Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France ed. by David P. LaGuardia, Cathy Yandell (review)

Hardy, Françoise. Avis non autorisés… Paris: Équateurs, 2015. ISBN 978-2-84990396 -4. Pp. 250. 19 a. Since her beginnings as a singer during the early 1960s (Tous les garçons et les filles), Hardy has been a cultural icon in France and other European countries, especially in Germany where she performed free of accent in the language of the country. Slender and long-haired, she also added appearances in movies to her artistic repertoire, particularly in England. In the new millennium she came out with book publications in various literary genres: novel, autobiography, and non-fiction. Her latest book bears an ironic title, as if the author had failed to get authorization to publish her opinion on various controversial subjects. This volume is a collection of opinion pieces on such subjects as medicine, politics, environment, literature, fashion, astrology, and spirituality. One finds bits and pieces of autobiography—always fascinating as the description of facts only the author can verify. It is, therefore, a very subjective book which one can read under various aspects, even as a counterpart to her husband’s flippant self-presentation (Jacques Dutronc’s Pensées et répliques, 2000). The woman whom we learned to know some 50 years ago as the singer of poetic and melancholic chansons presents herself now as a critical observer of government and other institutions . However, it is difficult to identify her as a conservative, despite her criticism of the current French president and her appreciation of his predecessor with whose wife, the singer Carla Bruni, she maintains a friendly relationship. The various subjects the author touches upon also include literature, both English and French. Her interest in modern French classics is selective. Sartre, Camus, Simone de Beauvoir do not mean much to her, but she appreciates Proust, Colette, Céline. The contemporary authors with whom she had personal encounters are Patrick Modiano and Michel Houellebecq. Astrology and spirituality are two subjects which seem to be of special importance to her. The research into these subjects, about which she has published before, indicate the earnestness of this author about the human existence, particularly of aspects which have not yet been sufficiently covered (metaphysics used to be a term for these philosophical activities). It is, however, always interesting that the author also finds time and space to deal with less important issues, such as fashion, television, and Salut les copains. Ocean County College (NJ), emeritus Gert Niers LaGuardia,David P., and CathyYandell,eds.Memory and Community in SixteenthCentury France. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4724-5527-2. Pp. 267. £65. Through the study of a variety of texts, including personal correspondences, memoirs, legal proceedings, pamphlets and poetry, the fourteen essays in this volume 220 FRENCH REVIEW 90.1 Reviews 221 examine the manner in which the “textual remembering” of public acts and practices served a mnemonic function while reinforcing community identities in Renaissance France. These essays indicate that even the most independent writers of this period situated their identity within a community or social group, rather than as a private or transcendent subjectivity. Additionally, as sixteenth-century writers transcribed and re-wrote the significant events of their era, they often defended the positions of particular communities that were in conflict with one another, especially during the Wars of Religion. This volume is divided into four parts: “The Nature of Memory,” “Re-Viewing the Wars of Religion,”“Remembering People and Places,”and“Memory, Identity,Alterity”. The essays focus their analyses on a variety of perspectives including the material specificities of communication in Renaissance France, sixteenth-century French rhetorical practices, and the remembering of critical sixteenth-century French historical events. LaGuardia’s essay, for example, examines the correspondences between Catherine de Médicis and Jeanne d’Albret to reveal the complicated material conditions in which “faithful” scribes and couriers were often called upon to supplement or alter written information, such that even private correspondences were embedded within collective writing practices.Both Dora Polachek and Marian Rothstein examine the manipulation of memories and willful forgetting to reinforce particular images, specifically, Brantôme’s depiction in Dames illustres of Marguerite de Navarre as a defender of Catholicism (Polachek), and Le Roy’s...