evolving concerns and particularly suited to current preoccupations with the status of the writing subject. It is telling that different contributors to the volume independently argue the case for a single female author, a single author whose gender cannot be ascertained, one or more anonymous male authors, or a group of authors. (Régine Reynolds-Cornell even airs the new hypothesis that the seventh story could be the work of Marguerite de Navarre). On this plane, no definitive answers are forthcoming, a point whose irony for the context of gender studies is not missed by several contributors, including Floyd Gray and Nancy Frelick. Attention to material details raises further enigmas in the very good paper by William Kemp, who argues, with scrupulous attention to the woodcuts, that the shorter version of 1540 (published by Juste under the title Pugnition) may — contrary to previous scholarly assumptions — predate the longer undated version (Les Comptes amoureux published by Denys de Harsy). Cathleen Bauschatz also examines the woodcuttings, suggesting that they may provide evidence of Flore's intention of making fun of Hélisenne de Crenne's Angoysses douloureuses. Parody or imitation? For Gray, the two forms often ironically shade into one another, which might give us cause to ponder on the various contributions looking anew at Flore's borrowings from medieval French and from more recent Italian sources. Equally, contributors are as divided as ever on the moral interpretation invited by the text: a hymn to sensuality, a concession to the codes of neoplatonism and amour courtois, a strikingly modern challenge to the institution of marriage? The jurors are still out, at least in this volume. Insome ways it is a shame there is no editorial afterword to attempt to restore order, but such an endeavour would be hazardous for a text with two states and titles, no clear single author and a complexity of.intertextual layers which, I suspect, has not yet been finally unpicked. Meanwhile, this volume has plenty to nourish Flore criticism.