(Re)lire Lesage éd. par Christelle Bahier-Porte (review)

Reviews 211 to Epstein’s art of “suspension” (54). Particularly revelatory in this painstakingly researched volume is chapter 4, “Brittany, Edge of the Modern World.” Epstein’s film essays on France’s savage coastal fringe presage the vérité techniques and collective authorship of Jean Rouch, as well as the rough location shooting of Italian neorealism. Ultimately,this documentary practice,which culminated in the immersive Le tempestaire (1947), may prove more central to our understanding of French film history than Epstein’s poetico-symbolist narratives.While Wall-Romana downplays the importance of screenwriter/actress/director Marie Epstein’s collaboration with her brother, his assessment of the film philosopher’s broader influence is robust: Deleuze’s “timecrystal ”(179) in Cinema I and II, Jacques Rancière’s account of narrative films as fables “thwarted” by moments of photogénie (182); and Ang Lee’s corporeal flights of wuxia fancy in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (197) owe not a little to the subject of this probing and exacting study. Johns Hopkins University (MD) Derek Schilling Literary History and Criticism edited by Marion Geiger Bahier-Porte, Christelle, éd. (Re)lire Lesage. Saint-Étienne: PU de Saint-Étienne, 2012. ISBN 978-2-86272-619-9. Pp. 224. 28 a. According to the editor’s introductory état présent, this volume typifies a critical trend that coincides with the forthcoming first edition of Lesage’s complete works (9). Whereas Lesage’s diverse oeuvre has suffered by comparison with his celebrated Gil Blas de Santillane (1715–35), these essays strive to place each work in its individual literary context. If Gil Blas receives more attention than Lesage’s comedies, the contributors offer fresh perspectives on such once discounted practices as his literary borrowings and episodic composition. Sylvie de Maussion de Favières-Thuret demonstrates how Don César Ursin (1707), based on a comedy by Calderón, redefines gender roles and foregrounds feminine virtues. Françoise Rubellin suggests that the comedic prologue Les petits-maîtres (1712), reproduced here, advocates poetics for the théâtre de la foire. Jean-Paul Sermain delineates a period poetics uniting the first version of Gil Blas (1715) with novels of writers like Fénelon or Challes: each novelistfisherman draws his story collection from his distinctive reservoir of older materials, but they are linked by a common “filet intellectuel” that reflects on the fishing operation (52). Also addressing the first Gil Blas, Jacques Wagner analyzes the problems its allusive mode of composition posed for academic critics, intuitively drawn to the novel, yet constrained by conventional artistic standards. Considering the novel’s three installments, Zeina Hakim treats Lesage’s inconsistencies as a concerted attempt to undermine convention. Giovanni Dotoli and Marcella Leopizzi detail how Lesage’s most popular “translation” (1717) turns Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato into a novel geared to eighteenth-century tastes. Bahier-Porte’s reading of Le diable boiteux (1726) treats the diabolical protagonist not simply as a reprise of its Spanish model, but as a recapitulation of multiple versions of the marvelous, harnessed to new satirical ends. Jacques Cormier defends Lesage’s evacuation of the metaphysical vision that had animated Aleman’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1641), likening his adaptation (1732) to Voltaire’s treatment of Pascal in his Lettres philosophiques. For Sylvie Ballestra-Puech, the dialogic Journée des Parques, divisée en deux séances (1735) takes Quevedo’s Sueños (1627) as the occasion for playfully reworking the allegorical dream, recasting the fates to figure the novelist. Two synthetic essays conclude the volume. To account for the failure of Lesage’s final work, the Mélange amusant (1743), Henri Duranton surveys Lesage criticism, including a bracing look at the assumptions inherent in the publication of his complete works and a challenge to critics who embrace them. Francis Assaf analyzes depictions of the clergy across seven novels, detecting no sign of anticlericalism , but rather the bemused recognition that priests share the foibles of their lay brethren. This volume’s attention to Lesage’s reworking of his models and to the resulting self-awareness gives it a rare cohesiveness, while Sermain’s contextualization of the writer’s poetics and Duranton’s piquant questioning of critical assumptions are especially...