The Poet and the King: Jean de la Fontaine and His Century. Mark Fumaroli , Jane Marie Todd
of the monarch's heir and brother, the duke of Alencon, in 1578, Henry instigated a new system with two archimignons, Epernon and Joyeuse, who in turn had their own clients. Le Roux demonstrates that this arrangement was effective in controlling religious disputes, at least until the death of Joyeuse in 1587. With only one surviving archimignon, equilibrium was destroyed and favor tilted heavily towards the Protestants. Thus Henry's conflicts with the Guise in 1588 directly resulted from his continued patronage of Epernon. The breath and scope of Le Roux's research is remarkable. He not only rereads traditional sources such as chronicles, livres de raison, and contemporary biographies in a new light, but also considers some material from departmental archives as well as what he terms "objective sources," i.e., correspondence, notarial acts, registers, and tax rolls. The bibliography of secondary works is equally impressive and includes English-language scholarship. The book's main flaw stems from its strength, namely, Le Roux's meticulous research. Simply put, it is much too long, and the general reader gets bogged down in the discursive biographical sketches. Furthermore, Le Roux could have expanded his conclusions by incorporating current historiographical debates into the narrative. For example, in defining the terms favor, grace, and friendship, he does a linguistic, source-based investigation that while useful, could have been more theoretically informed by considering relationships with the king and the state. Similarly, while he cites Norbert Elias in the bibliography, the role of friendship in the civilizing process is treated only superficially. These complaints, however, are minor in the face of a thoroughly wellresearched, fresh approach to the reign of the last Valois monarch, namely that Henry's reign can be defined by a contradiction — that the monarch distanced himself from the court through the use of intimacy. Furthermore, Le Roux's notes and prosopographical work makes this book an essential resource for any scholar working on sixteenth-century France. EDNA RUTH YAHIL University of California, Los Angeles