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L'Esprit Créateur renversement des valeurs, et se vouant en définitive à l'ironie. Dans Le Disparu, Karl, le héros, affronte les multiples figurations du pouvoir, dont la variante institutionnelle, le Grand Théâtre d'Oklahoma, évoque de très près 1'"invention démocratique" (225), mais au-delà encore, développe les virtualités utopiques du mythe américain-occidental. Le Château sera aussi lu comme une "fable théologico-politique" (235), qui pointe la valeur mythique de la notion d'Occident . Chez Cohen enfin, la culture occidentale, étrange legs d'un paganisme médiatisé par le christianisme, lui-même hérité du judaïsme, est accusée de dégradantes compromissions. Dans toutes ces œuvres, Γ "enquête sur le sens" trahit les "désarrois de la conscience occidentale" (262) plus qu'elle n'en révèle la cohésion identitaire. Au terme de l'étude, l'Occident désigne précisément "un trajet plus qu'un lieu"; à la "figure identitaire" s'adjoint un "continuel mouvement vers l'Ouest" mû par une "dynamique du déracinement": "toujours un projet, un horizon de l'action" (319). Dans cette investigation rigoureuse et inspirée, Philippe Zard atteint un rare bonheur de l'exégèse, quand elle laisse entrevoir ta profondeur et les virtualités humaines de la figuration litt éraire: "Admettre l'action de Ia littérature sur les hommes, c'est peut-être l'ultime sagesse de l'Occident" (Emmanuel Lévinas). Catherine Milkovitch-Rioux Université Blaise Pascal-Clermont-Ferrand II Isabelle de Charrière. There are no Letters like Yours: The Correspondence of Isabelle de Charri ère and Constant d'Hermenches. Trans. Janet Whatley and Malcolm Whatley. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2000. Pp. xxxiii + 549. $29.95. In 1760 twenty-year-old Belle de Zuylen, better known later as Isabelle de Charrière, initiated a correspondence with Baron David-Louis Constant d'Hermenches, a Swiss officer in the Dutch army, a man almost twice her age and wim a worldly experience that a young woman of intense intellectual curiosity and drive might find fascinating. Belle's initiative bespeaks an unusual self-possession and confidence as well as a need to engage an intellectual and sentimental nature against whom to measure and develop her own. After some awkward hesitations, there ensued a lively, personable exchange of some 250 letters over the course of fifteen years, most of which have come down to us extant. Readers of French have had access to various editions of me correspondence, most notably in the Œuvres completes published by G. A. van Oorshot (1979-1984). Janet and Malcolm Whatley 's eloquent translation now makes available the letters to English readers, accompanied by a critical apparatus of explanatory notes, index, chronology, identification of people mentioned, and an introduction that situates events and personages in the historical context. As the translators and other critics have suggested, it is tempting to read the correspondence as an epistolary novel. Certainly the two correspondents playfully echo and adhere to the conventions of the genre. Plots emerge and intertwine with me traditional themes of epistolarity, beginning with the practical problems of conducting a clandestine correspondence with all its implied moral improprieties; the misunderstandings and subsequent clarifications provoked by the rhythm of absences, missed or crossed letters, postal delays, and gossip; the pleasure both correspondents take in crafting their letters, in responding subtly and intelligently to each other's observations and witty remarks; and eventually developing the central plot of many epistolary novels, arranging a suitable marriage for the "heroine." The correspondence finally ends when the marriage plot fails and the reality of Belle's marriage to Charles-Emmanuel de Charrière and d'Hermenches's remarriage intervenes. But however closely the correspondence follows the conventions of epistolary fiction, it is most interesting where it deviates. For example, despite undertones of passion, and suggestions that Belle's interest in marrying d'Hermenches's friend, the marquis de Bellegarde, may be dis100 Winter 2000 Book Reviews placed love for the unavailable d'Hermenches, the "heroine" is neither seduced nor corrupted by her libertine correspondent. To the contrary, she, and not he, controls...

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