Espaces, objets du roman au XVIIIe siècle: hommage à Henri Lafon ed. by Jacques Berchtold (review)

son propre sang? Comment se fait-il que l’on n’ait pas retrouvé de sang sous ses ongles? Comment la date de son décès a-t-elle pu être changée dans le dossier par les médecins légistes pour accommoder l’accusation? De nombreuses questions restent sans réponse. Depuis ses débuts, ce fait divers passionne les foules. Que l’on soit convaincu de la culpabilité ou de l’innocence de Raddad, le film (comme le livre) permet de rééquilibrer l’accusation et la défense sur le plan médiatique. Pour qui voudra bien investir un peu de son temps, Omar m’a tuer permet aussi au spectateur de s’interroger sur les institutions nationales, en particulier les pratiques policières et judiciaires d’un système aux valeurs démocratiques connues qui s’affiche souvent comme modèle à l’échelle internationale. Seton Hill University (PA) Michèle Chossat Literary History and Criticism edited by Marion Geiger BERCHTOLD, JACQUES, éd. Espaces, objets du roman au XVIIIe siècle: hommage à Henri Lafon. Paris: Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009. ISBN 978-2-87854-456-5. Pp. 206. 23 a. This volume celebrates Henri Lafon’s contribution to eighteenth-century studies and is the result of a colloquium organized by Jacques Berchtold following Lafon’s untimely death in 2006. The collection of essays is impressive both in its range and in its rigorous consideration and application of Lafon’s methodology to a wide range of texts and approaches. Lafon provided a new way of envisaging material reality through “une poétique de l’objet” (21), and his major works show how the physical universe and relationship to space structures eighteenthcentury fiction. Perhaps Lafon’s most famous formulation, “La poésie vient au roman par les choses” (10), is an extension and elaboration of Eric Auerbach’s idea—which Lafon finds overly reticent—to the eighteenth century. Berchtold’s volume clearly shows the rich and diverse potential of Lafon’s approach. The volume is organized into sections devoted to “Méthodes,” “Objets d’étude,” and “Échanges textuels,” culminating in a set of Lafon’s notes toward a final essay on storms and rescues—a fascinating window into his methodology and thought process—and a bibliography of his works. The first section establishes Lafon’s methodologies from his earliest work in Les décors et les choses dans le roman français du XVIIIe siècle (1992) and Espaces romanesques au XVIIIe siècle (1997), concerns he would continue to elaborate throughout his career. Some examples should make clear the range of works considered: Berchtold’s own chapter considers semiotic proximities in La nouvelle Héloïse; Michel Delon provides an intertextual reading of Lafon’s 1979 novel Crébillon sur Danube, comparing the work to Milan Kundera’s La lenteur, a novel that similarly juxtaposes twentiethcentury characters and an eighteenth-century sense of space; and Erik Leborgne considers Lafon’s Pléiade edition of Jacques le fataliste (2004) through the interplay between public and private spaces in the duels of Jacques’s capitaine. The section “Objets d’étude” contains five essays, all of which are applications of Lafon’s work in Décors and Espaces. René Démoris brings both works to bear on two novels by Mouhy; Jean-Louis Haquette follows Lafon’s method in his consideration of Reviews 939 representations of “le paysage” (89) as a tangible character in the eighteenth-century novel. Nathalie Ferrand considers the idea of “distance” (86) in illustrations of novels by Rétif and Madame de Genlis and a painting by Jean-François de Troy—not only the distances between characters and settings that create the spaces in the image, but also the critical distances between viewer and image; and Christophe Martin considers space in the eighteenth-century novel as material for experimentation of the conscience. Jean-François Perrin proposes a reading of Rousseau’s Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques as if it were a novel, revealing Rousseau’s experience of the modern city as a labyrinth where “les choses échappent aux violences de l’interprétation dans une pure présence capable de combler le moi” (15). The...