Philosophical fictions and the French Renaissance (review)

Abstract

216 Reviews Kenny, Neil, ed., Philosophicalfictionsand the French Renaissance (Warburg Institute surveys and texts, No. 19), London, Warburg Institute, 1991, paper, pp. 137; 8 plates; R.R.P. £10. The ten essays which compromise this collection deal with aspects of the relationship between philosophy andfictionin writings in the French vernacular in the sixteenth century. Philosophy in this context is taken to embrace all investigations into human and natural phenomena, allowing that attention is restricted to inquiries infictionalform in contrast to the systematic investigation of phenomena characteristic of Aristotelian phdosophy, which was in any case normally pursued in Latin. While the broad sweep of philosophy as fiction in this period runs across most areas of philosophy, there is a particular emphasis on neoplatonist themes, and especially on alchemy and other forms of hermetic inquiry as ways to hidden truth and secret wisdom. The association of phdosophy andfictionwas not, of course an invention of the Renaissance, being as old as philosophy itself and as fully developed in some of Plato's dialogues as human genius is ever likely to achieve. More directly, Renaissance practice grew out of the medieval love of allegory and the conviction that myth and fable could be proper vehicles of philosophical truth. Ann Moss brings out this connection very clearly in her essay 'Fabulous narrations in the Concorde des deux languages of Jean Lemaire des Beiges'. This is an essay of considerable interest since Lemaire presents a mythological story of a journey to the Temples of Venus and Minerva precisely as a vehicle for considering the reception of the Italian Renaissance in France and exploring the possibility of harmony between different cultures and moral visions. Lemaire was attracted by both the platonist and neoplatonist theme of the unity of all forms of beauty and troubled by the idea of inevitable conflict between its 'higher' and 'lower' forms. Neoplatonist and platonist ideas also figure in Philip Ford's paper 'Neoplatonicfictionsin the Hymnes of Ronsard', on this occasion in the domain of cosmology. Ronsard, it is generally considered, subscribedtoa fundamentally Aristotelian view of the universe. Ford examines Les TV Saisons de Van (1563) and argues, without a great deal of conviction, that there are traces of neoplatonism in Ronsard's images which suggest that he was drawn to a more mystical conception of the cosmos than was provided by Aristotle. For discussion of a writer who was unambiguously anti-Aristotelian, one should turn to Michel Jeanneret's essay on Giordano Bruno's La cena de la ceneri (The Ash Wednesday supper, 1584): 'La Tete et l'estomac: Giordano Bruno, les banquets et le detournement de la philosophic'. Bruno's concern, in this wild suppersymposium dialogue composed during his London sojourn, was to defend his version of Copernican theory, which was essentially hermetic and non- Reviews 217 mathematical, against the Aristotelian pedants of Oxford. Jeanneret provides a lively guide to the literary and philosophical character of the dialogue, but his reading, which wdl appeal to post-modernists, exaggerates Bruno's success in elaborating a new epistemology or changing the course of philosophy. In an informative essay 'The philosophical phoenix', Richard Cooper explores the extensive imagery associated with 'the bird of wonder' in the Renaissance period with particular reference to French and Itatian poetry. The discussion ranges across the image of the phoenix in love poetry, its role as symbol of virtue in the moral order, of continuity in the social and political order, of rebirth, eternity, Christ the soul and martyrdom in the religious domain, and finally its association with science and medicine, and specifically with alchemy and the idea of its embodiment of everything longed for in the quest for the philosophers' stone. Cosmography had a special place in the Renaissance, with its burgeoning desire for a new understanding of the cosmos. In the concluding essay of the collection, entided 'Fictions cosmographiques a la Renaissance', Frank Lestringant examines two cosmographies in the sphere of mid-sixteenth century religious controversy. One is the 'Geographie infernale' (1552), developed by an early Calvinist theologian Piene Viret which can be set against the picture of underworld favoured by Dante and medieval Catholicism. The second example, also Calvinist and even more combative in character, is...