The Shape of Change: Essays in Early Modern Literature and La Fontaine in Honour of David Lee Rubin (Faux Titre 223) (Faux Titre)

In The Shape of Change , Anne L. Birberick and Russell Ganim bring together essays by fourteen established scholars who dedicate their studies to David Rubin as they explore the ways in which artistic endeavor shapes and is shaped by literary memory. The volume is divided into two sections. The first section, "Continuity and Discontinuity," offers essays by Jody Enders, Timothy Reiss, Twyla Meding, Marie-Odile Sweetser, Robert Corum, Jr., and the editors themselves and considers the ways in which seventeenth-century authors draw upon generic conventions or diverse artistic media to create works that reflect the aesthetic and moral values of their time. The second section, entitled "La Fontaine," focuses primarily on Jean de La Fontaine's masterpiece, Les Fables. Here the problem of imitation and innovation as it relates to genre, influence, and literary reputation is examined in essays by Jules Brody, Richard Danner, Judd Hubert, Catherine Grisé, Michael Vincent, Nicholas Cronk, and Ralph Albanese, Jr. The Shape of Change serves as a fine scholarly contribution to the studies of French seventeenth-century literature and La Fontaine. The essays are thoughtful as well as thought provoking and the volume's critical diversity is nicely balanced by its thematic coherence. In its ability to stimulate new thinking, this collection of essays will be of interest to both students and scholars of early modern France Title Page 3 Copyright Page 4 Table of Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 I. CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY 17 The Theatrical Memory of Denis Coppée’s Sanglante et Pitoyable tragédie de nostre Saveur et Rédempteur Jesu-Christ 19 Andromaque and the Search for Unique Sovereignty 41 Through the Talking Glass: Translucence and Translation in the Condé Museum’s Psyche Gallery 71 Translation as Appropriation: The Case of María de Zayas’s El Prevendio engañado and Paul Scarron’s La Précaution inutile 109 The Art of Praise from Malherbe to La Fontaine 137 Drink, Eat, and Write: Saint-Amant’s Gastronomic Discourse 159 The Rhetoric of Disgust and Contempt in Boileau 181 II. LA FONTAINE 197 “L’Alouette et ses petits” (4.22): Reflections on La Fontaine’s “esprit critique” 199 Monkey Rhetoric and Donkey Discourse: Irony and Relativism in “Le Lion, le singe et les deux ânes’’ (Fables 11.5) 215 Displacement in La Fontaine’s Fables from Metaphor to Theater 235 La Fontaine’s Les Filles de Minée’: Weaving a Poetic Narrative 257 Illustration, Image, and Emblem in La Fontaine’s Fables 283 Reading La Fontaine and Writing Literary History in the Eighteenth Century: The Problem of Voltaire 305 La Fontaine and the Teaching of Frenchness 333 David Lee Rubin Selected Publications 355 Notes on Contributors 359 Index 363