Alice Vintenon's far-reaching and ambitious study touches on a number of topics that have come under more intense or renewed scrutiny in recent early modern scholarship, such as questions of mixed genres (and of genre in general), of allegory, of ludic and serious intentionality, and of rhetorical concerns (as in the triptych “fiction, verisimilitude, fact”). The dichotomy of the title, “philosophical fantasy,” sets the tone for the detailed investigations to follow, which focus on classical roots, especially Lucian of Samosatus; on Italian and French writers (Alberti, Ariosto, Folengo; Rabelais, Ronsard, Philippe d'Alcripe); and on early modern and classical (Plato, Aristotle, Horace) theoretical treatises. These succinct indications suffice to show the merits of this book and its appeal to a wide variety of scholars in early modern studies. It is obviously inevitable, even in a massive study such as this, to leave blanks in even the most sweeping of investigations—blanks that some readers would find to be gaping holes. It would have probably strengthened the book's solid thesis even more if more attention had been paid to Lucian's more theoretical writings (Prometheus es or Bis accusatus come to mind as prime examples), which focus on the main concerns of this study, or to Béroalde de Verville, whose Moyen de parvenir is unconvincingly excluded from the study despite what amounts to a crowning achievement of the fantastical dialogue via the shattering of conventional categories. While the critic's reasoning can be accepted, albeit reluctantly, in those cases, the absence of Verville's unmentioned Voyage des Princes fortunés is more difficult to accept, given the text's Lucianesque and Rabelaisian heritage and its status as a model philosophical fantasy. Finally, a more thorough discussion of satire within the context of the Horatian utile dulci mixtum, very much at the heart of the study, could have lent a more thorough background to many of Vintenon's highly engaging observations, in particular with regards to the notions of anti-dogmatism, perplexity, and reader reception. These few points take nothing away from the considerable merits of the study but rather indicate where further engagement with this fascinating topic might extend and complement the rich groundwork provided here.

One of the major strengths of the study is the discussion of fantastical writing in a poetic and rhetorical framework, particularly the widespread categories of historia/argumentum/fabula. Much critical attention has focused on the first two terms, and especially argumentum when it comes to the essential Horatian dichotomy prodesse/delectare. We are shown in a quite convincing fashion that the fabula is far more problematic than is conventionally admitted, which nuances its main purpose of “pure amusement,” and thus aesthetic and intellectual inferiority. Similar work on facetiae has been done very recently, and the supposedly clear line between argumentum and fabula is blurred as a result, extending the early modern predilection for the concept of mixture to further concepts in the domains of rhetoric, epistemology, and hermeneutics. More's Utopia is a good example of the ambiguity that marks the theoretically sound distinction between the two rhetorical categories, an ambiguity that has come to the fore recently and is highlighted in the present study.

What seems at stake in such allegoric-philosophical fantasies, therefore, is the distinction between factual truth and truth of ideas, a dichotomy that is latent throughout Vintenon's work and underscores the inherent problematics of the aforementioned rhetorical categories. Alberti's transgressive fantasy in the Momus; Ariosto's resistance to conventional moralization and allegory (Orlando furioso); Folengo's polemical fantasy (Le maccheronee); Rabelais's play with erudition, parody, the grotesque, and monstrosity; Ronsard's ludic fantasy (Les Saisons); or d'Alcripe's unveiled fabrication of implausibility (La Fabrique véridique) provide detailed case studies of the issues sketched out above, constitute the first systematic examination of this important topic, and open new and fascinating venues for further scholarly exploration.