Baroque Ethos
THE first sign that French critics were begin- ning to rediscover what, for want of a better term, must be called the baroque poetry of their seventeenth century was the anthology Of verse produced by. Thierry Maulnier before the war. Since then the omens have multiplied, M. J. Rousset has written his excellent book around the baroque ethos, and scholars, both in France and abroad, have been busy editing texts and writing theses. It is a mark of the effectiveness of their work that Alan J. Steele in this new anthology of French verse (Three Centuries of French Verse 1511-1819. Edin- burgh University Press. Agents: Nelson, 15s.) can devote the largest part of his space to the seventeenth-century poets, whose productions, outside the field of drama, had always been rather sniffed at by English critics. He gives us plenty of Agrippa, d'Aubigne, Theophile de Riau, Saint-Amant and Tristan l'Hermite as against one poem by Racine, and, though this is perhaps reacting a little strongly against the Brand siecle view of French literary history, it does take the sting out of Boileau. Mr. Steele has also included a great number of sixteenth- century poets ranging from Jean Lemaire des Beiges, the most talented of the grands rhetoriqueurs, to Du Bartas, whose shadow falls across so much Elizabethan' and Jacobean literature. His selection from the eighteenth century serves to confirm me in the belief that, except for Andre Chenier and one or two adepts of a light eroticism, there is no poet worth reading between Racine and Marceline besbordes-Valmore. There is a good biblio- graphy and helpful notes on difficult passages, but, since this book is evidently meant for the general reader as well as the student, it could have thine with a rather less technical introduction. It is not much help to anyone Unacquainted with Renaissance thought and literature to be told 'that Save distilled `from emotion recollected the subtle essences of his Platonico-Petrarchan canzoniere. . .
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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