Pastoral Palimpsest: Writing the Laws of Love in L'Astree.

Mediated by Neoplatonist thought of the Quattrocento, paradox governs both form and content of Honore d'Urfe's L'Astree. The prefatory epistles to the work's first three parts establish a Foucaldian notion of "author function" while simultaneously positing the author's profound distrust of writing and his preference for an oral medium. Within the romance itself the three episodes featuring the authoritative Laws of Love, their falsification, and finally their complete revision illustrate deconstruction of the "author function" through the force of the Platonic textual "drift" against which d'Urfe cautions his protagonists in his prefaces. At the same time, the revised Laws of Love announce means of collective composition prevalent in the Later seventeenth century. The romance's sylvan cabinet thus reflects and resolves the dilemmas of authority and composition conceived in the prefaces' paternal Cabinet.

"Rien n'est constant que l'inconstance, durable mesme en son changement". [1] so the narrator of L'Astree ponders the shepherd Celadon's plunge into the river Lignon's waters of oblivion and its illustration of the inherent changeability of all things, particularly the once-constant and mutual love shared by the capricious shepherdess Astree and her faithful suitor. Qualified in terms of amatory conduct, a "paradox of nothing" thus inaugurates this long pastoral romance and displays in its symmetry the antithetical pairing of constancy and inconstancy; [2] whereas inconstancy appropriates the durability associated with constancy and is alone reliable, constancy undergoes ineluctable change, the salient feature of inconstancy, despite its ostensible foundation in stasis. Through rhetorical finesse, the paradox of nothing reduces apparent opposites to equivalence: each takes on the other's characteristics in an interdependent exchange. The conflicting propensities reflect one another through an operation of mut ual cancellation in which the dictum's subject, rien, annuls its constituent parts and proclaims the essential vanity of love. Yet, as mediator of coincidentia oppositorum, the same rien permits the two contrary states to coexist. [3]

Focusing as it does on the delights and torments of love in a multi-generic format, L'Astree is clearly a text permeated with paradox, and the opening aphorism echoes Plato's Sophist and his own paradox of stasis and motion. [4] Closely tied to Renaissance traditions of paradox, the force of sophistic formulations in d'Urfe's romance underlies its predominant theorizations of Neoplatonism, Petrarchism, and courtly love. [5] This is not surprising, given the romance's recognition of the omipotence of the god Love, himself perceived as a sophist by the Quattrocento humanists who influenced d'Urfe's literary interpretation of Neoplatonist doctrine. [6] By its coincidence of opposites, the formulation of the inaugural "paradox of nothing" contradicts another explicit maxim of the pastoral universe: "deux contraires ne peuvent estre en mesme temps en mesme lieu," [7] perhaps d'Urfe's nod to the controversy over "the paradoxical presence of not-being in ... being" that opposed the Florentines Ficino and Pico della Mirandola at the close of the Quattrocento. [8] In the void delineated by the paradox of nothing's subject, nevertheless, the opposing tendencies of constancy and inconstancy do indeed share a common space and time. The contradictory aphorisms are emblematic of the romance's divergent currents of representation: one monolithic and unitary, both founding and perpetuating the pastoral life, free from the influence of corrupt, contemporary society; the other fragmented and polyvalent, partaking of both the perceived debasement of seventeenth-century court society [9] and the savagery of nature in order to effect a continual subversion of the prevailing norms of the first system. In terms of love, the stable order of the first framework corresponds to constancy; the always shifting foundation of the second, to inconstancy. The upholders of constancy translate their accepted standards into inscribed texts intended to protect and preserve their content; the inconstants, few in number, prefer to prove their mettle in the oral arena, but manipulate written texts with ease. The conflict between constant and inconstant lovers is deployed not only in endless debate but on the surface of the very written texts the constants hold dear.

In such a climate of duplicity, the baldpate shepherd Hylas -- who has the singular merit of practicing the inconstancy he preaches and thus eliciting with ease the admiration and love of women -- deftly crafts sophistic paradoxes which support his professed beliefs. Moreover, this "cunning, or cavilling disputer" [10] engages in frequent verbal jousts against his enemy Silvandre, who defends steadfastly the courtly and Neoplatonist tenets of constant love which serve as the standard by which all lovers are judged in the Forez. In this way, Hylas conforms to the definition of the sophist offered by Ficino in his De Amore 6.9: "A Sophist Plato defines as an ambitious and crafty debater who, by the subtleties of sophistries, shows us the false for the true, and forces those who dispute with him to contradict themselves in their speeches." [11] Couched in witty casuistry, Hylas's frequent jabs most often elicit peals of laughter from the pastoral spectators and do little to alter the other shepherds' aspirations to attain the ideal of perfectly constant love. The equilibrium in opposit ion of constancy and inconstancy is unrealizable in act, since Hylas most often stands alone against the throngs of the Forez's self-professed constant lovers. It is instead in the realm of written discourse -- of writing as process and product -- that Hylas achieves the parity to which La Fontaine's Gelaste alludes in Psyche the champion of comic theater begins his defense of the genre by citing Hylas as "le veritable Heros d'Astree" (122), more necessary in his singularity to the romance's success than the scores of constant lovers who crowd its fabled fields and forests.

Hylas becomes a comic hero for La Fontaine through his bons mots, his subversive manipulations of both speech and text. Carried out on the surface of inscribed text, his interventions transcend the sophistic underpinnings of his never-ending debates against the defenders of constancy. Correspondences between text and paratext suggest Hylas's identification with the reader of L'Astree: when he disrupts the coherence of venerated written discourse and replaces it with his own tenets of inconstancy, his interventions challenge the very foundation of the romance as a text circulated in print, and, consequently, of a culture grounded in the power of ecriture. [12] Though handwritten texts abound in L'Astree, I have chosen to set aside the romance's numerous poems and epistles in order to focus on the authoritative Laws of Love. This revered document serves not only as a manual-in-verse for the conduct of the perfect lover -- a descendant of the medieval fin amant [13] -- but as the poetic distillation of the past oral community's most ancient and cherished beliefs on love. As such, it is analogous to the text of L'Astree itself, widely perused and debated as a guidebook in matters of love in seventeenth-century salons. [14] Highlighting three separate episodes, the "Loix d'Amour" form an intrarextual annominatio, or "variation on a semantic or lexical theme," [5] which allows the differences between the three texts to come to the forefront.

Reflecting the importance of topographical markers in L'Astree, the Laws are guarded in a privileged space, the Temple de l'Amitie, an edifice which explicitly bars entry to all profanes esprits in order to restrict passage to the select few "d'un sainct amour espris" (2:5.176). The Temple's conception by the Druid Adamas and the shepherd Celadon justifies its role as shelter for the Laws of Love. Wrongfully banished by Astree, Celadon seeks only to hasten his own expiration until the nymph Leonide discovers him and offers him a gift of paper and ink. Inspired then to abandon his melancholic idleness in order to become a sort of gardener-hermit, he passes the time fashioning arbors -- tonnes and cabinets -- from the raw materials provided by the boughs and limbs of the surrounding boccage sacre (2:8.320). Otherwise, Celadon busies himself memorializing his love for Astree by engraving their chiffres and various devises on the trunks of young trees. His double handiwork -- his alteration of the landscape and his writing -- domesticates "the multiple and disorderly world of nature" [16] which looms large in the uninhabited forest of Bon-lieu; he lacks only a place to store the musings he consigns to verse on paper. Enter Adamas, who befriends Celadon in order to further his own ends; following the Druid's detailed instructions, alongside the oak representing the trinity of the god Teutates, Celadon constructs the Temple d'Astree and the Temple de l'Amitie. The former structure contains a life-size image of the shepherdess -- an amplification of the miniature Celadon holds close to his heart at all times -- and furnishes a place for the shepherd's daily worship of his deesse (2:5.176). He reserves the latter for the composition and preservation of love poetry to his beloved Astree. On the grassy altars, the forsaken shepherd records on parchment the conventional variants of love most often expressed in extemporaneous song by the others.

Conjoining image and explanatory text, the contiguous temples contain an emblematic structure which supports my designation of them as representational center of the Forezian world of love. [17] Their location at the margins of the inhabited terrain of the pastoral landscape -- at "le plus fort du bois" (2:5.175) -- forms the interstice of nature and culture in the Forez: this hinterland is the theater not only for Adamas's important discourse on the "mysteres les plus cachez de sa religion" (2:8.321), but for Celadon's labor of love. The shepherd eagerly undertakes Adamas's directives for construction of the Temples (2:8.320-21), which become an outgrowth of the untamed space of the forest. It is no accident that this bucolic cabinet echoes the author's designation of his own Cabinet, for the arbor fashioned by Celadon for storage of his love poems represents the displacement of contemporary conventions of composition into the wild landscape of Bon-lieu. [18] I will argue that the sylvan cabinet and the tex ts it houses become the counterpart to d'Urfe's own Cabinet and the romance it generates: manipulation of the documents protected by the Temple de l'Amitie becomes a commentary on the composition and circulation of L'Astree itself. In this shrine, word successfully protects itself from deed -- until Hylas arrives on the scene.

Distinct from the poems or letters penned by one or another of the Forez's pastoral retinue, the original text of the Laws of Love is an anonymous transcription of timeless precepts regulating amatory conduct. The Druid priest Adamas delivers them, along with a painting depicting the combat of "la reciproque amitie," to Celadon's secret retreat in the forest in order to reward the former shepherd's diligence and to encourage his construction of the edifice (2:8.327-28). As Silvandre points out to the doubting Hylas, they translate generally accepted "anciens statuts d'amour" (2:5.183). Due to their anonymity, the Laws antedate notions of early-modern authority outlined by Michel Foucault in his well-known essay: like the pre-modern texts Foucault classifies as authoritative, the Laws' nameless scribe and their venerated wisdom insure a "demonstrated truth" founded on public opinion. [19] The inscription of the verse decrees on the Douze Tables guarded within the Temple de l'Amitie supports their status as so urce of an immutable truth that surpasses the oral tradition represented by the narrative's numerous poems. [20] By successfully transforming their dictates, Hylas dismantles the underpinnings of constant love in order to graft inscription onto the textual mold provided by the initial "paradox of nothing."

In this study, I propose to complement the work of other scholars who have designated d'Urfe's major work as a pre-classical text in which the inscribed word carries the weight of truth. [21] I will contend that d'Urfe showcases the written word's prepotency only to allow the writing process to destabilize textual authority; he then proposes a new paradigm for writing based on a model which overtly appropriates the vicissitudes of speech. In his prefaces to the first three parts of L'Astree, d'Urfe makes clear his profound suspicion of written texts and a preference for a medium approximating oral discourse. These introductory epistles suggest a defensive strategy of writing: the work itself and its characters are to constitute a bulwark against critical onslaughts from a fundamentally corrupt audience. The Urfeian cabinet becomes thus not only the place of textual genesis but of textual conservation. The shepherds' initial perusal of the Laws of Love duplicates the paradigm of bastion assaulted by auditor: the Temple de l'Amitie's protective space is violated by the proscribed Hylas, who first hears without seeing and enters later in order to disfigure its hallowed Laws. The transformation of the Laws thus gains particular relevance to the prefaces and their delineation of the romance's composition: the fate of the Laws is that of L'Astree, a work which generates new forms of writing from predominant genres of the sixteenth century, such as pastoral and romance. [22]

At variance with the fusion of seeing and reading that would be achieved by the written text, writing the Laws of Love evolves as a process dependent upon the disjunction of visual perception and text, what Foucault terms "ce qu' on voit et ce qu' on lit." [23] From this perspective, L'Astree embodies rather than "pre-exists the sundering that institutes the modern subject and his interiority." [24] The split between writing and speaking, text and recitation, outlined in the author's paratextual epistles, signals a postlapsarian world which engenders a modernity based on eventual effacement of what Foucault terms the "author function." [25] The prefaces allow the reader to construct this illusory figure; the reiterative writing of the Laws of Love pushes it toward dissolution. Through a close reading of the process of re-writing the Laws, I will show how representation of the written text in L'Astree evolves toward a changeable process which foregrounds the practice of collective composition prevalent in literary salons of the later seventeenth century. [26] In order to effect wri ting's consequent usurpation of the written text's prerogative, the tools of writing -- particularly those contained in the portable escritoire of the seventeenth century -- and their delimitation of public and private spaces assume a primary role. The case of the Laws of Love manifests the rupture between written text and writing process in L'Astree, according to which what is said (dit) -- an unchanging, constant form -- separates from the saying (dire) -- a variable, inconstant form. [27] Whereas the written text mirrors in its fixity the doctrines of constant love espoused by the large majority of Forezian lovers, writing becomes identified with Hylas and his protean tenets of inconstancy.

D'Urfe himself prepares the unstable grounding for the written text's authority in his prefaces, where the seemingly "direct, unmediated commentary" of the author [28] figures prominently in order to dispense advice on the work's reception to its most important characters. [29] Though they introduce a text whose "oceanic" [30] expanse of printed words appears to grant overwhelming authority to their substance, the prefatory texts establish d'Urfe's aversion to the written frame -- a mode which for him would include the printed text -- and his predilection for an oral medium. His stated rejection of writing contains Platonic overtones: by spurning the intrinsic value of writing and instead anchoring his work in speech, he adopts Socrates' defensive strategy designed to protect literary works from the hermeneutic "drift" inherent in texts consigned to writing. In the Phaedrus, Socrates remarks that such slippage of authority takes place when the text falls into the hands of unsympathetic readers who fail to co mprehend, forcing the "parent"-author to hasten to his progeny's rescue.[31] An overview of key passages in all three prefaces reveals that the author's obvious reliance on written text is counterbalanced by his disavowal of that medium, in an effort to free his book from its constraints.

In "L'Autheur a Bergere Astree," the author begins by addressing directly the young shepherdess -- both main character in the romance and the literary work itself -- as a restless maiden anxious to escape the solitary confines of the Cabinet in which she was conceived (1:5). [32] This coming-out, she reasons to the author's paternal dismay, will allow her to present herself to a general public who will nor fail to shower her with accolades (1:5-6). The author's private Cabinet is of course the locus of textual conception and production. Now in the opening lines of this prefatory epistle, d'Urfe cites the unnamed "particuliers qui t'ont desja vue," or those who have reviewed the author's unpublished versions of his work (1:6). [33] He thus suggests the rudiments of "salon writing," dependent upon circulation of preliminary texts among a select coterie and subsequent collective critical revision. [34] Discarding the conventions of the Renaissance prologue based on the tripartition of author-work-auditor/reader , [35] d'Urfe refuses the commonplaces which establish complicity between author and reader through mediation of the text. He constructs instead a closed circular exchange between author and character which excludes the reader, an outsider referred to in the third person as a hostile, corrupt entity against whose critiques the author's character-allies must react with the advised defense.

In his parting counsel to his offspring, the author warns Astree that the public's attacks may well center on his literary embellishment of the dreary existence of true-life bergeres necessiteuses ("destitute shepherdesses," 5). In defense of such incongruity between representation and real life, he cites the example of theater, claiming that the public ought to grant him at least as much latitude in the composition of his romance as they do playwrights in the staging of pastoral drama. The latter content themselves with a mere "quelque chose de berger" -- an approximation of pastoral dress which replaces simple attire with ornate finery. Why should his readers complain, then, that his shepherdesses speak the sweet language of love rather than the coarse dialect of simple country folk? Unlike pastoral drama, the author continues, the tale he weaves is not accountable to the watchful eye of the spectator: "je ne represente rien a l'oeil," he reminds his shepherdess creation, "mais a l'ouye seulement, qui n'es t pas un sens qui touche si vivement l'ame" (1:7-8). [36] Here d'Urfe echoes Ficino's elevation of hearing over sight by way of the former's capacity to move the "spirit," equivalent to the ame of d'Urfe's dictum. Michael Allen notes that the Ficinian "spirit" is "the junction or knot binding body to soul, ... precisely what is struck by sound or sight." [37] D'Urfe's sly appeal to his readers' auditory faculties thus echoes Neoplatonist thought while aligning L'Astree with early-modern notions of reading:

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the reading style implicit in a text, literary or not, was still often an oralization of the text, and the "reader" was an implicit auditor of a read discourse. The work, which was addressed to the ear as much as to the eye, plays with forms and procedures that subject writing to demands more appropriate to oral "performance." [38] The adventures to follow are to be heard rather than seen, recited before an audience rather than perused in solitary silence.

Reinforcing the romance's basis in speech and audition, in "L'Autheur a al Riviere de Lignon," d'Urfe underscores the primacy of the spoken word announced by the introductory remarks to part 1, and moreover overtly proclaims writing a vain endeavor. Focusing at once on love and writing in a pastoral setting, Plato's Phaedrus, perhaps mediated by Ficino's commentaries and summae, is clearly d'Urfe's principal referent for this address. Phaedrus's dialogue with Socrates takes place in a rustic locale "consecrated to Achelous and some of the nymphs" near a pleasant brook during the hours of estival noontime heat (230b). Likewise, d'Urfe's reflections on writing transport him back to the banks of his faithful Lignon and its retinue of "Nayades," "Dryades" and "Napees" (3:6). [39] For d'Urfe as for Ficino in his summae of the Phaedrus, the Dryads and Naiads "[preside] over [the] generation and growth of subsequent written text," [40] though d'Urfe seeks to deny the value of writing. Our author flees to the golden -age setting of his sweet memories of youth in order to escape the vanity of writing (escrire), indissociable from an epistemological order which includes politics, philosophy, and theology. Written expression of such sciences is necessarily futile in the corrupt siecle in which the author and his contemporaries are obliged to toil (3:6-7). D'Urfe's use of escrire presumes an equivalent status between manuscript and printed texts; like authors of Renaissance works both paradoxical and "reflexive," d'Urfe comments in this passage on his own book already circulated in print and on the status of author to which he lays claim. [41]

Just as for seventeenth-century salonniers, writing for d'Urfe comprises dictation by the author to a scribe who serves as confidant. He scorns the "plus solides viandes" prized by his contemporaries in favor of re-telling love's apparently frivolous nuances: to the prickly affairs treated in written texts on the sciences, he opposes his own imaginations, guarded by his fideles secretaires, the banks of the river Lignon. The substance of "ces choses passees" will serve as material to be passed on (enseigner) to the river's aquatic demi-goddesses who will in their turn take pleasure in repeating (raconter) these joyful tales in surroundings which recall those of the golden age (3:6). [42] Now in this address, the author's reflections turn about his own imminent death, which may entail effacement of those "ardentes pensees d'une vie si heureuse;" in order to assure perpetuation of his "cheres et douces pensees," he charges the river Lignon with their preservation (conserver) and dissemination (publier) (3:7). It is significant that the sense of publier is not associated explicitly with the printed medium during the early seventeenth century. Cotgrave, for instance, specifies that publier means "to publish, divulge, manifest, proclayme, noyse abroad, lay open, set forth, make common, or knowne;" publication may thus accommodate both oral and written frames. D'Urfe asserts in his prefatory epistle that dispersal of his fond pensees will be oral in nature: the second life the Lignon bestows upon them will ensure their posterity "aussi longuement que dans la France on parlera Francois" (3:7). [43]

D'Urfe's stated design to achieve immortality through speech conforms to Socrates' plan in the Phaedrus: the spoken word will evacuate his work of "serious intent" and rank him among those "who [have] knowledge of what is just, honorable, and good" (276c). Like Plato's wise man, d'Urfe knows that the written word can serve only as a "reminder," and never as "something reliable and permanent" (275d). [44] Since the written mode is his conveyance of choice, however, d'Urfe conforms to the paradox of the writer who would disparage writing, noted by Ficino in his summae of the Phaedrus: "those who verbally condemn writing down of speeches as something frivolous or ostentatious are voicing the opposite of what they think; for they themselves in the meantime are wonderfully delighted as with something excellent" (192). The written word -- like the printed text later in the seventeenth century [45] -- implicates the author in the public sphere, where his work may drift into the hands of a hostile readership.

D'Urfe's refusal to accord absolute value to inscription is symptomatic of his times, for it hails the literary backlash to the print trade of the early modern period, when widespread dissemination of printed texts was counterbalanced by their rejection. [46] Like Shakespeare's Henry VI, d'Urfe's prefatory observations bear witness to a "fundamental tension between two cultures: one increasingly based on recourse to the written word in both the public and the private spheres; the other based on nostalgic and utopian esteem for a society without writing, governed by words that everyone could hear and signs that everyone could understand." [47] D'Urfe's book may be designated as reactionary, since he espouses a return to the values of a past free from the present consolidation of royal power, to a happier time when provincial nobles held political sway. [48] "L'Autheur la Riviere de Lignon" suggests paradoxically that in order to represent such an idyllic past, the romance must renounce the written text in fav or of the spoken framework.

In "L'Autheur au Berger Celadon," d'Urfe upholds the ascendancy of speech by sketching a model society exempt from the amatory vices that pass for the norm in the debased world of the work's public. Here he opposes the faithful shepherd Celadon's amour parfaite to the "amour parfaite et accomplie" of the author's contemporaries (and presumed readers), who would deride the respect and obeissance Celadon accords his capricious maistresse. Those evildoers in love are unknown, however, in the courtly society of "bons vieux Gaulois" to which Celadon belongs (2:4-5). L'Astree harks back then to a golden age of love founded on manly honor and virtue and supported by an integrity of parole shunned in the reader's fallen world of false love. To underscore his rejection of the vices of contemporary society, d'Urfe asserts: "ces bons vieux Gaulois estoient des personnes sans artifices, qui pensoient estre indigne d'un homme d'honneur de jurer et n'observer point son serment, qui n'avoient point la parole differente du coeur" (2:5). [49] Since it ostensibly antedates the doubling impulse generated by present-day corruption, the idyllic universe d'Urfe claims to forge would exclude the semantic fragmentation illustrated by the divergent kinds of amour parfaite he describes. Nevertheless, despite the author's pretensions to establishing a radical distinction between the pastoral paradise of the fifth-century Forez and the courtly world of seventeenth-century France, degradation figures inevitably in the story of L'Astree, [50] and the duplicity characteristic of the outside world plays a pivotal role in the romance's polyvalent system of representation. Straddling the public and private spheres, the author occupies a precarious position in this written universe which denies its own supporting structure.

Like prefaces to other early modern texts, d'Urfe's epistles allow posterity to bestow on L'Astree what Foucault terms the "author function," dependent upon the mediation of printed text and its concomitant "circuit of ownership" which would exclude or attenuate the risks associated with the "act" of writing. [51] In a real sense, the system of publication privileges guaranteed d'Urfe's property rights to his printed work. [52] In his dedication to Henri IV, however, he transfers authorship to the King, undermining his stated paternal claim: [53] "Recevez la donc (SIRE) non pas comme une simple Bergere, mais comme une oeuvre de vos mains: car veritablement on vous en peut dire l'Autheur, puis que c'est a vous quetoute l'Europe doit son repos, et sa tranquillite" (1:4). [54] Despite the author's gesture of conventional deference to his King, the prologues of the first three parts provide answers to the queries Foucault attributes to the reader of poetry or fiction in his quest to construct the figure of the a uthor: "From where does it come, who wrote it, when, under what circumstances, or beginning with what design?" [55] The author function mediates between "real writer" and "fictitious speaker," [56] just as the preface functions as pont, or bridge, between the reader's acquired knowledge and the mysterious matter of the textual corpus to follow. [57] As locus of mediation, the preface invokes the author function; d'Urfe establishes the criteria for conferral of the author function in his prefaces only to permit its deconstruction in the the story of L'Astree, where erosion of the authority of inscribed texts echoes the theoretical repudiation of writing espoused in the paratextual epistles.

In sum, d'Urfe sets out to construct in his prefaces a rampart -- a sort of closed cabinet -- against the attacks of a malevolent readership who would force the sense of his work to drift; he thus excludes the reader-auditor from the circle of complicity he shares with his protagonists. In the episodes featuring manipulation of the Laws of Love, the romance itself will repeat this pattern of inclusion of text and exclusion of reader. The original text of the Laws constitutes an authoritative model for written text; the alterations it undergoes at the hands of the inconstants signal the initial model's replacement with new parameters for textual composition and for definition of the author. According to the prefaces, writing is a paradoxical act, for it concurrently asserts and denies its own presence. L'Astree itself translates the fundamental structure of paradox in order then to surpass the potential reversibility suggested by the pairing of opposites orchestrated by the "paradox of nothing."

In order to examine the transposition of the "paradox of nothing's" form onto written text, let us now pass to the first visit paid by the shepherds and shepherdesses to the adjacent Temple d'Astree and Temple de l'Amitie in the labyrinthine forest of Bon-lieu. On an estival stroll in the woods, they stumble upon the two edifices, remarkable for the representations they endose and display. In the Temple d'Astree, the visitors marvel at the sight of the centerpiece, a life-size portrait of the shepherdess Astree surrounded by scrolls of explanatory love poetry composed in Celadon's recognizable hand. By traversing a passageway, they discover the Temple de l'Amitie, which contains more poems of love and the Twelve Tables of the Laws of Love. Primarily a memorial to the absent Celadon's constant passion for his mistress, upon the shepherds' and shepherdesses' accidental visit this cabinet (2:5.177) [58] becomes a privileged space of textual handling, where recitation, audition, defacement, dictation and transcri ption all take place.

The consummate champion of amatory constancy, Silvandre, approaches the Laws of Love and with much reverence recites to the assembled group the verses as he finds them. Though his fickle nature bars his entry into the shrine of constancy and hinders his own perusal of the text, [59] Hylas remains on the Temple's doorstep, as an auditor. Like the reader of L'Astree sketched in "L'Autheur a la Bergere Astree," Hylas is denied ocular proof and must rely on his ears, or "l'ouye seulement." The configuration of protected space and menacing auditor duplicates the defensive framework already outlined in d'Urfe's first prefatory epistle: the sylvan shrine with its proscription of vulgar intruders is analogous to the critical rampart to be erected by the author's protagonists; restricted to the sole use of his ears, Hylas thus plays the role of auditor. The author's bergere of the first preface is represented in her double incarnation as shepherdess -- the life-size portrait of Astree in the temple bearing her name - - and as text -- the twelve alexandrine sixains of the Laws of Love. The ensuing debate and alteration of text put into practice the Platonic compositional "drift" against which d'Urfe seeks to guard in his prefaces: Hylas's interventions show the ease with which auditor may appropriate inscribed text and become author in his turn.

The Laws sum up in poetic form d'Urfe's particular brand of Neoplatonism, tinged with notions of Petrarchism and courtly love, upon which both Silvandre and Adamas expound at length. In L'Astree, theory and practice, word and deed, clash to the extent that Neoplatonism becomes a facade, no more than a theoretical code in competition with another code that is implicit but nonetheless real. [60] The surreptitious presence of such a counter-code entails a split between behavior and stated theory; consequently, the consummate perfection demanded by Renaissance adherents of Neoplatonism becomes unattainable, since the the love professed by the parfait amant is a priori an absolute given not to be surpassed by mystical transfiguration, the ultimate goal of Neoplatonist love. [61] By its opposition of constancy and inconstancy, the "paradox of nothing" hints at the chasm between act and discourse in L'Astree, a discrepancy which lies at the heart of the romance's contradictory theory and practice of honneste amitie . [62]

As the principal defender of constancy, it is fitting that Silvandre recite the Laws of Love to the others; when he finishes his reading -- an act which coincides with the document's material representation before the eyes of the reader of L'Astree -- the inconstant immediately challenges the fidelity of the constant shepherd's reading to the text's contents:

Je ne croy point, dit-il, Silvandre, qu'une seule des parolles que tu as proferees soit escritte au tableau que tu tiens. Mais les ayant composees il y a long temps scion ton humeur melancholique, tu feins cette heure de les lire pour leur donner plus d'authorite et tromper plus aysement toute cette troupe. (2:5.183) [63]

Here Hylas exposes the potential treachery inherent in the format of recitation and audition proposed by "L'Autheur a la Bergere Astree:" he who reads aloud may falsify at will the content of the document in his hands as long as evidence is withheld from a doubting audience. Moreover, Hylas's challenge reveals the written word's accepted authority in the Forez, where the expression of Silvandre's humeur melancholique may acquire the status of truth if inscribed on parchment. In his own defense, Silvandre retorts that the Laws are not his invention but the transcription of common "anciens statuts d'amour," and that his rendering may be corroborated by the testimony of the auditors present in the Temple, who are also potential readers. Silvandre refuses, however, to allow profanation of "ce saint lieu" by the unworthy body of the inconstant, who desires to see for himself the Laws of Love in order to refute Silvandre's reading (2:5.183-84). Hylas knows, of course, that Silvandre's reading is true to the text; t he inconstant takes full advantage of the dubious nature of recitation and his own exclusion as reader in order to engage his enemy in yet another joust in their endless rhetorical tilt. Reading, then, becomes the pretext for another of the inconstant's sophistic displays of "disingenuous and venal reasoning." [64]

Hylas reasons that he has little to lose if he incurs Love's wrath by violating the implicit interdiction of his presence in the sacred space of the Temple, for he can always find a new mistress. Flaunting his designation as proscript and determined to correct "ce qu'il trouveroit contraire son humeur" (2:5.194), he penetrates the forbidden threshold while the others are occupied with the merveilles housed in the adjacent Temple d'Astree, and absconds unnoticed with the parchment upon which the sacred Laws are inscribed. He seizes the escritoire [65] near the entrance to the Temple, and aided by its writing tools and surface, cleverly substitutes key words in the document so that the discourse of inconstancy replaces the time-honored precepts regulating the practice of constant love by the courtly parfait amant. In order to effect his subterfuge, Hylas takes care to remain within the confines of the meter and rhyme of the original ocro-syllabic sixains. He first uses the tools contained in the escritoire to cross out key words and then to erase his marks; he covers them with his fingernail, smooths them with penknife or fingernail, and only then traces the characters which will alter the document's sense. His painstaking deformation is so well-executed that "il estoit mal aise de le recognoistre" (2:5. 197-98). [66] Hylas executes here a parody, in its etymological sense of transformation in the realm of verse. [67] His gesture demonstrates tangibly that following the example of the travestied characters of L'Astree, the written word itself may don a mask which both displays and obscures.

Having altered the document to his satisfaction, Hylas returns it to its grassy altar in the Temple and feigns sleep near the entrance. Pretending to awaken when Phyllis addresses him, Hylas announces to his companions that a puissance interieure (2:5.198) has inspired him to recognize the error of his ways: he is now prepared to follow the letter of the Laws, he declares, if Silvandre makes an identical promise. Hylas's subsequent recitation of his own falsification provokes outrage from Silvandre, who insists in his turn upon seeing the stanzas for himself. The inconstant hands over the parchment and delights in his enemy's bafflement at the Laws' content, the diametrical opposite of his original reading. Hylas's sham is soon discovered, however, by the clever Diane, who recognizes slight differences in certain "traits des lettres." [68] She holds up the parchment to the light of the sun which clarifies for all the inconstant's alterations; moreover, the crowd glimpses traces of the original text he crosse d through, vaguely discernible beneath its cleverly concealed replacement. Diane remarks the coincidence of the two divergent sets of Laws, as well as the doctrines they represent: "en un mesme lieu vous trouvez ce que vous cherchez tous deux" (2:5.201), [69] she comments upon discovering the hoax. The parchment in Diane's hands explicitly undermines the validity of the constants' device, "deux contraires ne peuvent estre en mesme temps en mesme lieu."

In order to blot out (effacer) his transgression, Hylas must strike his own rendition and re-write the erased characters in the margin of the original text: the others are in agreement that he must "rayer luy-mesme ce qu'il y avoit escrit, et... mettre la marge ce qu'il avoit raye." [70] Just as Hylas rectified the original verses in order to suit the tenets of inconstancy, so the shepherds decide that part of his punishment will be correction: "tous les bergers furent d'avis que les vers fussent corrigez comme ils estoient auparavant" (2:5.202). Despite the assembled group's prescriptions, however, Hylas never reconstructs the Laws of Love in their original integrity: the key words he erased are relegated to the margins of the text, leaving nearly-blank spaces showing traces of his subversive maneuvers. Thus "corrected," the gaps of the Laws stand ready for further manipulation.

This episode clearly situates L'Astree at the point of transition cited by Foucault between Renaissance and Classical modes of representation: Silvandre's first reading of the Laws of Love signals the force of writing manifest in the "non-distinction entre ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on lit, entre l'observe et le rapporte." [71] It is precisely this correspondence between seeing and reading which substantiates Silvandre's and his auditors' faith in the inscribed tenets of constancy; and which Hylas calls into question. The crucial spaces of semantic change scattered about this authoritative text -- spaces which remain nearly blank in the document's final version -- serve as palimpsest for Hylas's contrary views on love. [72] The inconstant goes to much less trouble to cross out his own rendition than he did to prepare the surface of his devious replacement: in the document's definitive form, the marginalized discourse of constancy reappears and exists side-by-side with Hylas's partially-effaced profanations. Just as in the initial "paradox of nothing," neither doctrine prevails. Moreover, Hylas challenges the status of inscribed text as authoritative transmission of accepted rules: his facile gesture of palimpsest converts the Laws' generalized dictates into a mere "cas particulier de la representation," [73] dismantling their anonymous, authoritative foundation as "anciens statuts d'amour." The "corrected" rendition of the Laws of Love hails the disjunction of what is seen (vu) and what is read (lu): [74] the marginalized discourse of constancy corresponds to neither version of the Laws offered to the reader of L'Astree. At the same time, the coherent recitation of the Laws' original form becomes unfeasible, since Hylas's marginalization of key words disrupts permanently the verses' linear disposition on the parchment surface, The narrative reproduces only two complete poetic versions of the Laws: Silvandre's first recitation and the results of Hylas's sneaky intervention; the final form of the Laws resists represen tation and is absent from the text of L'Astree. The "paradox of nothing" of the romance's beginning -- "rien n'est constant que l'inconstance" -- is thus illustrated by the written codification of the opposing doctrines: each tends to nullify the other, leaving the spaces in which Hylas carried out his textual transformation; like the Latin palimpsestos, they are are literally scraped again ("grattes de nouveau"). [75]

The final rendition of the laws of Love translates simultaneously the Neoplatonist code of the original text and the counter-code of Hylas's falsification. In his reading of the Laws and in his frequent debates against Hylas, Silvandre repeats the conventional formulations of Renaissance Neoplatonism. Hylas's ripostes, conversely, reveal another facet of Neoplatonism particular to its development and refinement in the seventeenth century, when a recognized "built-in impermanence of love" [76] spurns the imperative of fidelity for either man or woman. Through his practice of the inconstancy he preaches and his promotion of equality in fickleness, Hylas's word and deed are consistent with contemporary theoretical works espousing the fundamental parity of men and women. [77]

A display of coincidentia oppositorum, the hybrid rendition of the Laws runs counter to the maxim which sums up the romance's strain of constancy: "deux contraires ne peuvent estre en mesme temps en mesme lieu." Intended to exclude paradox and its perils, such a statement of conceptual impossibility is no match for the doubling mechanism represented by the dexterous inconstant's manipulation of the Laws of Love. Based on principles of travesty and the antithetical structure of paradox, Hylas's deformation of authoritative text furnishes a paradigm for inscription in L'Astree beneath the written text's apparent authority lurks a concurrent undermining discourse accorded equal space. Rather than retaining the perpetual reversibility implicit in paradox, however, the manipulated Laws will serve as the basis for a new form of writing put into practice at a second stop at the Temples.

Although Hylas is constrained to reinscribe -- and to marginalize -- the original text of the Laws of Love, it is the inconstants who have the last word on the form and content of regulations governing the conduct of the perfect lover. On their return trip, the now-larger pastoral contingent visits the temples again, where the restless Hylas, tiring of his affection for the disguised Druidess Alexis, becomes enamored instead of his feminine equal in inconstancy, Stelle. Recognizing their mutual attachment, together they resolve to formulate twelve conditions of love. Unlike the first version of the Laws enshrined in the Temple de l'Amitie, they will permit each of the document's endorsers total freedom in amatory concerns. Stelle specifies that they will bear the title "Loix d'Amour," identical to the caption figuring at the start of the Laws of Love already manipulated by Hylas. To facilitate transcription of their conditions, Hylas fetches the escriroire resting near the aperture of the Temple de l'Amitie a nd paper from his panetiere. Lacking trust in one another, the inconstants agree that Stelle will dictate the Laws, with Hylas's approval for each clause, and that Corilas, her jilted suitor, will serve as secretary. An intermediary well-versed in the grammar of wayward love, he gladly volunteers his services (3:9.488-89).

This episode portrays textual production as dictation to a male scribe by a woman who consults her peers, and thus anticipates the practice of "salon writing" to be refined during the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Announcing the heroines of Madeleine de Scudery who "dictate new laws of love," [78] Stelle acts here as the feminine "director or animator of a creative enterprise," conforming to the definition of salon "author" offered by DeJean. [79] If the writings emerging from such undertakings are fundamentally seditious in nature, [80] the case of the new Laws of Love allows us to trace the roots of such subversion to d'Urfe's own prescription for a return to the aristocratic values of a lost past coupled with Stelle's advocacy for a novel format of writing. Stelle's proposal of dictation to a faithful secretary echoes the format for publication put forth by d'Urfe in his address to the river Lignon. Like the author, Hylas and Stelle reject the authority of text circulated in written form and instead appeal to its mnemonic function. Rather than an engraving intended to remain forever unchanged, the written text will allow the couple simply to recall the details of their agreement: "je veux que vous puissiez vous en souvenir, et moy aussi," reasons Stelle to Hylas (3:9.488). The Laws of Love no longer dictate conduct for all lovers but for Stelle and Hylas alone. Thus particularized, they lose their universal application and claim only the status of reminder hailed by Socrates in the Phaedrus.

Introducing the twelve articles of this "contrat d'importance" (3:9.492) between the two fickle lovers is a preamble that spurns the tyrannie intrinsic to the doctrines of constancy by banning the very words which constitute their foundation: the new lovers agree that "tous ces mots de fidelite, de servitude et d'eternelle affection, ne seront jamais meslez parmi nos discours" (3:9.490). [81] They remain completely free in their actions and words, and may cease to love one another at any time. Equal distribution of love's joys and pains replaces the maistresse's capricious rule; each of the document's adherents gains a liberty in love expressly denied by the first text of the Laws of Love. The premises of the new Laws are clearly a radical departure from those of the first version. The latter reflect d'Urfe's problematic notions of Neoplatonism by sanctioning in writing an oblational and submissive love, and not a mystical union of the Platonic kind. [82] The inconstants' "Loix d'Amour," on the other hand, b y their rejection of the maistresse's supreme power, presume the reciprocity requisite for attainment of perfect love according to Neoplatonist doctrine. [83] The fundamental equality heralded by the new Laws thus resolves the inconsistencies of d'Urfe's Neoplatonism while schematizing the basic dynamics of salon writing.

Silvandre perceives the blatant contradiction inherent in the inconstants' effort to regulate free love, and thus suggests in mocking tones the addition of a thirteenth clause which would nullify all the previous statutes if such a caprice suited either of the document's adherents: "quand bon vous semblera... vous n'observerez pas une de toutes celles que vous avez escrittes, aurrement vous contrevenez a vostre intention, car elle n'est que de vous aymer sans contrainte." [84] Sobered by his realization of the contract's binding power, Hylas takes seriously Silvandre's remark made in jest: "il est certain que, si nous lisons ce qui est mis icy, nous nous obligeons observer ces articles, et toute obligation est en effect une contrainte, si l'on n'adjouste la condition que Silvandre a proposee." [85] Accustomed to enjoying "pure et entiere liberte" (unadulterated and complete freedom), he refuses any restraint imposed by "deux doigts de papier barbouille" (two dirty bits of paper). Citing an equal desire to ma intain her own freedom, Stelle agrees to the addition, and as a precautionary measure against Silvandre's potential malice suggests that Hylas's adversary be noted as autheur of the appended clause (3:9.491-93).

The learned defender of constancy balks at the association of his name with a document so contrary to his humor, and refuses the status of witness his acquiescence would confer. Adamas arbitrates the ensuing dispute and decides that Silvandre's name will not figure in the final rendition of thirteenth clause, "[a]djouste par advis et conseil" (3:9.493). [86] The constant shepherd's "authorship" is thus diffused to the entire pastoral gathering. The attached disclaimer may invalidate any of the previous twelve dictates: "Que toutesfois nous, Stelle et Hylas, sommes si soigneux de nostre liberte, et tant ennemis de toutes sortes de contraintes, qu'il nous sera permis, quand bon nous semblera, de n'observer une seule de routes les conditions cy-dessus escrites et accordees" (3:9.494). [87] The mutual fondness between Hylas and Stelle begins with their ratification of this document's clauses, signified by their joined hands. Conducted in the beginning par jeu, their rhetorical mating passes with time to love "a bon escient" and kindles a durable flame: "peu a peu vivant avec cette franchise, il conceurent, et l'un et l'autre, une amitie plus grande qu'ils n'avoient pense, ny jamais ressenty pour quelqu'autre subject qui se fust presente devant leurs yeux" (3:9.494). [88] The inconstants thus realize the potential for attainment of perfect Neoplatonist love implicit in the preamble to their contract; through equality and lack of constraint, they succeed in approximating the elusive reciprocal -- and perfect -- love for which the others may claim only to strive.

Stelle designates the conditions of her pact with Hylas as "Loix d'Amour," and thus conceives dictation as a subversive act; she appropriates the title of the laws governing constancy in order to replace their content and collapse their form. The new Laws' form contributes as much as their content to the establishment of a credible text to counteract the force of the original Laws of Love. Significantly, the octosyllabic meter of the first set of Laws facilitated Hylas's clever parody; the signatories now free their statutes from the restrictions of rhyme and meter. Just as for seventeenth-century salonniers, prose rather than poetry is their conveyance of choice. [89] The first visit to the Temple de l'Amitie features Hylas's constrained reworking of a generally sanctioned, anonymous text; the return trip proposes a method of composition for a fresh document. The drafting of this contract binding only for the two lovers clearly undermines the universal authority of the original Laws and announces Scudery's "justification of private contracts as a legitimate counterforce to the officially sanctioned legal and political order." [90] It would seem thus that, while a direct relationship of cause-and-effect may not be established, later generations of d'Urfe's aristocratic readers delved into his "breviary of ... behaviour" [9] in order to locate not only codes of social and amatory discourse but models of writing.

As the nominal equivalent to the earlier, once-authoritative Laws, Stelle's version illustrates the ubiquitous representation of coincidentia oppositorum in L'Astree. The text transcribed by Corilas may be presumed faithful to Stelle's utterance; the printed page, in any case, shows coincidence of speech and writing, since an identical text figures both Stelle's dictation and Corilas's transcription. The pair's selection of Corilas as scribe illustrates their successful search for a neutral secretary who will eschew devious procedures of reduction and augmentation. Manifest in the quest for the "immediacy" of "animated utterance," the written text as faithful transcription of speech signals the presence of copia, "an exact superimposition of the oral on the written frame, a principle of equivalence or interchangeability." [92] The first twelve clauses of the renegade Laws of Love, transcribed as a true reproduction of Stelle's enunciation and exempt from fraudulent manipulation, seem to convey the reliabilit y of the written medium, reflected in the coincidence of observe and rapporte, of vu and lu. [93] The addition of the thirteenth clause, however, permits the document's signatories to circumvent any and all of the written stipulations and constitutes a formal departure from the previous versions of the Laws. The ultimate rendition of the Laws parallels d'Urfe's valorization of the oral medium in his prefatory addresses: just as the perceived immediacy of the spoken format may transcend the written or printed modes, the thirteenth clause allows the document's form to cancel its content. Nevertheless, Hylas's and Stelle's contract represents the successful practice of the compositional "drift" against which d'Urfe seeks to protect his work in the prefaces: the inconstants first make their own the title and the twelve-clause arrangement of the original, and then compose new dictates which correspond neither to the form nor the content of the old Laws. The new Laws' resting place completes this drift of authorshi p: as a mnemonic device, they will accompany Hylas and Stelle on their wanderings away from the place of composition. Unlike the immobile Laws of Love housed in the Temple de l'Amitie, the new Laws travel.

Hylas's falsification of the Laws of Love -- displaying in its disjointed form suspension of "le primat de l'ecriture" [94] -- prepares the format of his contractual agreement with Stelle. In the composition of their anti-rules governing inconstancy, Hylas and Stelle exceed the limits imposed by paradox while retaining the potential for erasure germane to palimpsest: refusing the fixed form of the original Laws, their strictures adopt instead a self-annuling format. The new Laws of Love represent the project of writing in L'Astree. Composed by a refined salon of disguised nobles, they constitute a text that perpetually performs Hylas's gesture of palimpsest even as it transcribes itself.

While anticipating and inaugurating new means of composing the novel, the new Laws of Love contain and perpetuate the process of palimpsest from which they originate. In this transitional format which combines old and new, the place of composition and the space of storage are crucial. The isolated Cabinet of the author's first prefatory epistle leads inexorably to the romance's sylvan cabinet, and recalls the Neoplatonist parallel between Academy and "garden or parkland setting." [95] Identity of terminology and parallel utility generate a series of correspondences which substantiates identification of the original text of the Laws of Love with the romance of L'Astree. The fate of these Laws implicates the authorial voice of the prefaces in the represented process of Platonic textual "drift." Both the paratextual epistles and the romance itself specify the cabinet as the space of composition. Whether author's closet or rustic arbor, it becomes, in Foucaldian terms, "a space into which the writing subject cons tantly disappears." [96] Near Bon-lieu's space of authorial construction and diffusion, Stelle dictates a particularized contract, a document which refuses the author function. [97] Rather than evoking old models of textuality in which the force of writing predominates, then, through the inconstants' handling of inscribed text, d'Urfe's pastoral romance halls an incipient modernity which allows form to prevail over content. Like "today's writing," writing the Laws of Love constitutes "an interplay of signs arranged less according to its signified content than according to the very nature of the signifier:" [98] the pliable nature of the parchment surface allows Hylas to dislodge lu from vu in his falsification; in his contractual version, he begins with fresh paper and proposes a mode of writing which surpasses the Laws' initial, authoritative format.

In the case of his contract with Stelle, however, Hylas's maneuvers are translated only by his assent or dissent, since this is a document crafted by the entire gathering and dictated by Stelle. The cabinet of Bonlieu becomes a place of authorial disintegration through the voice of a woman linked by the astral referent of her name to the author's bergere -- both shepherdess and romance -- of the first preface. Composition of the inconstants' contract reverses the paternal framework of the author's opening invocation, where he addresses his creation directly and suggests a self-protective strategy of conservation. In the final visit to the Temple de l'Amitie, Stelle appropriates the voice of author through her dictation -- adopting the format suggested by the third prefatory epistle -- and creates a text intended never to remain static but to cancel itself should either endorser deem it necessary. Stelle becomes thus an alter-Astree who, instead of safeguarding the author's work from encroaching corruption, assimilates that very inconstancy and engineers the "writing subject's" diffusion through the collective composition of her contract with Hylas.

The legacy of the symmetrical pairing of constancy and inconstancy in the romance's inaugural paradox and in Hylas's falsification of the Laws of Love is the escritoire, with its malleable surface and set of writing tools. Resting at the threshold of the Temple de l'Amitie, it permits Hylas's facile alteration of the original Laws as well as Corilas's transcription of the new Laws. The escritoire is an integral -- albeit detachable -- part of the Temple's arboreal framework, straddling the sacred space of inscription and the exterior world of semantic duplicity. The same object which aids Celadon in his composition of the temple's many poems lauding constant love provides the tools and the surface for Hylas's parody of the Laws of Love. Vanished with the meandering Hylas during Silvandre's etching of the epitaph gracing Celadon's empty tomb (2:8.34950), the escritoire reappears for Stelle's dictation of the new Laws of Love. As support for the doctrines of both constant and inconstant love, it refuses the fu ndamental difference claimed by the clashing defenders of the apparently disparate doctrines and serves finally as their virtual meeting ground, as the tangible site of coincidentia oppositorum. [99] At the dividing point of the Temple's holy space of constancy and the external domain of inconstancy, the escritoire embodies the rien of the initial "paradox of nothing" and implicates writing as both process and product in the subversive practices it facilitates. A portable object, the escritoire moves easily with Hylas on his errant path of storytelling. When he rejoins the group at the Temples, the escritoire too returns to mediate the written text's liberation from the reversibility of palimpsest and of paradox. Upon their departure from the boccage sacre, the shepherds and shepherdesses leave behind the surface and tools of writing as testimony to the interchangeability of constancy and inconstancy, and to the "paradox of nothing" which serves as the organizing principle for the romance's divergent amatory currents. The future, however, lies beyond the symmetry of paradox and parody contained by the escritoire, in the mode of writing put forth by the inconstants' contract.

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY 

The initial coming-out of the author's bergere -- both shepherdess and literary work -- has as its narrative counterpart the movement of the revised Laws away from the Temple de l'Amitie, in Hylas's panetiere. The road taken by Stelle, Hylas, and their contract is also that of seventeenth-century fiction: the exemplar of sophism, Hylas joins Stelle as auditor-author and as standard-bearer for a new generation of women writers who are also readers of L'Astree and who, like d'Urfe and his troubling inconstants, found their writings on subversion of textual and political authority.

(1.) D'Urfe, 1:1.10; "Nothing is constant but inconstancy, which is unchanging in its very changeableness" (8). All references to d'Urfe are to the Vaganay edition. Citations, except where noted, refer to volume, book, and page number. English translations of part I are from the Rendall edition and are followed by page number. All other translations are my own unless otherwise stated.

(2.) D'Urfe's paradox corresponds to the general configuration of the "paradox of nothing" summarized by Colie, 234, in a quote from Macbeth: "Nothing is / But what is not" (1.3.141-42).

(3.) Colie, 30, cites coincidentia oppositorum, or coincindence of opposites, as a principal trait of paradoxical texts.

(4.) D'Urfe's pastoral romance illustrates many of the commonplaces of paradox reviewed by Colie such as: doubleness and duplicity (480); a world in flux (379); contradiction (8); generic mixing (128); and refusal of codification (140-41). In his discussion of the differences between sameness and difference, the Stranger of Plato's Sophist resorts to the example of motion and stasis: "Well, motion and rest at any rate cannot be [identical with] difference or sameness.... Because motion would then be at rest, and rest in motion, for whichever of the two [motion or rest] becomes applicable to both [by being identified with either sameness or difference, which are applicable to both] will force the other [rest or motion] to change to the contrary of its own nature, as thus coming to partake of its contrary" (255b; brackets contain Cornford's clarifications).

(5.) Colie discusses paradox in relation to both skepticism and sophism (398-99). In his chapter on "La conception de l'amour," Gaume traces d'Urfe's theories of love to medieval doctrines of courtly love and the influence of Petrarch (432-38), and to Neoplasonists of the Italian Renaissance such as Ficino, Bembo, Ebreo, Pico della Mirandola, and Castiglione (438-504). Gaume notes that L'Astree is "un amalgame d'amour courtois, de petrarquisme et de neo-platonisme" (437). Since it was held to treat questions of ontology, Ficino granted Plato's Sophist pre-eminent status; see Allen, 1989, 19.

(6.) For the demon Love's designation as a sophist, see Allen, 1989, 25 and Ill.

(7.) D'Urfe, 1:1.20 and 2:3.93; "two contraries cannot exist in the same place at the same time" (16).

(8.) Allen, 1989, 64. For the dispute between Ficino and Pico concerning Neoplatonist interpretation of the Sophist, see Allen, 1989, 10-48.

(9.) Elias points out that d'Urfe intends to illustrate in L'Astree the discrepancy between the corrupt mores of the court -- represented by the nymphs and knights -- and the untainted ways of the provincial nobility -- represented by the shepherds and shepherdesses (256-57).

(10.) Cotgrave, "Sophiste."

(11.) With regard to Hylas's rhetorical games in his confrontations with Silvandre, Chabett notes: "Assez bon sophiste, [Hylas] retourne les propositions de l'adversaire en ignorant ses premisses, en confondant le tout et la partie, le sujet et le predicat" [A rather good sophist, [Hylas] overturns the propositions of his adversary by ignoring the latter's premises, by confusing the whole and the part, the subject and the predicate] (402). She contends further that Silvandre is right because the Druid Adamas echoes his pronouncements on love, thereby conferring authority upon them. Similarly, Antonioli remarks that Hylas's constant inconstancy is but "un sophisme aux yeux de ces parfaits amants que sont Tircis et Silvandre. Comme il ignore en effet les mysteres de la Beaute, Hylas Se trompe sur la nature de l'amour qu'il confond avec le desir" [a sophism in the eyes of the perfect lovers Tircis and Silvandre. Since he is in effect ignorant of the mysteries of Beauty, Hylas is mistaken about the nature of lov e, which he confuses with desire] (70).

(12.) Referring to Foucault's Les Mots et les choses, Greenberg cites L'Astree as belonging to an order of representation characteristic of the Renaissance, in which ecriture predominates (36-37).

(13.) Saly, 39, sees in the Laws of Love a text contradicting Neoplatonism: she identifies d'Urfe's parfaict amant with the medieval fin amant, or "celui qui pratique ... l'amour intersexuel epure, qui loin d'etre platonique, cultive le desir pour le transcender; cette discipline du desir developpant les plus hautes valeurs de l'ehtique personnelle et sociale" [he who practices a purified intersexual love, which far from being Platonic, cultivates desire in order to transcend it. This discipline of desire develops the highest ethical values on both personal and societal levels]. She also contends that d'Urfe's Laws are a seventeenth-century adaptation of codes of fin'amors disseminated by twelfth- and thirteenth-century troubadours and trouveres in their cansos (38 and 40-45).

(14.) Harth points out that the structure of L'Astree reflects the literary games popular in contemporary salons (37). Maclean notes that L'Astree was "considered the breviary of correct behaviour and manners by contemporary readers" (157).

(15.) Cave, xix.

(16.) Wine, 1986, 146.

(17.) The conjunction of image and text is illustrated by Silvandre's gloss of the painting depicting "L'Amant et l'Ayme" (2:5.178-80) and the life-size painting of Astree complemented by three poems composed by Celadon (2:5.185-89).

(18.) D'Urfe, "L'Autheur la Bergere Astree, 1:5. All references to d'Urfe's prefatory material are to the Vaganay edition. Citations are to volume and page number. See n. 28 below for a detailed description of the prefatory material.

(19.) Foucault, 1984, notes with respect to anonymous medieval texts that "their ancientness, whether real or imagined, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of their status" (109).

(20.) In L'Astree, as Foucault, 1966, claims with regard to the Bible, "la Loi a ete confiee des Tables, non pas la memoire des hommes" (53). See also Spencer, 131, for the fundamental oralite of d'Urfe's romance.

(21.) Horowitz, 1984, underscores the "indelibility" of written language, referring to the episode of Hylas's falsification of the Laws of Love as an exceptional deviation from the general stability of written documents (93). Greenberg refers to Foucault (1966, 54) in order to contend that the overwhelming matter of the printed text of L'Astree reflects "le 'principe male' du langage," which would dominate the passive female orality informing the matriarchal structure of political power in the Forez (36).

(22.) Horowitz, 1985, 256.

(23.) Foucault, 1966, 54. Greenberg, 38-39, contends that seeing and reading occur simultaneously in L'Astree.

(24.) Greenberg, 38.

(25.) Foucault, 1984, 108.

(26.) DeJean, 22-23.

(27.) Spencer remarks: "[L]'accent se deplace du 'dit' au 'dire'; ce que le titre donnait pour 'oeuvre,' on voit ainsi se substituer une performance, qui nous invite a apprecier, plutot que le talent de l'auteur le brio de l'interprete" [The emphasis shifts from "what is said" [dit] to the "saying" [dire]; for what the title puts forth as a "work," we see substituted a performance which invites us to appreciate the virtuosity of the interpreter rather than the talent of the author] (134).

(28.) Booth 16. Because it presents in a direct manner the artifice of fictional creation, the undisguised voice of the author impedes the desired illusion of the work's immediacy. The author overtly proclaims his presence in the titles of d'Urfe's opening epistles, all of which begin with L'Autheur and specify the addressee: "L'Autheur a la Bergere Astree" precedes part 1; "L'Autheur au Berger Celadon" prefaces part 2, and "L'Autheur a la Riviere de Lignon" introduces part 3. References to prefatory material are to volume and page number.

(29.) Genette, 1996, 122, Debesse, and Gerhardt have shown that the river Lignon functions as yet another character in L'Astree.

(30.) Greenberg, 29.

(31.) Plato, 1961a, 275e.

(32.) The Cabinet to which d'Urfe refers is one of what Ranum calls the "new private spaces" -- or an extension of an already extant private space -- created during the early modern period (210). This space may designate either an item of furniture or an entire room (228). Similarly, Cotgrave defines cabinet as "A cabinet, or casket, for jewels, & c; also, a closet, little chamber, or wardrobe, wherein one keeps his best, or most esteemed substance." DeJean designates the cabinet as the "inner sanctum" which bears witness to women's literary production in seventeenth-century France (50). It is noteworthy that L'Astree, a work admired and emulated by habitues of literary salons, originates in d'Urfe's own Cabinet.

(33.) Situating d'Urfe's composition of a preliminary four-volume draft of L'Astree between 1584 and 1589, Magendie, 23-26, cites the Philocalie of Du Crozet: d'Urfe had shown to his neighbor a first version of the Bergeries that would become part 1 of L'Astree in 1607.

(34.) DeJean, 22-23, refers to the example of the Princesse de Conti's provincial salon in order to schematize the process of "salon writing": a gathering of literate nobility provides commentary and suggestions for revision of novels dictated by a presiding woman to a male scribe.

(35.) Tripet, 4-6.

(36.) "I represent nothing to the eye but only to the ear, which is not a sense that touches the soul so vividly" (5). "From the Author to the Shepherdess Astrea" is found on pp. 35 of Rendall's translation.

(37.) Allen, 1984, 52.

(38.) Chartier, 1994, 9.

(39.) Allen, 1984, notes that Ficino would have associated the Phaedrus's "sacred place" with "the earthly paradises and enclosed gardens" of his time (4).

(40.) Ibid., 5.

(41.) Near the end of the seventeenth century, Furetiere will specify that "Escriture se dit aussi par opposition a ce qui est imprime" [The written word (escriture) is also used in contrast to printed matter], distinguishing manuscript from printed works. Furetiere suggests further that at this time, the status of author depends as well on the printed medium: "En fait de Litterature, [auteur] se dit de tous ceux qui ont mis en lumiere quelque livre. Maintenant on ne le dit que de ceux qui en font imprimer" [With regard to Literature, (the word author) is used to designate all those who have brought to light some book. Nowadays it is used only for those who have had books printed] ("Auteur") On the other hand, contemporary with d'Urfe's composition of L'Astree, Cotgrave's definition of escripture is simply "the making, or writing of bookes." Similarly, he defines autheur as "an author, or writer of bookes;" the imperative of circulation in print seems not yet to be prerequisite. See Colie, 355, for the self- reflecting characteristics of paradox. Cave, xiv, specifies that a text is "reflexive" when it displays its procedures and problems of representation by means of their representation within the text itself.

(42.) The fields surrounding the Lignon enclose "un perpetuel printemps de fleurs," one of the conventional characteristics of the golden age derived from Latin poetry (Giamatti, 52).

(43.) ... as long as French is spoken in France.

(44.) Such a wise man "will sow his seed in literary gardens,... and write when he does write by way of pastime, collecting a store of refreshment for his own memory, against the day 'when age oblivious comes,' and for all such as tread in his footsteps, and he will take pleasure in watching the render plants grow up" (276d).

(45.) See Chartier, 1994, 41.

(46.) Chartier, 1989, 122-24.

(47.) Ibid., 123.

(48.) Commenting on d'Urfe's dedication to Henri IV, Elias notes the resignation of the provincial nobility in the wake of the king's victory over them: "L'Astree shows one of the possible reactions of this half-courtly, unwillingly half-pacified nobility in the transitional period when the doors of the court cage were closing, when the people they closed on could perhaps hardly escape the feeling that they were closing for ever, and when a French noble really had only the choice between sharing in the glory within the golden cage or living ingloriously outside" (248).

(49.) [T]hose fine Gauls of old were people without artifice, who believed it unworthy of an honorable man to swear and then not to uphold his oath, and whose words did not differ from their heart.

(50.) Elias notes the contamination of the "mimetic world" by "the commands and prohibitions of harsher, non-mimetic reality" (282).

(51.) Foucault, 1984, 108.

(52.) D'Urfe was granted a ten-year privilege for L'Arstree in 1607. For the importance of privileges in the publication of parts 2 and 3 of L'Astree see Vaganay, and Hoffmann, 317-18, n. 13.

(53.) In "L'Autheur a la Bergere Astree, in order to introduce the list of counseled defenses against the work's detractors, d'Urfe admonishes Astree: "Et pour te laisser ton despart quelques arrhes de l'affection paternelle que je te porte, mets bien en ta memoire ce que je vais te dire" (1:6) ["And to leave you on your departure with some tokens of my paternal affection for you, lodge firmly in your memory what I am about to tell you" (3)]. By claiming paternity to his literary creation, d'Urfe conforms to Renaissance conventions of the prologue as delineated by Tripet (4).

(54.) "So therefore accept her (SIRE), not as a simple shepherdess, but as a work of your own hands: for truly one can say you are the author, since it is to your Majesty that all Europe owes its peace and tranquillity" (1). D'Urfe plays here on the sense of autheur, who may also be "th'originall inventor, the first deviser, of a thing" (Cotgrave).

(55.) Foucault, 1984, 109.

(56.) Ibid., 112.

(57.) Tripet, 8.

(58.) "The third definition Cotgrave provides for cabinet is "an arbor in a garden." Bloch and Wartburg designate cabinet as an "endroit couvert de verdure, dans un jardin" [a place covered with greenery, in a garden], noting its first usage in this sense in 1540. Furetiere's third definition designates cabinet as "un lieu couvert au bout des allees d'un jardin, ou on se repose, soit qu'il soit de maconnerie de charpente, ou seulement de verdure soutenue par des perches" [an enclosed place at the end of a garden's walkways, where one rests. It may be constructed of masonry made of timber, or only of greenery supported by poles].

(59.) At the Temple's threshold, an engraved garland prohibits entry to those not consumed by "un sainct amour:" "Loin, bien loin, profanes esprits: / Qui n'est d'un sainct amour espris, / En ce lieu sainct ne fasse entree" [Stay far far away, profane souls: / Whoever is not seized with a devour love / May nor enter into this holy place] (2:5.176).

(60.) Aragon: "un code theorique concurrence par un autre code implicite mais reel" (12).

(61.) Ibid., 17. Silvandre's assertion of his love's capacity to exceed the bounds of perfection (4:9.555-56), cited here by Aragon, is a characteristic of "paradoxes of totality" (Colie, 114).

(62.) Horowitz, 1985, remarks that "[b]oth secondary and primary tales contradict 'honneste amitie,' or any of its cultural variations, opposing through sex and violence the verbose explanations of pure love based on duty, service, fidelity, discretion, goodness, and reason" (255).

(63.) "I don't believe," said he, "Silvandre, that any of the words you've spoken are written on the table you're holding in your hands. Rather, having composed them long ago in accordance with your melancholy humor, you're pretending now to read them in order to lend them greater authority and more easily deceive this entire gathering."

(64.) Allen, 1989, 9.

(65.) Like cabinet, escritoire may designate a part of domestic architecture or an object apt to be manipulated: it is a "writing desk or writing room" (Ranum, 211). In this case the escritoire's displacements underscore its status as a portable object; Furetiere notes that "[i]l y a de grandes escritoires de cabinet, de petites escritoires pour la poche." As significant as its mobility and surface are the objects it contains: Furetiere defines escritoire as "Espece d'etuy ou l'on serre les choses necessaires escrire, parriculierement le ganif, les plumes, l'encre et la poudre."

(66.) [I]t was quite difficult to see precisely.

(67.) Genette, 1982, cites Dumarsais's 1729 treatise entitled Tropes in order to define parody as a poem devised in imitation of another, in which the author "detourne dans un sens railleur des vers qu'un autte a faits dans une vue differente. On a la liberre... d'ajouter ou de retrancher ce qui est necessaire au dessein qu'on se propose; mais on doit conserver autant de mots qu'il est necessaire pour rappeler le souvenir de l'original dont on emprunte les paroles" (ascribes a mocking meaning to verses that another created for a different purpose. One has the freedom... to add or to delete whatever is necessary to the proposed undertaking; but one must retain as many words as necessary to recall the original whose words one borrows] (27).

(68.) Gregorio notes that handwriting is perceived by the characters of L'Astree as "a means of identification" (85) whose reliability is nor absolute: "it is a sign which can be forged or misread" (86). In this case, differences between the original scribe's pen and Hylas's give away the inconstant's ruse.

(69.) ... in the very same place, you both find what you're seeking.

(70.) ...himself strike what he had written and... place in the margin what he had crossed through.

(71.) Foucault, 1966, 54.

(72.) The second definition of palimpsest offered by the Oxford English Dictionary is: "A parchment or other writing-material written upon twice, the original writing having been erased or rubbed our to make place for the second; a manuscript in which a later writing is written over an effaced earlier writing." Robert defines palimpseste as: "Parchemin manusrit dont on a efface la premire ecriture pour pouvoir ecrire un nouveau texte" [A manuscript parchment on which the first writing has been erased in order that a new text be written in its place]. The original text of the Laws, at the moment of its erasure and prior to Hylas's imposition of his new text, illustrates to the letter these definitions.

(73.) Foucault, 1966, 58.

(74.) Ibid.

(75.) Bloch and Wartburg, "palimpseste,"

(76.) Lougee, 37.

(77.) Maclean, 35, notes that most writers who contributed to the traditional "Quetelle des femmes" of the early seventeenth century intended to confirm the innate merit of one sex over the other. Marie de Gournay, on the other hand, in her 1622 treatise on Egalite des hommes et des femmes, claims to advocate equality between the sexes.

(78.) DeJean, 97.

(79.) "DeJean, 75, refers to Madeleine de Scudery in her definition of the author in the mid-seventeenth century.

(80.) DeJean locates the origins of the modern novel in the current of political subversion associated with Scudery's fiction, and asserts that "Artamene, and not Astree, [is] the earliest indication of prose fiction's definitive early modern tradition" (45-46).

(81.) ... all those words of faithfulness, servitude and eternal love will never enter into our dealings with one another.

(82.) Aragon: "un amour oblatif et soumis, et non une union mystique de type platonicien" (13).

(83.) Ibid.

(84.) [W]henever it suits you... you shan't observe a single one of the conditions you've written down; otherwise you violate your intention, which is to love one another without constraint.

(85.) [I] is certain that, if we read well what is put forth here, we oblige ourselves to observe these articles, and every obligation is indeed a constraint, if we don't add the condition that Silvandre has proposed.

(86.) ... appended by judgment and counsel.

(87.) Notwithstanding, we, Stelle and Hylas, are so vigilant of our freedom, and so opposed to all kinds of constraint, that it will be permitted us, when we so desire, not to observe a single one of the conditions written down and agreed to above.

(88.) [L]ittle by little, living according to such liberty, they both conceived a love [amitie] greater than they had expected, and greater than they had ever felt for any other who had been present before their eyes.

(89.) DeJean, 72.

(90.) Ibid., 89.

(91.) Maclean, 157.

(92.) Cave, 155-56.

(93.) Foucault, 1966, 54 and 58.

(94.) Ibid., 58.

(95.) Allen, 1984, 7.

(96.) Foucau1t, 1984, 102.

(97.) Ibid., 108.

(98.) Ibid., 1984, 102.

(99.) With regard to the apparent opposition between constancy and inconstancy, Horowitz, 1984, states "there is... no meeting ground for these radically dissimilar discourses" (86). Ehrmann explains the similarities between constancy and inconstancy by identification of the lover, whether faithful or fickle, with the mutable world in which he lives: "Constance et inconstance partent... d'un meme principe, d'une meme preoccupation, d'une volonte de s'identifier a un monde insaisissable, soit en devenant insaisissable, comme lui -- soit en se fixant, et ainsi en fixant le monde -- par la constance" [Constancy and inconstancy begin with ... the same principle, with the same preoccupation, with the will to be identified with an unattainable world, either by becoming unattainable, like that world, or by becoming stable, and thus stabilizing the world, through constancy] (53). This interpretation accounts for the fundamental sameness of the two proclivities without considering their mutual dependency.

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