Les Lettres persanes en leur temps éd. par Philip Stewart (review)

Reviews 235 Stewart, Philip, éd. Les Lettres persanes en leur temps. Paris: Garnier, 2013. ISBN 978-2-8124-1776-4. Pp. 250. 19 a. The title of this volume, a companion to Stewart’s edition of the Lettres persanes, reflects his preference for the 1721 edition over the more widely used posthumous 1758 edition. His foreword succinctly outlines the work’s publishing history and explains that he favors the version available to readers“in its time,”when its impact was most subversive (8). The ensuing essays, however, do not emphasize contemporary controversies; we hear less about Louis XIV, John Law, or religious heterodoxy than about subtler questions of interpretation arising from Montesquieu’s handling of the epistolary genre. Thus, Christophe Martin’s “Usbek in absentia” questions critics’ frequent treatment of the seraglio as a figure for despotism, given that its disintegration coincides with the absence of Usbek the despot. Stewart’s “Les émigrés,” on the other hand, disagrees with the commonplace view of Usbek as open to European ideas, but blind to tyranny at home, describing him as fatalistic about the possibility of reforming the Persian system.If Stewart sees both Usbek and Rica as successful emigrants,Suzanne Pucci focuses on rupture rather than assimilation.In her“Montesquieu poète du départ,” she suggests that the writer’s accounts of wrenching separation from self and surroundings are emblematized by the eunuchs’ mutilation. Mary McAlpen distinguishes Montesquieu’s individualized portraits of Usbek’s five wives from his depiction of Asian women in L’esprit des lois, pointing out that he treats their sexual frustration as due to human nature rather than climate.Although Usbek’s harem is of central concern to many contributors, Catherine Volpilhac-Auger examines the paucity of visual and picturesque elements in the Persians’Parisian scenes and portraits. Myrtille MericamBourdet treats esprit in all its forms as an underlying preoccupation of the Lettres, likening Rica’s observations about French wit to Montesquieu’s treatment of honor in L’esprit des lois. Two especially insightful essays reach wide-ranging conclusions by focusing on a single letter. Frank Salaün demonstrates that Rica’s reaction to Ramus’s sixteenth-century quarrel over the Latin pronunciation of the letter Q (letter 109 in the 1758 numbering) reflects Montesquieu’s broader concern with defining the status of rules, manifested more explicitly in L’esprit des lois.And Jan Herman offers an intriguing analysis of the imbricated oriental narratives in letter 141, discussing both their relationship to the larger harem plot and their implications about the earthly origins of sacred texts. The letter, he suggests, exemplifies a form of “oblique discourse” that enabled writers of the early enlightenment to explore controversial ideas indirectly. Finally, Laetitia Perret’s survey of approaches to Les lettres persanes in school manuals and curricula offers a useful historical perspective, showing how treatments of the work reflect changes in the teaching of literature over two centuries. The essays offer careful and often challenging readings that expand our appreciation of Les lettres persanes. Questioning many of our most commonly accepted ideas about Montesquieu’s text, they demonstrate in their variety and contradictions some of the interpretive conundrums that insure its enduring fascination. Dartmouth College (NH) Kathleen Wine Thiher,Allen. Understanding Marcel Proust. Columbia: UP of South Carolina, 2013. ISBN 978-1-61117-255-3. Pp. xvii + 322. $60. This engaging look at the life and works of Proust highlights the novelist’s interest in religious tropes, especially the biblical allegory of the Fall, and underscores their central role in lending structure and meaning to In Search of Lost Time. Although the anticlerical policies of the Third Republic and his father’s dedication to medicine dominated Proust’s formative years, Thiher draws attention to the young man’s studies in philosophy, which served to undermine his faith in science as the only credible source of knowledge. Readings of Émile Mâle and John Ruskin reinforced Proust’s understanding of religious art and furnished key concepts, such as the notion of artistic transcendence and the transmigration of souls, in the evolution of aesthetics of redemption. Early essays and other writings gain new authority here, thanks to Thiher’s efforts to...