SGARD, Jean

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Home—Chemin de Chanteclair, 38700 Corenc, France. Offıce—Université Stendhal, 1180 avenue Centrale, Domaine Universitaire, 38400 Saint Martin d'Hères; B.P. 25-38040, Grenoble Cedex 9, France. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Université Stendhal, Grenoble, France, professor emeritus.

WRITINGS:

La Sainte Face de Claude Mellans: Étude des bases géométriques du dessin, Société d'émulation historique et littéraire d'Abbeville (Abbeville, France), 1957.

Le "Pour et contre" de Prévost, A.G. Nizet (Paris, France), 1969.

Prévost romancier, Librairie Josée Corti (Paris, France), 1968.

(With Michel Gilot and Françoise Weil) Dictionnaire des journalistes, 1600-1789, Presses universitaires de Grenoble (Grenoble, France), 1976.

(Editor) Oeuvres de Prévost, Presses universitaires de Grenoble (Grenoble, France), 1978-86.

(With Pierre Rétat) Presses et histoire au XVIIIe [i.e. dix-huitième] siècle: L'Année 1734, Éditions du CNRS (Paris, France), 1978

(With Michel Gilot and the Centre d'étude des sensibilités de l'Université de Grenoble III) Le Vocabulaire du sentiment dans l'oeuvre de J.-J. Rousseau, Slatkine (Geneva, Switzerland, and Paris, France), 1980.

(With Centre d'étude des sensibilités de l'Université de Grenoble III) Corpus Condillac, 1714-1780, Slatkine (Geneva, Switzerland), 1981.

Condillac et les problèmes du language, Slatkine (Geneva, Switzerland), 1982.

Histoire de France à travers les journaux du temps passé, A l'Enseigne de l'arbre verdoyant (Paris, France), 1982

(With Anne-Marie Chouillet, George Bourez, Marie Thérèse Bourez, Elisabeth Milet, and Madeleine Fabre) La Presse provinciale au XVIIIe siècle, Centre de recherches sur les sensibilités, Universitaire de languages et lettres de Grenoble (Grenoble, France), 1983.

Bibliographie de la presse classique, 1600-1789, Slatkine (Geneva, Switzerland), 1984.

L'Abbé Prévost: Labyrinthes de la mémoire, PUF (Paris, France), 1986.

Les Trente ré de la Journée des tuilles, Presses universitaires de Grenoble (Grenoble, France), 1988.

(Editor) L'Ecrivain devant la Révolution: 1780-1800, Université Stendhal de Grenoble (Grenoble, France), 1990.

(General editor) Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789, two volumes, Universitas (Paris, France), 1991.

(Editor, with Geraldine Sheridan) Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant, Voyage merveilleux du prince Fan-Férédin dans la Romancie: Contenant plusieurs observations historiques, géographiques, physiques, critiques et morales, Université de Saint-Etienne (Saint-Etienne, France), 1992.

(With Carole Dornier and others) Les Mémoires d'un désenchangé: Crébillon fils, les égarements du coeur et de l'esprit, Paradigme (Orléans, France), 1995.

(Editor) Abbé Prévost, Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité (1728): Antoine Pré d'Exiles, Desjonquères (Paris, France), 1995.

Vingt études sur Prévost d'Exiles, Éditions littéraires et linguistiques de l'université de Grenoble (Grenoble, France), 1995.

(Editor, with Peter Friedemann and others) ColloqueMalby: La Politique comme science morale: Actes du colloque 6-8 juin 1991, Musée de la Révolution française, Château de Vizille, Palomar (Bari, Italy), 1995-97.

(Editor, with Lourdes Carriedo López) Songe, illusion, égarement dans les romans de Crébillon, ELLUG, Université Stendhal (Grenoble, France), 1996.

(With Catherine Volpilhac-Auger) La Notion d'oeuvres complètes: Textes (conference presentation), Voltaire Foundation (Oxford, England), 1999.

(Editor) Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, Oeuvres complètes, Garnier (Paris, France), 1999-2002.

Crébillon fils: Le Libertin moraliste, Desjonquères (Paris, France), 2002.

Member of advisory board, Encyclopédie, ARTFL (Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language); general editor, Dictionnaire de la presse de langue francaise, 1600-1789; member of editorial board, Eighteenth-Century Fiction.

SIDELIGHTS: Jean Sgard is a scholar of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature. His Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789, described by Colin Jones in the Times Literary Supplement as an "outstanding collective work under the sagacious and astute general editorship of Jean Sgard," provides basic information on the 1,267 periodicals known to have been in print in pre-Revolutionary France from the beginning of the seventeenth century to July 14, 1789. Writing for Modern Language Review, Malcolm Cook noted, "No future study of the French press of this period can be undertaken without reference to this remarkable dictionary."

Sgard's particular passion, however, is for the writings of eighteenth-century French novelist Abbé Prévost. Sgard opens L'Abbé Prévost: Labyrinthes de la mémoire by commenting: "To write once more about Manon Lescaut may seem absurd." However, with more expertise on Prévost's work than any other scholar, Sgard was well equipped to write this in-depth study on Prévost's 1731 novel, the full title of which is Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.

While Sgard's Prévost romancier is a lengthy, detailed study of Prévost's writings, L'Abbé Prévost is described by Peter France in the Times Literary Supplement as "a brief essay . . . a reading of Prévost which is far from banal." While the book is primarily a thematic criticism of Prévost's works, it also traces Manon's publishing history: the 234 different editions between 1731 and 1981 make it the most published of any French novel except Fénelon's Télémaque. L'Abbé Prévost also analyzes Prévost's style, particularly as it pertained to the 1753 edition of Manon. France wrote that Sgard, "speaking with the inwardness of an editor who has lived with these novels for many years, shows himself to be an unusually eloquent advocate for Prévost."

When reviewing Vingt études sur Prévost d'Exiles for Modern Language Review, R. A. Francis wrote: "As editor of the Grenoble Oeuvres de Prévost and author of two major critical volumes, Jean Sgard dominates contemporary Prévost studies," and called Sgard "Prévost's most authoritative modern biographer." Francis explained that Vingt études sur Prévost d'Exiles is a compilation of many studies and articles by Sgard, some previously unpublished, on the eighteenth-century writer. The volume was presented to Sgard as a retirement gift from publishers and Stendhal University. "As always with Sgard, it is lucidly and sympathetically written and eager to explore the full implications of the evidence cited. Prévost is fortunate to have such an interpreter," commented Francis.

L'Ecrivain devant la Révolution: 1780-1800 contains essays that began as contributions to a 1987 Franco-Italian conference in Grenoble. Colin Jones commented in Modern Language Review that "this volume . . . will prove invaluable to the numerous scholars now working on the vexed question of the Revolution and the writer." Essays by French writers are in French; those by Italian authors are in Italian. The French section includes H. J. Lusebrink writing on the abbé Raynal, P. Roger on Sade, H. Hofer on Mercier, and M. L. Girou-Swiderski on Madame Monnet. The Italian section includes B. Anglani writing on Gorani, D. Gorret and A. Di Benetto on Alfieri, C. Romeo on Scrofani, and C. Di Donna Prencipe on Foscolo.

Robin Howells commented for Modern Language Review that Voyage merveilleux du prince Fan-Férédin dans la Romancie: Contenant plusieurs observations historiques, géographiques, physiques, critiques et morales, coedited by Sgard, is a "pleasing little work of 1735 [that] belongs to the tradition of the anti-roman inaugurated by Don Quixote. The ideal world of fiction is parodied, reviewed, and mocked by sending a deluded protagonist [Fan-Férédin] in quest of it." Bougeant, the book's author, covers a vast panorama—Homer, Ovid, La Fontaine, La Fayette, to name a few—dividing his work into "Haute Romancie" and "Basse Romancie." Howells points out that Bougeant "remarkably . . . ignores the 'nouvelle' and the new 'roman mondain,'" precursors of the novel, and compared Bougeant's conservative perspective to Voltaire, suggesting Bougeant viewed fictional writing as clearly not being cultured.

For Songe, illusion, égarement dans les romans de Crébillon, Sgard collected twenty-one studies by experienced scholars and commentators, many of whom chose Claude Crébillon as their thesis subject matter. Malcolm Cook explained in Modern Language Review that "the varied responses in this volume establish [Crébillon] as a major author." Cook pointed out that "Sgard's introduction provides a survey of Crébillon's critical fortunes and attacks the reductive idea that his fiction deals merely with libertinage."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

French Studies (Oxford, England), July, 1993, William Doyle, review of Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789, pp. 324-325.

Modern Language Review, October, 1992, Colin Jones, review of L'Ecrivain devant la Révolution: 1780-1800, p. 996; July, 1994, Malcolm Cook, review of Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789, pp. 770-771; July, 1995, Robin Howells, review of Voyage merveilleux du prince Fan-Férédin dans la Romancie: Contenant plusieurs observations historiques, géographiques, physiques, critiques et morales, p. 757; April, 1997, R. A. Francis, review of Vingt études sur Prévost d'Exiles, pp. 470-471; April 1998, Malcolm Cook, review of Songe, illusion, égarement dans les romans de Crébillon, pp. 509-510

Times Literary Supplement, November 13, 1992, Colin Jones, "The Print Revolution," review of Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789, p. 22; Peter France, review of L'Abbé Prévost: Labyrinthes de la mémoire, p. 1226.*