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Printable PDF of Gethner, 156_169

Among the most memorable moments in the plays of Jean Rotrou are the scenes where a character who had earlier died or was believed to be dead unexpectedly returns. In addition to the obvious surprise value of such episodes, the playwright, by imagining what it would feel like to re­turn from the dead, used them to convey a moral and/or spiritual message. The resurrected characters display a greater level of maturity than before and now behave in an exemplary way. In addition, their enhanced moral worth receives the recognition it deserves from the other characters, thus reflecting a shared glorification of the good qualities that the protagonist has already been shown to possess. Moreover, they tend to emerge from the experience with a heightened devotion to religious faith and values.

In Rotrou’s tragicomedies, which furnish nearly all the examples of false death announcements, the resurrection is not literal, because the re­port of the character’s death turns out to have been inaccurate, due to ei­ther error or stratagem on the part of the announcer. Although these an­nouncements were a stock convention in baroque tragicomedy, Rotrou used them more often than anyone else, and in a greater variety of ways.[1] However, most of the critical attention given to this convention has con­cerned either its importance as a plot device (who spreads the false death report, why, and whether or not the announcer believes the news is true; whether the report impacts the dénouement) or its symbolism (most nota­bly, the standard baroque uncertainty about what is real/true/permanent). There has been no general study of how the experience of surviving a false death affects the characters who return to life. I am leaving aside those characters who report their own death or allow a friend to do so on their behalf, and also those who do not learn until later that someone else has reported them as dead; since they know full well that they have not died or lain in a deathlike state, they obviously do not undergo a transformation.[2] Instead, I propose to examine only those characters who emerge from a prolonged fainting spell or coma and have the conviction that they really were dead and have now been resurrected: these occur in tragicomedies (L'Hypocondriaque, La Pèlerine amoureuse, Célie, Dom Lope de Car­done). I also examine one tragedy where a character really dies and is then resurrected (Hercule mourant). In all these cases the characters undergo a transformation, believing that they must henceforth behave in a manner justifying the miracle of their return to life. Significantly, the reawakening is usually not shown on stage (L'Hypocondriaque is the exception), which requires the spectator to evaluate the contrast between their before and after states. Rotrou’s fascination with the resurrection experience can be confirmed by the fact that two of the plays studied here have no direct literary source (L'Hypocondriaque and Dom Lope de Cardone), while in a third case his treatment of the crucial scene differs radically from the source play (La Pèlerine amoureuse).

Since normally the apparent death and resurrection both occur during the course of the play, the contrast between before and after is immedi­ately apparent. The exception is La Pèlerine amoureuse (c. 1632; pub­lished 1637), where the heroine’s coma and reawakening take place sev­eral months prior to the start of the play’s action. In this case the alteration in her character and thinking must be inferred from the narrative of her past adventures that she delivers to her confidant midway through the play. Angélique explains that she succumbed to despair when her beloved Lucidor did not return by the arranged date and she concluded that he had forgotten her. Her mental anguish led to physical illness and eventually to a prolonged fainting spell, and she remained unconscious for so long that she was believed dead. When she recovered, she resolved to travel to Lu­cidor’s home town of Florence to find and confront him, but in order to get her family’s permission to make the journey, she claimed that during her convalescence she had made a vow to go on a pilgrimage in order to give thanks for her recovery. Although Angélique does not realize it, her new role as a representative of religion has effected a genuine transfor­mation in her: she is more self-confident, more willing to assist others, and more concerned about her relationship to God, as shown in her feelings of guilt about using a sacred disguise for a profane purpose. Starting with her opening appearance, she does her best to live up to the standard of saintli­ness people expect from pilgrims. When she is consulted by people along the way about their illnesses or other problems, she proves a sympathetic listener who gives good advice whenever possible and offers her prayers on behalf of those suffering. The play gives the impression that it is in large part because of her sincere religious belief and her benevolence that she receives the reward she has hoped for.

The link between resurrection and religiosity is reinforced by the fact that, when the lovers are finally brought together, Angélique plays two of the standard roles associated with God: sitting in judgment and granting pardon. Since she believes that her success in locating her beloved is part of a divine plan, she feels authorized to make the claim that she has been granted the gift of omniscience in order to serve others:

Le Ciel m’a départi cet heureux privilège
Que je connais les maux, qu’il consent que j’allège,
Il m’inspire à quels gens, je dois vouer mes soins,
Et souvent c’est à ceux que je connais le moins (V.8.1701–04).

She then diagnoses Lucidor’s ailment: infidelity in love, which she labels as “le pire / De ces vices honteux sous qui l’honneur respire” (v. 1709–10), and she prescribes as the cure that he must renounce his new beloved and return to his original one. Misinterpreting his amazement at finding her alive, she launches into a lengthy denunciation of his abandonment and infidelity, though she assures him that her love for him has not dimi­nished despite his misconduct. To demonstrate her sincerity, she declares herself willing to do anything he requests, apart from violate her honor. She even offers up her life in martyrdom: “Passe au dernier effort, teins ces lieux de mon sang,/ Je baiserai la main qui m’ouvrira le flanc” (v. 1763–64). This gratuitous offer may be more than baroque hyperbole, since the willingness of an innocent person to perform self-sacrifice in order to redeem a sinner has unmistakably Christian overtones. Lucidor, ecstatic to be reunited with her, explains how the misunderstanding came about, and all is quickly forgiven. Thanks to the false death convention, Angélique is allowed to give vent to her frustration and anger at the man who has betrayed her, before quickly forgiving him and agreeing to marry him. But that convention also allows her to exhibit the saintly side of her personality, showing that she does really live up to her name. Indeed, her last line during the reconciliation scene (“Et je passe en bonheur les plus rares esprits” [v. 1796]) could be read as meaning, “I am happier than even the angels.” The dénouement thus allows for both forms of dramatic recognition: declaration of true identity (Lucidor at once recognizes the woman he loves, despite her disguise), and acknowledgment of character and/or innocence (Angélique’s exceptionally virtuous nature, which has been refined and manifested through her resurrection experience, is seen and praised by all the other characters). It should be noted that in Rotrou’s source play, Girolamo Bargagli’s La Pellegrina, the recognition element is downplayed to a startling degree: in the final scene the hero speaks to the heroine at great length without realizing who she is and recognizes her only when she shows him a bracelet and then removes her robe and hood. Moreover, the two remain alone on stage until the conclusion, and none of the other characters comes out to laud the pilgrim for her nobility of cha­racter. And Rotrou certainly had no intention of making his heroine declare in her final speech, as does Drusilla in the Italian play, that she is eager to cast off her pilgrim attire now that her pilgrimage is over. Angé­lique maintains a sense of connection with the spiritual realm throughout the finale.

In Célie, ou le Vice-roi de Naples (1644; published 1646), the false death report is far more plausible and occurs during the course of the play: the victim is left for dead after being stabbed by her father (reacting to a false report that she has been unchaste), and her return comes as a surprise to the audience, as well as to the other characters. Célie’s reaction to the shocking series of events, again combining indignation with forgiveness, likewise comes as a surprise since we do not know her very well: she has made only two rather brief appearances in the play prior to this point. However, we are able to form a reasonably clear impression of her pre-resurrection personality: Célie is a typical virtuous heroine, but she is also shrewd and resourceful, and she is not intimidated by men, whether suitors or authority figures. When we first see her, she has her first-ever interview with the male protagonist Alvare, to which she has agreed only after he has sent assurances that his intentions are lawful. During the interview he is extravagant in his protestations of love, whereas she remains level-headed, noting that his uncle, the viceroy, is unlikely to allow his marriage to a woman of small fortune. She hesitates to take the ring he offers, out of concern that this would violate the rules of decorum, and admits her own love for him only in very measured terms. She finally accepts his ring, kisses it, and then returns it to him as a pledge of her devotion. Later, when her maid Lucinde brings her the report that Alvare is really in love with another woman and is planning to marry her that very night (in fact, a deception he has organized in order to mislead his rival), she bitterly com­plains both of the personal betrayal and of the corruption of young men in general, who care only about women with money. When she realizes that her comments have been overheard by her sister, Ismène, she and Lucinde, unwilling to let Ismène in on their secret, have the presence of mind to claim that Célie was merely rehearsing her role in a forthcoming play.

When Célie reappears in the final scene, she has acquired an additional set of personality traits: anger at her persecutors and a demand to have her integrity and virtue publicly recognized. She greets Alvare with the indig­nation and scorn that he deserves, reproaching him for not having believed in her innocence and for having accused her, when he should have de­fended her. The denunciation is mixed with an emphatic declaration of self-worth: she declares Alvare to be her “mortel adversaire” (v. 1657), both because he incited her father to stab her and because he attacked her personal sense of honor:

Je suis noble, Seigneur, et sensible à l’outrage,
Autant qu’il est crédule, autant qu’il est volage,
Et sans être sans cœur et sans ressentiment,
Ne puis souffrir un traître en qualité d’amant ;
Le sein qu’il veut fléchir, saigne encor de son crime. (V.3.1661–65)

When Alvare proposes to make reparation to her honor by killing himself, Célie cleverly deflects this act of despair by declaring that he is too impure to serve as a sacrifice. She then forgives him and, claiming that her anger was merely feigned in order to satisfy the demands of her honor, agrees to accept him, not as a lover, but as a husband. She even forgives the treache­rous Flaminie, since he is soon to become her brother-in-law, and she joins her approval to Flaminie’s match with her sister, already endorsed by both her father and the viceroy. Although Célie never invokes divine provi­dence (that will be done by the viceroy in his two final speeches), she clearly subscribes to the principle that her near-death experience has brought her closer to God, whose behavior she must strive to emulate. Thus, Célie, like Angélique in the earlier play, marks her return to life by playing several roles normally held by God (and unusual for a young wo­man): judge and agent of forgiveness. But she also assumes a third role with a religious association, namely, sacrificial victim: she points out that her own blood has been shed on account of a sinful man, whom she must now redeem. Again, as in the case of Angélique, the heroine is allowed to assume these religious roles only for a short time, after which she is rein­tegrated into the standard social order. In the process, of course, she is granted an earthly reward, in that she gets to marry the man she loves, who also happens to be wealthy and well connected.

In Rotrou’s very first play, L’Hypocondriaque, ou le Mort amoureux (1628; published 1631), the character who undergoes a resurrection is not the person who is falsely reported to be dead, but rather the recipient of the report, who comes to believe that he is dead; hence, the play’s para­doxical subtitle. This startling turn of events is brought about thanks to the machinations of a woman whose affection the hero spurns: Cloridan, falsely informed that his beloved Perside is dead, becomes distraught and soon comes to believe that he too is in the underworld. However, whereas Perside, the character announced as dead, does not learn of this until Act V and can hardly be said to undergo any change as a result (although, to be sure, she is extremely gracious in forgiving those who have wronged her), Cloridan undergoes a full-fledged maturation experience. He begins the play as a faithful lover and heroic young man, though overly impetu­ous and prone to angry outbursts. When he is told that Perside is dead, his grief soon exceeds the bounds of propriety: he denounces the gods for their impotence in failing to prevent the premature death of his beloved, and then declares that he will punish them by destroying their temples and massacring their worshippers (III.2.705–16). These blasphemous utter­ances, unworthy of a virtuous hero, lead to equally irrational denunciations of the sun, which he threatens with the loss of its light and power, and to the wish that night, rather than day, should rule the world. His mad scenes, which fill up much of the second half of the play, not only allow Rotrou to explore attitudes toward death and dying, but also let us witness the pro­tagonist’s gradual transformation into a model of humility and self-understanding. As madness overcomes him, Cloridan becomes reconciled with the gods and with the inevitability of death. He now praises the gods for taking pity on him and letting him rejoin Perside in a realm of purity. To be sure, he is still delusional, imagining that the real people around him are fellow inhabitants of the underworld; thus, he mistakes Cléonice for Perside, and Cléonice’s father for a rival. Rotrou adds a further layer of irony to the presentation of madness by having Cloridan imagine that everyone who speaks to him is mad, whereas he alone is sane. By the start of Act V Cloridan, who has been moved from a bedroom into a tomb, has attained a state of poetic serenity. He discourses on the ephemeral nature of earthly life and on the superior wisdom available to the disembodied spirits residing in the next world. His conversations become somewhat more rational and he stops mislabeling the people he sees; indeed, when Perside arrives he recognizes her at once. However, the revelation that the report of Perside’s death was a deception fails to bring Cloridan back to his right mind; his reaction is that all the other people he sees are really dead, like himself. After he is finally cured of his madness, he becomes gentle and humble, thanking everyone for restoring his sanity and totally overlooking the initial deception that was played on him. In fact, he recognizes that only artifice was capable of effecting the necessary cure:

Ma raison voit enfin la fourbe découverte :
On me rend la santé sous le front de ma perte :
Refuser du secours c’était me secourir,
Et vous me guérissez par la peur de mourir.
Je ne peux reconnaître un si pieux office,
Qu’offrant un cœur tout nu, pour ce doux artifice (V.6.2089–94).

The offer of his heart (a synecdoche for his whole person) parallels the willingness to undergo martyrdom in the plays discussed earlier, thus again linking resurrection to self-sacrifice. Cloridan, now able to reco­gnize piety in others and to realize that God is judging him, concludes his declaration of humility by stating that all he will remember of this episode will be the shame of having briefly lost his reason. The overpowering ex­perience of afterlife, even though it happened only in a deluded state, has produced what we are to suppose is a permanent transformation of his personality and thinking. In this play, the final recognition is primarily internal: Cloridan comes to understand that he is still alive, that his friends and his beloved genuinely care about him, that he has made an unworthy spectacle of himself, and that now he has a responsibility to live in accor­dance with the higher level of self-knowledge and wisdom that he has attained.

An even more unusual resurrection experience occurs in Rotrou’s final play, Dom Lope de Cardone (1649; published posthumously in 1652). This episode differs in many crucial ways from the norm for false death announcements in Rotrou’s tragicomedies: the character believed to be dead is the antagonist, not the male or female protagonist; the victim is guilty of the crime of which he is accused, rather than innocent; there is uncertainty at the end as to whether or not he will recover; and the audi­ence does not get to see him after he has regained consciousness. Since the wounds are inflicted in a duel with an invincible warrior (the title character), Dom Sanche believes that he is dying, and this casts a shadow over the play’s otherwise happy ending. (In Célie the final act makes it clear that the heroine’s wound was not fatal; her father was too elderly and distraught to inflict serious damage.) Nonetheless, the transformation of the reawakened character is even more profound than what we find in the plays previously discussed, in that an excessively unruly and self-centered young man begins to act responsibly and altruistically.

Sanche is one of the more extreme examples of the fiery and impetu­ous young Spanish aristocrat. Brave to the point of foolhardiness, he con­stantly places himself in unnecessarily perilous situations. Unduly quick to take offense and to draw his sword, he attacks a stranger in the dark under the window of his beloved Théodore. When he discovers that the man he fought with was his best friend Lope, who must therefore be his rival in love, he demands to fight a formal duel over Théodore. Although Lope tries to calm him down by assuring him of his abiding friendship, Sanche insists. Later, when Théodore, who has been granted permission to choose between her suitors, does not announce her decision instantly, it is again the impatient Sanche who demands the resumption of their duel, even though the king has ordered the two young generals not to fight over her again. His arguments border on the subversive, as he questions whether kings necessarily expect their decrees to be obeyed and wonders whether the present king would dare to execute the generals on whom the security of his realm now depends. Since such a challenge to absolutist ideology cannot be allowed to triumph in the work of a politically conservative au­thor like Rotrou, the audience expects him to be ultimately defeated.

However, once Sanche has apparently been mortally wounded, he at­tains the rationality and generosity that he has hitherto lacked. To be sure, he remains offstage, and we only hear his words paraphrased by his father, but it is clear that he takes full responsibility for transgressing the royal order and, having heard that the king has sentenced the victorious Lope to death for disobedience, genuinely wants to see his rival’s life spared:

Mon Fils percé de coups aux abois de la mort
Pour le justifier fait un dernier effort ;

Et ne saurait mourir avecque l’infamie
De laisser choir sans crime une tête ennemie. (V.4.1686–89)

All we get is four lines, but it is clear that a moral conversion has taken place, in which a character who once valued his own honor at the expense of everyone else’s finally comes to put the interests of others ahead of his own. Ultimately, the king is persuaded by his son to pardon the duelists, and medical assistance is dispatched to Sanche, which may or may not arrive too late. The recognition that accompanies this dénouement is a combination of self-knowledge with acknowledgment of royal authority: heroes are unquestionably needed by the state, but they must also know their place within it. In the play’s final moments Lope pledges allegiance to absolutist rule, and Sanche, if he recovers, will have to do likewise.

In the preceding examples, all of them in tragicomedies, resurrection is metaphorical, since the character’s death turns out to be a false death. In tragedies, where the deaths are real and thus irreversible, resurrection re­quires a genuine miracle. The sole case where Rotrou places a resurrection in a tragedy is the conclusion of Hercule mourant (1634; published 1636), his first work in that genre and one of the very earliest French tragedies that can be labeled classical. The title character does in fact die (his pro­longed agony is shown on stage, though not his immolation), and his res­urrection is an apotheosis: he descends from the skies in a flying machine to deliver a final message to friends and family on earth. The transfor­mation here is more complex than usual in that Hercule, son of the god Jupiter and a mortal woman, has a dual nature.

Much of the plot derives from the fact that the protagonist fails to un­derstand that duality. Although, starting from his opening speech, Hercule feels frustrated at his failure to gain the recognition from the gods that he has earned through his superhuman exploits, he fails to understand that first he must be purged of all his mortal impurities. That is a lengthy pro­cess because Hercule’s two natures are starkly contrasting: the divine is impressively noble while the mortal is despicable. As a demigod, he is extraordinarily courageous and self-reliant, with an intense desire to pro­mote peace and stability and to punish criminality. But as a mortal, he embodies many vices: arrogance, tyranny, vanity, egotism, jealousy, vin­dictiveness, excessive fondness for women. Even as he prepares to mount his funeral pyre, Hercule commits an act of shocking injustice by con­demning his rival, Arcas, to a horrible death in the presence of the woman they both love, Iole. Countermanding this unjust decree will be one of the purposes of his return to earth, as Hercule publicly acknowledges that his recent conduct was unbecoming for a god:

Admis dans le céleste rang,
Je fais à la pitié céder la jalousie,
Ma soif éteinte d’ambroisie,
Ne vous demande plus de sang. (V.4.1451–54)

Significantly, the bulk of Hercule’s speech is devoted to the welfare of others: he orders Arcas freed and allows him and Iole to wed, and he con­soles his grieving mother, Alcmène, whom he praises for her constant love and devotion. To be sure, the final section of the speech is a self-glorification, in which he orders the inhabitants of that land to build altars to his glory. But it is also true that as a god with benevolent intentions, he is now entitled to such forms of worship. Moreover, the object of celebration will be only the admirable portion of his record. Hercule’s resurrection marks a more extreme conversion than is the case in any of the tragicomedies, because the moral transformation requires the shedding of serious flaws and because the martyrdom is literally carried out (Her­cule’s self-immolation both kills him physically and purges him spiri­tually). Once again the character returning to life exercises the functions of sitting in judgment and of pardoning, but in this exceptional case Hercule becomes, not merely a temporary surrogate for God, but an actual partici­pant in divinity.[3]

The differences between Hercule mourant and the other plays dis­cussed here can lead us to wonder how Rotrou understood, in general, the differences between the genres of tragedy and tragicomedy. The dissimi­larities on the level of plot resolution are obvious: in tragicomedies the characters survive, the obstacles are external, and one could well imagine that additional obstacles might arise in the future, whereas in tragedies the protagonists really die, the obstacles are directly linked to their character, and their deaths mark a definitive resolution. But in both genres resur­rected characters experience a genuine maturation, which leads them to endorse a providential interpretation of events: they believe, or come to believe, that it is the forces of purpose and morality, rather than those of caprice (blind fate) that direct human affairs. On the other hand, the fact that Rotrou chose only one tragic plot with a resurrection, and that even in that play the other main character who dies is not resurrected and her end is fully tragic, calls the providential view into question. The gods have indeed intervened, but not all the deserving characters are rescued. Still, the transformation that the resurrected characters undergo in both genres has the same three levels: psychological (they acknowledge and transcend their negative feelings), ethical (they reach a state of increased goodness, which involves granting pardon to others), and religious (they feel a greater closeness to God and a responsibility to live up to what they per­ceive as divinely-set standards).

Rotrou’s originality in his treatment of resurrected characters becomes apparent when contrasted with the manner in which similar situations are handled by some of his principal rivals, none of whom chose to link resur­rection to internal transformation. Pierre Corneille, who had little use for false deaths, used the convention only in his very first play, the comedy Mélite (1629–30; published 1633). The title character faints upon hearing herself falsely accused of infidelity and is believed to be dead. Her favored suitor, Tircis, upon hearing of her apparent death, faints as well and is likewise assumed to have died. What stands out in Corneille’s presentation of the resurrections, which are not shown on stage, is that the two young people are not affected in the slightest by their experience. Instead, they calmly carry on as if the fainting had never occurred: Tircis asks for­giveness of Mélite for having given credence to forged letters, she pardons him, and they resolve to forget their past sorrows and give themselves over to their mutual love. The only character who does undergo a trans­formation is the culprit Eraste, who goes mad when he learns the fatal effect that his forged letters have produced and who, upon recovering his reason, reforms and asks pardon of the young lovers whom he has wronged.

François Tristan L’Hermite, who likewise used the false death con­vention only once, followed Corneille’s example. In his lone tragicomedy, La Folie du sage (1644; published 1645), the resurrected character again simply picks up where she had left off. In this play the assumption that the character has really died is more believable than in Mélite: Rosélie tries to commit suicide by drinking poison in order to avoid an unwanted marriage to the king. When it turns out that the flask contained merely a sleeping potion and she is successfully revived, she immediately resolves to try suicide again, this time using the more reliable method of a dagger. But she is persuaded to delay this action, and eventually the king relents. The character who undergoes a significant transformation is Rosélie’s father, the philosopher and scientist Ariste, who goes mad upon learning of the death of his only child. But since, unlike Eraste, he is a virtuous man and a totally innocent party, he is allowed to merely regain his reason with no lasting consequences.

The playwright who shows the most interest in the convention after Rotrou is Jean Mairet. Once again, the resurrected characters experience no transformation and simply resume their thoughts and plans from be­fore, but in his two pastoral tragicomedies, Sylvie and Silvanire, Mairet shows the awakenings on stage, though he does so primarily to have an occasion for elaborate spectacle. In the earlier play (1626–28; published 1628) the false deaths are part of a magic spell: the two lovers are put into a prolonged coma from which they awaken briefly once a day but at dif­ferent times, so that each believes that the other is genuinely dead. The audience gets to witness each lover reviving, mourning the death of the other at great length, and then falling back into unconsciousness. But what the audience would have found most exciting is the prelude to the defini­tive reawakening: a knight errant fights against the demons who maintain the magic charm and finally ends it by destroying an enchanted mirror. The on-stage awakening is noteworthy only in that Thélame has initial difficulty in accepting the fact that he is not really dead, whereas Sylvie quickly figures out the situation. As for Silvanire (1628–29; published 1631), the heroine, whose coma was likewise induced by magical means, also awakens on stage. Although at first she is confused and feels unsure whether she is really dead or alive, within twenty lines her mind has cleared. Again there is no transformation, since she calmly continues to reject her unwanted suitor and to maintain faith with the other suitor whose affection she returns. However, the awakening is overshadowed by the exciting events that precede and follow it, all of which are shown on stage. The unwanted suitor Tirinte, believing Silvanire to be dead, pursues the magician Alcidor, whom he accuses of having killed her, and Alcidor manages to escape by commandeering an empty boat; after Tirinte calms down, the two men lift the lid off the heroine’s tomb so that the magician can apply the antidote; finally, when Silvanire continues to rebuff Tirinte, he tries to abduct her by force, but her beloved Aglante, who has resolved to commit suicide over her tomb, arrives just in time to save her. The ex­ternal action and special effects fix the audience’s attention, but no inner change takes place.

The fact that Rotrou overtly and consistently linked resurrection and transformation fits with the prevalence of religious vocabulary and themes in his corpus. Whether he viewed spiritual regeneration as part of a per­sonal religious vision or merely as a convenient dramatic convention (and critics continue to argue about what Rotrou’s religious beliefs really were), the return to life is perceived by the characters themselves in spir­itual terms, and this adds an extra dimension of emotional intensity to plots otherwise dominated by earthly concerns.[4] It also appeals to the audi­ence’s sense of fairness by making us feel that the ordeal that the charac­ters have undergone makes them more deserving of the happy ending that the playwright has granted them.

Oklahoma State University

Works Cited

Baby, Hélène. La Tragi-comédie de Corneille à Quinault. Paris: Klincksieck, 2001.

Gethner, Perry. “A Baroque Guilt Trip: False Death Announcements in Rotrou." Cahiers du dix-septième8(2001), 58–67.

Heulot-Petit, Françoise and Lise Michel, eds. Reconnaissance sur la scène française XVII^e-XXI^e siècle. Artois: Presses de l’Université, 2009.

Morel, Jacques. Rotrou dramaturge de l’ambiguïté. Paris: Klincksieck, 2002; first edition 1968.

Nelson, Robert J. Immanence and Transcendence: The Theater of Jean Rotrou (1609–1650). Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969.

Orlando, Francesco. Rotrou alla tragicommedia all tragedia. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1963.

Rotrou, Jean de. Théâtre complet. Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1998–. 14 volumes projected.

Stegmann, André. L’Héroïsme cornélien, genèse et signification. Paris: Armand Colin, 1968, 2 vols.

Van Baelen, Jacqueline. Rotrou, le héros tragique et la révolte. Paris: Nizet, 1965.

Vuillemin, Jean-Claude. Baroquisme et théâtralité: le théâtre de Jean Rotrou. Tübingen: Biblio 17, 1994.

Watts, Derek A. “Rotrou’s Problematical Tragedies.” In Form and Mean­ing: Aesthetic Coherence in Seventeenth-Century French Drama: Studies Presented to Harry Barnwell, ed. William D. Howarth, Ian McFarlane and Margaret McGowan (Amersham: Avebury, 1982), 75–91.

Printable PDF of Pagett, 140–155

Molière’s successors were quick to fill the void left on the French stage after his death. This generation of comic playwrights, which includes Noël Hauteroche, Jacques Robbe, Jean Donneau de Visé, Thomas Cor­neille, Edmé Boursault and Charles Chevillet (known as Champmeslé), had written under the shadow of the great comic author in his last years and flourished after 1673. Their theatrical production, while relatively little studied today, offers a fascinating window into representations of Parisian life in the 1670s. While the 1690s would be dominated by the works of Dancourt and Regnard, the late 1670s and the 1680s were a time of renewal in French comic theater, as, along with imitations of previous generations, new representations of Parisian life filled the stage.

One of the ways that these plays showed modern life was through their representations of money. The 1660s, with such plays as L’Avare, had marked a turning point on the French stage as theatrical representations of money became increasingly detailed, with paper money shown on the stage and lending transactions portrayed and explained to the audience. In the following decade, there was an expansion in the complexity and impli­cations of how financial transactions were shown. The vilification and purge of the financial class during the four years of the 1661 Chamber of Justice, which saw the scapegoating of finance minister Nicolas Fouquet, was in the recent past, and France was engaged on a path toward mercan­tilism and colonial exchange like never before. In the years following Mo­lière’s comedies of manners, a number of plays examined money and fi­nance in a new light. They portrayed a variety of forms of both paper and coin money, and showed the increasing importance of financial knowledge in a world where paper instruments were becoming more common.

Along with portraying these financial developments, comedies in the 1680s showed a departure from traditional ideas of economic and social value. Champmeslé’s 1682 Le Parisien is a particularly good example of this, showing a consumer credit system that dominates over traditional sources of value, such as land, in the context of the newly reinvigorated Indies trade. In it, we see how theater, as a shared space of representation and of mutually recognized artifice, was an ideal venue for imagining the changing roles of social status, displaying a difference between how value appeared and how it was assessed. The analysis in this essay first exam­ines how the play exploits a “monetary imaginary” composed of coins and financial instruments. The next section concentrates on the ways in which the play ties this use of money to a framework of colonial trade. The study concludes by looking at how the play puts into question the traditional association of nobility with value.

What we know about the production history of Le Parisien reveals a work that was moderately successful and met with favorable critical re­ception. The five-act verse comedy was first performed on February 7, 1682 by the newly founded Comédie-Française at the Hôtel Guénuégaud, andwas produced on alternating nights with a tragedy, Zélonide, Prin­cesse de Sparte, for the next month.^[1] In his preface to the printed edition, Champmeslé writes that the play’s fifteen or sixteen performances were successful beyond his expectations. It would go on to have 57 perfor­mances by 1724 (Lancaster, History 4:490). In comparison, L’Avare, while not meeting with initial success, had 47 performances in its first three years (Lancaster, History 3:718). The Mercure Galant also gave a brief but glowing review of the play, where Donneau de Visé wrote that “les plus portez au chagrin se divertiroient à cette Piece. On y rit par tout; & il serait mal aisé de ramasser dans un seul Ouvrage un plus grand nombre de choses plaisantes” (173–74). Part of this success, as Donneau de Visé hints, may have come from the fact that Molière’s widow, Ar­mande Béjart—by then known as Madame Guérin—played a starring role as Elmire, a character who only speaks Italian (likely a nod to the com­peting troupe, the Comédie-Italienne).[2]

Another reason for its success was related to genre. At the end of the century, actors were favoring comedy because it was more profitable—so much so that they were ordered by the King in 1712 to perform a tragedy for every comedy that they produced (Lancaster, Sunset 27). As the sev­enteenth century drew to a close, money had become an increasingly im­portant element of French comedic theatrical production, which itself was more popular than ever before. More comedies than ever were produced during the end of reign years: the period between 1635–1672 counted 223 comedies, making up 38 percent of theatrical production, while the 316 comedies produced between 1680–1715 accounted for 77 percent of all French plays during that time (Biet 16; Spielmann 125). About a third of comedies between 1661 and 1715 feature money as either a prop or as a principal plot element, in the form of coins, transactions, and paper money.^[3] Comedy, with its portrayals of daily life, embraced these represen­tations in a way that tragedy, although it was considered more prestigious, could not (Lancaster, Sunset 144). The different forms of money that comedy showed were more than mere props. Their evolving forms and characteristics were often instrumental in the action of plays, and were sometimes the subject of them as well.

In this popular genre, a certain way of representing money developed over the century, what can be referred to as the “monetary imaginary,” encompassing an idea of money that is constructed on the stage. There, a distinction is made between money as an object (the gold or silver to which value can become attached) and money as an abstract idea (de­tached from any particular material manifestation such as coin). Theater is particularly suited to this display because of its unique role as both a vis­ual and literary representation of the world. Although there is no evidence to demonstrate a causal relationship between theatrical representations of money and subsequent developments in monetary policy or practice, plays from this period show a rich monetary imaginary of theater that developed in parallel with the monetary practices of the time. This is similar to how Philippe Desan defines the economic imaginary in dual terms, as “à la fois économie de l’imaginaire et imagination économique” (15). The latter term, referring to how economy was imagined, corresponds to the visual and dramatic use of money on the stage by French playwrights.

The increase in representations of money on the stage came at the same time as theater audiences were becoming an interactive and de­manding public, as Jeffrey Ravel has shown. Theater was a place for visu­ally examining ideas of exchange in front of a participatory audience. Theater and money share a similar lexical field—a pièce de monnaie, and a pièce de théâtre; billets, paper tickets, buy entrance to a play, and billets also refer to forms of paper money such as bills of exchange, bearer notes, and lottery tickets. Furthermore, from the Middle Ages on, the market­place was a privileged location for theatrical performances. When theater left the church, it went to the market, the fundamental place of exchange, and remained there into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with foire theater. The market was a place of transformation. In his study of theater, Jean Duvignaud looks to the market sale as the “magical” opera­tion of wheat turning to gold, and draws a comparison between this trans­formation of goods into money and that of actors who became characters in the plays performed in the very same market spaces (78). While the Hôtel Guénuégaud, where Le Parisien was performed, was not a market, the theater building did provide a space for representing similar types of transfigurations in a city that by this time functioned as a center both of financial operations and their representations. As Paris was increasingly the financial and commercial center of France, the title of Champmeslé’s play is well-suited.

Inscribed in this context of seventeenth-century money plays set in the city, Le Parisien crystallizes particularly well the conflict between noble and bourgeois approaches to money. The play examines two forms of cur­rency—one social, that of titular nobility, and the other financial, that of gold—at a time when both were undergoing significant revaluation. The play is at the nexus of a colonial economy on the rise and a domestic aris­tocratic economy in decline. Its success may also have been related to the social context it evoked. It shows merchant bourgeois characters falling prey to their enterprising servants, whose financial skill arouses anxieties over social class and value. Displaying both nobility and money on the stage, Le Parisien shows the contrast between traditional sources of value and new ones. The play is a testament to a material world where money was taking on new roles, shapes, and national importance. It takes the spectator from the scribblings of notaries, to stashes of coins hidden away in a mattress, to jewels and silver coming from the Indies trade. It illus­trates the conflict between bourgeois saving and noble spending, and the increasing difficulty of being able to tell who is noble and who is not. Crucially, the play displays how this financial world of credit and negotia­tion is best navigated by those who are initiated in its ways. Here, the play departs from the somewhat more subtle pedagogical role of comedy that Pierre Force describes in Molière ou le Prix des choses, where “le rôle éducatif de la comédie consiste donc à révéler, tout en les cachant, les règles de l’échange” (Force 253). Le Parisien, like other late seventeenth-century money plays, depicts a new economy in a way that explains it more explicitly to the spectator. It reflects an important intermediate step in theatrical depictions of money between coin and paper, years before Turcaret, Lesage’s 1709 masterful illustration of rags-to-riches financial ascent. Already in 1682, Le Parisien shows a rich economy of paper money, as well as a servant—like Lesage’s valet, named Frontin—who takes center stage because of his financial knowledge. Le Parisien’s treatment of financial value falls along three main axes: how it treats coin and paper money, how it presents international and colonial trade, and how it shows and calls into question the values of nobility.

Viewed as a money play, Le Parisien is at a compelling point in the history of such representations: it is in between the world of gold and that of paper, and presents a world of coins, paper, and precious objects. The plot is premised on Clitandre’s search for specie (coin money, as opposed to notes), which he needs to impress his love interest. Most of the action of Le Parisien consists of Clitandre and his valet Frontin coming up with clever ways to take money from Clitandre’s father Jérome. Jérome, on the other hand, spends the play trying to come out ahead in his own enter­prises: in marrying his son to the daughter of a wealthy trader, and in a property dispute with a neighbor at his country residence. The plot, like that of his Rue Saint-Denys from the same year, turns upon questions of inheritance.^[4]

While the inheritance is a concern for the future, coins drive the im­mediate economy in Le Parisien, turning up in unusual places, and alt­hough Clitandre, Jérome, and Frontin all search for them, the play con­signs them to an old economic system. This is particularly visible in one scene where Clitandre’s valet, Frontin, asks his master’s mother if she has any money hidden away, telling her it is to purchase a captain’s commis­sion in the army for her son, so as to keep him out of danger (2.9). She reveals a hidden treasure trove, uncovering sixty-six double louis, which were wrapped in a package hidden in her mattress, and which are de­scribed as being “tous batans neufs.” Behind a pile of old books, she has hidden another one hundred louis in a purse. Finally, she reveals 124 “demy Loüis” that she has stashed away in an old sock behind a painting (3.14).

Spectators would also have been aware that Madame Jérome has kept these coins for a considerable period of time: double louis coins, described as looking brand new, were last minted in 1652, thirty years before the play’s production. The double louis, weighing 13.5 grams, would have been by far the most valuable gold coin in circulation at the time. Since coins made of the soft metal were easily subject to wearing down with use, their “newness” is a sign that they have not been touched. Yet we also know that the coins are at least newer than 1640, the date when the louis d’or was first minted. This hoard contrasts with what several characters in the play argue should be a credit economy. Jérome, upon discovering the coins, takes the money and criticizes his wife for having hidden it away. He argues that he could have been putting it to good use earning interest:

Oüy, cet argent m’eust fait du profit davantage.       
Qui le laisse moisir n’en connoist pas l’usage;          
Si ce trésor caché depuis le temps qu’il l’est,
Eust esté dans mes mains, un honneste intérest        
L’eust fait doubler, tripler, en moins de rien. (4.1)

In this key phrase, Jérome distinguishes his knowledge of money from that of his wife, “qui le laisse moisir.”Here he affirms his financial skill—that of placing money in wise investments or lending it. Jérome argues that his wife should have instead loaned the money out: where it would be safe, the transaction recorded on paper, and earning interest. Yet even though he is quick to criticize hoarding, Jérome, too, keeps coins hidden at home, in a strongbox that Frontin and Clitandre break into. Their on-stage attack with files, hammers, and picks on what should be the most secure place in the home, the “Dortoir aux Pistoles,” lends further credibility to the mes­sage that money is safest when it is circulating in the form of loans (4.5).

Those loans would have to be recorded on paper, another bearer of value that has an important role in the play. When Jérome encounters Crispin dressed in black, he says he looks like a “Porteur de Billets mortu­aires,” referring to the printed small pieces of paper that were used to an­nounce deaths. Indeed, paper in the play is used to mediate several aspects of life and death. Jérome seems to think he can control it. He states that his friend the commissaire can write the report of his son’s death later, confi­dent that because of their personal relationship, he will manipulate the document (“s’il en est besoin il l’antidatera” [4.6]). Moreover, a marriage contract that from the first act positions the play in a network of written obligations and penalties is only effective so long as it is in physical exist­ence; it has a hefty dédit or forfeiture clause whose power is merely as strong as the integrity of the notary who keeps the sole copy. Jérome’s efforts to destroy this contract fail, however. He asks the notary, who is his wife’s brother, to burn it. His brother-in-law refuses with horror, calling the act of trying to corrupt a notary “blasphemy” (3.2). The integrity of a notary is portrayed as being stronger than familial ties: for Jérome (and perhaps for the spectator) this is a lesson about the strength of paper. Nota­ries held the contracts for private loans between individuals. As paper contracts with financial implications are portrayed in such a manner, the reliability of paper money is emphasized.

Precious objects also prove to be reliable bearers of value in the play. In one particular case, the play teaches a lesson on negotiating the value of objects, and on the kind of economic knowledge that is necessary to par­ticipate in this kind of transaction. Clitandre’s love interest, Elmire, offers him a diamond ring to help him with his money problems, a ring which he uses to snare Jérome into a trap. Her servant, Lysette, convinces Jérome that she needs to sell the ring to provide her mistress funds to flee town. She explains that her plan is to bring it to a goldsmith, and to sell it to the first person who will buy it. Jérome, the son of a jeweler, thinks he recog­nizes an opportunity for a good deal. When Lysette mentions the price she would like to get for the diamond―four or five hundred écus, half the price that she knows it is worth―Jérome bites. The stage direction before his line, “bas,” indicates that his thought process is made explicit to the audience:

JÉROME bas. Quatre ou cinq cens Ecus! Il en vaut mille & plus,   
Achetons-le. (5.4)

As Jérome prepares to count the money out to Lysette (driving a hard bar­gain, he agrees to pay 400 écus, the lowest amount she mentioned), El­mire’s brother Géraste, disguised as a police official, bursts into the room claiming to be looking for a murderer he says is Lysette. She claims that the money Jérome is counting is her payment for performing the murder, and so it becomes evidence of a crime. As the son of a jeweler, Jérome had the technical knowledge to perform a jewelry appraisal, but his as­sessment ability has met its limits: he has walked into a setup, and stands falsely accused of contract murder. This scene shows the characteristic fungibility of coin money, pointing to its ambiguous and impersonal na­ture, and its capacity to be used for anything. The more traditional and personal bearer of value, the diamond ring, will be later instantly recogni­zed by Elmire’s father, Des Moulins, as that of his daughter. This recogni­tion makes it possible for the play to end in a reconciliation that allows for the prospect of a happy marriage.

But the search for another kind of diamond provides a backdrop for the play. Behind all of these exchanges of objects and coins, the context of international trade, and in particular the Indies trade, remains in the back­ground. The importance of navigating these various economies is espe­cially true in the play’s examination of overseas ventures. While Frontin, a servant, is charged with negotiating the domestic financial system, Jérome wants his son to learn about international commerce. He signed a contract agreeing to wed Clitandre to the daughter of a man engaged in the Indies trade, whom he describes as being a “bon Bourgeois, / Au trafic étranger instruit dés son jeune âge” (1.8). Jérome encourages his son to leave France to trade overseas, arguing that Paris is no longer a place to get rich as it once was:

Abandonnez la France, aussi bien ce Païs
N’est plus pour s’enrichir ce qu’il estoit jadis.
Des procez épineux, la chicanne est bannie,
La foy dans le commerce est par tout rétablie,
La guerre est declarée aux pâles Usuriers,
La Finance n’est plus en pillage aux Fermiers,
Le Sort d’intelligence avec ses Economes,
N’y fait plus qu’à pas lents la fortune des Hommes,
Et comme au seul mérite il attache son choix,
Dans tout un siecle à peine en éleve-t-il trois.
Chez un Peuple plus brute, où la simple ignorance,
Au milieu des trésors, languit dans l’indigence,
Allez, mon Fils, allez par des soins diligens,
Profitant de l’erreur, où sont ces bonnes Gens,
Vous ouvrir un chemin, aux fortunes heureuses,
Remporter de chez eux des Perles prétieuses,
Des Diamans de prix, des Rubis de valeur,
Et de l’or, des Mortels le vray chasse-douleur (2.2).

This long exhortation in favor of searching for value abroad deserves a closer look. France is presented as a country where it was once possible to get rich, but no longer is. The methods Jérome decries having passed into disuse are less than reputable: first, he bemoans the passing of useless trials or chicannes (of the sort he himself is involved in with his neighbor). “Faith in commerce is reestablished,” he declares, likely a reference to the 1673 Code Savary which regulated commercial operations in France. Jacques Savary’s contribution to French commercial law established basic principles of accounting and inventory keeping that companies were ex­pected to uphold; it also provided for an overhaul of the means for settling commercial disputes precisely of the kind Jérome himself seems to have benefited from in the past. Jérome speaks of “war” declared against “pale usurers,” an allusion to Jewish moneylenders. He also refers to the cessa­tion of the “pillage” of Finance by tax farmers, likely a reference to the state’s consolidation of tax farms over the previous two years.^[5]

His appeal that Clitandre travel to the Indies evokes a fantastical no­tion of riches: while the Spanish, English, Dutch, and Portuguese had been engaged in significant New World trade for decades, the French got off to a slow start. Jérome’s discourse reflects a sort of vague monetary dream: diamonds, rubies, pearls, and gold. This is a far cry from silver, which was the predominant actual source of wealth that the Spanish had been bring­ing back from America. Jérome assures Clitandre that his future father-in-law will be able to teach him all of the tricks of the “commerces secrets” (2.2). He further encourages his son to read the works of travel writers in order to understand the customs of the different nations with whom he could be trading, recommending by name François Bernier, whose Mé­moires sur l’empire du Grand Mogol was published in 1671, and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, whose book relating travels in Turkey, Persia, and the Indies came out in 1676 (2.3).

In the monetary world portrayed in this play, knowledge of how the system works is key to being able to profit from it. By invoking the major influx of precious metals from the Indies trade, the play evokes a transat­lantic silver transfer that was finally beginning to become a reality for the French, whose commercial ventures towards the Indies started to increase significantly in the 1680s (Goubert 198–203). In particular, on January 6, 1682 (just one month before the performance of Le Parisien), the Com­pagnie des Indes lost its monopoly on the Indies trade by royal decree, allowing private traders to use space on the company’s ships if they paid the freight (Sottas 72).^[6] The discourse Jérome employs to convince Clitan­dre to go abroad for the Indies trade is a strong exhortation of the value of colonial commerce. He positions this trade as the replacement for the easy enrichment possible in previous decades in France that was available to tax farmers who “pillaged” state finances, or that of usury. (In the late 1710s, it was this promise of New World wealth that would result in the Mississippi Bubble, as the stock price of the company that was tied to the French national bank continued to rise uncontrollably based on inflated hopes of potential trading gains.) The play's colonial imaginary is rein­forced by the lamentations of Clitandre’s mother:

Mon fils, qui m’est si cher, l’enlever de la sorte,
Pour l’envoïer mourir chez les Topinambours?
Avant que cela soit, on tranchera mes jours. (1.8)

Madame Jérome’s New World allusion is to one of the first areas France tried to colonize, known as France Antarctique. This was France’s failed 1560 venture, located in modern-day Brazil, described by André Thevet in his 1572 Cosmographie universelle, by Jean de Léry in his 1578 Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, and alluded to by Michel de Mon­taigne in Des Cannibales. Thus, just like her monetary references to old coins, her colonial references date far in the past. The search for value abroad, as depicted here, is strikingly unspecific and reflects an antiquated conception of colonial trade.The play is nevertheless thus inscribed in a larger context of international trade as a substitute for a flagging domestic economy. While the nobility were not normally allowed to engage in busi­ness, an exception was made for international commerce. Here, aspiring to international trade blurs the lines between nobility and bourgeoisie.

Perhaps the most fundamentally charged axis of Le Parisien is its in­sistence on the importance of money over nobility. From the first act, the play revolves around Clitandre’s search for cash. Previously, merchants and usurers had lent to Clitandre with his father’s imminent death and therefore inheritance in mind. As opposed to that represented in Dom Juan, for example, Clitandre’s borrowing is predicated upon his likelihood to repay, not upon any noble name. As the play begins, Frontin tells him that his usual sources are dry: his creditors, worried by Jérome’s longev­ity, are doubtful that they will be repaid any time soon. Frontin thus has to turn to new sources. Le Parisien shows a consumer credit system where the information that determines lending decisions involves a mix of quali­tative and quantitative elements. Both Clitandre and his father turn to Frontin to navigate this world.

Despite his valet’s warnings of the increasing difficulty he has in finding credit, Clitandre agrees to finance a large purchase of soldiers’ uniforms, to help get his love interest’s brother out of trouble. When Gé­raste, a captain in the army, says he needs 100 pistoles, Clitandre sends Frontin to get them, telling him to be creative: “Cherche, imagine, in­vente” (1.6). Frontin exclaims in frustration that all of the usual sources of ready cash (“le Marchand, l’Usurier, le Notaire”) will no longer lend without a guarantee (1.7). At this point, all credit based on name alone (that is to say, Jérome’s reputation) has been exhausted. This situation represents a key turning point. The traditional credit market, where lend­ing was based on interpersonal relations, has come to an end. Laurence Fontaine writes in this sense of a “marché des obligations sociales et du pouvoir sur les hommes” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that existed in lieu of a credit market that rationally priced loans based on time and risk (216). The use of Frontin as an intermediary renders Clitandre’s borrowing more impersonal: lenders make their decisions based on their assessment of the chances that Clitandre and his family will repay, and with no consideration of any social obligation.

The play shows characters entering into a world of financial transac­tions that were traditionally viewed unfavorably. Géraste’s purchase of used clothes from another captain who was otherwise going to sell them to a used clothing dealer (a “fripier”) is one example of this kind of transaction. Géraste purchases the clothes for a bit more than the clothes dealer was going to offer, but the very action brings him into a realm of undesirable transactions. He is, as Lysette, says, “un peu moins Juif” than the clothing reseller—but a little nonetheless, the phrase implies; it is a compelling blurring of the lines between a bourgeois effort to make money and the activity typically associated with Jews in Paris at the time (1.6).^[7] Géraste’s entry into this world of transactions signals a descent into the “unnatural” gains that were the focus of traditional prohibitions of usury.

The play also portrays cases where characters come into close contact with financial instruments and dealings with merchants, usurers, and nota­ries; characters are shown haggling and attempting to pull revenue out of any possible source. The methods by which Frontin ultimately gets money are personal: he obtains it directly from Clitandre’s father, telling Jérome that his son has been arrested and that the guards will release him in ex­change for a small bribe. When faced with this situation, Jérome, like his son, depends on Frontin’s mastery of money. He wants to negotiate the sum down by two-thirds, relying upon Frontin’s abilities: “Frontin, par ton adresse / Ne m’en pourrait-on point diminuer deux tiers?” (1.9). When Frontin explains that this reduction in price will be impossible, Jérome agrees to pay the full amount. By asking Frontin to carry out negotiations, Jérome considers his servant’s financial skill to be a resource for him, as the employer, to exploit. He does not realize that it is precisely this knowledge that Frontin will continually use to gain power over his master. In his plea to Jérome for money to bribe the guards, Frontin also negoti­ates to his own benefit, starting first by asking for an undetermined sum—“quelques Pistoles”—then revealing his real request, for one hundred louis (1.9). Clitandre’s mother also trusts in, and falls victim to, Frontin’s finan­cial skill. When Jérome, exasperated by his son’s antics, agrees with Frontin’s assessment that he should be sent to the army, it is Frontin who makes the convincing argument to Madame Jérome that, provided with the appropriate money for bribes, he can navigate this other sort of economy, the corrupt military system, to obtain a promotion for her son in order to ensure he will be out of harm’s way. This division of labor, with the valet engaged in domestic negotiations, and the master hoping to engage in in­ternational trade, mirrors the traditional image of the noble who is allowed to engage in overseas commerce, but forbidden to exercise a trade at home.

By invoking the one branch of the commercial trade in which the no­bility could acceptably participate, the play invites an interrogation of the mechanisms that forbade them to engage in merchant activity. Although money circulates throughout the play, those who have the specialized knowledge to find it are not noble. Clitandre’s future father-in-law, who masters the Indies trade, is a “bon Bourgeois”; Frontin, who navigates the credit market, and makes cash come out of the most unlikely hiding places, is a servant; and Jérome, who built his fortune himself, is not noble either (indeed, he is described in the character list as a “Bourgeois de Paris”). While the theatrical dream of getting rich from the Indies trade is not new—it was comically alluded to in Scarron’s Héritier ridicule (1648), for example—here it takes on a more credible face. Similarly the role of a servant with “adresse” had been seen before (La Flèche in L’Avare comes to mind); but in this play the role of the servant begins to overtake that of the master. Jérome pushes his son into business because his skills are no longer effective in a changing world, where a new kind of knowledge is needed. Indeed Jérome, who clearly enjoyed financial suc­cess in the past, is often shown failing in his own negotiations in the play: first in trying to get Frontin to negotiate a lower bribe to get his son out of jail; later, in another of Frontin’s schemes, when he mistakenly thinks he is tricking a young woman out of a diamond ring; and he fails in his ef­forts to try to get out of the marriage contract he arranged for his son, which carries a 12,000 franc dédit, or cancellation penalty. Jérome seems powerless in the face of a new financial world of paper and international trade, where servants outwit their masters. His control of coin and credit is what had previously defined him as a financial man, and his own son’s efforts to steal coins from him weaken his grip, symbolically and literally, on his money and his power. Just as nobles needed to look to new sources of wealth, so does this bourgeois.

Clitandre’s constant spending is a heavy weight for his father to bear, since the legacy he wants for his son takes the form of both monetary as­sets and financial knowledge, two things Jérome clearly values more than noble status. When, in a ruse to break Clitandre’s arranged marriage, Lysette and Frontin disguise themselves as a pregnant countess and a squire, ready to “retirer son Fils des bras de la Roture,” to “parfumer sa Race,” Jérome assesses her value quickly, and dismisses her, saying that she is literally worthless: “Non, vous ne valez rien” (2.5). For Jérome, real value, which is to say monetary value, is all that counts. The play con­stantly indicts nobility and shows a search for real value—real coins—in a context where credit is increasingly unavailable without proof. Nobility by itself ceases to have currency in Le Parisien.

The connection between family values and monetary value appears in very clear terms when Jérome hears a false report of Clitandre’s death. He vows to exact his revenge, yet he speaks in financial terms, directly equating his son’s spilled blood to monetary compensation. He tells Fron­tin that he will make his son’s killer pay, quite literally: “Il n’aura pas pour rien versé le sang d’un Fils, / Et chaque goute au moins me vaudra cent Loüis” (4.6). Jérome devotes more attention to the formalities of this com­plaint than to any urge to physically track the killer down. The “illustre vengeance” he promises is primarily the bureaucratic and administrative procedure involved in obtaining his blood money, as his first thought is to go to his friend the Commissaire to lodge a complaint (4.3). The explicit connection between blood and money here echoes the connection Clitan­dre makes between the death of his father and the arrival of his inher­itance. Even Jérome’s desire to sell his wife’s house, worth at least 20,000 francs by her estimation, reveals a desire to convert a traditional seat of value—land and a house in the country—into money. To do so, he has goaded his neighbor into purchasing the house, having filed a lawsuit ac­cusing him of encroaching on the property with trees he planted, and hoping to encourage the neighbor to buy the house in order to make the suit go away.

In its focus on negotiation, Le Parisien also explicitly comments on changing values, particularly those of integrity and sincerity. Frontin, complimenting Lysette on her skills at duping people for money, remarks that women have become skilled tricksters in a century “où regne l’artifice” (5.1). It is this “artificial” character of the time period that the play examines most convincingly. At one point, Crispin confesses to Jérome that he was not a witness to Clitandre’s death, but admits his true nature: “Je suis un Fourbe” (4.8). This confession, more than just a state­ment of guilt, is a statement of identity. Clitandre’s silence serves as an admission to Jérome that he is a trickster too, having played a role in fak­ing his own death to steal his father’s money. Clitandre thus goes beyond being a spendthrift and into territory that is criminal, and profoundly dam­aging to the bourgeois image that Jérome maintains. Interestingly, Clitan­dre never takes the opportunity to explain himself fully once his father discovers him, calling him a “fripon.” He does not speak a word to his father for the rest of the play: it is as if he is still dead to him. The play’s ending leaves open the possibility for reconciliation but does not guarantee it; the couples, we imagine, could get married but Jérome is interested only in his cassette, a concern that he mentions in his last line in the play (in an echo of L’Avare). He is anxious to hold onto something of real value in the face of artificial substitutes; his embrace of coin money, and desire to keep it safe, are a reaction to instability (and a rather reactionary one at that: even though he knows he should be lending it out, he does not).

By examining the implications of finding new sources of money, the role of skilled mediators and masters of money, and the importance of money over nobility, Le Parisien focuses on the instability of traditional sources of value and shows a world in transition. Money is key to this change, both as something to be accumulated, and as something which itself is changing in form, from the crisply minted coins hidden away in the Jérome household to the potential gains of the Indies trade. Through­out, the power of paper as a bearer of value is established as resistant to attempts to tamper with it, and increasingly appears as trustworthy and reliable. Le Parisien uses money to explore the impact of a new world where there are new sources of value to be exploited. This process in turn calls into question the traditional system of socioeconomic value in the country. The old merchant class is representing as adapting to a new soci­oeconomic order, where money is acquired differently and where nobility no longer has the same value. By insisting on the importance of making money circulate, of finding new sources of money, and of the role of skilled non-noble mediators and masters of money, Le Parisien serves as an important transition between the world of Harpagon, Molière’s secre­tive bourgeois moneylender, and that of the title character of Turcaret, the shameless financier who started his own career as a servant. Far more than just using money as a reality effect, Le Parisien explores the circulation of money, and in so doing examines the evolution of tensions between class and wealth, and between what is earned, what is inherited, and ultimately what and how things are valued. An example of one of the many plays from these years that focus on money, Le Parisien uniquely displays both the search for value abroad, and the mortgage of traditional bearers of va­lue, such as land and houses. By emphasizing the increasing importance of financial and commercial knowledge in a society in flux, it gives an in­sightful look at how economic and social value was being re-imagined on the stage.

University of Pennsylvania

Works Cited

Biet, Christian. Droit et littérature sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002. Print.

Chevillet, Charles [Champmeslé, pseud.]. Le Parisien, comédie. Paris: Jean Ribou, 1683. Gallica. Web. 4 April 2013.

Cornette, Joël. Chronique du règne de Louis XIV. Paris: SEDES, 1997. Print.

Desan, Philippe. L’Imaginaire économique de la Renaissance. Mont-de-Marsan: Editions InterUniversitaires, 1993. Print.

Donneau de Visé, Jean. Mercure Galant. Lyon: Thomas Amaulry. February 1682. Google Books. Web. 4 April 2013.

Duvignaud, Jean. Sociologie du théâtre : essai sur les ombres collectives. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965. Print.

Fontaine, Laurence. “Relations de crédit et surendettement en France : XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles.” In Des personnes aux institutions: Réseaux et culture du crédit du XVIe au XXe siècle en Europe. Actes du colloque international centenaire des FUCAM. (Mons, 14–16 novembre 1996), edited by Laurence Fontaine, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and Paul Servais, 206–219. Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia Bruylant, 1997. Print.

Force, Pierre. Molière ou le Prix des choses : Morale, économie et comédie.Paris: Nathan, 1994. Print.

Furetière, Antoine. Dictionnaire universel, contenant généralement tous les mots françois . . . The Hague: Arnout & Reinier Leers, 1690. Google Books. Web. 4 April 2013.

Goubert, Pierre. Louis XIV et vingt millions de français. Rev. ed. Paris: Fayard, 1991. Print.

Lancaster, Henry Carrington. A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore:JHUP, 1924–42. Reprint, 1966. Print.

Privitera, Joseph. Charles Chevillet de Champmeslé: Actor and Dramatist, 1642–1701. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1938. Print.

Ravel, Jeffrey. The Contested Parterre: Public Theater and French Politi­cal Culture, 1680 1791. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Print.

Sottas, Jules. Histoire de la Compagnie royale des Indes Orientales : 1664–1719. Paris: Plon Nourrit, 1905. Print.

Spielmann, Guy. Le Jeu de l’ordre et du chaos. Comédie et pouvoirs à la fin de règne, 1673 1715. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002. Print.

Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste. Les six voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier : Ecuyer baron d'Aubonne, qu'il a fait en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes. Paris: Gervais Clouzier et Claude Barbin,1676. Gallica. Web. 4 April 2013.

Printable PDF of Welch, 121–139

In one of the more awe-struck passages of Alexandre-Olivier Exquemelin’s Histoire des aventuriers, the narrator suggests that the kings of France and England might succeed in wresting the Caribbean islands away from the Spanish if only they employed some pirates to do their fighting for them. He writes:

Un seul de ces hommes vaut mieux que dix des plus vaillants de l’Europe. Comme ils sont braves, déterminés et intrépides, il n’y a ni fatigues ni dangers qui les arrêtent dans leurs courses; et dans les combats ils ne songent qu’aux ennemis et à la victoire. (175)

In the next sentence, though, the narrator admits that pirates might not make such reliable defenders of the empire after all. Although they may exhibit bravery and single-mindedness, “tout cela pourtant [est] dans l’espoir du gain, et jamais en vue de la gloire. Ils n’ont point de pays cer­tain, leur patrie est partout où ils trouvent de quoi s’enrichir” (175). This passage neatly illustrates the two-sided nature of the pirate as represented in late seventeenth-century travel and adventure literature. His strength and courage in battle resembled an ideal, chivalric form of heroism. The fact that it was motivated by the pursuit of worldly riches rather than fame or glory, however, made his valiance seem more criminal than virtuous.

Some of this ambivalence surrounding late seventeenth-century depic­tions of Caribbean piracy stems from the larger “crisis” of heroism in that period. Scholars have suggested that the literary pirates evoke a traditional form of aristocratic heroism made anachronistic by absolutism. In her analysis of British pirate stories, for example, Erin Skye Mackie argues that the outlaws “nostalgically figure a type of personal sovereignty oper­ating above the law” (12). At a time when British nobles were losing power to an increasingly centralized government, pirates represented a fantasy of individual autonomy and resistance to the state. Doris Garraway similarly notes that in Exquemelin’s work, “pirates deliberately seized power and glory through behaviors that mimicked older forms of aristo­cratic violence, warfare, and privilege” (112). Pirates’ resemblance to no­ble heroes of old allows readers to view them in a romanticized light, in spite of their moral flaws. In her brief analysis of Exquemelin’s charac­terization of Captain Grammont, for instance, Sylvie Requemora-Gros observes that he benefits from an “aristocratisation” of the pirate in earlier, fictional representations (457). She notes that, in spite of his moral flaws (cruelty, debauchery, impiety), Grammont’s heroic virtues such as gener­osity and bravery transform him into an alluring, almost mythic figure (457).[1] This is also what connects the early modern pirate figure to his nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary descendants. As Margaret Co­hen has shown, the moral and social transgressions of modern literary pi­rates are often depicted as sublime: “Byron would recognize the kinship between pirates and more elevated strivings of the modern spirit when he dignified them to embody the existentialist pursuit of freedom in the Ro­mantic gentrification of the work of the sea” (113). For both early modern and modern readers, the main attraction of the pirate figure derives from the way he epitomizes a degree of absolute autonomy and individual sov­ereignty only available to an outlaw.

In wholeheartedly embracing the romanticized view of pirates as em­bodiments of pure freedom, though, scholars have tended to neglect a se­cond dimension of their morally ambiguous status, namely their connec­tion to materialism. Piles of coins, jewels, and assorted booty serve as the alluring backdrop for many descriptions of pirate culture. In Gomber­ville’s Polexandre (1637), for example, the scene in which the novel’s protagonist befriends the pirate king Bajazet takes place in a cove com­pared to a “magasin public” on account of its stores of exotic treasure (Venetian glass, Persian carpets) that are minutely catalogued by the nar­rator (I: 175–80). Such descriptive scenes appeal to the readers’ own fas­cination with worldly goods at the same time as they metonymically sig­nify the role of wealth as the primary motivating force in pirates’ lives.

The pirate’s single-minded pursuit of riches makes this figure a pro­ductive site for analyzing contemporary notions of the honorableness of commercial endeavors. As portrayed in literature, unashamedly individu­alistic, treasure-seeking pirates represent the inverse of the period’s domi­nant attitude toward commerce. As historians from Henry C. Clark to Anoush Terjanian have shown, seventeenth-century French political theo­rists struggled to reconcile traditional notions of virtue and concepts of loyalty with the empire’s dependence on mercantile ventures. In his 1646 tract Le Commerce honorable, for example, Jean Eon, père Mathias de Saint-Jean, hypothesized that the French were “plus picqués d’honneur que de profit” (200). For that reason, Frenchmen had to be coaxed into participating in commercial endeavors by convincing them that it was honorable and good for the state.[2] This position is reflected in the lan­guage of the founding documents of France’s trading companies, such as François Charpentier’s 1665 Discours d’un fidèle sujet au roi, touchant l’établissement d’une compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales, in which he asserted that the commercial venture was inspired by a “love of the public good” (Clark 42).

Pirate narratives complicate this view that commerce is only valuable when performed for the glory of the state.[3] Instead, they expose a pro­found ambivalence about individualistic materialism. On one hand, these exciting, often sensationally violent narratives glamorize the lives of “ad­venturers” who reject the bonds of law, country, and family to chase after treasure. On the other hand, they depict their pirate heroes as corrupt, if not perverse, for their choice to renounce normal social values for the sake of profit. Through their presentation of lives governed by the proto-capi­talist logic of investment—the weighing of risk versus reward—these texts reflect on how commerce challenges more traditional ways of theorizing value, especially the value of life.

This essay examines this ambivalence in two French-language narra­tives about Caribbean piracy: the anonymous, clandestinely published Nouvelles de l’Amérique ou le Mercure amériquain(1678) and the first French edition of Exquemelin’s Histoire des aventuriers (1686). The works’ publication history suggest that their subject struck a chord with French and other European readers: Exquemelin’s work saw three French editions between 1686 and 1699 (possibly including a counterfeit one) as well as translations into Spanish, English, and German. The Nouvelles were hurried to press without royal approval (Ouellet and Villiers 33–4). In fact, these texts emerged in the context of a small flurry of representa­tions about Caribbean piracy that hit the French publishing scene in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Although most depictions of pirate society appeared in works of descriptive travel literature such as those by Dutertre, Rochefort, Raveneau de Lussan, and Labat,[4] the more complex narratives contained in Nouvelles and Exquemelin’s Histoire offer a deeper reflection on the confrontation of traditional and commercial val­ues in the pirate Caribbean. I wish to argue that the narrative pattern of adventure in these works—repeated cycles of risk and reward, loss and profit, fortune and misfortune—mirrors the logic of investment that un­derpinned commercial ventures in the early modern Atlantic. In these ta­les, life itself often serves as the stake that characters venture in hopes of future gain. By placing life and health in the same narrative equation as material riches, the stories reflect on the way a commercially driven soci­ety might alter the perception of life’s value.

Assessing Risk and Reward in Nouvelles de l’Amérique

Long before the late seventeenth-century spike in publications about Atlantic piracy, French readers were of course accustomed to consuming stories that featured “bandits of the sea.” Mediterranean corsaires served as agents of misfortune in countless romances, kidnapping maidens, sepa­rating lovers, providing the necessary obstacles to delay the foregone con­clusion of “happily ever after.” As Sylvie Requemora-Gros aptly puts it, in these tales “le pirate a la même fonction initiatique que la tempête: mettre le héros à l’épreuve de l’adversité” (461). The Caribbean flibustiers de­picted in Les Nouvelles de l’Amérique ou Le Mercure amériquain refer­ence this older narrative tradition. They appear not as full-fledged charac­ters in their own right, but rather as narrative actors who imperil—and occasionally help—the protagonists. As plot devices, they serve both to test the heroes’ mettle and to inject a measure of (pleasurable) unpredicta­bility into the unfolding of the tales. Consequently, the pirates in these stories do indeed function in the same way as the storms, shipwrecks, pe­riods of enslavement, encounters with sharks and crocodiles, and other misfortunes that the Spanish and French protagonists must endure.

On account of this reliance on chance misfortune to drive the plot, the three tales contained in Nouvelles de l’Amérique might have struck their first readers as hopelessly outmoded, opportunistic transpositions of ro­mance clichés from a traditional Mediterranean setting to the exciting, exotic backdrop of the Caribbean and South America. As John Lyons has demonstrated, already in 1643 Madeleine de Scudéry portrayed the “ex­cessive dependence on chance as a technique of composition” as a “clumsy” crutch for poor writers (106).[5] In the compressed form of the novellas, the accumulation of misfortune appears all the more noticeable, and presumably all the more implausible. It might be tempting to dismiss the author of the Nouvelles de l’Amérique as an inferior novelist who of­fered readers the cheap thrills of an accident-laden plot while hiding from critical opprobrium under the mask of anonymity. But the work does make several concessions to the late seventeenth-century expectation of verisi­militude. The book advertises its contents as “trois histoires véritables arrivées à notre temps.” Moreover, as Réal Ouellet has shown, its tales appear to have been inspired by anecdotes related in the 1678 Dutch edi­tion of Exquemelin’s ostensibly non-fiction work.[6] The novellas’ extrava­gant plots are rooted in the real dangers of the American landscape: the man-eating dogfish and crocodiles the characters encounter were all doc­umented in descriptive literature on the Antilles. The pirates they meet bear the names of freebooters who actually trawled the Caribbean. The “white slavery” suffered by classic romance protagonists is here trans­formed into the system of indentured servitude that provided much of the colonies’ labor in this period. The haphazard nature of the adventure plot, in other words, productively interacts with the real contingencies and eve­ryday hardships of the Atlantic setting. The nature of the risks—if not their frequency—is plausible and predictable.

While the fiction’s accidents reflect real New World perils, the novel­las’ dependence on fortune as a structuring device also usefully engages with realities of the Atlantic economy. As Valerie Forman has shown in her work on commercial themes in early-modern English drama, the Christian concept of the felix culpa—the “happy accident” that shapes romance and adventure narrative as well as dramatic tragicomedy—lends itself well to representing the logic of mercantile investment. Forman demonstrates how English plays mapped the cycle of suffering and re­demption onto mercantile plots in which initial outlays of effort and for­tune translated into future material rewards, effectively educating specta­tors about trade. The Nouvelles de l’Amérique make many of the same structural moves as the plays studied by Forman. The protagonists give up safety in Europe and hazard their lives in America. Sometimes, they are rewarded in gold. Yet, the novellas’ conclusions are much more ambigu­ous than those of the pro-investment plays studied by Forman, showing not only what might be gained but also what is lost when redemption takes a material rather than moral form.[7]

 “L’Histoire de Mont Val,” the second novella in the collection, exem­plifies the way all three tales map the traditional plot devices of adventure narrative onto real aspects of Caribbean colonial society. This story fol­lows a young, naïve French gentleman whose idle curiosity inspires him to travel to America. He enlists a certain La Rivière, noted for his honesty as well as his savvy, to serve as companion and guide. La Rivière advises Mont Val to consider his voyage as a financial opportunity, recommend­ing that “il y fallait conduire avec soi des Marchandises, sur lesquelles on faisait toujours un gain très considérable, bien loin de dépenser un sol du sien” (119). As soon as the two characters arrive in Saint Christophe, La Rivière’s commercial shrewdness gives him the advantage over Mont Val’s nobility. He makes a fortune selling not only the merchandise but also all of Mont Val’s domestics, consigning them to three years of in­dentured servitude (121). Shortly thereafter he sells his master, too: “sans dire en détail de quelle manière il agit pour la faire, nous dirons seulement qu’il le vendit bien cher, puis que ce fut pour trois ans, afin d’en recevoir une plus grande somme d’argent” (123). The merchant becomes a villain, and the young nobleman a casualty of the profit-driven society. This first misadventure is the story’s most important, as it serves to disillusion Mont Val and initiate him into the ways of colonial life. As a gentleman, he had been accustomed to a social order in which his station and wealth guaran­teed an easy, predictable life. In America, he discovers, his nobility no longer counts for anything. As a victim of the “pernicieux négoce,” he is only worth the price of his own labor, a fact that is driven home when his new master offers to set him free if he will buy him an African slave as replacement. Of course, this solution is impossible for Mont Val, who “n’avait ni connaissance ni argent, et par conséquent aucun crédit” (127). He is subject to the same ruthless economy as everyone else.

To regain heroic status in the adventure tale, Mont Val has to adapt by acquiring and demonstrating a practical form of merit that carries more weight in the American context than the mere mark of nobility that con­ferred heroism in traditional romances. In the fields and kitchens of the plantation, he learns to transform American crops and game (potatoes, chilies, and turtle meat) into tasty dishes that win the favor of his fellow slaves. After several months, he allies himself with two other workers, including a failed merchant forced to sell himself into servitude (135–6), and together they plan to flee in a canoe and thus “donner eux-mêmes la liberté” (134). They succeed in escaping but are soon arrested by Spanish soldiers who mistake them for French pirates. They run into the woods, swim to an island and, like Robinson Crusoe, must hunt, fish, cook, and build pontoons out of logs in order to survive. Mont Val exchanges the inherent privilege of the nobleman for a different kind of merit, based on his ability to transform natural resources into usable goods.[8]

The novella’s final adventure reflects on these competing notions of worth (the traditional and the commercial) by introducing Mont Val to a group of French pirates. The famous freebooter L’Olonnais rescues Mont Val from a Spanish ship and welcomes him into his band of pirates, “re­connaissant l’esprit de Mont Val et ses mérites” (171). Mont Val is glad to be free from imminent danger, but his relationship to the pirates is ambiv­alent at best. He willingly participates in the pillage of a wealthy Spanish settlement but also prevents one of his fellow pirates from raping a young Spanish beauty (176). His discomfort becomes clearer afterwards, when they divide up the spoils of the venture: “Mont Val en eut sa part aussi bien que les autres; mais méprisant un si petit gain à cause des périls qu’il avait courus en exposant plusieurs fois sa vie, il voulut le hasarder au Jeu pour s’en défaire entièrement ou pour l’augmenter” (180). Mont Val un­derstands that the booty functions as a kind of payment, but finds that it is not sufficient reward for the risks he has taken. He prizes his life more highly than the other pirates do. By resorting to gambling, a favored pas­time of the French nobility, Mont Val shuns the pirate’s view of risk as investment in favor of a more typically aristocratic approach to risk as an ostentatious display of indifference to material wealth.[9] Better to lose eve­rything at the games table than to accept the terms of an exchange that places such a small price on life.

In fact, Mont Val’s clinging to traditional noble values appears to be what ultimately saves him. Later, when a failed raid on another Spanish town results in Mont Val’s capture and injury, he is rescued by the young woman whom he saved during his first adventure with the pirates. She takes him into her home, helps him heal, and finally puts him on a ship back to Europe, where he rejoices in his safety and vows never to return to America. His virtue (in saving the woman) is the cause of his redemption. Yet even this seeming reversion to a traditional, chivalric narrative pattern is tainted by materialism. As he departs, the woman gives him a “présent d’une Bourse de deux cent Pistoles d’or, qui le consola en quelque façon de la perte qu’il avait faite avec le traitre la Rivière” (189). Mont Val re­turns to Europe like any other adventurer, having suffered but with a pile of gold to show for it. In spite of his travails, Mont Val’s unwitting “in­vestment” paid off and, from a financial point of view at least, his accident was indeed a happy one after all.

Yet, in “L’Histoire de Mont Val,” material fortune almost but not quite compensates for moral and physical misfortune. Although the tale ends happily, the tone is far from triumphant. When Mont Val forswears America at the end of the story, the adventure narrative becomes a moral tale. The contingency of the money-driven Atlantic is best to be avoided, the story implies, because there is no moral justification behind the as­signment of reward. When Mont Val experiences misfortune, it is often because an immoral adversary has profited at his expense. As Réal Ouellet notes of another novella in the collection, “aucune providence, aucun Dieu vengeur, non plus, n’intervient dans ce monde” (“Fiction et réalité” 295). Throughout the narrative’s episodes, Mont Val fails to see the risks and hardships he faces as opportunities for gain, as other characters do. In­stead, he repeatedly reflects on the “douleur de se voir si mal traité de la fortune” (143). He laments that he has suffered such “rudes envers de la fortune” (144).[10] By assigning agency to “fortune” in these passages, Mont Val subscribes to an older, Stoic notion of chance as the principal force driving events—often tragic events that must simply be endured.[11] In so doing, he rejects the possibility that he could play an active role in engi­neering his own fortune by capitalizing on chance. The depiction of life’s ups and downs as random and contingent rather than informed by concep­tions of virtue or merit prepares us for the characterization of Mont Val’s final present as a “consolation” rather than a reward. The novella offers only an empty parody of a happy ending in which acceptance of the com­mercial values of the Caribbean is figured as a kind of loss.  

In this way, the reprisal of the haphazard, accident-filled narrative structure of traditional romance-adventure tales sharpens the novella’s exploration of issues of risk and value in relation to the mercantile space of the colonial Atlantic. The author modernizes the adventure plot by placing its many unfortunate events within an economic frame. The Car­ibbean landscape naturally contains a multitude of dangers, but a character who survives these risks receives material rewards. In “L’Histoire de Mont Val,” though, only the villains—the devious La Rivière, the pillag­ing pirates—seem to understand the rules of the story they inhabit. Mean­while, the protagonist Mont Val dissonantly clings to values of an older type of adventure tale in which disinterested virtue brings recompense in the form of love and glory. The result is an ambivalent narrative that con­demns profit-seeking enterprise even as it inculcates a logic of investment, and that rejects New World values even as it appeals to readers with its alluring American setting.

Disenchanting the Pirate Life in L’Histoire des aventuriers

The conflicted presentation of Mont Val’s American adventure illus­trates the central thesis of Michael Nerlich’s work on the Ideology of Ad­venture: that the nature of the risk and the reward in adventure narratives from a given culture typically celebrates and enshrines that society’s “highest ethical achievement” (1: 5). The clearest example of adventure stories’ ideological function comes from chivalric adventures, in which the noble warrior was ready to sacrifice himself in battle in return for the so­cially prized reward of glory and honor. In contrast, the pirates in Les Nouvelles and in other Caribbean adventure tales were prepared to risk their health and safety for food, goods, or bullion. In the narrative logic of pirate adventures, in other words, material profit displaced aristocratic honor as the epitome of achievement. The result is an exaggerated, excit­ing, violent version of the cycle of risk and recompense associated with colonial mercantilism.[12] Structured at least in part as an adventure narra­tive, Exquemelin’s ostensibly nonfictional account of Caribbean piracy frequently glamorizes both the dangers and the ample material rewards of the freebooters’ lives. At the same time, however, the narrator questions the validity of the materialist ideology that informs the pirates’ adventures, exposing the detrimental effects of an Atlantic economy that subsumes human life to material value.

First published in Dutch in 1678, Exquemelin’s work was considerably expanded for the first French edition that appeared in 1686. This version is a work of two halves. The early sections focus on geographical and ethno­graphic description, resembling a traditional travel narrative (and were possibly padded by the French editor with passages borrowed from Du Tertre’s Histoire générale des Antilles[13]). The later parts (the original ones) recount a series of “adventures” led by a variety of French, Dutch, and English pirate captains. A pastiche of travel description and adventure narrative, the work confirms its hybrid generic status with both numerous reminders of its truthfulness and several comments on the pleasurable quality of its stories, adventures that could “pass” for those of a novel (193).[14]

What unites both halves of the work is the recurring theme of the preeminence of money in the Caribbean. The book foregrounds this theme from the very outset, in its establishment of the narrative voice and point of view. The text presents itself as the eyewitness account of life among the aventuriers by Exquemelin, a surgeon and French engagé with the Compagnie des Indes occidentales.[15] Engagés—or indentured servants—made up the majority of French settlers in the island colonies. In exchange for the cost of their passage to America, they promised to work for a num­ber of months or years in service to the colony.[16] In the opening pages of L’Histoire des aventuriers, the narrator Exquemelin recounts his journey to and arrival in the Antilles, and his experience being “engaged”: “On nous fit venir et on nous exposa en vente aux habitants. Nous fûmes cha­cun à trente écus” (63). It’s not accidental that Exquemelin describes this process in the terms of a slave auction; he is “exposed for sale” like an object, priced at thirty écus. Indeed, he later exaggerates his condition as “fâcheux esclavage” (63). And, throughout the early part of the work, he often depicts engagés working in the sugar fields alongside African slaves, metonymically equating the plight of these two groups.[17] Although the narrator rarely calls attention to himself in the rest of the work, these ini­tial passages effectively focalize the narrative through the persona and point of view of a self-described victim of a colonial system that valued individuals in purely economic terms.

This disillusioned perspective remains evident in the first part of the book that describes and classifies the natural riches of the Caribbean in terms of their use or exchange value. For example, in chapter 9, Exque­melin announces he will discuss the rare and peculiar reptiles of the is­lands, starting with the tortoise. His discussion of the animal’s anatomy is prefaced by the remark that, when cooked, its tastes like pork (125). Within two paragraphs, the narrator starts referring to the beasts as “vi­ande” and the scientific explication of their bodies gives way to a dis­course on the best way to hunt them (128–9). Discussions of the native human populations are dominated by lists of the produce they have availa­ble for trade or pillage. Finally, the ethnography of the adjacent colonial and pirate societies is organized as a detailed account of the division of labor among legitimate habitants, outlaw boucaniers (or hunters who pil­lage the land), and the aventuriers who make their living on the sea. The effect of this section is not so much to excite the curiosity of the reader to learn about the marvels of the New World but rather to explain an econ­omy, prefigure the exotic commodities that may soon arrive in Europe along with cocoa and sugar, and explain how they may be harvested and exploited for profit.

The motivating force of profit becomes even more salient in the se­cond, more narrative part of L’Histoire des aventuriers. In each chapter or episode of this section of the book, a pirate chief weighs the dangers and potential profit to be gained by a particular action, leads his men into the venture, and usually succeeds in winning the plunder—the outlaw mirror image of the fate of company investors and ship captains engaged in le­gitimate commercial ventures. Moreover, Exquemelin’s vocabulary fre­quently assimilates piracy to normal mercantile activities. Although contemporary legal discourses treated piracy as a kind of thievery at sea and designated treasures gained in this way as “prises”—seizures or tak­ings—Exquemelin often refers to the pirates’ “butin” as “marchandise” or simply as “argent” “gagné” at sea and then distributed as “récompense” for effort and injury.[18] For example, at the conclusion of one successful venture, the French-born pirate known as l’Olonnais carries the booty back to “home base” on the island of Tortue, “afin d’être partagé aux aventuriers qui avaient également risqué leur vie pour cela” (225). What follows is a lengthy descriptive scene in which Exquemelin vividly brings to life the process of adding up the value of the treasure:

Tout ayant été ainsi ramassé, on trouva qu’en comptant les joyaux, l’argent rompu, prisé à dix écus la livre, il y avait deux cent soixante mille écus. . . . Tout ce butin fut donc ainsi partagé, ayant pris auparavant sur le total des ré­compenses promises aux blessés, aux estropiés, et aux chi­rurgiens. Les esclaves qui avaient été pris furent vendus à l’encan, et l’argent qui en provint fut encore partagé entre chaque équipage. (225–6)

After the slaves seized in battle have been sold and after the spoils have been divided, the pirates celebrate their success with games and feasting, but also with plans for the next profitable venture: “Quelques uns . . . fu­rent en France, dans le dessein d’acheter quelques marchandises, afin de revenir négocier en ce pays, comme plusieurs qu’ils avaient vus beaucoup profiter sur leurs camarades en leur vendant du vin et de l’eau-de-vie” (226). This passage demonstrates the fluidity between the pirates’ illegal “adventures” and legal commercial investment. It depicts pirates as savvy businessmen, always looking for a new opportunity even if it means capi­talizing on the tastes and desires of their comrades in arms, profiting at their expense.

In these moments of pause between escapades, piracy can seem glam­orous, attractive, occasionally even righteous according to the logic of the narrative pattern of adventure, with elaborately enumerated riches repre­senting the just rewards for brave fighters who have risked their lives in battle. Yet, piracy’s dark side becomes evident in passages that concen­trate on the nature of the risks taken in pursuit of those rewards. Although modern critics are rightly often struck by the pirate figures’ love of free­dom, Exquemelin shows that pirates in fact gamble their most basic liberty for the promise of riches. If they did not die in battle, pirates who failed in a venture to seize a ship would typically enter forced servitude under the ship’s captain. For example, Exquemelin recounts the efforts of a Dun­kerque adventurer, Pierre Franc, to overtake a Spanish warship. Van­quished by the Spaniards, Franc and his men narrowly escape hanging at sea, and instead become “enslaved.” After working for two years “sans en recevoir pour tout paiement qu’un peu de nourriture,” Franc and his com­panions are brought back to Europe. First they are sent to Spain, from whence they travel to France, then back to America to pillage Spanish ships “pour se faire payer par les Espagnols de leur salaire” (187–8). This willingness to risk freedom for profit sets up a disturbing hierarchy of val­ues in which the protection of liberty seems less compelling than the de­sire for the riches that might be gained by adventure. By risking life for profit, in other words, pirate figures literally put a price on their own heads.

Perhaps the most spectacular illustration of the monetization of human life comes in two separate passages in which Exquemelin reproduces the terms of “chasse-parties” or agreements outlining the way to divide up the spoils of plunder. The document stipulates that officers injured in the fight receive a larger part of the spoils in remuneration for their bodily loss:

Pour la perte d’un œil, cent écus ou un esclave.

Pour la perte des deux, six cent écus ou six esclaves.

Pour la perte de la main droite ou du bras droit, deux cent écus ou deux esclaves.

Pour la perte des deux, six cent écus ou six esclaves. (178)

Some scholars have read the chasse-partie as evidence of pirate society’s quasi-democratic, utopian form. Requemora-Gros, for example, interprets the documents as a sign of “une véritable contre-société organisée” in which cohesion, liberty, and equality are guaranteed through a form of “sécurité sociale” (457). Indeed, the agreement resembles modern-day insurance contracts. Yet there is something disturbing about its terms. Pre­sented in list form, it startles the reader by disrupting the flow of prose. The repetitive, short sentences disconcertingly take the form of equations: a body part is equal to some amount of money or to some number of slaves. In his analysis of similar documents produced by the British navy, Ian Baucom has described their effect as the “monetizing anatomization of the body” (7). He writes:

There is something more than a little macabre about this list, something unnerving that exceeds the finicky mince of bureaucratic language, the formulaic translation of the loss of a foot, a thigh, a lung, or a bladder into a mis­fortune.... the financializing, decorporealizing logic of equivalence that so confidently translates a lieutenant’s foot into 5 shillings a day. (6)

The “logic of equivalence” exposed in these passages of Exquemelin’s work underscores the extent to which life and health are themselves part of the outlay required to gain commercial reward in pirate society. The chasse-parties make visible the metaphoric substitution of money or commodities (some of which happen to be human commodities) for the body.

The inclusion of slaves in the chasse-parties’ macabre equations par­ticularly highlights the more sinister, disastrous implications of the mone­tization of life and of the body in the Atlantic. The equation of human life with commercial value is endemic in the world described in narratives of piracy. Adventurers seize not only bullion but also prisoners, who are later transformed into monetary riches in the form of ransom. They attack slave ships and convert their human cargo into cash at illegal or corrupt versions of the sanctioned, regulated slave markets.[19] In these various ways, L’Histoire des aventuriers minimizes the distinction between illegal piracy and legitimate mercantile activity, between voluntary servitude in ex­change for the promise of riches and the system of forced slavery for the sake of the sugar trade. The bitter conclusion of Exquemelin’s narrative reveals the ultimate complicity between colonial structures and piracy through the story of Captain Morgan, one of the cruelest pirates who, having pillaged sufficient riches—“quatre cent quarante-trois mille deux cents livres” (371) to be exact—settles down into a place at the top of the British colonial government. “A l’heure que je parle, il est élevé aux plus éminentes dignités de la Jamaïque, ce qui fait assez voir qu’un homme, tel qu’il soit, est toujours estimé et bien reçu partout, pourvu qu’il ait de l’argent” (372). Money ensures the kind of esteem and dignity formerly conferred on heroes who displayed conventional forms of honor and valor. Exquemelin presents Morgan’s fate as evidence of the infiltration or in­fection of the colonial structure by an over-valuation of money—a final, devastating instance of the displacement of moral value by the value of ill-gotten wealth.[20] This nostalgia for older systems of honor, though, is under­mined—or at least rendered more complex—by the attractiveness of piracy’s illicit profits, especially when seen from the relative safety of the reader’s point of view.

Conclusion

The kind of elite, metropolitan Frenchmen and women who might have picked up a copy of Les Nouvelles de l’Amériqueor L’Histoire des aventuriers in the last quarter of the seventeenth century encountered the material rewards of France’s Caribbean entanglements in the course of their daily lives. Commodities such as chocolate and sugar, for example, altered the everyday habits and appetites of elite French subjects. In her recent book, Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture, Madeleine Dobie demonstrates that French read­ers and writers readily suppressed the economic and geographical origins of such quotidian material comforts. She interprets the relative absence of literary representations of the Antilles as indicative of a cultural desire to forget the abusive economic structures (i.e., slavery) that supplied French consumers with luxury products.[21] Rather than address harsh realities of the Antillean colonial economy in straightforward literary depictions, Dobie argues, French writers displaced themes of enslavement and ex­ploitation to Oriental settings. The minor genre of Caribbean adventure tales may represent one textual space in which French readers did directly confront unsettling questions about the human costs of the material riches produced in the island colonies. Although they undoubtedly served as an important precursor to the romantic, swashbuckling, sublimely free liter­ary pirates of subsequent centuries, the outlaws of the late seventeenth-century Caribbean appear as decidedly ambivalent figures. They may be liberated from state oversight, these narratives suggest, but they are bound by their own greed. In French narratives, pirate lifestyles serve as an exag­gerated refraction of the larger social and economic conditions of the co­lonial Atlantic where the pursuit of profit trumped freedom, human dig­nity, and moral order. In this way, adventure narratives complemented contemporary moral and economic discourses that questioned the role of the profit motive in civilized society. Unlike those abstract pronounce­ments, however, Caribbean adventure narratives implicated their readers actively and emotionally in their questioning of materialistic desires by alternately portraying the pirate life as condemnable and highly alluring.

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Works Cited

Académie Française. Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française(1694). Dictionnaires  d’Autrefois. University of Chicago ARTFL Project. Web. 22 March 2012.

Anon. Nouvelles de l’Amérique ou le Mercure amériquain. Rouen: François Vaultier, 1678. Print.

Baucom, Ian. Specters of the Atlantic: Finance, Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Print.

Clark, Henry C. The Compass of Society: Commerce and Absolutism in Old-Regime France. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007. Print.

Cohen, Margaret. The Novel and the Sea. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Print.

Daget, Serge. “Traite et piraterie, pirate et négriers,” in Vues sur la piraterie: Cartes, tableaux, chronologies, bibliographies Ed. Gérard Jaeger. Paris: Tallandier, 1992. 132–141. Print.

Debien, G. Le peuplement des Antilles françaises au XVIIe siècle: Les engagés partis de La Rochelle (1683–1715).Caire: Institut français d’Archéologie orientale, 1942. Print.

Dobie, Madeleine. Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. Print.

Eon, Jean, père Mathias de Saint-Jean. Le Commerce honorable, ou Considérations politiques, contenant les motifs de nécessité, d'honneur et de profit, qui se treuvent à former des compagnies de personnes de toutes conditions pour l'entretien du négoce de mer en France, composé par un habitant de la ville de Nantes. Nantes: G. Le Monnier, 1646.Print.

Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier. Histoire des aventuriers flibustiers. Eds. Réal Ouellet and Patrick Villiers. Saint Nicolas, Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005. Print.

Forman, Valerie.Tragicomic Redemptions: Global Economics and the Early Modern English Stage. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Print.

Garraway, Doris. The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Print.

Gomberville, Marin le Roy sieur de. Polexandre. 5 vols. Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1637. Print.

Grussi, Olivier. La vie quotidienne des joueurs sous l’Ancien Régime à Paris et à la cour. Paris: Hachette, 1985. Print.

Isambert, François, ed. Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l'an 420 jusqu'à la Révolution de 1789. 29 vols. Paris: Belin-Leprieur et Plon, 1821–1833. Print.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Ed. Ian Shapiro. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Print.

Lyons, John D. The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Print.

Mackie, Erin Skye. Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates: The Making of the Modern Gentleman in the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Print.

Miller, Christopher. The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Print.

Nerlich, Michael. Ideology of Adventure. Trans. Ruth Crowley. 2 vols. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987 [original 1977]. Print.

Ouellet, Réal. “Fiction et réalité dans Nouvelles de l’Amérique (anonyme, 1678) et l’Histoire des aventuriers (1686) d’Exquemelin” in Les tyrans de la mer: Pirates, corsaires et flibustiers, eds. Sylvie Requemora-Gros and Sophie Linon-Chipon. Paris: PUPS, 2002. 281–94. Print.

Ouellet, Réal and Patrick Villiers. “Introduction.” Alexandre-Olivier Exquemelin. Histoire des aventuriers flibustiers. Saint Nicolas, Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005. 9–45.Print.

Pioffet, Marie-Christine. “Flibustiers et écumeurs de la mer des Antilles à travers les mailles du discours viatique (XVIIe siècle),” in Les tyrans de la mer: Pirates, corsaires et flibustiers, eds. Sylvie Requemora-Gros and Sophie Linon-Chipon. Paris: PUPS, 2002. 315–34. Print.

Reith, Gerda. The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Requemora-Gros, Sylvie. Voguer vers la modernité: Le voyage à travers les genres au XVIIe siècle. Paris: PUPS, 2012. Print.

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Printable PDF of Rousseau, 103–120

A l’image du genre voisin de la fable, les animaux sont un élément traditionnel du conte[1]. Près de la moitié du corpus met en effet en scène un univers animalier plus ou moins développé[2]. Ces animaux, authentiques et fantasmagoriques, parlants et hybrides, participent en premier lieu du merveilleux ornemental et occupent l’espace féerique sans surprendre leurs homologues humains. Eléments à part entière du personnel merveil­leux des contes, ils forment, entre autres, des peuples de dauphins, mou­tons ou oiseaux. Figurants anonymes, messagers ou compagnons zélés des héros, ils endossent un rôle généralement instrumental et performatif, et peuvent accéder, sous conditions, à l’héroïcité. Ils sont plus rarement un adversaire qu’un adjuvant magique et secondaire, parfois sacrifié au bé­néfice du protagoniste en difficulté. Occupant ainsi une fonction utilitaire au sein de la diégèse, l’animal est généralement un facilitateur qui permet aux acteurs principaux d’accomplir leur destin.

L’interaction homme/animal opère dans les deux sens et si les humains sont souvent comparés à des bêtes, les animaux eux-mêmes prennent les qualités d’autres espèces et gagnent en valeur par l’assimilation de traits hétérogènes[3]. Les spécificités zoologiques offrent alors des effets pit­toresques renouvelés qui alimentent le fabuleux du conte comme son énonciation. L’anthropomorphisme à l’œuvre dans ces textes personnifie des animaux aux habitus plus mondains que sauvages et métamorphose des hommes dont l’apparence bestiale révèle a contrario des vices bien humains. Etres hybrides dès la naissance ou à la suite d’un sort, ces per­sonnages, dont la quête de rédemption structure le récit, élaborent des scénarii diégétiques et discursifs spécifiques, rehaussant la rhétorique fée­rique. Comment en effet assumer son héroïcité quand on devient un canari ou un sanglier ? Qui de l’homme ou de l’animal possède la plus grande bestialité et qui a le plus à perdre à être ainsi métamorphosé ?

La confusion et la profusion inter, trans- et multi-générique des es­pèces définissent et motivent le genre merveilleux et la métaphore comme la métamorphose animalière sont des prétextes actanciels et poétiques à d’insolites varia lexicales et narratives.

*****

Les animaux entourent, accompagnent, vivent avec les personnages des contes dans une omniprésence criante[4]. Témoins réalistes de la vie rustique ou précieuse contemporaine, ils entent toutes les strates sociales et s’affilient selon leurs dispositions et fonctions auprès de l’homme. Par­ticipant de la dichotomie manichéiste à l’œuvre dans les contes, la pré­sence animale est aussi bien positive (notamment par l’hégémonie pastorale qui fait du mouton le témoin privilégié des amours et déses­pérances héroïques) que négative (bien que beaucoup plus restreinte dans ce cas). Un personnel animalier féerique divers, mais relativement réduit, atteste également des habitus mondains par la présence d’animaux de compagnie traditionnels comme les chevaux, les chiens, les chats ou les oiseaux décoratifs, voire plus insolites comme les singes et réinvestit le bestiaire folklorique et biblique par les traditionnels crapauds et serpents ou encore lions féroces, ces derniers restant exclusivement accessoires et cantonnés à remplir les marmites et les geôles des adversaires.

La fréquentation constante des animaux les inclut pleinement au quo­tidien des personnages qui les intègrent spontanément à leurs occupations et leur langage. C’est alors l’occasion d’établir un recensement quasiment exhaustif de certaines catégories, en de longues énumérations imagées comme les pratique régulièrement Mme d’Aulnoy. Ainsi le prince cadet de La Chatte blanche collectionne les chiens « de grands, de petits, des lévriers, des dogues, des limiers, chiens de chasse, épagneuls, barbets, bichons » (Aulnoy 756) ; dans Babiole, le cortège royal de Magot « était composé de petits épagneuls, de levrons, de chats d’Espagne, de rats de Moscovie, de quelques hérissons, de subtiles belettes, de friands renards » (Aulnoy 512) ; pour amuser le petit prince on lui donne « des chiens, des chats, des oiseaux, des écureuils, et même un petit cheval appelé Cri­quetin, qui dansait la sarabande » (Aulnoy 510). Hommes et animaux se côtoient donc couramment et leurs interactions s’insèrent foncièrement dans la diégèse et le discours. Des comparaisons ou métaphores animal­ières scandent ainsi les textes de manière topique participant de la rhétorique du conte fondée sur la profusion hyperbolique des motifs. Les effets de listes ainsi relevés soulignent le caractère merveilleux du récit. Sa fictionalité est alors révélée par la démesure, l’extravagance, et parfois l’incongruité des éléments énumérés. L’énonciation hyperbolique du genre ancre donc le texte dans la littérature par sa mise en scène outrée.

Les analogies interrègnes sont généralement dévalorisantes pour l’humain dont l’image est alors réduite à une catégorie ou une particularité zoologique. Les mentions présentant la princesse Truitonne dans L’Oiseau bleu s’accompagnent ainsi fréquemment d’un trait péjoratif renforçant la caractérisation négative du personnage. C’est diversement qu’elle est « bête », ayant à la fois « moins bonne mine qu’une huitre à l’écaille » et possédant « des dents plus longues que les défenses d’un sanglier » (Aulnoy 217). La variété des tours descriptifs ancrent le personnage dans une bestialité difforme et grotesque, l’enfermant définitivement dans la catégorie du monstrueux antipathique. Mme d’Aulnoy joue également sur l’équivoque quand Truitonne lance à celui qui vient de lui refuser sa main qu’il est « un plaisant roitelet » (Aulnoy 197). L’invective visant à ra­baisser le personnage et signifiant, selon le Dictionnaire de l’Académie, « Fort petit oiseau » et péjorativement « Un petit Roi »[5] prend corps dans la métamorphose qui s’ensuit, puisque Charmant est transformé en Oiseau bleu. L’apostrophe devient alors imprécation performative et s’incarne dans la métamorphose magique et punitive.

La conteuse aime varier les tournures et les associations même chez ses héros positifs. Au roi qui file la métaphore chasseresse et prétend avoir attrapé une « colombe », sa fille rétorque que la proie en question est bien « plutôt une chouette » (Aulnoy 154). La princesse Gracieuse, tremblante et apeurée, qui s’apprête à subir les tortures de Grognon, apparaît « comme un pauvre mouton » (Aulnoy 158) ; Merveilleuse, perdue dans la forêt, a peur d’être mangée « comme un poulet » par « les lions et les loups » (Aulnoy 412) ; Léandre, devenu lutin par la grâce d’une fée, par­court les airs « comme un oiseau » (Aulnoy 229) ; la reine qui découvre Babiole, stupéfaite, reste « plus muette qu’une carpe, [et] ouvrait deux grands yeux » (Aulnoy 521) devant le discours de la petite guenon, en une posture particulièrement évocatrice et ridicule. Ces quelques exemples soulignent la combinaison imagée des races et des genres qui crée un spectacle fantaisiste, voire cocasse, mais toujours renouvelé et piquant.

Une évocation animalière prépondérante chez Mme d’Aulnoy assimile les personnages (féminins ou masculins) à la race simiesque. De nom­breuses références aux singes sont en effet proférées par les protagonistes comme autant d’invocations et d’injures méprisantes. Ainsi transparaît le mépris d’une reine captive qui éprouve dégoût et crainte de devoir laisser son enfant à « son magot de fils » (Aulnoy 367). Telle belle-mère est une « magotte » (Aulnoy 154), tel héros difforme est « un petit magot » (Aulnoy 226), tel prétendant encore est « un magot qui fait peur » (Aulnoy 784). « Magot », « bête » et « monstre » sont alors parfaitement syn­onymes et utilisés tour à tour indifféremment. Le recours aux comparai­sons dévaluatives discrédite l’image du personnage et l’assimile peu ou prou à l’animal désigné en une caricature burlesque.

Inversement, les animaux peuvent être associés et comparés à d’autres espèces en fonction d’attributions spécifiques enrichissant leur nature. Les rapprochements zoologiques participent du relief pittoresque de l’écriture de Mme d’Aulnoy et animent ses récits. On peut ainsi lire dans La bonne petite souris qu’elle « courait deçà, courait delà, dansait, cabriolait comme un petit singe, et la reine prenait un […] grand plaisir à la regarder » (Aulnoy 367) ; le géant qui sévit dans le royaume de la Belle aux cheveux d’or « mange un homme comme un singe mange un marron » (Aulnoy 181) et l’Oiseau bleu « voyait mieux qu’un lynx » (Aulnoy 205). Les comparaisons restent topiques, quelle que soit l’espèce à laquelle elles sont attribuées. Mme d’Aulnoy peut également renverser les positions de comparant et comparé quand elle met en scène un singe venu en ambas­sade pour son roi dans un appareil ostentatoire que l’exubérante descrip­tion ridiculise. En effet, « Mirli­fiche sur le tout, plus grave qu’un dictateur romain, plus sage qu’un Caton, montait un jeune levraut qui allait mieux l’amble qu’aucun guilledin d’Angleterre » (Aulnoy 512). L’incongruité des comparaisons en apparence valorisantes stigmatise l’attitude affectée contrastant avec l’espèce simiesque et sa suite hétéroclite de chats, chiens, hérissons, belettes, et autres guenons enrubannées, source de comique. Ces représentations animales offrent ainsi une peinture bigarrée et pétillante qui participe des varia stylistiques propres à la conteuse. Les interactions métaphoriques brouillent les genres et les règnes et plongent le lecteur dans un monde de correspondances fantasmées où l’homme s’animalise et l’animal s’humanise au gré des caprices des auteurs qui se complaisent dans une surenchère galante de détails mondains et pittoresques.

La présence zoologique anthropomorphe est ainsi une évidence dans le monde féerique[6]. Dans des récits où cohabitent fées, ogres et dragons, le don de parole interrègne va de soi pour les protagonistes humains. Peu de personnages s’offusquent de rencontrer telle carpe à la conversation agré­able ou d’être transporté par un attelage de souris ou de pigeons. Les vaines justifications paraissent alors dissonantes et parasitaires. Mme d’Aulnoy s’égare même en explications spécieuses dans Le Mouton quand elle essaie de justifier l’étonnement de Merveilleuse, qui, surprise d’entendre répondre un mouton alors qu’elle est elle-même accompagnée d’une guenuche et d’un doguin parlants, balbutie qu’« une fée […] leur avait fait don de la parole, c’est ce qui rendait le prodige plus familier » (Aulnoy 413).

Les animaux-parlants sont des éléments constitutifs du genre et par­ticipent du merveilleux magique des contes. Eléments décoratifs et pit­toresques, figurants anonymes, les animaux sont les citoyens de contrées fabuleuses, à l’instar des différents peuples rencontrés par les héros lors de leurs pérégrinations. Silhouette collective, ils occupent et incarnent l’espace merveilleux. Le roi mouton, héros éponyme de Mme d’Aulnoy, est donc nécessairement entouré de sujets de même race, comme un sei­gneur de ses gnomes ou une reine de ses nymphes ou de ses fées. C’est ainsi qu’

une centaine de moutons parés étaient autour de lui qui ne paissaient point l’herbe; mais les uns prenaient du café, du sorbet, des glaces, de la limonade; les autres des fraises, de la crème et des confitures; les uns jouaient à la bassette, d’autres au lansquenet; plusieurs avaient des colliers d’or enrichis de devises galantes, les oreilles percées, des rubans et des fleurs en mille endroits. (Aulnoy 412–413)

La transposition du modus vivendi curial d’un règne à l’autre ne fait pas l’économie des traits permanents de la galanterie alors en vogue. Le dé­placement zoologique n’entraîne en effet aucune modification du régime alimentaire ou d’adaptation morphologique transitionnelle. Les courtisans ovins assument le même emploi décoratif et adventice que leurs homo­logues humains et procèdent du merveilleux surnaturel et fantaisiste de la conteuse, qui, quasi exclusivement, propose des collectifs et des peuples animaliers[7]. C’est ainsi que les protagonistes sont accompagnés de suites et compagnies multiformes ou se déplacent grâce à des équipages à deux ou quatre pattes. Les attelages hétéroclites permettent aux personnages (humains ou non) de voyager à travers différents paysages, selon les ca­ractéristiques de chacun. L’ambassadeur du roi Magot se présente pour demander la main de Babiole dans un carrosse traîné par « six lapins blancs d’une excellente garenne » (Aulnoy 512) ; Florine dans L’Oiseau bleu fait apparaître de ses œufs magiques deux pigeons, un chariot, un ensemble de six souris vertes, et un raton qui lui permettent de traverser un royaume de glace ; enfin, à Cendrillon qui vit dans la pauvreté, sa mar­raine met à disposition un carrosse traîné par des souris (devenues che­vaux), conduit par un rat (devenu cocher), et entouré de laquais d’origine reptilienne[8]. Divers moyens de locomotion animaliers permettent donc aux héros de traverser forêts et contrées, des fidèles chevaux aux éléphants et chameaux en passant par des dauphins ailés. La variété et l’exotisme de ces ensembles cortégeants constituent un procédé narratif qui participe de l’esthétique merveilleuse de la profusion.

Certains animaux accèdent à l’individualisation et collaborent à l’intrigue en tant qu’auxiliaire adjutatif ou oppositif. Ils endossent gé­néralement un rôle utilitaire, accessoire ou essentiel, mais toujours inso­lite. Le cercle des opposants est assez restreint et réinvestit fortement la tradition biblique et folklorique. Outre les bêtes féroces historiques et im­aginaires de l’époque (loup, lions, aigles, et corbeaux[9]), des espèces les plus exotiques (tigres, éléphants, singes[10]) aux plus courantes dévoyées (chevaux, chiens, oiseaux divers), les principaux acteurs du mal restant les crapauds et serpents. Qu’ils s’agissent de substitution (enfants dérobés à l’accouchement et remplacés par des chiots ou des chats pour accréditer une naissance monstrueuse[11]), d’oiseaux chargés de vanter les mérites de leur maître[12], ou tout simplement d’agresseurs manipulés par leur proprié­taire[13], ces animaux incarnent l’ennemi et une épreuve supplémentaire dans le parcours héroïque. Assez peu signifiants, ils sont un passage obligé du folklore féerique manichéen. Dans tout le corpus, seuls deux person­nages atteignent un véritable statut autonome et souverain en tant qu’opposant de premier plan. Le roi des singes qui souhaite épouser l’héroïne éponyme de Babiole et le loup du Petit Chaperon rouge. Le premier est l’avatar bestial d’une version hypéronymique de l’époux malfaisant et mal-aimé. Sollicitant la main de la princesse, sa mère ne peut que lui donner sous le prétexte d’une ancienne union guerrière. Comme pour un prétendant humain, Magot use de son autorité royale et masculine pour contraindre la princesse et l’enlever. L’épisode qui semblait être l’obstacle premier à l’alliance des héros, ne devient finalement qu’un élé­ment secondaire et totalement ignoré dès que Babiole s’échappe de son escorte et rejoint un nouveau territoire. Le dénouement escamote Magot et l’aventure simiesque au profit d’autres adjuvants et péripéties sans lien avec la situation initiale. Le second, le loup, apparaît comme le véritable héros du conte, qui est à la fois l’élément performant narratif (c’est sur ses indications que la petite fille emprunte un chemin plutôt qu’un autre) et l’acteur principal puisqu’il est le seul survivant au dénouement. Incarna­tion de la tentation et du mal par excellence, la figure du loup cache celle de l’humain, évoquée à demi-mots dans la moralité, espèce plus dan­gereuse car d’apparence familière. Il s’agit d’ailleurs de l’unique cas de pleine réussite de l’opposant au personnage principal. A l’exception de ce récit d’avertissement, la poétique narrative des contes expose des animaux adversaires peu signifiants, dont la nécessaire présence n’est qu’un leurre et un divertissement stylistique topique. Loin de menacer réellement le héros, ces animaux hostiles ajoutent au suspense et au plaisir rhétorique de la peur.

Les adjuvants, quant à eux, composent une galerie plus étendue de races disparates. Nourrices ou auxiliaires diégétiques, ils accompagnent assidûment les protagonistes dont ils sont les jokers magiques et sacrifi­ciels lors des épreuves. Présent dès l’enfance du héros, l’animal adjutatif sert de substitut maternel et de support affectif ou divertissant. La douceur, la soumission et la loyauté sont les qualités essentielles de l’animal de compagnie héroïque qui souffre tous les caprices et vicissitudes de son maître. La Princesse Carpillon de Mme d’Aulnoy réinvestit en particulier le mythe de la louve capitoline en mettant en scène un animal féroce, nourrissant farouchement un petit humain voué à la mort par ses pairs. Le prince, condamné par un funeste oracle, est élevé par un aigle avant que des bergers ne le recueillent et qu’il retrouve une éducation humaine. L’exemple souligne le caractère protecteur de l’animal qui fait preuve de plus de compassion et de désintéressement que les hommes, prêts à l’offrir en sacrifice une seconde fois au centaure les menaçant.

La majorité des textes présentent des compagnons fidèles et dociles à l’affection entièrement dévouée. Serviteurs au même titre que les domes­tiques ou suivantes des héros, ils les accompagnent dans leurs pérégrina­tions et les assistent au moindre danger. Ils servent régulièrement de mes­sagers complices permettant l’accélération des événements. C’est ainsi que, dans le conte La Princesse Rosette, l’heureux dénouement est rendu possible par le chien vert Frétillon qui, lors d’un voyage de l’héroïne, va dérober de la nourriture pour sa maîtresse au meilleur endroit qui soit, c’est-à-dire dans la cuisine royale de la contrée qu’ils traversent. La quête du voleur par le roi des paons le conduit d’abord au chien, puis à la jeune fille et permet alors l’hymen héroïque. Le conte se clôt sur l’image réjouie des savoureux repas du chien, à qui la morale fait une belle part dans sa louange conclusive.

Semblablement, le petit chien Cabriole, initialement apporté en présent à la Belle aux cheveux d’or, devient le complice des aventures du prince, son confident et son partenaire face aux épreuves. Quand Avenant est dé­solé des refus de la princesse et néglige de manger, le chien « ne voulut pas souper non plus » (Aulnoy 180) ; face au pessimisme de son maître devant le danger, il le rassure et propose une stratégie de combat ; il est également le seul à visiter le héros en prison, à prendre de ses nouvelles et à lui en apporter, et une fois le roi mort, c’est lui qui rappelle à l’héroïne victorieuse le mérite du prince et permet le dénouement euphorique par l’union finale.

Dans Le Mouton, Mme d’Aulnoy renchérit sur le caractère zélé des adjuvants lors d’une mise en scène macabre de substitution d’organes censés prouver la mort de l’héroïne. Les trois compagnons—la guenuche Grabugeon, la mauresse Patipata, et le doguin Tintin—proposent tour à tour leur vie pour sauver celle de leur maîtresse, mais seul le chien possède un cœur et une langue compatibles. L’épisode s’attarde sur le sacrifice de chacun des personnages et leurs déclarations de dévotion fidèle. La mise en avant du bon sens canin renforce le caractère pathétique de l’holocauste et l’erreur des deux vies inutilement sacrifiées. Leur mort fait également l’objet d’un enterrement et d’une stèle commémorative, fait rare dans le genre, démonstration du recueillement et de la reconnaissance de l’héroïne épargnée par le sort. L’anthropomorphisme ici à l’œuvre prête aux bêtes une réflexion et une abnégation qui dépassent le simple récon­fort proposé couramment dans les textes. Le subterfuge est alors opérant et permet à l’héroïne de quitter son royaume. L’intervention initiale des ani­maux est donc un stratagème narratif dont la finalité est double : apporter du merveilleux par la présence d’animaux parlants et motiver la narration.

Le seul protagoniste adjuvant et héros à la fois est le Chat botté. Acteur principal et éponyme de l’ensemble des actions du conte, il sup­plante le héros conventionnel tributaire du manque et accède à l’héroïcité par son omniprésence. Auxiliaire de la réussite de son maître, c’est d’abord pour son propre compte qu’il œuvre et fomente divers strata­gèmes. Ses manœuvres visent en effet à enrichir le fils du meunier et par­tant à le sauver d’une mort certaine. Moteur du récit, c’est le chat human­isé (botté, sur deux pattes et parlant) qui tire les ficelles de l’intrigue et manipule les hommes, des simples paysans au roi, en passant par l’ogre terrible. La fadeur et la passivité du héros « officiel » l’effacent du champ de l’action et laisse toute latitude à l’épiphanie du chat qui clôt le récit sur un dénouement et un épilogue triomphants. Le conte permet l’accomplissement héroïque de l’animal en admettant spontanément son humanisation. L’acceptation inhérente par le personnel féerique de la con­fusion des règnes dénote et confirme le merveilleux générique.

*****

Outre la représentation traditionnelle de l’adjuvant serviable, les ani­maux-parlants sont singulièrement des hommes, prisonniers d’une en­veloppe bestiale. Métamorphosés dès la naissance ou à la suite d’un en­chantement, ces personnages affichés d’emblée comme animaux, conser­vent un logos et un ethos humains qui leur permettent d’évoluer dans les deux règnes. A travers la bestialité, c’est évidemment l’humain qui est détaillé et modélisé. Il s’agit alors davantage d’ « illusion d’animaux par­lants »[14] et le véritable intérêt narratif réside dans la tension entre le corps et l’esprit discordants de ces figures transgénériques. C’est principalement sous cette forme, humain emprisonné dans le bestial, que l’animal accède à l’héroïcité. L’éponymie caractéristique[15] marque en effet la perspective primordiale du personnage et place la métamorphose comme thème prin­cipal de l’œuvre.

Bien qu’en apparence animal, le personnage conserve la plupart de ses attributs humains discriminants. Occupations, sentiments et discours rest­ent ceux de son espèce d’origine. L’anthropomorphisme galant des contes fait preuve d’une grande variété d’attitudes et de particularismes expres­sifs voire truculents illustrant les habitus mondains dans une scénographie souvent incongrue. Ainsi la fée Gentille sous la forme d’une couleuvre, reconnaissante d’avoir été épargnée par Léandre, lui fait « toutes les pe­tites mines et les airs gracieux dont une couleuvre est capable » (Aulnoy 226), la Chatte blanche reçoit son prince avec égards : musique, dîner, conversation, spectacle, chasse, tous les divertissements de la noblesse sont évoqués lors de son séjour au royaume félin ; le mouton agit de même avec Merveilleuse, l’Oiseau bleu rapporte de son palais divers bijoux qu’il offre à la princesse captive et la Grenouille bienfaisante met « du rouge et des mouches » (Aulnoy 673). Le décalage entre l’attitude mondaine et l’apparence bestiale apporte une couleur comique à la peinture pittoresque des mœurs animalières.

Quand il s’agit d’une naissance monstrueuse, ou d’une transformation infantile, l’entourage met en œuvre une éducation humaine afin de polir l’animalité de l’enfant. Babiole comme le prince Marcassin sont élevés comme de petits humains et affublés de divers atours censés les embellir, cependant la dissonance du sauvage et de l’apprêté confère au personnage une attitude ridicule. La guenon est ainsi « habillée comme une princesse, on lui faisait tous les jours des robes neuves, et on lui apprenait à ne marcher que sur ses pieds » (Aulnoy 509) et « si la Cour était en deuil, elle traînait une longue mante et des crêpes qui la fatiguaient beaucoup » (Aulnoy 510) ; tandis que le cochon était couvert « de mille nœuds de nonpareilles couleur de rose; ses oreilles étaient percées; […] on lui met­tait des souliers et des bas de soie attachés sur le genou, pour lui faire paraître la jambe plus longue » (Aulnoy 968). L’accoutrement de ces per­sonnages en fait des animaux savants que l’on exhibe à défaut de pouvoir cacher, or l’incongruité de la parure les avilit d’autant par la charge comique qu’elle présente. Malgré les efforts parentaux, la nature pré­domine et transparaît dès que les héros ne se contraignent plus et c’est ainsi à la chasse qu’excelle le sanglier alors qu’ « il connut bien que le luth et le théorbe ne lui convenaient pas » (Aulnoy 969), comme c’est égale­ment « sur le haut d’un volet de fenêtre ou sur le coin d’une cheminée » que la guenon trouve refuge, loin de « son panier ouaté, plumé, propre et mollet » (Aulnoy 511). La dualité des héros les tourmente et leur hybridité est source de conflits intérieurs ou avec leur entourage qui les rejette après avoir échoué à les assimiler.

A l’opposé de la civilité anthropienne manifestée par les personnages désireux de préserver leur humanité, surgit un maniérisme animalier fort savoureux. Les contraintes zoologiques donnent en effet lieu à des situa­tions et discours aux vocables créatifs et imagés. Ainsi les heureuses circonstances font que la reine peut répondre à l’injonction de la fée Li­onne de lui apporter un pâté de mouches, grâce à l’aide de la Grenouille bienfaisante et de ses comparses qui attrapent suffisamment d’insectes pour réaliser le plat. En retour « La reine ravie lui fit une profonde ré­vérence: car il n’y avait pas moyen d’embrasser Grenouillette » (Aulnoy 670). La contingence bestiale limite les rapports galants et les astreint à des adaptations parfois burlesques. Constancio devenu pigeon découvre avec stupéfaction son nouveau corps et ses particularités comme « ses pieds pattus » mais « ignorait de quel secours peuvent être des plumes » (Aulnoy 881). Il conserve cependant ses nobles manières et les transpose selon les possibilités de ses nouveaux membres. Il remercie ainsi l’hospitalité de son hôte et « lui faisait la révérence à la pigeonne en tirant un peu le pied, […] la becquait d’un air caressant ». Les exemples se mul­tiplient à l’avenant dans l’univers animalier de Mme d’Aulnoy, qui dé­veloppe systématiquement un vocabulaire propre à chaque catégorie et propose des déclinaisons lexicales établissant une véritable terminologie animale. « Pigeon », « pigeon », « pigeonne », « pigeonneau », « pigeon­nique »[16] comme « Magot », « magot », « magotique », « Magotie », « ma­gotin », « Magotins »[17] ou « Grillon », « grillon », « dégrillonne­rai »[18] et « Grenouille », « grenouille », « Grenouillette », « grenouil­lique »[19] sont quelques exemples caractéristiques des paradigmes de néolo­gismes créés par la conteuse. Il est intéressant de remarquer que le nom commun comme le nom propre correspondant ou encore un diminutif hypocoristique de même base sont indifféremment employés pour dé­signer le personnage qui se voit alors affublé de surnoms à consonances burlesques ou dévalorisantes, bien qu’affectueuses. La métamorphose animale est alors un prétexte aux tableaux colorés et aux néologismes plaisants. La transposition zoologique des mœurs galantes renouvelle la stylistique et la poétique du récit dans une grande liberté de ton et d’action.

La transformation bestiale n’est généralement qu’un passage, une dé­gradation transitoire de l’image héroïque avant l’épiphanie ultime du per­sonnage. Toutes les métamorphoses sont vécues par les protagonistes comme une déchéance de leur statut et ont soit pour but de les protéger (masque temporaire pour échapper à un ennemi féroce) soit de les abaisser au monde grotesque et faire ressortir par contraste leurs qualités sublimes (ou renforcer leur spécificité brutale). L’animalité est une épreuve dié­gétique qui participe de la formation du héros, de son parcours initiatique. La pénitence de la métamorphose est généralement promulguée par l’ordonnance de fées à qui le protagoniste ou ses parents ont fait défaut. Le héros doit donc expier une faute dont il n’est pas nécessairement re­sponsable, mais qu’il faut réparer. C’est ainsi que la mère de Marcassin voit dans un songe prémonitoire la menace sur son fils ; la mère de Dési­rée oublie de remercier la fée qui l’a aidée à concevoir la princesse, et la Chatte blanche elle-même transgresse l’ordre des fées en n’épousant pas le prince choisi, tout comme Laideronnette provoque le nouvel enchantement de Serpentin vert par son manquement à l’interdit.

La métamorphose animalière est donc un motif performatif qui dé­clenche les péripéties du conte et conduit intégralement l’action héroïque. C’est parce qu’elle est devenue une guenon que Babiole est désirée et en­levée par le roi des singes, Serpentin vert doit user de stratagèmes pour conquérir une princesse sans se dévoiler et la Biche, la Chatte blanche, le Mouton ou le prince Marcassin doivent trouver l’amour sous leur forme animale pour être désenchantés. La métamorphose est ainsi le nœud de l’action auquel s’ajoute la problématique amoureuse qui intensifie et com­plexifie les relations et les échanges interrègnes. L’ambition du héros est alors de retrouver forme humaine à travers le désir de l’autre dans une quête initiatique qui doit l’amener à s’aimer en tant qu’individu hybride et transgenre pour se faire aimer du partenaire. Comme les personnages refusen­t majoritairement leur nouvelle condition, la transformation est source de désespoir, de conflits, et surtout d’une quête de réhabilitation physique et sociale. Marcassin n’est ainsi heureux que lorsqu’il est seul et ne désire rien d’autre. Ses supplications commencent en effet avec son amour pour Ismène « Il faut te guérir, car de tous les malheurs, le plus grand c’est d’aimer sans être aimé » (Aulnoy 970). Ses relations sociales fonctionnent uniquement sur le mode de la violence et ses passages à l’acte le conduisent à refuser le commerce humain pour préserver son in­tégrité physique et mentale.

Dans le monde des contes galants où les personnages vivent exclu­sivement en communautés, la métamorphose entraîne la disgrâce sociale. Les hommes-animaux ne peuvent notamment plus régner sur d’autres hu­mains et sont contraints de quitter leur royaume. Ils sont rejetés de leur cercle, car leur forme ne correspond pas aux critères élitistes de la société de classes à laquelle ils appartiennent. La dysharmonie physique et donc fonctionnelle n’est en effet pas compatible avec le statut régalien et la nécessaire accordance entre la beauté extérieure et la noblesse d’âme exi­gée et reconnue comme le fondement physiognomonique de l’héroïcité. La destitution de règne(s) engendre l’exclusion du groupe social. Ainsi la Chatte blanche ne gouverne plus qu’un empire de félins, ses courtisans ayant été également transformés ou réduits à l’état de main ambulante par le même sort ; le Mouton évolue avec ses semblables dans une campagne idyllique mais exempte de toute contingence gouvernementale ; l’enchanteur rappelle à son ami le roi Charmant, devenu Oiseau bleu, et qui veut retourner aux affaires, que « Tel qui veut obéir à un homme, ne veut pas obéir à un perroquet : tel vous craint étant roi, étant environné de grandeur et de faste, qui vous arrachera toutes les plumes vous voyant un petit oiseau » (Aulnoy 210). La mésalliance que constituerait l’union d’une princesse avec un paon, fût-il roi, transparaît dans la répugnance du frère de Rosette : « voyez la belle alliance qu’elle nous donnerait, des pe­tites paonneaux pour neveux » (Aulnoy 289). Le mépris affiché signale donc l’imperméabilité des castes et des règnes. L’animalité discrédite le pouvoir régalien qui doit rester une entité immaculée et inatteignable.

 La transformation animale remet donc en cause l’autorité royale et principalement masculine. La dévalorisation liée à l’animalité opère un traitement dissymétrique selon l’appartenance sexuelle. Les femmes sont en effet généralement mieux traitées que les hommes. La forme animale étant le révélateur de l’intériorité profonde, les personnages féminins sont davantage transformés en animaux dits « doux » (chatte, biche), que les hommes qui peuvent se retrouver avec une version hirsute de leur person­nalité (serpent, porc, ou oiseau au bec agressif). Les caractéristiques phy­siques animalières propres sont utilisées positivement par les femelles au profit de l’amant alors que les mâles exercent des pressions et agressions à cause de leur nature sauvage. Comme sa laideur empêche Alidor d’approcher Livorette, sa transformation en serin lui permet de s’introduire dans l’intimité de la princesse et de la violer en toute impu­nité. De même, Marcassin qui échoue à séduire, menace Ismène de sa férocité : « je suis un sanglier redoutable; […] pensez-y, ne me désespérez pas » (Aulnoy 971). Lors de la nuit de noce, la princesse se suicide avant de subir le viol de la bête. Marcassin égorge ensuite Zélonide, épousée de force, qui tentait de le tuer dans son sommeil. Le Mouton essaie quant à lui de garder Merveilleuse dans le monde souterrain des ombres. Les mâles proposent donc un schéma relationnel fondé sur l’autorité et la vio­lence. Les relations amoureuses animales et sous contrainte, sont néces­sairement vouées à l’échec car contre-nature et anti-galantes. La dis­symétrie entre les partenaires exclut tout sentiment et tout accouplement harmonieux. Ce n’est que lorsque les amants prennent une forme similaire ou qu’ils acceptent la différence, qu’ils peuvent s’unir. L’accord vient de la réduction de l’altérité, comme la princesse qui, grâce à l’enchantement de l’amour, ne voit plus les difformités de Riquet, le partenaire doit ap­prouver et tolérer les spécificités de son alter ego afin de les dépasser et les effacer.

L’épreuve qualifiante que constitue la transformation animalière per­met donc un rebondissement diégétique et apporte au récit un nouveau souffle narratif et merveilleux. Certains contes de Mme d’Aulnoy pro­posent ainsi des épisodes largement développés ou qui constituent l’intrigue principale du récit. Chez les autres conteurs, le passage à l’animalité est généralement une métamorphose auxiliaire et un ressort dramatique parmi d’autres (se cacher, pouvoir voler…) qui ajoute au merveilleux narratif et participe de l’ornement féerique. Les héros, comme leurs ennemis, revêtent diverses formes selon les nécessités de l’intrigue. Tel roi se transforme-t-il en aigle pour enlever celle dont il tombe amoureux lors de son voyage, tel prince en perroquet pour convaincre une princesse de le suivre[20] ; Fortunio prend l’apparence des animaux qu’il a aidés pour s’approcher au plus près d’une princesse[21] ; les personnages de Quiribirini se transforment à volonté grâce au mot magique et prennent la forme des animaux qu’ils croisent[22], comme Alexis dans l’Apprenti magi­cien se change en cheval, en carpe ou en oiseau selon ses besoins[23]. La métamorphose est donc un outil magique facilitateur de l’intrigue et un élément merveilleux conventionnel du genre féerique. Loin d’être par­ticulièrement répandu dans le corpus, ce ressort accessoire traditionnel est réinvesti par les conteurs mettant en avant des motifs folkloriques aussi bien que galants. La médiation animalière, quand elle est maîtrisée et non subie, est toujours au service de l’intrigue amoureuse et appuie les intérêts des protagonistes.

Dans de rares cas la métamorphose est définitive. Châtiment ou ré­compense, la transformation intervient à l’issue du récit pour clore l’intrigue et partager le sort des protagonistes. Truitonne est ainsi punie par l’enchanteur et la fée qui lui donne l’apparence de ce qu’elle était déjà à l’état humain « afin qu'il lui restât au moins une partie de son nom et de son naturel grondeur » (Aulnoy 221). Le roi mouton, quant à lui, se sui­cide de dépit et ne peut donc reprendre forme humaine. Seuls Constancio et Constancia choisissent de demeurer à l’état de pigeon et colombe et refusent le monde humain et son asservissement charnel[24]. En abandon­nant leur enveloppe humaine, ces héros optent pour une vie simple et na­turelle, témoignage de leur amour véritable, délesté des contingences phy­siques.

Malgré une approche euphorique du héros, les personnages-animaux tiennent en effet des discours fort moralisants pour le règne humain. Comme dans la fable, l’animal est un media subtil qui permet une dénon­ciation détournée des vices. La bestialité à l’œuvre est donc plus humaine qu’animale et ce sont les défauts des hommes qui sont condamnés. Ainsi à la princesse qui lui reproche de ne pas tenir parole, le prince Marcassin rétorque : « Il faut bien, lui dit-il en souriant à la marcassine, qu’il y ait un peu de l’homme mêlé avec le sanglier » (Aulnoy 990). Loin de condamner l’animal, c’est l’homme qui est ici accablé par les reproches sous-jacents de l’auteur. C’est finalement quand il accepte son animalité, que le san­glier s’adoucit et vit en harmonie avec son enveloppe. La condition ani­male est en effet enviable aux hommes car elle leur procure la liberté que la société retreint. Aussi Marcassin plaide-t-il, pour convaincre Marthésie de l’épouser, en faveur d’une vie sauvage et d’un apaisement (re-)trouvé dans la nature : « J’ai appris, depuis que je suis habitant de ces forêts, que rien au monde ne doit être plus libre que le cœur; je vois que tous les ani­maux sont heureux, parce qu’ils ne se contraignent point. » (Aulnoy 987). Les hommes ont donc à apprendre des animaux et de leur liberté d’aimer. Le texte valorise l’animalité et discrédite l’artifice d’une éducation contre-nature, en mettant en scène une vision pastorale qui serait sans perversité par opposition au monde social et notamment curial. La transformation bestiale est donc un état généralement temporaire dont l’annulation possi­ble motive le héros à poursuivre sa quête de rédemption, et partant à ali­menter la narration, pour retrouver sa forme humaine. C’est finalement l’acceptation de l’animalité par le couple héroïque qui autorise le désen­chantement et le retour à l’humanité, quand les personnages ne décident pas de conserver définitivement leur nouveau statut et d’adopter une vie plus quiète.

*****

La présence animalière dans les contes de fées du XVII^e est donc un prétexte stylistique supplémentaire aux varia pittoresques du merveilleux, en particulier chez Mme d’Aulnoy qui multiplie les épreuves et les néolo­gismes ludiques. La profusion des motifs et du lexique participe de la poétique hyperbolique à l’œuvre dans des textes aux multiples facettes thématiques et sémantiques. L’anthropomorphisme mondain ostensible­ment mis en scène dans les contes et transposé au domaine animal est à l’origine de situations inédites et souvent incongrues. Le paradigme galant adapté et adopté par les héros animaux est en effet source de comique grotesque comme de savoureuses déclinaisons lexicales constitutives d’un genre renouvelé par le plaisir de l’exubérance et de la monstration verbale.

La métamorphose animalière permet commodément de fournir un ob­stacle narratif en soi. Les personnages éprouvent en effet les mêmes pas­sions, subissent les mêmes tourments et affrontent les mêmes épreuves diégétiques que leurs homologues rigoureusement humains. Les amants, contraints par leur forme inadéquate et incompatible, devront trouver le remède pour accéder au dénouement euphorique. Enjeu éthique et narratif, le passage à la bestialité offre aux conteurs des intermédiaires de choix pour dénoncer les vices humains et écorner les clichés du merveilleux. La métamorphose est ainsi le lieu privilégié d’une critique des mœurs et des relations hommes-femmes. Hormis les figures traditionnelles du mal, les animaux sont systématiquement mis en scène de sorte à faire émerger leur caractère bienveillant et dévoué, voire sacrificiel. A contrario, les hu­mains, emprisonnés dans une forme exogène qui les discrédite, révèle leur nature profonde, violente, et régressive. Les représentations classiques et le manichéisme simpliste semblent donc remis en cause. Cependant, le contexte général et générique galant rétablit in fine (sauf exception) les conventions et confirme le statut héroïque humain. Le passage à l’animalité restant un moyen d’extérioriser et de saisir le caractère trouble de l’humain à travers des épisodes qui renouvellent l’intérêt diégétique.

L’animalité présente sous de nombreuses formes participe donc à plein de l’ornement féerique et d’une rhétorique du foisonnement investi par un genre qui réfléchit (sur) ses propres outils poétiques. La médiation animale est un des nombreux artifices du conte qui le définissent en même temps qu’ils l’exhibent à un lecteur consentant qui feint de ne pas y croire.

Université Stendhal, Grenoble

Ouvrages cités

Alamichel, Marie-Françoise et Josseline Bidard, Des animaux et des hommes. Paris : Presses de l’Université de Paris Sorbonne, 1998.

Aulnoy, Madame d’, Contes des fées suivi des Contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode, ed. Nadine Jasmin, Bibliothèque des génies et des fées, tome 1, Paris, Champion, 2004.

Berlioz, Jacques et Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu, dir. L’animal exem­plaire au Moyen Age Ve–XVe siècles. Rennes : Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1999.

Defrance, Anne, Les Contes et les nouvelles de Madame d’Aulnoy. L’imaginaire féminin à rebours de la tradition. Genève : Droz, 1998.

Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 4^e édition, 1762.

Escola, Marc, Commente Contes de Charles Perrault. Paris : Gallimard, « foliothèque 131 », 2005.

Gaillard, Aurélia, Fables, mythes, contes, l’esthétique de la fable et du fabuleux (1660–1724). Paris : Champion, 1996.

Hannon, Patricia, Fabulous Identities: Women’s fairy Tales in Seventeenth-Century France. Amsterdam : Rodopi, 2004.

Harries, Elizabeth Wanning, Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2003.

Jasmin, Nadine, Naissance du conte féminin. Mots et merveilles : Les Contes de fées de Madame d’Aulnoy (1690–1698). Paris : Champion, 2002.

Jones-Davies, Marie-Thérèse, dir. Le monde animal au temps de la Re­naissance. Paris : Jean Touzot, S.I.R.I.R. 15,  1990.

Lemoine, Patrick, La Fontaine les animaux et nous. Paris : Armand Colin, 2011. 

Lhéritier, Mademoiselle et al. Contes, ed. Raymonde Robert, Bibliothèque des génies et des fées, tome 2, Paris, Champion, 2005.

Mainil, Jean, Madame d’Aulnoy et le rire des fées. Paris : Kimé, 2001.

Murat,Madame de, Contes, ed. Geneviève Patard, Bibliothèque des génies et des fées, tome 3, Paris, Champion, 2006.

Perrault, Charles et al. Contes merveilleux, ed. Tony Gheeraert et Raymonde Robert, Bibliothèque des génies et des fées, tome 4, Paris, Champion, 2005.

Perrot, Jean, dir.  Tricentenaire Charles Perrault.  Les grands contes du XVII^e siècle et leur fortune littéraire.  Paris : In Press, 1998.

Pinon, Laurent, Livres de zoologie de la Renaissance une anthologie (1450–1700). Paris : Klincksieck, 1995.

Poirier, Jacques, dir. L’animal littéraire des animaux et des mots. Dijon : Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 2010.

Robert, Raymonde, Le conte de fées littéraire en France de la fin du XVII^e à la fin du XVIII^e siècle.Paris : Champion, 2002.

Sermain, Jean-Paul, Le Conte de fées du classicisme aux Lumières. Paris : Desjonquères, 2005.

Tucker, Holly, Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France. Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 2003.

Mirrors deceive and mirrors reveal. Mirrors are ephemeral, just like beauty. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy (1650/51–1705) was not spinning tales as wet nurses and nannies did in the bedroom of Louis XIV or other aris­tocratic children; neither were peasant children gathered closely around her in front of the hearth to listen to her contes. D’Aulnoy created fairy tales for adults, specifically told and read in salons of aristocratic women—and these fairy tales were their looking glasses. In her story, “Babiole,” d’Aulnoy constructs a tale in which a cursed queen gives birth to a human infant that metamorphoses into a monkey shortly thereafter. Despite the fact that Babiole describes herself in repugnant terms, d’Aulnoy’s treatment of Babiole’s humanness is captivating: she is de­picted as a reasoning being, capable of owning pets, falling in love, and refusing to look at herself in the mirror. The tale concludes with a magical transformation in the desert from monkey to beautiful woman—after which she marries her cousin, the prince, who once rejected her apish love, but eagerly accepts her now human hand. Babiole reunites with her birth mother, and they live happily ever after, free from bestial tones of the simian.

As Elizabeth Wanning Harries demonstrates in Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale, the conteuses were working within a self-referential frame; their fairy tales were mirrors for their lives and the Ancien Régime’s aristocratic cultural milieu. Aspects of seeing, seeing oneself, and being seen are salient when considering this simian fairy tale. I argue that “Babiole” reflects anxiety of the era sur­rounding animal-human differences, as well as unmasks a tension between ugliness and refinement that operates along the frontier of beast and woman. This tension allows us to reflect on a deviant category of other­ness, which refutes Ancien Régime ideals of beauty and plays a central role in viewing, and imagining, the non-white body. Imitation, linked with ugliness, refinement, and beauty, becomes a site of stigma: the animal apes the human, and the human apes period ideals of female beauty. Ulti­mately, Babiole herself becomes a mirror. Babiole shifts from animal-ob­ject—as an item to be displayed and collected—to human-subject, as the most beautiful princess in the universe, in the d’Aulnoyian conte de fées, explicating and speculating on ideas surrounding animality and the sa­lonnière. For in the end, ugliness is discordant with refinement, even if refinement is spectacular and wondrous, as is Babiole’s prodigy.

As Lewis Seifert has shown in his work on hybridization and seven­teenth-century French fairy tales, hybridization in d’Aulnoy’s work mani­fests itself as highlighting the “tensions between human and nonhuman animality”; for Seifert, “Babiole” shows how d’Aulnoy plays with con­temporary discourses of the day regarding the animal and the human boundary—d’Aulnoy confounds the certainty of boundaries and “unset­tles” them (246). Although the monkey was an exotic pet imported to Western Europe that enjoyed considerable popularity among the rich from the eleventh to twelfth century onward (Salisbury 53), the monkeys’ ori­gins—namely, in colonized spaces of the era—speaks to this idea of oth­ered, non-white bodies. The post-colonial perspective will be important for my reading of this tale, and a surprising juxtaposition of two mirror scenes later in the article will take this into consideration.

The opposition between the colonized/colonizer and the beast/human are linked in this tale: the two pairs mirror each other. Additionally, along the border of the beast and the human, we must tend to the notion of the human giving birth to an animal or a hybrid; this emphasis on childbirth suggests significant biographical intertexts in d’Aulnoy’s work. D’Aulnoy herself had six children, of which four survived to adulthood (Defrance 15).[1] Her fertility and her experience as a mother adds much richness to the text itself, as we shall see. The language d’Aulnoy uses surrounding conception, birth and mothering is poignant, and is just another manifesta­tion of the salonnière’s self-reflexivity.

Self-reflexivity again plays a major role in collecting and cabinets of curiosity during this time period: one collects and consumes to reflect a mastery of refinement. The connection between the heroine, Babiole, and cabinets of curiosity is a crucial aspect of refinement in d’Aulnoy’s tale. As her name indicates, a “babiole” could be put on display, as a knick­knack or trinket, and then put away. Kathryn Hoffmann writes about hy­pertrichotic girls—hairy girls—who played the harpsichord as Babiole, spoke several languages, and were kept at court as pets. These girls, cov­ered in hair much like an ape or monkey, worked and travelled often with fairs of the period; thus hypertrichotic girls became commodified and col­lected—they became things or objects, and were no longer human beings (Hoffmann 67–85).[2]

The possibility of owning and displaying the rare and exotic was an important moment in d’Aulnoy’s life, as well as in her family’s. In fact, d’Aulnoy herself was clearly familiar with monkeys; in her Mémoires de la cour d’Espagne and Relation du voyage d’Espagne from 1690 and 1691 respectively, she mentions monkeys several times; a monkey was even offered to her daughter as a gift (Hoffmann 75). Moreover, a monkey ap­pears on the frontispiece in d’Aulnoy’s third volume of tales, Les Contes des fées (1711), recalling the fairy tale “Babiole” and its heroine (Harries, Twice Upon a Time 52). In this frontispiece, we see an older woman, dressed as a sibyl, with glasses, holding a book. Two standing children—a girl and a boy—accompany her. On the floor in front of her is a cherubic child playing with a monkey on a leash. Christine Jones, Gabrielle Ver­dier, and Elizabeth Wanning Harries have discussed this frontispiece at length. Verdier reads the simian as a manifestation of exoticism, and em­phasizes how the small child in the foreground touches his index finger to the monkey’s in the same way that Michelangelo’s Adam does with God (486). Verdier interprets this sacred gesture as imputing a sense of dignity to the frontispiece that would otherwise make the child seem merely dis­tracted.

Jones, on the other hand, highlights how the monkey is tied to the theme of imitation: the monkey’s very body language and the extended index finger mirrors the gesture of the child (65). Jones writes, “The inti­mate relationship of the child and the monkey, which recalls the image of God and man, itself refers to an act of creation” (ibid.). Jones also reads this sign of imitation as signaling that the literary conteuses of the era used parody: “The theme of imitation as it appears here suggests that parody and creativity will be the stylistic tools of the literary conteuse,” she writes (ibid.). While I agree that imitation is clearly at stake, what interests me here is the mirror-like image the monkey and child represent; and like Jones, I am fascinated by the allusion to man and God. The monkey is clearly seen as inferior and degenerate to the human, while man is seen as the inferior image of God; this hierarchical chain, with man being the monkey of God, is, in itself, a clever parody. Also we must not forget that monkeys were clearly connected to Satan, as he was also the ape of God (Janson 17–19). The monkey is a complicated sign here indeed, and alt­hough we can read this through many lenses, the darker connotations of mirroring the human and of refracting man’s darkest primal desires and urges rest beneath imitative gestures or exotic symbols previously dis­cussed. Furthermore, to add to this darker connotation, these exotic simi­ans hailed from colonized or non-Western regions, and were conflated with the colonized’s body. In brief, this taming, ownership, and domina­tion of the simian hearken back to ideas of subjugating the other, non-white body. When reading the frontispiece, an irreconcilable difference echoes between the animal, or othered body, and the salonnières.

When considering the differences between the animal and the human, let us examine the beginning of the tale, “Babiole,” and how the epony­mous character’s transformation, and the language that surrounds this transformation, unfolds. D’Aulnoy writes:

<blockquote>Enfin la reine donna le jour à la plus belle créature que l’on ait jamais vue: on lui attacha en diligence la fleur d’aube-épine sur la tête ; & dans le même instant, ô mer­veille ! elle devint une petite guenon, sautant, courant & cambriolant dans la chambre, sans que rien y manquât. A cette métamorphose, toutes les dames poussèrent des cris effroyables, & la reine, plus allarmée qu’aucune, pensa mourir de désespoir. (53) </blockquote>

Already, we see an emphasis on vision and beauty: she is born the most beautiful créature that the queen and her court have ever seen. The choice of the word créature markedly foreshadows the infant’s transformation to the bestial. D’Aulnoy alludes to the human-to-beast metamorphosis to come. And indeed, this superlative beauty of the human infant is rapidly followed by a dramatic change that is quite disturbing. Although the change is marvelous (ô merveille!), the tenor of the language that follows shows a chaotic and disorderly beast that is intruding on the atmosphere of refined decorum; the monkey is depicted as jumping, hopping, and breaking into this carefully controlled space of etiquette among highly cultivated, courtly women.

First, this concerning and horrifying conduct by the metamorphosed guenon incites gasps and cries of horror from the female courtesans. The queen is the most horrified of all. The courtesans’ and the queen’s extreme reactions reveal a remarkably emotional dimension: this highly vulnerable and emotional outpouring is not refined at all. Here the aristocratic women lose their polished exteriors and become unrefined, primal, and emotive. This transformation from child to grotesque beast mortifies the queen; clearly, the queen is repulsed by the rapid metamorphosis of her newborn daughter into an animal, revealing the primal fear of one’s offspring being born with a defect—an animal body. However, in this case, the queen had a taste of initial, human beauty and then was immediately robbed of her pride and happiness. The worst thing imaginable happened—a beastly transformation—perhaps even more appalling than the death of a child. The tale continues: “elle étoit déjà guenon, guenon confirmée, ne voulant ni tetter, ni faire l’enfant, il ne lui falloit que des noix & des marrons”(53).

In what follows, we shall see how several important terms and ideas are at work in the preceding passage. Was she always already a monkey, even her spirit, as this passage seems to imply?First, Furetière’s Dictio­naire universel (1690) defines guenon as: “Petit singe femelle que les Dames de qualité prennent plaisir de nourrir. On appelle aussi guenon, une femme vieille ou laide, quand on luy veut dire quelque injure.”

Guenon is entangled in the world of the ugly, and/or aging, female body. The term was used to lambaste and castigate the feminine, but also implies a narrative of ownership and possession connected to plaisir. This aforementioned scene of the infant girl turned simian and her monstrous transformation contains marked feminine energy; all of it is clearly unre­fined, raw, exposed, and unbridled, including the emotions of the courte­sans as well as those of the monkey girl herself. This ugliness is clearly transmitted from her grandmother to her mother to Babiole herself, by the fairy Fanferluche’s curse: her bestial transformation is a hereditary curse, as we learn at the beginning of the conte that the malevolent fairy was present when her grandmother was giving birth to her mother, wishing her nothing but heartache (chagrins) from the beginning (51). The atmosphere of female domestic and aristocratic space is permeated with ugliness and misfortune. The courtesans display unsophisticated and emotional open­ness and vulnerability surrounding this event. The whole emotional at­mosphere of the birth is destabilized. Furthermore, not only is the monkey girl leaping frenetically around in crazy and unstable movements, she re­jects anything that connects to the human.

Second, this rejection of the human cripples Babiole’s relationship with her mother: the pair’s relationship is fractured. Here we will examine sight, mirroring, and breastfeeding. It is interesting to consider that vision is an integral part of the mother-infant relationship, or at least the wet nurse-infant relationship. It was very common to hire a wet nurse during this era, as breastfeeding was considered to affect a woman’s beauty and ruin her figure—once again, vanity comes front and center.[3] Despite the fact that the queen in this conte probably would not have breastfed her child, it is important to consider that the moment after birth is one of the most memorable in any mother’s life. Although a newborn has limited ocular capacities in the first weeks, the infant soon begins to mirror its mother’s and primary caretaker’s faces from five weeks old onward.[4] In many cases, the wet nurse remained with the elite family; in others, the child was given to a nearby wet nurse from among rural folk connected to the elite family by farming their land.[5] Thus it is possible that the queen would have had access to her child on a regular basis; an early modern reader would realize this possibility.

Mirroring becomes paramount in this tale, and we see ugliness and monstrosity converge at this point. This mirroring of the maternal face is remarkable and a hallmark of the mother-infant pair, and the queen is cheated of this special relationship. Equally, it could be said, that the hu­man infant turned monkey is deprived of the benefits of mirroring: the emotional and social aspects of mirroring and the ability to empathetically connect with the mother figure is denied to both the monkey girl and her mother. The mirroring relationship is foiled by the beastly transformation. Furthermore, after nine months, she witnesses her daughter transform into a monkey, or an animal that is depicted as rejecting breastfeeding and cuddling; the first time a mother sees her child’s face and those initial ten­der moments shared between the pair are minutes about which many mothers dream, and the queen is denied this privilege. In place of this beautiful moment, the queen is presented with ugliness and the escapades of a monkey that merely wants nuts (“il ne lui falloit que des noix & des marrons” 53), which incites the following anxiety: “Que vais-je devenir ! quelle honte pour moi, tous mes sujets croiront que j’ai fait un monstre” (53). This self-reflexive despair does not involve her child: it does not read, “What will become of my child?” Rather, it poses the question of what will happen to the queen herself. How will this shameful and ugly event play out for the queen herself in relation to her subjects? She states that all of her subjects will believe and think that she has birthed a mon­ster. The queen’s very refinement, and by extension her beauty, is at stake.

Third, in this human-to-animal transformation of this dramatic scene, we witness one of the worst nightmares of a woman of this period: giving birth to an animal was a horrific event and would carry much shame. The child-beast who carries the curse of his or her mother—whether the mother thought about monkeys too much (implying a narrative of mental illness, obsession, or impure thoughts), or whether a fairy cursed her—was indeed a monstrous sign. The queen’s grief and the guilt concerning her contaminated daughter lead her towards infanticide. The queen’s ladies suggest that the she should tell the king that “la princesse est morte, & renfermer cette guenuche dans une boîte que l’on jetera au fond de la mer” (53). This is a very unsuccessful endeavor, as Babiole is saved by the queen’s sister and her four-year-old son; the pair intercept the servant that the queen sent to kill the monkey baby. The little prince wants to keep the monkey as a pet. Thus the monkey comes to be known as Babiole (55); again, we are reminded that this name indicates possession, or “une chose de peu de valeur” according to Furetière. Ultimately, Babiole becomes a collector’s object.

The physical description of the monkey in the story changes course here; if her birth and her rapid transformation into a monkey are grotesque and troubling, calling the queen’s identity into question, she transforms once again when she belongs to her aunt and her young cousin, the prince. She becomes a royal toy, a strange object of interrogation, and even an uncanny spectacle. The little prince demands that:

<blockquote>elle fût habillée comme une princesse: on lui faisoit tous les jours des robes neuves, & on lui apprenoit à ne marcher que sur les pieds; il étoit impossible de trouver une guenon plus belle & de meilleur air: son petit visage étoit noir comme geai, avec une barbette blanche & des touffes incarnates aux oreilles ; ses menottes n’étoient pas plus grandes que les aîles d’un papillon, & la vivacité de ses yeux marquoit tant d’esprit, que l’on n’avoit pas lieu de s’étonner de tout ce qu’on lui voyait faire. (55) </blockquote>

Babiole is dressed as a princess, but she clearly does not have a truly royal body: each day she is made new dresses, and she is taught to walk on two feet. Cultural grooming is paramount in this passage. We see a clear nega­tion of the animal, and a suppression of the bestial aspect of the monkey girl. However, d’Aulnoy’s game of alternately humanizing and animali­zing Babiole deserves mention. She is dressed as a royal body and taught to behave and carry herself as a human, but then, in the next sentence, she becomes the most beautiful and charming guenon in the world, which seems to be in direct opposition to the aforementioned idea of ugliness and to the term guenon, although the idea of possession emerges front and center. The supremacy of this particular animal and her value as a beauti­ful object is highlighted. D’Aulnoy’s detailed description of Babiole’s body captivates the reader: the animal-animal comparisons complicate Babiole’s depiction, and relegate her even further into the realm of the bestial.

Importantly, d’Aulnoy chooses the adjective “black”: “son petit visage étoit noir comme geai” (ibid.). A narrative of race inserts itself here: I would like to suggest that the exotic monkey becomes a metonym for col­onized bodies of the territories during the Ancien Régime. This explicit blackness is an important signal, embedded in a narrative of animality, much in the same fashion that the colonized body was treated in the same manner as the animal—purchased, collected, displayed, and used. Contin­uing with this colonial optic, during the Ancien Régime, stories circulated of aristocratic women engaging in illicit affairs with pet monkeys, indige­nous women coupling with apes deep in the forest, and some great apes, such as orangutans, were even thought to be a species of degenerate man.[6] As Frantz Fanon writes in Peau noire, masques blancs, “le Noir n’est pas un homme” and Fanon speaks about the colonized’s extremely marginal­ized and dehumanized position (6). Babiole, much like the colonized, is imprisoned deeply within her animalized body. “Babiole” shows a clear demarcation between French salonnières’ and the other’s body: the mon­key girl becomes a symbol of the body that is dominated and controlled by those around her.

Continuing with a trope of animalization, d’Aulnoy specifically chooses to corporeally compare Babiole to a bird and a butterfly: both are winged creatures, capable of flight, and both are delicate and spiritual. A future intimation of flight might be implied, foreshadowing her escape to the forest, but d’Aulnoy seems instead to emphasize Babiole’s bestiality. She then immediately strives to juxtapose this bestiality with a description of how full of vivacity and energy Babiole is. Specifically, when looking into her eyes, d’Aulnoy remarks that one can perceive the monkey girl’s spirit or wit: her eyes mirror those of a cultivated aristocrat or salonnière. These two conflicting aspects of her character trouble the reader, forcing the reader to examine her own relationship to the bestial and the refined. The whole exercise that d’Aulnoy constructs is a self-reflexive reading.

It is here that we see both the reader and the author examining and re­flecting their own messages of civility and incivility, beauty, ugliness and refinement. What is more, this rich excerpt from d’Aulnoy accentuates a shift in attitudes among Babiole’s female relatives: her mother’s initial self-reflexive episode steeped in horror contrasts with her aunt’s self-re­flexive quest to collect objects that reflect her own prowess and refine­ment as an aristocratic woman. In opposition to her mother, her aunt and her young cousin exhibit her. In the competition for the most rare and pre­cious gem in the courtly realm, they insist on her refinement, on her fi­nesse, on the fact that she is almost human, but not quite: their object of curiosity, or their little knick knack or toy, inhabits an abject space be­tween the human and the beast, even if she is the most beautiful of beasts, as d’Aulnoy writes. However, this precision detailing her incomparable corporeal beauty as an animal and her spiritual attitude is curiously fol­lowed by a detailed description of her physical appearance, which is somewhat debonair, even refined, but it is the body, nevertheless, of a monkey: “il étoit impossible de trouver une guenon plus belle & de meil­leur air” (55, my emphasis). In fact, “[S]on petit visage étoit noir comme geai, avec une barbette blanche & des touffes incarnates aux oreilles ; ses menottes n’étoient pas plus grandes que les aîles d’un papillon” (ibid.). This description recalls naturalist texts: the monkey becomes almost a stuffed animal, taxidermied, underneath a glass cloche, on display. Thus Babiole, the monkey princess, is not so repellent to her aunt or her cousin, the prince: she becomes a commodity, and her status as a creature between beast and human princess is strangely compelling and attractive. She is no longer the product of a monstrous birth; her value rests in her difference in a society that esteems collections and oddities.

The objectification and display of her body continues: her refinement is cultivated even further. She is empathetic; when the prince cries, she does also. D’Aulnoy writes,

<blockquote>Le prince, qui l’amoit beaucoup, la carressoit sans cesse; elle se gardoit bien de le mordre, & quand il pleuroit, elle pleuroit aussi. (55) </blockquote>

This passage brings up the notion of the Cartesian bête-machine and the issue of the problematic animal soul in “Babiole.” Despite her imitative humanity, Babiole’s underlying bestial nature is always present: she must hold herself back from biting the prince “qui l’amoit beaucoup” (ibid.). The animal inside her has to be checked and restrained, yet Babiole is ca­pable of speaking; in this way, Babiole seems to complicate the Cartesian divide between human and animal. In the fifth part of the Discours de la méthode (1637), Descartes states that animals cannot speak as humans do; in short, they do not have the ability to say what they think. He writes, “[J]amais elles ne pourraient user de paroles ni d’autres signes en les com­posant, comme nous faisons pour déclarer aux autres nos pensées” (146). Cartesian philosophy was not foreign to the conteuses: we should remem­ber that Descartes’ ideas were being discussed by women in salons during the era, and d’Aulnoy would have been familiar with his work (Tucker, Pregnant Fictions 158).[7] D’Aulnoy and other conteuses would have been aware of the Cartesian idea that animals do not have a soul as humans do, and thus they are not capable of feeling pain or emotions the same way human beings do. It is notable that Descartes explicitly mentions monkeys in his text, stating that “s’il y avait de telles machines qui eussent les or­ganes et la figure d’un singe ou de quelque autre animal sans raison, nous n’aurions aucun moyen pour reconnaître qu’elles ne seraient pas en tout de même nature que ces animaux” (145). He also writes that they resemble and imitate man, but that they are indeed not human (145–46). This part of the Discours develops the idea that the union of the soul and body cha­racterizes a true human being, while an animal, or amachine, is the body alone. D’Aulnoy’s fairy tale complicates this union between the soul and the body. Babiole is constantly grappling with bestial, violent feelings: these primal, animal inclinations coupled with her human ability to speak specifically problematize the notion of the Cartesian animal-machine. Clearly, d’Aulnoy fractures here the Cartesian bête-machine by confoun­ding the notion that animals do not speak and lack the ability to reason. Concerning this unclear limit between the animal and the human in d’Aulnoy’s work, Patricia Hannon writes, “Aulnoy’s metamorphosed cha­racters look back towards a pre-Cartesian worldview wherein the bounda­ries between self and universe, human and natural, are less clearly drawn” (81).  

This confounding of the animal-human Cartesian boundary is illus­trated when one day, four years after her birth, Babiole begins to speak with a voice that is so sweet, clear and distinct—which touches the queen to such an extent that she gives Babiole her own menagerie, including dogs, cats, birds, squirrels and even her very own small horse (56). The collected thus becomes the collector herself by means of her own collec­tion; to be a collector in this fashion implies an element of humanness. Here we see a perverse cycle of refinement unfolding. Moroever, to be refined, one must collect, and one must participate in the circulation and exchange of bibelots of the period.

The queen pushes the quest for refinement to extremes, by encourag­ing the idea that Babiole is a “guenuche née princesse” (56).The guenu­che, carrying clear tones of ugliness as we previously discussed, once again collides with the refined. The monkey-princess continues to be cul­turally groomed:

<blockquote>La reine lui donna des maîtres qui exercèrent bien la vi­vacité de son esprit ; elle excelloit à jouer du clavecin : on lui en avoit fait un merveilleux dans une huître à l’écaille: il venoit des peintres des quatre parties du monde, & particu­lièrement d’Italie pour la peindre; sa renommée voloit d’un pole à l’autre, car on n’avoit point encore vu une guenon qui parlât. (57)</blockquote>

First, it is interesting that d’Aulnoy tells the reader the queen arranged for instructors to train Babiole in order to cultivate the vivacité de son esprit: this training and this drawing out of energy, wit and spirit seem to be inte­gral to Babiole’s identity formation. Much like any aristocratic child, Ba­biole is being trained to become sophisticated and refined ; it is clearly a learned behavior, d’Aulnoy seems to say. Although there is something to be said about possessing an innate esprit, as Babiole clearly is endowed with an aspect of inherent esprit—she was born human and transformed into an animal shortly thereafter—we are seeing Babiole’s already inhe­rent witbeing groomed to the extreme. Cultivation and refinement are something to work towards, and they are not completely inherent to the soul—human or animal. Babiole, just like many salonnières of the period, is even taught to play a harpsichord, and is painted by famous artists from all over the world, yet she is so celebrated in the cultural atmosphere of the day because, as d’Aulnoy remarks, no one had ever seen a monkey that speaks. She is a wondrous spectacle, so very human, but not quite. Her body is a site of desire, an object to be possessed by a public, by ar­tists, and by aristocrats. Her body becomes a mirror of their cultural va­lues, and a place to inculcate their worldly tastes.

The zenith of her refinement is, however, represented by the fact that Babiole falls in love with her cousin, the prince. D’Aulnoy writes, “Ba­biole avoit un cœur, & ce cœur n’avoit pas été métamorphosé comme le reste de sa petite personne” (57). D’Aulnoy remarks here that Babiole has a heart, exactly as a human being does, and this could not be taken from her, in spite of her metamorphosed, bestial body. At an emotional level, Babiole is reacting exactly as a refined salonnière would. In the case of Babiole, she pathologizes the pain of her non-reciprocal love for the prince. When she confesses her love for the prince, he laughs (64). Babi­ole cannot sleep, and she is melancholy. Her refinement, so carefully cul­tivated by others and accepted as part of her identity, condemns her to be alone, and to be conscious of the fact that she is never going to live the dream of her aristocratic spirit. Babiole’s ability to reason, paired with her cultivation that made her so famous, only underline her solitude:  her pre­dominantly human spirit is trapped in a monkey’s body.

This animal-human tension, and the subsequent repulsion Babiole feels, manifests itself by a refusal to look in the mirror. Babiole is all too conscious of her curse. D’Aulnoy continues in the crucial mirror sceneof the tale: 

<blockquote>elle ne se voyait jamais dans un miroir, que par dépit elle ne cherchât à le casser ; de sorte qu’on disoit ordinai­rement, le singe est toujours singe, Babiole ne sauroit se dé­faire de la malice naturelle à ceux de sa famille. (57–58)</blockquote>

Let us recall that mirrors were very popular objects at court during the Grand Siècle; mirrors were highly sought-after objects, and had been symbols of the rich aristocracy and “l’instrument du paraître” for a very long time. In fact, Melchior-Bonnet explains, mirrors functioned as a link between nature and culture and operated as conveying “leçons de civilité” (11). Bérénice Le Marchand advances that the mirror is inextricably linked with fairy tales at the end of the seventeenth century, and that a study of the looking glass is crucial when trying to understand court society during Louis XIV’s era (99). During this time, mirrors underlined beauty, finery and physical perfection. This scene of Babiole and her mirror tells the tale of a despised relationship with the mirror image. Ugliness and self-loathing is paramount in this episode. Babiole fears looking at herself, and is repulsed by her own “ugliness”; she is physically unacceptable to her­self, as well as to others. In fact, the only time that Babiole looks into a mirror, she wishes to shatter it. Anne Defrance and Le Marchand both read this desire to break the mirror as a rejection of the self, in which she rea­lizes that the reflection is not who she really is, or what she feels she is; however, I wish to push further here.[8]  Although it is true that the mirror hides just as much as it reveals (Melchior-Bonnet 114), the reader and Babiole are cognizant of her imprisoned soul. Babiole’s desire to shatter the mirror is a very strong reaction that relates to earlier intimations of violence, as when Babiole must hold herself back from biting her little cousin, the prince. Moreover, an emphasis on the fracturing of the image, or the animal self, is central to this portion of the text. The gap between the monkey and the human becomes irreconcilable; the accent is put on her ugly, non-human, bestial corporeality while her refined mind and cul­tivated spirit are exiled to an abject interstice.

Very similar themes are played out in an early nineteenth-century novel. Over a century later, another aristocratic woman of the salons, Claire de Duras (1777–1828), anonymously published a short novel, Ou­rika, in 1823. The striking similarities between “Babiole” and Ourika function as a concrete application of post-colonial theory. Ourika chronicles the life of a young Senegalese woman torn from her native land, enslaved, and consequently raised by a French family during the revolution. From the age of two onward, the aristocratic family that raises her with their son, Charles, culturally grooms her. Much like Babiole, Ou­rika falls in love with her young male counterpart, but this love can never be realized due to their differences. In the case of Babiole, her bestial body prevents their union; in the case of Ourika, it is her black body that forbids her to love and be loved. Duras’ text contains a crucial mirror scene, so very similar to the one in “Babiole,” in which the heroine, Ourika, per­ceives herself with horror in the mirror, and goes so far as to connect the color of her skin with that of the simian:

<blockquote>…souvent mes nuits entières se passaient à pleurer. J’épuisais ma pitié sur moi-même ; ma figure me faisait horreur, je n’osais plus me regarder dans une glace ; lors­que mes yeux se portaient sur mes mains noires, je croyais voir celles d’un singe ; je m’exagérais ma laideur, et cette couleur me paraissait comme le signe de ma réprobation ; c’est elle qui me séparait de tous les êtres de mon espèce, qui me condamnait à être seule, toujours seule ! jamais ai­mée ! Un homme, à prix d’argent, consentirait peut-être que ses enfants fussent nègres ! Tout mon sang se soulevait d’indignation à cette pensée. J’eus un moment l’idée de demander a Mme de B. de me renvoyer dans mon pays ; mais là encore j’aurais été isolée : qui m’aurait entendue, qui m’aurait comprise ? Hélas ! je n’appartenais plus à per­sonne ; j’étais étrangère à la race humaine tout entière ! (15) </blockquote>

This scene from Ourika hearkens back to “Babiole”: a connection with Babiole’s own mirror scene and the repulsion of their own reflections is discursively clear. Although the two are separated by more than a hundred years, the connection between the black body and the simian is evident. The other, whether animal or the colonized, is cast outside of the realm of true beauty. In the end, Babiole is transformed into a human female and seems to achieve true refinement and beauty according to period ideals; in the case of Ourika, Charles chooses to marry another, and this devastating news devours Ourika, who dies from a broken heart in a convent, without her aristocratic family.

These scenes convey the fear of the other, the anxiety of incivility and unrefinement that is equated with ugliness and the bestial. At this point in Babiole’s story, it seems that she is eternally punished, and forever con­demned to imitate and mime the lives of human beings.Finally, Babiole’s mirror scene speaks about the common maxim that le singe est toujours singe—the monkey will always remain the monkey, for many people. While mirrors generally reflect ephemeral and mutable images (Le Marchand 100), Babiole’s looking glass interrogates whether Babiole, or any uncomely, courtly woman, can ever really change. In the context of Babiole’s situation at this moment in the conte, it seems she cannot rid herself of the fairy’s curse—she cannot break the malice naturelle con­nected to her family, or the very same tainted reputation connected to the simian: Babiole is stripped of agency.

Thus the unsettled nature of imitation culminates at this point in the fairy tale. It is interesting to consider the ambassador-parrot who delivers a message from the monkey king, Magot, to the object of his kingly desire, Babiole.[9] The parrot is also a creature that mimes by its very nature. Pas­cal wrote, “Le bec du perroquet qu’il essuie quoiqu’il soit net” in his Pensées (104), showing that the parrot is an animal that behaves purely from instinct: he goes on wiping his beak, despite the fact that it is already clean. A human being would have realized that cleanliness had been achieved and ceased, due to higher cognitive abilities: namely, this is what Pascal terms as thinking, and the ability to truly think overcomes instinct. Additionally, let us once again return to Descartes and consider his fol­lowing assertion:

<blockquote>il n’est pas croyable qu’un singe ou un perroquet qui se­rait des plus parfaits de son espèce n’égalât en cela un en­fant des plus stupides, ou du moins un enfant qui aurait le cerveau troublé, si leur âme n’était d’une nature du tout dif­férente de la nôtre. (148) </blockquote>

Let us remember that, for Descartes, animals do not have a soul, and hu­mans represent the union of the soul and the body. It is significant that the parrot and the monkey appear in d’Aulnoy’s story, and that d’Aulnoy im­bues the monkey with a troubled soul, while the parrot is portrayed more in line with the Pascalian and Cartesian discourses. D’Aulnoy illustrates this parrot and his capacity to imitate, or his ability to “deliver” the mes­sage of the monkey king. Thus the reader witnesses the imitation of a creature that imitates the human ; the parrot relays an imitated message to another creature that imitates the human : the monkey. We see the grou­ping of two imitators here. This chain is not accidental ; it serves to playfully underscore the succession of imitation and reflects courtly imi­tation itself. Furthermore, d’Aulnoy describes the parrot as  “il n’étoit pas tout à-fait habillé à la mode,” but he is an “assez bon poëte” (62). He is not full of spirit and vivacity, as Babiole is. D’Aulnoy remarks later in the text that he had “aucun bon modèle” (62), thus indicating to the reader that in order to imitate at an acceptable, fashionable and refined level, one must follow appropriate, and good, models. One imitates, but does so carefully and with prudence: too much imitation is dangerous. To successfully imi­tate requires well-bred refinement.

Imitation of the refined and the beautiful is evoked as powerful in this fairy tale. A moment before Babiole’s final transformation, in which Babiole encounters her birth mother, deserves emphasis, for beauty is central to this scene. It is her physical refinement that saves Babiole. D’Aulnoy writes that Babiole has a beautiful face for an animal: “la reine venant à passer, demeura si vivement surprise de sa jolie figure” (72), and then the queen, her biological mother, takes Babiole into her arms. The queen offers her a place in her menagerie, thus casting Babiole once again as collector’s object. Babiole replies :

<blockquote>que puis-je ressentir lorsque je me vois dans mon mi­roir, petite, laide & noire, ayant des pates couvertes de poil, avec une queue & des dents toujours prêtes à mordre, & que d’ailleurs je ne manque point d’esprit, que j’ai du goût, de la délicatesse & des sentiments ? (74) </blockquote>

Again, the mirror becomes integral to seeing and being seen: Babiole per­ceives herself as ugly, small and black, hearkening back to a racially char­ged depiction. Not only that, but the bestial is linked to this racial por­trayal, and again we see Babiole herself saying that her teeth are “toujours prêtes à mordre” (ibid.): violence and the simian walk hand in hand here. In addition to this violent rhetoric, the simian is clearly connected to the other, non-white body. However, Babiole claims that she is cultivated and witty: “d’ailleurs je ne manque point d’esprit, que j’ai du goût, de la déli­catesse & des sentiments”—but notably not beautiful: “je me vois dans mon miroir, petite, laide & noire” (ibid.). The struggle between the beastly and the refined and its connection to beauty persists. The queen asks if Babiole is capable of tenderness, because, in the end, she is a beast, even if she is capable of speaking. At last, the queen realizes that Babiole is her daughter and she tries to sequester Babiole in a castle, for this time she feels that she cannot kill her own flesh and blood; she has so much spirit, this Babiole, and it is too bad that the child is just not natural (76). Again, the language hedges towards the domain of the “petit monstre.” Babiole, as a monkey, is condemned by her aunt, her cousin the prince, and once again by her mother, to be alone for eternity. Babiole is a contaminated mirror of her mother, and her female relatives in general, and an unsavory reminder of a tormented past inflicted by an evil fairy. Babiole reminds both the author and reader of the primitive and wild part of humans that we have tried so desperately to control and refine with our civilizing ri­tuals and processes: Babiole carries the physical sign of savagery and unrefinement, yet she is also intellectually refined. The queen as well as readers of the conte would interpret her as a dangerous and uncontrollable hybrid package of civility against incivility.

It is only at the end of the tale, and only after the transformation of Babiole into a woman, that the prince and her mother finally accept her. Yet this freedom from the bestial is complicated indeed. King Magot and his gifts initiate her transformation from monkey to human. Earlier in the fairy tale, he gave Babiole a glass chest with an olive and a hazelnut (66). These two natural objects incite her metamorphosis in the forest; a king­dom magically springs up around her, and she is turned into a beautiful woman. It is fascinating that the ape, King Magot, instigates the metamor­phosis of Babiole: it is the ape that promulgates the transformation of the monkey. Thus there will always be a simian aspect that lingers around the whole affair of the metamorphosis, and the simian nature of the entire in­cident will never completely be erased. However, it is only when Babiole is liberated from her ugly and bestial envelope that she becomes an ac­ceptable partner for the prince. In the desert, she metamorphoses and “se rendit sur le champ si belle, que rien dans l’univers ne pouvoir l’égaler; elle se sentoit de grands yeux, une petite bouche, le nez bien fait, elle mouroit d’envie d’avoir un miroir” (78).

This is an extreme change from the previous desire to break a mirror when looking at her reflection as a monkey. Now she has an urgent desire to look at herself as a beautiful woman. The description of her corporeality is very much that of a salonnière, underlining white beauty and the auto-referentiality of the fairy tales; her small mouth and well-formed nose are physical hallmarks of Western beauty. But her beauty as a woman is not typical—it is superlative. The opposition between ugliness and refinement operates clearly here. When the prince visits Babiole’s birth mother, he explains, “cette Babiole que vous avez vue si laide, est à présent la plus belle princesse de l’univers” (91).Again, we come back to these binaries of ugliness and refinement, and ugliness and beauty: the human world can only accept Babiole when her metamorphosed body is human, and only if she has seemingly rid herself of this mark of the beast. The ugly and the bestial are decidedly conflated in this tale.

In fact, as Furetière puts it, “La laideur et la beauté dependent du ca­price et de l'imagination des hommes.” It is key here that man, and his imagination, is the arbiter of deciding what is ugly, and what is beautiful. Furetière furthermore writes:

<blockquote>BEAUTÉ, se dit figurément des choses spirituelles et morales, et même de toutes les choses qui nous donnent du plaisir à voir et à ouïr. La beauté de l'esprit, des sentiments est plus estimable que celle du corps. La beauté de la vertu, et la laideur du vice.</blockquote>

Beauty of the soul and of the spirit is held in higher esteem than physical beauty. In the case of Babiole, her animality limits her to the bestial realm. The fact that she is an animal strips away any chance of agency concer­ning her status as ugly or beautiful—only in human form is she able to avoid true ugliness. But once again Furetière reminds us, “La beauté est plus en imagination qu’en realité.” Reading this in conjunction with “Ba­biole,” a fairy tale that by its very nature is presented as being rooted in the imaginary, we see that perhaps d’Aulnoy is crafting a metadiscursive comment about the tenuous nature of beauty, and the fluctuating nature of ugliness and beauty in general. As for refinement, d’Aulnoy seems to sug­gest that the soul can be refined but not necessarily the body; beauty and refinement are not necessarily the same thing. D’Aulnoy wishes to show us a soul that is trapped inside a body: a refined soul in the debilitating and ugly package of the simian.

In conclusion, let us turn to the last part of the poem at the end of the tale that reveals d’Aulnoy’s allusions to ugly women of the era:

Elle osa choisir même un Prince pour amant.

J’en connois bien encore dans le siècle où nous sommes,

En qui d’une guenuche on trouve la laideur,

            Et qui pourtant des plus grands hommes

            Prétendent captiver le cœur ;

            Mais il faudroit en leur faveur,

            Que quelque enchanteur charitable

Voulût bien leur donner, pour hâter leur Bonheur,

Ainsi qu’à Babiole, une forme agréable. (93-94)

In order to make themselves socially acceptable to men of the period, contemporary women must seek out a charitable enchanter to give them a more pleasing and attractive form, such as Babiole’s transformation from monkey to woman. Although Babiole escapes her cursed destiny as a monkey, perhaps other women of the period could not escape true ugli­ness. These tropes of refinement, beauty, ugliness, animality, and race linger in the years following d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales:we only have to return to Duras’ Ourika, in which we see a heroine that is both animalized and colonized, that will never escape the curse of an imprisoned soul. Her phy­sical differences spell out eternal abjection and alienation from salon­nières and their aristocratic milieu.

The monkey is a figure conflated with evil, curses, ugliness, and women—but the monkey also reflects an aspect of sublimated humanity. The monkey allows us to see ourselves: it unwraps the primal part of the human, unmasking incivility. Ultimately, this mirroring and the monkey’s imitation of the human are seen as dangerous, for this category of the bes­tial, the other, the uncontrollable, the nonwhite body, must be contained and controlled. This untamed possibility, or “ugliness,” lies beyond the limit of accepted femininity: it forever rejects the chance of beauty. Re­finement and beauty are indeed not mutually exclusive. The fairy tale, “Babiole,” demands a complex reading: these polyvalent layers call into question ugliness vis-à-vis refinement and beauty, and the beast against the human, compelling the reader and the author to reflect on their own lives—these tensions culminate in an inescapable mirror. All of these cat­egories attempt to define what exactly is human, and more specifically, what exactly is woman: is the monkey always monkey after all?

Indiana University—Bloomington

Works Cited

Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine d’. Nouveau cabinet des fées IV. Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1978. Print.

Daston, Lorraine and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Print.

Defrance, Anne. Les Contes de fées et les nouvelles de Madame d'Aulnoy, 1690–1698: L'imaginaire féminin à rebours de la tradition. Genève: Libr. Droz, 1998. Print.

Descartes, René. Discours de la méthode. Ed. Denis Moreau. Paris: Brodard & Taupin, 2000. Print.

Duras, Claire de. Ourika: The Original French Text. Ed. Joan DeJean. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1994. Print.

Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire, masques blancs. Manchecourt: Éditions du Seuil, 1995. Print.

Furetière, Antoine.  Dictionaire Universel. Rotterdam and La Haye: A. & R. Leers, 1690.  Reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1970.

Janson, H.W. Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1952. Print.

Jones, Christine. “The Poetics of Enchantment (1690-1715). Marvels & Tales, 17.1 (2003): 55-74. Print.

Hannon, Patricia. Fabulous Identities: Women’s Fairy Tales in Seventeenth-Century France. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. Print.

Harries, Elizabeth Wanning. “Simulating Oralities: French Fairy Tales of the 1690s.” College Literature 23.2 (June 1996): 100-15. Print.

———. Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Print.

Harth, Erica. Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Print.

Hoffmann, Kathryn. “Of Monkey Girls and a Hog-Faced Gentlewoman: Marvel in Fairy Tales, Fairgrounds, and Cabinets of Curiosities.” Re­framing the Early French Fairy Tale. Ed. Holly Tucker. Special issue of Marvels & Tales 19 (2005): 67–85. Web. 1 Jan. 2012.

Legerstee, Maria and Jean Varghese. “The Role of Maternal Affect Mir­roring on Social Expectancies in Three-Month-Old Infants.” Child De­velopment 72.5 (Sep.-Oct., 2001): 1301–1313. Print.

Le Marchand, Bérénice Virginie. Mise en scène du miroir: Le spectacu­laire dans les blasons et emblèmes de la Renaissance et les contes de fées du dix-septième siècle en France. Diss. Vanderbilt University, May 2004. Print.

Melchior-Bonnet, Sabine. Histoire du miroir. Paris: Éditions Imago, 1994. Print.

Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Ed. Gérard Ferreyrolles. Malesherbes: Maury-Imprimeur, 2009. Print.

Salisbury, Joyce E. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Seifert, Lewis C. “Animal-Human Hybridity in d’Aulnoy’s ‘Babiole’ and ‘Prince Wild Boar’.” Marvels & Tales 25.2 (2011): 244–260. Web. 1 Oct. 2012.

Tucker, Holly. “Fairies, Midwives, and Birth Spaces in the Tales of Mad­ame d’Aulnoy,” in Classical Unities: Place, Time, Action; Actes Du 32^e Congrès Annuel de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Tulane, University, 13–15 avril 2000. Ed. Erec R. Koch. Tübingen: Narr, 2001. 89-94. Print.

———. “Like Mother, Like Daughter: Maternal Cravings and Birthmarks in the Fairy Tales of Mme d’Aulnoy and Mlle de la Force.” The Mother in/and French Literature. Ed. Buford and Nancy Lane. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 33–50. Print.

———. Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003. Print.

Tuttle, Leslie. Conceiving the Old Regime: Pronatalism and the Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.

Verdier, Gabrielle. “Figures de la conteuse dans les contes de fées fémi­nins.” XVII^e Siècle 180 (1993): 481–99. Print.

Printable PDF of Ganim, 63–81

La collection…peut nous servir de modèle:
c’est là où triomphe cette entreprise passionnée de
possession, là où la prose quotidienne des objets
devient poésie, discours inconscient et triomphal.

Jean Baudrillard, Le Système des objets

Introduction and background

Paul Contant’s Le Jardin, et Cabinet Poétique, (1609) is a little-known but significant work in marking the intersection between scientific inquiry, literary expression, and religious discourse in early modern France.[1]  Con­sidered one of the first “museum books,” Contant’s work can initially be seen as an illustrated and descriptive catalog of the flora and fauna that the author, who was also a botanist and an apothecary, either accumulated during his numerous travels or purchased in transactions with traders and other collectors. Despite having a register-like quality, the book carries a distinctly interpretive dimension. In this vein, the text becomes a social and religious document to accompany the cabinet de curiosité that is the inventory of plant and animal specimens on display at the poet’s home in Poitiers. Near the end of his work, Contant includes a florid but poignant tribute to one of his patrons, a prominent Poitevin known as the Sieur Ligneron Mauclerc that summarizes many of the key themes, perspectives, and questions raised in the text:

Tu as tousjours vacqué de toute ta puissance
De chercher les thresors, qui dans l’Inde ont naissance,
Pour en ton Cabinet monstrer en un moment
Tout ce qui naist et meurt en ce bas element :
Dont ta grande bonté et ton amour loyalle
M’a daigné departir d’une main liberale :
Entre autres les Tatoüs, et l’Uletif poisson,
Maincts fruicts, maints animaux, maint rare Limaçon,
Et maints autres presens dont je te remercie
Que chers je garderay tout le temps de ma vie.
(235–37)[2]

Specifically, the homage raises the issue of wealth as a means to explore the natural world and to assemble items of intellectual and perhaps mo­netary value. Such objects are often of a rare and alien—if not monstrous—quality. But once retrieved and displayed within the confines of a cabinet, they become accessible to an increasingly inquisitive public. In addition, the power ascribed to a person of worth such as Ligneron car­ries with it, from a rhetorical perspective, a flattering, near-divine quality that aligns with Contant’s aim of poetically celebrating his cabinet  not simply as a curiosity but as a personal expression of eternity (“Que chers je garderay tout le temps de ma vie”).

The originality of the text lies in its ambition not only to encapsulate but to marry natural and literary creation within the confines of a mini-epic. On one level, the world is rendered intelligible first by taking the reader through the sequence of plant, animal, human, and divine being, and then on another by suffusing those orders with literary meaning. Plants are celebrated for their mythological as well as their medicinal functions. Animals—especially the most bizarre and monstrous varie­ties—seemingly strike a more vivid presence than plants, not simply be­cause they are biologically more complex, but because they convey to humans the notion that God is in charge of originating, altering, and de­stroying life as he sees fit. The celebration of nature, poetry, and God is clearly modeled on Guillaume Du Bartas’s Sepmaine (1578) and, to a certain extent, on other examples of the devotional lyric during the ba­roque era.[3] At the same time, Contant’s work differs and distinguishes itself from that of Du Bartas in multiple ways. Du Bartas models his work on Scripture, and in particular the Old Testament, to interpret the creation of the world. Like Contant, he gives detailed representations of natural phenomena (adding descriptions of stars and planets), but does so in the form of biblical exegesis. In the manner of many religious poets of the baroque era, the tone and content of Du Bartas’s work are meant to create a meditative experience in the reader, who internalizes examples of God’s natural wonders in order to better apprehend divine presence on earth. Contant is not nearly so focused on devotional exercise. Rather than ele­vate the reader through various stages of spiritual consciousness, Contant prefers a more concentrated focus on material objects as tangible examples of God’s accessibility to humanity. But where Du Bartas, as a poet, is an interpreter of natural science, Contant is also a practitioner of it. The or­ganic is not only conceptual, but tactile and readily available, thus ena­bling it to mingle intimately with the spiritual in order to become enduring.

Contant lived between 1570 and 1632 and, like his father Jacques, was a prominent member of the Calvinist community in Poitiers. Both father and son shared a talent for business and botany, with Paul publishing their combined Oeuvres in 1628.[4] Significant among the Oeuvres is a text enti­tled Les Commentaires sur Dioscoride that demonstrates the scholarly interest both men shared with regard to pharmacology and the study of herbal and other medicinal substances. While neither Le Jardin,et Cabinet Poétique nor the Oeuvres asserts Calvinist doctrine, it bears noting that many of those who, during the early modern period, launched sustained inquiry in what we would now call “natural history” were of Protestant faith. Relatively free from the doctrine and the censorship of the Catholic Church, Reformist collectors were able to pursue their work more openly than some of their Catholic counterparts. Along these lines, it is no coinci­dence that Contant received many of his specimens via La Rochelle, the port nearest Poitiers and still a Protestant enclave at the time. In addition, one does detect an affirmation of the individual both in Contant’s biog­raphy and in his text. Throughout Le Jardin, et Cabinet Poétique, Contant protests that he is not wealthy. Yet, as was the case with many who held similar collections, he benefitted both financially and scientifically from mercantile exploration and exchange, amassing an impressive personal fortune that spoke to his entrepreneurial initiative and sparked envy in his detractors. Contant’s adversaries published pamphlets denouncing him for swindling patrons and for coming by his possessions in an unscrupulous manner.[5] Rightly or wrongly, Contant felt threatened by rivals. A rather shameless self-promoter, Contant did himself no favors by repeating his devise, “Du don de Dieu Je suis Contant,” throughout Le Jardin et Cabinet Poétique. As far as presumably other Protestant undercurrents in the text are concerned, the presence of the individual subject/poet is apparent from the beginning of the work, with the “Je” engaging in a direct relationship with nature, and consequently, with God. Contant’s apostrophes to his plant and animal specimens, as well as to God, reinforce the idea that the speaker communicates with objects of veneration on his authority alone. There is no mention of a Church, and allusions to Christ are indirect at best, but intermediaries for Contant do come in the form of the biblical, mythological, and literary antecedents that help the reader understand the rich significance of the plant and animal holdings in the garden and the cabinet. Faith and grace originate from God and find their keenest expres­sion in the appreciation of nature’s splendor and fecundity.

Figure 1. P. Desmoges. Cabinet of mirabilia from the Oeuvres of Jacques and Paul Contant, 1628. Botany Libraries of the Harvard University Hebraria.

The Curiosity of the Cabinet and the Jardin

Precursors to museums, the cabinet de curiosité appeared throughout Europe during the Renaissance and baroque periods and consisted of pri­vate collections that housed unfamiliar objects from the physical world. The collections, often displayed in glass cases, or on large tables, were meant to demonstrate a taste for learning and sophistication as well as material comfort and success. The word cabinet comes most directly from the sets of drawers in which the samples were stored (SeeFig. 1).[6] In addi­tion to referring to a bureau or armoire, the term connotes a room or a group that harbors secrets, therefore adding to the sense of mystery and, to a certain extent, inscrutability surrounding these fascinatingly peculiar objects. The problem associated with these collections stemmed from the fact that the items displayed often represented multifarious and bizarre compilations of animal, vegetable, and mineral material that ranged from the fake to the marvelously authentic. As Oliver Impey and Arthur Mac­gregor point out, terms such as “‘cabinet of curiosities,’ ‘closet or rarities,’ and the Wunderkammer all have an endearingly whimsical ring to them” (1). However, these somewhat dismissive attitudes are displaced, they contend, because “those very traits of diversity and miscellaneity… [actu­ally reveal] a serious intent… in a programme whose aim was nothing less than universality” (1–2). Accordingly, from a cultural perspective, the growth of such cabinets represented what Paula Findlen describes as “new attitudes toward nature as a collectible entity” (1). Moreover, Findlen ar­gues that collections, and later museums, became an effective way to “manage [the] empirical explosion of materials that wider dissemination of ancient texts, increased travel, voyages of discovery, and more system­atic forms of communication had produced” (3). In terms of the develop­ment of collections in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it should be noted that Italy, the Hapsburg Empire, the Nether­lands, and eventually Britain had far surpassed France in both the size and number of cabinets founded by either the nobility or by prosperous bour­geois. During the Renaissance, France boasted its share of naturalists, such as Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566), Pierre Belon (1517–1564), and Charles de l’Ecluse (Carolus Clusius, 1526–1609), but had relatively few collectors. Because France did not possess collections rivaling those of Ulisse Aldrovani in Bologna, Gustavus Adolphus in Sweden, or Rudolf II in Prague, Contant’s jardin and his cabinet become especially relevant. Much smaller in scale than those found elsewhere in Europe, Contant’s holdings were still among the most noted in France, and served as a pre­cursor to more sophisticated attempts in the eighteenth century—most notably those of Réaumur in France and eventually Linnæus in Sweden—to collect and organize natural phenomena according to a defined system of scientific classification.[7]

Contant’s efforts, though rudimentary by some standards, were con­siderable in France for the time. His own cabinet contained thousands of objects, among them:

3500 bronze statuettes (about which little is known)

3000 dried, pressed plants

100 flasks and vials containing oils and perfumes

150 items considered fossils (bones and other fragments embedded in rocks)

100 animals (43 of which are mentioned in the poem)

1 large canoe (18 feet)

The collection piqued significant interest, and the once heir presumptive to the throne, Henri de Condé, visited in 1628. Three years later, Abraham Gölnitz, a noted travel writer from Danzig, stopped in Poitiers and gave an account of Contant’s work in his volume Ulysse Belgico-Gallicus. As the title suggests, the book (which appeared in 1655), gave reports on similar collections in Belgium and France.[8] Because Contant’s inventories often lacked concept or design, with his attempts at cataloguing and nomencla­ture often falling short, Gölnitz’s contribution is important not simply be­cause it added to the international renown of Contant’s work, but because it simplified classification of the samples in terms of 1) plants, 2) fossils (minerals and rocks), 3) animals (land species first, then water), and 4) objects which were divided into naturalia and praeternaturalia. This last designation calls explicit attention to the extraordinary, if not inexplicable character of certain specimens. In labeling certain parts of Contant’s in­ventory preternatural,[9] Gölnitz—whether by accident or by design—publi­cizes the very quality in the collection that Contant seeks to promote. Si­milarly, Gölnitz adds a final category named artificialia which includes items that are partially or wholly fabricated.

Figure 2. Liminary engraving of plants described in Le Jardin,et Cabinet Poétique. Botany Libraries of the Harvard University Hebraria.

The garden, while intrinsically natural in its essence and its existence, is nonetheless a collection in and of itself, planned and cultivated to em­phasize the spectacular and the rare. It represents what Susan Stewart would later call “Nature…in a synthetic, acculturated sense” (151). Alt­hough the public could not, of course, walk through the actual grounds, Contant’s botanical sanctuary was situated in the city center so as to ac­centuate its visibility in Poitiers. In many respects, the garden foreshad­owed much larger projects at Vaux and Versailles to illustrate what Claire Goldstein describes as “marvelous dislocations: of seasons, terrain, cli­mate, and locality” (209) to underscore humanity’s ability to assemble and subdue nature for its own purposes. Contant intended the preserve, which contained 59 specimens from around the globe, to evoke a sense of won­der in those who both viewed the garden from the outside, and those for­tunate enough to enter it. In its liminary image, Le Jardin,et Cabinet Poétique elicits awe in the reader by illustrating what Myriam Marrache-Gouraud and Pierre Martin call an “impossible bouquet” (47) of flowers, trees, bushes, and other assorted plants, all of which were purportedly found in Contant’s garden. In a sense, nature becomes artificial because an arrangement of the kind represented in the image could never be realized. The engraving, of which Contant supposedly sketched the original draw­ing, is meant to simulate the experience a spectator would undergo when visiting the garden itself. What bursts forth is a floral abundance meant to overwhelm with its breadth, depth, and exoticism (see Fig. 2). Barely visi­ble on the page are numbers accompanying each plant. The numerals are cross-referenced in the poem itself, as each specimen carries a description that elaborates its significance. By establishing a kind of verbal “key” to the liminary engraving, Contant makes a quasi-scientific effort to catego­rize the contents of his garden and bring more specificity to its nomencla­ture. Nonetheless, the attempt to count and classify the inventory is over­taken by the fertility of the vegetation on display. Nature’s bounty far out­strips the man-made container at the base of the print. Not only does the fecundity overflow the boundaries imposed by humanity, it dwarfs the animal life that ostensibly supports the vessel. From a symbolic stand­point, nature asserts its superiority over any human (or animal) attempt to control it. The garden itself becomes a curiosité in part because of its seemingly limitless growth and variety.

Botanic Verses

The numbering in Contant’s poem is far from perfect, as occasionally some numerals are out of sequence or are missing altogether. Likewise, the lyric itself is not of stellar quality in that the persona of the poet is sometimes without contour, the rhymed couplets often seem stilted, and the language and imagery sometimes border on the prosaic.[10] Similarly, Contant’s self-described “mini-epic” features no real plot or characters in the conventional sense. In addition, the descriptive nature of the work can become digressive to the point where readers have difficulty charting the progression of the text. The artistic problems of the poem notwithstanding, Contant’s ambition is clear from the opening verses, where he outlines the goals of the project and his particular role in obtaining them. His declara­tion, “Je chante les beautez de la terre nouvelle…” is a direct imitation of Virgil’s Arma virumque cano, while the reference four lines later  “Que l’Aube au teint vermeil enfante de ses pleurs;…” (the precise allusion is to the tears of dawn on flower petals) immediately signals Homer’s Illiad. Having situated himself among the luminaries of Classical Antiquity, Contant, with no small amount of self-congratulation, then exalts his col­lection as transcending all others assembled to date:

J’en fais un Cabinet qui passe la nature.
Cabinet que voyant l’on ne peut exprimer,
Cabinet qu’exprimant l’on ne peult estimer;
Tant la recherche est grande, et qui en son enfance
Aujourdhuy se faict voir un nouveau monde en France!
Qui façonné par moy de recueilz tous divers
Descouvre les tresors de ce grand univers. (69–71)

While the initial line certainly contains some degree of exaggeration, Contant suggests that his cabinet surpasses anything that nature itself has produced. Seeing the repository, the spectator is readily aware of its inef­fable, “inestimable” quality, which seemingly implies that this particular cabinet is superior to those collections Contant viewed as competition with his. Extolling his “recherche” as extensive and profound, Contant contends that his inquiry is only in its earliest stages and intimates that the best is yet to come. His declaration that a “nouveau monde” now appears in France alludes not only to samples from the Americas that embellish his corpus, but to the idea that thejardin and the cabinet represent new worlds that he, as poet, collector, and apothecary, has assembled and created. With respect to his own role, the image Contant conveys is that of a demi­urge. In this case, the term connotes a powerful creative force or personal­ity, or, as the last two verses imply, a near deity who organizes and shapes the material world, presumably out of disorder. Later in the poem, Contant does ascribe substantial credit to God and to nature for the splendor around him. All the same, he does not merely see himself as reflecting this majesty in his text. By touting his own lyric and intellectual agency, Con­tant reveals not simply the natural world, but, more importantly, his part in shaping it.

Glory, while the purview of nature and of God, also extends to Contant himself. The trajectory of the entire poem is such that it starts in the gar­den, moves inside to thecabinet, and then returns to the garden as the work concludes. At all points, but especially at the beginning, the empha­sis is on grandeur. The first numbered reference (we remember that the numeric designations in the text correspond to those in the liminary im­age), is to the cedar of Lebanon, to which Contant directs an apostrophe:

Toy des arbres le chef! dont le tres-riche tronc
Du coupeau Syrien jadis dedans Solime
Fut conduit à grand frais dans le temple sublime
Du grand Dieu d’Israel: Je te salüe aussi… (73)

It is highly improbable that Contant’s garden contained a mature cedar of Lebanon since the trees are normally quite large (40 meters in height, 3 meters in diameter) and grow at a very slow pace. More than likely, Con­tant possessed a smaller-sized version of the famed conifer. For Contant and for his readers, what matters most are the associations the cedar eli­cits, namely, the building of the Temple of Israel and the recognition that the cedar of Lebanon is the most magnificent of all trees, if not of all ve­getation. Following the cedar are the pines from Savoy which, Contant reminds us, were reputedly used to build the Trojan horse. From the standpoint of syncretism, what occurs is that Contant’s garden and his poem become the loci where the highest forms of biblical, literary, and natural history not only converge, but find their most meaningful collec­tive expression. As mentioned, the garden itself becomes a cabinet in that it becomes a privileged space for the exotic, the luxurious, and the em­pyreal. The uniqueness of Contant’s work resides in his ability to illustrate the linkages between these modes and manifestations of greatness and to translate their significance to the reader.

Throughout the text, Contant’s view of nature is peaceful, beneficent, and gentle. While there are brief allusions to illness and death in the nar­rative, the overall image is that of healing and regeneration. Nature in Contant’s world is a re-creation of Eden, and, if compared to interpreta­tions of nature held in the following century, exhibits a proto-Rousseau­vian quality.[11] However, Contant’s assessment of humanity differs widely from Rousseau’s. While nature tries to work in harmony with humankind, it does not have a willing partner. For Contant, humanity is as corrupt as it has ever been:

Homme indigne des biens que ta grande bonté
A voulu departir, à son humanité;
Ingrate humanité, car sa mescognoissance
Ne meritoit d’avoir un tel bien jouïssance… (87)

Humanity continues neither to see nor to appreciate the earthly paradise in which it lives. Consequently, humankind is unworthy of the beauty around it, and insufficiently venerates God’s majesty. The possessive adjective “ta” in the first line of the citation refers to the bounty of both Nature and God. Contant’s theology is one that equates natural and divine transcen­dence. As noted, he was very much a Protestant, but compared to other Calvinist poets of the day, there is very little, if any, Reformist message in Contant’s lyric. Similarly, most of the biblical references in the narrative are to the Old Testament, and Christ is mentioned but once in the text, and only then referred to as “le Redempteur” (159). Where Christ is seemingly present is in the author’s generally benevolent portrait of God, and then, the term used to evoke the divine is “Dieu.”  Although there exist, es­pecially in the section on the cabinet, manifestations of God’s angry po­wer, Contant’s God provides for his people and cares for them by conti­nuously beautifying and replenishing the Earth itself. To know nature, then, is to know God and his love. In Contant’s view, the key existential problem for humanity is to find a way to gain sufficient knowledge of na­ture not so much as to gain salvation (a topic he does not deal with) but so as to properly worship and comprehend God. The best means of solving this quandary is to collect and organize what is wondrous, strange, and unnerving in nature and make it intelligible to at least some segments of humanity. The humanistic dimension to Contant’s work comes in the form of an invitation to the public to study not just Contant’s personal museum, but all similar collections in order to extend and deepen humanity’s knowledge of nature, God, and itself.

From the Garden to the Cabinet : God(s) and Monsters

From a narrative point of view, there is very little transition from the garden to the cabinet. Absent are any structural indicators such as books, chapters, or other markers delineating separation in the text. What Contant does include is a few verses thanking one of his friends and donors, a pharmacist from La Rochelle named “Moriceau,” for helping him add substantially to the collection.[12] In expressing his gratitude, Contant under­scores the exotic nature of Moriceau’s donations:

Dedans mon Cabinet plein de choses nouvelles;
Que l’Inde, le Peru, que le Nil, que le Nord,
Ont jetté par faveur sur le bigarré bord… (169)

Figure 3. The bat, canoe, and other exotic items from the cabinet. Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library.

While the rather hasty shift could serve as a reminder of Contant’s limited poetic skills, it could also signal that Contant perceives little distinction between the garden and the cabinet, and that both his exterior and interior spaces become fused into a natural, global whole. Forty-three specimens are pictured in the engravings, and although some samples are readily re­cognizable, most are alien to France and are meant to strike the reader as unusual if not somewhat glamorous. Immediately drawing our attention are the supposed “monsters” which are intended to represent the rarest and most astonishing forms of animal life known at the time (see Fig. 3). As Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park suggest, response to the genetic va­riations and anomalies of what were termed “monsters” and “prodigies”[13] underwent numerous transformations during the early modern period:

[…] attitudes toward monsters [evolved] in linear terms: originally part of the prodigy canon,  with its omi­nous religious resonances, monsters shifted over the course of the Sixteenth Century to become natural wonders—sources of delight and pleasure—and then to become ob­jects of scientific inquiry…[.] These reactions overlapped and coexisted over much of the early modern period. (176)

Contant’s work illustrates this type of ambiguity. At this same time the poet indicates that physical aberrations are a sign of divine displeasure and might, he is no doubt fascinated by such abnormalities and knows that his audience is as well. The development and dissemination of print culture enables the allure of the unfamiliar to spread rapidly. As Wes Williams states, “The history of science, the history of the book, and the relation of both…are also histories of encounter, of conflict, and of imagination, as the texts and images . . . make plain” (39). From a promotional standpoint, without monsters featured prominently in the work, Le Jardin, et Cabinet Poétique, as both a text and an actual collection, would not have attracted as much attention from dignitaries and the literate public. From a scientific perspective, however, by effectively assigning the label of “specimen” to such examples, Contant mitigates the horror his public may initially expe­rience, and, in some readers at least, engenders a certain intellectual de­tachment that empowers them with a sense of their own capability to understand and hold sway over nature.

Among Contant’s most prized monstrous curiosities is an object de­noted as a “dragon.” In all likelihood, the “dragon” was originally some sort of lizard, or had been reconstructed from small dinosaur fossils. Whatever the case, the image in the engraving is embellished, and no such creature actually existed. As a result, grouping it under Gölnitz’s classifi­cation of artificialia would be more than appropriate. Nonetheless, for Contant’s purposes, the dragon is important not simply for its shock value, but for the mythological and biblical significance it carries. Specifically, Contant appropriates the dragon for the purposes of depicting humanity’s continued fall from grace. In the poem, the dragon replaces the serpent in Eden whose evil persists in cursing humankind:

Et le subtil Dragon l’ennemy de Nature,
Qui sans cesse et sans fin l’humaine creature
Tasche de renverser par mille efforts divers
Soit de jour soit de nuict ce vaste Univers.
Qui tascha d’acabler celuy que la puissance
Divine, avoit logé dans l’Eden d’innocence… (175)

The dragon in Contant’s collection may be artificial, but the danger it symbolizes and still poses is real. Humanity remains an outcast from its earthly paradise and its sinful nature stands in marked contrast to physical and divine nature as represented in Eden and in Contant’s poem. For the reader, Contant’s garden represents both what is lost and what could be regained if humankind were, finally, to embrace and apprehend the divine character of the bounty surrounding it. The fact that Contant himself has, for all intents and purposes, seized and confined the beast, should provide hope that sin and evil can be overcome.

If humanity is to rediscover the link to Nature’s wonders, part of the pro­cess would involve enhanced connections to the animal world. The dragon may represent an artificial specimen in Contant’s collection, but many presumably real animals serve to demonstrate how humanity benefits from associations with this component of nature’s and God’s kingdom. Perhaps the most palpable example of such bonding occurs in Contant’s mention of an episode taken from Jean de Léry’s Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (1578).[14] As Contant tells it, a monk’s servant is overtaken with pleurisy. Efforts to bleed him are futile to the point where his Confes­sor is called to administer last rites. At that moment, a rare but beneficent bat swoops down and bites the servant on the heel, whereupon the purga­tive bleeding begins and the man is cured. Symbiosis occurs in that the bat receives the blood it needs to survive. As if to suggest this interdepen­dence, the bat (see Fig. 3) is portrayed as highly anthropomorphic. Many of the bat’s features are humanoid, including its smiling face and well-defined muscles. While this pictorial exaggeration might seem naive and even silly, the point is to underscore the reciprocity, if not harmony, between the human and animal worlds. Overseeing the unifying process is God, whom Contant praises in the final two lines of the section: “Voilà comment celuy qui toutes choses donne / Contre l’espoir humain la santé nous redonne” (195). Two inferences readily drawn from this distich are that God has absolute power to heal, while exercising complete control over the elements of his creation. It is this last assumption that bears most closely on the role of “monsters” in Contant’s repository.

In many respects, the most notably freakish samples in Contant’s col­lection were the prized possessions of the cabinet. Specifically, he lists five specimens, designated as:

Enfant monstrueux (conjoined twins)

Aigneau monocule

Pigeon à deux testes

Chien à huict pieds

Chat à huict pieds

These items are examples of what is now called teratology, or the study of deformities.[15] In the case of the conjoined twins, the display consisted of a skeleton, while the animals were stuffed and made to look verisimilar (to the extent possible) through the skills of a taxidermist (see Fig. 4). Contant vaunts such anomalies not simply to jolt the reader, but to advance his assertions concerning divine supremacy over the universe. To prove his contention, Contant criticizes the theories of natural philosophers and phy­sicians from Classical Antiquity such as Galen, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, as well as his near-contemporary Jean Fernel (1497–1558), who stated that such irregularities occurred as accidents of nature and carried no further significance. In effect, Contant echoes the surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510–1590) who, forty years earlier, stated that the first two “causes” of mons­ters were 1) “la gloire de Dieu,” and 2) “son ire”(4).[16] Referring to the abnormalities on exhibit in his cabinet, Contant states:

Car tous ces grands deffauts ou du trop ou du peu
Sont signes quelques-fois que Dieu nostre grand Dieu
Veut par là faire voir,…
…Que seul lui a sur nous le pouvoir actuel:
Qu’il faict tout, [et] qu’il peut tout … (209)

Aberrations, then, indicate God’s omnipotence and reinforce the authority of heaven and nature over humanity. What emerges near the end of Con­tant’s text is a somewhat mixed portrait of God. Throughout most of the poem, God is seen as a benevolent creator who provides for the universe through nature’s plenitude. His authority is affirmed by the expanse, depth, and regeneration of this bounty, while his goodness is confirmed by the constant provision of this wonder and abundance despite

Figure 4.“Monsters” both human and animal, included in the cabinet. Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library.

humankind’s ingratitude. Nonetheless, God’s will is such that he must occasionally demonstrate his awesome presence (“…nostre grand Dieu / Veut par là faire voir…”) by producing startling—if not at times frigh­tening—examples of his power. On occasion, God maintains his hold on humanity by creating monsters, but does this mean that God himself is monstrous? For Contant, the answer to this question is no. Contant’s God is capable of subverting his own norms to keep humanity in line, but by and large, the portrayal is not that of an angry, punitive Deity as seen in the Old Testament. What Contant does is to give the reader versions of the same God that reflect his vision of nature: generally charitable and resto­rative, but at times unpredictable and daunting.

A Return to the Garden and the Meaning of Life

Contant ends the poem with a shift back to the garden as if to suggest that while the internal, reserved space of the cabinet is valuable, it pales in comparison to the splendor of Nature. As with the move from the garden to the cabinet, there is virtually no transition in that the numbered se­quencing of the plants, which had been interrupted with the inventory for the cabinet, simply restarts from where it had stopped. The final descrip­tion is of an unnamed plant, but specialists believe it is most accurately identified as the helianthus tuberosus, known as the “poire de terre” in French, and the “Jerusalem artichoke” in English. Originally from the plains of North America, the helianthus tuberosus is a sunflower that propagates quickly and produces a tasty root vegetable. Contant portrays the plant as resilient to the forces that menace it:

Mais comme un haut sapin que l’Aquilon agite        
Or deça or de là, de son flair tourne-vite,
Sans bransler tant soit peu resiste courageux
A ses efforts souflants d’un esprit orageux… (235)

Clearly, these resistant qualities served as inspiration to a poet who saw himself as beleaguered and vulnerable. For Contant, meaning is derived not simply from his life’s work in the garden, but from nature’s guarantee of renewal. On its highest level, the poet sees this regeneration as a pro­mise of immortality. It is perhaps not a coincidence that in almost the exact middle of the poem, Contant gives the strongest defense of his pro­ject while stating his ultimate aim:

Je ne veux point qu’on die, haissant ce qu’on peut;
Contant a de grands biens; car cela ne m’esmeut:
Et ma profession honneste ne me donne
Les moyens terriens, mais la riche Coronne
De l’immortalité: Et le bien ne faict pas
L’homme heureux, mais ouy bien, les oeuvres du trespas. (173)

Placing himself above the pettiness of his critics, Contant suggests that the meaning of his existence, as defined by his “profession honneste” of poetry and collecting, is to enrich and combine his understanding of lite­rature, nature, and God so as to attain everlasting life. By identifying and strengthening these links in the chain of being, Contant transcends the earth by creating art from it.     

The University of Iowa

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. 1968. Le Système des objets. Paris: Gallimard.

Contant, Paul. Le Jardin,et Cabinet Poétique. Poitiers: Antoine Mesnier, 1609.

———. Le Jardin,et Cabinet Poétique. Ed. Myriam Marrache-Gouraud and Pierre Martin. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004.

Contant, Jacques et Paul. Oeuvres. Poitiers: Antoine Mesnier, 1628.

Du Bartas, Guillaume. La Sepmaine ou creation du monde. Paris: Michel Gadoulleau, 1578.

Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1994.

Goldstein, Claire. Vaux and Versailles: The Appropriations, Erasures, and Accidents that Made Early Modern France. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008.

Gölnitz, Abraham. Ulysse Belgico-Gallicus. Amsterdam: A. Willems Les Elzevier, 1655.

Impley, Oliver and Arthur Macgregor, ed. The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities In Sixteenth and Seventeenth—Century Europe. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1985.

Joubert, Laurent. Erreurs populaires au fait de la medicine et le régime de santé. Bordeaux: Simon Millanges, 1578.

Léry, Jean de. Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Bresil, autrement dite Amerique. Poitiers: F. Lestringant, 1580.

Paré, Ambroise. Des Monstres et Prodiges. Ed. Jean Céard. Geneva: Droz, 1971.

_____. Les Oeuvres de M. Ambroise Paré. Paris: Gabriel Buon, 1575.

Schnapper, Antoine. Le Géant, la licorne et la tulipe. Collections et col­lectionneurs dans la France du XVII^e siècle. Vol. 1. Histoire et His­toire naturelle. Paris: Flammarion, 1988.

———. Curieux du Grand Siècle. Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVII^e siècle. Vol. 2. Oeuvres d’art. Paris: Flammarion, 1994.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1984.

Williams, Wes. Monsters and Their Meanings in Early Modern Culture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Printable PDF of Theobald, 46–62

One of the most prominent characteristics of the protagonist of Charles Sorel’s Histoire comique de Francion is his predilection for pleasure.[1]  He finds pleasure in eating, drinking, reading, writing, playing tricks on peo­ple, and, perhaps most of all, having sex. In a surprising passage in the fourth book of the 1623 edition, however, he proclaims that, unlike his classmates at the collège, he does not take pleasure in masturbation:

En ce temps là, je passois le temps avec le plus de plaisir, et le moins de soucy que je pouvois parmy les com­pagnies des Escoliers les plus genereux, et les plus desbauchez. Presque tous estoient addonnez a un vice, dont de tout temps nostre College avoit eu le renom d’estre in­fecté. C’estoit que pressez par leur jeune ardeur, ils avoient appris a se donner eux mesmes quelques contentements sensuels, a faute d’estre accouplez avec une personne d’autre sexe. Quant a moy je n’estois gueres amoureux de ce plaisir là, et faisois conscience de respandre inutilement une semence tres bonne, au lieu de la mettre en un lieu où elle profitast: je ne me voulois point rendre ennemy des Dames, qui haïssent mortellement ceux qui les privent ainsi de ce qui leur est deub. Mais quand j’y songe, si ces gar­çons là pechoient, ils estoient assez griefvement punis, car ils avoient beau faire, jamais ils n’assouvissoient leur desir qui s’accroissoit de plus en plus et leur donnoit des gesnes secrettes. Un tel martyre me cause de la pitié, et je maudis les loix du monde, qui gardent que les remedes n’y soient donnez, et que tant de filles qui d’ailleurs souspirent en ca­chettes apres les embrassemens, ne soient mises avec ceux qui sont ainsi travaillez, afin qu’ils esteignent ensemble leurs flames par une eau la plus douce de toutes, et que de­sormais ils s’abstiennent de pecher. Si nous eussions eu chacun une de ces mignardes en nostre compagnie, elle nous eust bien plus servy que celle de tous nos livres.[2]

Sorel provides a complex and somewhat ambiguous commentary on mas­turbation. On the one hand, he incorporates language similar to that of theological doctrine of the seventeenth century, which condemned mas­turbation as a mortal sin, but at the same time he seems to demonstrate an awareness of an opposing physiological perspective about masturbation as a natural human behavior. While readers could reasonably assume that Sorel would subvert the Church’s stance in favor of a more “liberal” posi­tion, his protagonist appears to share the belief of the Church that mastur­bation is a waste of life, but more than that, he sees it as creating an endless need to replicate pleasure that can’t ever be satisfied. My purpose is to briefly discuss the significance of this passage in terms of the context of Catholic theology of the time, but especially to draw parallels between this and other contemporary literary mentions of masturbation, and to ex­plore the connection between this episode in Francion and the sort of endless pleasure of fiction that the novel can provide.

In their study of the history of masturbation in France, Histoire d’une grande peur: La masturbation, Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck cite the Somme des péchez by the Franciscan Jean Benedicti, first published in 1584, as a work that solidified the position of Catholic theology on mas­turbation in a systematic way.[3]  According to Benedicti, “Quiconque se procure pollution volontaire hors le mariage, qui est appelée des théolo­giens mollities, il pèche contre l’ordre naturel….La pollution volontaire et procurée en veillant, soit par attouchement, par cogitation et délectation, par locution ou conversation avec femmes ou hommes, par lecture de livres impudiques, ou par quelqu’autre moyen que ce soit, est péché mor­tel.”[4]  Following the traditional teaching that the practice is condemned as “an act against nature” in that it does not lead to procreation, the purpose that God intended for sex, Benedicti categorizes it as a mortal sin.[5]  He goes a step further by condemning masturbation as a crime against God’s word, referring first to Onan’s sin in Genesis.[6]  After his brother’s death, it was Onan’s duty according to Jewish law to sleep with his sister-in-law in order to give his brother an heir. Onan resented the fact that his son would be an heir to his brother and preferred to “spill his seed” on the ground rather than impregnate his sister-in-law. While his crime seems to cover not only masturbation but also coitus interruptus and becomes such mainly because it involves disobeying God’s law, the terms onanisme and masturbation have been used interchangeably in both French and English since the beginning of the eighteenth century.[7]  Francion’s claim, “[je] faisois conscience de respandre inutilement une semence tres bonne” (210), could be a reference Onan’s sin. Benedicti also refers to the New Testament to condemn masturbation as a sin against God’s word, citing Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “Ne vous trompez point: car ne les paillards, ne les idolâtres, ne les adultères, ne les mols, ne les sodomites, ne les larrons… n’hériteront point le Royaume céleste.”[8]  For Benedicti, “les mols” are masturbators.[9] Sorel’s use of the words “vice” and “pécher” in the passage undoubtedly refer to the Catholic teaching on masturbation.

While Sorel’s passage clearly has documentary value to modern histo­rians of sexuality,[10] it is also, and perhaps primarily, an example of literary parody. The words “ardeur, martyre, gêne, éteindre, soupir, remède, flammes,” and “douce” are all used in Petrarch, and most important, in French imitations of Petrarch, to describe the poet’s burning love for a lady (in Petrarch’s case, for Laura). The image of “douce eau” as a ful­fillment of erotic desire derives from Petrarch’s Rime sparse as well (see the famous Canzone 126: Chiare fresche et dolci acque). Of course, the situation Sorel describes, masturbating boys and sighing girls who are ready to have sex if only the “laws of this world” permitted it, is com­pletely contrary to the chaste though pining Petrarchan lover devoted to the one and only (married) beloved whose virtue persists until her death. Although at first glance it may seem surprising to find this lyric language associated with masturbation, it is typical of Sorel to mix high and low registers and to re-write and subvert material from literary precedents. This is something that the unconstrained “genre” he is practicing allows him to do. Therefore, one cannot separate the documentary value of Fran­cion’s comments from the literary games that Sorel is playing, which in­form his comic fiction as a whole.

Another example of Sorel’s literary games that also relates to Fran­cion’s idea of wasting life (and perhaps to masturbation) occurs in the second book during Francion’s dream. As he dreams of having sex with Laurette, his love interest, he kisses an old woman, Agathe, who is also spending the night at the inn. Francion’s roommate, who turns out to be his old friend Raymond, pulls him back: “Mais le compagnon de lict de Francion la priva d’un si cher contentement, car il tira son gentil baiseur par le devant de sa chemise, mettant en evidence la plus aymable piece de son corps, qui avoit froslé contre le ventre de ceste vieille, et luy avoit causé un plaisir nompareil, et puis après il le fit remettre au lict” (102). Although Francion is not touching himself, the word “frosler” implies a masturbatory act, and if Raymond had not been there to stop him, it is not difficult to imagine the outcome had Francion’s dream continued. After he wakes up and Raymond tells him what happened, a horrified Francion says to Agathe,

ne t’en glorifie point de ce que j’ay faict, car apprens que je prenois ta bouche pour un retraict des plus salles, et qu’ayant envie de vomir j’ay voulu m’en approcher afin de ne gaster rien en ceste chambre, et de ne jetter mes ordures qu’en un lieu dont l’on ne peut accroistre l’extreme infec­tion. J’y eusse possible apres deschargé mes excremens en te tournant le derriere et si j’ay touché a ton corps, c’est que je le prenois pour quelque vieille peau de parchemin, que je treuvois bonne a torcher un trou où ton nez ne merite pas de fleurer. (102) 

This passage, although not explicitly about masturbation, seems to reaf­firm Francion’s objection to wasting life. The expressions “jetter mes or­dures” and “descharger mes excremens” emphasize the fact that sex with an old woman cannot produce life.[11]  Much more than a possible commen­tary on masturbation or on the theological consequences of the “pollution nocturne,” this passage is above all highly literary: the erotic dream is a mainstay of amorous lyric inherited from the sixteenth century. The frus­trated lover cannot possess his beloved in real life, so he turns to the “songe amoureux” to indulge his erotic fantasies.^[12]  Francion’s disappoint­ment when he is awakened by Raymond harks back to the transformation of the voluptuous body of the sorceress Alcina into that of an old hag in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (VII, 70–72), and to the satirical tradition that follows.

In yet another episode, Francion comments indirectly about wasting life in the third book as he recounts his dream to Raymond. In his dream, after fleeing a group of monsters, he meets a man whom he describes as malicious; the man has climbed an apple tree and not only takes the fruit, but also breaks the branches, leaving only the trunk that has no hope of producing fruit in the future.[13]  Martine Debaisieux has demonstrated that the episodes in Francion’s dream mirror his adventures in the novel.[14]  She shows that the threat of castration in the dream reflects Francion’s fear of impotence and loss of the virility that is part of his identity.[15]  When the dream is considered in juxtaposition to the passage on masturbation, it seems to represent not only his fear of losing the ability to experience and give sexual pleasure (which allows him to see himself as superior to other men), but also a preoccupation with not being able to reproduce.[16]

While Francion objects to masturbation in the passage in question from the fourth book, calling it a vice, a sin, and a waste of life, he also suggests that it is common practice among almost all (“Presque tous”) of his classmates. The fact that he knows this implies that they do not try to hide it and therefore feel no guilt or shame about it. As we have seen, the posi­tion of the Church that masturbation was a mortal sin was not solidified until the late sixteenth century, and according to Philippe Ariès, cultural norms about children and sexuality were much less strict before the sev­enteenth century.[17]  Ariès cites passages from the journal of Heroard, perso­nal doctor to the young Louis XIII, as examples of children’s expo­sure to sex; he summarizes, “Pendant ses trois premières années, personne ne répugne ou ne voit de mal à toucher, par plaisanterie, les parties sexuelles de cet enfant.”[18]  It was common, and not at all shocking, for adults to joke about sex in front of children and even to touch them sex­ually.[19]  In the fifteenth century, Jean Gerson set out to reform cultural norms to protect children’s innocence; he wrote specifically about mastur­bation in De Confessione mollicei.[20]  For Gerson, masturbation was a dan­ger brought on by original sin, but it could be prevented through confes­sion and through educational reform: “Comment preserver l’enfance de ce danger?  Par le conseil du confesseur, mais aussi en changeant les mau­vaises habitudes de l’éducation, en se comportant avec les enfants autre­ment. On leur parlera sobrement, en n’utilisant que des mots chastes.”[21]  The purpose of the “conseil du confesseur” was to make children, espe­cially those between ten and twelve years old, feel guilty about masturba­tion.[22]  Ariès writes that the moral discipline that Gerson called for in collèges was not established until the late seventeenth century.[23]  

Jean-Jacques Bouchard’s Confessions reflect the less severe, pre-guilt perspective on masturbation. Bouchard was a part of the libertine social circle in Paris during the 1630’s; if he didn’t know Sorel, they were likely to have had acquaintances in common.[24]  In this fascinating account of sexual initiation that was not published until 1881, masturbation is de­scribed in surprising detail. The narrator explains that the main character, Orestes, discovered the practice at eleven years old:

Estant parvenu à l’age d’onse ans il treuva de luy mesme le moyen de bransler la pique en cette façon : une après disnée, come il estoit dans une petite estude assis sous une table […] regardant son vit et le maniant, il sen­tait je ne sçai quel chatouillement extraordinaire, ce qui le fit recommencer une autre fois avec plus d’attention ; et y ayant treuvé un goust nompareil, il comencea de là en hors à perfectionner cet art dont il s’imaginoit estre l’inventeur, l’apprenant aux petits laquais de chez luy et à quelques en­fans de ses voisins.[25]

He continues to masturbate as a collégien: “Il mena cette vie là tout le temps qu’il fut au college, c’est à dire depuis les treize jusques à dix huit ans, spermatisant tous les jours, deux fois d’ordinaire, le plus souvent trois ou quatre […].”[26]  A few years later, Orestes cannot achieve an erec­tion in order to have sex with women:

devant que se treuver avecque quelque femme, il estoit dans des ardeurs et des impatiences nompareilles tout le temps qu’elle estoit absente; puis en la presence aussitot il se sentoit fraper de je ne sçai quelle mauvaise honte / si opinastrement froide, que ni la chaleur du devis, ni du vin, ni des caresses, ni des baisers mesmes ne la pouvoit sur­monter. Il en falloit venir à une forte et puissante operation de main, et après avoir bien pressé, […] et frotté, une grosse heure durant, jusques à la lassitude de l’un et de l’autre […], il ne succedoit autre chose qu’une excessive sueur, suivie incontinent après d’un frisson si violent, qu’il n’y avoit si petite partie de son corps qui n’en fust esbran­slée avec une espece de convulsion; ce qui luy causoit une telle dissipation d’esprits qu’il demeuroit come esvanouy une bonne espace de temps. Que si après cela il pensoit solliciter et presser de nouveau son bidet ombrageus, c’estoit lors qu’il recomençoit de plus belle ses quintes et son opiniastreté, car il l’a vu mille fois se dresser, puis au mesme instant qu’il le vouloit faire entrer, tomber plus mort que jamais.[27]

Orestes fears that his impotence is caused by too much masturbation in his youth. This problem could be what Sorel refers to as the “gesnes secrettes” experienced by Francion’s friends. Interestingly, impotence is one of the physical consequences of the practice, along with convulsions, fatigue, and weakness, threatened by the anonymous author of a widely-circulated pamphlet about masturbation in 1715.[28] The description of Orestes’s symp­toms suggests that the rumors of physical effects of masturbation that were believed to be true in the eighteenth century may have already started as early as the 1620’s or 30’s.

Although Orestes is clearly frustrated by the impotence that he thinks is the result of masturbation, it is difficult to determine if he feels guilt. In her discussion of whether or not the title “Confessions” (assigned 250 years after the text was composed) is appropriate, Martha Houle writes, “Bouchard makes no reference to the actions he recounts as erreurs or péchés, nor does he speak of guilt or repentance.”[29]  However, in the previ­ously cited passage, the narrator describes Orestes as feeling struck by “je ne sçai quelle mauvaise honte” when he is unable to have sex with women, and the predicate “je ne sçai quel” is also associated with the “chatouillement” Orestes feels while masturbating in the first passage. But Orestes’s shame is conveyed through physical symptoms, not through moral reflection. Instead of being held back by the moral or religious qualms that characterize the traditional conflict between a sense of sin and the desires of the body, it is Orestes’s body that holds him back. While Bouchard uses Greek letters to “disguise” the most shocking parts of his text, he speaks much more openly about masturbation than Sorel does in Francion, and the words “vice” and “pécher” give Sorel’s passage a more moralizing tone. Of course, it is important to note that Bouchard may not have intended to publish the Confessions, whereas Sorel rightfully feared being censored; he omitted the passage about masturbation in the 1626 edition of Francion presumably for fear of persecution after the trial of Théophile de Viau.

For Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Bouchard’s description of masturbation sug­gests that it was an ordinary part of sexual experimentation: “[Bouchard] raconte une initiation à la sexualité, sans doute tout à fait banale, d’un fils de famille de l’époque (masturbation, sexualité de collège, amours ancil­laires compliquées d’impuissance émotive…), et non pas du tout l’expérience ab-norme d’un ‘pervers’ comme on l’a si souvent écrit.”[30]  The fact that Francion’s friends masturbate suggests the same thing, and Sorel’s explanation that they felt a physical need to release sexual energy (they were “pressez par leur jeune ardeur”) also points to a physiological stance about masturbation that was emerging in the sixteenth and seven­teenth centuries. Jean-Louis Flandrin cites a 1628 translation of Cardinal F. Toledo’s instructions for priests regarding confession:

It is a very grave sin and one which is against nature: it is not permitted either for health or for life, nor for what­ever purpose. Therefore those Doctors who advise this act on health grounds sin grievously, and those who obey them are not exempt from mortal sin. This sin is abandoned with great difficulty, particularly as the temptation is ever-pre­sent: therefore it is so common that I believe that the ma­jority of the damned are tainted with this vice.[31]

While there is little to no medical documentation about physical effects, whether positive or negative, of the practice of masturbation during the Ancien Régime, this excerpt shows that it was quite common and that it was seen as beneficial by at least some doctors who were recommending it to patients.

Several poems presented in La Muse lascive,Michel Jeanneret’s an­thology of sixteenth and seventeenth century erotic poetry that has been ignored and/or under-valued by critics, both confirm that masturbation was a common practice and shed light on the passage in Francion.[32]  In an untitled poem by Saint-Pavin, the poet adopts a critical tone toward mas­turbation and gives voice to the same concern about wasting life expressed by Francion: 

Pour ne point foutre de putain,
En crois-tu, pour cela, tes passe-temps sans crime ?
Bougre, tu te fous de la main,
Ce plaisir est-il légitime ?
Si celui qui forma le plus grand des Romains,
Pour tout con n’eust eu que ses mains,
Voy de quel heros admirable,
Il auroit privé l’Univers ;
 Songe que la nature en tes plaisirs pervers,
Te crie incessamment : Arreste misérable,
Ah ! c’est un homme que tu pers ! [33]

Since Saint-Pavin treats masturbation much more favorably in another poem (“Ma main est là bien aymée/ Qui me sert le plus souvent,/ Le soir, ma porte fermée,/Seul, je m’en joue en resvant”[34]), this poem may be writ­ten in the voice of someone who has chastised the poet for masturbating; or perhaps the poet is talking to himself as an expression of self-loathing. But the last verses suggest that the crime of masturbation is perverse not because it goes against God but because it goes against nature and the hu­man race. Indeed, it is nature that cries out incessantly to the masturbator, not the Holy Spirit or his conscience. In addition, the counter-factual ex­ample given, Augustus’s absence from history, had his father not dis­charged in a “con,” can easily be read ironically. First of all, it is pagan, not Christian, and the burlesque juxtaposition between the vulgar “con” with elevated style of the periphrases “le plus grand des Romains” and “quel heros admirable” undermines the moral questioning that the horta­tory rhetoric is intended to produce. Clearly, Saint-Pavin is having fun with the topic. Masturbation seems to lend itself to a sort of writing that includes many levels of intention and meaning, much the same as Sorel’s passage, whose mixture of theological, mock-Petrarchan, and naturalistic vocabulary can also be read as a Catholic condemnation or as a warning against the physiological consequences of the practice or finally, it can simply be read ironically as a gesture to the censors.

Malherbe takes a more personal tone in a poem that describes the struggle between desires of the body and fear of sin:

Sitôt que le sommeil au matin m’a quitté,
Le premier souvenir est du con de Nérée,
De qui la motte ferme et la barbe dorée,
Égale ma fortune à l’immortalité.

Mon vit, dont le plaisir est la félicité,
S’allonge incontinent à si douce curée,
Et d’une échine roide au combat préparée,
Montre que sa colère est à l’extrémité.

La douleur que j’en ai m’ôte la patience,
Car de me le mener c’est cas de conscience,
Ne le mener point ce sont mille trépas.

Je pense le flatter afin qu’il se contienne,
Mais en l’entretenant je ne m’aperçois pas,
Qu’il crache en la main sa fureur et la mienne.[35]

The words “incontinent,” “colère,” and “fureur” emphasize the uncontrol­lable force of the poet’s sexual desire, which is comparable to Sorel’s des­cription of Francion’s friends who are “pressez par leur jeune ardeur” to masturbate. It is unclear whether Francion’s friends experience guilt or shame, but in Malherbe’s poem, masturbation is a “cas de conscience.”  His member is compared implicitly to a hunting dog (see the hunting vo­cabulary: “curée,” “échine,” “mener,” “flatter,” “se contenir”). The lyrical markers “immortalité” and “mille trépas” make of this poem another send-up of allegories of the erotic chase and capture. Usually, it is the lover who is “captured” by the snares of the beloved (in this case, her “con” instead of her eyes), and in the case of Actaeon, he is devoured by his own dogs. But the subject of masturbation allows this erotic allegory to be turned on its head. The result of the action is bittersweet: desire’s fury is appeased, but the poet becomes furious with himself. His semen, a mark of his own and his “dog’s” anger, is in his hand which also, conveniently, is the hand that holds the pen. The last term “fureur” can be taken ironically, as a fu­ror poeticus: the scenario of masturbation has allowed Malherbe, as Saint-Pavin and Sorel, to engage in some extremely self-conscious and multi-leveled writing.   

In comparison to these two poems, however, the tone of Sorel’s pas­sage seems much lighter. His solution to the problem of “jeune ardeur” is neither abstinence nor masturbation, but sex between a man and a woman. Francion says, “je maudis les loix du monde, qui gardent que les remedes n’y soient donnez, et que tant de filles qui d’ailleurs souspirent en ca­chettes après les embrassemens, ne soient mises avec ceux qui sont ainsi travaillez, afin qu’ils esteignent ensemble leurs flames par une eau la plus douce de toutes, et que desormais ils s’abstiennent de pecher.”  Sorel seems to acknowledge that sexual desire is a natural human instinct and suggests indirectly that there is nothing inherently wrong or sinful about it. However, there is no mention of marriage in this passage. Sorel therefore foregoes one sin (masturbation) for another (premarital sex), which his protagonist enjoys throughout the novel.

 The only punishment for masturbation mentioned in the passage is that “jamais [ses amis] n’assouvissoient leur desir qui s’accroissoit de plus en plus et leur donnoit des gesnes secrettes.”  For Francion, then, mastur­bationproduces a never-ending need to replicate pleasure, whereas sex with a woman seems to provide fulfillment. Masturbatory pleasures are infinite but unlikely to produce satisfaction whereas heterosexual pleasure is teleological and definite. The analogue to Malherbe’s “fureur” is found in the representation of another endless pleasure in the Histoire comique de Francion: the pleasure produced by reading and writing fiction. It is, indeed, the pleasure of novelistic prose as opposed to the definite and tele­ological pleasure of drama and poetry. In this sense, Sorel engages in meta-poetic play similar to what we have seen in the poems, although it is more on the level of an indefinite writing process than in the lexical and intentional games of Saint-Pavin and Malherbe.

This analogy between the endless need for, and the pleasure of, mas­turbation, and the lack of generic framing, the absence of a moral lesson, and the pleasure of the novel is apparent in Sorel’s statements and in his writing practice. The Advertissement d’importance aux lecteurs of the 1623 edition of Francion implies that the novel came about in order to provide pleasure to the writer: “Je n’ay point trouvé de remede plus aisé ny plus salutaire a l’ennuy qui m’affligeoit quelque temps, que de m’amuser a descrire une histoire qui tinst advantage du folastre que du serieux, de maniere qu’une triste cause a produict un facetieux effect” (61). “Folastre” has the important connotations of “free from constraints” or “playful,” and in the history of its usage is sometimes connected to erotic fantasy.[36]  Not only an observer (and participant) of sexual prac­tices, Francion is also a writer, and in the eleventh book of the 1626 edi­tion, he tells his friends, “Je n’escry que pour me divertir” (438). The pleasure experienced by the writer is mirrored by that of the reader. After Francion describes his dream to Raymond in the third book of the 1623 edition, Raymond says, “je suis marry maintenant que je vous resveillay, d’autant que vostre songe eust esté plus long, et que le plaisir que je reçoy à vous l’ouyr raconter eust esté de mesme mesure” (154). Similarly, after Hortensius tells a story in the fourth book, the narrator describes Fre­monde’s reaction: “a la premiere fois qu’il [Hortensius] dit, pour le faire court, car c’estoient les mots qu’il repetoit, elle luy respondit, si vous voulez plaire, il ne faut pas dire si souvent, pour vous le faire court, parce que tout resolument nous le voulons long” (197). Not only is this a sexual innuendo, but it also corresponds to Sorel’s practice of fiction.[37]  So the listener’s pleasure—longer is better—comes to be identical to the reader’s pleasure.  Sorel makes the histoire comique longer and longer by adding new episodes and by pushing back the marriage of Francion and Nays at the end of the 1626 edition to the end of the twelfth book in the 1633 edi­tion. He also writes in the closing sentence of the 1626 edition that Le Berger extravagant will be a continuation of story: “En attendant je tra­vailleray a mettre par ordre les avantures du Berger extravagant que Fran­cion a composés, et les donneray au public comme une seconde partie de ceste Histoire Comique” (462). As Martine Debaisieux observes, “L’histoire comique de Sorel semble donc constamment vouloir retarder sa fin.”[38]

 Another example of prolonging the pleasure provided by the novel is found in La Maison des jeux, which Sorel composed between 1625 and 1635, at the same time he was writing Francion and Le Berger extravagant.[39]  The characters play a game called “le jeu du roman” and spontaneously create a novel as a group. Each member continues the story, often re-writing other group members’ earlier portions. The novel that the group creates “ends” with several marriages, but the group decides that the ending can always be pushed back if they change their minds, and the story can always continue in the imagination of the reader: 

Dorilas ayant finy le Roman de cette sorte, les uns di­rent que sa conclusion estoit aussi à propos comme elle pouvoit estre, & les autres qu’il la pouvoit changer, & la faire pour le moins aussi bonne qu’elle estoit; Mais l’on en remit les discours à une autrefois, de mesme que des autres particularitez qui concernoient toute l’Histoire; Et l’on dit seulement qu’il y avoit eu un grand plaisir à entendre les divers changemens de stile que plusieurs avoient fait dans leur narration; Apres cela l’on donna le bon soir à Lydie, & chacun se retira.[40]

The prolonging of the ending of Francion and of the novel game in La Maison des jeux runs counter to another, more “official” view of pleasure created by fiction, especially by tragedy in the Aristotelian seventeenth century, which emphasizes the perfect pleasure that a well-conceived clo­sure can provide. But for Sorel, closure in fiction represents the end of pleasure, and the longer the story, the better.

In conclusion, let us look again at Francion’s statement concerning masturbation:

Quant a moy je n’estois gueres amoureux de ce plaisir là, et faisois conscience de respandre inutilement une se­mence tres bonne, au lieu de la mettre en un lieu où elle profitast: je ne me voulois point rendre ennemy des Dames, qui haïssent mortellement ceux qui les privent ainsi de ce qui leur est deub.

  Similar to Malherbe’s ironic formulation (and to, non-ironically, the Ca­tholic tradition), for Francion masturbation presents a “cas de conscience” and, as the biblically charged expression “respandre inutilement” con­firms, it is indirectly represented as a sin. The adverb “inutilement” can refer to the absence of offspring, just as the verb “profiter” can refer to offspring at the end of the phrase. Spilling one’s seed on the ground ins­tead of inside a woman cannot produce a child. However, the next sen­tence modifies the meaning of “inutile” and “profiter”: Francion did not want to make himself an enemy of the “ladies.”  Note that he does not say “mon épouse,” but he uses the plural. Masturbation, then, is “useless” be­cause it does not please women who would prefer men to make love to them, to give them pleasure (and not necessarily children). Becoming an enemy of the ladies means that this pleasure would no longer be available to Francion himself. In other words, sex with women is deprived of an “ending” (children, marriage) just as much as masturbation, but sex with women is undoubtedly a lot more fun. At the same time, the lexicon of “profit” is one that recalls the profession of writing (as a livelihood); the writing of novels, too, is one that appeals primarily to women, and, in op­position to the “high” forms of literature, allows indefinite re-writing and continuation. In that sense, despite its overt condemnation by Francion, masturbation can be compared to the sort of unending pleasure that the writer can provide to reader and listener and himself.  

Ithaca College

Works Cited

Ariès, Philippe. L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973.

Bouchard, Jean-Jacques. Les Confessions. In Journal (2 vol, t. I), ed. E. Kanceff. Turin: G. Giappichelli, 1976.

Cavaillé, Jean-Pierre. “Jean-Jacques Bouchard en Italie: Athéisme et so­domie à l’ombre de la curie romaine.” In Dissidents, excentriques, et marginaux de l’Age classique: Autour de Cyrano de Bergerac, ed. P. Harry, A. Mothu, and P. Sellier. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006.

Debaisieux, Martine. Le Procès du roman: Écriture et contrefaçon chez Charles Sorel. Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1989, Orléans: Paradigme, 2000.

 De Vos, Wim. Le singe au miroir: Emprunt textuel et écriture savant dans les romans comiques de Charles Sorel. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag,  1994.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis. Sex in the Western World, trans. Sue Collins. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991.

Goldin, Jeanne. “Topos et fonctionnement narratif: la maquerelle dans l’Histoire comique de Francion.” Etudes françaises 13.1–2 (1977): 89–117.

Houle, Martha. “Naming the ‘Confessions’ of Jean-Jacques Bouchard.” Cahiers du dix-septième 9.2 (2005): 1–9.

Jeanneret, Michel. La Muse lascive: Anthologie de la poésie érotique et pornographique française. Paris: José Corti, 2007.

Mathieu-Castellani, Gisèle. Les thèmes amoureux dans la poésie française (1570–1600). Paris: Klincksieck, 1975.

Roy, Emile. La Vie et les œuvres de Charles Sorel. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1891.

Serroy, Jean. “La P… irrespectueuse: L’histoire de la vieille dans le Francion de Sorel.” Littératures classiques 41 (2001): 123–131.

Sorel, Charles. Histoire comique de Francion. In Romanciers du XVIIe siècle, ed. A. Adam. Paris: La Pléiade, Gallimard, 1958.

_____. La Maison des jeux, où se treuvent les divertissemens d’une com­pagnie, par des narrations agreables, & par des jeux d’esprit, & d’autres entretiens d’une honeste conversation. Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1657; Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1977.

Spencer, Catherine J. “Jouvence du récit: les métamorphoses d’Agathe dans Francion.” Cahiers du dix-septième 6.2 (1992): 213–222.

Stenger, Jean, and Anne Van Neck. Histoire d’une grande peur: la mas­turbation. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1984.

Weber, Henri. La Création poétique au XVIe siècle en France de Maurice Scève à Agrippa d’Aubigné. Paris: Nizet, 1955.

Printable PDF of Tonolo, 33–45

Qu’est-ce que la vie pour celui qui, après 1634, quitte Paris et la Cour pour un méandre de la Charente, fait « profession d’être fugitif du monde » (Lettres choisies I 40)[1], abandonnant ce qui pouvait en constituer l’essence, c’est-à-dire le mouvement, le spectacle et l’action, renonçant à l’idéal de vie héroïque qui l’avait naguère fasciné, comme à tout espoir de carrière ? C’est pourtant le même Guez de Balzac qui, selon Bernard Beugnot, offre « l’expérience conjointe, et pour le lecteur indissociable, du bonheur de vivre et du bonheur d’écrire » (L’Écriture du paysage 366–367), reposant les bases d’une réflexion sur l’art très concret de vivre. C’est encore lui qui dispense à toute une génération, depuis sa retraite immobile, les nécessaires conseils en la matière. Le recueil des Lettres choisies n’échappe pas à ces desseins qui courent dans tout l’œuvre épis­tolaire de l’auteur ; mais on peut penser que sa situation dans l’œuvre et la vie de Balzac, sa composition singulière, ainsi que le texte liminaire qui l’accompagne et dont on a pu souligner l’aspect de manifeste offrent une perspective stimulante dans le cadre d’une réflexion sur les sens et les valeurs de la vie à une époque charnière. Nous voudrions d’abord revenir sur la situation des Lettres choisies, parues en 1647 soit sept ans avant la mort de l’auteur, « dernier recueil du vivant de l’épistolier » selon la for­mule de Roger Zuber (Balzac et Borstel 465). Ce recueil n’est pas seulement la marque d’un art épistolaire accompli ; il pose comme des­sein, dès l’Avertissement qui le précède, le vieil idéal de l’éloquence in­carnée, d’une parole agissante. Nous verrons, dans un deuxième temps, comment Guez de Balzac a clairement établi dans son texte le lien entre les problèmes existentiels et l’acte d’écrire. L’idéal n’était pas neuf, hérité notamment d’une double tradition, humaniste et patristique[2]. Mais nous constaterons que Balzac n’a pas seulement formé un vœu pieux ; les Lettres choisies de 1647 sont en effet portées par un paradoxe : s’employant, dans un genre que l’on dit volontiers issu de la vie, à abolir toute expression de la vie réelle, l’épistolier entend pourtant recueillir le feu de l’existence, un feu qui se ranime à l’écriture d’autrui.

I. Situation des Lettres choisies, « le dernier recueil du vivant de l’épistolier » 

 Lorsque paraissent, en 1647, les 258 lettres en deux volumes, toutes nouvelles, du Sieur de Balzac, le public est, comme le souligne D. Lopez, « accoutumé à cette forme littéraire issue de la vie, et qui l’installe à part dans l’univers de la création »(Littérature épistolaire 192 ; nous soulig­nons). Balzac a dû mesurer ce point de maturité, qui est celui de son public mais également le sien, car, plus que dans les autres recueils, le travail sur le genre de la lettre est au cœur de sa poétique et, indéfectiblement liée à cette dernière, une réflexion sur l’écriture et la vie. Revenons brièvement sur l’histoire particulière du recueil, qui montre le prix que lui accordait son auteur. Comme B. Beugnot l’a montré (Bibliographie 25), le projet en a été plusieurs fois modifié. En 1645, Balzac pense intégrer des épîtres en latin à un choix de lettres, selon le principe du mélange qui avait prévalu dans son dernier recueil épistolaire, daté de 1637 ; il parle alors d’un « volumette », petit volume, qu’il nomme encore ses « Sélectes », du latin Selectae (Littérature épistolaire 194–195). En 1647, finalement, l’ouvrage des lettres en prose française paraît chez Auguste Courbé, tandis que les Epistolae selectae, pièces en latin donc, placées sous les auspices de Mé­nage et de la reine de Suède, forment un recueil à part, qui sera publié seulement en 1650. Cette séparation est significative : il semble que Bal­zac ait été sensible à l’accusation latente de pédantisme qui le menaçait, notamment dans sa concurrence avec Voiture. C’est pourquoi l’un et l’autre recueils, français et latin, ont été constitués toujours selon ce prin­cipe de sélection,  mais dans un souci de variété très mondain et avec une véritable volonté d’actualisation des textes[3]. Si le français s’est détaché du latin, c’est qu’il devient, selon la célèbre formule de l’Avertissement, la langue « du sang, de la vie, de l’esprit » (Lettres choisies Avertissement, 3) ; tandis que le latin, écrit dans un style très simple, est présenté comme la langue de cœur, celle par laquelle l’épistolier dit accéder au lyrisme et se sentir poète[4]. Par l’une et l’autre langues, mais d’une façon différente, Balzac s’attache donc à une forme incarnée de la parole littéraire[5].

Dans l’œuvre de Balzac, les Lettres choisies se situent exactement en­tre les Œuvres diverses, parues en 1644, et Aristippe ou De la Cour, dont la version adressée à Conrart date de 1651 mais connaîtra une publication posthume en 1658, ainsi que le Socrate chrestien, publié en 1652. LesŒuvres diverses rassemblent essentiellement des traités, des morceaux de consolation, des lettres et des discours, dont le fameux Discours du Ro­main dédié à la marquise de Rambouillet : sous des dehors d’humanisme, le Discours reconnaît en l’esprit le « souverain artisan » de toute chose[6] et témoigne de la conversion de Balzac à la culture mondaine. Or pour J. Jehasse, les Lettres choisies seraient justement comme la mise en pratique de la conversion du Romain des Œuvres diverses. De leur côté, Aristippe et le Socrate chrestien marquent dans leur impossible quête d’un prince parfait la dernière étape qui consacre le choix d’une éloquence efficace, d’une adéquation des mots et des choses[7]. Dans le Socrate chrestien, il s’agit de produire un « corps parfait et animé » (Socrate chrestien 17)[8], de mettre en œuvre une « petitesse énergique des paroles » dont on trouve déjà une ébauche très significative dans l’Avertissement des Lettres choisies : Balzac y écrit « C’est pourtant en ces petites matieres où l’esprit paroist veritablement grand » (Lettres choisies Avertissement, 10)[9]. Les commentateurs de Balzac ont donc tous perçu que les Lettres choisies constituent une transition cruciale. B. Beugnot définit l’écriture épistolaire à laquelle aboutit Balzac de la façon la plus suggestive qui soit, comme une synthèse, affirmant qu’elle est « la fusion de trois rythmes : celui de la nature (jours, saisons), celui de la vie (active, contemplative) et celui du style (atticisme, asianisme) » (L’Écriture du paysage 368). À propos des deux premiers livres des Lettres choisies, D. Lopez écrit de façon encore plus explicite qu’ils « lient étroitement les problèmes existentiels aux problèmes d’écriture », ajoutant, « À l’issue de ce cheminement […]  nous trouvons l’épistolier au terme d’une double reconquête, le goût de vivre (même dans la retraite) et d’écrire (même de loin) l’emportant peu à peu » (Littérature épistolaire 206)[10]. Reste à savoir ce qui explique ce cheminement vers cette parfaite réunion de la vie et de l’écriture.

II. Vie et écriture mêlées : le vieil idéal de l’éloquence incarnée

Cet idéal n’est pas neuf ; il vient d’une double tradition. Le modèle d’écriture qui est en jeu est celui de la conversation[11], qui est d’abord l’expression d’un atticisme à la française longuement mûri. R. Zuber en cerne ainsi les fondements : « L’idéal cicéronien du naturel, la prétention érasmienne à l’authenticité, le goût malherbien d’une langue pure […] tout se conjure ici […] pour satisfaire les exigences les plus précises de l’art épistolaire et des leçons d’une rhétorique faite style » (Balzac et Borstel 466)[12]. D. Lopez[13] a également remarqué que la transformation de l’œuvre épistolaire balzacien serait un miroir des évolutions du style attique, depuis la quête d’une parole comme art vivant, dans la Grèce classique du V^e siècle avant Jésus-Christ, jusqu’à l’art intériorisé, intime, art de la brièveté et de la densité prôné par Sénèque, en passant par l’éloquence féconde de Cicéron. Nous retrouvons une fusion de ces différents aspects dans l’Avertissement des Lettres choisies.

Le premier mouvement de ce texte marque une opposition très forte entre la fausse et la vraie éloquence : du côté de la première, les « belles paroles »[14], seulement les « couleurs » et « les apparences »de la vie et de l’esprit, le « mouvement forcé, qui se faisoit par ressorts, et venoit de loin », enfin une « éloquence qui fait du bruit »[15], autant d’insistance sur ce qui est artificiel, ostentatoire, mécanique, lointain — l’enjeu étant de construire, par l’écriture épistolaire, une intimité avec soi. Face à cela, les métaphores du corps humain, de la matérialité, de la proximité avec soi[16], de la douceur[17], de la fluidité et de la liquidité qui se ressentent même dans cette double trilogie, simple et limpide (« il y a ici du sang, de la vie, et de l’esprit » et « je vous donne un corps naturel, sain et vigoureux »), quand le reste de la phrase se déploie en un rythme alambiqué, quasi-mimétique de l’éloquence artificieuse qu’il entend dénoncer. Remarquons au passage que par l’équilibre des rythmes ternaires et binaires, cette simplicité se nourrit d’une rhétorique toute classique. Ajoutons sur ce premier mouve­ment de l’Avertissement, que la trilogie qui en est le centre est une reprise, à peine déguisée, de la tripartition des pères de l’église : le corps, l’âme et l’esprit[18]. Nous ne sommes pas loin non plus du verbe qui s’est fait chair ou de l’éloquence incarnée de Paul[19]. Ainsi, Balzac, tout comme d’ailleurs dans le Socrate chrestien, paraît revenu d’un atticisme maigre et aride, et exprime l’ambition d’une parole agissante, en prise avec la réalité des corps et le mouvement de la vie.

Dans le deuxième mouvement de l’Avertissement, le propos se fait plus ambitieux, plus complexe. C’est le fameux passage sur les « petites matieres » qu’il convient de privilégier car, selon une antithèse très sim­ple, l’esprit y « paroist veritablement grand » et, selon une analogie plus osée, « à faire beaucoup de presque rien, il y a une espece d’imitation de la puissance de celuy qui crée »[20] : ce qui est en jeu, c’est donc bien la puis­sance de la création, de la vie première, celle de l’écrivain qui entend être démiurge par la seule force entreprenante de son esprit[21]. Dès lors, n’est-il pas significatif que le texte s’achève sur l’exemple de la lettre de consola­tion, genre épistolaire que l’auteur, on le sait, pratique de longue date, comme l’épreuve suprême de la puissance de l’esprit[22] ? Ce propos, ces images, qui ont donc une valeur de programme, trouvent, comme nous allons le voir maintenant, des échos nombreux dans les lettres qui compo­sent le recueil.

III. Mourir à soi…

Cette volonté de revenir au mouvement premier de la vie se fonde par­adoxalement, dans la pratique épistolaire des Lettres choisies, sur un dé­tachement de la vie comme réalité vécue ; il s’agit visiblement pour Guez de Balzac, à la fois par l’organisation du recueil et par le rendu de la sub­stance existentielle, de ne pas adhérer à la temporalité constitutive de celle-ci. D. Lopez[23] a noté que la composition du recueil se distingue par l’absence absolue de suivi chronologique. Selon lui, son auteur ferait preuve d’une désinvolture affichée par rapport à la chronologie de lettres qu’il a composées entre 1637 et 1647 ; non seulement il ne propose aucun effet de vie continue mais il joue a contrario la carte de la dispersion des destinataires, inventant certaines dates, recomposant la matière d’une lettre à Boisrobert en deux textes, allant jusqu’à postdater la lettre de consola­tion sur la mort de Pereisc, trois ans après la mort de ce dernier, comme si l’essentiel était la position du sage face à la vie, qui, hors monde et hors temps, échappe ainsi à la contingence. Ce choix de composition n’est d’ailleurs pas sans effet de réel dont le plus flagrant est dû à la lettre à Conrart du 1^er juillet 1647, placée en position ultime du recueil, et donnant l’impression « d’un échange authentique, d’actualité, et qui se poursuit dans la vie réelle alors que la dernière page du livre se ferme » (Lettres choisies I 199) ; si Balzac se détache de la vie c’est pour, in fine, mieux la ressaisir dans ce qu’elle a d’essentiel. À la volonté de briser la continuité temporelle du vécu, s’ajoute, chez lui, un travail manifeste pour déréaliser la matière mondaine que celui-ci fournit : Paris, les amis correspondants, les souvenirs mêmes ont tendance à être transformés en réminiscences ou en rêves. L’une des citations les plus frappante en ce sens se trouve dans la quatrième lettre adressée à M. D’Argenson : « Ma vie, Monsieur, est un morne assoupissement, interrompu, néanmoins, par quelques visions assez agréables » (Lettres choisies I 18). De même, les derniers mots adressés à Conrart non seulement suggèrent de reconsidérer l’ensemble de l’expérience épistolaire comme un rêve mais redessinent une temporalité dilatée et maîtrisée, une « bien-heureuse durée » comme il la nommera ailleurs (Lettres choisies II 86) : « Ce seroient des jours dont je mettrois à profit tous les momens, et qui me r’aquiteroient de tout le temps que j’ay perdu avec de faux sages et de faux amis. Je m’imagine que je me re­nouvellerois, que je me changerois entre vos mains. […] Vous me feriez vivre une veritable vie. Celle des Isles Fortunees, celle des champs Eliseens ; celles que les Poëtes filent d’or et de soye… » (Lettres choisies II 673)[24] ; il y a là, renforcée par l’image du tressage, promesse d’une au­tre vie, idéale et mythique, d’une vie puisée à la création littéraire.

En outre, à la déréalisation de la vie vécue dans ses états mondains se mêle une véritable imprégnation de l’expérience de la mort. Le lecteur sera frappé, une fois qu’il a refermé le recueil,  de la prégnance de la lettre de consolation. Si Balzac y revient aussi régulièrement, c’est qu’elle tient le rôle de ce nécessaire « aiguillon » qui fait toucher le cœur de la vie ; régulièrement visitée, écrite, la mort est chez Balzac le pouls de la vie. Elle est la scandaleuse raison de vivre que les lettres de consolation, par­ticulièrement élaborées de ce recueil, mettent en lumière, car d’une part elle unifie l’être[25]  et, d’autre part, elle permet de trouver la seule force véritable, qui est en soi[26] ; ou plutôt, l’être humain est ainsi fait qu’un équilibre mécanique semble le porter, tel un principe de vie immuable[27]. Enfin, si la lettre de consolation est une pratique de l’écriture qui fait sentir la vie, c’est par son enjeu : il y faut « ramasser de la force en peu de pa­roles, au lieu de la dissiper par de longs discours » (Lettres choisies I 158). On trouve, dans cette formulation, l’idée d’une économie et d’une densité de la parole dont on peut penser qu’elle est, par une sorte d’analogie im­plicite, la conception que Balzac se fait également de l’existence. En fait de composer sur de « petites matières », Balzac pousse l’expérience épis­tolaire jusqu’à ses limites : écrire sur rien, s’effacer en tant que sujet jusqu’à se donner quasiment pour mort. Ce dernier motif, fréquent sous sa plume, n’est pas sans rappeler la langoureuse vie des morts bienheureux érigée en modèle dans le Socrate chrestien. Marquée à de nombreuses reprises par les métaphores de l’assoupissement, du sommeil constant, de la glace, de l’immobilité pesante ou du feu qui s’est retiré de son être[28], l’expérience de l’anéantissement, qui domine le premier volume du recueil, est paradoxalement la condition pour se sentir vivre ; selon une antithèse puis une asyndète frappantes, Balzac écrit à Lhuillier : « Mon oisiveté est perpétuellement occupée : […] je ne fais rien, et je ne cesse jamais » (Lettres choisies I 150). Le premier défi est souligné quant à lui dans une lettre à M. Favereau : « ce n’est pas une si petite affaire de parler et de n’avoir rien à dire, de manquer de choses, et de remplir de mots une feuille de papier » (Lettres choisies I 502) ; mais sa vertu est aussitôt relevée, deux lettres plus loin, dans un texte destiné au marquis de Mon­tausier : « Et manquant de langage […], je ne saurois plus que produire un acte intérieur, qui me justifie envers moy-mesme » (Lettres choisies I 524)[29]. Pour Balzac, loin de l’éloquence bruyante du monde et des hommes, une écoute de son intériorité, qui est aussi expérience de l’unité des sentiments, est possible.

Ainsi, en ouverture comme en clôture du livre, l’existence à laquelle paradoxalement aspire l’ermite de Charente est celle d’un être de fiction qui serait uniquement inscrit dans le cœur et l’esprit des autres : n’écrit-il pas à Boisrobert qu’il préfère, telle une plante solidement enracinée, ex­ister en son cœur[30] plutôt que faire l’objet d’un « commerce de fumée » (Lettres choisies I 7) ou « d’affections en peinture » (Lettres choisies I 9) ? Puis à Costar que « c’est un extréme mal-heur que d’estre séparé de [lui] ; mais c’est une souveraine félicité que d’avoir tout de part en [son] esprit et en [son] cœur » (Lettres choisies I 601) ? L’existence suprême est celle d’un être de fiction : « Que je lise mon nom dans vos Vers, je ne scay s’il n’y a point un autre Balzac », écrit-il, saisi d’étrangeté, au père jésuite Vital Théron, ajoutant même, « Peut-être que je ne suis pas le veritable » (Lettres choisies II 59)[31]. Conduite à distance avec la complicité des puis­sances de l’imagination, l’expérience épistolaire devient plus forte que l’expérience vécue ; c’est ce que souligne un extrait d’une lettre adressée à l’archevêque de Toulouse qu’il n’a pu visiter : « Mon imagination, qui a la force de m’approcher des lieux où je me souhaite, me promene sans cesse autour de ce bon-heur esloigné » (Lettres choisies II 42)[32]. L’ultime limite est celle du silence épistolaire, qui devrait mettre en danger l’œuvre elle-même, mais que vante Balzac, car il est l’épreuve de vérité : « se taire n’est pas oublier », écrit-il à Gomberville[33], ajoutant « Assurément tant que vous ne me parliez point, vous me meditiez » (Lettres choisies I 30). Cette tentation du silence, ce retrait de la vie et de son être, Balzac les ex­plore à plusieurs reprises dans le premier volume de son recueil comme une nécessaire expérience, comme la pierre angulaire de la démonstration que la vie véritable réside dans les actes d’écriture et de lecture, dans un dialogue à distance d’épistolier à épistolier, d’auteur à auteur. La deuxième partie des Lettres choisies illustrera inlassablement cette thèse : si vie il y a, elle s’exprime de façon continue dans l’esprit, dans la puis­sance, toujours diverse, de création.

IV. Vivre en recueillant la parole des autres

En effet, dans cette deuxième partie, les lettres n’ont plus guère d’autres sujets que les divers ouvrages que Balzac reçoit, lit, annote, commente, et dont il renvoie les effets et les pouvoirs à leurs auteurs, en les remerciant, en les louant, en isolant ce qui constitue un fait de style, un acte d’écriture propre. Les ouvrages qui viennent à Balzac sont de tous ordres, car ses correspondants s’en remettent à lui avec une confiance tou­chante ; éloquence religieuse, controverses, paraphrases, prose, vers d’idylles, dialogues, discours, traités philosophiques, pièces de théâtre, traductions, chansons à boire : on semble lui envoyer de tout[34].Dans la lettre au duc d’Épernon se rencontre une formule qui en dit long sur le pouvoir d’aimantation existentielle que l’auteur a acquis : de son « petit coin du monde », Balzac écrit que « Toute la Prose et tous les Vers de la Chrestienté en ont appris le chemin : les Paraphrases et les Commentaires ; les Harangues et les Panegyriques y arrivent de plusieurs endroits. Mais les lettres partout croient avoir droit d’y venir »(Lettres choisies II 95)[35]. Les commentaires des œuvres reçues vont de la véritable analyse — les lettres à Dupuy, à Ménage, à Saumaize ou à Heinsius, sont parmi les plus remarquables en la matière — à l’exclamation extatique : ainsi à propos des tragédies de Corneille ou des vers de Colletet, Balzac se contente de dire, et il souligne qu’il ne peut dire que cela, « La belle chose ! » (Lettres choisies II 437) ou « voilà qui est beau ! » (Lettres choisies II 470). C’est que, pour l’épistolier de Charente, il s’agit, dans cette deuxième partie des Lettres choisies, d’illustrer par sa propre élo­quence les qualités de vérité, de chair et de sang, qu’il défendait dans son Avertissement. Ainsi placée stratégiquement à la fin du premier livre de la deuxième partie trouve-t-on une lettre destinée à Méré qui fait directement écho au texte fondateur de la préface ; dans les mots de son correspondant, Balzac avoue avoir rencontré une éloquence qui a touché directement son âme, une éloquence si universelle et si unie à celle des philosophes et des orateurs des siècles passés qu’elle pourrait bien être surnaturelle : « Asseu­rément vos ames se sont veuës, et entretenuës en l’autre Monde, avant que d’arriver en cestuy-cy » (Lettres choisies II 176). Et Balzac de rappeler qu’il n’est point besoin des « consignes des grammairiens » pour toucher son lecteur : « il suffit de bien foüiller dans vous-mesme ; je vous promets que vous y trouverez d’excellentes choses » (Lettres choisies II 177). Preuves de la véritable éloquence, les ouvrages qu’il admire, tels ceux que lui envoie monsieur Dupuy, sont des êtres vivants « sains » et « entiers » (Lettres choisies II 208). Ils font coïncider les choses et les mots : ainsi, dans les lettres de Montausier, « la figure de la chose est la chose elle-même » (Lettres choisies II 202). Partout dans ce qu’il reçoit et lit, Balzac trouve une éloquence incarnée : des paroles dont il s’imprègne, l’épistolier charentais écrit encore : « On les sent, et les reçoit jusques dans le cœur. Elles vivent et se meuvent » (Lettres choisies II 421) [36]. Peu à peu émerge également l’idée que les œuvres de l’esprit possèdent leur autonomie et qu’elles existent par un mouvement qui leur est propre. Dans un effet de transmission très réussi soulignant comme les mots passent de leur auteur à leur lecteur qui les réutilise à son tour, Balzac pointe cette liberté nais­sante que ni auteur, ni commentateur critique ne peuvent entraver : « Vo­tre Recueil — écrit-il à Colletet — peut donc se faire sans nous, ou pour me servir des termes de vostre lettre, vostre corps peut battre aux champs, quand il luy plaira, personne ne le retient » (Lettres choisies II 335)[37]. Ainsi vivent les mots d’esprit, la véritable éloquence.

Enfin, les images auxquelles Balzac recourt pour commenter les œu­vres sont significatives. Elles sont essentiellement de quatre ordres et ren­voient au système métaphorique concret qu’il tissait dans l’Avertissement[38]. On trouve tout d’abord l’image d’une vive peinture : à Ménage, auteur d’un petit poème qualifié de « petit espace » dans lequel il a « trouvé mille rayons de ce premier souverain Beau », il dit : « vos couleurs sont solides et vos apparences essentielles » (Lettres choisies II 184). En second, on rencontre la métaphore de la medicine — au sens de medicament — que la lettre à monsieur de Flotte, envoyée le 28 décembre 1641, illustrerait le mieux : non seulement le lot d’ouvrages envoyés par son correspondant a guéri le vieux solitaire de la pituite, mais, écrit-il en un jeu de mot inhabituel sous sa plume, « Votre volume est mon Arse­nac » (Lettres choisies II 483)[39]. La métaphore du feu de la vie est égale­ment très présente. Par exemple, Balzac écrit à Godeau dont il a reçu les épîtres, « je m’allume en les lisant »[40],  à Lhuillier, « Monsieur, je brûle du feu que j’ay trouvé dans vos lettres » (Lettres choisies II 641) et à Lavaux, qu’il « sort du feu » de ses harangues, remarquant au passage que « les Anciens mesmes ont dit que ce n’est pas tant de la bouche, que de l’estomac, que procede le bien-dire » (Lettres choisies I 507). Décidément, la véritable éloquence est bien affaire de corps plus que d’esprit. C’est pourquoi l’image qui revient systématiquement pour commenter l’effet des ouvrages lus et relus — jusqu’à une douzaine de fois comme il le glisse à Conrart [41]—est celle de la nourriture. Littéralement, Balzac a faim des mots des autres. Les vers de Colletet font ses « délices » (Lettres choisies II 334) ; les écrits de monsieur de Bourzeys sont « une viande [qu’il a] apprestée » (Lettres choisies II 152); à monsieur De Flotte il de­mande des « Ragousts et Bisques de l’esprit » (Lettres choisies II 488). Non sans humour, il remarque d’ailleurs auprès de l’abbé Guyer que sans ces nourritures, la vie de solitaire, bien que pourvoyeuse de charmes, pour­rait vite devenir peau de chagrin[42]. Ce qu’échange Balzac avec ses corre­spondants dans ce recueil ayant valeur de testament, ce sont des mots qui ont pouvoir de vie.

Critique littéraire de sa génération, juge suprême des lettrés de son siècle ; on sait que tel a été le rôle que s’est peu à peu donné l’ermite cha­rentais, dans son exil. Mais si celui-ci prend tout son sens, dans les Lettres choisies, c’est grâce à ce triple mouvement qui porte le recueil, depuis le désir fondateur d’une éloquence incarnée, relayé par une nécessaire expé­rience d’écriture sur rien, qui, à la faveur d’une reconquête de l’intériorité, permet de se préparer à accueillir les mots des autres et à en recueillir la puissance de vie. Balzac se veut alors le réceptacle, le
principe unifiant des textes de son époque, des manifestations littéraires, de la plus humble à la plus ambitieuse, de son vivant. Démiurge, il l’est, dans la mesure où toutes les œuvres créées doivent en passer par lui pour exister. L’ermite de Charente devient essentiel aux autres, et par là il sent qu’il vit.

Université de Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines
Laboratoire ESR-DYPAC

Ouvrages cités

Balzac, Guez de, Epistolae selectae, éd. Jean Jehasse. Saint-Etienne : Presses universitaires de Saint-Etienne, 1990.

_____. Lettres choisies. Paris : Courbé, 1650, 2 volumes.

_____. Œuvres diverses, éd. Roger Suber. Paris : Champion, 1995.

_____. Socrate chrestien, éd. Jean Jehasse. Paris : Champion, 2008.

Beugnot, Bernard, « L’Écriture du paysage de Balzac : image et genèse. »  XVII^e siècle 168 (juillet–septembre 1990) : 359–269.

_____. Bibliographie des écrivains français. Guez de Balzac, Memini, 2001.

Brooks, Frank, « Guez de Balzac Eloquence and the life of Spirit. » L’Esprit créateur 15 (1975) : 59–78.

Jehasse, Jean, Guez de Balzac et le génie romain. Saint-Etienne : Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1977.

_____. « Guez de Balzac : Aristippe ou De la Cour. »  Justice et Force politiques au temps de Guez de Balzac. Ed. Gérard Ferreyrolles. Paris : Klincksieck, 1996. 27–41.

Lopez, Denis, « Littérature épistolaire et réalité : Guez de Balzac et le recueil des Sélectes (1647). » Littératures classiques 11 (1989) : 191–210.

_____. « Effets de l’atticisme chez Guez de Balzac. » XVII^e siècle 168 (juillet–septembre 1990) : 329–340.         

Zuber, Roger, « Balzac et Borstel : l’avertissement de 1647 et son auteur. » Ouverture et dialogue. Mélanges offerts à W. Leiner. Eds W. Döring, U. Lyroudias et R. Zaiser. Tübingen : Narr, 1988. 465–477.

_____. Les « Belles infidèles » et la formation du goût classique. Paris : Albin Michel, 1995.

Printable PDF of Probes, 18–32

« La peinture est une poësie muette, & la poësie une peinture parlante. »

Simonide, cité par Plutarque dans Moralia : Bellone an pace
clariores fureint Athenienses 3.346

Mon étude explorera « la vie » à travers le rôle des sens chez deux emblématistes du premier dix-septième siècle, Jean-Jacques Boissard (Emblemes, 1584, 1593, 1595 ; et Theatrum vitae humanae, 1596) et Jean-Baptiste Chassignet (Sonnets franc-comtois, c. 1615)[1]. Associés géographiquement (les deux sont Bisontins) et par des liens d’amitié (Boissard avait en outre dédié un emblème au père de Chassignet), ils le sont principalement par l’importance qu’ils attachent au thème de « la vie » (topos mis en valeur dans le titre de Boissard et dans les deux pôles qui organisent l’oeuvre de Chassignet, vie temporelle et vie spirituelle). Nos emblématistes[2]peuvent également être associés par leur application primordiale des cinq sens, tant dans la pictura que dans le texte qui l’accompagne.

Travaillant seul ou en collaboration avec des artistes (Boissard com­posa les dessins et les textes des Emblemes, mais s’inspira des gravures de Théodore de Bry pour le Theatrum vitae humanae ; Chassignet se laissa guider par les gravures de l’orfèvre Pierre de Loysi), nos emblématistes font valoir les significations diverses que pouvait prendre « la vie » au premier dix-septième siècle. Pour Boissard, par exemple, « la vie » est associée au récit et à la mémoire (emblème 11), sa qualité transitoire s’illustre par une bulle agréable à la vue (emblème 6)[3], et l’amitié est jugée vivifiante (emblème 30, dédié au père de Chassignet)[4]. Chassignet s’interroge sur la signification de la vie en faisant également appel aux sens, au dégoût comme au goût. Le sonnet XVIII met en scène un porc glouton « puant » et un ibis vomissant, autant d’images animalières du lecteur qui « ne vit [...] que pour boire et manger ». Comme Boissard, Chassignet entrelace « vie » et mémoire, sollicitant les sens du lec­teur/spectateur, la vue et l’ouïe, entre autres, pour exposer une significa­tion du vrai renom, exemplifiée dans la gravure par un personnage allégorique (La Renommée) embouchant des trompettes : « Qu’est-ce que je voy là si hautement voler?/ [...] Mais que dict-elle au ciel, qu’annonce-elle en terre? » (sonnet LXXXI).

Notre analyse des significations de la vie chez Boissard et Chassignet va en plus nous permettre de découvrir, de même que l’application quasi constante des sens, une tension évoquée entre les sens et la raison. Nous dégagerons également des expressions contradictoires concernant les sens et la vie, traduisant une perspective variable qu’énoncera, quelques décen­nies plus tard, La Fontaine dans « Un Animal dans la lune » : « Pendant qu’un Philosophe assure,/ Que toujours par leurs sens les hommes sont dupés,/ Un autre Philosophe jure,/ Qu’ils ne nous ont jamais trompés »[5].

Nous trouvons chez nos emblématistes une véritable panoplie d’images, tant dans la pictura que dans le texte, pour représenter la vie. Le plus souvent ces images s’associent à l’idée du mouvement. Chez Chassignet, par exemple, la vie est tour à tour un point ou un compas (sonnet VIII), un cadran ou une horloge qui « distincgue les temps et marcque veritable/ Les heures, les moments, les minutes, les jours » (son­net XX), ou un moulin à vent dormant (sonnet XL), proposé comme un contre-exemple au lecteur : « Veux-tu vivre semblable à ces moulins à vent,/ Qui, cois, sans se torner, ne font point de farine,/ Si les vents irrités ne les vont esmouvant ».

Le mouvement au plus haut degré est représenté dans l’emblème XXXI de Chassignet par un caméléon, symbole du flatteur. La devise suc­cincte, « Assentator », annonce le topos, préparant ainsi le lecteur à suivre l’exposition poétique d’une vie de « servage ». La tension entre une vie de liberté et celle de contrainte ou de servitude s’exprime dans la maxime associée : « Quiconque est menteur ou flatteur/ De libre devient servi­teur ». Loin d’être ici un simple ornement, la formule lapidaire renferme une observation éthico-sociale qui sera développée dans le sonnet par une série de situations et d’exempla. Une apostrophe aux flatteurs est renforcée par deux analogies, « monstres doués d’ame et de face humaine » et « ser­pents venimeux dez le nombril en bas », dans le premier quatrain qui se termine par une interrogation destinée à retourner vers l’image artistique l’attention du lecteur/spectateur tenté par une vie d’asservissement : « Au laid cameleon ne ressemblés-vous pas,/ Qui reçoit en son corps toute cou­leur prochaine? »  Dans un remarquable parallélisme poétique qui, par la structure syntaxique des vers, semble mimer l’action du flatteur par une série d’exempla historiques (César, Néron) et de déclarations d’ordre plus général, le lecteur est amené à reconnaître la folie d’une vie d’obséquiosité :

Le Roy veut-il manger, vous avés appetit.
Le Roy veut-il chommer, vous dormés un petit.
Le Roy est-il fasché, vous estes en ombrage.

Un mouvement circulaire réintroduit dans le tercet final des apostrophes cinglantes et le procédé d’interrogation, invitant de cette façon le lecteur à contempler un dernier effort de persuasion, cette fois de nature pragma­tique :

Lasches guenons de cour, esprits peu relevés.
N’estes-vous pas bien folz de vivre en tel servage
Pour quelque doux soubris que vous en recevés?

Chez Chassignet comme chez Boissard, la navigation offre un champ par­ticulièrement riche en métaphores. Chassignet, qui accueille la mort comme un « abry » ou une « plage », identifie l’homme peu assuré de sa résurrection avec un vaisseau qui vagabonde. La métaphore peut être pro­longée, plusieurs termes véhiculant la même idée comme, par exemple, dans la question suivante posée au lecteur : « Que seroit-ce de toy qu’un vaisseau qui va fort,/ Qui vogue, et, d’heure à autre, avoysinant le port,/ Ne peut anchrer au port ny seurgir au rivage? » (sonnet XLVI).

De vivantes scènes d’orages et de périls accompagnent les textes de Boissard et les traductions de Pierre Joly, peignant « mille calamitez » de « la mer de ce monde ». Ainsi dans l’emblème 50 de l’édition de 1595, la vie « ressemble à la navigation difficile & dangereuse [où] nous [...] flot­tons assidiuellement agitez ». Si Boissard évoque ici le port « du repos bien heureus », il met également en relief l’âme qui ne cesse de courir des risques, la comparant à « la galere à l’incertaine rame/ [Qui] pirouëtte au peril des gouffres dangereus ». Représenté d’une manière proéminente dans la gravure de l’emblème 9 de l’édition de 1588, Scylla et Charybde sont identifiés figurativement dans le texte poétique avec les vices de ran­coeur et d’envie. La devise succincte en latin, « Nec Scyllam nec Chary­boin », offre un espoir qui se trouve dépeint artistiquement par une figure dont un bras s’étend vers le ciel et l’autre repose sur une croix. L’espoir est élaboré et confirmé par des éléments du texte français, par la devise qui combine le divin et la raison humaine : « Qui se regle selon le vouloir de Dieu, & la raison, ne craint aucun danger », et par la métaphore maritime du « fanal » pour le Saint- Esprit. Cette dernière sert à rappeler au lecteur des textes bibliques classiques tels que le Psaume 27.1, « L’Éternel est ma lumière et mon salut : De qui aurais-je crainte », et Jean 8.12, « Jésus parla [...] Moi, je suis la lumière du monde : celui qui me suit ne marchera point dans les ténèbres, mais il aura la lumière de la vie ». Cette métaphore des plus saillantes pour Dieu avec son appel à la vue est renforcée dans le vers pénultième du sonnet par une imagerie associée qui suggère, cette fois avec un appel au toucher figuratif, l’effet sur le lecteur et le poète de la lumière divine : « Le soleil de la Foy nous [doit] eschauffer le cueur ».

Chez l’un et l’autre emblématiste, la vie s’unit à la mémoire, cette der­nière personnifiée dans les images allégoriques de la Renommée et de la Vertu. Ces figures traditionnelles volent dans les airs ; chez Chassignet, la Renommée souffle dans deux trompettes pour célébrer les faits valeureux et les vertus du dédicataire de l’album, Clériadus de Vergy, gouverneur de la Franche-Comté de 1602 à 1630. La réflexion poétique sur la maison de Vergy s’associe à des méditations d’ordre général, en premier lieu, dans le distique sententieux « La foy n’est point sans charité,/ Ny Vergy sans fi­delité », et puis dans l’apostrophe qui clôt le sonnet LXXXI : « O renom glorieux en ce siecle où nous sousmes,/ Qui part d’une vertu si rare entre les hommes/ Qu’honneurs, moyens, grandeurs, sans elle ne sont rien! ». Une série d’interrogations et un appel soutenu au visuel comme à l’auditif rendent la réflexion plus vivante et servent à conduire le lecteur/spectateur à la conclusion exclamative. La figure d’allocution l’invite de cette ma­nière à suivre, par ses propres facultés, l’expérience sensorielle du poète, à regarder l’image, et à imaginer le son des trompettes :

Qu’est-ce que je voy là si haultement voler?
[...] Ces deux trompes qu’on voit de sa bouche caler
L’une tendant en hault, l’autre en bas deprimée,
Qu’est-ce autre que le bruit de sa voix animée
Qui dez ce bas sejour passe au delà de l’air?
Mais que dict-elle au ciel, qu’annonce-elle en terre?

La figure mythologique volante dans la gravure de l’emblème 19 de Boissard (de l’édition de 1595) représente la vertu, une qualité étroitement entrelacée avec « le renom » ou « la reputation » dans le texte poétique. Faisant ressortir l’opposition entre vertu et envie, la gravure dépeint cette dernière accroupie et entourée de serpents munis de crochets à venin. Deux épithètes insistent sur la protection conférée par la vertu, « securus » dans la devise « vir bonus invidiae securus » et « garanty » dans le poème. Le dernier vers, « [L’homme de vertu,] garanty de ses dards, sur les astres excelle », suggère, je pense, au lecteur de retourner à la scène du tableau où il observera non seulement les serpents menaçants mais également la Vertu, décrite dans le commentaire comme « au dessus de tout ce que nous peut arriver ». Sa perfection et son pouvoir transformateur s’expriment en des termes visuels : « [Elle] a mesmes tant de lustre, que quand elle re­flechit ses rayons sur nostre ennemi, & il s’en trouve tant soit peu esclairé, elle nous rappelle à l’aymer ». Dans le texte poétique le verbe « trom­pette » avec son appel à l’ouïe sert à mettre en valeur le vrai renom : « Qui puise son renom de la source eternelle/ Des lettres & des arts, l’affranchit du tombeau/ [...] Et trompette dans l’air sa louange immortelle ». Bien que la figure qui vole soit indubitablement la représentation traditionnelle de la Vertu armée d’une lance et d’un bouclier, le langage poétique n’aurait-il pas suggéré également au lecteur la Renommée qui, selon l’usage, est dé­peinte embouchée de trompettes[6]?

Image de la Renommée, associée au sonnet LXXXI de Chassignet, dans les Emblèmes de Pierre de Loisy. Bibliothèque municipal de Besancon, 64 466. Reproduction autorisée.

Une vie de renommée et de vertu est illustrée d’une manière explicite dans l’emblème 8 de Boissard (de l’édition de 1595). La gravure inclut les deux figures allégoriques, la Renommée ailée mais les pieds plantés fer­mement sur terre, suivant la Vertu ou la stimulant, si le lecteur/spectateur accepte l’interprétation donnée dans le commentaire : « aussi est le desir de gloire comme un esguillon qui pousse l’ame genereuse à l’entreprise de choses grandes & arduës ». Une imagerie sensorielle multiple fournit un appui important à la morale de la devise, « Fama virtutis stimulus ». Le toucher figuratif de l’aiguillon s’accompagne d’un recours à la vue, au goût, et à l’ouïe pour établir le lien fondamental entre la renommée et la vertu. Le sensoriel souligne de même l’action réciproque : si « la vertu reçoi[t] nourriture [...] par les mains de l’honneur », là « où la vertu reluit esclatte d’ordinaire la belle reputation ». Deux inscriptions grecques, ΚΑΛΩΣΑΚΟΥΕΙΝΜΑΛΛΟΝΉΠΛΟΥΤΕΙΝΘΕΛΕet ΜΟΧΘΕΙΝΑΝΑΓΚΗΤΟΥΣΘΕΛΟΝΤΑΣΕΥΤΥΧΕΙN [7], remplissent la scène, l’une associant le labeur à la vertu, l’autre transmettant un dernier appel aux sens par une injonction qui focalise sur l’ouïe : « Cherchez à bien écouter au lieu de s’enrichir »[8].

Nuancées et équilibrées, les méditations de Boissard sur la vie et la re­nommée persuadent le lecteur par des procédés tant négatifs que positifs. S’il affirme, par exemple, que la vertu porte la mémoire à la postérité, épandant « la renommée à toutes mains », il n’hésite pas à décrire le ré­sultat transitoire de la conduite opposée au moyen du sensoriel, par des bulles de savon qui « esclattent par la diversité de leurs couleurs, & sont aggreables à la veuë mais [dont le] lustre se passe en un moment, & par un leger attouchement s’esvanouyssent » (emblème 6 de l’édition de 1595). Si le poète illustre « la vie de mémoire » (c’est la devise de l’emblème 16 de l’édition de 1588) par une plume et un livre dans lequel sont écrites les vertus de celui qui « prevoyant aspire/ A l’immortalité », il consacre éga­lement un quatrain entier du sonnet à une description sévère de celui qui « ne respire [qu’] en ce siecle ». Rassemblant tous les sens, il déclare : « Celuy là des humains vivre ne se peut dire,/ Qui touche, gouste, & sent, qui void, & qui entend ».

L’amitié est jugée essentielle à la vie chez Boissard et chez Chassignet. Les emblèmes de Boissard se focalisent sur les qualités d’un ami véritable : la fidélité, la sincérité, et le sacrifice volontaire de soi. Pour affirmer l’association indispensable entre la vie et l’amitié, Boissard évoque d’une façon réitérée les quatre éléments qui étaient considérés depuis la cosmologie antique comme principes constitutifs de tous les corps de l’univers : la terre, l’eau, l’air et le feu. La devise de l’emblème 31 qui proclame « Dulce vitae condimentum amicitiae » ou, selon l’adaptation libre du traducteur Pierre Joly, « Il n’est bien tel que le bien d’amitié », prépare le lecteur/spectateur à la comparaison entre l’amitié et les éléments nécessaires à la vie. Soutenant que « nous devons faire plus d’estat d’amitié que de toute autre chose », l’argument se base non seule­ment sur le raisonnement que l’affection réciproque rend « ceste vie bien-heureuse », mais encore sur la comparaison qui souligne sa qualité vitale : « C’est un fort inexpugnable, un rampart inaccessible, un bien autant necessaire que le feu, que l’eau, & que l’air ».

Bien que la gravure contribue à l’exaltation de l’amitié par sa figure allégorisée de l’Amicitia dont les pieds reposent sur une plinthe portant l’inscription « Constanter » et que la poésie associée célèbre la constance, voire l’immortalité de l’amitié, l’emblème ne néglige pas pour autant le registre négatif. Suivant les sages représentés dans la pictura entourés de livres et assis à une table où est gravée une maxime qui prône la nécessité de nourrir l’amitié, Boissard déclare que « vita sine amicitia caeca est » et compare l’amitié qui soutient la vie avec le soleil dont la lumière et la chaleur préservent le monde. En traduisant le latin en français, Joly donne à cette comparaison épigrammatique qui provient de Cicéron[9]une tour­nure à la fois plus emphatique et plus personnelle : « Ce seroit nous autant affliger, si l’on nous privoit d’amitié, que si pour nous rendre miserable on arrachoit du ciel le clair flambeau du soleil ».

Le traducteur/adapteur n’hésite pas à reprendre et amplifier une image qu’il avait développée pour un emblème et l’insérer dans un autre. C’est le cas de l’image du « solaire flambeau » qui, dans le contexte d’un emblème principalement négatif qui avertit l’ami des dangers de l’hypocrisie, se trouve renforcée de trois superlatifs abstraits pour créer un véritable péan à l’amitié :

C’est du ciel arracher le solaire flambeau,
De priver d’amitié l’humaine creature :
Veu que Dieu n’a doté nostre fresle nature
De rien qui soit meilleur, plus plaisant, ni plus beau. (30)

Suivant une longue tradition, Boissard incorpore dans ses compositions sur l’amitié le lieu commun de l’orme desséché entrelassé de la vigne pour illustrer « Amicitiae immortali » ou « l’amitié qui vit après la mort » (28). La pictura ajoute à l’image artistique habituelle deux figures humaines, chacune faisant un geste de la main vers l’arbre et la vigne. Le quatrain en latin, présumant de la part du lecteur/spectateur la connaissance de l’histoire, peut-être d’Alciato, d’Antipater, ou d’Erasme[10], ne se réfère pas à l’image mais en distille une maxime double qui distingue la vraie amitié de la fausse. Joly, qui se sert d’un huitain en français pour son élaboration, identifie soigneusement chaque élément symbolique de l’image avant de livrer une méditation modelée sur le quatrain :

Petite est la vertu qui au vivant assiste
D’une foible amitié, mais celle qui persiste
Mesmes apres la mort, tient la perfection.

Boissard et Chassignet incluent, au sein des réflexions particulières et pragmatiques sur l’amitié et la vie du prince, une représentation de Denys le Tyran et son courtier Damoclès à table, une épée suspendue au-dessus de la tête de ce dernier. Un sujet fréquent dans l’Antiquité, chez Cicéron, par exemple[11], la méditation se concentre  sur la peur qui s’associe à la vie d’un tyran. L’un et l’autre emblématiste avertissent le prince du courtisan flatteur dont « l’amitié est legere, inconstante & muable » (Boissard 45) et conseillent à celui qui gouvernera et vivra en paix, de traiter ses sujets avec équité. Chassignet, dont le « miroir du prince »[12] célèbre les preux de Vergy, notamment Clériadus, gouverneur de la Franche-Comté[13], amplifie l’exhortation en mettant en relief le pouvoir destructif de la peur sur l’amitié :

Prince, veux-tu regner sans soupçon et sans crainte,
Ne donne à tes sujects occasion de plainte,
Ne leurs oste leurs biens, leurs femmes, leurs honneur.
Crains sur tout d’estre craint ; la peur sçait mieux esteindre
L’amitié que la mort, et le fascheux seigneur
Qui de beaucoup est craint beaucoup de gents doit craindre. (LX)

Dans les contraintes de cette étude, nous ne pouvons développer que briè­vement le rôle de la faune et de la flore dans les méditations sur la vie chez nos emblématistes[14]. Une plante peut fleurir sur un mur brisé pour représenter chez Chassignet la résurrection, le toucher souligné dans l’exhortation du poète : « Allons gays à la mort [...]/ Aymons-la, suyvons-la, presentons-luy le sein » (LXXVII). Boissard étend la métaphore anti­thétique dans le sonnet 15 de l’édition de 1588 ; la devise résume le texte poétique ainsi : « In morte vita »/ « mort vivifiante ». Le poète trace le cycle des saisons, le grain subissant la corruption et la pourriture d’où « pousse [...] un tendre germe,/ Qui produit herbe, & fleur ». Le sensoriel renforce l’imagerie, « la vie promise » ou « la pleine felicité » étant le fruit d’un processus qui comprend « la terre beschée » et « esbrechée » ainsi que la putréfaction. Le poète qui inclut son lecteur dans l’apposition « Nous, semence du Ciel » et qui évoque Dieu comme « le Grangier sou­verain » s’autorise ici du texte biblique prééminent qui se réfère à la résur­rection, I Corinthiens 15.37–38 : « Tu sèmes un simple grain de blé [...] ou quelque autre semence, puis Dieu lui donne un corps [...] ; à chaque se­mence il donne un corps qui lui est propre ». Le lecteur de la première modernité qui était accoutumé aux relais[15] essentiels à la riche fabrique des emblèmes se serait vraisemblablement remémoré toute une série de paraboles apparentées au Nouveau Testament, bien que dans certaines la moisson représente le Jugement dernier et les moissonneurs les anges (Matthieu 13.24–30), et dans d’autres la semence est identifiée par Jésus à « la parole de Dieu » (Luc 8.11).

La faune peut se joindre à la flore pour transmettre un message se rap­portant à la vie et à la « mort seconde ». Le tableau interprété dans l’emblème XLIV de Chassignet se compose d’un renard qui s’abrite der­rière une plante, la scille, pour se cacher d’un loup. Expliquant la protec­tion offerte au renard par la plante, le poète déclare : « le loup [...]/ [...l’] abhorre et fuit/ [Et] ne peut [l’] oeillader que d’un mauvais regard ». Le lecteur curieux aurait pu trouver dans les histoires naturelles ou dans les dictionnaires de l’époque — dans celui de Furetière, par exemple — que la squille ou scille était un irritant au toucher, utilisé comme raticide ainsi que comme médicament cardiaque (« squille » Furetière). Chassignet dé­veloppe d’une manière complète l’image artistique, la nuit et « la noirceur profonde » symbolisent le monde ; le renard prudent, le pèlerin ; le loup, Satan ; et la plante, la prière et le jeûne, avant de communiquer l’application finale rassurante :

La priere et le jeusne est la squille nouvelle
Qui nous sauve aysement de ce loup infernal,
Si nous nous mettons d’heure à couvert dessous elle.

D’autres animaux, sauvages, domestiques ou fabuleux, aussi divers que le crocodile, le basilic, le porc, le genet furieux, le phoenix, la lamie, le pa­pillon, le poussin, la cigale, et le hérisson, par exemple, sont évoqués par rapport à la vie et fonctionnent, avec un appel sensoriel continu, comme une représentation soit de la vie éternelle soit de la vie temporelle. Nos emblématistes les allèguent pour traduire un éventail d’aspects de la vie : le genet furieux avec le sablier ailé et une allusion à « la parricide amante » de Jason établissent la notion du temps comme « un gourmand [...] inhumain » (Chassignet, sonnet LXVII) ; la lamie d’Afrique, dont l’appétit lubrique est décrit en grand détail à travers les sens du toucher et de l’odorat, devrait avertir le lecteur/spectateur des dangers de la volupté qui « attire » et « consomme » (Chassignet, sonnet XXXIV). Le pragma­tique comme le moral se trouve illustré par la faune. Un avertissement au peuple « mutin » et « impudent » est émis par Boissard au moyen d’une personnification d’un « indiscret papillon », qui, pensant « nuire au clair de la chandelle », le combat de l’aile et perd la vie. Avant de donner le précepte moral, « les Princes sont de Dieu les vivantes images », le poète communique à l’impudent la leçon pragmatique que « La Royale spendeur qui flambante estincelle,/ Luy consomme sa vie » (emblème 25 de l’édition de 1588).

Que nous apprend l’emblème, création originale bricolée d’éléments souvent empruntés à des sources multiples et diverses[16], au sujet de la signification de « la vie » dans la première modernité ? Par quelles straté­gies, ces significations sont-elles communiquées au lecteur/spectateur?  La vie temporelle est communément dépeinte comme une vie transitoire, de mouvement, la notion alimentée à maintes reprises par des images artis­tiques et littéraires tirées des topoi de la navigation. La peinture des périls de la mer permet à l’emblématiste d’opposer la vie temporelle à la vie éternelle, cette dernière perçue comme un port assuré pour le croyant. Les lieux maritimes peuvent également instruire le lecteur qui doit traiter une importante affaire ; le conseil donné sous  forme de maxime, « Ny teme­rairement ny laschement », se caractérise d’un « gouvernail accort » qui conduirait « la nef » au « havre salutaire » (Boissard, emblème 27, de l’édition de 1588). La vie méritoire pour Chassignet comme pour Boissard est associée à la mémoire et nourrie par la vertu. Les méditations sur les figures allégoriques de la Renommée et de la Vertu approuvent le désir de gloire, mais s’opposent aux tendances nuisibles à la vie telles que l’envie, l’ambition démesurée, les apparences, et la louange inique. Si l’emblématiste engage son lecteur à dialoguer avec lui par des interroga­tions sur la vie ou sur la Renommée, « Qu’est-ce que je voy là si haulte­ment voler?/ [...] Mais que dict-elle au ciel, qu’annonce-elle en terre? » (Chassignet, sonnet LXXXI), les éléments de l’emblème dialoguent de même l’un avec l’autre[17]. Le texte « devient littéralement la voix de l’image »[18]et grâce à des figures et à des stratégies rhétoriques, l’appel visuel de la pictura s’amplifie d’un appel aux autres sens, à la mémoire et à l’entendement.

L’apport de la faune et de la flore à la signification de la vie est consi­dérable. Des avertissements aux grands comme aux petits sont renforcés par des allusions au règne animal. Sur le mode de l’amplificatio, par exemple, Chassignet entasse image sur image, un petit chien qui marque l’arrêt sur un sanglier, une petite vipère qui tue un gros taureau, et un petit ichneumon dont la vengeance contre un crocodile occupe un quatrain en­tier, pour livrer l’avertissement suivant sur la vie : « Toy donc qui des pe­tits ne fais estat quelconque,/ [...] sache qu’il ne fut oncque/ Ny d’ennemy leger, ny de petit amy » (sonnet XXIX). Le lecteur est ainsi invité à se remémorer l’héritage des fables et des bestiaires où sont données des le­çons pratiques sur la vie[19].

L’application constante des sens par nos emblématistes sert à vivifier les méditations sur la vie. Les sens, reconnus par Aristote comme essen­tiels à l’imagination (De Anima 2.5, 3.3) et par saint Augustin comme porteurs des images à la mémoire (Confessions 2.10.17), viennent au se­cours de l’emblématiste qui invite son lecteur à contempler avec lui l’image artistique et à formuler, aussi avec lui, une interprétation. La pen­sée de saint Augustin, notamment dans son exégèse de l’épître aux Ro­mains 1.20, autorisa également le lien fondamental entre la perception sensorielle, la compréhension théologique, et le jugement moral : « Uten­dum est hoc mundo, non fruendum, ut invisibilia Dei per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciantur, hoc est, utde corporalibus temporalibusque rebus aeterna et spiritualia capiamus »[20].

L’emblème avec ses divers appels aux yeux, à l’intelligence, et à la mémoire, réunit l’utile à l’agréable, visant à plaire et à instruire[21]. Pierre Joly, dans la dédicace de sa traduction des Emblemes de Boissard, insiste sur la pertinence des emblèmes dans une vie de valeur, affirmant que ces compositions « ne sont qu’enseignemens à bien vivre » (prefatory matter, édition de 1595). Notre analyse de l’emblème 9 de l’édition de 1588 a relevé une véritable règle de vie dont la contribution sensorielle est faite par l’évocation des opposés : « les membres froids [...] au cercueil », « la campagne azurée », et « le soleil de la Foy [qui] nous eschauffe [...] le cueur ». La raison n’est aucunement négligée, la devise communiquant le principe de la vie : « Qui se regle selon le vouloir de Dieu, & la raison, ne craint aucun danger ». L’emblème XXXVI de Chassignet sollicite tous les sens : dans la pictura, par un coeur enflammé sur un autel ; dans le sonnet, par des allusions à « l’encens », à « l’oraison », à « la nourriture », et à « l’ador[ation] de la peinture », pour rendre plus intense la règle de la vie qu’il offre : « Il faut [...]/ Tenir ses sens reglés au veuil de la raison ».

University of South Florida

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