Before Imagination: Embodied Thought from Montaigne to Rousseau (review)

John D. Lyons's brilliant study fills a lacuna in our knowledge of early modern views of the imagination, significantly advancing inquiry in this area. Although the concept of the imagination is said to have emerged with the Enlightenment's emphasis on creativity, Lyons revises this modernist perspective, focusing on the uses of the imagination from Montaigne to Rousseau. His topic is a vast one, and he succeeds admirably in delineating it without sacrificing complexity. From Aristotle's influential definition of phantasia as the link between the senses and judgment, he emphasizes neo-Stoic theories of the imagination and attends to their literary uses in the development of the inner self, devotional practices, pedagogy, and the emotions. This allows for a tightly-knit, compelling argument that renews our interest in the early modern imagination as part of an intricate philosophical tradition and a vital force in the development of the nascent concept of the inner life. Several of Lyons's stimulating ideas and thematic developments are offered in the following summary.

The introduction elegantly clarifies classical theories of the imagination, emphasizing Stoic self-cultivation, a technique or practice using will and judgment to direct the imagination. With the sixteenth-century Stoic revival (chapter 1), Lyons suggests that Montaigne's literary creation of a private retreat, or arrière boutique (back room), in the Essais aimed to give readers mastery over time, place, and, above all, over themselves. Montaigne's cultivation of an inner retreat is often studied in the context of Stoic secular humanism, but Lyons offers a fresh critical perspective, giving the Essais a significant place in the history of devotional literature, notably the pastoral project of his contemporary, François de Sales (chapter 2). Influenced by the will-centered doctrine of the 1547 Council of Trent, de Sales popularized the inner self-cultivation that was a prominent feature of Stoic practice while including women. In his bestselling Introduction à la vie dévote (1608), his devotional practice allowed for the creation of an alternate world, one that encouraged interiority while observing conformity to social obligations. Lyons suggests that de Sales's use of imagination helped promote the model of the royal subject, whose mask in polite society reflected not so much the negative result of courtly oppression as the positive effect of a devotional exercise enabling practitioners to modify their wills and privately pursue the goal of individual freedom. In Pascal's apologetics and metaphysical thought (chapter 3), imagination is seen to play a huge role, prompting a revision of Cartesian philosophy. Pascal's skepticism about the will-directed imagination, his belief that imagination and custom work within to shape our everyday lives in unseen ways, distinguished him from previous thinkers (although, in this reader's opinion, perhaps not Montaigne).

Imagination in secular literature provokes intriguing questions. Madame de Sévigné's Letters (chapter 4) betray anti-Stoic attitudes as she proclaims her weaknesses, preferring the feelings that come from her most passionate attachments. In particular, her discussions of death fascinate readers with their intensity and depth of feeling, prompting Lyons to explore a philosophical dimension in her writing that is made accessible through imagination. In the novel genre (chapter 5), Madame de Scudéry conceives of storytelling as a social practice for developing imagination. Her multilayered Clélie even asks readers to imagine what individual characters are imagining and teaches them how imagination can be used for therapeutic purposes. Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves, on the contrary, is anti-imaginative, depriving its characters of imagination and the liberation it affords from present suffering.

A turning point occurs in the works of Boileau and Fénélon (chapter 6), who present a decisive conceptual shift from the positive use of imagination by the individual to an emphasis on negative and passive attributes. With Rousseau in Emile (chapter 7) imagination is a weakness either to be avoided or exploited by...