Geoffrey Turnovsky

Régis Sauder's touching 2011 documentary, Nous, Princesses de Clèves, which follows a group of Marseille high school students over the course of a year as they read La Fayette's novel while preparing for the Baccalauréat exams, juxtaposes two distinct types of reading: a reading in which the students are able to see themselves in the characters of the novel and a more difficult classroom-based reading that seeks to instill in the students, through conventional pedagogical exercises such as the explication de texte, an appreciation for the literary art and importance of the text. This essay explores the tensions between these two literacies, which become manifest in the film, especially in scenes where the students, who so easily relate to the novel's characters, struggle with the more formal analysis. In a second part, inspired by the writings of Priscilla Ferguson, the essay explores the sociological and pedagogical implications of what seems, in the film, the incompatibility of these distinct appropriations of the text, as it pertains to the students in the documentary and to US-based French programs built on the literary curricula developed by pedagogues such as Gustave Lanson in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This article revisits the letters written by readers of the Mercure galant responding to the “gallant question" posed by the periodical's editor in an April 1678 issue, regarding a central plot twist of Madame de Lafayette's novel La Princesse de Clèves. Highlighting the expansive, democratic, and participatory nature of these readers as they connected with the unprecedented complexity of the novel's characters, whose dilemmas they "identified" with, scholars have imputed to this 1670s public a modernity reflecting that of the novel itself, often considered “the first modern novel” in French. This essay analyzes the letters in light of their arguments as well as of the novel's editorial history, exploring the implications of a disconnect existing between the work and the readers in question, who, in reality, did not generally empathize with its protagonist's dilemma as presented by the Mercure, and moreover, who did not seem to have read the text. This disconnect highlights a number of realities that a "history of reading" approach to late 17th-century literary culture can bring out. One is that, in the summer of its publication, the work was perhaps not accessible in the provincial towns that produced the new readers of this modern public and who wrote in to the Mercure. Second, literary demand in the late 1670s, even as it was growing and touching new kinds of readers, expanded through a continuing interest in the didactic and romanesque genres of the 1630s-50s, rather than the "modern novel" of Lafayette. In the 1680s, excerpted texts from Scudéry's early romances, condensed as guidebooks for ideal comportment and sociability, were published in numbers that far exceeded copies of the Princesse de Clèves in circulation; and ultimately, the Mercure galant of the 1670-80s specialized in the former literary stylings more than the latter.

When Louis Belmont discussed the bound collection of manuscript letters and verse known as the "Chroniques du samedi," he described it as a “luxurious specimen,” whose lavish (in his view) material forms – “good paper,” gilded edges, and blue velvet binding – echoed the refined sphere that its texts, a "register" of the activities of Madeleine de Scudéry’s Saturday salon, evoked. He called it “le livre bleu de la préciosité.” Yet the history of the "Chroniques" as a document is more complex. This article explores some of the contexts through which the manuscript may have passed in its trajectory from the Scudéry group in the 1650s to the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal today, and which may have shaped the book. I highlight two specifically: the world of 19th-century autograph collecting typified by Feuillet des Conches, collector and forger, who owned the manuscript and signed his name on its endsheets, and the political, religious, and secretarial framework of the early 18th century, when Pellisson’s papers were administered (published, archived) for posterity.

These contexts are obscure and to a degree, unknowable. But they have left discernible traces on the bound manuscript that, despite or because of the uncertainties encountered, may help us view it in a new light: created over time, invested in distinct and often contradictory ways, and materially altered for a variety of purposes.

Translated by Cécile Soudan. Original English version posted here, too.

This article revisits the 18th-century trope of “sentimental reading,” as described in the famous fan-mail sent by readers to Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. It reinterpets the accounts offered by these readers of the emotional, exalting experiences generated by La Nouvelle Héloïse, Paul et Virginie, and other key works, in light of the contradiction presented by a book historical context that determined these experiences – by delivering to the readers the texts in question, for instance – and yet was defined by attributes ostensibly antithetical to them: the sense of intimate communication with an author taken to be a personal friend whom the reader could imagine hearing or seeing was mediated by an expanding, commercialized trade and by an increasing standardization of typographic forms and methods, allowing more and more individuals to read the same work and respond in the same way. This article contends that, as perhaps a representational exercise more than a real reading practice, sentimental reading was a function of this paradox. I am delighted that it is included in a volume of contributions dedicated to celebrating the life, work and influence of Gita May, in whose seminar on Diderot, as a first year graduate student, I first really discovered the endlessly enriching intellectual culture of the 18th century.

Short studies of three readers of the Mercure Galant, based on the letters they sent to the editor, Donneau de Visé in 1678, and other archival traces. These readers include a counselor in the presidial court of Bourg-en-Bresse named Brossard de Montaney; the daughter of a military governor of Brie-Comte-Robert and (possibly) _fille du roi_ sent to Quebec named (Marie-Angélique) Portas; and the possibly pseudonymous "De L'Isle" of Ile de Ré, sub-delegate of the Intendant of the province of Aunis-Saintonge. The essay highlights the political and socio-professional context of this readership.

This article reassesses Diderot’s _Lettre sur le commerce de la librairie_ as an effort to conceptualize a complicated, fraught, and modernizing literary market (viewed through the central perspective of authorship), rather than as an ideological statement in favor or against Old Regime guild regulations elaborated in the interests of guild booksellers and the State.

Description of a new minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, developed within the Textual Studies program at the University of Washington, Seattle. This essay appeared as part of the Campus Spotlight on the University of Washington, in EuropeNow 47 (April 2022) (https://www.europenowjournal.org/2022/04/17/campus-spotlight-university-of-washington/), edited by Taylor Soja, PhD Candidate in History at the University of Washington.

Link to the essay: https://www.europenowjournal.org/2022/04/17/exploring-the-challenges-of-the-digital-revolution-in-a-new-minor-in-textual-studies-and-digital-humanities-at-the-university-of-washington/