To the author’s credit, this is one of the few books in my field whose index designates not only Barthes and Todorov, but also Oprah Winfrey and the Richard and Judy Book Club. Of course, Diana Holmes brings to bear on this wide-ranging study an illustrious career spent at the crossroads of French studies, women’s writing and literary criticism. But in the face of such scholarly pursuits, she can nevertheless claim: ‘I have two modes of reading, that of an academic and a literary critic, and that of an ordinary reader who loves to be told a good story and to disappear into the enchanted space of a fiction’ (p. 4). Hence, this focus on the middlebrow, a term without a direct French equivalent, as Holmes readily concedes, whose dismissive charge is nevertheless conveyed in the way that fiction is often evaluated in France, especially in the context of women as readers and writers. The book’s seven chapters begin with a defence of middlebrow poetics in terms of ‘the (underrated) qualities of mimesis and immersivity’ (p. 3), and are followed by a conclusion which exemplifies these ‘two modes of reading’ through close analysis of Marie Ndiaye’s Trois femmes puissantes (2009). The sentimentality of middlebrow fiction, with its concern for love, romance, family and the social filtered through domestic dramas, has – Holmes argues – been disdained by the highbrow critics of modernism ‘since (at least) the beginning of the twentieth century’ (p. 2). Those very turn-of-thecentury decades which saw the explosion of modernism also witnessed the rapid growth of the early Third Republic’s reading public (hence the popularity of Daniel Lesueur and Marcelle Tinayre (Chapter 2) and Colette (reclaimed for the middlebrow in Chapter 3)). We then pursue Nemirovsky, Sagan, literary prizes since the founding of the Prix Goncourt in 1903, and in Chapter 7, the twenty-first-century literary scene. As a nineteenth-centuryist, I look forward to seeing how, in subsequent criticism, this persuasive critical argument about mimesis, modernism and a feminine middlebrow will be mapped back onto fiction between the French Revolution and the Belle Époque, for the very language of sentimentality which twentieth-century modernism derides is already the object of ridicule in the hands of nineteenth-century male-authored mimesis, as exemplified by Margaret Cohen and Naomi’s Schor’s now classic critical accounts which have encouraged a generation of scholars and students to re-evaluate the likes of George Sand in the face of the mimetic project which arcs from Balzac to Zola. This reminds us how complex the interrelationship between mimesis, modernism and gender must be, for the likes of Balzac and Zola do themselves then become the object of modernism’s ridicule, whilst Flaubert’s art of being difficult has allowed him to enjoy what Holmes terms ‘the modernist privilege’.

中文翻译：

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书评：戴安娜福尔摩斯：中庸问题：自美好年代以来法国的女性阅读和文学经典

值得作者称赞的是，这是我所在领域为数不多的几本书之一，其索引不仅指定了 Barthes 和 Todorov，还指定了 Oprah Winfrey 和 Richard and Judy Book Club。当然，戴安娜·福尔摩斯 (Diana Holmes) 为这项广泛的研究带来了她在法国研究、女性写作和文学批评的十字路口度过的辉煌职业生涯。但面对这样的学术追求，她仍然可以说：“我有两种阅读方式，一种是学者型的，一种是文学评论家的，另一种是喜欢被讲好故事并消失在世界中的普通读者。小说的魔法空间”（第 4 页）。因此，这种关注于中眉，这个词没有直接的法语等价物，正如福尔摩斯欣然承认的那样，尽管如此，他的轻蔑指控却以法国经常评价小说的方式表达，尤其是在女性作为读者和作家的背景下。这本书的七章首先从“模仿和沉浸感的（被低估的）品质”（第 3 页）为中庸诗学辩护，然后是一个结论，通过对“两种阅读模式”的仔细分析来举例说明Marie Ndiaye 的 Trois femmes puissantes (2009)。中庸小说的多愁善感，其对爱情、浪漫、家庭和社会的关注通过国内戏剧过滤，——福尔摩斯认为——“自（至少）二十世纪初以来”被现代主义的高尚批评家所蔑视第 2 页）。那些见证现代主义爆发的世纪之交的几十年也见证了早期第三共和国的阅读大众的快速增长（因此丹尼尔 Lesueur 和 Marcelle Tinayre（第 2 章）和 Colette（在第 3 章中被收回为中眉） ))。然后，我们将追寻自 1903 年贡古尔奖成立以来的涅米罗夫斯基、萨根文学奖，以及第 7 章 21 世纪的文学场景。作为一名 19 世纪的主义者，我期待看到在随后的批评中，这种关于模仿、现代主义和女性中间眉的有说服力的批判性论点将如何映射回法国大革命和美好年代之间的小说，因为 20 世纪现代主义所嘲笑的多愁善感的语言已经成为 19 世纪男性创作的模仿者嘲笑的对象，正如玛格丽特·科恩 (Margaret Cohen) 和内奥米·舍尔 (Naomi's Schor) 现在经典的批评性叙述所证明的那样，这些叙述鼓励了一代学者和学生们在面对从巴尔扎克到左拉的模仿项目时重新评估乔治·桑之类的人。这提醒我们，模仿、现代主义和性别之间的相互关系必须是多么复杂，因为巴尔扎克和左拉这样的人自己成为现代主义嘲笑的对象，而福楼拜的困难艺术让他享受福尔摩斯所说的“现代主义”。特权'。正如玛格丽特·科恩 (Margaret Cohen) 和娜奥米·舍尔 (Naomi's Schor) 现在经典的批判性叙述所证明的那样，这些叙述鼓励一代学者和学生在面对从巴尔扎克到左拉的模仿计划时重新评估乔治·桑之类的人物。这提醒我们，模仿、现代主义和性别之间的相互关系必须是多么复杂，因为巴尔扎克和左拉这样的人自己成为现代主义嘲笑的对象，而福楼拜的困难艺术让他享受福尔摩斯所说的“现代主义”。特权'。正如玛格丽特·科恩 (Margaret Cohen) 和娜奥米·舍尔 (Naomi's Schor) 现在经典的批判性叙述所证明的那样，这些叙述鼓励一代学者和学生在面对从巴尔扎克到左拉的模仿计划时重新评估乔治·桑之类的人物。这提醒我们，模仿、现代主义和性别之间的相互关系必须是多么复杂，因为巴尔扎克和左拉这样的人自己成为现代主义嘲笑的对象，而福楼拜的困难艺术让他享受福尔摩斯所说的“现代主义”。特权'。