The Environment in French and Francophone Film ed. by Jeff Persels (review)

Persels, Jeff, ed. The Environment in French and Francophone Film. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. ISBN 978-90-420-3613-0. Pp. xiv + 154. $56. This volume offers a welcome comparative perspective on contemporary ecocriticism , focusing on the French and Francophone contributions to a field that has traditionally been dominated by Anglo-American theory. Elaborating on research first presented during the thirty-ninth annual French Literature Conference, the authors of this volume apply a wide range of theoretical perspectives to case studies that broadly span both time and space (from early modern France to colonial Cameroun to the whole earth seen “from above”). As Persels explains in his introduction, the volume is meant to interrogate the relationship between humankind and the environment, and to answer Jonathan Bates’s call that we reflect on what it means to dwell with (rather than simply on) the earth. Eco-criticism is thus presented as both a theory and a practice, and some of the essays—such as those by Leon Sachs and Isabelle Delannoy on Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s documentary HOME—even read as a direct call to action. From a theoretical perspective, the two initial essays by Jonathan Krell and Louisa Mackenzie are certainly the most valuable.They provide a critical overview of the field and outline the particular contributions of French and Francophone theory to the study of the environment. They also extend the historical focus of the field as they underscore the philosophical interest of early modern representations of nature. Krell considers Luc Ferry’s critique of Michel Serres’s notion of the natural contract, offering a nuanced analysis of Ferry’s arguments, and ultimately underlining the practical challenges implicit in Serres’s description of nature as a living organism. For her part, Mackenzie follows Bruno Latour and suggests that contemporary theory and practice might be well served by more fluid, non-binary ways of thinking. She also takes the cue from queer theory to theorize hybridity and to develop a more inclusive perspective on nature-culture relations. Above all, these essays demonstrate that the field of eco-criticism is alive with internal debates; it is anything but a monolithic ideology or practice. The rest of the volume offers thematic case studies that exemplify a range of critical practices (from Liliane Toss’s relatively traditional semiotic readings of Plantu’s environmentally-conscious cartoons, to Marie Chantale Mofin Noussi’s postcolonial critique of coffee monoculture and its relationship to cultural homogenization ). Essays by Christophe Ippolito and Walter Putnam analyze the myth-making that underlies the construction of both urban and“natural”landscapes. They describe the many ways in which“Nature”is traversed by socio-political and cultural forces, and as such they deconstruct the category of the “natural.” Finally, essays by Claire Keith and Stéphanie Posthumus reflect on literature’s formal potential to enhance an ecocritical consciousness. This is an important issue also for Delannoy, who underscores the unique value of the humanities in creating new (and hopefully greener) paradigms for thought. We need the resources of fiction, she writes, to imagine and construct 282 FRENCH REVIEW 88.4 Reviews 283 alternative worlds, and this is a powerful and inspiring conclusion for a book of literary and film criticism. College of William & Mary (VA) Giulia Pacini Peters, Rosemary A. Stealing Things: Theft and the Author in Nineteenth-Century France. Lanham: Lexington, 2013. ISBN 978-0-7391-8004-4. Pp. ix + 264. $95. The author traces the shifting representations of theft from Rousseau’s Confessions to the fin de siècle through revisiting works by Balzac, Vidocq, the Comtesse de Ségur, and Zola as well as sociological texts, legal documents and the Code pénal. She argues that this crime, which has been relatively overlooked by critics, constitutes a fundamental element of the nineteenth-century cultural climate in France and provides a powerful tool for reading that climate and, more particularly, attitudes towards ownership and identity. After an introduction in which she supplies contextual background for the ways theft was framed and read by the nineteenth century, Peters devotes the first chapter of her book to Rousseau’s juvenile thefts, including that of the ribbon, and to Balzac’s Code des gens honn...