Bélisaire (review)

REVIEWS 421 into account how the decades following the composition of the Tale produced a new set of concerns for its author to grapple with in a very different kind of text. This failure is particularly regrettable (and not a little ironic) given Montag's laudable aim to "read works as a materialist" by "grasp[ing] through a 'concrete analysis of a concrete (textual) situation ' the way in which each text constitutes a singular realization of ideological struggle" (p. 126). An overall assessment of The Unthinkable Swift must, then, be mixed. On the positive side, along with the thought-provoking insights it offers, the book underscores the crucial roles that history and ideology play in the production of texts (literary and otherwise ), and points to the importance of theorizing one's observations and conclusions in a coherent, relatively systematic way. Less positively, Montag's actual explications fall short of fulfilling his highest critical aims. Although he rightly stresses the "complexity " and "contradictions" of Swift's writings, he winds up flattening out both of them by presenting a basically two-dimensional view of the works and their author. His analysis cannot tell us anything about how Swift, as Edward Said suggests, was able to function simultaneously as a traditional and an organic intellectual—or about how Swift could loyally serve a hegemonic institution while also writing and acting in various contexts counter-hegemonically. And although Montag argues for a creative union between history, text, and theory, his study too often belies such unity by sacrificing historical and textual particularities to theoretical abstractions. If it is important (as I believe it is) to "read works as a materialist," and if it is in addition important to figure out ways of intelligently applying Marxist theory to the study of eighteenth-century literature—a field that has only recently been opened up to contemporary theoretical investigations—then we need to do more than invoke a few noted theorists or make use of a specialized theoretical vocabulary. Specifically, we need to explore , through rigorous, detailed, and lucid analysis, the dialectical interactions inherent in a series of relationships: between historical forces and individual agency, between author and modes of production, between necessity and freedom, between hegemony and resistant formations, between history and ideology. To the extent that Montag's study challenges us to address these questions and apply them to our understanding of Swift, it makes a valuable contribution to the field. One can only regret that, in the course of doing so, it presents a view of Swift dismayingly similar to the one we have met with so often in the past, in the most traditional and conservative interpretations of Swift: as a Tory churchman, die-hard "Ancient," and slavish adherent of social and political hierarchy. Carole Fabricant University of California, Riverside Jean-François Marmontel. Bélisaire. Présentée par Robert Granderoute. Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1994. ISBN 2-86503-233-7. Bélisaire, a digest of the ideas of its time (p. Iiv), was first published in February 1767, and achieved a degree of notoriety sufficient to be censured by the Sorbonne. The main point of contention was chapter 15, in which the old, blinded general Bélisaire advises the Emperor Justinian and his heir Tiberius about the duties of a ruler in the matter of the 422 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 8:3 civil toleration of religion. The censor Coger thought the chapter was modelled on the philosophy of Rousseau's Vicaire Savoyard (p. 175); it certainly contains an outline of the principles of natural religion. God is seen as just and good: having created humans, he will be tolerant of their failings. Bélisaire does not mention direct, written revelation, preferring instead the inner light of his soul to tell him what he needs to know of God. Conscience is the supreme guide, but the religion is identifiably Christian and loving God and one's neighbours are praised as sublime moral principles. This brings us to the rights and duties of the Prince, who is entitled to make any appropriate decree concerning public order and civic behaviour: "Dieu en a fait des vérités de sentiment...