Les Normes du dire au XVIe siècle (review)

As the Introduction to this volume observes, sixteenth-century France is marked by 'une vaste réflexion sur le bien dire'. This not only impacted upon theory and practice across the different literary genres using French but also promoted considerable debate on the form and basis of the emerging standard form of the vernacular. Given the wide-ranging nature of this réflexion, covering its different manifestations in one volume poses an almost insuperable challenge, but the twenty-eight contributions to the colloquium collected here certainly address an ambitiously broad span of topics and add usefully to our understanding of cultural developments in a period of major change. The papers are organized into three general subsections, 'Interroger la norme', 'Évolutions de la norme' and 'Normes et société'. However, such is the fluid nature of the subject matter treated in certain papers that their classification under one or other of these headings can sometimes seem of doubtful appropriateness. The focus of the first sub-section is predominantly literary. The various contributions address the creation or adaptation of norms across a considerable number of different genres some of which are perhaps rather less familiar, for instance, oracular writings (Dubois), accounts of pilgrimages (Gomez-Géraud) and Jesuit letter-writing (Laborie). Particularly interesting is the close study by Duché of the influential approach which Nicolas Herberay adopted for translation. Herberay, an acknowledged master of French prose ('un vray Cicero françois', according to Jean Martin), wrote with a female as well as a male readership in mind, developing a prose style that was eloquent and natural that would set an example for bien dire in this area. The second sub-section begins with a cogent overview (Baddeley) of a familiar field, developments in orthography and the interplay between orthography and spelling, and is followed by a series of studies which explore revealingly topics such as the evolving relationship between poetics and grammar (Monferran), the increasing limitation on the use of metaphor in literary works (Cernogora) and developments in historiography (Dumontet). Perhaps the most interesting paper is the examination of the fortunes of the alexandrine in the early part of the century (Halévy). Particular attention is given to the writings of Jean Lemaire de Belges and Geoffroy Tory both of whom, on the basis of fanciful argumentation, sought to invest the alexandrine with special prestige and nationalistic symbolism matching the terza rima in Italian. Their exercises in myth-making were to contribute indirectly, it is argued, to the rapid rise in the alexandrine's use from around 1555. The final sub-section of the volume contains contributions that more particularly address linguistic issues. Notable amongst these are two items: a re-evaluation of the system of vers mesurés devised by Baïf which is seen as an attempt not only to reproduce the metrical patterns of ancient Greek but also to contribute towards the norms of spoken French by reflecting the élite 'usage des Bons' (Vignes); and a meticulous examination by Morin of change in the pronunciation norms presented by Peletier du Mans in his earlier works (1550, 1555) as against his 1581 Euvres poëtiques, the new norm correlating with that presented later in the works of Lanoue (1596) and La Touche (1696). Alongside these are a number of other attractive essays including a study of the linguistic norms in the speeches made at the formal opening of the Paris Parlement, with eloquence and high rhetoric dominating over practicality and clarity between 1560 and 1600 before a reversal occurred in the early seventeenth century (Petey-Girard), and an investigation of sixteenth-century liminaires (any text preceding a written work) composed by women where a complex set of norms operate involving humility, simplicity of style, the practice of dedicating the work to another woman and, in the light of the lack of image for the female writer, an attempt to 'socialiser l'auteur' (Gauthier). Completing the text...