The Indecency of Knowledge

Paper by Madeleine Alcove

Cyrano De Bergerac Et Le Feu: Les Complexes Prométhéens De La Science Et Du Phallus

Paper by Madeleine Alcove

Le Mythe de M. Ross Chambers Sur "Le Mythe Du Libertin"

Paper by Madeleine Alcove

Lettre à Monsieur Le Bret, prévôt de l’église de Montauban.

Alcover Madeleine. Lettre à Monsieur Le Bret, prévôt de l’église de Montauban.. In: Littératures classiques. Supplément au n°53,2004. Cyrano de Bergerac. Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil pp. 313-315

éphémérides ou biographie sommaire de Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac

Biographie15519 avril : mariage, à Paris, des grands-parents paternels de l’écrivain, Savinien I de Cyrano et Anne Le Maire : celle-ci est la petite-fille d’Étienne Cardon, marchand parisien. À ce jour, l’origine du grand-père paternel n’est pas résolue (sarde ? descendant d’un marchand bourrelier de Sens ?).1555Le couple signe une donation entre vifs qui, en cas de décès, fait du survivant son légataire universel. Quatre enfants leur survivront : Abel, Samuel, Pierre et Anne.1555-1560Savinie..

Sur les Lettres diverses d’Henry Le Bret, éditeur de Cyrano et prévôt de l’Église de Montauban

The Lettres diverses attributed to Henry Le Bret were published anonymously, without any date nor place of publication. This article deals with three problems : authorship, datation and Le Bret’s direct involvement in its publication.Le Bret’s paternity of Lettres diverses, included the only letter addressed to himself, is proven mainly by his signature found in many of them and by his attested private relationships with the majority of addressees. The publication date is resolved after a meticulous comparison of Lettres diverses and Recueil de quelques discours et lettres écrites à des personnes studieuses sur differentes matieres (1692), in which 15 letters (out of the 64 of Lettres diverses) are present with some variations. From an omission in the Recueil I theorized that a great number of pages from a published copy of Lettres diverses were detached/untied and reused as a material hypotext for the Recueil ; this theory is substantiated and confirmed by a lot of informations related to events, books, and people, especially to Bossuet, Queen Marie-Thérèse and the Clergy Assembly of 1665. All these data lead to the conclusion that Lettres diverses were published between 1678 and May 1681, which invalidates all previous datations proposed by Lacroix, Forestié, Cioranescu, and myself in 2004.And finally there is no historical evidence nor objective argument for believing that Le Bret did not want his readers to know that he was responsible for the publication of these letters : the book was obviously destined to a private and chosen group of friends, which was not uncommon in xviith century. In 1692, given his geographic and not so private new public, Le Bret withdrew from Lettres diverses all the ones addressed to his Parisian friends as well as some destined to Toulousan ladies in which good taste was questionable (like his Eloge de la petite vérole, i. e. small-pox).We can now reformulate the bibliographical description of this book : Lettres diverses par Henry Le Bret, prévôt de l’église cathédrale de Montauban, Montauban (?), ca 1678-1681.Among the addenda completing this article are a brief account of the controversy between Le Bret and the minister Pierre Isarn, a restitution of one of his remarks concerning Boileau’s Satire IX, and his quasi unknown éloge de la petite vérole

Le Cyrano de Bergerac de Jacques Prévot

In his last book on Cyrano’s life and works, Jacques Prévot mainly repeats his 1977-1978 doctoral thesis. As far as biography is concerned, important components, particularly two related to religion and to the army, are ignored or underevaluated. The discovery of Cyrano’s maternal genealogy has revealed, in 2000, a milieu of very pious people, some of which were influent in the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, and, more recently, the discovery of the conversion of Cyrano’s paternal grand-father to Protestantism brought a new light on a possible tension in the family and on the writer’s repeated comments on Catholic Church’s dogmas. About Cyrano’s military carrier Prévot’s informations are generally totally outdated (Lacroix, 1858 and Lachèvre, 1921), although we learned in 2009 that the writer entertained a relationship with his former captain in the Gardes du Roi, Alexandre de Biran de Casteljaloux (“Carbon de Casteljaloux” in Rostand’s play) ; the officer lived in Clamart, not far from the castle of Mauvières, property of the Cyrano family, and, in Paris, he was in the Marais where Cyrano moved in 1649. Castelgeloux had a strong attachment to Jean de Cuigy, the landlord of Clamart and the “notaire secrétaire du roi” who signed the authorisation (“privilège”) to print posthumously Cyrano’s novel, Les Etats et Empires de la Lune, and Cuigy had a long relationship with Tanneguy Regnault des Boisclairs, the last protector of the writer, all installed rue de la Verrerie or in its close neighborhood. As we see, many events of Cyrano’s biography appear now as linked together through this group of old and influential friends. As far as the history of Cyrano’s works is concerned, Prévot, who seems not to have a clue of what material bibliography means and to have a very poor knowledge about censorship at this time, could not analyse the social and financial effects of the previous censorship of the Lettres (1654) on the “cleaning” of Cyrano’s novel before its publication in1657. I have proved in 2009, thanks to a variant the content of which refers to an event posterior to Cyrano’s death, that Le Bret indeed was involved in this rewriting in 1657. Furthermore, the corpus variorum provided by Prévot in 1998, although very faulty, has confirmed (without Prévot knowing it ?) my theory that the posthumous version descended from two different manuscript branches used one after the other, which makes dubious that Le Bret received the novel from Cyrano with the mission to publish it. At the end of the article are examined two attributions, one about a substitution concerning the most important philosophical “treatise” in the novel and the other about the attributions, after Lachèvre, of seven mazarinades to Cyrano, although a stylistic test, inspired by Harold Love’s works, has established in 2004 the total improbability of these attributions to Cyrano ; but Prévot does not refute his adversaries, he just continues to assertdogmaticallyhis opinions

Statistique et critique d’attribution : l’édition posthume des États et Empires de la Lune

Alcover Madeleine. Statistique et critique d’attribution : l’édition posthume des États et Empires de la Lune. In: Littératures classiques. Supplément au n°53,2004. Cyrano de Bergerac. Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil pp. 295-311

Le Bret, Cuigy, Casteljaloux, Bignon, Royer de Prade et Regnault des Boisclairs : du nouveau sur quelques bons amis de Cyrano et sur l’édition posthume des états et empires de la lune (1657)

This article deals mainly with Henry Le Bret, Cyrano’s friend and editor. Only Le Bret’s Parisian years are concerned here, the ones which preceeded his clerical career in Montauban.Till now very little was known of Le Bret’s Parisian period and nothing at all of his career as a « avocat au Conseil Privé du Roi ». Long investigations in Archives Nationales (Paris, CARAN), mainly in notarial deeds (Minutier Central) and in Conseil Privé’s archives (series V6), as well as in Archives départementales de Tarn-et-Garonne (Montauban), allowed me to revive many of his friends and clients : in the second category can be found Bishop of Albi, Gaspard de Daillon du Lude, related to the Roquelaures, and to Cyrano through the wealthy Feydeau family ; in the first category appear many people named in Le Bret’s posthumous preface of Cyrano’s Etats et Empires de la Lune (1657), like the Cuigys, the Durets, Captain Carbon de Casteljaloux, the engraver Bignon and the dramatist and historian Royer de Prade. They were all living in a delimited area of the « Marais » (Right Bank : rues de la Verrerie, des Billettes, Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie, Simon Lefranc and Sainte-Avoye) ; even Cyrano’s protectors were there, Regnault des Boisclairs at rue de la Verrerie, and Duke of Arpajon, whose residence partly burnt in January 1655, at Vieille rue du Temple. A precious notarial deed reveals that Le Bret was a cleric before Cyrano died, situation which should bring a new light on the making of the posthumous edition, published with numerous cuts (« lacunes ») and variants ; another notarized document concerns the donation of Clamard « seigneurie » to Cuigy junior in 1656, donation which not only explains a variant of the posthumous edition but also provides an irrefutable evidence that Cyrano’s novel was altered after his death.Among the addenda completing this article are the autograph last will of Casteljaloux, written in 1642 in Clamard where he died in 1654, the donation of Clamard to Cuigy junior (1656) and a substantial repayment to Le Bret by Royer de Prade (1657) just before the former went to Montauban