Zayde: A Spanish Romance

Modern Language Review, The, July, 2007 by John D. Lyons

Zayde: A Spanish Romance. By MARIE-MADELEINE PIOCHE DE LA VERGNE, COMTESSE DE LAFAYETTE. Ed. and trans. by NICHOLAS D. PAIGE. (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. 248 pp. $18. ISBN 978-0-226-46852-5.

Although The Princess of Cleves has long been a part of the literary curriculum, for readers of English as well as of its original French, the longest work attributed to Marie-Madeleine de La Vergne, Comtesse de Lafayette, has largely been neglected. Yet Zayde: A Spanish Romance, published in 1670 under the name of Lafayette' s friend Jean Reginauld de Segrais, is a delightful work. It gives insight into the movement known as Preciosite, with its proto-feminist critique of love and marriage, it has a plot full of twists and surprises, and--unlike Cleves--it has a happy ending. The year 2o06 marks the return of Zayde: it has reappeared in a French paperback edition and now in this fine translation by Nicholas Paige in the important series of works by women authors, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.

To translate Lafayette is no mean feat, as we know from the many attempts to render her better-known novel. It is hard to strike a balance between preserving the slightly formal elegance of the French and going to the opposite extreme in trying to convey the witty playfulness of some of the dialogues. It is tempting to try to compensate for the abstraction that was natural to writers of late seventeenth-century France by rendering things more concretely, trying to imply details of description the author avoided. At a few points Paige seems to me to err on the side of impersonality, but generally I think he gets it quite right.

It is good to see that the heroine, and thus also the novel, has her name back, Zayde, the original French spelling. In translating the rest of the title as 'A Spanish Romance' Paige serves us well, for-as the translator explains in his impressive and highly informative introduction-'Zayde is the last great French romance' (p. i3), and the question of the subtitle opens the translator's insightful note on this generic hybrid. Paige calls attention to the sharp differences in structure that separate the 1670 work from the small book that eight years later heralded something new, something that many have called the first great novel of analysis.

With its thorough introduction, clear and informative footnotes, and extensive bibliography, Paige's Zayde will bring a fresh view of Lafayette' s work to an English public.

JOHN D. LYONS

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA