Prophètes, sorciers, rumeur: la violence dans trois romans de Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly (1808–1889) (review)

Hélène Celdran Johannessen’s perspicacious study of the marginal figures in three of Barbey’s novels builds on previous exploration of representations of violence and the sacred in Une vieille maîtresse, L’Ensorcelée, and Un prêtre marié. Shepherds, seers, mendicants, hags, and other characters from popular Norman folklore appear frequently in these works. Since their roles as storytellers, prophets, malefactors, or slanderers are, more often than not, associated with incidents of conflict or violence, René Girard’s ideas on mimetic crisis, violence, and the sacred constitute a coherent theoretical framework for analysing Barbey’s narratives. The frequent presence of the angry mob or la foule in these texts corresponds to the theatrical and ritual representation of public execution and suggests the collective need to preserve social order through sacrifice. Johannessen indicates the critical precursors on the topic: Joyce Lowrie’s The Violent Mystique 1974 and Pierre Tranouez’s Fascination et narration dans l’œuvre romanesque de Barbey d’Aurevilly: la scène capitale 1987. The latter shows how the triangular structure of relationships in Barbey’s stories consistently brings about the death of one of the characters, namely the scapegoat; however, Girard’s formulation is not mentioned per se in Tranouez’s work. A sustained analysis of Barbey’s depiction of the pariah/scapegoat in a Girardian context is entirely appropriate, if not overdue, and the author’s considerable research on the subject is admirable. The first four chapters clearly and cogently reveal the representation of the victimary mechanism in the three novels. The author exposes in the first chapter the prophecies that presage the death of specific characters — she refers to these narrative features as ‘récituels’. Chapters 2 and 3 elaborate on the concept of the récituel in relation to time and space. La lande de Lessay (the moors of the Cotentin) is the site of rich local lore and regional mythology. Johannessen focuses on the importance of spatial and mythical intersections particularly in L’Ensorcelée and shows how the landscape becomes a space ‘à vocation sacrificielle’. The fourth chapter expands on the notion of rumour as an oral tool of violent intent. I would have welcomed further integration of these chapters with the final chapter, ‘René Girard contre Joseph de Maistre’, which is undoubtedly an important component of the analysis and should have been more carefully formulated in and of itself and in relation to the preceding discussion. Some minor details in the text disrupt the flow of thought, such as various stylistic idiosyncrasies (the abundance of repetitions, exclamations, and rhetorical questions, for example), and the footnotes contain a number of typographical and orthographical inconsistencies. On the whole, however, this study is insightful and well researched. The application of Girard’s paradigm to Barbey’s narratives is of value to scholars of both Barbey and Girard and to readers of nineteenth-century literary culture in general. In addition the volume contributes to studies and debates on ritual violence in popular culture in the areas of sociology, ethnology, and anthropology.