Romantic Hospitality and the Resistance to Accommodation.

Leonard Adams is a professor of French Studies at the University of
Guelph.

Twelve quatrains by Anna Letitia Barbauld constitute the prologue to this enigmatic work that takes its inspiration from a chance encounter in Dr. Priestley’s laboratory with a hapless mouse, and highlights the tensions that occur when the narrator comes face to face with the Other. What follows is an interesting discourse in which Professor Melville draws from themes in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Coleridge, Immanuel Kant, and Mary Shelley. Furthermore, Melville’s skilful exploration of Derrida’s commentary on hospitality in a Romantic context must also be emphasized.

Paradox, conundrum, and analysis are interwoven in this most arresting work, based on a selection of texts focusing on problems associated with the reality of hospitality and Otherness. Professor Melville, beginning with Rousseau’s difficulties with politesse, society women, and the treatment of the perfect host, explores Kant’s justification of conviviality and the health benefits derived from indulging in mirth at the dinner table. He then moves on to the dangers of hosting unfamiliar visitors. Melville has done a thorough assessment of recent thought on sociality. His discourse on dinner table interaction is not only enlightening but is also offered seasoned with an adequate helping of humour. Diners would be pleased by his explication of what may be called Kant’s recipe for prandial enjoyment. His broad treatment of the meaning of hospitality, its failings and its successes, will be remembered by careful readers of the book. Some of the book’s salient features include the application of Coleridge’s comments to the mundane activities of home life in which people encounter rodent pests. Scholars will probably acknowledge their debt of gratitude to Melville for the painstaking effort he put into the composition of this book. His closing reference to the events of September 11, 2001, and their similarities to the principal theme provides readers with an appropriate epilogue.