L'Erreur de la Renaissance: Perspectives litteraires.

Francois Rigolot. L'Erreur de la Renaissance: Perspectives litteraires.

Paris: Honore Champion Editeur, 2002. 418 pp. index. tbls. bibl. [euro] 55. ISBN: 2-7453-0684-7.

The polysemy of the term announces the ambitious scope of this book. Despite the restriction of the subtitle, Francois Rigolot's sympathetic pursuit of error in literature does not neglect its theological and philosophical dimensions. Concentrating on writers of the Continental Renaissance, and especially of sixteenth-century France, but not neglecting either ancient or twentieth-century voices, the author has produced a many-sided apologia for the productiveness of error.

The study is divided into two main sections, "Erreurs de pensee" and "Erreurs de langage," each of which comprises five chapters. (It soon becomes clear, however, that, as with rhetorical figures, the distinction of thought and words is only a relative one.) Religious tolerance is at issue in the treatment of doctrinal errors (chap. 1). The concept of condescendence as theorized and practiced by Erasmus attempts to make possible a dialogue with heretics. It may also underlie friendship and pedagogy, as for Rabelais, Montaigne, and La Boetie. In the realm of love poetry, erreurs amoureuses belong to the heritage of Petrarch and Ovid's Heroides (chap. 2). In an exemplary way, Louise Labe turns the lover/poet's error into a renewed relation with canonical texts. Popular errors are the object of Laurent Joubert's debunking, and Montaigne in his consideration of the New World seems to have a similar aim (chap. 3). With errors of nature we enter the domain of the monstrous; an examination of Rabelais's treatment of monsters in the Quart Livre leads to a fresh understanding of that book's therapeutic function (chap. 4). The Renaissance dialogue (Erasmus, Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne) may have error both as subject matter and as a model for its own labyrinthine proceeding (chap. 5).

"Erreurs de la rhetorique" (chap. 6) studies the representation of the poet in works by Jean Marot and his son Clement. Verbal error in the form of ambiguity or punning, in the works of Rabelais and Tabourot des Accords, is the subject of chapter 7. Visible error in the form of simulacra, as it underlies Montaigne's attitude towards rhetoric and the plastic arts, is the subject of chapter 8. The precepts of Horace and the knight-errant of romance provide contrary examples of normative and aberrant activity; against this background Ronsard and his commentator Muret attempt to direct the correct interpretation of a newly canonical poet (chap. 9). Finally, Ronsard adopts Jacques Peletier's idea of literary progress in his evolving relation with his epic predecessors Homer and Virgil (chap. 10).

The volume includes a bibliography that unfortunately does not contain all the secondary works mentioned in the footnotes (and whose authors are not included in the Index nominum). On the other hand, the Index rerum provides a helpful guide to the many concepts, appearing in a half-dozen languages.

This rich study is written with the author's usual erudition and clarity. Admittedly, the various origin of several chapters means that the connection between the immediate topic and the overarching theme is not always evident. This is the case in chapter 3 for the relation between popular errors and Montaigne's use of S. Munster for a critique of European conquest. It is also not clear that error is really an important theme in the dialogues and dialectical works of chapter 5. Inevitably, one might also take issue with particular points of interpretation. For example, one may be surprised to find the discussion of Maurice Sceve in chapter 9 conclude with the poet an involuntary victim of poetic furor, as someone who reached for the Horatian ideal of brevity but fell into the matching vice of obscurity.

The abundance of texts and kinds of error is offset by the recurrence of a few areas of interest. Chief among them is perhaps hermeneutics; concepts such as ambiguity, altior sensus, truth, and obscurity turn up repeatedly in different forms. The hermeneutical debate familiar to students of Rabelais has not disappeared from these pages. Yet the author is anything but dogmatic. Appropriately, he plays on the ambiguity of the preposition de in the title: error as considered by Renaissance writers? Error attributed to the period by subsequent readers? The reader constantly wanders on a rewarding itinerary.

STEPHEN MURPHY 

Wake Forest University