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“Fragments d’un discours amoureux: les Huguenots et le roi au premier XVIIe siècle”, montre qu’ils ont toujours prêché la soumission, puisque la souveraineté est d’origine divine. Quand ils se sont rebellés—ce qui s’est produit à plusieurs reprises—ils visaient les “mauvais conseillers” et non le roi! Certains historiens ont cru que les journées d’émeutes d’octobre 1789, à l’issue desquelles le roi, sous la pression populaire, a quitté Versailles pour Paris, marquaient la rupture entre le peuple et la royauté. Dans “Les derniers feux de l’amour: les journées d’octobre 1789 revisitées”, Monique Cottret rejette cette idée en expliquant que cette émeute exprimait au contraire l’amour du roi et sa perception, assez traditionnelle, comme père nourricier. Paradoxalement ce roi guillotiné avait été, avant d’être détesté, particulièrement aimé. Dans “De la haine du roi à la communauté des affections: les ressorts d’une politique républicaine selon Saint-Just”, Pierre-Yves Glasser et Anne Quennedey s’intéressent à la vision du souverain chez Saint-Just. Pour celui-ci, le roi doit être haï, non de manière viscérale, mais parce que la raison et la justice l’exigent: tout roi est en effet un usurpateur de la souveraineté qui appartient de droit au peuple. Bien que le volume n’offre pas une présentation méthodique du sujet, abordé selon les intérêts variés des auteurs, cette variété même pourra intéresser un lectorat aux multiples spécialisations. University of North Texas Christophe Chaguinian KAPLAN, ALICE YAEGER. Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis. Chicago: UP of Chicago, 2012. ISBN 9780 -22642-438-5. Pp. 272. $26. Of the three biographical sketches, the most complete is the first. From a childhood spent in an uncertain family environment, Jacqueline Kennedy could construct a quest for the romanticized French roots of the Bouviers. Kaplan finds that her skill in French gave the future First Lady a source of power and prestige, independent of the President’s. On another level, Kaplan’s book is predicated on the idea that for all three of her subjects, a similar type of quest brought them to France in their youth. However, Kaplan can present little direct evidence that the quest was personal. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s (born Bouvier) letters are not in the public domain; Susan Sontag’s journals are fragmentary; Angela Davis, the only surviving person of the trio, refused to be interviewed. Throughout the postwar period, the image of France as a cultural center continued to evolve in the press and the arenas of foreign and domestic affairs. The book opens with Jacqueline Bouvier embarking for a junior year abroad, which would include a voyage to Vienna and, in the summertime, car trips in regions of France where automobiles were then scarce. Sontag’s experience of France started when she traveled from Oxford to visit a friend who was living in Paris. Kaplan tells us Sontag never went back to Oxford, and that she abandoned her studies to enjoy life there. Jacqueline Kennedy’s experience of French is more extensive, and Susan Sontag’s is the least easy to compare with the others, yet Kaplan wants to include both as part of a single category. If Sontag is exceptional in this group, Angela Davis’s experience of a junior year abroad is perhaps the last of a line. Since then, college programs are perhaps less selective and their organization has transformed them into very different experiences. Kaplan herself spent a junior Reviews 1047 year abroad in Bordeaux, a story she told in an earlier book, French Lessons: A Memoir. People who mingled with Jacqueline Kennedy and her classmates—here Kaplan’s account is vague—included young men who were to become famous, such as George Plimpton, founder of the Paris Review. Kaplan discusses the knowledge and French accent that her three subjects managed to acquire. She examines their ability to write in French and to express themselves verbally with the eye and ears of a connoisseur. Kaplan, who recounts her own experience learning to pronounce...

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