unity of this heteroclite production and to the specificity of this chameleon writer.This phenomenon is analysed at many different levels. The idea of transformation is,of course, characteristic of Piron’s career as a playwright as he distinguished himselfin different dramatic genres, and on all the Parisian stages of his time bar the Opera(he preferred to parody opera libretti rather than write them). Processes oftransformation are also a thematically distinctive aspect of the plots of his plays,particularly in the comedies performed on the official stages, which often rely on theambiguous identity of the main characters. Connon also gives special attention to thelinguistic ambiguity of what these characters say on stage. Even though ‘disguise androle reversal are long-standing staples of comedy’, he shows how, in Piron’s hands,‘they appear to be in the service of a deeper exploration of whether the assumption ofan alternative identity can have a profound impact on who a character is, and, incertain cases, it is shown to lead to a deeper understanding of the individual’s nature’(p.173). Furthermore, the conception of the plays themselves is based on a process oftransformation, as Piron plays with his sources, whether they are literary sources orevents taken from real life. Connon demonstrates convincingly how, in Piron’sparodies, the modifications become a process of creation. He also shows how Pironcontributed to the debate that went on throughout the century about the nature oftheatre, not only through the plays themselves (and the parodies in particular) butalso through the remarks to be found in his prefaces. In this respect his study ofFernand Cortès is particularly innovative.

This is an erudite study that invites us to deepen and reconsider some of thetraditional interpretations of Piron’s work: this is particularly convincing in hisanalysis of La Métromanie, when he proposes to reconsider the ‘jeux de reflets’between the play and the play within a play, in order to describe the ‘distortedreflections’ extended to the relationships between the play and the real-life events. Byfocusing on identity and transformation, Connon enlightens at every moment of hisbook the specificity of Piron’s work: the liveliness of his writing and the impertinenceof his spirit. He also convinces us that, as he underlines at the end of his introduction,‘the time is ripe for a new critical edition of these works, both to make them morereadily available and to bring to them the benefits of modern scholarship’.

Jeanne-Marie HostiouParis 3/Oxford University

La Peyrouse dans l’Isle de Tahiti, ou le Danger des présomptions: dramepolitique et moral en quatre actes. Edited by John Dunmore. London: ModernHumanities Research Association. 2006. Critical Texts, vol. 10. 120. £12.99. pb.0-947623-72-8.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the disappearance of the great Frenchmaritime explorer Jean-François de Galaup de Lapérouse captured the Europeanimagination in many ways: even shortly before his rendezvous with the guillotine,Louis XVI reputedly asked if there had been any news of the expedition. In thesubsequent tension-filled years several novels, poems and plays featuring the exploitsof France’s answer to Captain Cook appeared on both sides of the Channel. One suchplay was the anonymous La Peyrouse dans l’Isle de Tahiti, ou Le danger des présomptions:drame politique et moral en quatre actes, a work published in 1806 but which appearsnever to have been performed. It is brought to us here in volume 10 of the MHRA

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Critical Texts series – a series whose goal is to ‘provide affordable critical editions oflesser-known literary texts that are not in print or are difficult to obtain’. JohnDunmore, a leading specialist in Pacific exploration, performs a great service byplucking this play from obscurity and presenting this critical edition to the modern-day reader – especially since the title of the play is so curiously misleading: Lapérousenever visited Tahiti, and the French mariner’s role in the play is, by Dunmore’s ownadmission, peripheral.

In his fairly lengthy introduction, which is written in French, Dunmore details theexploits of Bougainville, Lapérouse and Ahu-toru – the first South Sea Islander tovisit Europe as part of the returning Bougainville expedition. Dunmore explainshow Bougainville’s voyage spawned a great interest in the South Seas and reignitedthe debate over the ‘noble savage’. The introduction concludes with a briefdiscussion of censorship under Napoleon. In the section entitled ‘Analyse de lapièce’ Dunmore sketches out the major theme of the play – the depiction of an idealsociety based on Enlightenment principles which is threatened by Europeanpractices – and details a plot and character summary. The editor appears to be muchmore comfortable discussing Pacific explorers than post-Revolutionary theatre, andhis obvious enthusiasm for Lapérouse does not appear to be replicated for the playitself, which this reviewer found to be very enjoyable, featuring, as it does, famoushistorical figures spouting political theory, star-crossed lovers, song-and-dancenumbers, a ship that runs aground, numerous misunderstandings, a duel, a trialscene and a colourful scoundrel who disturbs the natural order of things on theisland. After the early expository scenes the action gathers pace with the arrival ofthe scoundrel, Dorville, and builds to the dramatic trial scene in the final act of theplay.

Parenthetical numbers in the body of the play appear to refer to pages in the sourceedition which Dunmore used, but this is not clear, and the reader is not given anymore detail on the source text beyond its date and place of publication. Any quibblessuch as this one are, however, minor when compared to the praise deserved fordusting off this play and bringing it to light in the twenty-first century.

John GreeneUniversity of Louisville

Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, vol. 16: Geographica. Edited by CatherineVolpilhac-Auger. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation / Naples: Istituto Italiano per gli StudiFilosofici. 2007. xlviii + 449. 9 illus. £105. hb. 978-0-72940-910-0.

This book, part of the 22-volume complete edition now going forward, is unique in thewhole enterprise in being the only separate volume to survive from Montesquieu’sworks of documentation for the Esprit des lois. The loss of the others is grievous: oversixty titles have completely vanished. Fortunately, what remains in Geographica is aseries of travel accounts, set out by the author as an aide-mémoire for the eventualcomposition of his masterpiece. These are not compilations (his Lettres persanescontains a devastating attack on ‘compilateurs’, whose work is deemed to be ‘uneespèce de profanation’) nor annotations, nor yet a complete synthesis of the worksconsulted. Rather, in what has happily been termed a ‘magasin de lecture’,Montesquieu addresses only those sections that particularly concern him, with muchuse of underlining to emphasise what he wants to stand out for later use. (Comparison

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© 2008 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies