Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France by Lewis C. Seifert (review)

essay of 50 pages, “Phraséologie historique du français,” examines the role of certain fixed phrases in Old French, exploring patterns of creation and resistance to change, and assessing the importance of this linguistic phenomenon in the production of literary texts. The essay integrates Buridant’s own contributions to this area of research into a larger “aperçu panoramique” (43) reflecting the work of numerous philologists. Brigitte Callay (Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania) focuses on a problematic verse from the prologue of Guillaume d’Angleterre (“Crestiëns dit, qui dire siaut...”), exploring the rich ambiguities and complexities of the verb, dire, as utilized in other Old French texts. Colette Van CoolputStorms (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) focuses on differences between the Romanz de Dieu et de sa Mere by Herman de Valenciennes, composed toward the end of the twelfth century, and the Biblical passages which Herman recasts in his work, especially their references to weeping. Yasmina Foehr-Janssens (Université de Genève) studies 24 illuminations from the most important manuscripts containing the work of Baudouin de Condé (second half of the thirteenth century), using them to gain insight into the concepts of authorship and authority manifested in the text. Cinzia Pignatelli (Université de Poitiers) analyzes the exempla included in the French translation of the Otia imperiali, as possible evidence supporting the attribution of the translation to Jean d’Antioche. Herman Braet (Université d’Anvers) and Dulce Maria González-Doreste (University of Laguna) trace representations of Dido through medieval French literature and through manuscript illuminations, demonstrating how the Virgilian figure was variously adapted to suit the purpose of the writer or artist. Geert H.M. Claassens (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) extrapolates from Torec, a work written in Middle Dutch, certain broad characteristics of the Arthurian narrative in Old French on which it is based, and which has since disappeared . Remco Sleiderink (Université Libre de Bruxelles) defines the intertextual relationship between Li Romans du Vergier and a song composed by the thirteenth-century trouvère, Gillebert de Berneville. All eight essays are admirably researched and very well documented. This is not a book intended for a general audience, and even readers who are reasonably well acquainted with medieval French literature will not be familiar with most of the texts examined here, many of which are fairly obscure. Academic libraries with extensive holdings in the medieval area, however, may wish to consider purchasing this work. University of North Carolina, Greensboro David A. Fein SEIFERT, LEWIS C. Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France. Ann Arbor: UP of Michigan, 2009. ISBN 978-0-472-05058-1. Pp. 339. $28.95. Since the 1990s, with the seminal work of such scholars as Joan DeJean, Elizabeth Goldsmith, and Faith Beasley, questions related to gender in seventeenth -century culture have been given the critical attention that they deserved. However, most work on gender has focused on women and female subjectivity. In Manning the Margins, Seifert expands the scope of early modern gender studies to include masculinity. Through an examination of civility manuals, salon literature , polemical texts, and narratives about cross-dressing, Seifert highlights the Reviews 807 precariousness of the seventeenth-century masculine subject, which continually needed to be reiterated through relations to other men and to women. Moving from the production of normative masculinities to the production of marginal masculinities, Seifert demonstrates the delicate balancing act male subjects performed to maintain their normative or non-normative subject positions. Part 1 begins with a discussion of honnêteté as “a discourse of masculinity” (22). It focuses on the works of the chevalier de Méré, whose ideal honnête homme must strike a balance between excess of and lack of masculinity, between being a fashionista and being fashionless, between being a brute and a sophisticated man-of-arms. Whereas chapter 1 centers on men’s relations to other men and forms of masculinity, chapter 2 looks at men’s relations to women and femininity , and the dangers this relation presents, notably with respect to effeminacy. Seifert demonstrates that discourses on effeminacy function to monitor the boundaries between men and women and between the masculine and the feminine . Keeping the tensions between different extremes of masculinities and the...