Le mythe antique dans l'oeuvre de Pontus de Tyard (review)
Thomas Sébillet’s idiosyncratic use of diastole to signify what will ultimately be called diérèse because the former term is confined to the realm of physiological terminology (Jean-Charles Monferran). While the essays focus on twelve particular terminological issues, readers with a more general interest in early modern metaliterary discourse will find the indices of proper names and critical notions at the end of the volume useful for exploring broader themes and reconstitute the dominant role of certain poéticiens for this period. For example, the poetics of Sébillet, Du Bellay, Ronsard, and Peletier du Mans are treated throughout the volume, and roughly 250 critical terms are discussed in the context of the twelve case studies. A selective bibliography and a list of online resources complement the collection, making it a practical manual for those who wish to study early modern French literary criticism. In their introduction, the editors outline the challenges that the history of this discourse poses because it does not emanate from a well-defined discipline like medicine or mathematics. Instead, it overlaps with other fields (such as classical rhetoric) and borrows from several disciplines and their specialized terminologies, themselves undergoing substantial changes (such as agriculture, astronomy, and anatomy). The development of a critical vocabulary describing literature is not linear nor methodological, but, as the editors point out, it reveals the historical consciousness of the authors who contribute to its formation and betrays their pedagogical and ideological predilections. More importantly, the case studies show that the historiographical preconception of a linguistically proliferating sixteenth century and a domesticating and regulating seventeenth century does not hold true for the case of metaliterary discourse. This revision is one of the reasons M. Jourde and J.-C. Monferran mention for their deliberate choice to assemble essays covering and often bridging the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The debate on literary terminology during this period is further unified by the complex interplay of Latin and French nomenclatures and punctuated by quarrels over ancient and modern designations. This volume constitutes an important contribution to the study of metaliterary discourse in early modern France while affording precious insights into the animated debate about the delineation of literature as an object of critical inquiry. It also makes a convincing case for the further softening of our disciplinary boundary between sixteenthand seventeenth-century French literary studies. MARCUS KELLER University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign