French Renaissance Literature Research Articles

Margaret as a Reader of French Renaissance Literature

Margaret as a Reader of French Renaissance Literature

Thomas Kyd's The Householder's Philosophy and Cristoforo Landino's Comento sopra la Comedia di Dante

Thomas Kyd's The Householder's Philosophy (1588) is a translation of Torquato Tasso's Il padre di famiglia (1582). While translating Tasso's text, Kyd made some sizeable additions to it, which would appear to spell out his stance on a series of issues. In particular, Kyd significantly expands Tasso's discussion on usury. Kyd's take on usury can be divided into two sections: first, a fiery invective followed by a quotation from Dante; second, a less heated denunciation based on a rational argument summarizing Aristotle's take on the matter. While the former seems to be Kyd's own invention, as scholars have previously suggested, no one has ever pointed out that the latter is in fact plagiarized from another Italian text, namely Cristoforo Landino's Comento sopra la Comedia di Dante (1481). Among other reasons, this discovery seems especially interesting because it adds another piece to the patchy mosaic of Kyd's intellectual life. As it happens, Kyd's decision to insert elements from such an encyclopedically comprehensive humanist text of literary criticism as Landino's Comento into a philosophical tract imbued with humanist notions concerning society, the family, astrology, philosophy, and cosmography seems further to connect Kyd with the continental intellectual milieu. The latter thus appears to have caught Kyd's interest even beyond his well-known penchant for neo-Senecan drama and French Renaissance literature.

Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance

Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance

Review of J. O’Brien and Malcolm Quainton (eds.), "Distant Voices Still Heard. Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature"

Review of J. O’Brien and Malcolm Quainton (eds.), "Distant Voices Still Heard. Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature"

The Study of Sixteenth-Century French Literature in North America

Seven scholars active in the field of French Renaissance literature present in this article their assessment of research in the discipline today, focusing on monographs by scholars working in North America and published during the past five years: ToddW. Reeser writes on Rabelais, Colette H.Winn on early modern French women writers, François Rouget on poetry, David P. Laguardia on prose (registres-journaux, mémoires, récits, contes, nouvelles), Kathleen P. Long on the literature of theWars of Religion, George Hoffmann on Montaigne, and Cathy Yandell on the themes and problems that currently dominate literary and pluridisciplinary studies of sixteenthcentury France.

Gerard agonistes

A praise of Gerard Defaux, an expert in French Renaissance literature, this opening essay starts by pointing out the main achievements of Defaux as a specialist in Rabelais, Clement Marot, Maurice Sceve and Montaigne. It then pays hommage to Defaux as a fighter, a scholar who committed himself passionately to the defense of his ideas, notably the Christian dimension of Humanism and the rejection of deconstructionist theories.

Gerard agonistes

A praise of Gerard Defaux, an expert in French Renaissance literature, this opening essay starts by pointing out the main achievements of Defaux as a specialist in Rabelais, Clement Marot, Maurice Sceve and Montaigne. It then pays hommage to Defaux as a fighter, a scholar who committed himself passionately to the defense of his ideas, notably the Christian dimension of Humanism and the rejection of deconstructionist theories.

Distant Voices Still Heard: Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature

Distant Voices Still Heard: Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature

Distant Voices Still Heard: Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature by John O'Brien, Malcolm Quainton

456 Reviews dominant culture while none the less seeing and perhaps even revelling in its inter? nal tensions, paradoxes, and absurdities. Minnis points out that a paradox central to medieval education, in which Ovidian love poetry played a prominent role, was that boys were simultaneously taught to desire and to shun women. Jean de Meun, as he sees it, exploits these tensions with a characteristic 'donnish humour' that promotes the heterosexual mastery of women as essential to the definition of male subjectivity. The book sheds much light on the reception of this very important text and on late medieval literary practices in general. It will be welcomed by students and scholars alike. Pembroke College, Cambridge Sylvia Huot Distant Voices Still Heard: Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature. Ed. by John O'Brien and Malcolm Quainton. Liverpool: Liverpool Univer? sity Press. 2000. viii + 232 pp. ?32 (pbk ?11.95). ISBN 0-85323-785-9 (pbk 0-85323-795-6). To provide a selection of interpretative essays, grouped in pairs, on Renaissance texts in prose and in verse, from the perspective of contemporary literary theory, is a bold undertaking. Aimed at the final-year undergraduate and early graduate levels, the collection seeks to give the 'maturing reader' an introduction to theoretical methodologies and their interpretative applications. In a substantial introduction, John O'Brien examines and provides essential background for the theories to be illustrated. He does not fall into the trap of going into too much detail about the underlying principles or of using more than necessary the esoteric vocabulary of criticism. In fact,his chapter shows a masterly command ofthe topic and his ability to make a valid and convincing case forthe study and use of liter? ary theory. As he concludes: 'It is precisely these encounters between two historical moments (now and then) and two historical modes (literature and exegesis) that repre? sent, forus in our time, the testing time of theory' (p. 44). Using literary theory must not be seen as belonging to the chosen few,but a way of gaining furtherinsight into the enjoymentof reading. Perhaps, in many ways, literarytheory isjust an 'accepted front' forreading texts according to the preoccupations of the present. This is what we may end up doing usually, but not in that methodological way capable of revealing so much richness and interest in texts which often seem off-puttingand difficult,not only be? cause of the language barrier, but also because of the abundance of historical cultural referents. Methods, however, as Michel Jeanneret reminds us, have their limits, and while we 'recognise their necessity', we should also 'refuse their hegemony' (p. 82). Francois Rigolot and Michel Jeanneret look at Rabelais from the structuralist and literal 'sign' perspective. Here, and constantly throughout this volume, there is a conscious awareness ofthe so-called 'historical method', and both these contributions reveal a new facet ofpleasure to be derived fromthe Rabelais experience. Ann Rosalind Jones and Carla Freccero develop what they see as feminist elements in Louise Labe's poetry; Floyd Gray and Nancy Frelick, in their studies of L'Heptameron, explore the role of author/narrator, reading/writing, and reader integration; Malcolm Quainton and Thomas Greene look at two Ronsard poems, the former dwelling on the effectof Ronsard's 'rewritings' and the latter, on Ronsard's art of orchestration; finally,Ann Moss and Lawrence D. Kritzman east a critical eye at Montaigne?Moss interprets the 'contemporary reading' ofthe title as a way of lookingat how Montaigne may have appeared to his contemporaries familiar with common-place books, whereas Kritzman MLR, 98.2, 2003 457 deals with questions of narrative and subjectivity. It was with interest and profitthat I read all the contributions. It is a book which has realized its objectives and more. Grasse Keith Cameron Etudes Rabelaisiennes, Vol. xxxix. Geneva: Droz. 2000. 175 pp. ISBN 2-60000478 -5 This latest volume contains nine lengthy articles, all of a very high calibre, the majority of which referto two broad areas of investigation. First of all come the monsters, animal, human, and linguistic. Francois Rigolotsets the tone with an important piece that begins with an investigation of the unnatural qualities of Quaresmeprenant, the monstrous Physetere and Andouilles, but...

Review: Distant Voices Still Heard: Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature

1University of Bristol Distant Voices Still Heard: Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature John O'Brien Malcolm Quainton Liverpool University Press 2000 viii + 232 Hardback£32.00 Paperback£11.95

Distant voices still heard: contemporary readings of French Renaissance literature

Distant voices still heard: contemporary readings of French Renaissance literature

:Enter Rabelais, Laughing

Francois Rabelais (1483?-1553) is a difficult and often misunderstood author, whose reputation for coarse Rabelaisian jesting and Gargantuan indulgence in food, drink, and sex is highly misleading. He was in fact a committed humanist who expressed strong views on religion, good government, education, and much more through the mock-heroic adventures of his giants. While most books about Rabelais have relatively little to say about his comedic genius, Enter Rabelais, Laughing analyses the many sides of Rabelais's humor, focusing on why his writing was so hilariously funny to sixteenth-century readers. On a broad level, Enter Rabelais, Laughing serves as an introduction to French Renaissance literature and exhibits a lucid writing style, free of jargon. To Rabelais scholars in particular it offers a thorough and innovative analysis that corrects misconceptions and questions commonly held views.

Preface to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne by his Adoptive Daughter, Marie Le Jars de Gournay by Richard Hillman, Colette Quesnel

REVIEWS that the aids to readers be as complete as possible. The book is 1043 pages long, and I suspect that the Press would have been extremely reluctant to let it grow any further. It is a shame (although perhaps peculiarly appropriate!) if the exigencies of production have been allowed to affect the usefulness of this superb volume. But the negative is, in the grand scheme of this grand history, a small thing. David Wallace and his contributors are to be congratulated on a monumental achievement. SIÂN ECHARD / University of B ritish Columbia Preface to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne by his Adoptive Daughter, Marie Le Jars de Gournay. Translated, with Supple­ mentary Annotation, by Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel. Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998. Voi. 193. 199. $18. Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel provide for the first time the English translation of Marie de Gournay’s “Preface” to her initial edition of Montaigne’s Essais (edition of 1595). This “Preface” is crucial to the understanding of how Montaigne was received at the end of the Renaissance as well as to under­ standing the literary ideas of Gournay on her own work. Until recently, not very much credit was given to Gournay in her role of defending and promoting Montaigne’s legacy. Olivier Mil­ let in his book La Première réception des Essais de Montaigne (1580-1640) (1995) and the proceedings of several conferences held on Gournay (Marie de Gournay et l’édition de 1595 des Es­ sais de Montaigne [1996], and Montaigne et Marie de Gournay, Actes du colloque international de Duke [1995], [1997]) paid a legitimate tribute to this female writer known as one of the first feminists in French history. All these collections of essays, however, undoubtedly owe a debt to François Rigolot’s major study reproducing Gournay’s “Preface” in French and including abundant annotation. This work was published in 1989. In fact, Hillman and Quesnel reproduce Rigolot’s critical edition with their English translation on the opposite pages. The translators successfully provide a precise and elegant trans497 ESC 26, 2000 lation, which could not have been an easy task considering the specific rhetorical and often metaphorical qualities of Gournay’s prose. Although their critical annotation of the “Preface” is primarily based on Rigolot’s scholarship, it often gives signifi­ cant additional information to the reader. For example, taking into account the needs of their readers (mainly graduate stu­ dents and scholars familiar with, but not specialists in, French Renaissance literature), Hillman and Quesnel provide explana­ tions pertaining to the language, the time, and the personality of Gournay (cf. 25, 33). Sometimes, the translators add a much more detailed explanation of an allusion than in Rigolot’s edi­ tion (cf. 39: Timon of Athens/Socrates). Of course, scholarship and philological work on texts are never definitive. Another intertextual reference or literary source might be suggested to our colleagues here. When we read: “Un esprit sage se commet et remet à plusieurs, et se fie de peu de personnes” [A wise mind commits itself to, and consults with, a number and has confi­ dence in few] (66-67), we are inevitably reminded of a similar thought of Montaigne’s when he recommends that “il se faut prester à autrui et ne se donner qu’à soy-mesme” (Essais, III.10, “De ménager sa volonté”). The introduction (1-17) written by Hillman puts the “Pref­ ace” into its historical context and emphasizes its polemical and theoretical aspects. Readers will adequately understand the im­ portance of Gournay’s role in the reception of the Essais and in women’s attempts to reach literary respect and autonomy. The bibliography (105-09) provides the main critical elements produced on the subject. Two elements could be added: the proceedings of the conference at Duke quoted above (although the authors indicate the English version of these proceedings in the Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 25, 1995), and Editer les Essais de Montaigne, Actes du colloque de Paris IV (1997). Despite a few typographical errors (read “Preface à ... ,” Table of Contents; “Élyane,” p. 2, n. 2; “wished her to do so,” not “her do to so,” p. 12...

Building Resemblance: Analogical Imagery in the Early French Renaissance

'Resemblance', as featured in allegorical, analogical, and other figurative modes of expression, is often considered to be at the heart of discourse and understanding in the sixteenth century. Although this is undoubtedly true in Marsilio Ficino's Neoplatonism or Henry Cornelius Agrippa's occult philosophy, Michael Randall notes that 'difference' also shows itself as an important element in many literary works of the early French Renaissance. In 'Building Resemblance', Randall examines the complex development of analogical imagery linking the imperfect human to the perfect divine in the poetry and prose of Jean Molinet and Jean Lemaire de Belges, two official historiographers working at the court of Burgundy, and in the novels of Francois Rabelais. In many of these texts, human beings understand their world not only through its resemblance to an invisible ideal but also through empirical analysis of contingent phenomena. Randall identifies a movement from Molinet's works featuring a conflicted relationship of resemblance and difference to Lemaire's, in which resemblance flourishes, and finally to Rabelais's 'Quart Livre', in which the principle of difference triumphs. All of these works, he argues, bear witness to the struggle between the paradigm of resemblance and that of difference, which would come to characterize the discourse of the modern era. In its use of noncanonical authors such as Molinet and Lemaire and in its contextualization of these authors in the works of other little-known writers, 'Building Resemblance' offers a compelling new portrait of French Renaissance literature.

The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing (review)

416Philosophy and Literature critics of any persuasion is her sensitivity to the literary text and how it shapes the specific appearance of the archetype. Knapp is particularly adept at showing how certain objects and settings create images or visualizations of exile and indeed of the "inner geography" of the human psyche; striking examples include the labyrinthian prison in The House of the Dead, the anthill in Recollections of Things to Come, and the ruined tramway in That Time. Most convincing, perhaps, are those chapters where Knapp uses linguistic analysis to show how a given word or name can resonate simultaneously on all levels—the individual, the cultural, and the mythical—to wrest the archetype from the recesses of the unconscious and objectify it within the text; memorable instances are found in her brilliant essays on Conrad, Agnon, and Beckett. The reader ofPhilosophy and Literature will be particularly rewarded by Knapp's continuous examining of the very bases of her approach, the allusions to western philosophers from Heraclitus to Hegel, the discussion of time in Garro and Beckett, and the exposition of oriental philosophies in Kawabata and Cheng. Few critics can match either the breadth of Knapp's cultural background, which enables her to seize the most slippery of allusions, or her sensitivity to the human dimensions of the archetypes and works she explores. Any reader will be enriched by the experience of reading Exile and the Writer. The conclusion she derives from the ten fictional works may well be applied to her illuminating critical study of them: "By evaluating the meanings of their reactions to the creative work, readers in certain cases also clarify their own chaotic feelings, thoughts, and impulses. When critical faculties are called into play during and following the completion of a novel, short story, or play, a better understanding of the problems and pleasures of others may emerge" (p. 236). University of Wisconsin-MadisonWilliam J. Berg The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing, by Tom Conley; xi & 226 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, $54.95. Conley's dense but readable study analyzes the importance of typographical shapes in French Renaissance literature in the context of psychoanalysis and the history of the printed word. It begins with a theoretical chapter that explains how printed characters can convey sense and confusion at the same time, can either support or betray what they appear to articulate, and can thereby be aligned with modern notions of the unconscious which Renaissance artists do not place in the depths of the psyche but rather on the surface of things. Reviews417 The first two chapters treat Marot and Rabelais. In "A Secret Space: Marot's Rondeaux," the author traces the inner itinerary of the poet, underscoring verbal and plastic representations as well as the dialogical nature of the verse. Much of this has to do with the nature of the rondeau itself and the poet's signature within his writing. Conley also charts "the graphics of [the poet's] psychomachia" (p. 31) and, through the visual dimension ofhis poetry, Marot's mute subversion of the orthodoxy he appears to defend at a time when poets could have paid for their license with death. "The Rabelaisian Hieroglyph" portrays the deep links between the growth of typography and Rabelais's work where we find hermetic dimensions, a Utopian dream of "living writing" and, in revisions made after the heresy trials of 1534, the politics of the hieroglyphic style of Gargantua's preface. With Ronsard we move from the rondeau to the sonnet and from the margins of French political life to its center where this prince of poets appears to underwrite the king at the same time that he transforms the status of poetry. Conley devotes two chapters to Ronsard, depicting his printed sonnets as both discourse and picture and showing how they share the visual innovations of the earlier marginal writings of Marot and Rabelais. Once again, Conley reveals an unconscious rhetoric whose graphic and textual nature allows meaning to emerge in ways that speech cannot control. Verbal expression metamorphoses into pictural movement that often transgresses the laws of the poet's own constitution. Each sonnet becomes an allegory of its own production...

Mirroring Belief: Marguerite de Navarre's Devotional Poetry

Offering new readings of Marguerite de Navarre's verse works by situating them within their contemporary religious and literary context, this work reviews theological and mystical writings, but pays particular attention to the devotional writing which flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries and which is virtually unknown today. Four theological issues central to the Reformation are discussed: the nature of justification; the role of the Church and the sacraments; the problem of faith and works; and the question of the Bible and its interpretation. Examining the religious structures and language that inform de Navarre's poems and plays, Ferguson draws conclusions regarding the author's religious beliefs as they are mirrored in her poetry. This text should be of interest to students of French Renaissance literature.

The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature

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The Law of Non-Contradiction and French Renaissance Literature: Skepticism and Negative Theology

writers to place a high value on their work; this evaluation proceeds from their sense of confidence and from their critical judgment. Sometimes, however, and increasingly so during the century, criticism tends to supersede confidence, writers' irony turns bitter, and the voices of textual polyphony become more and more discordant. I will investigate this negative tendency in French Renaissance literature by examining the impact of negative theology on Montaigne's skepticism. By reading some of the decisive fragments of the Apologie de Raimond Sebond in the light of the tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, I will situate Montaigne within an intellectual legacy which manifests itself in the writings of French Evangelicals and which seems to provide the metaphysical framework for the essay.2 This metaphysics, characterized by a radical opposition between Nothing and the Totality of Being, reveals the profound negativity of the Apologie: Montaigne's essay can be then understood not only as a starting point of a more modem epistemology, but also as an outcome of an ontology produced by the deep gap separating man from transcendence. The law of non-contradiction will guide me in this investigation. The motto for this study will be the last verses of the Prisons by Marguerite de Navarre, the writer probably most inspired by Dionysian theology in the French Renaissance.3 The narrator addresses the Nothingness of the human soul, finally freed from the hindrance of cuider and dissolved in divine Totality:

The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature

The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature

Review. The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature. MacPhail, Eric

Review. The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature. MacPhail, Eric