Oeuvres critiques, tome 1: Lettres sur Rousseau ; De l'influence des passions et autres essais moraux by Madame de Staël (review)

Book Reviews155 writing, Condé engages and agitates the reader and the reading process, thus prolonging and enhancing the consumption ofthe postcolonial text. Maryse Condé is known for her rich intertextuality as well as her re-staging of works that belong to the traditional European canon. Simek very successfully shows how this practice represents a way for the author to employ parody and irony to ruse with her readers. It is equally through her re-writing of well-known texts such as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, that Condé destabilizes, consumes, and re-invents Western canonical texts. The arguments of this study are convincing, ground breaking, and extremely well-crafted. This book will no doubt serve as a springboard for further investigation and critical analysis of Maryse Condé's writings. Best suited for graduate work or scholarly research, this book makes a fundamental contribution to Condé studies and the field of Francophone Caribbean literature. Sarah E. MosherUniversity of North Dakota Staël, Madame de. Oeuvres critiques, tome 1 : Lettres sur Rousseau ; De l'influence des passions et autres essais moraux. Oeuvres complètes, série I. Ed. Florence Lotterie. Paris : Honoré Champion, 2008. Pp 423. ISBN 978-27453 -1642-4. €77 (Hardcover). In his general preface, Michel Delon sketches the publication history of Staël's Oeuvres complètes, beginning with its first appearance following her death, as a written monument to the combined works of Jacques Necker and Germaine de Staël. He links its various subsequent publications to significant events in the tumultuous history of France. Arguing the importance of Staël's contribution to French history and literature, Delon draws a parallel between Staël and two notable male literary figures of the day, Jean Jacques Rousseau and François-René de Chateaubriand. These writers, caught up in the torments leading to and resulting from the Revolution, all reflected upon conflicts and tensions inherent in the roles of individual and society, of faith and reason, of tradition and progress. Unlike the situation of either Chateaubriand or Rousseau, however, it was not until almost 200 years later that interest in the writings of Madame de Staël revived to the point that a society for Staëlian studies was founded in 1930. The society continues today and meets regularly at the château de Coppet where Simone Balayé conceived and promoted the current series that aims at organizing all of Madame de Staël's texts together in a way that would prove especially useful to future researchers. The editors have chosen to systematize Staël's writing by putting her work in historical order within a three-dimensional thematic format that divides them into a series of three groups, each comprised of several volumes: Oeuvres critiques (the current volume), Oeuvres littéraires, and Oeuvres historiques. All essays in the collection are anchored to precise historical context and linked to 156Women in French Studies other contemporary texts through meticulously extensive annotation and crossreferencing . The editors have also modernized language and spelling in order to make Staël's writings accessible to as wide a public as possible. Each instance ofthis effort is carefully annotated in chapter-by-chapter lists of variantes. What this volume specifically does not include is any exhaustive presentation of interpretation, criticism, or commentary that her work may have subsequently provoked. Rather, the editors have provided a bibliography of Staëlian criticism that has accumulated over the years as interest in her work has grown. In this volume, Staël's work is divided into four sections: "Lettres sur les écrits et le caractère de JJ. Rousseau;" "De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations;" "De l'éducation de l'âme par la vie;" and "Réflexions sur le suicide." Each section begins with an introduction and analysis written by a member of the editorial team. The goal of each introductory presentation is to explain the conditions under which the writing was inspired as well as its reception by particular individuals and by the general public. In the final pages, editors have included additional valuable and thoroughly researched information. Among these, a chronology traces major...