La Grammaire du silence. Une lecture de la poésie de Marguerite de Navarre by Robert D.Cottrell; Jean-Pierre CoursodonReview by: Paula SommersBibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, T. 58, No. 2 (1996), pp. 530-533Published by: Librairie DrozStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20678118 .

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530 COMPTES RENDUS

dommage qu'Andr6 Tournon n'ait pas pu prendre connaissance de cet ouvrage, car cela l'aurait obligd A revoir les fondements memes de sa ddmar che interpretative.

Il apparait en definitive que l'6tude d'Andr6 Tournon, malgre ses perti nentes analyses ponctuelles, repose sur une conception quelque peu suran nde de l'oeuvre de Rabelais, une conception biaisee par un <pari de lecteur

(p. 8) ressemblant a s'y meprendre a un pur parti pris mdtholodogique. Ne serait-il pas souhaitable que la critique, plutOt que de s'employer a forcer le texte de Rabelais en le rdduisant toujours a une seule de ses deux composan tes fondamentales (ludique ou ideologique), s'applique au contraire A rendre

compte des possibilites memes de leur 6trange coexistence? D'aucuns l'ont dejA pressenti: l'heure n'est plus desormais aux lectures partielles et frag mentaires. Examiner dans quel esprit et selon quels mecanismes Rabelais s'est efforce de telescoper le serieux et le rire, le rire et le serieux, sans jamais definitivement subordonner l'un a l'autre, tel est aujourd'hui le passionnant defi que doit selon nous relever la critique rabelaisienne, sans quoi elle court le risque de s'embourber dans un debat devenu sterile depuis deja quelques annees...

Geneve. Frederic TINGUELY.

Robert D. COTTRELL, La Grammaire du silence. Une lecture de la poesie de

Marguerite de Navarre. Trans. Jean-Pierre Coursodon, Paris, Honore Champion, 1995, 312 pp. n.p.

This translation of Robert Cottrell's study of Marguerite de Navarre's poetry (The Grammar of Silence, Catholic U. of America, 1986) makes an

important critical work available to a broader audience. Cottrell has also updated his bibliography and appended articles dealing with emblematic aspects of La Coche and the function of le regard in the Miroir de Jesus Christ crucifid.

The book's title reflects an awareness that Marguerite de Navarre shares with a broad range of spiritual writers who find that human discourse can not express the reality of divine love or the experience of mystical insight. Cottrell conveys Marguerite's dilemma metaphorically, through the contrast between Mary and Martha, Biblical sisters who have traditionally stood for the via contemplativa and the via activa. In Cottrell's readings of the Queen's poetry, however, the opposition is more personal and more subtle. Mary is

mystical silence and the joyful consciousness of Rien in the presence of Tout. Martha is parole as opposed to langue and a sign of the necessity of human discourse, supported by the Biblical text and redeemed by the Incarnation of the Word. Cottrell speaks of the grammar of silence because Marguerite de Navarre has developped a system of textual strategies that challenge dis cursive reason and defeat carnal vision. The reader moves, as it were, through or with Martha to Mary and beyond.

Scholars have recognized that the Queen's correspondance with her spiritual advisor Guillaume Briconnet was a significant influence on her

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COMPTES RENDUS 531

mystical faith and her poetry. Cottrell brings new insight by demonstrating how, in his litters, the Bishop associated the various stages of spiritual progression different types or levels of language. Drawing upon his

knowledge of Augustino-Dionysian tradition, he sought to lead Marguerite beyond parole with its inevitable connotations of individual independance to the translinguistic perception of God as Tout-Verbe. Through forced com

parisons, tortured syntaxe and bizarre paradoxes he captured in his prose the

sterility of reason. Marguerite was quick to grasp his message and to introduce similar techniques into her religious verse.

Cottrell considers the Le dialogue en forme de vision nocturne an ideal introduction to the Queen's poetic corpus. It reveals the fundamental duali ties that shape her work, among them the opposition between letter and

spirit, and the contrast between desire for union with God and the resistance of <moi) to the annihilation of the self that is required for such union. In the Petit Euvre Marguerite strives to destroy the illusion of an independent self by subverting poetic discourse. The visible form of the poem does not

necessarily conform to its dramatic or ideological structure. Since Mar

guerite rejects the conventional association of pilgrimage with spiritual progress, moreover, she subverts the traditional patterns of symbolic narra tive. In effect, she replaces allegory as a mode of distance with an emphasis on identity and coincidence. Speech and silence in the Petit muvre recall

Brigonnet's correspondances between spiritual evolution and the discourse of the soul. Confronted with her vision of the cross, the persona of the Petit Euvre falls silent. Moved by love, she then breaks into a discourse which is

<nayf)> rather than auto-referential. Anaphoric sequences convey her pas sionate religious sentiment and effect a transition from ricit to contempla tion, or from the soul's journey towards a transcendent Deity to conscious ness of an immanent Saviour.

Cottrell's thoughtful readings of shorter works from the initial period of

Marguerite's career as a religious poet - L'oraison de l'ame fiddle, Le Dis

cord entre l'ame et la chair, L'oraison d nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ - con firm the technical and ideological pattern of Vision and Petit Euvre. Mar

guerite is, thus, consistent in her subversion of the metaphorical voyage (Aristotelian mythos) and her depiction of an inner vision (dianoia) linked with silence.

In the second part of his book (Le Texte Iconique), Cottrell explores Mar

guerite de Navarre's poetic representation of vision in greater depth. The Miroir de l'dme picheresse and the Miroir de Jesus Christ crucifi are linked

by the theme of specularity, but distinguished by the mise en Oeuvre of differ ent spiritual techniques. The latter recalls the exercizes of Loyola because of the involvement of the bodily senses in the persona's contemplative experiences. The former develops a progression that Cottrell describes, with due acknowledgement of Jacques Lacan and Charles S. Pierce, as a move ment from the Imaginary through the Symbolic to the Iconic. In L'In quisiteur, Trop, preu, peu et moins, La Com~die-de-Mont-de-Marsan, and La Comddie du ddsert and Le Triomphe de l'agneau Marguerite increasingly concentrates upon apocalyptic visions, and this concentration intensifies the tension between paro/k as a vehicle for distinguishing differences and unio

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532 COMPTES RENDUS

as the annihilation of difference. In these works the highest degree of

spiritual vision is again associated with aberrant or incomprehensible lan

guage and with what Cottrell has defined as the thematique du plaisir .

The laughter of the enfants in L'inquisiteur and the amorous singing of La Ravie in the Comidie-de-Mont-de-Marsan provide a dramatic expression of the delights of union with Tout. In La comidie du desert and Le Triomphe de l'agneau, the visionary experience, while joyful, inspires important varia tions. Marie, located in a setting that recalls the conventional Garden of the

Soul, reflects upon the process of seeing and also hearing a Word that has become flesh, and the reader's own interpretation of the text is assisted by his seeing numerological patterns that Cottrell discusses in some detail. The

Triomphe de l'agneau, regarded by many scholars as the Queen's greatest religious poem, prompts a meticulous analysis that includes reflection on the return to narrative or syntagmatic discourse as a reflection on the Law (his tory) and the disruption of narrative by techniques of repetition and regres sion (meta-history).

The final section of Cottrell's study, <La Rhetorique des larmes pro vides close reading of some of the Chansons spirituelles, La Coche, La Comidie sur le tripas du Roy, La Navire and Les Prisons. These texts, once

again, display aspects of Marguerite de Navarre's particular grammar of silence. In La Navire, as in Le Petit Euvre, the Queen subverts the literary format of her text. The verses depicts a dialogue, yet, Cottrell argues, there is no dialogue. Instead Marguerite and Frangois represent <closed systems

who remain fixed in their respective ideological positions. The use of terza rima so often associated with narrative progression functions here as an ironic commentary on the absence of progression. Finally, as a consolation for the bereaved Marguerite, La Navire is a failure. However successful as a

monument to Frangois, the text is a reminds her of his absence and her con

tinuing grief. Only when the vision of her brother fades in the concluding lines of the poem is there an opportunity for vision and for redeeming silence. Parole is no substitute for langue. Discourse is a marker of absence and cannot satisfy the longing for unity. What is true for Frangois and Mar

guerite in La Navire, moreover, proves to be true for the three speaker in La Coche. There tearful women are equally disappointed in the attempt to sub stitute their friendship and their discourse for lost or absent ?amis .

Cottrell's study culminates in discussion of Les Prisons. His nuanced an

interpretation of this complex work merits an ample and appreciative discus sion. For the purposes of this review it is sufficient to note that Les Prisons is yet another instance of Marguerite's peculiar ?grammar . Cottrell finds here another manifestation of the persona's progress from the Imaginary to the Iconic. As in her earlier poetry, the progression is consistent with transi tion from syntagmatic or narrative to paradigmatic levels, and with continu ing meditation on the conflict between letter and spirit.

Iteration is, in fact, typical of Marguerite's poetic corpus. In Les Prisons as in her other major religious poems, she is caught between an imitative discourse that requires submission to an authoritative, Biblical text and the repetition of that text in a work that is, inevitably, autoreflexive and autonomous. Each of the poems Cottrell discusses, therefore, offers its own

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COMPTES RENDUS 533

variation on the fertile or problematic relationships between langue and

parole, tout and rien, love of God and love of creature. Cottrell begins his preface with a reference to Marguerite de Navarre's

poetry as a terra incognita. With the publication of La Grammaire du silence these terms no longer apply. Although he does not address all her poetry, scholars now have at their disposal a valuable, contemporary reading of her

major works.

Columbia, Missouri. Paula SOMMERS.

A Sc&ve Celebration. Dglie 1544-1994, edited by Jerry C. Nash, Stanford French and Italian Studies n* 77, Saratoga, Anma Libri, 1994, 189 p.

Jerry C. Nash continue son travail infatigable au service de Ddlie. I a cette fois reuni des complices. Si une commune vendration les rassemble, on ne s'etonnera pas des contradictions qui sont la loi de ce genre d'entreprise. Il me semble toutefois que ces divergences touchent davantage les methodes

d'analyse que les postulats d'interpretation: ceux-ci gravitent souvent autour du dizain 449 et de l'idee qu'il y a (bien peu de difference entre ((ardeur et (vertu . C'est le texte lui-meme, en son ultime avatar, et grace a son pro pre effort de synthese, qui offre une mediation entre des lectures que tout

separe. Sceve fonctionne ainsi comme une sorte d'anti-Rabelais, attenuant les contrastes critiques au lieu de les accuser.

Dans 'A sa Delie': The Text of the Text , R. et V. La Charite degagent quelques 6l6ments de cette (synthese esthetique que constitue

' leurs yeux

Ddlie. Eclairant l'un par l'autre le desir de l'union et l'union elle-meme, la connaissance de soi et la jouissance de l'object , le texte nous entraine au dela de l'illusion d'irreconciliabilite pour arriver A l'expression poetique de l'experience amoureuse, 6levde au niveau d'une vertu plus esthetique que morale par ?a text of delight . L'essence recherchee ne se distingue pas d'une <presence> poetique capable de surmonter ses d'chirures et de reconcilier le corps et l'ame.

Dans un langage moins abstrait, G. Defaux aboutit a des conclusions similaires. L'intertexte marotique de la Delie: Maurice Sceve et 'ferme amour' montre de fagon convaincante que le dizain 17 (celui du Rh ne et de la Saone) est ohabit6 par Marot : il renvoie & l'adynaton de l'6glogue de Pan et Robin et surtout aux rimes de la derniere chanson de l'Adolescence clementine. La comparaison permet d'opposer les deux poetes sur la ques tion de <ferme amour , que Sceve refuse, contrairement au dernier Marot, de dissocier du <feu . Aux palinodies de Pdtrarque meditant sur ses ojeunes erreurs (Defaux prouve que Sceve lit souvent le Toscan ia travers Marot ), et au zele <anterotique de Clement lui-meme, Sceve oppose un acte d'idola trie qui divinise l'amour humain.

A partir de l'embleme 26, oLa Lycorne qui se voit , J. DellaNeva

( Image and (Un)Likeness: Mirroring Other Texts in Sceve's Ddlie ) pour suit sa rdflexion sur l'intertexte petrarquiste de Ddlie, en montrant que les dizains 235 et 236 doivent etre lus en continuit, presque comme udeux

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