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130 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 incorrectly given in the list of abbreviations, correctly given in the note to page 120, where the title of Rousseau's Essay is incorrect; Wokler's article is about 'Rousseau's Anthropology Revisited' not 'Revised,' and so on. In addition, there are errors of judgment. If it is difficult to understand why Horowitz used the incomplete and inaccurate Dufour edition of Rousseau 's correspondence when the magisterial Leigh edition is readily available, it is impossible to imagine why he consulted the abominable FoxIey translation of Emile when Allan Bloom has done such an excellent job of retaining the sense, tone, and flavour of the original text. But the major defect has to do with Horowitz's perfunctory dismissal of any theological implications in Rousseau's view of history and the evolution of man. This question, which I have dealt with elsewhere (Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Providence) and which is too complex to explore in a review, concerns initially Rousseau's explanation ofhow man passed from a solitary to a social state. According to Horowitz, God or Providence plays no part in Rousseau's account of this transition. Itis true that in the Discourse on Inequality the suggestion is that natural accidents such as floods, earthquakes, and the like caused men to seek less hostile environments where they congregated and came to know each other. In the Essay on the Origin of Languages and the Political Fragments, however, the story is somewhat different. In the Essay, for example, the natural accidents turn out to have been specificallydesigned by God to end man's isolation and force him into the social framework for which he was providentially destined. In the Political Fragments Rousseau states quite categorically that the tilting of the earth's axis was God's way of saying to man: 'Cover the earth and be sociable.' In short, Rousseau sees the hand of God as the initiator of the social process. This providential element in man's development is a basic and constant feature of Rousseau's philosophy that Horowitz fails to deal with or even to recognize, and yet it must be considered if one hopes to give a complete account of Rousseau's view of history. What Horowitz has provided is an excellent secular interpretation that, given his Marxist approach, is what one would expect. (AUBREY ROSENBERG) Jean-Jacques Hamm. Le Texte stendhalien: achevement et inachevement Editions Naaman, Collection 'Etudes' 1986. 149 Aussi curieux que cela puisse d'abord paraitre, aucune monographie n'avait encore ete consacree aun aspect pourtant frappant de l'oeuvre stendhalienne et dont plusieurs critiques ont glose en passant: son hesitation entre achevement et inachevement. C'est maintenant chose faite et I'ouvrage de Jean-Jacques Hamm remedie acette lacune. J.-J. Hamm n'est pas un neophyte des etudes stendhaliennes, comme HUMANITIES 131 en font foi ses nombreux articles parus dans Ie Stendhal Club, Ie colloque 'Stendhal Palimpseste' qu'il organisa aI'Universite Queens en octobre 1987, et l'esquisse de la presente etude qu'il donna au colloque de Cerisy-Ia-Salle sur Stendhal en ete 1982 (parue aParis Aux Amateurs du Livre, 1984, 13-31). Informe par les apports recents de la linguistique et de la critique litteraire, Ie livre de J.-J. Hamm prend pour corpus la totalite des ecrits connus de Stendhal, qu'il nomme 'texte stendhalien' et qu'il interroge, moins pour trouver les causes biographiques ou socio-historiques de l'inachevement, que pour en etudier Ie processus. Ainsi, meme quand il est fait appel ala psychanalyse apropos de tel motifrecurrent, ce n'est pas tant pour expliquer I'homme Henry Beyle, que pour elucider la demarche de I'ecrivain Stendhal. II ne s'agit pas non plus ici de considerer I'inachevement comme un echec, mais plutot de Ie sommer d'eclairer Ia strategie d'une ecriture. C'etait tenter de cerner I'insaisissable et il est vrai que parfois J.-J. Hamm semble donner dans l'evidence. Pourtant, par une approche systematique de phenomenes lies al'inachevement, sans jargon inutile, sans non plus la ferveur aveugle de certains beylistes fanatiques, mais grace aune grande familiarite avec I'oeuvre et Ia critique...

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