Zayde: A Spanish Romance (review)

Since its inception, "The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe" series from the University of Chicago Press has made available women's writings from Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, many for the first time in English. The selections are often unavailable in modern, affordable paperback editions even in their original language, a situation that fortunately is changing, perhaps under the impetus of the Chicago series. The French women writers already featured in the collection are Marie Dentière, Louise Labé, Mme de Maintenon, Madeleine de Scudéry, and Marie-Catherine Desjardins (Mme de Villedieu); two treatises by Gabrielle Suchon and a selection of fairy tales are the next French volumes projected. The choice of Zayde among the works of Mme de Lafayette is consistent with the effort to bring lesser-known works to a wide readership. While other Lafayette novels (La Princesse de Montpensier, La Comtesse de Tende, to say nothing of La Princesse de Clèves) have been published in recent, inexpensive paperback editions in France, Zayde has not appeared in print in French since 1990 (though it is available on the Gallica site of the Bibliothèque Nationale); the only English translation dates from 1678. Nicholas Paige's edition situates the novel in seventeenth-century French culture and in the history of the genre so that North American undergraduates, along with an audience of educated readers outside the academy, will be able to appreciate fully the particularities of this work.

The subtitle "A Spanish Romance" signals the importance of genre in this case. The unlikely plot twists, the imbricated tales, the heroic characters of the sprawling Baroque novels popular until around 1660 have been set in a new frame, compressed to fewer than 200 pages. Of all the attempts to remake romance in a condensed form in the final decades of the century, Zayde, first published in 1669, proved to be the only commercial success. Paige explains its subsequent disappearance from the canon as a key element in the history of the novel: as romance became feminized, associated primarily with women readers and writers, it was increasingly devalued, and by the nineteenth century it was eliminated from the realm of "serious" literature in favour of the realist strain, which was perceived as more than mere escapism. Paige helps the non-specialist reader to realize how Zayde questions and subverts the romance genre even as it takes full advantage of romance conventions. Rather than a parody in the manner of Sorel or Marivaux, "Zayde is the last great French romance" (13) in the sense that it links the embedded stories, using them to create "a sort of taxonomy of unhappiness in which heroes and heroines are separated not by real, external obstacles—an earthquake, a father's interdiction, an uncertain birth, a rival's challenge—but rather by different psychological bents" (18-19). The characters' inability to interpret narrative because of their own flawed vision requires the reader to recognize and interpret gaps in understanding caused by human frailty. Lafayette's genius in renewing the conventions of romance was little appreciated after the eighteenth century as "the realist prejudice has rewritten our conception of what the novel is and made it nearly impossible to appreciate the other novelistic genres to which early modern women made a particularly active contribution" (2).

After having exposed the broad context in which Zayde must be situated in order to be appreciated, Paige's translation and its accompanying notes continue to bolster the reader's understanding of French culture in 1670. Helpful glosses on notions such as admiration, inclination, attachement, engagement, and galanterie, for example, explain the resonance of these words in salon culture. Notes are also provided when Paige wishes to elucidate his choices for other complex concepts, such as esprit, fortune, humeur, or patrie. The elegant translation balances the "charming archaism" (32) associated with romance (even for early modern readers) with the need to appeal to twenty-first...