PFSCL XLIV, 86 (2017) Bernard J. Bourque (éd.) : Jean Donneau de Visé et la querelle de Sophonisbe, Écrits contre l’abbé d’Aubignac. Édition critique par Bernard J. Bourque. Tübingen : Narr Verlag, 2014 (« Biblio 17, vol. 208 »). 187 p. This volume presents the first modern critical edition of three pamphlets written by Jean Donneau de Visé defending Pierre Corneille against attacks from abbé d’Aubignac during what has come to be known as the Querelle de Sophonisbe. These texts have received little attention in their own right, and the last of Donneau de Visé’s pamphlets, only recently rediscovered by François Rey, has been hitherto unknown to scholars. The quarrel, which took place in 1663, is a rather confusing affair. The abbé’s anger at Corneille seems to have sparked by the fact that the latter in his Trois Discours (1660) both ignored d’Aubignac’s treatise on dramatic theory, published in 1657, and disagreed with his positions on a number of crucial points, especially the application of the three unities and the definition and scope of the concepts of vraisemblance and bienséances. D'Aubignac would ultimately publish four pamphlets, which he entitled dissertations, with the first three providing detailed critiques of Corneille’s most recent tragedies in reverse chronological order, and the last attacking the playwright personally. At around the time of the abbé’s first pamphlet, the fledgling journalist Donneau de Visé published a miscellany entitled Nouvelles nouvelles, which included an attack on Corneille’s Sophonisbe, using arguments quite similar to those of d’Aubignac. Then he suddenly switched sides and published, anonymously, a defense of Sophonisbe that was equally focused on attacking d’Aubignac. Although Donneau de Visé, by referring to the Nouvelles nouvelles, openly hinted at his identity, the abbé was convinced that Corneille was the real author. Donneau de Visé then countered the abbé’s attacks on Sertorius and Œdipe with a defense of each of those plays. At that point the quarrel abruptly ceased. Bourque’s introduction provides a brief outline of the quarrel and notes the rediscovery of the third pamphlet. He then reviews Donneau de Visé’s biography and gives an overview of how this pioneer of French journalism has been viewed by critics over the centuries. He also furnishes an extensive and useful bibliography. The notes are extremely helpful, elucidating references to literary works and historical figures, providing the passages from d’Aubignac that are being rebutted, and indicating points on which either Donneau de Visé or d’Aubignac was mistaken. Unfortunately, the introduction does not include as much information as it should. Bourque assumes that readers are already familiar with the basic facts of the quarrel, so he gives only a skimpy summary. (For a detailed discussion, listing all the stages and explaining the stakes, one should consult the 1995 critical PFSCL XLIV, 86 (2017) 180 edition of the d’Aubignac pamphlets by Nicholas Hammond and Michael Hawcroft, to which Bourque often refers.) A more serious deficiency is that we are not told why these particular pamphlets are worth the attention of scholars. The case would not be hard to make. For one thing, Donneau de Visé was attempting to remove dramatic criticism from the realm of erudite conversations between scholars, which is what d’Aubignac explicitly intended, and to shift the audience to the general theater-going public, especially those frequenting the salons and the court. That is also what Molière was beginning to do as the simultaneous quarrel over L’École des femmes unfolded. (Donneau de Visé was also an active participant in that controversy.) The change of focus necessitated several key strategies, also adopted by Molière: ridiculing pedants who vaunt their erudition while disdaining the verdict of the public, reducing the importance accorded to the rules and suggesting that they should be descriptive rather than prescriptive, establishing the principle that the primary rule is to please, and using satirical devices to make the debate entertaining. Donneau de Visé, by aligning himself with the taste of the general public and using ad hominem arguments (often unfair and inaccurate) against d’Aubignac, was doing more than rebutting the abbé’s critiques of Corneille; he was positioning himself as spokesman for the honnêtes gens in the audience and preparing the ground for his future career as editor of Le Mercure galant. At the same time, Donneau de Visé was carefully undermining the basis for the debate: unlike d’Aubignac, who took the rules very seriously and was genuinely offended when Corneille disagreed with his views, the journalist shared Corneille’s flexible approach to the rules and openly questioned the reliance on writers from antiquity. He even rejected the authority of Aristotle, suggesting that the Greek philosopher might have devised better and more useful rules if he himself had tried to compose plays. Unfortunately, both men tend to be mean spirited and given to exaggeration. D’Aubignac’s quibbles over individual lines in Corneille viewed as unharmonious, unclear, or using metaphorical expressions deemed bombastic or silly lead Donneau de Visé not just to defend each of those passages, but also to subject passages in d’Aubignac’s pamphlets to similar stylistic scrutiny. These critiques are tedious to read, and in many cases the objections are unfounded. Moreover, by choosing to adopt an extreme polemical stance, Donneau de Visé essentially has to claim that everything Corneille writes is perfect. But he relies on the fact that public opinion is on his side: since the French have acknowledged Corneille as their leading playwright and since his reputation extends throughout Europe, all criticisms of Corneille must be misguided. Also disturbing to the modern Comptes rendus 181 reader are the frequency and nastiness of the personal attacks. For example, the journalist blames d’Aubignac's testiness on his age and claims that the abbé was much older than he really was; after noting that the abbé never received any honors or pensions either from Richelieu or from Louis XIV, he speculates that d’Aubignac’s jealousy stems from seeing Corneille receive prizes that he feels he himself has deserved; he constantly reminds the reader that d'Aubignac's own plays had not been successful, either on the stage or in print, and argues that the abbé, precisely because of those failures, has no right to call himself an expert on dramatic theory. The recently discovered third pamphlet contains a rebuttal of d’Aubignac’s criticisms of Corneille’s Œdipe, though the discussion is briefer and less detailed than in his defense of the two previous plays. Perhaps the most important feature of this text is Donneau de Visé’s decision to give his name directly, thus ending the confusion about the authorship of the defense pamphlets, followed by an announcement that he plans to stop his participation in the quarrel since he has better things to do. In addition, the personal attacks against his opponent reach a new level of nastiness: d’Aubignac does not deserve the title of abbé because he merely receives a small income from his abbey (i.e., he does not administer it in person), so he should be called by his family name instead; as a priest, d’Aubignac is spending too much time on secular texts and not enough on religious texts; he is behaving in an un-Christian manner by launching unjustified attacks against Corneille; he is unpatriotic by questioning the judgment of the king, who recently honored Corneille with a monetary gift. Although these personal attacks are unfair, d’Aubignac must have found them highly embarrassing. It is thus likely that Donneau de Visé’s third pamphlet was the principal reason why he chose likewise to end the quarrel. One minor point is also worth noting: during the periodic mentions of the recent play Manlius (1662) by Marie-Catherine Desjardins, for whom d’Aubignac served as mentor, no one objects to the right of women to compose plays and get them performed. While Donneau de Visé is eager to criticize the abbé’s role in the genesis of Manlius, he concedes that the young Desjardins has talent. However, his comments about her play are often inaccurate, suggesting that he had not read it very carefully. The presentation of the texts is not as meticulous as it could be. Bourque corrects obvious errors in the original edition only about half the time. In most cases it is easy to figure out what was meant, but periodically the error is so confusing that the reader is forced to go over a passage multiple times. For example, l’ennuie should be l’envie (p. 39), (p. 40), avent should be avant (p. 51), pourvoir should be pouvoir (p. 65), nuise should be nulle (p. 69), pas should be par (p. 101). And the lack of circumflex accents needed to PFSCL XLIV, 86 (2017) 182 distinguish between the passé simple and the imperfect subjunctive, which is a frequent mistake in texts of this period, should have been systematically corrected. To claim that Donneau de Visé deliberately used the indicative rather than the subjunctive in such cases (p. 68) is unfair. One also wonders why the punctuation of the original edition, which is often outlandish and confusing, has been scrupulously preserved. Despite these minor flaws, this edition makes a very valuable contribution to the study of seventeenth-century French drama and clearly deserves a place in university libraries. Perry Gethner Delphine Denis (dir.) : Honoré d’Urfé, L’Astrée. Deuxième partie. Édition critique établie sous la direction de Delphine Denis par Jean- Marc Chapelain, Delphine Denis, Camille Esmain-Sarrazin, Laurence Giavarini, Frank Greiner, Françoise Lavocat et Stéphane Macé. Paris : Honoré Champion, 2016 (« Champion Classiques, Littérature »). 715 p. Nous avons salué la publication du premier volume de cette édition critique (PFSCL XXXIX No. 76 (2012), 258-261) et nous ne pouvons que féliciter l’équipe dirigée par Delphine Denis de la publication de ce deuxième volume qui possède les mêmes qualités que le précédent. Depuis la publication de la première partie en 2011, le site Le Règne d’Astrée, (http: / / astree.paris-sorbonne.fr) s’est enrichi et mérite d’être consulté, par exemple pour la version de 1610 de cette partie, pour la bibliothèque d’Honoré d’Urfé, les réécritures et adaptations de L’Astrée et l’iconographie ou la musique. Il faut savoir gré à l’équipe de profiter des ressources électroniques d’aujourd’hui pour mettre à la disposition du lecteur une abondance d’informations de grande valeur. Ces matériaux faciliteront les recherches et les cours universitaires sur cet ouvrage magistral. Cette partie est publiée en 1610, et « on connaît non moins de dix-neuf éditions de la seconde partie parues entre 1610 à 1647 » (18). Pourquoi les éditeurs ont-ils retenu celle publiée en 1614 chez Toussainct du Bray ? Il y en a trois à être publiées entre 1610 et 1616, dont la « grande proximité des leçons […] conduit à affirmer qu’elles procèdent d’un modèle commun » (20), introuvable aujourd’hui. Par « conjecture philologique », l’édition de 1610 ne peut pas être « le modèle qu’elles ont suivi » (20). Entre les deux éditions de 1614 « celle qui compte 932 pages » est prise pour texte de base « parce que c’est d’elle que procèdent les éditions successives publiées sous de nouveaux privilèges » (21). Les éditeurs corrigent le texte de 1614 quand celui de 1610 est meilleur, par exemple « Or, dit le Druide : oyez donc ce