The Sources of Grévin's Ideas on Comedy and Tragedy

Abstract

IT HAS long been known that the late Latin grammarians, Diomedes and Donatus, provided literary theorists of the early French Renaissance with many of their ideas on the literary genres, especially comedy and tragedy. Gustave Lanson pointed out the extent of this indebtedness in the first half of the sixteenth century in his L'Idee de la trag&die en France avant Jodelle.' Nor is it any secret that throughout the century, in spite of the discovery of Aristotle's Poetics about mid-century, these grammarians, together with Horace, continued to supply the basis for theorizing on drama. What has not been studied in detail is the way in which these texts were used, the kinds of things which they continued to contribute to poetic theory, and how they were combined with ideas from Aristotle, once the latter came into play. As a step in this study of ideas, I propose to analyze here the sources of Jacques Grevin's Brief discours pour l'intelligence de ce theatre, which accompanied his Th6dtre in its first edition of 1561.2 The short text of Grevin presents several advantages for a study of this kind. In point of time it follows some of the major critical treatises of the century-Fabri, Sebillet, Du Bellay, Peletier-in two of wh ch, at least, both the comic and the tragic genres had been discussed. But, whereas no reflection of Aristotle's theo-