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well as on “Du pédantisme” (I, 25), the author mostly refers to the “Apologie de Raimond Sebond” (II, 12) in his demonstration, which is undoubtedly Montaigne’s most complex essay and fully deserves its elevated position in this study. One wonders, however, whether a larger sampling of essays, such as the inclusion of texts on monstrosity (“D’un enfant monstrueux,”II, 30;“Des boiteux,”III, 11), would not have reinforced the argument considerably. Despite all the interesting interpretations and connections that Foglia establishes in his study, it is surprising to remark the absence of many recent studies that could have helped the author transform his book into a truly outstanding contribution to the issues he is tackling. When it comes to notions such as skepticism and cynicism, one would have expected to find references to MarieLuce Demonet’s À plaisir: sémiotique et scepticisme chez Montaigne (2002), the collective volume L’écriture du scepticisme chez Montaigne (2004; FR 79.2) as well as Michèle Clément’s essential Le cynisme à la Renaissance (2005). Even Terence Cave’s Pré-Histoires I (1999) or Patricia Eichel-Lojkine’s Excentricité et humanisme (2002; FR 78.2) could have added substance and variety to an argument that suffers from the absence of such a large number of recent studies. Moreover, the book could have also used much more careful editing to avoid the inordinate number of typographical errors, the repetition of identical sentences within a paragraph, and the long lists of interrogative sentences at the beginning and sometimes the end of every subchapter. This being said, Foglia’s book remains a valuable introduction to the topic. Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center (NY) Bernd Renner Fournier, Jean-François. Charles Baudelaire: quand le poème rit et sourit. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011. ISBN 978-2-296-56383-4. Pp. 284. 27,50 a. Fournier begins by defining his project in negative terms: he does not attempt to study comic elements within Baudelaire’s oeuvre, but rather to assess every single appearance of the words rire and sourire (together with some related signifiers such as risée, souriant and so on) within Les fleurs du mal, Les épaves, Spleen de Paris, and Amœnitates Belgicæ. There are two introductory chapters: the first explores what Fournier calls the “richesse ontologique, éthique et esthétique” of laughter (15); the second offers a prolonged analysis of Baudelaire’s 1868 essay “De l’essence du rire.” The remainder of the book is split into two sections:“Les sourires”(devoted to the 23 occurrences of sourire in Baudelaire’s poetic works) and “Les rires” (51 occurrences). This might sound as though the reader is in for a dreary slog from one poem to the next. Fournier’s two introductory chapters are indeed dry and theoretical, and require some gumption to get through. But the actual close readings of the individual poems are dazzling, pure pleasure to read. Further, it is absorbing and exciting to follow the thematic links that Fournier draws across several disparate poems. For instance, he characterizes certain smiles in Baudelaire’s oeuvre as an (ultimately impossible) 218 FRENCH REVIEW 87.4 Reviews 219 invitation au voyage: for Fournier, the inviting smile of Leonardo da Vinci’s “anges charmants”in“Les phares”(68) finds echo in the“invitation”of the exotic destinations proposed in “Anywhere Out of the World” (“Batavia te souriait, peut-être?” the narrator asks his own soul, 73), as well as the stationary voyages offered by hallucinogens in “La chambre double” (“un seul objet connu me sourit: la fiole de laudanum,” 78). There are complicated issues of intersubjectivity and solipsism entailed in Baudelairean smiles; as Fournier observes, the narrator/lyrical subject never smiles at another subject (excepting only the“philosophes à quatre pattes”of “Les bons chiens,”112). Laughter, in contrast, can seem to have a more social dimension (for instance, the savagely mocked Belgians collectively laugh at heaven in “La civilisation belge,” 154, while four blasé “vétérans de joie” share a laugh in “Portraits de maîtresses,” 166), though Fournier ultimately characterizes le rire baudelairien not as an opening toward a group, but rather toward “l’abîme intérieur” (250): a...

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