consist of case studies of a particular type of interdisciplinary method or object. Athird type consider institutional aspects, including Mark Ledbury’s challengingconsiderations of the political, social and institutional dimensions of art history’sadoption of interdisciplinarity, in programme design and self-presentation. Spaceprecludes a discussion of all of these chapters, but amongst the questions raised arethat of the place of the canon; the problem of competence when a scholar works onthe boundary between different disciplines; and more than one article insists that trueinterdisciplinarity does not just ‘borrow’ from other disciplines, but combines discretemethods into a new synthesis, or interrogates objects hitherto ignored. A soberingchapter by Joan Schwarz on literature and the law also shows how much is demandedof the scholar who would combine methodologies from two different fields, and thecautionary theme runs through many chapters of this volume. Collapsingdisciplinary boundaries and the reconfiguration of fields of knowledge are shown tobe age-old phenomena, and in a telling chapter, Joan DeJean shows how many of thefounders of eighteenth-century literary studies (she mentions Bénichou, Mornet,Hazard and Febvre) were already working in interdisciplinary ways, between historyand literature in particular. In a period where ever more is being done to disciplineacademics, readers of this collection will find, not a naïve call to scholarly anarchy,but reasoned and stimulating case studies of how much can be achieved whenscholars are prepared to think beyond the boundaries of their field.

Mark DarlowChrist’s College, Cambridge

Le XVIIIe, un siècle de décadence? Edited by Valérie André and Bruno Bernard.Etudes sur le 18

e siècle 34. Brussels: Editions de l’université de Bruxelles. 2006. 222 pp.€23 pb. 2-8004-1383-2.

Forcefully begging the question, the editorial introduction to this collection ofpapers declares: ‘Le XVIIIe siècle est hanté par le sentiment obsédant de sadécadence.’ The topic is a good one, and the claim a salutary corrective to themodern assertion (found among proponents and adversaries of ‘The Enlightenment’alike) that the age was confident of human progress. They weren’t so silly. Therather eclectic contributions in this volume are in effect divided into two (thoughthis is nowhere stated), with the first half treating discourses in France. Here Iwould pick out several pieces. Laurent Versini reviews magisterially the secularpessimism of Montesquieu. Benoît de Baere shows us a Buffon who is deeplydistrustful of the savage state and its dangers for European civilisation. The broaderstudy by Didier Masseau examines ‘reactionary’ denunciations of French culturaldegeneration in the period from 1760, an account complemented in detail by that ofFabrice Preyat. Then come a number of articles on other European cultures.Belgium (‘les Pays-Bas autrichiens’) as the home country gets two. Painting wasperceived to have declined after the great age of Flemish art in the previous century,and new academies are established (Christophe Loir). Monasteries and conventswere also ‘reformed’ by the state (Olivier Vanderhaeghen). The complexities of theItalian situation are illustrated through the case of the pugnacious journalistGiuseppe Baretti (Maria Vitali-Volant). The theme of decadence in eighteenth-century Britain is explored through a general review (Andrea Gatti, writing inEnglish). The notion of a transmigration of the arts (and after the Revolution, of

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civilisation itself) from France to Russia, is scouted by Peter and Catherine as well asby Voltaire or Grimm (Alexandre Stroev). Germany is represented through SylvieThorel-Cailleteau’s richly suggestive (if doubtfully relevant) piece on the ‘decadent’pull in Winckelmann’s aesthetics.

The sense that things are declining can be found in every age (as Montesquieu drilynotes: p.16). If it is nevertheless of particular significance in the eighteenth century,we might ask why. In the broadest historical terms, one could say that the eighteenthcentury is where the long-held conviction of man’s degeneration (since Eden or theGolden Age), and the more sophisticated view of history as cyclical, encounter thenew idea of domains of human progress. Greater social stability and material wealthbegat an expanding culture of individual gratification which was often seen asinimical to Christian or civic virtues (thus the debate on luxury). The pretext of‘decadence’ allows the despotically Enlightened state to extend its control (theexpulsion of the Jesuits, the ‘reform’ of the monasteries, the institutionalisation of thearts). But its principal counsellors, the French philosophes, are also the inheritors of aGrand Siècle of pre-eminent artistic achievement and of moral pessimism. Towards theend of their own century, it is the progressives as well as the reactionaries in Francewho denounce rococo decadence. Its antidote will be the stern disciplines of neo-classicism, the artistic manifesto of a Revolution that is equally a return to thatancient order from which we had fallen away.

Robin HowellsBirkbeck, University of London

Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution and the Making of ModernDrama. Matthew S. Buckley. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.2006. 191 pp. US$49.95 hb. 0-8018-8434-9.

Matthew Buckley’s well-researched study considers the role of the French Revolutionin the historical evolution of dramatic forms, challenging the common assumptionthat the ancien régime hierarchy of genres collapsed simultaneously with its hierarchyof social orders as a result of the same reformist pressures. Buckley maintainsconvincingly that what the Revolution and contemporary theatre share is less anundermining of hierarchical structures than disruptively new modes of publicperformance. In line with a recent critical trend, it also problematises the notioncherished by the revolutionaries themselves that the Revolution marks a clear,irreversible rupture with what went before. Indeed, much of the Revolution’sinnovation in dramatic form arises precisely because it embraces and intensifies theenlightened writer’s conscious self-dramatisation as an historical agent. For Buckley,then, the Revolution is history qua drama, the political radicalisation of which,however, soon outstrips the traditional dramatic forms in which it is couched.

The study is organised broadly in two parts: the first is a recapitulation of recentaccounts of the Revolution’s relationship to the theatre; this is necessary, thoroughlyresearched and well written, but it is also the least original aspect of Buckley’s work.Overall the interpretations are interesting and plausible, although they strive too hardat times to underscore the dramatic nature of revolutionary action and fall back tooreadily on references to ancien régime ‘absolutism’ without any proper definition of theterm or ideological caveats concerning its use. Largely adhering to Lynn Hunt’sgeneric reading of the Revolution, these chapters conclude that the adoption of

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