Le rire à la Renaissance: colloque international de Lille 2003 ed. by Marie-Madeleine Fontaine (review)

purgatory. Chesters qualifies their collections of histoires prodigieuses in terms of “the secular ghost-tale anthology” (116). This designation, however, is misleading, since most of the material included in their respective volumes does not consist of ghost stories, although, as Chesters argues, the place of the ghost stories within these anthologies of histoires prodigieuses is not negligible. In the book’s final section , Chesters examines literary manifestations of ghosts in works by Shakespeare, Rabelais, and Ronsard, among others, to consider such issues as the embodiedness or disembodiedness of ghosts, the ability to do violence unto them, and finally, questions of sexuality. Throughout the book, Chesters draws from ancient and Biblical exempla— such as the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the Old Testament account of Saul and Samuel, and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice—to show how they served as points of departure for sectarian debate and as paradigms for new stories about ghosts. The story Chesters himself tells is one in which ghosts move from the Church or cemetery to the tribunal and domestic space, while the figure of the ghost becomes increasingly autonomous from religious discourse and the Catholic clergy. Initially appearing to facilitate their own transition from purgatory to paradise, ghosts increasingly became involved in the fates and lives of the living, at times punishing the living, at others trying to let them go. Chesters has produced a valuable study of interest not only to scholars of early modern literature and history, but also to folklorists looking for historical background on the ghost story. Wayne State University (MI) Anne E. Duggan FONTAINE, MARIE-MADELEINE, éd. Le rire à la Renaissance: colloque international de Lille 2003. Genève: Droz, 2010. ISBN 978-2-600-01332-1. Pp. 540. 75,90 a. The twenty-six articles of this substantial volume illustrate the renewed scholarly interest in Renaissance humor in all its forms by underscoring its allencompassing impact in various fields such as literature, music, art, the sciences, and religion. As the foreword puts it, the objective was not to establish a theory of Renaissance laughter, which would be virtually impossible in a necessarily heterogeneous collection of articles, but rather to insist on its varietas, its public nature, and its modernity. Not surprisingly, many of the volume’s contributions confirm Rabelais’s prominent role in the matter, retracing his models (in antiquity and medieval theater) as well as his influence well into the nineteenth century (Balzac, Lacroix, Nodier). This is not a study of Rabelaisian laughter, however, as the wide variety of approaches and topics paints as complete a picture of early modern humor, its main representatives, and its indebtedness to classical models as it is possible in a collective volume. In addition to the insightful critical articles, the collection also provides useful modern transcriptions of elusive primary texts such as twenty-six Chansons drolatiques et polyphoniques or eighty-four Demandes joyeuses en forme de quolibets. As its title indicates (“Évidences”), the first section establishes a broad overview over different domains that showcase Renaissance laughter, particularly literature and nineteenth-century interpretations, linguistics, architecture, music, and religion. The second section (“Complexités”) complements these initial studies by looking more closely into specific texts and questions such as the rare musical genre of the 568 FRENCH REVIEW 86.3 ‘fricassée,’ Joubert’s Traité du ris, the tension between the grotesque and the natural in the painting of laughter, laughter of humans and animals, the ambiguity of laughter across cultures, and the nature of laughter in general (Democritus vs. Heraclites; social and well-meaning vs. critical; concrete vs. abstract). Section three touches on a main characteristic of early modern laughter, the use of ‘facetious erudition.’ Yet again the inherent ambiguity of humor proves to be instrumental: in the drawings, paintings, and writings from Da Vinci to Zoroaster, in musical polyphony, in Jean Bouchet’s spiritual and benign humor, in the tension between the sacred and profane description of the Muses, or in the use of alchemy in particular or in the broader scientific data at the basis of Béroalde de Verville’s fiction. Section four finally focuses on the vital importance of the Court for the use and development of...