A History of Modern French Literature: From the Sixteenth Century to the Twentieth Century ed. by Christopher Prendergast (review)

Unusually, this volume opens with two Introductions. The second, by David Coward, is an informative overview stressing the need to see French and francophone literature both as a whole and as ‘a parade that is constantly on the move’ (p. 46). While Coward’s approach is chronological, he importantly draws attention to such issues as, for example, generic division, taste, reception and censorship, the contribution of women writers, education, and literacy. The first Introduction, by Christopher Prendergast, clearly compiled after the entries had been submitted, justifies and defends the contributors’ approaches and anticipates and counters potential criticism. This ‘History’ is intended primarily for the ‘general reader’ (p. 1), for anyone with an ‘active but non-specialist interest in French literature’ (p. 1); it does not provide coverage but a ‘sequence of landmarks’ (p. 14), and Prendergast insists that to object that there are omissions is ‘futile’ (p. 5) and that this ‘history’ is only one of many possible. The result is a collection of thirty unnumbered, disparate articles (chapters) by a team of international specialists, but a volume that has little evidence of overall cohesion or of there having been much editorial control. Inevitably approaches do differ quite widely: some chapters elicit admiration; others are pedestrian, and a few appear to have had a life elsewhere. Some contributors have adopted a broad-brush view of a whole period, assessing its ongoing influence both in France and beyond. Such is the case, for example, for those of the Renaissance, a period of ‘precarious brilliance’ (p. 68), of the moralistes during the second half of the seventeenth century, or of poetic practice in the late nineteenth century. By contrast there are chapters that are sharply and brilliantly focused on specific works (Phèdre, Candide, Madame Bovary) and persuasively propose fresh readings. Elsewhere, the body of an author’s work is examined to explore wider philosophical, social, and political issues: Rabelais and the problem of ‘definitive interpretation’ (p. 85) and his status in world literature; Montaigne, ‘the first of the moderns’ (p. 157), and Molière who provides us with the ‘first truly convincing portrayal of modernity’ (p. 173); Rousseau and the question of corruption and ‘natural man’; Césaire and his ‘central, seminal, pioneering’ (p. 591) impact in a postcolonial world, or Djebar and francophone literature. Similar explorations also result from the analysis of a single work such as Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu or Sartre’s La Nausée. If, perhaps with the ‘general reader’ in mind, some contributors seem to have felt the need for substantial biographical information (on Marguerite de Navarre, or Breton, for example), the opposite is the case in the chapters on poetry (Ronsard, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud with his ‘linguistic delirium’, p. 490), which are highly technical with detailed examination of layout, syllabic control, and even punctuation. The recommendations for further primary and secondary reading at the close of each chapter vary considerably, the translation of titles and some expressions is inconsistent, French capitalization has been systematically ignored, and, despite several omissions, the seventy-page Index suffers distinctly from overkill.