"Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre" and "Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin" by Marie Dentière (review)

142Women in French Studies (Elise) and her reading public to glimpse Claire's feelings for Frédéric long before she herself recognizes them. For example, in Letter XXII, Claire all but confesses her love for Frédéric. However, framed as a series ofquestions, her avowal merely reiterates the suspicions previously voiced by Elise. Although the sometimes extravagant language of emotion would seem to place this novel within the pre-romantic or sentimental tradition, Claire's torment in the struggle to maintain her virtue as wife and mother also evokes classical themes transposed into post-Revolutionary France. Her characterization of love as a sickness, her vain efforts to confront a violent, destructive passion with reason, and the turmoil of her guilt all recall earlier texts such as La Princesse de Clèves or Phèdre. Finally, Cottin's novel suggests the expectations for women in the newly constituted ideology ofthe domestic sphere (cf Letter IX). Although Cohen emphasizes the place that Claire d'Albe occupies in the nineteenth-century sentimental tradition, the novel seems to offer much more and promises to become a highly discussable text for the undergraduate classroom : as a reworking ofRousseauvian themes, as a (re)examination ofclassical terms like duty, virtue, honor, and passion in a new post-Revolutionary society, or as a fictional representation of the development of women's roles in the domestic sphere of the early nineteenth century. Margaret Cohen's translation of Claire d'Albe retains the flavor of the original while at the same time making the text accessible to contemporary readers. In a translator's note to the English edition, Cohen acknowledges her debt to Eliza Anderson Godfrey's 1 807 American translation, but indicates revisions such as the inclusion of sections that Godfrey censured in the name of decency. In the French edition, Cohen referred primarily to the original 1799 text. The appearance of available, affordable editions of Claire d'Albe in French and English contributes significantly to the recognition of women writers in the history of the eighteenth-century novel. Judith Clark SchanemanWestminster College Dentière, Marie. "Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre" and "Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin." Ed. and trans. Mary B. McKinley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pp [i]-xxix; HO. ISBN 0-226-14278-7. $50.00 (Cloth). ISBN 0-226-14279-5. $18.00 (Paper). In 1539, not long after John Calvin and Guillaume Farel had been banished from Geneva following a quarrel with the city council, Marie Dentière published an open letter to Marguerite de Navarre, calling for the queen's support. Dentière had made a name for herself in France and in Geneva through her outspoken promotion ofthe Reformed cause. In her letter, Dentière reminds Marguerite of her own publications in defense of Reformed ideas (most famously, Marguerite's Mirror ofthe Sinful Soul had been briefly condemned by the Sorbonne in 1533), and she urges her to use her influence to Book Reviews143 persuade her brother, French King Francis I, to intervene in favor ofReformers . After a dedicatory preface and a "Defense ofWomen," Dentière delivers an impassioned exposition of Reformed theology and a scathing attack on what she sees as the hypocrisies and idolatries of the traditional church. Thanks to Mary B. McKinley's recent translation, the full text of Dentière's Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre is available in English for the first time ever. The volume also includes McKinley's translation of another short text presumed to be by Dentière, a preface published in 1561, the year of her death, to a sermon by John Calvin advocating women's modesty in dress and their silence in church, in a commentary on 1 Tim. 2:8-12. The volume does not include an enigmatic third text, La Guerre et Délivrance de la Ville de Genesve, published anonymously in 1536 and attributed to Dentière in the nineteenth century, an attribution McKinley finds inconclusive. McKinley provides a comprehensive and engaging introduction to Dentière, with a well-researched analysis of her life and works—a feat in itself, given the scarcity of the evidence. She highlights the connection between Dentière and...