La ‘Varietas’à la Renaissance : Actes de la journée d’étude organisée par l’École nationale des Chartes (Paris, 27 avril 2000) ed. by Dominique de Courcelles (review)

Abstract

MLR, 97.4, 2002 959 La 'Varietas'd la Renaissance: Actes de lajournee d'etude organiseepar I'Ecole nationale des Chartes (Paris, 27 avril 2000). Ed. by Dominique de Courcelles. (Etudes et rencontres de I'Ecole des Chartes, 9) Paris: Ecole des Chartes. 2001. 267 pp. 124.50 F; ?19. Of the ten essays in this volume, four are specifically concerned with texts in Latin (Raphaele Mouren on 'La varietas des philologues au xvie siecle: Entre varia lecta et variae lectiones', Jean-Marc Mandosio on Poliziano, Isabelle Diu and Alexandre Vanautgaerden on Erasmus's Adagia, Marie-Dominique Couzinet on Cardano and Bodin), three with Italian and/or Spanish writings (Giuseppe Grilli on Poggio and the Lazarillo, Paola Vassali on Equicola and Villalon, Dominique de Courcelles on John ofthe Cross's Cdntico espiritual), just one with French literature (Ulrich Langer on the (Euvres morales of Jean des Caurres, 1575), the other two being devoted to matters architectural (Yves Pauwels on ' Varietas et ordo en architecture: Lecture de l'antique et rhetorique de la creation') or musical (Frank Dobbins on 'La variete dans la musique de la Renaissance'). Although the collection suffers from defects common in this type of volume (no bibliography and no index), it manifestly reflects, by its very disparate nature, the theme that it develops: 'la notion de varietas apparait comme un principe majeur des formes de pensee, d'ecriture et de vie qui prevaudront jusqu'a l'age classique, comme l'ordonnateur de toute la culture humaniste' (p. 3). The concept is especially familiar to us through its relationship with the notions oivariatio, imitatio, and copia and other forms of creative transformation (as recently described, forexample, by Michel Jeanneret in his Perpetuum mobile: Metamorphoses des corps et des oeuvresde Vinci a Montaigne (Paris: Macula, 1997; see MLR, 94 (1999), 529-30), and carries within itsimilar tensions. The pursuit of'variety' is certainly an attempt to imitate nature and successful imitation therefore reflectsan overarching (but hidden) order, but this is achieved through processes of disorder at work both in formal expression and in the individualpursuing it('et lejugeant et le juge sont en continuelle mutation et branle', as Montaigne tells us). One ofthe most stimulating and suggestive items is that of Mouren (pp. 5-31) on the philologists' varietas as variant reading and their collections of variae lectiones (called thus by Muret, for example, but also annotationes, miscellanea, and later adversaria) which in themselves lead nowhere, but can ultimately serve as repositories to be exploited by others. For his part, Langer signals the prevalence of the notion of variety in later sixteenth-century moral works (Horace's famous bee image crops up most appositely here) before discussing the 'banquet de savoir heterogene' (p. 129) to which we are invited by Des Caurres. Specialists in the differentdisciplines we associate with 'Renaissance studies', 'qui ca, qui la, voletans a leur aise', will all find something of interest in this volume. University of Wales, Lampeter T. Peach Poetique de la Renaissance: Le Modele italien, le monde franco-bourguignon et leur heritage enFrance au XVle siecle. Ed. by Perrine Galand-Hallyn and Fernand Hallyn. Preface by Terence Cave. (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 348) Geneve: Droz. 2001. xvii +786 pp. 120 SwF. This is a work conceived on the grand scale, with the aim of throwing light on the evolution over two centuries of French Renaissance poetic theory from its classical, ltalian, and medieval French origins. It proceeds by studyingprimarily the successive formulations of theorists with differingperspectives, and secondarily ideas on poet? ics expressed in poetry itself. The editors have assembled an international team of fifteenscholars, from America as well as Europe, whose combined expertise enables ...