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The first section “The Body” focuses on the ways in which taboo bodies and their secrets are encoded in the texts and their meanings communicated to the reader. Chapter 1 shows how female sexual desire and female sexual pleasure are covertly articulated in Sand’s Indiana and Lélia and in works by Rachilde. Chapter 2 takes up the topic of the diseased female body in Zola’s Lourdes and more briefly in Nana’s disfiguring death (57–58) to illustrate how sick bodies act as metaphors for unspeakable subjects such as female sexuality. While this reading is not new as far as Nana is concerned, is does cast new light on the “problematic sexuality” (57) of the female protagonist of Lourdes. Chapter 3 examines narratives of the Franco-Prussian war including La débacle and tales by Maupassant through the lens of two intersecting taboos: the taboo against separating sex from gender and the taboo of the weakened state of the French nation which for Thompson constitutes an “unspeakable truth” (69).The second section takes up nominally the experience of“The Reader”confronted with unsettling representations of taboo subjects such as horrific bodily violence. The focus in chapter 4 is on texts by Mirbeau and d’Aurevilly and their disrupting effect on the reader. Hugo’s writing of the“monstrous”is developed in chapter 5 through an analysis of Quasimodo and, briefly, Gavroche, Gwynplaine and Dea. Thompson finds that Hugo valorizes the disabled body and encourages the reader to transgress this particular taboo. The final chapter examines Zola’s treatment in Vérité of the two intersecting taboo subjects of child rape and the Dreyfus Affair through the lens of trauma theory. In the conclusion, Thompson argues for the need to overcome the persistent negativity associated with disability and offers a skillful reading of an episode of Lourdes. Although the concept of the taboo occasionally loses focus, the book makes for stimulating reading and Thompson generally succeeds in positioning her contribution within the abundant theoretical and critical literature pertaining to her topics. It is a slim book, however, whose demonstrations often hinge on just a few textual details, and some, specialists of Hugo for instance, may wish for a more developed and contextually embedded analysis. This is a valuable contribution to the growing field of studies investigating the literary body. Colgate University (MI) Bernadette Lintz Tortonese, Paolo. L’homme en action: la représentation littéraire d’Aristote à Zola. Paris: Garnier, 2013. ISBN 978-2-8124-1237-0. Pp. 201. 17 a. Like Schiller who realized that his contemporaries had misunderstood Aristotle, Tortonese sees a disconnect between the work of the Realists and the ideas on which they rely to justify their work. In an attempt to understand “la véritable pensée d’Aristote” (177), Tortonese examines the reception and subsequent modification of the philosopher’s Poetics during three historical periods: Antiquity, Classicism, and Naturalism. Each period constitutes the subject of one of the three main chapters, and 270 FRENCH REVIEW 89.1 Reviews 271 discussion in each chapter is formulated as a set of dichotomies: “Antiquité: imiter ou représenter?”; “Classicisme: dire vrai ou bien dire?”; “Naturalisme: décrire ou raconter?”The first chapter focuses on Aristotle’s reaction to and subsequent rewriting of Plato, the second on Corneille’s interpretation of Aristotle, and the last on Zola’s reconciliation of previous generations’ (often erroneous) interpretations of Aristotle with the ideas of Romanticism. These chapters are bookended by an introduction and conclusion, and the latter is followed by an afterword in which Tortonese portrays Georg Lukács as the last Aristotelian author and Gérard Genette as the last rhetorician. While it is interesting to contemplate the broad range of Aristotle’s influence, for this reader the final section pushes what was already a very broad timespan to unnecessary extremes. However, those seeking a condensed summary of the history of representation from its beginnings through the twentieth century will find Tortonese’s work a useful compendium. In a final note the author indicates that some chapters had previously been published as part of conference proceedings, and this information reveals much about the problematic structure of the book...

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