This second of a planned three-volume set of studies on French seventeenth-century novels underscores the impressive variety of fictional narratives written during the reign of Louis XIII. The literary importance of this period, which saw the establishment of the Académie française and the controversy over Le Cid, rests not only with the formal development of the epic and theatrical production. Rather, claims Greiner in his preface, the novel, too, was championed by an array of authors, resulting in scores of narratives with widely variant themes and styles. The eighteen uniformly well-researched articles he has assembled go far in justifying this premise. They document examples of classical genres, such as the pastoral, as well as developing ones—the heroic novel, the anti-roman, and autofiction being among the most notable. These studies also properly acknowledge the historical context in which they were written.
Greiner groups the essays into three overarching themes: the romantic novel, the comic narrative, and narrations centered on morality and religion. The result is a more cohesive organization than that provided in Greiner's first volume of essays, Le Roman au temps d'Henri IV et de Marie de Medicis. Each section shares approximately the same number of essays. The essays provide helpful biographical information about the sometimes-neglected authors, resulting in a more nuanced portrait of their literary intent than had been previously thought. Thibault Cabel's study of Malingre's Histoires tragiques de nostre temps of 1635, for instance, presents Malingre, often dismissed as a plagiarist, nonetheless as a historiographer who, in contrast with his contemporaries, chose to present historical chronicles rather than fictionalized narratives with pseudonyms and exotic locales. His cautionary stories tell of recent tales of sedition, rebellion, and, most tellingly, of the fall of ambitious upstarts and faithful attendants alike. Cabel argues persuasively that these stylistically mediocre tales reinforce Richelieu's developing principle of centralized power: any resistance to royal authority will result in punishment and loss.
The collection equally adds to the literary criticism of lesser-known works by prominent authors. Claudine Nédelec concludes that with his Les Aventures du Baron de Faeneste Agrippa d'Aubigné adapts well to this era by revealing a taste for the grotesque in his satiric picaresque novel. Two of the five essays considering the comic novel focus on Sorel's L'Histoire comique de Francion. Anne-Elisabeth Spica argues that this twelve-book franc-roman, while known for its libertine philosophical perspective, reveals an especial interest in the liberation of storytelling. With its sequence of secondary and tertiary narrators, the novel becomes a cascade of storytelling. Anne Boutet draws a clear line of influence between sixteenth-century short stories and Francion's introductory book.
Camille Esmein-Sarrazin demonstrates the immediate influence of d'Urfe's L'Astrée with her descriptive overview of roughly twenty narratives that imitate or continue the story of Celadon and Astrée. Some, represented by Gomberville's La Carithée and Videl's Melante, borrow motifs such as the fontaine de la vérité de l'amour to create new narratives. Others, such as Du Broquart's La Fille d'Astrée, explicitly portray the characters or their children found in L'Astrée. Valérie Wampfler provides an interesting analysis of Peruviana, written in Latin by the intriguing Claude-Barthélemy Morisot. Its portrayal of a political utopia based on social harmony illustrates La Fronde's debate with Richelieu's notions of absolutism and divine right.
The range and specificity of the collection's ancillary materials are particularly noteworthy. While Greiner's initial volume provided a thorough index of names and a comprehensive bibliography, he has expanded these resources to include a thematic index and most notably a chronological listing of 250 narrative prose works published between 1624 and 1643. As this catalogue also includes the prevailing genre of each work—roman pastoral, histoire facétieuse, histoire édifiante, among others—it proves particularly useful to scholars of French narrative prose dating from other periods. The reader comes away convinced that, taken in the aggregate, the highlighted narrative works, either neglected or unknown today, reveal a period of immensely heterodox creativity. This well-conceived volume leaves scholars looking forward to Greiner's final volume of carefully documented and well-argued articles focused on prose works produced in France in the late seventeenth century.
