TY - JOUR
AU - Heath, Sean
AB - Although the Perrault brothers—Jean, Pierre, Claude, Nicolas and Charles—appear frequently in histories of Louis XIV’s France on account of their literary, scientific and architectural pursuits, they have never been studied as a group as thoroughly as in this insightful volume. Oded Rabinovitch places their achievements in context by showing how their careers connected and overlapped. In doing so, he links cultural, intellectual and scientific history to the history of the family, kinship, patronage and networks, offering important insights into authorship and intellectual life during the Grand Siècle. On the most basic level, Rabinovitch provides a narrative of the Perrault family over the course of the seventeenth century, an engaging story of social advancement that is traced from Pierre senior’s move to Paris before 1609, through Pierre junior’s career in finance, which peaked in the late 1650s, to Charles’s literary career. Initially trained as a barrister, Charles used his literary talent to support Pierre’s status as a financier, just as he was supported by Pierre’s wealth. However, Pierre’s disgrace and the end of his career in the 1660s coincided with Charles becoming an important aide to the king’s minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The relationship between finance and literature flipped, with careers in letters now the main engine of the Perraults’ mobility, providing the family with social and economic capital. Charles assisted Colbert on artistic and cultural projects and was appointed to the Académie française in 1671. The prestigious set of witnesses at his wedding in 1672 showed the new social sphere into which the Perraults had moved. In the early 1680s, however, Charles lost his proximity to Colbert as the latter moved his relatives into positions of influence shortly before his own death. Charles’s later years were spent as a professional writer, establishing contacts with patrons and protectors and shaping the family memory in his Mémoires. The book is, however, much more than a narrative account. Rabinovitch explores what it meant to be an early modern author by anchoring the Perraults’ literary careers in their kinship network and patronage connections. Opposing the idea of this period as one in which literary careers transitioned from patronage to the market, Rabinovitch makes clear the importance of family strategies and ‘court capitalism’, the market in offices and favours. As he shows from biographical dictionaries and obituaries in learned journals, contemporary readers expected discussions of works to be placed in the broader context of their author’s family position and institutional affiliations, which goes to show the inadequacy of using modern, individualised notions of authorship to discuss early modern men of letters. Family activities shaped the skills, networks and knowledge that made specific works possible, as Rabinovitch shows with a detailed case-study on Claude Perrault’s Of the Mechanics of Animals (1680). This book was situated at the intersection of Claude’s specific set of skills, all of which were legacies of previous family projects, namely his medical training (important in a book based on evidence from dissections), literary and artistic talents, and affinity with machines (the book applies understanding of the working of machines to the movement of animals and the function of organs—for example, bellows were used as an analogy to birds’ breathing). Claude’s portfolio of talents made the book possible, as did his membership of the Académie des Sciences, which had almost certainly been secured through Charles’s connections to Colbert. Rabinovitch thus shows the nexus between kinship and institutions in shaping literary careers and the production of knowledge. Rabinovitch also explores the theme of cultural mediation. Drawing on historians of absolutism who have contrasted political theory with the actual reality of a government based on social collaboration, Rabinovitch argues that Versailles’s contribution to the royal image rested not just on organised propaganda campaigns but also processes of appropriation and collaboration. In his famous Parallèle des anciens et des modernes, Charles used Versailles for his own literary and intellectual purposes (bolstering the case for the ‘moderns’) as well as presenting Louis XIV’s palace as the pinnacle of creativity. Versailles presented a panoply of images that could be appropriated and mediated by men of letters. Rabinovitch shows that figures such as the Perraults were not mere tools of the Crown even if they were bound by ties of patronage; they could benefit from such works in ways not anticipated by the monarchy. This reviewer occasionally wondered whether Rabinovitch’s decision to frame his argument in terms of ‘family strategy’ was justified. One consequence is that Rabinovitch concentrates on the most successful brothers (first Pierre, then Charles and Claude), whom he sees as the people carrying the strategy at any one point and whose careers overlapped more frequently, and almost entirely ignores Jean and Nicolas. We get little idea of how close they were or how their careers might have been co-ordinated or planned, and although Rabinovitch draws a distinction between family ‘tactics’ and ‘strategy’, there seem to be few occasions when the latter is really appropriate except for Pierre senior’s decision to have the brothers educated in a range of subjects. Nevertheless, the book is a pleasure to read and brimming with ideas. A charming touch is the use of Charles’s most famous work, the fairy tales, at the beginning of each chapter to introduce certain themes: for example, Puss in Boots is used to introduce the need to project an image of the aristocratic lifestyle, which the Perraults did through their house at Viry. Scholars already knowledgeable about the Perraults will find many new ideas here, but the book will work equally well as an introduction for those who have yet to distinguish Charles from Claude. More importantly, it will be necessary reading for anyone interested in the intellectual culture of early modern France and the influence of kinship networks and patronage on literary careers and intellectual activity. Author notes London © Oxford University Press 2020. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - The Perraults: A Family of Letters in Early Modern France, by Oded Rabinovitch
JO - The English Historical Review
DO - 10.1093/ehr/ceaa158
DA - 2020-09-16
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-perraults-a-family-of-letters-in-early-modern-france-by-oded-RSmF0DWqV7
SP - 1026
EP - 1028
VL - 135
IS - 575
DP - DeepDyve
ER -