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The goal of this volume is to “interrogate” Yourcenar’s fiction and prefaces, which pose some interesting questions about the author’s attempt to direct her readers. The ten essays focus on a variety of texts, subjects, and approaches, reinforcing or contradicting each other. For example, Katherine Callen King reads “Deux amours d’Achille” to expose ideas about masculinity as a social construct; Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier considers the tricky process of self-definition and Yourcenar’s ambivalence about her mother in Dear Departed; Carole Allamand describes Yourcenar’s writing process to define the paternal and controlling nature of the paratexts; Mieke Taat argues that these paratexts refer to the womb, the internal place where a link with the other is conceived and developed. Other essays look at Coup de Grâce, Mémoires d’Hadrien , and recurring images that connect analogous experiences. Francesca Counihan illustrates the Eurocentrism and condescension that prevents Yourcenar from achieving her stated intention that is to reveal universality in her translations. And there is more. A helpful addition to the literature on this interesting francophone writer. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

S. Vander Closter, Rhode Island School of Design
Choice, October 2004