| In French literary
history Nicolas Boileau (1636-1701) has enjoyed legendary
status as the great codifier of French classicism, the discerning
critic who could demolish or elevate several generations of
French poets. This view of Boileau's role has lead to an emphasis
on his poetics, not his poems, which in turn has generated
general disdain for his poetic art.
Robert Corum dispels these misconceptions about Boileau by
focusing rigorous critical attention on Boileau's first nine
Satires and the accompanying Discours au Roy,
composed between 1657 and 1668. His reading takes into account
a number of factors, including sources, genesis, relation
to one another, coherence, and continuity of argument. This
examination reveals Boileau to be a gifted poet, not just
a talented versifier or a strait-laced mouthpiece for French
classical doctrine.
"In his new study of Boileau's first cycle of satires (1666),
Robert Corum suggests that these early poems are not autonomous, disordered
units, but rather the balanced constituents of a larger whole....Corum
concludes persuasively that Boileau's early satires are in fact a study
in character (that of the unifying speaker) rather than merely a tableau
of social behavior, but he understates one of the book's most productive
insights. The satires ...are finally discursive dramas about themselves
as poetic events.... The many strengths of this important book lie precisely
in the discovery that Boileau's early satires cohere in the matter of
their self-referring language." Jeffrey N. Peters, Papers on
French Seventeenth-Century Literature
For the complete review, see Papers on French Seventeenth-Century
Literature 27.53 (2000): 609-10.
"Robert Corum's Reading Boileau is a thorough, rigorous,
and original reappraisal of an excellent poet all too often
maligned for all the wrong reasons. While this book is appropriately
focused on Boileau's text, Corum's admirable scholarship
complements much recent work and situates Boileau with respect
to contemporary critical issues." Michael Vincent,
author of Figures of the Text: Reading and Writing (in)
La Fontaine
For more reviews, see
Reference & Research Book News 1 Aug. 1998.
Robert T. Corum, Jr., Kansas State University, has published
a study of the poetry of Saint-Amant, a critical edition of César
de Nostredame's Les Perles ou les Larmes de la Saincte Magdeleine,
and articles on Malherbe, Corneille, Théophile de Viau,
Tristan l'Hermite, and Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin.
1-55753-110-2
1998. PSRL 15. vi, 170 pp. Cloth $49.95
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