Sigu, Véronique. Médiévisme et
lumières: le Moyen Age dans la ‘Bibliothèque universelle des romans'. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, August 2013 (SVEC 2013:8).
Reviewed by
Jessica Stacey, King’s College London (Jessica.stacey@kcl.ac.uk)
That the Middle
Ages were not highly regarded by eighteenth-century French society is widely
known. This is the age of Voltaire writing of the dismal, barbaric birth of Europe,
of gothique as a byword for confusion
and ugliness, reaching its apogee in the neo-Classicist French Revolution.
However, it is also in the eighteenth century that French medievalist
scholarship is born with the work of antiquarian La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, who
wrote memoirs on chivalry and troubadour poetry which made their way to Horace
Walpole’s library at Strawberry Hill.[1]
Alongside this serious scholarship, medievalist (or medievalish) short stories were rapidly gaining
in popularity. Paperback collections, or bibliothèques, such as the populist Bibliothèque bleue made folk tales and
characters dating back to medieval romance cheaply available to an expanding
reading public. It is amidst these contrasting strains of thought that, in
1775, the first volume of a new project, the Bibliothèque universelle des romans, is published. The title page is graced by an ambitious
mission statement to which Véronique Sigu frequently returns over the course of
her new study, Médiévisme et Lumières: le
Moyen Age dans la ‘Bibliothèque universelle des romans’, and it is worth quoting
this key passage at the outset: ‘La Bibliothèque
universelle des romans, ouvrage périodique dans lequel on donne l’analyse
raisonnée des romans anciens et modernes, français ou traduits dans notre
langue; avec des anecdotes et des notices historiques et critiques concernant
les auteurs ou leurs ouvrages; ainsi que les mœurs, les usages du
temps, les circonstances particulières et relatives, et les personnages connus,
déguisés ou emblématiques.’[2]
The BUR is interested in the process of
categorisation. This process was key to the formation of what Roger Chartier,
in a well-known article which Sigu cites more than once, dubbed ‘libraries
without walls’: encyclopaedic or exemplary collections of texts, in vogue since
the seventeenth century.[3]
As a universal library of novels, the
BUR posits eight distinct classes
according to which all novels can be ordered, and the second of the eight
categories is romans de chevalerie.[4]
It is on these extraits (extracts)
or miniatures and their analyse raisonnée that Sigu focusses, also
drawing occasionally on the third category of ‘historical’ novels, to elucidate
her thesis on the role of the BUR in
crafting a place for the medieval in both popular and intellectual thought.
The Bibliothèque universelle des romans has
garnered criticism for its pretensions, which were lofty: the editors, working
from the Marquis de Paulmy’s extensive collection of manuscripts and with the
help of the antiquarian La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, aimed at a more
sophisticated audience than the Bibliothèque bleue but, as Lise Andries has shown, BUR
extracts were often based not on manuscripts but on the Bibliothèque bleue itself.[5]
Sigu acknowledges this charge, but seeks to elevate the collection’s status for
both medievalists and eighteenth-century specialists by emphasising both the
project’s commitment to ‘serious’, manuscript-based medievalism (especially in
its earlier years), as well as the close ties between those working on the
project within philosophe
as well as antiquarian circles. Sigu makes the philosophical stakes of her project clear in the
introduction: as the philosophes often
mocked erudition and erudite scholars were frequently hostile to the philosophes, the possibility of the BUR as a site of crossover renders the
periodical interesting to those who focus on the history of ideas as well as to
those who focus on the history of medieval reception. If accepted readings of
intellectual currents in the eighteenth century see reason (philosophy) opposed
to memory (erudition) in epistemology, and reason triumphant with far-reaching
implications, Sigu seeks to establish the BUR
as a location in which these opposed forces might, to some extent, be
reconciled (15). Hence the work’s title, which unites rather than opposes médiévisme and lumières – medievalism and Enlightenment.
To elucidate this
claim, Sigu begins her analysis with portraits of the two major personalities
behind the BUR, the Marquis de Paulmy
(who guided the publication from 1775 to 1778) and the Comte de Tressan (who took
the reins after Paulmy’s somewhat acrimonious and mysterious departure). Sigu
situates the two men in French intellectual life with reference to the salons
they attended. We learn that both would have mixed extensively with Montesquieu
and Voltaire at the salon of Madame
Tencin, as well as attending the salon of Madame Doublet where the antiquarian
La Curne de Sainte-Palaye made his intellectual base. She reveals the
surprising fact that the two men were closely linked with the philosophe par excellence, Voltaire, who was invited
to the editorial board and seemed, at the age of eighty, regretful of having to
decline (17). Whilst acknowledging that there is a schism between the time of
Paulmy and the time of Tressan – the loss of the former’s extensive library as
a resource seems to have led to a more slapdash, less antiquarian approach –
she argues that the Bibliothèque
universelle des romans took two major ideological stances towards the
Middle Ages, created under Paulmy’s reign and continued, even reinforced, under
Tressan’s. These stances are, firstly, a particular ideology of fiction and
history which seeks to rehabilitate the novel or romance through its historical
content, and secondly, the creation of the medieval as a site from which ideal
masculine models, both aristocratic and patriotic, can be drawn.
In arguing for a
rehabilitation of romans through
their historical content, Sigu is engaging with an anxiety foundational to
eighteenth-century medievalism. Novels and romances become valuable for their faithful portrayal of the customs and
morals of past times; the BUR was
following La Curne de Sainte-Palaye who, in his Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie (developed during the 1750s) had
set out an extensive defence of using fictional texts to ground assertions
about history and about actual medieval life. These same novels or romances
were, however, considered potentially dangerous, and this is the crux of the BUR’s engagement with fiction – what are
its safe uses and what, when making an extrait
or miniature should be excluded,
or even rewritten?
In a fascinating
discussion of the implications of the term extrait,
Sigu convincingly argues that we must take its origins in chemistry seriously.
The BUR generally masked the more
violent or sexual aspects of medieval texts, figured as dangerous,
inflammatory, or simply poor-taste: medieval writing must be ‘distilled’ to
recover only the useful or harmlessly diverting. Infamous anti-philosophe
Fréron, reviewing the BUR in 1775,
praised the process in intriguingly chemical language: ‘D’après ce que j’en ai
vu, j’ose dire que tous ces ouvrages lus dans la Bibliothèque en question, non
seulement n’ont plus rien de dangereux, mais qu’ils contiennent les plus grandes
leçons de sagesse et d’excellents préservatifs contre les séductions du vice.
Le poison secret qui pourrait s’y
trouver renfermé reste dans le creuset de
l’analyse, laquelle se borne à donner l’esprit
et, pour me servir de l’expression même des auteurs, la miniature de chaque
roman: miniature dans laquelle n’entrent que les traits propres à caractériser
l’ouvrage, et d’où sont bannis toutes les images qui ne seraient pas avouées
par la décence la plus rigoureuse.’ (quoted
120-121, my emphasis)[6]
As Sigu notes, what is conserved is the fond
historique (historical foundation), and what is left out is the imagination en délire (fevered
imagination) of pre-modern writers.
The primary issue
that can be taken with Sigu’s analysis of this process concerns how far it can
be considered a rehabilitation of the novel/romance form. She qualifies that
this rehabilitation is not wholehearted, comporting a moralising taint that the
reader may find paradoxal, but the
purification implied by this process of extraction – which results in something
which no longer has the form of a novel or romance – may be more significant
than Sigu allows. On the one hand, Tressan is happy to speak of the roman de chevalerie as valuable for having
‘point de modèle dans l’antiquité. Elle est dûe au
génie des François ; & tout ce qui a paru, de ce genre, chez les
autres Peuples de l’Europe, a été postérieur aux premiers Romans que la France
a produits, & n’en a été, pour ainsi dire, qu’une imitation.’[7]
On the other, content is pruned, and the form itself undergoes extensive modification to produce an easily
digestible miniature.
Sigu’s second
major argument revolves around the changing ideological function of the Middle
Ages in France towards the end of the eighteenth century. She identifies two
primary deployments of a medieval ideal in the Bibliothèque universelle des romans, roughly splitting between
Paulmy’s and Tressan’s directorships but present throughout the publication’s
history. The first is the chevalier as
critique of and model for the modern aristocrat, and the second is medieval
France as the birthplace of the modern French nation. Concurrent to the textual
and narrative harmonisation practised by the editors, there thus runs a
harmonisation of power dynamics between rulers and their vassals, which tends
to recast kings as absolute monarchs and knights as absolutely loyal – not
through a sense of feudal obligation, but through an anachronistic nationalism
(228). She quotes Tressan who, blending aristocracy and national progression,
figured chevalerie as a civilising
aristocratic force pushing society forward (139). Of course, not all knightly
characteristics fit this assessment. In a century which had forbidden duelling,
the central role of single combat was downplayed (147), whilst the religious
attitudes of the knights, uncomfortably close to superstition and fanaticism for
eighteenth-century thinkers, were also modified or skipped over, even when the
Grail Quest is at issue.
Rehabilitators of
the medieval past are interested in grounding French national character, and
particularly their gallantry in love, in the Middle Ages, but most (aside from
the notable exceptions of Boulainvilliers and his followers) seek to divert
attention from medieval political organisation. In common with other
eighteenth-century retellings of medieval tales (Baculard d’Arnaud’s Nouvelles historiques, for example), the
BUR expands (or even fabricates) a
principal role for individual sentiment, and elides the troubling
non-individuation of the medieval hero/heroine (‘son étrangéité’, 177) and the
primarily social function of courtly love. Furthermore, love of the
eighteenth-century kind is used to mask medieval political concerns:
Blanchefleur’s feudal war in Chrétien de Troye’s Conte du Graal is rewritten with the damsel besieged by a spurned
suitor (169). Sigu also demonstrates that greater emphasis was placed,
throughout the BUR’s treatment of the
medieval past, on conjugal rather than extramarital love, and convincingly
argues for a sexist undercurrent restricting female agency (notably, 176 on Guinevere
and Lancelot in Le Chevalier de la
charrette).
A minor criticism,
but one pertinent to medievalists, is that Sigu’s medieval secondary references
are rather venerable, whereas her eighteenth-century secondary sources are much
more up-to-date. This may, of course, be because she deals with
well-established medieval texts, whilst the study of eighteenth-century
medievalism is in the process of blossoming. This imbalance has no particular
negative impact on the investigation, but it might have been interesting to
reference more recent work by, for example, Carolyn Dinshaw on nineteenth-century
amateur medievalism. However, this is not to say that her work does not engage
with problems of contemporary relevance to medievalists for, by situating the BUR’s extract of The Perilous Cemetery in relation to the periodical’s editorial
technique more generally, she draws conclusions important to the manuscript
tradition of the medieval text. In contrast to the text’s editor Nancy Black,
who judges from the great disparities between the BUR version and the extant manuscripts that a lost manuscript must
have been known in the eighteenth century, Sigu demonstrates that the
variations from extant manuscripts to the BUR
version are no greater than those extracts for which the source manuscript
is known for certain, refuting the lost-manuscript theory (discussed 147-151).
Another moment which will bring a smile to the faces of medievalists is when
she cautions her readers with one of the fundamental elements of engagement
with medieval literary tradition, but applied to the BUR: ‘évitons [...] de juger trop sévèrement le manque de fidélité
de la reécriture à l’original mediéval, nous imposerions des critères tout à fait
anachroniques à ces travaux d’adaptation’[8]
(254). A medievalist Enlightenment indeed.
Sigu has
undertaken a formidable amount of research, supporting her analysis of the
ideological agenda of the BUR by
citing reviews from many contemporary journaux
which back up her assertions, suggesting a widespread engagement with, and
appetite for, the brand of medievalism the BUR
was selling. Her critical engagement with the implications of the metaphor
of chemical extraction is, overall, highly compelling. Her extended analysis of
the technique consistent throughout the BUR’s
publication (no matter who held the
reins) of distilling ‘unwieldy’ or ‘barbaric’ medieval texts down to a
particular conception of their essence, and then adding a great deal of moral
or historical commentary to produce a more coherent image of chivalry, builds a
convincing picture of a publication seeking to enhance the chevalier for eighteenth-century
reappropriation – though this by, ultimately, denigrating medieval literary
production. In identifying a move, as the publication evolves, from the
medieval figured as a place from which to criticise modernity to the medieval
as modernity’s origin point (244), Sigu situates the Bibliothèque universelle des romans at the heart of the current
revaluation of what medievalism meant to the Enlightenment.
Jessica Stacey
King’s College
London
[1] Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie; Considerée comme un établissement
politique et militaire. 3 vols. (Paris: Chez Duchesne, 1759).
Histoire littéraire des troubadours, (Paris: Chez Durand, 1774) (Horace Walpole’s annotated copy held at the British Library, class-mark 1464 d.1).
Histoire littéraire des troubadours, (Paris: Chez Durand, 1774) (Horace Walpole’s annotated copy held at the British Library, class-mark 1464 d.1).
[2] The Bibliothèque universelle
des romans: periodical giving a reasoned analysis of novels ancient and
modern, French or in translation, including anecdotes and historical and
critical annotations regarding authors and texts, as well as the morals and
customs of the past, particular and related circumstances, and known, disguised
or symbolic characters.
[3] Chartier, Roger, ‘Libraries Without Walls’ in Representations, No. 42, Special Issue: Future Libraries (Spring,
1993), 38-52.
[4] As Sigu notes on 197, the term ‘roman’ (novel) as used by the BUR includes many forms not covered by
modern usages – medieval romances, contes,
even poetic retellings of history.
[5] Andries, Lise, ‘La Bibliothèque bleue
et la redécouverte des romans de chevalerie au dix-huitième siècle’, in Medievalism and manière gothique in
Enlightenment France, Damian-Grint, Peter (ed.), (Oxford: SVEC, 2006) 52-67.
[6] ‘From what I have so far seen, I dare say that all the works in
this Bibliothèque not only no longer
contain dangerous material, but that highly edifying lessons and effective
defences against the seductions of vice are to be found therein. The secret
poison which could have been hidden within is left behind in the crucible of
the analysis, which restricts itself to portraying the spirit or, to use the
favourite term of the authors, the miniature of each novel: miniature into
which are admitted only those traits necessary to convey the character of the
work, and from which are banished any images which the most rigorous modesty
would scruple to avow.’
[7] ‘no model whatsoever in Antiquity. It was a French invention, and
all other works of this genre which appeared in Europe were posterior to those
first novels/romances produced by the French, and were thus imitations of
them.’ Tressan, le Comte de,
‘Discours préliminaire’, in Corps
d’extraits de romans de chevalerie, (Paris: Pissot, 1782)
[8] ‘let us avoid judging the lack of fidelity to the medieval original
in the retelling too harshly, for this would be to impose utterly anachronistic
criteria upon these adaptations.’
