Louis XI by Joël Blanchard (review)

Reviews 215 United States between 1960 and 2010, among them Perec’s Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien and Récits d’Ellis Island: histoires d’errances et d’espoir, as well as works by Annie Ernaux and Marcel Cohen. The techniques used to produce these works include direct documentation through notation and transcription, copying and pasting, and textual montage. Zenetti discerns in these works an effet de document, which invites the reader to interpret the text as evidentiary and non-imaginary, and an effet de littérarité, where the reader approaches the text aesthetically within a literary tradition. The tension between these two effets leads Zenetti to determine empirically how readers ascertain the genre of factographies. She solicits reader responses from fifty volunteers at the university level (students and instructors), and her analyses of the questionnaires reveal that readers notice a pronounced lack of continuity or intention among textual elements. Readers accustomed to performing traditional explications de texte find factographies difficult to interpret. Zenetti refers to Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades, Stanley Fish’s notion of interpretive communities, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s bricolage to show that readers nevertheless overcome the apparent lack of authorial presence and engage in processes of recombining and reframing textual elements to produce meaning. Unlike the historical avant-garde movements that made use of confrontational tactics to effect political change, factographies engage contemporary politics by re-presenting fragments of language used in various social contexts with minimal authorial modification . The reader must contend with the literal meanings of language in the fragments and engage the world outside the text where these meanings inhere. Despite the apparent neutrality that factographies would seem to exhibit, Zenetti argues that they constitute a new political literature by refusing any totalizing perspective or narrative that would determine the act of interpretation. The realism of factographies lies in the raw data they present and the need of the reader to make sense of the data. Overall this is an excellent monograph that defines an emerging genre, explores its resistance to lyricism, and connects it to other forms of contemporary art that eschew traditional notions of expressive originality and seek instead to bring to readers’ attention instances of concrete language embedded in the world. Hartwick College (NY) Mark Wolff Society and Culture edited by Zakaria Fatih Blanchard, Joël. Louis XI. Paris: Perrin, 2015. ISBN 978-2-262-04104-5. Pp. 371. 24 a. Blanchard’s book attempts a more in-depth look at the personality and politics of the mysterious figure who ruled France from 1461 to 1483,an analysis that goes beyond a recitation of dates and events. The ten chapters approach Louis from different perspectives , for example, his financial and diplomatic policies, his feelings about God and religion,his recourses to arms and to judicial procedure in dealing with antagonists, his choice of associates, his attitude toward the written word, etc. Several insights about the man and ruler emerge from this study, though one often feels lost in a verbal cascade of names and details that might have been set in a clearer context. The reader becomes increasingly aware to what extent Louis was limited in his power to act by the circumstances in which he was confined by his opponents, both foreign (e.g., Edward IV) and domestic (the Duke of Burgundy and other nobles, as well as Louis’s own father and brother). He responded to this situation with a policy of expediency, pragmatism, and opportunism. He was constantly forced to deal with a never-ending series of crises. His administration was thus necessarily reactive rather than proactive. He was never in a position to articulate and put into effect a consistent set of goals, except the preservation and extension of his own power. Many of his troubles came from his famously long-running conflict with his cousin Charles le Téméraire of Burgundy. The two men hated each other and were equally determined to destroy the other. After suffering numerous humiliations, including being held prisoner for ransom at Péronne, Louis finally won out when Charles, ever the victim of his excessive ambition, got killed while storming Nancy in 1477.Although Louis...