"Adieu vieille forest . . .": Myth, Melancholia, and Ronsard's Family Trees

Abstract

This essay explores two nature poems by the French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard, each of which articulates a symbolics of loss through ancient tales of tree-cutting and deforestation. In "Elegie XXIIII" the poet laments the selling of his native Foret de Gastine by appropriating Ovid's fable of Erysichthon, the king whose greed led him to devour his own body. In "Le Pin," Ronsard weaves into his own personal history the Ovidian tale of Attis, a mythical figure of transgression and castration who was metamorphosed into a pine tree by the goddess Cybele. This essay will argue that yet another mythological figure, Cronos, the Golden Age god who devoured his children and castrated his father, serves as the master myth behind the transformative discourse of both poems. As the allegorical Temps Devorateur, Cronos confronts the poet with his own mortality, creating a metonymic relationship between natural bodies and the body of the writer's text. In both poems, Ronsard's poetics of incorporation and transformation is fraught with contradiction, since the incorporation of rival political and literary figures at once diminishes and strengthens their power over the writing subject.