De bonne vie s'ensuit bonne mort: Récits de mort, récits de vie en Europe (XVe–XVIIe siècle) (review)

This collection of eighteen essays, separated into three sections ("Narration, argumentation et organisation de la matière historique," "La 'thanatographie,' récit et interprétation de la mort," and "Présence de la mort dans l'autobiographie") contributes to a field of research, the representation of death in the early modern period, that continues to mobilize scholars from diverse disciplines (literature, history, anthropology, sociology, art history, and history of ideas), in France particularly since Claude Blum's monumental La Représentation de la mort dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (Paris: Champion, 1989). As its title indicates, this collection focuses on the "dialogical relationship" (9) between life and death that many of the period's death narratives display, frequently in an effort to play off the dichotomy of movere and docere, and proposes to explore the complex nature of this phenomenon.

Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore's nicely illustrated contribution on Catherine d'Amboise's Prudens et Imprudens insists on the moral and cultural objectives of a text on exemplary lives and deaths conceived to cement the aristocracy's exalted status. Pascale Chiron shows the subtle rhetoric behind the apparent celebration of the deceased in verse epistles addressed to Louis XII and François I^er. These texts attest to the poetic and political liberty granted by the mask of the deceased's voice and to the actual object of most such poems: praise for the king. By analyzing three little-known variations on the Romeo-and-Juliet theme by Italian authors (Salernitano, da Porto, Bandello), Jean Lacroix fills in gaps between the famous treatments of Dante and Shakepeare of this archetypical life-and-death tale. Hélène Germa-Romann's reading of the funeral orations of Henri III's minions reveals their political and religious dimensions. Claudie Martin-Ulrich elaborates on this topic and shows how the movere ends up triumphing over the docere. In the seventeenth century, the didactic objectives seem to have dominated death narratives, as Catherine Pascal shows in the Jesuit Nicolas Caussin's warning of the powerful "to reflect on the vanity of their condition" meant to incite them "to work for their eternal salvation while on earth" (121).

The second section focuses on the death of illustrious people and opens with Julien Gœury's investigation of the popular biographies of Protestant ministers from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries dedicated to suggesting "a new way of conceiving death" (126). Paula Barros shifts the focus to England, where Puritan hagiography redefined the place of the deceased in the society's memory by producing role models and promoting individual canonization. Bruno Petey-Girard shows that even funeral orations for famous figures, such as Mary Stuart or Charles IX, are subject to rhetoric and often celebrate the life of the speaker rather than the deceased. Adrien Roig insists on the importance of orality in the life-and-death narrative of Inès de Castro, subject of the first Portuguese tragedy. Agnès Delage analyzes the celebration of pagan heroes' lives and deaths that became popular at the beginning of Philip IV's reign, mostly in order to provide the young king with models of government, to praise the new regime, and to correct the depraved morals of contemporary society. The publication of press reports of Philip III's death, a rare event at the time, leads Didier Rault to question the reasons behind this occurrence: to ensure the sacred status of the king against rumors of diabolic temptation, particularly harmful to the throne in Catholic Spain.

The paradoxical presence of death in autobiographical texts is the topic of the third section, in which Patricia...