Comptes rendus PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0014 200 François Lecercle et Clotilde Thouret (dir.): La haine du théâtre. Controverses européennes sur le spectacle, Vol. 2: Discours et arguments, Littératures classiques, n o 99 (2019). 194 p. In 2013 the editors of this collection founded at Paris-Sorbonne a research group entitled “Haine du théâtre” in order to study antitheatrical prejudice in a wider context than ever before. This is the second volume of the proceedings from the colloquium that they sponsored in 2014. Whereas Volume 1 focused on the role of historical and geographical context in shaping the discussions, Volume 2, likewise containing fourteen articles, goes into more depth about the specific arguments concerning the theater and the ways in which they have undergone reinterpretation, focusing on four European countries during the early modern period. One of the main theses developed here is that what appears on the surface as mindless recycling of traditional tropes may serve to disguise controversies relevant to the current moment. The first group of articles deals with arguments linking drama to paganism and/ or deception. Marie-Hélène Goursolas demonstrates the polyvalence of one of the oldest and most common charges against the drama: idolatry. As a theological term, it can designate either worship of pagan gods, whose ritual requires visual representations, or improper worship of the monotheistic God. Early modern critics could use the term to condemn drama’s pagan associations (use of myths as subject matter, portrayal of dangerous passions linked to the gods). Protestants used it to denounce Catholics, whose rituals, including the mass itself, they viewed as theatrical, and to reject religious plays as improper visualizing of sacred events. Idolatry as a metaphor could be directed against playwrights (for vanity), audiences (for ignorance), or actors (for allegedly becoming the wicked characters they portray). Enrica Zanin argues that the principle of vraisemblance could be invoked by critics on both sides of the debate. While Plato’s condemnation of all forms of imitation was rarely applied to drama by its later opponents, being too broad and not allowing for a potential reform of the stage, it could be linked to concerns about drama’s inadequacies, especially imitating badly or imitating bad actions. Chapelain’s preference for vraisemblance ordinaire involved a desire to police the content of drama by making it focus on exemplary conduct. Though theologians like Voisin condemned realistic imitation as projecting false images of truth, reformers like Rapin and Rymer saw drama as capable of representing universal principles such as poetic justice, thus serving a moral function. Marie Saint-Martin shows the linkage between treatises on demonology and dramatic theory. Actors who truly inhabit their roles are akin to victims Comptes rendus PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0014 201 of demonic possession, while those who remain conscious of their roleplaying are hypocritical or intending to deceive. If what devils create is merely illusions, they resemble playwrights. In both cases the fictional spectacle can produce real emotions, in the spectator as well as the actor, and the return to oneself produces a type of catharsis. In the sole article devoted to Spain, Florence d’Artois notes that, since most attacks and defenses of drama during the Golden Age were written to urge the permission or the banning of performances, little attention was paid to the ontological critique (that mimesis is an inherent source of moral corruption by inciting the passions). St. Augustine could be marshalled by theologians on both sides, citing different passages or different books. The second group of articles deals with the notion of spectacle. Françoise Decroisette shows that Italian detractors of drama reacted to the advent of commedia dell’arte, where the body of the actor tended to overshadow plot and text, by denouncing both the dangers to spectators of focusing on the physicality of performers and the frequent use of vulgar and erotic gesticulation in farces. Defenders, many of whom were themselves performers, insisted on distinguishing between plays with clear moral content and requiring a graceful and dignified acting style, and farces, featuring immodest plots and a lewd acting style. Sylviane Léoni raises the question of how the new scientific explanations of vision offered by Kepler and Descartes might have impacted antitheatrical arguments. The views inherited from Antiquity, which claimed that images arriving from the outside could literally contaminate the recipient, do not disappear in the 1690s in France, but there is greater emphasis on the contamination produced by language, accompanied by a perception of the individual as more autonomous but, owing to the inherent corruption of human nature, more willing to embrace sinful messages. Marion Lafouge explores the linkage between the quarrel during the 1670s in the theory of painting (over the respective roles of color and design) and three quarrels over the validity of opera as a genre: the role of opera vs. tragedy in the 1670s, the value of French music vs. Italian music in the 1700s, and the value of French opera vs. Italian opera in the 1750s. The similarities include the following issues: whether art should appeal primarily to the senses or to the intellect; whether value should be determined by cultivated amateurs or by connoisseurs; whether the overall effect should be prized over specific aspects. Curiously, opera was linked to sensual pleasure and to the Modern ideology in the first and third quarrels, but to intellectual pleasure and Ancient ideology in the second, suggesting that the underlying issue was that of the legitimacy of both the genre and the royal-sponsored institution. Comptes rendus PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0014 202 A group of three (often overlapping) articles studies the role in the debates of the presence of women as performers or spectators. Andrea Fabiano notes that in Italy attacks on the theater, going back to the origins of commedia dell’arte, listed the use of actresses and the dominance of love plots as the primary sources of corruption on audience members. Even some 18 th -century reformers felt that drama could not achieve the goal of inculcating morality unless women were banished from the stage. Goldoni, who viewed drama’s moral task as presenting a critical mirror of real life, composed multiple plays where characters who hate both the female sex and the theater are shown to be more prone to fascination with the female body than they would like to admit. Véronique Lochert, analyzing antitheatrical arguments from France and England, notes their generally misogynistic perspective. Detractors saw immorality in the use of actresses, allowing men and women to mix in the audience, and depicting love on the stage. While the seductive nature of drama was alleged to make the audience as a whole effeminate, women were viewed as more prone to concupiscence and more likely to confuse fiction with reality, especially in regard to amorous desires. Sarah Nancy, after giving an overview of the anti-female arguments used by enemies of the theater in France, shows that some of their arguments attack women metaphorically. In other words, theater in its very essence resembles the female gender (as constructed by misogynists) as being seductive, artificial, immoral and feminizing, even if no real women are present. The final group of articles focuses on conceptions of the spectator. Ellen MacKay notes that many commentators of drama in England used the argument that it lulls audiences into a state of passivity, which could be viewed as negative (encouraging the enjoyment of idleness) or positive (harmless entertainment). A metatheatrical passage in a Jacobean comedy seems to confirm that playwrights of the era could embrace a more neutral version of it: audiences can get swept up into a collectivity where individuals stop thinking for themselves and thus cannot reflect on the play’s moral content. Bruna Filippi, noting that in Italy, despite clerical objection to drama, neither civil nor ecclesiastical authorities moved against actors, cites the case of a 17 th -century Jesuit, Ottonelli, who wrote a series of treatises urging tolerance of the theater. However, his arguments betray a thinly veiled hostility, since his main argument is that theater is one of the inherently bad activities that should be allowed because it serves to prevent activities that are even worse. Although, like a typical theologian, he criticizes secular drama for exciting concupiscence, he feels that the plays performed in Jesuit schools can be genuinely edifying, though even those are becoming less spiritual in his day. Logan Connors situates Abbé Dubos in the quarrel over drama thanks to his concern to understand how human emotions are aroused. Comptes rendus PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0014 203 Whereas 17 th -century theorists generally believed that emotions are imprinted directly and unconsciously onto the soul and leave a lasting impression, either positive or negative depending on the writer’s stance, Dubos took a radically new position: the emotions produced by plays (or works of visual art) have only a superficial and temporary effect on the soul, and the pleasure we feel, far from being unconscious, results from our awareness that the emotions are detached from the world of reality. There is no religious harm done because the soul is not damaged and because entertainments keep the soul from the dangers of idleness and boredom. Larry Norman shows how Abbé Jean Terrasson, a defender of the Modern position during the Querelle d’Homère, while denouncing Greek epic and drama for their vulgarity and immorality, turned out not to give unqualified endorsement to contemporary French drama. Indeed, despite his insistence that only a secular critique is valid, his arguments often overlap with those of theologians. Tragedies ending with the punishment of a vice are ambiguous in their moral lesson; Cornelian tragedies of admiration are more acceptable. But better yet, he felt, would be to compose new tragedies according to strict moral principles and revise older plays accordingly. In this hope he anticipated a possibility that would be more famously developed by Rousseau. This is a fascinating collection with much material guaranteed to interest scholars of French drama. Perry Gethner