Jacques Delaunay et les moines poètes Dampierre et Marconville dans les Epigrammata

Abstract

In his little-known 1539 collection of epigrams, Jacques Delaunay (Jacobus Alnetus), a physician and canon of Saint-Étienne de Troyes, includes two important, and hitherto unnoticed, poetic exchanges between the monastic humanist poets Jean Dampierre and Nicolas de Marconville and himself. After a brief presentation of these two figures, the present article examines the principal themes and literary techniques characteristic of the poems that comprise the two poetic “correspondences” with Delaunay. Examination of these two separate sequences reveals several common, unifying themes. The relative (perceived) impoverishment of their poetic invention, and the deep anguish that it generates, constitutes a recurring motif, and a veritable preoccupation, for these poets, all of whom speak of the challenges posed by duties that distract them from cultivating the muse. Their collective meditation on these themes quietly elaborates a defense of the dignity of minor poetic genres such as the epigram in hendecasyllables or elegiac distichs, insofar as these genres often give voice to relations of friendship, love, and Christian solidarity.