Béroalde de Verville (1556–1626) was a French polymath with encyclopedic knowledge covering medicine, mathematical and mechanical instruments, physics, alchemy, optics, clock-making, political theory, theology, philosophy, and the cultivation of silkworms. Living during a period of political and religious strife, he was also a literary genius who, after years of critical neglect, has inspired able critics to take the measure of his accomplishments and to shine a light on his Baroque richness. His life was as tumultuous as his times: he was born in Paris, moved to Geneva, but returned to France; he was a Catholic turned Calvinist who returned to Catholicism (but who may have abjured) as well as a Canon of St. Gatien de Tours. Readers new to Béroalde as well as specialists will greatly profit from this critical edition of his historical novel and encomium of Joan of Arc. The editors base their edition on the text conserved by Harvard's Houghton Library (*FC5 B4589), originally published in 1599 in Paris by Mathieu Guillemot and in Tours by Simon du Molin.

The significance of La Pucelle d'Orléans (1599) and its specific difference from other works of Béroalde is that it is an apologia of the “sexe féminin” (7) written from the angle of rescuing the national heroine from oblivion. The editors insightfully place it at the intersection of diverse contemporary genres such as imaginary voyages, national histories, the querelle des femmes, and Hermetic writings. Indeed, this historical positioning of La Pucelle is also the meeting point of many of Béroalde's works, but it bears the unique stamp of symbolizing moral aspiration and national pride through a woman heroine. The editors provide a cornucopia of information and analysis that can only be summarized in broad lines. Highly symmetrical and vertiginous, the novel circles around the central figure of La Pucelle, but by various mirror effects it disperses her exemplary traits and their opposites through a host of characters. The principal themes are chivalry, moral conduct, ideal and base love, patriotism, and the necessity for a heroine of the people to rouse the monarchy to take up arms against the English. Though the novel's action symmetrically ripples through multiple adventures reflecting its main figure, it also submits its reader to dizzying centrifugal forces such as reversals, multiple, imbricated episodes, jolting surprises, and staggered and shifting temporal displacements, a style the editors describe as ordo artificialis (34). While the action of the novel is principally recounted in prose, the author occasionally inserts neo-Petrarchan poems in which national virtues are reflected by the devotion and sacrifice of lovers. In reading La Pucelle I find a number of paradoxes thrust upon the reader. Anchored in history, the novel is bathed in fantasy; playing on varied and contrasting perspectives, its plot nevertheless appears guided by prophecy, inevitability, and predestination; firmly centered on Joan, it places the heroine in a quest for origins and identity. It is therefore not only an act of conscientious clarification that the editors supply a superb plot summary, index of characters' names, and a treasure store of notes, but also an indication of the efforts required to assimilate Béroalde's overpowering imagination.

The editors well identify two other dimensions of La Pucelle's poetics relating to alchemy and what the French call the genre romanesque. As a novelist, Béroalde follows his contemporary Jacques Amyot by beginning in medias res and heightening suspense, but breaks with him on closure by inventing a partially unreliable narrator and leaving some points unresolved. As the editors observe, Béroalde reveals two types of alchemical voyage: the superior one of pursuing the highest stages of wisdom and the inferior one of using knowledge for cupidity. To distinguish between the two, readers are invited through the eyes of Filion to an insular hermitage called Ile Sympsiquée (“Saint Psyché,” 58) to find this Holy Spirit, anima, or philosopher's stone, whose female principle is supreme knowledge (the Grand Oeuvre).

Characterizing Renaissance and Baroque writings is not only their astonishing variety but also their daunting contrariety. One might contrast La Pucelle with what may be taken as misogyny in Béroalde's Le Moyen de parvenir (1616?), whose likely printer was nevertheless a woman, Anne Sauvage. As the widow of the prestigious printer Mathieu Guillemot, who produced La Pucelle, she successfully took over the reins of the business after his death. Indeed, Anne is representative of a distinct social group of widowed Parisian printers whose fascinating history has been elucidated by Neil Kenny and Janine Lanza.

This critical edition of La Pucelle is a solid contribution to Béroalde studies that complements relatively recent editions of his work. The editors merit praise for achieving high standards of presentation, documentation, and comprehensiveness that I find all the more remarkable given their encyclopedic subject. They fulfill the much needed goal of providing eager readers with a useful modern edition, one moreover that shows Verville to be the author of infinite tomorrows.