Perfect Friendship: Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille.

As his title suggests, Ullrich Langer's examination of literary texts is organized around certain problems in the moral philosophy of friendship. His first section, "Theoretical Challenges of Friendship," considers Helisenne de Crenne's novel Les Angoysses douloureuses . . . and tale 10.8 of the Decameron, as well as a paradox by Antoine Hotman. The instrumentality of the love-object in the first text, and the tendency towards identity of the two friends in the second, are both set against a philosophical tradition (or traditions) inquiring after the nature of the highest love. Likewise, Hotman's paradox, which claims to condemn friendship for its antisocial exclusiveness, is illuminated when set against earlier theories about inclusive and exclusive love.

The second section, "Friendship in Literary Worlds," concentrates on relationships represented in four major works: Pantagruel, tale 10 of the Heptameron, Montaigne's "De l'amitie," and La Princesse de Cleves. In all these texts, the author sees a conflict between, on the one hand, properly ethical discourse (considerations of ends and interest) and, on the other, a tendency towards the gratuitous, ideal and ultimately ineffable. More particularly, mention should be made of the elucidation of Pantagruel's (undeserved) love for Panurge as Augustinian fruitio and non-instrumentality. In the fictions by Marguerite de Navarre and Mme de Lafayette, the female characters are disappointed by men who cannot maintain the high standards set by masculine discourse on friendship. In the brief discussion of Montaigne's essay, two insights stand out. The a-teleological or autotelic nature of true friendship as portrayed by Montaigne is linked to the autorelic nature of his writing. And the most famous expression of that friendship, "Par ce que c'estoit luy; par ce que c'estoit moy," is analyzed, in its semantic poverty and mystical renunciation of signification, as an example of the Longinian sublime.

The final section, "Friendship and the Political Life," implicates friendship in a larger political world. In the fourth book of L.B. Alberti's Della Famiglia, we see the elaboration of concepts of friendship as resembling commercial transaction (where the material sense of interest acquires greater importance) and as it moves towards the growing culture of princely courts. The author sees certain tendencies of the republican Alberti's work as announcing Il Cortegiano. The book concludes with a study of Corneille's Cinna and Rodogune and the role of friendship in the absolutist state.

As in his previous book, Divine and Poetic Freedom in the Renaissance, the author argues the relevance of scholastic thought to early modern literature in France and Italy. A broader philosophical tradition informs the present study, comprising the major classical texts on friendship by Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch and Lucian, as well as Augustine and, prominently, the late medieval commentators and rethinkers of Aristotelian ethics: Aquinas, Ockham, Peter Lombard, Johannes Altensteig, John Major and others. The confrontation with literary texts is mostly convincing, and useful for literary scholars, who are often not familiar with scholastic philosophy. Some interesting paradoxes also result, as when we find that the best theorization of gratuitous love, exemplified by Pantagruel's friendship for Panurge, is provided by scholasticism - that same tradition against which Rabelais carries on a well-known polemic.

The author explicitly neglects the Platonic tradition, mainly because of its confusion of erotic love and friendship. Such a delimitation is surely defensible, as a study of the literary uses of Aristotelian philia is a greater desideratum. And yet, precisely that Platonic confusion seems central to two of the cases of failed friendship considered here: namely, Floride and Amadour in Heptameron 10, and the Princesse de Cleves and her husband.

Perhaps more important is the neglect of a central ambiguity which would help explain the political significance of friendship. E. Benveniste has shown how Indo-European languages closely associate social and emotional concepts; so, for example, Homeric philein and related words belong to a semantic network concerning hospitality and gift-giving as well as subjective experience. And what is true for Homer and Pindar has certainly not disappeared from Aristotle's world. In a similar way, amicitia is central to the workings of Roman patronage; in such a context, those who call each other amici are not speaking primarily of feelings of friendship. The discussion of Cinna here might be helped by taking account of the element of Roman ideology that represents Augustus as amicus in that sense.

Admittedly, the author may privilege whatever aspect he likes of a vast and complex topic. His emphasis on friendship as interiority and as the locus of ethical dilemmas leaves out something, but is already quite rich.

STEPHEN MURPHY Wake Forest University