Le Palais des curieux by Béroalde De Verville (review)

Véronique Luzel’s careful edition of this encyclopedic text constitutes a welcome addition to the current revival of scholarly interest in the prolific, long-neglected polymath writer François Béroalde de Verville. The little-studied Palais des curieux, first published in 1612, is an excellent illustration of the transitional phase of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as it endeavours to combine the humanist ideal of collecting all human knowledge with an increasing taste for critical thinking, showcasing the ‘crisis of exemplarity’ that dominates discourse in this period, as well as with the openness and the unfinished, seemingly random nature of the topics covered that are characteristic for early modern writing. The broad diversity of topics includes literature, with an emphasis on the defence of the vernacular and the precise use of vocabulary at the service of the ‘bien-dire’ (p. 27), the natural sciences (physics, medicine, chemistry, botany, zoology), religion, history, law, and economics. This varietas explains the large range of sources Béroalde uses, notably the Bible, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Henri Estienne, Marot, and Ronsard, who do not escape criticism or corrections that underline the critical undertaking of questioning authority. The author’s own writings also feature prominently in this catalogue of sources, and Luzel’s extensive notes and frequent quotations from these quite inaccessible texts prove extremely useful in retracing Béroalde’s thought processes. The motley structure of the text is far from haphazard, since it seeks to imitate the ordered chaos of nature, which often escapes human understanding. In this context, singularity and fantasy denote harmony and liberty. Therefore, not only does the text oscillate between a chaotic compilation (‘variae lectiones’), a collection of miscellany, and an encyclopedic effort, it also displays other tensions that mark this period (often referred to as ‘baroque’) as a culmination of renascent tendencies: between religious faith and critical thinking; between the compilation of stories, anecdotes, or facts and the personalized use that the author makes of them by his way of narrating them, ‘non nova sed nove’ [not new things, but in a new way]; between the light-hearted — even, at times, facetious — and the serious; or between admiration and criticism of his sources. The main objective of what could consequently be called a personal, critical encyclopedia is clearly to please the reader —‘delecter le lecteur’ (p. 265) — but this edification is also subject to another essential dichotomy of the time, the Horatian ‘docere et delectare’ [to teach and to delight]. Pleasure is closely linked to the curiosity that manifests itself in a pronounced ‘libido sciendi’ [desire to know]. In many respects, the writings of Béroalde de Verville are an important link between humanism and neoclassicism, as they exemplify the many parallels between writers seemingly as disparate as Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, and Boileau. A continuous evolution trumps rupture between these established periods and this excellent edition will contribute to a better understanding of Béroalde and of the larger context in which his text occupies a pivotal place.