MISS FERRIER'S book is a pleasant well- written essay on
the development of prose fiction from the Arthurian legends to the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre. These fifteenth-century stories, as she says, are cast 'in a rigid and highly formal mode.' The authors were not interested in character or psychology, but in 'situation.' Her book is therefore a study of 'form,' and of a number of different approaches to stock situations. The story of Pelleas and Arcade represents 'the form in embryo,' and the Cent nouvelles nouvelles 'the form perfected.' Antoine de la Sale's Le. Petit Man de Saintre is an impor- tant but unsuccessful attempt to apply the technique of the nouvelle to a full-length work of fiction, and is perhaps the first roman de mrrurs. A final chapter on 'the form enlivened' shows that in the Heptameron the complexities of behaviour have become almost as important
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