La Première Circulation de la ‘Servitude volontaire’ en France et au-delà par John O’Brien et Marc Schachter (review)

This volume presents a major contribution to the study of Étienne de La Boétie’s Servitude volontaire. The chapters, which John O’Brien and Marc Schachter bring together alongside previously unpublished transcriptions of manuscripts of the Servitude volontaire, represent the fruits of the last three decades’ research into the early circulation and reception of this seminal expression of modern political philosophy. In the absence of an authorially approved version of the Servitude volontaire, critical editions (De la Servitude volontaire ou Contr’un, ed. by Malcolm Smith (Geneva: Droz, 1987); De la Servitude volontaire ou Contr’un suivi de sa Réfutation par Henri de Mesmes, ed. by Nadia Gontarbert (Paris: Gallimard, 1993)) have drawn on a narrow textual tradition comprising three early print editions and four manuscripts, with editorial consensus long designating BnF MS fr. 839 (‘De Mesmes’) as the ‘best’ exemplar of La Boétie’s text. In the last thirty years however, no fewer than five previously unknown manuscripts of the Servitude volontaire have surfaced, with important consequences for its textual tradition as well as its historical radiation and reception. This volume is the first to explore the changed landscape of Servitude volontaire scholarship. Part One consists of five chapters (O’Brien, Schachter, Renzo Ragghianti, Jean-Eudes Girot, and Michel Magnien) devoted to the newly discovered manuscripts, followed by three new appraisals of the early modern printed editions of La Boétie’s text: the Reveille-matin des Francois (Jean-Raymond Fanlo); the Vive description de la tyrannie (Jean Balsamo); and the Memoires de l’estat de France (Cécile Huchard). Part Two offers full transcriptions of the newly discovered manuscript versions of the Servitude volontaire: MSS Beale, Folger, Piochet, Pinelli, and Mériadeck. Researchers will benefit from having these previously unpublished and unknown texts gathered in one place. The transcriptions are moreover excellent models for the critical capture of early modern manuscript textuality. Termed ‘semi-diplomatiques’ by the editors (p. 13), one is tempted to call them ‘hybrid’ editions: without any sacrifice to the accessibility of the text, these editions successfully exploit the potential of modern technology for preserving the idiosyncratic mise-en-page of the handwritten copy (the edition of MS Piochet even reproduces an ornate manicule). Indeed, a keen awareness of the early modern material text under-girds all the contributions to this volume, with the chapters devoted to the manuscripts in particular paying close attention to the material context in which the newly discovered copies of the Servitude volontaire were found. Furthermore, the authors stress the inherent instability of La Boétie’s text as it began to circulate, and view its manifestations in terms of the various material, cultural, and socio-political contexts in which the ‘original’ text repeatedly crystallized. The editors also clear up a particular grey area of Servitude volontaire studies once and for all: the date of the treatise’s first publication is unambiguously fixed as 1577 (as opposed to the frequent and mistaken 1576). It remains to be said that the comprehensive index nominarum and the sixteen high-quality full-colour reproductions make this book both a useful research tool for Servitude volontaire scholars and a helpful and much appreciated aid for students of early modern manuscript culture more broadly. An annotated manuscript index of all nine known copies of the Servitude volontaire would, however, have been a welcome addition.