Clément Marot and the Inflections of Poetic Voice [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520322097

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Clement Marot and the Inflections of Poetic Voice

Clement Marot and the Inflections of Poetic Voice ROBERT GRIFFIN

University of California Press BERKELEY

LOS ANGELES

*974

LONDON

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England ISBN: 0-520-03586-5 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-84394 Copyright © 1974 by The Regents of the University of California Printed in the United States of America

through evening colors Laura walks in mists whose arms reach to touch her smile

Contents

Introduction x PART ONE: FORM I:

Remembrance of Things Past II:

External Form

]J

26

III:

Internal Structure 49

IV:

Rhyme and Reason

89

PART TWO: R E F O R M V: VI:

Living Faith

117

The Past Recaptured

159

PART T H R E E : FORMLESSNESS VII: VIII:

Language: Between Past and Future

193

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique IX: X:

Point of View

245

The Art of Wit

262

Notes

279

Bibliography Index

317

307

225

Introduction

THE EVENTS that compose the life of Clément Marot have not wanted for energetic historians in this century. From Georges Guiffrey's dramatic tableau vivant, through the irenic discoveries of Philipp A. Becker, to the current painstaking studies of C. A. Mayer, myriad facts have been assembled and myths such as Marot's rumored liaison with Diane de Poitiers and his supposed participation in the Battle of Pavia have been permanently laid to rest.1 The chronicle of Marot's movements and actions is (more than) adequate, yet the life of the mind—the life that ought to interest us most—has not been fully charted. At times it defies final statement. As evidence that there are ways in which the many centers of Marot's mind forbid definitive judgment, one could cite three rigorously detailed and informed studies that have appeared in recent years on Marot's religious beliefs, and describe respectively a passively orthodox, a freethinking, and a bravely evangelical Marot. 2 Such wide divergence in considered critical evaluation of a fundamental issue is at first sight curious, but it is symptomatic of a complex and enigmatic problem whose importance derives from Marot's position at the chapter headings of literary histories. The one fact that biographical investigation has placed beyond question is Marot's stature as the foremost French poet of his time. Almost every move, for instance, of his quarrel with the troublesome and talentless François Sagon has now been reported, from the many principals involved to the meaning of the invectives exchanged; 8 when the air cleared after that pointless and drawn-out battle, Marot's primacy among peers was obvious to all. Still, our considerable knowledge about his life and about the esteem he enjoyed among his contemporaries is matched by our uncertainty about the man he really was and what his attitudes were toward the contentious issues of his time. The relationship between the true character of Marot the man ( 14961544) and the assumed poses of Marot the poet—whose work does not

2

Introduction

neatly coincide in date of publication with the chronology of its composition, and whose authentic poems do not greatly surpass in quantity or quality the apocryphal works attributed to him—must be approached with circumspection. Purely biographical information amassed by some critics in support of the person he made his poems seem to reveal would not concern this book, were it not that modern readers have tended to derive such vague traits as doux, profond, and triste sans larmes from his poetry and attribute them resolutely to his own personality. Personal habits have been imputed to him and judgment then passed on his moral character by reading psychological attitudes into physiological features as they appear in his several portraits, and relating these attitudes to certain verse fragments.4 Readers by and large have cared as much about the writer's life as about the poetry he wrote. Of equal importance is the fact that internally consistent biographies have been extrapolated from the tangle of his publications. Like a shield of Perseus, the biographical reflection has been turned back on the work as an instrument for evaluating its sincerity or authenticity and for casting it into preformed critical conceptions. T h e vicious circularity of such arguments is evident. Whether we view him as the articulate creator who self-consciously fashions his own image or as the mute witness withdrawn behind his characters, it is therefore important to isolate the role of the poet in his poetry, and to know how creator and creation become enmeshed. The problem is both more intriguing and compounded because critical opinion has made Marot's case anomalous in its time and, not without justification, has deprived us of analogies against which his own case might be more easily measured. The legend of Villon the poète maudit grew and thrived quite apart from any careful scrutiny of the Testament. In the poetry of the Grands Rhétoriqueurs the narrator's voice is generally as uncaptivating to the modern sensibility as their poetry, or in the case of Pierre Gringore, "ce brave Gringoire," has been mythologized by Victor Hugo vastly out of proportion to his poetic merit. Among the Pléiade poets, Ronsard's most significant autobiographical statements in the "Hymnes des saisons" are obfuscated by allegorical personae, while D u Bellay casually dismisses any biographical import to L'Olive, "soit ce nom / D'Olive veritable ou non." 5 More than any poet of the preceding or following generation, the bond between life and literature in Marot has been made to appear smooth and seamless or else the two have been hopelessly confused. This book will examine the artistic ways in which Marot's presence

Introduction

3

is felt in varying degrees in all the poetic genres he undertook. In particular, it will be concerned from the outset with the critical areas that have led otherwise competent critics to perceive several Clément Marots inhabiting the same poem: the particular use he made of poetic conventions available to him, his attitudes toward the techniques of poetry which he inherited from the Rhétoriqueurs, and the ways in which he shaped both to his own needs and affixed his own signature. In view of the critical dédoublement

that alternately speaks of his late medieval

outlook and accords him a place of honor on the threshold of the French Renaissance, extensive consideration will be given to the meaning and implications of his traditionalism, not just to what he says about the new freedom but (and this qualification often sets apart two different phenomena) to how the new learning gives coherence to his life's work. As a complement to the imprint of the past, then, this book must also take note of the two intellectual milieus of his time, "Des gens de court & gens d'eglise," which both limit and expand his poetic voice and invariably condition his use of language. Much attention will be paid throughout to the various uses and understandings of poetic form and to the variety of stylistic devices Marot used to clarify and obscure his participation in these milieus. It is a commonplace of literary studies that the apprehension of form and style is one way of coming to an appreciation of thought; that the turns and rhymes of a ballade or sonnet are an indication of the thought and experience of the poem, and that indeed it is possible that form and style are the only vehicles of meaning in some (or all) cases. The fluidity with which Marot moved among the various genres he undertook prevents us from considering different poetic forms as individually separate stages in the creative evolution. Hence the three-part division of this book, dealing with Marot's transformation of medieval themes and forms and his manipulation of language; his reaction to and action upon the main currents of Renaissance ideas; and his uniquely personal contribution to literary speech—a contribution that issues from the confluence of past and present and guarantees a permanent resonance to the qualities of his poetic voice.

Before broaching the special problems created by tensions between illusion and reality in Marot's text, a few words need to be said about the peculiar difficulties that arise not only from his participation in court circles but also from the published text itself, difficulties that beset—yet invite—serious study of Marot. T h e most immediate prob-

4

Introduction

lem confronting the reader of Marot is the authenticity and correctness of the text, a problem that varies from poem to poem and is a result both of his casual attitude toward proofreading and of publishing practices of his time. Pierre Villey and especially Mayer have set forth the enormous complexity of this question and, except briefly to say caveat lector in the next few pages, it need not preoccupy us at this juncture.6 Although the Gutenberg revolution was to alter the nature of European thought and literature, it did not immediately displace the prevailing tradition of circulating manuscripts whose scribes multiplied errors to the extent that their copies and copies of copies departed from the author's original manuscript. Since incunabular printers were often no more scrupulous about the validity of the manuscript they worked from, and since dating practices varied even between Lyons and Paris, the curious situation prevails where manuscripts are at times more reliable than printed texts. The resulting confusion did little to enable an author to establish an even reputation, let alone assure him his livelihood, nor did such shabby procedures in those days before inviolable copyrights protect him from overly ambitious printers. In the absence of enforced copyright, the man of letters was rewarded in far less measure than he is today. Although a writer normally received a small amount in advance from the printer to whom he submitted his manuscript, further royalties, if any, often depended on the personal relations between the two men. The most tangible rewards for writing came from reputation and a willingness to prostrate oneself, because from fame and fulsome praise came pensions, gifts, and benefices. Yet reputation was itself subject to the polemic temper of the times and to the carpings of literary mercenaries. Thomas Murner was offered more than twice as much for writing against Luther as Luther was offered by a Wittenberg printer for the per annum rights to his manuscripts. Much later Montaigne vainly labored to rectify La Boétie's reputation as the author of the Discours de la servitude volontaire long after its clandestine publication in Le Reveil-Matin des François. The more widespread an author's reputation, the more anonymous poems might be attributed to him and the more likely his work was to appear in unauthorized and incorrect versions. In 1540, for instance, when Marot's name alone assured a handsome profit for any first printing, the fresh translation of the Histoire de Leander et de Hero which he had passed to some friends ended in the hands of Gilles Corrozet, who published it the following January. Corrozet, who four years earlier had incorporated fragments of the Temple de Cupido into his own poetry, equated

Introduction

5

Marot's style with Vergil's and praised him as a paragon of morality— but he also secured a legal injunction against any others who might publish the same work within two years, including Marot himself (who nevertheless authorized a more correct version that same year). The question of most basic importance concerning any text of Marot, then, is whether he actually oversaw and corrected its publication and determined the format of his various collections. Proper understanding of his intent and achievement depends upon determining the classification and order of authentic poems, but all too often unwarranted editorial prerogative has been taken for the author's design. In a case of central importance like that of L'Enfer, we are on safe ground. Composed in 1526 and surreptitiously published in 1539 by J. Steels, it was again issued by Etienne Dolet in 1542 where it bears the trustworthy notice "Reveue et recongnue par l'autheur mesme." But editions that appeared in or after 1544 had an especially deforming influence, since Marot could no longer alter or disavow them. Except in cases where his personal friends apparently conveyed his real intentions, these spurious editions enlarged the corpus of attributed poems and imposed an arbitrary classification on the works. This deformation was initiated by the 1544 Constantin edition, whose editor interjected grammatical "corrections" in conformity with his understanding of propriety within the evolving nature of the French language. Editorial corrections are meaningless on a poem like "Le Balladin" since its abrupt ending and the words "ycy mourut" imply that it was Marot's last work and that the author's manuscript is unique; rich in aesthetic pronouncements and religious statement, its 1545 version would be of inestimable value in concluding on Marot's thought if it could be authenticated. In other instances, however, we possess both approved original and final versions of poems published during his lifetime which allow us to understand and measure the importance of his stylistic evolution. Aside from numerous poems published individually, the texts having the most useful and most authoritative value are the manuscript Marot gave to the Grand Master Anne de Montmorency and the 1538 edition published by Dolet and Gryphius in Lyons. When his text was not being plundered and falsified by unauthorized editorial patchwork or spurious accretions, it was modified late in his life by the poet himself for reasons dictated more by court protocol than aesthetic canons or the imperatives of religious faith. When in 1538 the militantly orthodox Anne de Montmorency was appointed Connétable de France, Marot presented to him a seventy-four page

6

Introduction

manuscript bound in red velvet. In the middle of the manuscript is a poem that had been sent to Renée de France at Ferrara two years earlier, from Marots' exile in Venice. In its original form the poem corresponds to the evangelical interests of the duchess of Ferrara and of Marot, whose exile, precisely, was occasioned by the aftermath of the Affaire des Placards. In that version Marot attacked Roman Catholic idolatry, but in the concluding verse of the shortened Montmorency version he implied that his flight stemmed "Des ennemys d'Apollo et des Muses" and not "Des ennemys de la belle Christine." The emendation would have told the powerful Grand Master that Marot's troubles involved an attack on his poetry instead of his defense of the evangelical reformation. Both versions show Marot's hand; their differences on matters of detail are fundamentally important and revolve around the court figure to whom they are addressed. From the time he initially encountered the court ambiance, Marot's choice of poetic form was imposed, or at least conditioned, by genres in vogue. Before his twentieth year he entered the service of his first protector, Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroy, and shortly afterward presented Le Temple de Cupido to the newly crowned François i e r . His muse may have been more meretricious than inspired, since his new benefactor's father was the royal treasurer; and the de luxe copy he offered the new king evidently delighted the latter, who promised that Clément would succeed Jean Marot as Valet de Chambre du Roi. He only gradually outgrew this influence and never fully escaped it. Thus the "Eglogue sur la naissance du filz de Monseigneur le Daulphin" composed in the last year of his life takes us back a full generation to his first literary venture, his translation of Vergil's first eclogue. The Pléiade passed excessively harsh judgments on such acquiescence to tradition and belittled Marot's true originality. My task in later chapters will therefore be to define and characterize Marot's personal contribution from out of the stock poetic materials that restrict a poet at court. Despite the impossibility of establishing an absolute chronology of artistic development, and although he never fully escaped from supplying pièces de circonstance, nothing is surer than his increasing awareness that poetic forms do not remain static and his evolving grasp of the resources of even socially stratified language—a grasp that allowed him to assert his literary personality. This is in no way an attempt to advance Marot as a Burkhardtian individual who stepped from the medieval shadows into the light of the Renaissance. Nor is it to support the cliché (although it is largely true) that without Marot's example

Introduction

7

the Pléiade would not have shown so brightly; their slow acceptance of Marot's talent notwithstanding, Ronsard did clear his own way as he passed from a reliance on literary models to his own personal vision, while Du Bellay himself outgrew the rigid confines of polemical generalizations as he surveyed the shattered ruins and experienced the degeneracy of ancient and modern Rome. A generation in advance of the Deffence et Illustration Marot's unique contribution was nevertheless essentially an experience with the nature and use of language. The fluidity of the man behind the pen, the confusion between what he said and what he meant, is, along with the problems outlined above, a linguistic phenomenon: this is the main theme of the present book. T h e evolution we are dealing with here is an expanding awareness of his ability to control poetic form, structure, theme, and their implications, to refine the resources of language, and to master the degree of his own appearance between the lines of verse. I wish to acknowledge and thank the Humanities Institute of the University of California and the American Philosophical Society for grants that enabled me to spend long hours in damp Italian and French libraries in order to ferret out the background material for this book. My special thanks go to my friend and colleague Henry W . Decker, who offered numerous helpful suggestions in the preparation of my manuscript and did all he could to save me from the inadequacies that remain.

I: REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST Osservate con diligenza le cose de' tempi passati: per che fanno lume a le future. FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI

Più consigli ed avvertimenti, C X X I I I

To

UNDERSTAND

the personal freedom with which Marot is supposed

to have infused Renaissance poetry, it is first necessary to suggest the constraints of prescribed models and themes from which his contribution grew. It is equally important to realize that his career did not postdate the Middle Ages but rather paralleled the waning of its influence. In his formative years he willingly and indiscriminately embraced both the faults and virtues of medieval tradition, ranging from its representation in figures who dominated the contemporary scene back through its deeper roots. Jean Meschinot's Lunettes

des princes (1493), to choose one exam-

ple from many others showing a manic concern for convoluted form, metrical complexity, and bombastic style, treats old ideas as if it thought they were new. A belaboring of the time-worn moral theme of the prince who views the book of the world through the twin optics of Justice and Prudence, it was reprinted at frequent intervals throughout Marot's life. Although they are memorable more as caricatures than exemplars of verbal mastery, the publication dates and fruitful years of writers like Meschinot and Guillaume Cretin placed them in the generation that dominated to the point of overwhelming the literary scene from Marot's birthdate into his formative years. Marot's first epigramme, whose generic name alone suggested an increased appreciation for the economy of classical form, was originally dedicated as a medieval huitain

to Cretin, the perpetrator of some of the most complicated

poetic language, form and rhyme configurations of the early sixteenth

12

Form

century. No bookish legacy, he had a firsthand acquaintance with Cretin who had judged the 1521 poetry competition at the Puy de la Conception and had awarded first prize to Jean Marot. Impressed by the younger poet, however, Cretin requested a copy of the chant-royal Clément had entered. If the episode tells us anything, it is that Marot's close connection with this and other quasi-literary societies like the Basoche and the "Enfants-sans-souci" remained a lasting presence in his verse. From the medieval genres that he continued, through the forms he modernized or initiated, his verse is sprinkled with terminology of the mime, peopled with the names of his confrères and moved by petition in their behalf. 1 For Marot, literary history was not only what he remembered having read but was also the continuation of the past in a present that altered its traditions and, in some cases, strengthened them. His early acquaintance with satirical drama of the late Middle Ages transcended specific reference to technical jargon and fostered the dramatic dimension we will find later in his most accomplished works. By regressing through the stages of literary history which were most significant for him—from Jean Marot through Lemaire and Villon to the Roman de la Rose—we can appreciate the ways in which the present in Marot's case is but the survival of a transformed past. Marot's own history, and the vocation of his father which was to be his own, placed him early in an environment where lavish and studied praise was heaped on powerful figures at court. Jean Marot's vacuous works could hardly have exerted a profound influence on his son in the sense of giving lasting intellectual depth to his celebrations of court figures or lyrical inflection to his sorrow at their passing. But it was pervasive in the sense of furnishing countless examples of stock treatment of themes. Clément's indirect address to Francis I in the "Déploration de Florimond Robertet" ("Françoys, franc roy de France et des François,/Tu le fuz . . ." w . 189-190) resembles more than it differs from Jean's "O François franc! monstre cy ton franc cueur / Voulant pitié préférer à rigueur." No fanciful word game, by enumerating in this order the name, character, nationality, and deeds of their subject, father and son alike adhere, knowingly or not, to the convention for personal encomium as laid down by the earliest poetic manuals that were to guide the Grands Rhétoriqueurs.2 Formal adherence to protocol in the "Déploration" is consistent with the encomium's pronouncement by Republique françoise to personified Death. The Latinate proper name and the archaic nouns that open a 1 5 1 7 ballade ( V I I ) claim a certain authenticity, "Quand Neptunus puissant Dieu de la

Remembrance of Things Past Mer, / Cessa d'armer Carraques & Gallées," but here the young Clément's poetic description bespeaks a limited acquaintance with the pantheon of antiquity and derives from a more recent source. Published ten years earlier in order to flatter the Italian expedition of Louis X I I in allegorical form, Jean Marot's Voyage de Genes is in essence a censure of worldly ambitions. In it, Neptune leads a tired parade of gods and accomplishes precisely the same plodding feats as he does in Clément's ballade.3 Such chronological details show how much Clément was of his time and reveal important limitations on his early sources, limitations from which he did not break even in more mature years. At the outset of he Temple de Cupido, to cite the earliest example, he conjures up Eros, Ce jeune enfant Cupido, Dieu d'aymer, Ses yeulx bandez commanda deffermer, Pour contempler de son Throsne celeste Tous les Amans qu'il attaint et moleste. (vv. 5-8) much as Jean Marot does in a rondeau, Car si Amour qui les cueurs faict pasmer, Vouloit ses yeulx aveuglez deffermer, Pour contempler sa trè-belle figure, . . . A few lines later he invokes the vision of the God of Love drawn from the Roman de la Rose, armed with the golden and leaden arrows that cause or extinguish love, but the image of blindfolded Cupid, so pronounced in the two passages cited, is a distinctly post-fourteenth-century accretion and does not occur in earlier medieval or classical sources.4 When some fifteen years later Marot reverts in his third elegy to the same stereotyped attributes and fears that "Amour ne prenne soing / De desbander ses deux aveuglez yeulx / Pour contempler les vostres gracieux" ( w . 56-58), he does so perhaps by recalling his father's similar imagery, just as he does near the beginning of the elegy (w. 1 3 - 1 4 ) where he integrates lines drawn from Jean's first rondeau. The elegies, which to the Renaissance eye came to represent a more modem, adaptable, and unified poem sequence ( D e f f e n c e et Illustration, II, 4), regularly continue themes developed by Jean Marot's rondeaux, an antiquated verse form Clément was beginning to abandon during the period of his elegiac muse which extended roughly from 1525 to 1534. Elegies III, V , X , XIII, and XVII refine the courtly question of a gentleman's

14

Form

proper conduct and his worthiness to receive his lover's graces, which Jean Marot had treated with the wordiness and gross metaphors characteristic of late medieval moralités. This is not to imply that the progress of Clément's refinement was smooth, or that he clearly foresaw the inevitable course of French letters. More than once his mature muse bogged down in the linguistic accidents that fascinated earlier Rhétoriqueurs. In the first eclogue, unable to resist parading the cities that mourned the death of Louise de Savoie, regent of France—"Anjou faict jou, Angolesme est de mesme, / Amboyse en boyt une amertume extreme" (vv. 160-161)'—he surpassed in triviality the traditional but more sensible motif with which his father closes the "Epistre des dames de Paris aux courtisans de France" : "Paris pleure, & Tours a destresse, / Bloys languist, Amboise ne cesse . . . " 5 Yet when the apprentice poet does venture beyond the bounds of his model, the rationale for his expansiveness is often more instructive than the extent of his innovation. In the Voyage de Venise, whose spiritual dimension does not surpass an occasionally proffered homily, Jean Marot described the auroral descent of Peace after the smoke and fulminations of Mars. In the 1521 "Epître en prose" dedicated to Marguerite d'Angoulême, using identical vocabulary for the most part, Clément significantly altered Mars into "ceste impitoiable Serpente, la Guerre" and stipulated that by prayer "la tressacrée fille de Jesuchrist, nommée Paix, descendra trop plus luisante que le Soleil pour illuminer les regions Gallicques. Et lors sera vostre noble sang hors du dangier d'estre espandu sur les mortelles plaines," a reference to the Agnus Dei prayer said before Communion in the Roman Catholic Mass.6 Even details in a confident line like "L'heur d'Hannibal par la fatalle main . . . Feut destourné" from his comparison of the victory of Scipio Africanus to that of François de Bourbon over the forces of Charles V , indicate Clément's increasing concern up to 1544 with balance and brevity. These same qualities are lacking in Jean's laborious Quant Scipion le jeune enfant Rommain Eut fouldroyé par belliqueuse main Cartaginoys & Hannibal leur chef, Reduyt Cartaige à estresme meschef, of the "Epistre des dames de Paris, au roy françois" and in his clumsy compulsion to explain to the naïve reader that Hannibal, incidentally, is the Carthagenian leader.7 Clément's familiarity with his father's verse, then, seems to have

Remembrance of Things Past

l

5

exerted a fruitful influence on his development of poetic themes precisely in proportion as he diverged from it. Earlier sources, however, furnished him with more polished models of brevity and discretion and taught him to prune the tedious limbs of outward flourishes. As we will see presently, the example of the escape of Jean Lemaire de Belges from the florid language and prolixity of the Rhétoriqueurs served Marot well throughout his career in his mastery of poetic diction and structure, as Lemaire was later to serve Ronsard as an enthusiastic exemplar of humanistic learning. In his early years and beyond, Marot's catchword allusions to Lemaire de Belges long after his death indicate far more than a passing acquaintance with his work; they suggest that in all forms of poetry he held him as an unimpeachable standard of excellence. Following a Lemaire-inspired description of Venus's chariot at the beginning of "Le Second chant d'amour fugitif," Marot's succinct rhetorical question of why he should seek pleasure invested in "Venus, la Déesse, / Veu que en Pallas gist toute ma liesse?" (vv. 37-38) capsulizes the general movement of La Concorde des deux langues from its "Temple de Venus" to its "Temple de Minerve." The progression of Rondeau XVI dedicated to Estienne du Temple is contrived so as to become a play on his name and is obviously directed to the clarification "Je dy au Temple excellent de Minerve," at once a brief bow to Lemaire's famous temple and a full evaluative comment. In fact, a mere mention of his name in Epître XXVIII suffices as a measure of the addressee's talent. The passing and otherwise extraneous reference to Lemaire in the "Epître au Lieutenant Gontier" ( X X V I I I ) serves no other purpose than to lay the basis for this standard: "Quand tout est dit, les louanges données / De toy à moy doibvent estre ordonnées / . . . A Jan le Maire, ou au mesme Donneur [Gontier himself]." Such acknowledgment could in no way be self-interested, since Lemaire was long since dead by the poem's 1 5 3 1 - 1 5 3 2 composition. The point is not that the juxtaposition of names constitutes patent flattery, but rather that Marot selected the late poet as an instinctive reference point. The Rhétoriqueurs commonly heaped extravagant praise on their contemporaries as a means of receiving outlandish compliments in return. But in the respect Marot shows for the memory of Lemaire, it is less the freedom from self-interest than the way in which he activates that memory that separates him from the older poets. The influential Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troye on which Lemaire's reputation largely rested furnished themes and descriptions that could be transferred from poem to poem with appropriate modulations. This

Form

i6

is true even of episodes where the "Homère françoys" seems to have nodded. The important marriage of King Peleus with the sea nymph Thetis, where the goddess Eris introduced the contentious golden apple, marks the fall of primordial harmony before discord in Homeric legend. In Lemaire's bounteous description of the wedding feast, in which dozens of floral genera and species are indiscriminately enumerated for the reader, chaos seems already to have set in. In the Temple de Cupido Marot prunes Lemaire's garden, reducing the wandering list by two-thirds, and between its first publication around 1 5 1 5 to the 1538 edition he shuffled flowers from verse to verse. The changes are not effected to enrich or complicate the rhyme, since the rhyme scheme remains the same in each instance, but rather respond to the necessity, given the subject, of describing the Temple's edenic setting. Nor was Marot's acquaintance with the passage a one-time affair of an inexperienced poet copying from an open text. The first eclogue's theme of arcadian innocence coincides with a rearrangement of the floral series in which the alliterative effect shuns the artificial single-mindedness of the Rhétoriqueurs; it is counterbalanced by color variety, and tempered by intervening lines : Rommarin vert, Roses en abondance, Jaulne Soulcie & Bassinetz dorez, Passeveloux de Pourpre colorez, Lavande franche, Oeilletz de couleur vive, Aubepins blancs, Aubefains azurez, Et toutes fleurs de grand beaulté nayve! The classic example of assimilation, however—and of the fallacy of biographical criticism—is undoubtedly the third eclogue, which earlier critics presumed to be an intimate remembrance of Marot's childhood long past. It has become fashionable to diminish his originality here by citing the numerous passages from the Illustrations de Gaule on which the accounts of his upbringing by Mother Nature and father Jean are actually based. But the (anachronistic) charge of insincerity might have some validity only if we gratuitously assume that the passages he selected did not reflect the reality of his youth, or if we overlook a more interesting possibility, that of a heightening of reality through judicious borrowing of poetic images. In any case, that Marot went to Lemaire de Belges to project scenes from childhood years under his father's tutelage is a commentary on the formative nature of that influence.

Remembrance of Things Past

»7

To recede farther into the medieval past, the equally formative example of François Villon left a different sort of imprint. In the case of Lemaire de Belges, Marot's filtering of a possibly lived experience through the stylized, classical articulation of his literary model was vivid enough to beguile some of his most astute readers into accepting the image for the event. In poems of traditional fixed forms Marot's efforts to imbed Villonesque fragments reproduce only a pale shadow of the original poignancy or else restate contrived complexities that were originally intended only as social amusements. The allegorical dialogue between Honte and "la jeune Dame qui a vieil Mary" of Rondeau VIII, while it corresponds aesthetically to some of the lesser fabliaux, lacks the knowing glance to the reader of the lively and subtle Testament X C V I I whose theme it reworks. Three rondeaux later, Marot's hypothetical legacy of soul, body, and heart abbreviates the sights and sounds of Villon: "Je donne aux vers mon Corps plein de foiblesse" ("Item, mon corps j'ordonne et laisse / A nostre grant mere la terre; / Les vers n'y trouveront grant gresse"—vv. 841-843). And the line beginning that stanza, "Auprès de l'eau me fault de soif périr" revives only the poetry contest at Blois where Villon dutifully fulfilled Charles d'Orléans's request to finish a poem on the theme "Je meurs de seuf auprès de la fontaine." Still, the concern in a refrain like "Autant en emporte ly vens" for the decay that claims all life and the nostalgia of man's proudly human yet uniquely mortal condition is the same concern we see in Marot's embroidered "Aultant ou plus en emporte le vent." 8 As we shall observe in later chapters, he found in Villon a conversational use of language which conveyed to the reader a natural acceptance of human frailty, and a sense of irony that made that acceptance possible. Whether by design or by chance, his observation "que les Roys / De nouveau mis en leurs nobles arroys, / Mettent dehors, en pleine délivrance, / Les Prisonniers vivans en esperance" and his appeal to the Cardinal du Prat shortly after his 1526 emprisonment to deliver him "Hors des Prisons de faulte de pecune" (Epître XIII) is a momentary resonance of Villon's half-serious, half-mocking miserere composed before his deliverance from the infamous prison at Meung by the newly crowned Louis XI ("Epistre à ses amis"). Villon's example would easily have come to Marot's mind because the medieval poet's delinquent adventures had become a prototype for the life that, in their turn, the less fortunate Rhétoriqueurs actually led, or in more inventive moments imagined they led. Such contemporaries of Marot as the debt-ridden Henri Baude, the mercurial Songe-

i8

Form

creux, and the legendary Pierre Faifeu, shared the satirical bent of the basochiens and adopted Villon as patron saint of their nocturnal escapades. Like Villon's, their extant work consists in large part of doubtful allegations of innocence and rhymed pleas for clemency addressed to people in high places. As Marot neatly put it in a succinct epigram ( C C L X X I V ) , there were "Peu de Villons en bon savoir,/Trop de Villons pour decevoir." Marot's proximity more to the court than to the street did not allow him to owe nearly the same allegiance as they to Villon. The preface to his uncautious edition of the Petit Testament demonstrates a far greater concern with the manipulator of language than with the romantic outlaw. His grudging allowance that "ne fay doubte qu'il n'eust emporté le chappeau de laurier devant touts les poetes de son temps, s'il eust esté nourry en la court des roys & des princes, là où les iugements se amendent & les langages se polissent," not to speak of the "aultres incongruitez dont estoit plein le langage mal limé d'iceluy temps," reads Villon as the unfortunate product of an unfortunate time.9 But it is blind to the Villon whose art exists because of Villon and whose voice outlasts all generations by speaking below the loftiness of their aesthetic and social conventions and above the narrowness of their mundane concerns. In line with his contention that Villon lacked polish, he gratuitously refashioned entire verses, lengthening some verses and shortening others "au plus près de l'intention de l'auteur." This is Marot the editor and theoretician of around 1533, rejecting dated language, if not dated substance. If Marot may be seen here as a purist at the threshold of an awakening Renaissance consciousness, his revolution—like all revolutions—is surely made with the tools of the past. Like other men during periods of notable cultural change, he first conceives an intellectual notion of the world whose amorphous ideal stands at odds with prevailing categories of thought and forms of expression; through the creative imagination that imbues them, his fluctuating ideas anticipate concrete forms that future generations will live more fully. In the next chapter we will see that this phenomenon applies to poetic forms as well as sources. Although Marot was a product of his past while no longer sharing its spirit, he did possess a sense of discrimination lacking to his contemporaries which transcended his abstract pronouncements. W e know that in 1527, toward the end of "La Complaincte du riche infortuné," Marot's insertion of a long passage from the "Ballade des pendus" rescues the pathetic death of Jacques de Beaune from sinking into empty symbolic melodrama. In this otherwise historically accurate monologue, Marot

Remembrance of Things Past

»9

extended the time during which the body was displayed in order to legitimize Villon's image of the corpse abused by creatures and the elements. The significance of Villon's appearance, whose gaze cannot be deflected by the actual fact of death before him, derives from the way it counteracts the allegorical personae of which the Rhétoriqueurs were so fond, and represents an attempt to update Villon's finest qualities. The most lasting of medieval source books was, of course, the Roman de la Rose. Through the fifteenth century and beyond, it was the progenitor of endless allegorical fascinations, a purveyor of institutional satire, an encyclopedia of mythical tales and scientific fact, a code of courtly protocol more pervasive than Ovid, Andreas, or Chrétien. At its full development in Guillaume de Lorris, allegory is a highly specialized form of symbolic expression rich in psychological revelation. But since its first purpose is moral instruction, it arises even at its best from a mixed poetic intention; at the hands of the Rhétoriqueurs it very easily became the vehicle for deliberate didacticism empty of the psychological content that had supported it. Precisely because it had originally proved a powerful instrument for teaching manners and morals, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century allegory continued as a debilitated formula in an increasingly conventional mold long after it had lost its internal necessity to press courtly values through fresh psychological insight. Judging from a few chance comments made by Cretin, in a scene imagined by the sleeping Marot in Complainte VII, it is obvious that Lorris was the elder statesman in that part of the Elysian Fields inhabited by the departed Rhétoriqueurs. Far from escaping its influence or relegating its ubiquitous grip to a dead past, Marot's name appears on the title page of a sixteenth-century version of the Rose allegory which he is supposed to have edited and prefaced. To this familiarity with the novel and with its verger d'Amour that enclosed its allegorical dramatis personae may be ascribed the overture and matrix of imagery for Epigramme LIX, "Dedans le cloz d'ung Jardin florissant, / Entre aultres fleurs voy une Rose. . . ." In the short span of the epigram, however, there is no opportunity for a fatal contradiction between psychological mobility and the rigid stance of the moralist, nor any possibility of the labored dissection of ideas by which allegory makes its point; the real danger takes place in Marot's longer dramatic narratives. Allegory separates out prominent psychic elements of the inner drama of conscience and personifies them as dramatic "characters"—a substitution that contributes to the instability of the form. It is thus capable of establishing an excessively obvious and therefore

Form

20

poetically graceless coherence of method and meaning at variance with the integrity of consciousness. Different features of the individual soul are personified and, within the conventional setting of a dream, the personifications assume individual identity and act out the inner drama in a discursive narrative. T h e dream state of the lover who sleepwalks into Lorris's garden of delight became a convention used and abused by major and minor Rhétoriqueurs alike to convey the state of inspiration in which they were visited by their muse and, understandably, to disclaim conscious responsibility for the results of that visitation. In Marot the dream appears in conjunction with other overused conventions, such as the ancient Rosy-Fingered D a w n that greets his awakening, "Aurore adonc, à la face vermeille, / Sortit du Ciel, & sur ce je m'esveille" (Complainte VII);

it is impossible for him to write without dreaming or to dream

without writing: "Compter vous vueil ung debat qui m'esveille. / Toutes les fois que je dors ou sommeille . . ." (Elégie XXII).

T h e dream

serves primarily to conjure routine allegorical figures before the mind's eye through the free use of imagination (fantasie), the picture-making faculty in Renaissance psychology, and thereby to lend some substance to abstract forces: " U n g nouveau songe assez plaisant l'autrehier / Se présenta devant ma fantasie" (Chant-royal III).

W h e n in the first

eclogue Colin wishes to learn the truth about death, he commands the wood sprites to sleep, dream, wake and tell all, so that he may record it in song. Like Lorris in his opening lines Maintes genz dient que en songes N'a se fables non e mençonges; Mais l'en puet teus songes songier Qui ne sont mie mençongier, issuing from the "val de paour," Marot religiously opposes songe to mensonge

in a standard compilation of rimes équivoquées

with, how-

ever, some heretical modifications : Si me souvint tout à coup de mon songe, Dont la pluspart n'est fable ne mensonge; A tout le moins pas ne fut mensonger Le bon Espoir qui vint à mon songer; (Epitre II, w . 152-155) It is the inclusion of mitigating emotions, like fear, hope and their many intermediate shades, which divorces the expression here from the simplified extremes of truth and falsity. T h e psychological resonance

Remembrance of Things Past

21

that Marot sets up between the allegorical persona and the faculties of the mind, between the narrative and the inner drama, is remarkable in view of the mental paralysis that characterizes the late Middle Ages and his contemporaries, with the exception of the poetic circle of Lyons. In Epître XLVI, where Marot sees himself in exile pursued by the furies, his subtle combination of Lorris's vocabulary with the fitful melancholy of Ovid in exile gives evidence of a mature synthesis of sources and a mobility of expression not to be found elsewhere in the early sixteenth century. And it is this mobility that keeps his appreciable debt to the Roman de la Rose from being slavish, as is evident in all of the following analysis. Several years after the 1526 version of the Roman de la Rose attributed to him, Marot's virtuous and beautiful lady of Elégie XX describes to her mother the mistreatment she is subjected to by her husband and likens herself to a caged bird: Or si l'Oiseau mauldit en son langage (Comme dit Meung) cil qui le tient en Cage, Pourquoy icy doncques ne me plaindray je De ce cruel qui chascun jour r'engrege Mes longs ennuyz? 1 0 T h e loose reference to Jean de Meung directs the reader to lines 1 3 , 306-323 of his novel, where it is the Vieille who reminds her audience that, although the caged bird may appear content with its lot, it seeks the freedom of Nature's other creatures. In 1529 Marot again resorted to the image of the caged bird, under the more specific circumstance of a pointed reply "Aux dames de Paris qui ne vouloient prendre les precedentes excuses en payment" (the six bourgeoisettes who attacked him as the author of the spurious "Gracieux Adieux aux Dames de Paris" that had impugned their virtue and indicted him as an improbre damnifere, incapable of attaining the eternal glory of the true poet) : Or estes vous dedans Paris six femmes Qui ung escript tout farcy de diffames M'avez transmys; & quand aulcun se boute A l'escouter, luy semble qu'il escoute En plain marché six ordes Harangeres Jecter le feu de leurs langues legeres Contre quelqu'ung. Va vilain Farcereau, Marault, Belistre, Yvrongne, Macquereau, Comme une Pie en Cage injurieuse. (w. 1 1 9 - 1 2 7 )

22

Form

Not only are we removed here from the atmosphere of a stylized plaint into the heat of one of Marot's many vicissitudes but depart as well from a faithful recollection of Meung to a broader community of presences which, for lack of a better name, we could label Renaissance. The earlier passage used the undifferentiated oiseau, as Meung had used oyseau, but the use of Pie invokes an altogether different tradition that has broad medieval roots and was widespread during Marot's time. In French and Latin bestiaries of the Middle Ages the magpie is associated through etymology with poetry (picae-poeticae), but there its annoying chatter is merely an imitation of the human voice. Elégie XX partakes of this handbook tradition by its mention of such stereotypes as the "Champestre Oiselleur" who cages "l'Oisellet des champs." 1 1 The distinction made in the "Dits des Oiseaux" of the 1491 Calendrier des Bergers between corvidae "du bois" and "en cage" returns in Marot's Epître XXXIV. Far from being a rhyming convenience, the physical context of the creature en cage in Elégie XX assumes a moral dimension—a cause swiftly calling forth an effect: ". . . un viel Corbeau en cage / Jamais d'aultruy ne tiennent bon langage" (Ballade I). However, the "Pie en Cage injurieuse" seems more precisely to originate in Lemaire de Belges, not Meung, who himself borrowed heavily from Brunetto Latini's bestiary Li Livres dou Trésor. In Lemaire's seconde epistre de l'Amant Vert the magpie aligns with its bird of a feather, "Corbeaux vilains, piës injurieuses" (v. 210), and again in the Illustrations de Gaule we see "le caquet de la Pie, le cry de la Corneille" (I, 22). The alignment was natural because from early antiquity the crow had come to forebode evil and augured impending disaster. At the outset of the "Déploration de Florimond Robertet" Death's scepter is feathered with "un vieil corbeau de qui le chant damné / Prédit tout mal." Later in the Illustrations Lemaire fuses the myth of Jupiter transformed into a swan for the seduction of Leda, with the myth of the swan, source of harmonious song: "c'est à dire il se fait beau et plaisant comme un cygne, et chanta si doux par ses belles paroles" (II, 2). While the swan and crow appear rarely in bestiaries, and then only individually, in the classical Roman poets whom Marot knew they come together with the magpie to symbolize the eternal opposition of great poets and their detractors. Along with the prattling crow, Martial derides the inproba pica (I, 54) and the pica loquax ( X I V , 74, 76). In the spirit of satire Ovid's muse relates to Pallas the superiority of the nine sisters over the nine magpies (Metamorphoses V , 294 ff., 663 ff.), and in the "Choliambi" appended to his satires which Du Bellay took

Remembrance of Things Past as a literary credo in the Regrets, Persius rejects crows and poetridas picas alike. Much like Ovid's Metamorphoses V , 329, Marot's purportedly autobiographical "Eglogue soubz les noms de Pan & Robin" stipulates the impossibility of "Les cygnes noirs, & les corneilles blanches" (v. 254), while the shepherd's sweet flute strains contrast with "la pie en son caquet" (v. 100). And, with less clarity, in his moralizing "Second Chant d'Amour fugitif" he attires his victims as Corbeau, Cigne and, at the brunt of the satire, Pie. What is clear is that in Marot we witness the transvaluation of the image from moral admonition to aesthetic judgment.12 Isolated as a curiosity in the bestiaries and lost in the welter of Lemaire's menagerie, Marot's "Pie en Cage injurieuse" becomes a mode of aesthetic proof of maximum vehemence, a defense of his own reputation and an illustration of his enemies' idle chatter. W e are only one step from Du Bellay's "Contre les envieux poetes" and the millennium separating the "nouveaux Cignes" from the old "corbeaux envieux" and "la babillarde voix / De la pie injurieuse." Many bits and snatches of this thematic material, imagery, and terminology in Marot originated among both the great and mediocre of his contemporaries and elders, and pressed upon his consciousness as literary prototypes. In some cases, the subjects he reworks and the particular expressions he settles on show undeniably medieval roots that go back to Meung or Lorris and beyond. Despite the revolutionary twist he gave to the Pie-Corbeau-Cygne theme, the new idea of the exemplary poet displaced an older attitude toward poetry that was more widespread and more pragmatic, yet in the modes of writing Marot learned and actually practiced, the new muse relied on the old for its realization. His plea addressed to Francis "tes faitz et tes vertuz dieter" (Epître X L I V ) recalls the medieval ars dictandi studied by law clerks of the basoche to learn epistolary themes and the bestowing of blame and praise. The Illustrations de Gaule clearly exemplifies these options : "Les belles bergettes . . . meirent sus dictiers et chansonettes servans à la louenge du tresbeau et tresvaillant Paris" (I, 23), "Stesichorus . . . composa un dittier plein d'injures, contumelie et diffamation encontre Heleine" (II, 24). In its reference to poetic technique, Jean Marot's imagined advice to his son in the "Epître au Roy, pour succeder en l'estat de son pere" ( X I I ) , "Tu en pourras dieter Lay ou Epistre," suggests Eustache Deschamp's L'Art de dictier (1392) where such fixed forms as the lai are prescribed. But these rapprochements are only superficial and overlook Marot's attempt to assimilate and update what was eternally fresh and to divest himself of the outdated. They

24

Form

are especially misleading if they imply that the choices of the poet schooled by the Rhétoriqueurs and conversant with the procedures of the basochiens always fell at one of two poles : imitation or revolution. Marot's Ballade XII "De Caresme" begins on the apostrophe Cessez, Acteurs, d'escrire en eloquence D'armes, d'amours, de fables et sornettes! Venez dicter soubz piteuse loquence Livres plainctifz de tristes chansonnettes! By its composition prior to 1526 and by the particular subjects it enumerates, it is evident that the poet had in mind the causes grasses written by the basochiens and performed by the "Enfants-sans-souci" before Lent where "l'intention de celuy qui plaide est d'exiter à rire, et non à la commiseration." 1 3 Even working within the canons and prescribed function of the genre, the writer had considerable latitude if he had sufficient imagination or desire to avail himself of it. The lengthy eulogy of the Grands Rhétoriqueurs in Complainte VII (1543) comes not from Clément but from the mouth of Jean Marot, a spectral shade visiting his son asleep. Even further removed from Clément's consciousness, the subsequent praise of Lorris is sung by Jean to his companion in the Elysian Fields, Guillaume Cretin. More than twenty years earlier Clément had begun to escape from the intricate labyrinth of Rhétoriqueur constraints. In the "Epistre du despourvu," composed in 1519 and first published in the 1532 Adolescence Clémentine, he outlines the procedure for rhetorical composition, then dreams, and looses cascades of verses like "Triste, transi, tout terny, tout tremblant," all directly imitated from Cretin. But the variants of the 1538 edition, Poesie for Rethorique and Escrivains for Orateurs, reveal a change in attitude and a sense of poetic mission precocious for his time. The "Epistre au Reverendissime Cardinal de Lorraine" ( X V ) implies the same sophistication in its 1538 alteration of plume rustique to Plume Poétique.14 Significantly, it is in the genres he refurbished in name or spirit that we find the most insistent alterations of this kind. The opening of Marot's response to "Abel" in a huitain-turned-epigram ( X V I I ) was modified from Rethoriquer to Poetiser while the closing of Epigramme XVIII saw rethorique become l'Art Poetique. The terminology in the original versions refers to the older distinction between première and seconde rhétorique (that is, rhetoric of prose and verse) which relegated poetry to a technical discussion of rhyme and verse forms in the service

Remembrance of Things Past

25

of deliberative, occasional, and forensic oratory. After 1538 we must wade through Gracien du Pont's L'Art et science de rhétorique métriffiée (1539) and Estienne Dolet's L'Orateur françois (1540) before we corne to Jacques Peletier's translation of Horace's Ars poetica (1544) and Thomas Sebillet's Art poétique françois (1548) where Marot's aesthetic is set forth as a paradigm and the Pléiade's thunder is stolen. So it is that in the "Epistre aux Dames de Paris," before scoring his detractors for their magpie-like chatter, a self-aware Marot promises to demonstrate "Combien mieulx picque ung Poete de Roy / Que les Rimeurs qui ont faict le desroy." The sting of the poet is more potent than that of the Rhétoriqueur because here, and in many other instances, it is not blunted by the instinct to lavish superlative praise on the Maecenases of the world nor absolutely to damn vacuous forces of evil. By its economy, an image like the Pie injurieuse controls linguistic depth and symbolic meaning with more flexibility than the repetitive, rambling, and formally rigid allegories of Jean Molinet or a Georges Chastellain which conceal a criticism of social, political, and theological issues beneath an innocent surface. Marot's use of language and meaning differs from their translation of abstract ideas, loved less for meaning than for their own sake, which is nothing more than an abstraction from objects of the senses. While Marot's poetic world is at times peopled by allegorical characters, it is not, finally, the same world the Rhétoriqueurs inhabited, infallibly guided by moral abstractions that are at once larger and shallower than life. Like Villon before him and Du Bellay after him, Marot is concerned with Virtue and Fortune as they interact, with the ways in which the individual acts upon and is acted upon by the larger forces around him. This concern joins an awareness that evolution in poetic form responds to and conditions the changing form of life itself.

II: EXTERNAL FORM And not alone in habit and device, Exterior form, outward accoutrement, But from the inward motion to deliver Sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth —King John, 1 , i, 2 1 0 - 2 1 3

As COMMON as it is to deplore an influence of Rhétoriqueur themes on the young Marot, it is even more habitual to write off his cultivation of so-called medieval fixed forms as a rite de passage from which he fortunately recovered. The Petrarchan strain that appears in his earliest poems and continues through his epigrams until around 1538, long after he began to abandon the chants royaux, ballades, and rondeaux, could at first glance be hailed as a coming of age and a new realization. Such a judgment is essentially a viewing of Marot through the severe eyes of his Pléiade critics, and involves a perspective more relative than absolute. A modern critic like Pierre Jourda can speak of the superficiality of Ma rot's rondeaux, yet Sebillet on the other hand, while cautiously allowing for youthful errors, tells the prospective reader that "tu trouveras peu de rondeaus creus dans son jardin." 1 Both attitudes are as accurate as they are misleading when taken singly: in his finest moments the young Marot excelled in a form that is no longer considered excellent. The short fixed-form poems, skillfully fashioned by Rutebeuf, the troubadours and trouvères, and elaborated and codified by Guillaume Machaut in the first third of the fourteenth century, engaged the attention of the meanest minds of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. As a consequence, these poems underwent little artistic transformation in Marot's time. His contemporaries developed no new forms, and gloried in filling some of the dustiest bottles with the same old wine. Like the thematic rambling of the lesser Grands Rhétoriqueurs in their long poetic tracts, their conception of short poetic form is platitudinous at its worst, barren of feeling, and painfully dull. In what

External Form could have been a moving account of the House of Burgundy's military hegemony, Jean Molinet indiscriminately peoples the ballade "Souffle, Trithon, en ta buse argentine" with characters drawn from myth, heraldry, and history. Because the intelligence of the poet is inadequate to his subject, and since his technique invites him to do so, all the details of the poem by the time we reach the envoi—from the simplest landscape to an impending act of physical and moral conflict—are reduced to the same low level of intensity: Tremblez doncques, Liegeois par legions, Car vous verrez, se je vueil ou je daigne, Comme je suis, en franches mansions, Lyon rampant en croppe de montaigne. Even given a normative style, there is no relation discovered here among rhetoric, the value of the subject, and the form chosen. The poem simply goes on mechanically from detail to superfluous detail—a superfluity that characterized its age.2 These weaknesses do not inhere in the fixed form genre per se. Villon's ballades are at times as rich and subtle and powerful as we could want them. Such qualities proceed from the poet, not from the accidental properties of his subject or the form he happens to write in. The Petrarchan sonnet, to cite the most widespread and innovative accretion to sixteenth-century French poetic forms, could be the vehicle of the century's most superfluous verbiage, yet its form is no less restrictive than the ballade, rondeau, or chantroyal. There is much bad poetry housed in both the medieval and Petrarchan forms, although the "badness" of bad medieval poetry is immediately obvious, while that of Petrarchan poetry is much less so. If there is primitive charm in Molinet's ballade, it results from the badness; and the badness is simply the lack of an intelligence adequate even to the simplest subject, a lack made more obvious by the plainness of the fixed-form methods. But apart from the quality of individual poems, the method of both older and newer schools have peculiar limitations and inherent possibilities, a consideration of which is important if we are to understand the history of the poem as a changing form. Since Petrarchan style usually supported the most perfunctory and conventional themes, the solidity, straightforwardness, and restraint that medieval style gained from the subjects it treated are no longer in evidence. They have given way to an airy elegance that does not so much support the substance or coincide with the form as it decorates them—to a style distinguished by ingenuity of figures, by rapid associa-

28

Form

tion of details, by wordplay meant to dazzle rather than to inform, by diction that was faintly archaic and "literary" even in its own time, by elaborate syntax, and by varied and subtle rhythms resulting from the play of that syntax against the poetic line. In Petrarchan practice, the rhetoric is very nearly the whole poem. Subject is subservient, and formal structure frequently incidental. It took the Du Bellay of the Regrets to realize fully the potential suppleness of the sonnet form despite the constrictions that its form imposes. The characteristic structure of the medieval poem, however, the structure in which nearly all the finest poems of the phase are cast, is expository; that is, it adopts the method of sound discourse in which a selected object, sensible or otherwise, is examined in detail and its various parts rationally related to one another, to the whole which they constitute, and to the form that encompasses them. The syntax moves toward simplicity, most units being straightforward and declarative, with relatively few qualifiers or interruptions, or displacements of syntactical units. While Petrarchan conceits and the themes of late fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century neo-Petrarchan poetry appear early in Marot's career, he failed to see the immense possibilities of the sonnet which he introduced into French poetry. Like most writers he was quicker to respond to new ideas than to new forms. But he did exploit the natural simplicity of native genres like the chanson, and his concern for spontaneity is evident in Complainte II, where the verses ending each stanza and beginning the following stanza are drawn from beginning lines of popular songs. Despite the tendency of the Pléiade's self-serving manifesto to dismiss all native genres and to welcome all "classical" ones, the upshot of their experiment with new form is a matter of mixed gains and losses. In Marot's own experiments the direct economy of medieval forms is often retained, and the fluid subtlety potential in imported forms is realized. If the marriage of old and new forms was not always harmonious, few marriages are. Harmonious synthesis, moreover, was foreign to a poet who might occasionally wish to select genres for the reflection they afforded of his changing experience, yet who had to be mindful at all times of the conventional taste that reigned at court. Instead of examining all the genres separately in a contrived chronological order, then, it is more appropriate to point to the continual interplay among them, both of composition and intent. The illusion of unified organization and purpose in the Deffence et Illustration, and its prominent location at midcentury, make it all the more suitable for recognition as a major literary event. Marot's consciousness of purveying an art poétique, while

29

External Form

110 less real in the aggregate, must be gleaned from random comments in rondeaux, ballades, and disparate prefaces, or else inferred from his practice. But this means that Marot was the captive of no aesthetic credo, as Du Bellay found himself to be, for example, when he prefaced his French version of the Aeneid (1552) with an apology for translation; there he had to retract the polemic that in the Deffence et Illustration he had directed against Sebillet precisely for encouraging translations. The resultant gain in regard to Marot is that crosscurrents of classical and modern are more apparent in his poetic development. There is no perfect coalescing of new consciousness, new intent, and new form. The difficulty of speaking of him as the last of the Rhétoriqueurs or as the first Renaissance poet is that both tendencies overlap and coexist, and continue to do so until the end. Just as in medieval genres like the rondeaux, Marot initiated the Petrarchism that was later refined in the epigrams, so in reestablished genres like the elegies, he continued themes that are basically medieval. (Examples of the coexistence of contrary inspirations, the cross-fertilization of ancient, medieval, and modem influences, and the transformation of genres may be seen in the following several pages with reference—quite at random —to the étrennes, Psalms, and eclogues; other genres could as well have been chosen.) The reprise of the short form in the épitaphes written at the end of Marot's life, and the collected étrennes written shortly before their 1941 publication, suggest in turn a resumption and a transformation of the prescribed forms that had earlier won him court acclaim. At that time, he was polishing the haulte louenge and expansive voice of his innovative Psalms, although delaying their publication, possibly for fear of earning praise from Huguenot quarters and therefore the censure of the Sorbonne. The étrennes, dedicated and addressed "aux Dames de la Cour," are occasional greetings as rigid in observing the individual standing of their addressee at court as they are in obeying the dictates of their rapid verse form. The first one, appropriately dedicated to the queen, is typical: Au ciel, Madame, je crie, Et Dieu prie Vous faire veoir au printemps Frere & mary si contens Que tout rie. The others, whether risqué or proper, flatter in descending order members of the queen's entourage, and with mythological garnishings com-

jo

Form

ment obliquely on what was public knowledge of their private lives. Their publication almost overlaps the dedicatory epistle of the Psalms "aux Dames de France," where his Pauline appeal to "dames & damoyselles/Que Dieu feit pour estre son temple" (cf. II Corinthians 6:16; Hebrews 3:6) and his denunciation of the "dieux estranges" is set ironically in a new age "Quand n'auront plus ne cours." Sebillet's Art poétique (II, 8) and the Deffence et Illustration (II, 4) both spoke warmly of Marot's eclogues, the origin of the genre in France. Generations and centuries had admired Vergil's fourth eclogue, had exploited and glossed its theme of the lost Golden Age and the prophecy of a return to a purified humanity. The theme was particularly well suited for Marot's generation, and his second eclogue, "Avantnaissance du troiziesme enffant de madame Renée, duchesse de Ferrare," borrowed heavily from Vergil in framing references to the evangelical reformation. Du Bellay singled out for praise the fourth "eglogue sur la Naissance du filz de Monseigneur le Daulphin," which again reconstructs Vergil's fourth eclogue and comments, as Ronsard's eclogues were to do, on current events under allegorical guise. The poem joins past and present as Marot, not to be outdone by even "le dieu Pan," hails the advent of the Golden Age by incorporating Vergil's description of the Augustan Age. Awareness of an intervening time period appears only in his transposed prophecy that "aura France encores des Rolands" (v. 69), originating in Vergil's passing mention of Achilles. However, in the preceding eclogue, "au Roy soubz les noms de Pan & Robin" (III), one must speak of a coexistence and continuation of classical and medieval form. The poem is a well-integrated pastiche and mélange of imagery drawn from various Vergilian eclogues and from early sixteenth-century poets. Francis, thinly veiled as Pan, god of woodlands and shepherds, is addressed by Marot-Robin, who recounts the stages of his life from youth to old age, and whose literary ancestor can be traced to the thirteenth-century pastorale of Adam de la Halle, Jeu de Robin et Marion. The medieval pastorale, and to some extent the ancillary genres of the pastourelle and bergerie, inevitably portrayed refined feelings beneath provincial trappings and catered to an aristocratic dream of innocence and simplicity. As at the debut of the Jeu de Robin et Marion at the court of Charles d'Anjou, this eminently aristocratic genre was frequently designed as a court amusement. It never lost this essential function in the various forms it assumed up to and beyond the sixteenth-century, even in the vast prolixity of the Astrée. Marot sensed the possibilities of adapting the genre to the

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simple refinements of the French court: draping Francis in Pan's robes would in no way be shocking. Aware of the decorum and suitability of the pastorale's tone to the court milieu and to the personalities who were to inhabit its verse, Marot was no less aware of the genre's traditional procedures and distinguishing characteristics. The borrowings in his third eclogue from Lemaire's description of the education of Paris far from the world of men may have been dictated by the genre's tradition of allegorical autobiography, as is the case in the Arcadia of Sannazzaro. If so, it is significant that the third eclogue's most substantial debt to Vergil, spread through the various stages of the poem, comes from the Mantuan poet's first and most autobiographical eclogue. Apparently Marot was clearly conscious of his role in reconstituting the pastorale and christening it as an eclogue. Although any attempt at chronological or autobiographical specificity in this instance would be idle, in elaborating the familiar correspondence of the cycle of life to seasonal change, he is at least aware of measuring the various stages of his own life by his experience with poetic form: the poet comments that the inspiration of his "muse pastoralle" (v. 212) dries up in the autumn of his life, only to renew in winter as "une eglogue rustique" (v. 249). Aside from passing references to the coming Reformation and the waning of Roman Catholic dominion, the voice that resounds in Marot's second eclogue is that of the official court poet who chronicles events from a distanced perspective and conjures Vergil's portentous example. A greater self-awareness imbues the third eclogue— not that the literary commonplace of the seasons of nature and life can be credited as biography; rather, the self-consciousness I am speaking of appears in Marot's use and transformation of a traditional genre, a procedure that can affix the poet's signature as surely as his direct involvement in the poetic theme. That Marot authored the first bona fide eclogue, elegy, epithalamion and, as seems likely, the first sonnet in French is indisputably impressive. But however impressive the appearance of these achievements taken together, their realization tells the story of an emerging conscience rather than the steps of a systematic program. In the years 1531 to 1535, when Marot began to unify his conception of the French eclogue, he was also writing a "Chant Pastoral en forme de Ballade" ( X V ) in which he drew equally on the episode of the pipes of Pan from the first book of the Metamorphoses and on the stock characters of Tityrus, Corydon, and Mopsus from Vergil's Eclogae 2, 5, and 8, precisely those that figure prominently in Marot's first eclogues. Literary historians have pointed out

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the lack of substantive differences between Sebillet's Art poétique françoys (1548) summarizing the école de Marot and the Defence et Illustration announcing the arrival of the millennium one year later.8 The prime contributions of Du Bellay's treatise, so the argument runs, were its enthusiastic attitude and the notion of the separation of genres and poetic forms, even though its peremptory tone created only an illusion of clarity and needed to be modified in time. Yet the nebulous quality "attitude" can be just as significant in a poetic treatise as the doctrine it advances. Sebillet's indecisive distinctions among Marot's poetic genres bespeak an uncertainty that prevailed among their contemporaries and derive from the fact that new forms, both brief and expansive, were developing out of the old. The ballade was undoubtedly one of the most popular poetic forms of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and flourished through monthly poetic competitions at the court of Charles V I . Although his abandonment of the conception of the ballade and of its overall structure suggests the termination of a legacy, Marot for all that did not forsake some of its smaller but essential structural components. Along with the ten-line stanza, one of his preferred ballade forms is built on three eight-line stanzas followed by an envoi. These are the traditional ababbcbc huitains of the Testament, that survive in Ronsard and about which Sebillet says " L e huittain estoit frequent aus anciens et est aujourd'huy fort usité entre lés jeunes aussy." This is the same huitain that calibrates the strophic divisions of Marot's first eclogue—at the time when he is clearly abandoning the ballade—where its presence, however, is subtler to the extent that the divisions are integrated by connecting rhymes, overlap breaks in dialogue, and depend more on the initiative of the poet than on the formal restrictions of a genre. Even more significant is the predominance of huitains and dizains among the epigrams. Obviously, there are considerable differences between the medieval fixed-form poem and the epigram, not the least of which is the basic opposition between the ballade's orchestrated repetition and the epigram's concision. Marot's epigram has recently been the subject of two luminous studies.4 But while Mayer is primarily concerned with establishing the integrity of Marot's collected epigrams and their faithfulness to the classical form, it is more important for our immediate purposes to stress the underlying mobility and long-term indecisions that led up to the final polished epigrammatic form as a separate genre. Pierre Villey's discoveries, followed by more precise modifications at the hands of Mayer, have clearly demonstrated that not until around

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1536-1537 in the Chantilly manuscript did Marot rechristen his huitains and dizains as épigrammes, and that he began to write with the classical model of the epigram in mind.5 It is equally important to bear in mind that in the "Second Livre des Epigrammes" of the 1538 Oeuvres, in addition to the "Epigrammes à l'imitation de Martial," are found the rondeau "Tant seullement ton repos je desire" and the sonnet "Au Ciel n'y a ne Pianette ne Signe." Until 1538 rondeaux and future epigrams coexisted side by side in the section vaguely entitled Menu. James Hutton, pointing out the ease with which the themes and spirit of the neo-Latin epigram found a place in the dizain and sonnet, mentions long discussions on this mobility during the sixteenth century.® This interchange goes far to explain the erroneous attribution to Marot and the inclusion among his epigrams of the regular Marotic sonnet "Adolescents, qui la peine avez prise." But, parenthetically, on the level of praxis in poetic form, the adaptation was not always easy nor the huitain and dizain always the perfect vehicle for the classical model. An example of the inadequacy of new forms to old themes is Epigramme CLXXXII: C'est grand cas que nostre voysin Tousjours quelque besongne entame, Dont ne peult, ce gros lymosin, Sortir qu'à sa honte & diffame. Au reste, je croy sur mon ame, Tant il est lourd & endormy, Que quand il besongne sa femme Il ne luy fait rien qu'à demy. The redundancy of adjectives (vv. 4, 6) and the extraneous interjections (vv. 3, 5) separate Marot's rendition from the brief compass of Martial's Latin distic: "Rem peragit nullam Sertorius, inchoat omnes: / hunc ego, cum futuit, non puto perficere." For the epigrammatist, manner is matter. To reduce his scenes to message is to miss both his point and his quality. Martial's Sertorius, like his other stock character Laurus, undertakes all sorts of enterprises, but always comes to the identical lame and impotent conclusions, where artistic expression is conterminal with the meaning of the action performed. Hutton has suggested that nothing human was foreign to the epigram in the early sixteenth century, whether couched in huitains, dizains, or sonnets; that philosophical speculation, the bite of satire, or lyric abandon were all within its purview. But with the advent of the Pléiade, the creative impulse to write amatory epigrams was absorbed increasingly by the sonnet, while the scope of the epigram in the style of Martial was narrowed from tears to

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laughter.7 With Marot's epigrams we are still at the crossroads of these two tendencies. Their subjects—whether the tone is eulogistic or satirical, conversational or lyrical—are as varied as those of the early rondeaux and ballades. Frère Lubin in Ballade III is the (more distinguished) literary ancestor of Thibault in Epigrammes XLVII and CCXLIX. Still, thematic similarities should not obscure the fact, so cogently argued by Mayer, of Marot's sense of poetic evolution in attempting later in his career to order by genre his previously published work.8 When late in his life he returned to poetic procedures he had long ago abandoned, it was often done with a deliberate notion of literary anarchronism and archaic effect. Such is the case with the "Complainte du General Preudhomme" (1543), where the appearance in the poem of the ghost of Jean Marot dictates by decorum the use of an older form. It is true that he refused to classify certain poems like the "Déploration de Florimond Robertet." But the tendency of posthumous editors to reorder his work, and even, as Constantin did, to create such fuzzy categories as Opuscules—in which a youthful effort like the Temple de Cupido stands alongside the "Eglogue au Roy soubz les noms de Pan & Robin," a work which, as we have seen, testifies to Marot's selfawareness of his position in literary history—have only fortified his unfortunate reputation of undisciplined, albeit elegant, badinage. Villey claimed to see a correspondence between the major publications in Marot's career and a three-stage consciousness on the poet's part in his development of poetic genres. The first stage would be the cultivation of traditional medieval forms in the Adolescence clémentine, in response to the dictates of the court of Anne de Bretagne until 1526. The second began in the Suite de l'Adolescence where the élégie-épître marks the triumph of "l'esprit français" at the court of Francis. Finally, the 1538 Oeuvres ushered in the combination of classical and biblical influences through the epigrams, sonnets, Vergilian eclogues, and the psalms. In defense against a possible charge of facile generalizing, Villey pointed out the break in the 1534 Adolescence between the Adolescence per se, whose various poems up to folio 88 predate 1526, and the "Autres Oeuvres" beginning on folio 89 and composed of later poems.9 As helpful as Villey's generalizations may be, and as undeniably paramount as those publications are, we have seen that an awakened sense of mission and interest in newly conceived genres involve a transfer rather than a rejection of older, basic forms. Ballade themes are refracted, and the huitain is only renamed, in the Epigrammes. It remains to be seen during the rest of this chapter if Villey's

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categories hold up in the case of the elegies, épîtres, and psalms, or if the perpetually shifting attitude of the poet toward his work obtains there also. Marot was indeed writing elegies around 1530; he first applied the term to a collection of twenty-one poems in the Suite de l'Adolescence at the end of 1533 or at the beginning of 1534. 1 0 While he clearly saw those poems as a sequence that individually and collectively reflected his notion of what constituted an elegy, it is not at all certain to what extent he distinguished that form from kindred genres or from whatever else the elegy was not. Such inadvertent or willful indecision characterized critical definitions and appraisals of both Latin and French elegies well beyond Marot. 1 1 Sebillet's confused and confusing characterization of the elegy is as indicative as Marot's elastic use of the term. He begins by attempting to set restrictions: "L'élégie n'est pas sugette a téle variété de suget: et n'admet pas lés différences dés matières et légeretés communément traittées aus épistres: ains ha jé ne say quoy de plus certain . . . Pren donc l'élégie pour epistre Amoureuse," but later relaxes them in a mood more speculative than declarative: "complaintes et deplorations sembleroient estre comprises soubz l'élégie." Nonetheless he relegates themes to the complainte that Marot eventually considered appropriate to the elegy. 12 Four years before the Art poétique françoys, the 1544 edition of Marot's works had distinguished the sections Complaintes, Epitaphes, and Cimetière on a basis more of tone than on the order in which they had appeared in earlier editions. According to Villey, the increasingly serious tonal shades of some of these poems reflect Marot's increasing public stature and, correspondingly, an increased seriousness on his part in celebrating illustrious figures.13 The 1538 Oeuvres had already expanded the original collection of elegies from the Suite—and disturbed their homogeneity—by interpolating six new poems among which are two complaintes, "du riche infortuné messire Jaques de Beaune, seigneur de Samblançay" and "sur la mort de Anne Lhuilier d'Orléans," which originated in the Cimetière section of the Suite and the new complainte entitled "Elegie . . . de Jehan Chauvin, Menestrier." 1 4 These three are the poems that have come to be called the "élégies déploratives." Various hypotheses have been advanced to explain the inclusion of certain complaintes among the elegies while others retained their original classification. Saulnier has argued that the juxtaposing of amorous and funereal elegies in 1538 evinced a desire less to classify methodically than to demonstrate the author's varied talent. The three "élégies déploratives" were withdrawn from their original location because their

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median length fell between the epigrammatic terseness of the Epitaphes and the generally longer complaintes. The second complainte, " O que je sens mon cueur plein de regret," which by its length and subject could have gone into the new elegy grouping, remained where it was because its original publication in the Adolescence marked it too obviously as a work of his youth. 15 Christine M. Scollen has proposed the simpler and equally plausible solution that the separation in 1538 of complaintes and "élégies déploratives" was based primarily on internal form, all the remaining complaintes being strophic, while the decasyllabic rimes plates of the transplanted poems and their nonstrophic, more amorphous nature coincided with the elegies.16 Most critics concede that from the Adolescence to the 1538 Oeuvres Marot moved increasingly toward an arrangement of his collected poems by genres, but despite growing clarifications it is never entirely certain what defines a genre. The critical speculations we have just seen use sound arguments in proposing median length, strophic form or the lack of it, similar tone, command of thematic variety, or the poet's awareness of the chronological evolution of his talent—some of which are mutually exclusive in the case of individual poems—as the basis of genre groupings. All these factors may have been at work at various times or at any one time in Marot's intentions. And again, there is the probability of varying time lag between the birth of a poetic conception and its formal realization. So in bringing poems together in unified groupings, it is possible to respect the poet's intentions even when the individual poems themselves do not mirror those intentions. Moreover, there is frequently a lack of correspondence between the different meanings of the adjective elegiac and the genre elegy. Composed as it was at least ten years before the first elegy, Marot saw the "Epistre de Maguelonne" as distinctly belonging to the Adolescence and not to the elegies of the Suite. Yet it shares Ovid's Heroides with the Elégies as a common model, 17 adheres to the same verse and rhyme scheme, and is decidedly elegiac in the sense of being a love lament. What, if any, is the essential difference between the fictional heroine of medieval origin who cries Mais responds moy à ma complaincte amere . . . Si commençay, comme de douleur taincte, Plus que devant faire telle complaincte. ( w . 104, 1 2 1 - 1 2 2 )

and the hero of Elégie XVII, assaulted by the allegorical figure of Danger, who terminates his "complaincte" following a passage borrowed

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from one of Jean Marot's rondeaux; or the heroine of Elégie XX who likens herself to Jean de Meung's Oiseau en Cage, poses the question "Doncques à qui feray ma plaincte amere?" and responds with "la complaincte presente" (w. 89, 92)? The medieval themes of the Elégies, "la partie la plus médiévale de son oeuvre" 1 8 according to Mayer, are obvious on the most superficial reading. Less apparent, and this should be underscored, is the extent to which the overall development of the Marotic elegy as a genre traces back to a medieval form loose enough in its conception to permit variety and wide latitude in its handling. Evidence of this license is a tonal and thematic sequence Marot established in 1538 between Elégie X and the ballade "Amour me voyant sans tristesse" ( X V I I ) in one instance, and between Elégie XX and the rondeau "Contre raison, Fortune, l'esvollée" ( L X I I ) in another. In the first case, the ballade groups with the two ballades that follow in the Mayer collection, "Chant de May" and "Chant de May et de Vertu" and, on the basis of theme and tone, with Elégie X, Amour me feit escrire au Moys de May Nouveau refrain, par lequel vous nommay (Comme sçavez) la plus belle de France; the grouping is occasioned not by any biographical data furnished, although bibliographical evidence indicates their composition was contemporaneous, but by the Moy de May which traditionally sanctioned settings for the love lyric. Indeed, the lyrical nature of Marot's last three ballades represents a marked departure from the ballades of thç Adolescence, and the association of Ballade XVII with the Elégies is not difficult to understand. In the 1538 Oeuvres it preceded Elégie X, and its refrain, "C'est bien la plus belle de France," furnished the elegy's point of departure. Similarly, the close of Elégie XX En mauldissant Fortune & ses alarmes; Et en mes pleurs entremeslez voz larmes, Pour arrouser la fleur qu'avez produicte, Qui s'en va toute en seiche herbe reduicte. (w. 103-106) announced the rondeau that followed, "Contre raison, Fortune, l'esvollée" La fleur des champs n'est seichée & foulée Qu'en temps d'Yver. . . . Lemaire's recitation of the poetry heard at the Temple de Venus, "hympnes et elegies, / Chansons, motetz, de cent tailles et modes" (vv.

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299-300), places the elegy within a variable context of neo-Latin religious and amatory lyricism, a context in which the expression "cent tailles et modes" allows for vast freedom in form and versification. The decasyllable in rimes plates which Marot seems to have settled on by 1538 became the accepted elegiac meter around 1545 to 1548. 19 In fact, his use of this same meter in his "Dieu Gard à la Court de France," now headed as a cantique, may have led him in 1537 to refer to it as 'Telegie presente" (v. 69). Until that time, Marot's experiments with the elegy, and with the different genres it derives from and allies itself with, must be seen in the shifting focus of a poet viewing his work and of a poet viewing himself as the author of his work. Later chapters of this book will examine this double reference in poetic point of view. The épitres, which will also be discussed in much greater detail further on, are unlike the elegies in that they extend over the entire length of Marot's career as a court poet and thus reflect much more the court influence, have deeper roots or at least some precedent in an earlier period, and are much more seminal in influence. They are Marot's most important and best known works. As the most varied poetic medium practiced by Marot from the standpoint of tone and theme, it is entirely possible (but difficult to prove conclusively) that Marot's elegies stemmed directly from his épîtres. In both the 1538 and 1544 editions the Elégies immediately precede the Epîtres and are occasionally themselves labeled as épîtres, although this classification was even more vague than the term élégie; as we saw, Sebillet stammeringly defined them as épitres amoureuses. The incipit variant of the first elegy, entitled "La premiere Elegie en forme d'Epistre," reads "de faire cest epistre" and enriches the suggestiveness of the line Mayer settled on, "Quand j'entreprins t'escrire ceste lettre." In the Suite the Elégies are followed by a group entitled "Epistres différentes," and in that back-to-back juxtaposition an interchange of certain poems would not defy credence. The épître "A une jeune Dame laquelle ung Vieillard marié vouloit espouser & decevoir," which first appeared in the Suite as did the elegies, is an example of a poem on the way to elegiac statement. Its theme of the courtly triangle comprising defenseless lady, young admirer, and cruel rival is that of Elegies X X , X X i and the intervening rondeau we briefly examined. The épître amoureuse, in fact, refers to a medieval type battered and reduced by allegory and formal complexity at the hands of the Rhétoriqueurs. Tracing its roots would entail going back to those humanist clerics of the Middle Ages who wrote elegiac distics on the model of Ovid, would

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entail recounting the hesitations of Christine de Pisan, who tended toward the octosyllable and decasyllable in rimes plates in the Epître au dieu d'Amours but surrendered to chaos in the Epître d'Othéa, and ending with its regularization and culmination in the Epître de l'Amant Vert; it would also show that Marot owed few real debts to his predecessors in his cultivation of the épître, except for an artistic one to Lemaire—and then only in the case of the so-called épître artificielle, where address to the reader is a pretense. Still, there remain appreciable distinctions between the elegies and the épîtres of Marot. While the monotone elegies are the fruit, even though never fully mature, of an experiment with form and pursued strictly on the level of literary imagination, the épîtres abound in all the shades of mood and feeling that colored Marot's daily life, exemplifying their own form and inspiring other forms. Their most distinctive offspring, even more than the elegies, was the coq-à-1'âne. The surest testimony to the weakness of barriers betwen genres and to the vitality of the épître is that the latter was the progenitor or the ally of genres as diverse as the elegy and the coq-à-1'âne. While Marot's elegy sequence creates the illusion of a love drama truly acted out, his four coq-à-1'âne strive for an impression of fantasy while commenting with oblique satire on genuine historical and social conditions. And while the elegy, both in its sequential and individual development, strives for consistent expresion in theme, form, and tone, the virtue of the coq-à-1'âne, as Sebillet tells us, resides in "sa plus grande absurdité de suite de propos." 20 Critics have often pointed to the opacity of the "suite d'énigmes à travers lesquelles Marot promène son caprice" and the problems created for the reader who must "saisir au vol toutes les intentions de Marot et exercer (sa) sagacité à travers la clef des énigmes." 21 But only recently have Marofs debt to traditional forms and his freedom from them been clarified. Charles Kinch established the similarity, if not the kinship, of the coq-à-1'âne to the late medieval sottie, to which he likened its apparent madness. Mayer especially has weeded through the wealth of specious explanations of the genre's name, to conclude that the incoherent jump from subject to subject, from the coq to the âne, derives from a familiar proverb. At the same time that he admits its filiation with the épître proper, Mayer shows that its false chronology and feigned address to the imagined recipient make it a parody of the épître. Finally, Mayer convincingly argues that, before Eustorg de Beaulieu, Marot was the true initiator of the form and, despite its resemblance to some established genres, he sufficiently

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innovated to establish it as a prototype that would be emulated but unexcelled.22 Although Sebillet properly observes that Marot wrote no énigmes as such, the coq-à-1'âne is clearly associated in the Renaissance hierarchy of genres with this ancient literary riddle. Barthélémy Aneau mentions that "sont bien nommez du coq à l'asne telz enigmes satyrez." 23 To the extent that this association holds true, the coq-à-1'âne then falls under the broad classification that Renaissance rhetoricians called "dark" tropes, soluble only after considerable effort, as opposed to "clear" allegory which is readily apprehensible by the application of reason and whose point appears "like a painting seen through glass." The enigma and kindred figures are often censured precisely for their obscurity by the vast majority of theoreticians from antiquity through the European Renaissance who hold clarity as a basic and inarguable canon of literature, "dilucide virtus." 24 Part of this distrust derived from the mechanics of Renaissance psychology, where reason was valued above imagination (fantaisie) and was expected to hold it in check. In common usage, "fantasy" is associated with notions of the grotesque, the odd, the eccentric, the capricious, the whimsical, the irrational, and the arbitrary, all of which express different nuances of its central meaning, that of an extravagant and impossible deviation from nature. In the usage of literary criticism, however, the term must mean both more and less than that: more, because the literary fantasy, unlike the fantasy in life, is a work of art and must be created according to some kind of artistic laws that are not arbitrary, capricious, or irrational; and less, because other literary types, such as the Utopia, the satire, the allegory, and the romance, also use extravagant and impossible deviations from nature. Some such deviation, indeed, is involved in all art; and if "fantasy" is given a wide inclusive meaning, it will end up being applied to works like the Divine Comedy or King Lear, an application of no interest to the literary critic, though it may be to the psychologist who regards all art as fantasy. In fact a countervaluation of obscure fantasy did exist, especially in Rabelais and des Périers, even if it did not prevail. Sebillet goes so far as to define the enigma in terms that are antithetical to Quintilian's criticism of it: "la vertu de l'énigme est l'obscurité tant dilucide." He goes on to specify the semantic density inhering in the form, "on ne touche pas seulement lés qualités et propriétés de la chose: mais aussi son origine, son usage, sa puissance, et sés effetz." 25 The fundamentally serious undercurrent, or at least the intense thematic content, which moves along swiftly under the surface

External Form folly has innumerable Renaissance analogues and did not escape the notice of contemporary commentors. For Scaliger, the obscurity that arrives at a known fact indirectly was ridiculous yet "non sine eruditione", and we read elsewhere that "ce docte et subtil enigme fut grandement loué." 26 The reaction of l'Acteur in the Temple d'honneur et de vertus, "A ces motz la tressaige princesse, non saichant proprement se ces choses qu'elle parcevoit par veoir et par ouyr luy estoient demonstrées reallement, ou s'elles se représentaient par figure enygmaticque devant sa puissance intellectuelle," is essentially the opposition of a living argument having the force of logic (demonstrées) to an airy vision closed to immediate solution (resembloient); no particular preference is stated beyond that implied by a sequential ordering. 27 The term "fantasy" as applied to the enigma of the coq-à-1'âne thus becomes useful for literary criticism when we compare the sort of work to which it can be applied with similar works, such as romance and allegory. In fantasy, the deviation from nature is enjoyed primarily for its own sake, for the pleasure of playing with natural law; whereas romance and allegory, while they may provide pleasure, subordinate it to a didactic intention. Both attitudes are found in Marot, depending on what reference or convention he is working in at the time, and each alternately receives his undivided attention. They are brushed over in the "Epistre à son amy, en abhorrant folle amour" which "faict changer le sens en frenaisie / Et la raison en vaine fantasie" ( w . 5-6), but in the second épître Bon Espoir invites the author to use "(s)es cinq sens, / Cueur & esprit & fantasie toute" (vv. 117-118). In the coq-à-1'âne reality and fantasy are inextricably joined to create a hermetic satire that hides the author behind its brief and complex allusions, and engages the reader in an appreciation of wit and a search for ironic meaning. An extended examination of a random passage will make this abundantly clear. While recognizing that attempts to understand Marot's every allusion are probably futile, Mayer's comprehensive critical apparatus has shown in one instance that (at least) six satirical jibes are contained in a dozen lines of the second coq-à-1'âne: Touche là; je suys en esmoy Des froids amys que j'ay en France; Mais je trouve que c'est oultrance Que l'ung a trop & l'aultre rien. Est-il vray que ce viel marrien Marche encores dessus espines, Et que les jeunes tant pouppines

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42 Vendent leur chair cher comme cresme? S'il est vray, adieu le caresme Au Concile qui se faira. Mais Romme tandis bouffera Des chevreaulx & la chardonnette.

(vv. 68-84) What is remarkable in the passage is the method in Marot's madness. For while the transfer of associations is often gratuitous and intimates a confused—or confusing—state of mind, its madness is only apparent. The initial "Touche la" suggests the rapidity of the mind's flight and places us in the context of the preceding paragraph, where Marot alleged his innocence in the affair of the "Gracieux Adieux Faitz aux Dames de Paris." W e are reminded that we are in 1535, when the poet was in exile. The importance of that pivotal date in Renaissance history, with all of the decisive events attendant to it, justifies in no small measure the compactness of the following allusions, in which the turnabout in logic conjures a period when the Church banned translations of the Bible while Boccaccio's Fiammetta and Rojas's Celestina were passed over in silence (vv. 1 0 0 - 1 0 1 ) , and reflects the historical and personal events it alludes to. Following his allegation of innocence, comes a personal declaration of unjustified abandonment by his friends in France. Despite the antithetical use of Mais, the theme of injustice continues to echo in the two following lines as we advance from a radically personal statement to an amplified general observation utilizing the impersonal Yung and I'aultre. Just as the conjunctions subvert the sense of the passage, the rhyme scheme advances the thought into the following section at the same time that the punctuation arrests it in couplets. The general commonplace dwindles to what Mayer's learned notes identify as a reference to the gout of the criminal magistrate Morin. The transition is also one from lucidity to opacity, since even this clarification leaves the thought a suspended fragment. Of course, the passage from general to ad hominem satire makes vagueness imperative, in order to remain within the traditional bounds of propriety and safety. Even so, Morin finds himself sandwiched between the themes of injustice—which his personal history may in fact have continued— and lascivity, in the following section which grammatically ("Est il vray que . . . Et que . . .") embraces him. In the aggregate, isolated references to the "jeunes tant pouppines" and the old hags "de bonne voulunt£" (v. 30) do personify Marot's general castigation of the

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time's social license and perversion. The parallel structure (chair-cher) that unites the meaning and divides the hemistichs, and the rhymes (cresme-caresme) joined in meaning and separated by punctuation, obliquely link prostitution with Lent as cause and effect ("S'il est vray . . ."). The most immediate referent of chair is the jeunes pouppines, but a more distant association with caresme is inescapable; this semantic multivalence is the prime characteristic of the enigma. The importance of flesh during Lent within the context of Marot's life and work needs no explanation. Superficial grammatical connectives where there are underlying semantic differences, or superficial opposition with underlying similarities, are the basic principles of Marot's satirical irony in the coq-a-l'&ne. The author insinuates an unassailable logic and order at the same time that he completely undercuts them. Finally, just as the earlier reference to the old whore quickly gave way to the prophecied demise of papal power and adumbrated the image of the Whore of Babylon common to evangelical polemic and the Revelation, this passage orchestrates a variation on the same theme, as Marot predicts the alteration of the rules of dogmatic abstinence by concilar edict. The image of the chevreaulx hidden beneath the chardonnette implies that the alteration will simply legitimize present Lenten abuses and violations by the clergy. Such diametrical oppositions between the elegies and coq-a-l'lne, despite their having a likely common ancestor in the ¿pitre, make us look twice and with a certain skepticism at the three-stage development that Villey claims to see in Marot's career. Villey's separations of influences on the many poetic forms continued, cultivated, or initiated by Marot have a useful convenience when we consider the finished product and its resolution and publication in individual collections arranged by genres. But they say little about, or rather tend to obscure, the development of a poetic consciousness that entailed continuing modifications and hesitations prior and preparatory to eventual affirmations of form which in many cases remain penultimate. More important for our purposes, explanation by cause and effect along chronological lines overlooks the synchronic influence of forms on one another that Marot developed at a different pace, the transfer of similar poetic themes and values from forms he considered outmoded to new ones he wished to pursue, and the diachronic evolution of ideas within the same form in response to the fluctuations of Fortune. In short, Villey's procedure understates the shifting attitude of the poet as he himself views his work in progress.

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Because they occupy a significant proportion of Marot's culminating years and because the model they followed, no matter whose translation he had before his eyes, made them gravitate toward a collection of ordained tones and themes and a definite length, the Psaumes de David have tended to be considered as a separate chapter in his life, apart from his other experiments with poetic form. Their final collected form has led us to see a different Marot writing them. The studies of Orentin Douen, Paul Laumonier, and Philippe Martinon legitimately treat the psalms apart from the general body of Marot's literary efforts because those studies center respectively on the composition, publication, and fortune of the psalm as a genre, and on the particular influence and general history of its prosody.28 But even historians interested in such questions as formative religious influence on the psalms, their genesis around 1530 to 1533, the separate publication of the VTe pseaulme de David translate en frangoys in 1533, the first collected manuscript of thirty psalms in 1539, Marot's vicissitudes with the Sorbonne, Calvin, and the Genevan council, or the publication of the cinquante pseaumes en frangois in 1543, limit their discussion of Marot's creativity to poems extending from the "Deploration de Florimond Robertet" to the "Avantnaissance du 3® enfant de Madame la Duchesse de Ferrare," plus the later apocryphal pieces for possible interchange of religious ideas.29 Shortly after his return to France in 1537 from exile in Italy, Marot's psalms began to circulate at the French court and the first collection began to take shape. At the same time, he continued to pursue his cantiques, which he had initiated in Venice the year before. An examination of the publication history of the cantiques shows that Marot hesitated in settling on a name for them, which is another way of saying that he was unsure about his conception of them and hence how to define them. This hesitation shows that the cantiques were not conceived in isolation from his growing awareness of the nature and intent of the psalms, and that the interchange in the pursuit of each genre was a creative one. The 1536 piece, "Plaigne les mortz qui plaindre les vouldra," was offered in the 1538 Montmorency manuscript as a Complaincte h la Royne, thus linking it to the elegies, and in a 1541 manuscript is listed as a Cantique de Marot.30 The first cantique published in the sixteenth century (1538 Oeuvres) under that title is the Cantique cL la Deesse Sante, which is nevertheless entered earlier that year in the Montmorency manuscript as a Hymne. In another poem, the "Dieu gard £t la Court," which Mayer classifies among the cantiques on the basis of its tone, Marot compounds confusion by concluding with the offhand, rhetorical question "Doy je finir 1'elegie

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presente," even though this poem lacks the qualities he ascribed to the elegy as he began defining that genre more coherently in the 1534 Suite. The significance of this confusing pattern of creation is that at the very time when the nature of the cantique was being clarified in Marot's artistic consciousness, the psalms were also becoming a cohesive group. When Charles V visited France in 1540 Marot published a set of occasional cantiques for which he definitively settled on that name, and in addition he presented the Holy Roman Emperor with his thirty psalms in manuscript which, when they were first published in 1541 without the author's permission, appeared along with a group of cantiques. These cantiques and psalms established his reputation as the foremost French poet of, respectively, official and religious lyricism. One of the 1540 cantiques, "Le canticque de la Royne sur la maladie et convalescence du Roy," draws on fragments from the psalms, amid allusions to classical lore, to express throughout its length the emotional attitude of the writer and his faith in God. Moreover, Marot was in the process of consolidating a growing awareness among Renaissance theoreticians that, even when they are grouped in separate collections, the hymn, canticle, and psalm are kindred forms; although, for example, in the Enarratio primi psalmi, Erasmus distinguished the hymn from the psalm on the grounds of religious propriety, he implicitly joined them in all other respects.81 In an épître of 1538 addressed to Renée de Ferrare (XLII), Marot, besieged on all sides by ravenous wolves, A proposé en pseaulmes et cantiques Rememorer les nouveaux et antiques Dons du Seigneur, ses graces et bienfaictz, Et mesmement ceulx que par toy m'a faictz. (w. 45-48) Again in 1543, in the "épître Aux Dames de France," he conjured up the Golden Age when peasants and craftsmen would perform their daily rounds with "un pseaume ou cantique" (v. 46) in their mouths. Several years later Du Bellay assigned to the ode the same domain, "les louanges des Dieux & des hommes vertueux," that in his letter to Renée de Ferrare, Marot had reserved for the psalms and cantiques and Peletier marks off the same range of subjects with special reference to Marot's psalms, "les louenges des Dieus, Demidieus e des Princes." 32 Sebillet had done much the same thing in his chapter on the cantique and on the ode: "le Cantique François n'est autre chose que le Pséaume

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Hébreu ou Latin. Aussy trouveras tu lés Cantiques de Marot pleins d'invocations et prières dressées aus Dieus a fin de destourner le mal, ou continuer le bien." 8 3 It is not hard to understand why Sebillet pluralizes Dieus when we remember that the cantiques and psalms combined embrace at once Jehovah and the Deesse Santé. Nor is it difficult to explain the alternation between mal and bien when we realize the ability official lyricism had in expressing collective joy or lament at the prospect of war or peace, or ill health or recovery of a sovereign. These fluctuations are distinct in kind but not degree from the expansive thematic range of the psalms as set forth in the prefatory epistle to Francis, Icy sa voix sur les reprouvez tonne, Et aux esleuz toute asseurance donne, Estant aux uns aussi doulx & traictable Qu'aux autres est terrible & redoubtable. (vv. 75-78) It is true that earlier in the same epistle he denied the validity of a mythic dimension in the psalms, "Fables n'y sont plaisantes mensongères" (v. 55) and in the "épître Aux Dames de France" he again disclaimed the presence of dieux estranges in his haultes louenges ( w . 25-26). But their careful circumscription simply placed him all the more at the forefront of coming Renaissance discussions on this matter. Sperone Speroni, whose dialogues were to have a formative influence on the early theories of the Pléiade, also excludes myths from the poetic truth he proposes in the Apologia dei dialogi and attributes praise and sorrow, both human and divine, specifically to a closely united set of genres, of hymns, canticles, and psalms: senza altre favole, tutte le grazie che le [to the well-ordered city] son fatte dal Signor Dio . . . ; lodar le geste de' cittadini in guerre giuste vittoriosi . . . ; e condolersi alla morte de chi era degno di non morire . . . ciò facendo, riusciranno li suoi poemi non commedie, non tragedie, non epopeje, ma inni, cantici, e salmi.34 The adaptability of both psalms and cantiques in form and intent is yet another link between them. Passing in review several of Marot's cantiques, Sebillet concluded that they "ont toute autre forme et ryme et de coupletz. Et pour cela t'ay-je dit que le Cantique est variable en sa forme et structure." 35 A glance at the epistolary and strophic forms —both isometric and heterometric—of the cantiques easily explains his comment.36 Although the themes of the psalms are more singleminded and predetermined, the essentially popular nature and intent

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of his "sainct cancionnaire" as outlined in the épître "Aux Dames de France" (v. 58) subjected the collection to an even greater formal variety than the cantiques or any previous version of the psalms, such as Pierre Gringore's Heures de Nostre Dame (1527). That we can measure the extent to which Marot personally experienced affective changes and fluctuations in attitude by the incidence of his choice of variable forms, and that the tone the poet desires to set determines his choice of forms, and is itself, in turn, conditioned by that form, is evident even from a verse like "Ses (Marot's) vers divins, ses chansons mesurées" (v. 59). This verse occurs in the epistle to the king where Marot renounced, as many later Huguenot poets were to do, the profane loves he had once sung. The psalms are "mesurés" in the same way that Ronsard's odes are "mesurées à la lyre." Since masculine and feminine rhyme endings are arranged in identical order from psalm to psalm, all are adaptable to the same melody or to identical ones. This isometric versification of the psalms was adapted to the cadence of popular songs, much as the songs from the anthology Jardin de Plaisance were fitted to the compaintes, and thus made the psalm as a poetic form instrumental in renovating lyric poetry.37 Each psalm is prefaced with a statement as to strophic length to facilitate its being sung, although neither air, timbre, intensity, nor pitch is indicated : first psalm—"à deux versets pour couplet à chanter"; second psalm—"à deux couplets différents de chant, chascun couplet d'un verset," and so on. The forty-one rhythmic combinations possible in the fifty psalms justify Sebillet's decision to discuss the psalm, cantique, and ode in the same section, "aussy peu constant qu'ilz sont, et autant prompt a changer de son, de vers, et de Ryme, comme eus de visages et d'acoutremens," and indicate why Ronsard chose to exert his literary personality in the odes with the example of the psalms in mind.38 Marot's eventual reorganization of the corpus of his poetry along lines of genre, after his slow abandonment of the restrictions the Rhétoriqueurs had placed upon the genres, would not have been an exercise of his own literary personality if he had viewed poetic form as merely the set of formal elements tradition had established. The history of his publication, however, bespeaks a transvaluation in his attitude toward poetic form, a fluid conception of artistic conventions that is responsive to conditions outside of the formal structure. The continuing process of allowing one form to grow from another, and the reorganization of previously published work are the prime evidence of this fluidity. The adherence of the youthful Marot to the medieval narrative poem

4

8

Form

serves to bind him in a common enterprise with his predecessors. His fixed-form poems both accept and assert affiliation with time-honored structures that transcend the merely individual. And as medieval forms give appropriate structure to the values of that society, so too the act of affiliation involves a value judgment. In a sense, in his early years, Marot is competing with the Rhetoriqueurs but he is also joining them. Even at the point when he grew aware of his own inner resources and of a corresponding lack of resource in the traditional forms, his originality still has meaning only through implicit reference to tradition. He abandoned the rondeau, transferring its themes to other forms, and he transformed the individuality of the ballade by making it the unit of a larger and different structure, because both forms were so encrusted with precedent that he was unable to say anything new with them. But this simply means that their form was not at the growing edge of the body of new poetry, as Du Bellay tells us later. By the strophic richness illustrated in the Psaumes de David, Marot implicitly demonstrated the poverty of unbending, limited generic form he no longer practiced to any serious extent. The psalms evince an enrichment within, not a rejection of, formal restrictions: the interaction of the poem's mechanical demands with the poet's individuality, which issues in an organic fusion. The originality of Marot, or for that matter of any Renaissance poet, may consist more in what he transformed than in what he created ex nihilo. The value of what Lemaire, Villon, and even Lorris had done was not diminished by Marot's innovations, but continued to contribute indirectly to his art by example and through the integration of their imaginative biographical projections into his own imaginative dramatizations. The forms of poetry cannot be so unlimitedly flexible as to accommodate all the nuances of experience. Only life can afford such infinite variety, and, in regard to Marot, we are fortunately past the point of confusing biography with its poetic refraction—which may be a blessing for both. Yet Marot's poetic forms do vary in different measure with the peculiar demands of every context. Variance strives for a uniqueness, a particular adaptation to the peculiar purpose of the ballade, rondeau, eclogue, epigram, elegy, or coq-a-l'ane, achieved through bending, but never utterly destroying, the conventional formal patterns of the poetic tradition he inherited. In Marot, the solid achievement of the past becomes the best guarantee of the future.

IÏÏ: INTERNAL STRUCTURE T o every Form of being is assigned, Thus calmly spoke the venerable Sage, An active Principle. —WORDSWORTH, The Excursion, IX, i

search for discreteness of genres and integrity of form in his work represented an effort to divest or transform older forms as a means of asserting his own freedom—of reinterpreting the past in order to make a place for himself in the present. Relation of theme from one poem to the next, still vague in some parts of the Adolescence, becomes much more evident in the elegy sequence of the 1534 Suite, and demonstrates a further refinement in the epistolary verse novel as it came into existence in the early sixteenth century.1 More than being a mere juxtaposition according to broad thematic categories or coincidental similarities, as had been the case with "A une mesdisante," " A ung Poete ignorant," "De la jeune Dame qui a vieil Mary," "Du mal content d'Amours" (Rondeaux VI through IX of the Adolescence), the sequential ordering of the elegy collection intimates a consciousness on the poet's part of the work's overall direction—a direction dictated more by the organizing principle of art than the fortuitous circumstances of biography. This growing consciousness appears in genres with widely differing characteristics, and thus permits us to gauge and evaluate some of Marot's overall attitudes toward his work and his conception of its integral parts. Mayer argues that the "Second Livre des Epigrammes dédié à Anne" would claim the distinction of being the first French canzoniere before Du Bellay, were it not that most of the poems in the book do not relate to his love for Anne. 2 Still, the initial epigram of the book, "Anne, ma soeur, sur ces miens Epigrammes . . . ne mesprise les flammes / Qui pour t'amour luisent icy dedans" ( L X X I X ) and the finale, "Puis que les Vers que pour toy je compose. . . . Ilz te feront vivre éternellement" ( C L I ) do invite MAROT'S CONTINUAL

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comparison with their counterparts in the Rime Sparse and L'Olive. Petrarch's liminal sonnet, "Era il giorno . . ." situates the lovers' fated meeting according to the liturgical calendar, beginning with the crucifixion. Similarly, Du Bellay's "Egal un jour au Laurier immortel" of the first sonnet calls forth the collection's last line, "Jusq'à l'égal des Lauriers tousjours verds," while the Christmas Eve Sonnet ( V ) and the rebirth sonnets at the end of the collection encompass the intervening sonnets within their liturgical rhythms. But for all that, this structure does not delimit the content of the majority of poems in the sequences (since both Petrarch and Du Bellay range freely through a variety of themes) so much as it controls the range of attitudes of the poets. The flight from the medieval genres to the epigram, according to Villey, delivered Marot from the acrobatic forms that had dominated the scene at the cost of ideas, and led to a corresponding coincidence of structure and theme where length varies as intent varies.3 This variability is true both of the loose and fixed verse forms after the Adolescence, although it is perhaps more obvious in the épîtres. In an épître ( X X X I ) written around 1533, he compares his poetry with that of Guillaume du Tertre, and pays the latter the standard compliment that alongside his verse Marot's poetry would surely pale. He concludes on a note of routine courtesy: Or, tel qu'il est, en gré le vueilles prendre Plus escriroys, plus me feroys reprendre. (w. 23-24) The phrase tel qu'il est seems incomplete from an aesthetic point of view, given the elasticity of the épître which could be abridged or expanded at any point according to the requirements of the subject. But the surface impression of incompleteness resulting from his comparison is surely the one Marot intended to give, and reflects his own self-awareness in the humble pose he assumes. Marot's pretense that he is leaving the poem open-ended is belied by its effect of formal completeness, since a work of art is finished when its intent is realized. Yet even in the Psaumes de David, the "sainct cancionnaire" where sequence and theme are predetermined beyond appeal, we have seen that the shifting manipulation of poetic form and structure attests to the poet's originality and suggests a mobile conception of poetic structure. In fact, all elements of Marot's poetry are formative: not only the sound patterns and the logical structure of the ideas but the metaphors

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and images, which both literally create forms in the imagination and also—through repetition and development or, without these, through coherence with other images—give unity to the poem. Not only sound patterns and logic and images but the more elusive element of tone, which provides a formal unity of mood or of point of view. Not only that but equally formative is the syntax, which gives precise form to the sentences, themselves the structure of the thought.4 In this chapter and in the following we will examine the intricacies of some of Marot's verbal structures, in order to suggest the vast range of his verbal command irrespective of genre and the ways in which control of the poem's inner configuration was a means for Marot of controlling meaning. His rare mentions of literary training that might have taught such control are scattered unevenly through his entire work. For the court poet whose narrative voice was frequently a function of the personage or event he commemorated, personal comment would have been out of place, so that as usual, Marot's allusions to his formative background are equivocal. When he alleges to Chancellor Antoine Duprat that "(il) a suivy long temps Chancellerie" (Epitre, XIII, v. 53), thereby claiming a substantial judicial training, his intent may have been more to persuade and establish affinity than to inform. Yet his countervailing assertion that his preceptors "m'ont perdu ma jeunesse" is too reminiscent of Villon's "se j'eusse estudié / Ou temps de ma jeunesse" and Du Bellay's criticism of his teachers "Qui ma jeunesse passée / Aux tenebres ont laissée," not to be recognized as a literary commonplace.5 Whatever the nature of his true opinions on his youth, misspent or otherwise, the more we enter into the reality he imagined and the more his poetic statement is abstracted from biographical considerations, the more inescapably it appears that from his earliest years he had some familiarity with and training in the precepts and practice of the classical Trivium—the combined study of rhetoric and dialectic—which had formed writers of all callings for fifteen centuries. This familiarity and training are more obvious in his youth than in his maturity, not because he became less rhetorical but because he became more skillful in manipulating and concealing his technique. In his épître (II) to the Duchesse d'Alençon composed around 1519 Marot conjures up Mercury, god of eloquence "Qui des humains la mémoire illumine" and who warns the young poet of failure "Si en mon art tu ne veulx inspirer / Le tien esprit par cure diligente" (vv. 18, 24-25). This art is then as clearly laid forth as ever Cicero or Quintilian did, or as Du Bellay was to do in the D e f f e n c e et Illustration (I, v) :

S2

Form Les bons propos, les raisons singulières Je voys cherchant, et les belles matières, A celle fin de faire Oeuvre duisante Pour Dame tant en vertus reluisante . . . Bien disposez d'une veine subtile De vous escrire en ung souverain stile. ( w . 44-47, 5 0 - 5 1 )

Marot has summarized here the three related procedures of invention, where in his memory or in an open text a writer finds material that is suitable for the subject he will undertake, of disposition, or the organization of the writer's attitude and material, and of style, where he selects an appropriate degree of address. Although he was evidently conversant with rhetorical procedure and although threads of the three kinds of classical oratory (judicial, deliberative, and panegyric) are perceptible in the whole fabric of his work, Marot's mature poems never show him constrained by its system or, when he does adhere to its program, never doing so against the poem's context. T w o strains of judicial argument, for instance, occur appropriately in L'Enfer and " L ' E p î t r e de Frippelippes," where Marot is most fervently pleading his case. T h e Enfer is marked throughout by sharp changes in narrative direction—and therefore intent—which require only minimum comment to be clarified. T h e first twenty verses of the exordium comply, wittingly or not, with the invariable purpose of any exordium to make listeners benevolos, "mes treschers Freres," and attentos, "Escoutez doncq,' A m y s " (v. 20). 6 T h e next verse, "Bien avez leu . . . ," opens a distinctly new section, corresponding in intent to the second traditional step, narration, where the facts of the case are to be set forth and evidence given. In " L ' E p î t r e de Frippelippes" Marot's imaginary valet becomes his advocate before an absent adversary, and sets the mood by praising his master's star witnesses in the long quarrel and discrediting those of François Sagon. Once the tone is set, he comes to the point as he did in L'Enfer: " M a i s vien ça . . . il me vient souvenir, / Q'ung jour vers luy te vy venir . . ." ( w . 1 0 3 , 1 0 5 - 1 0 6 ) . Finally, after he calls other witnesses, gives evidence and refutes Sagon's charges, he proceeds to pass judgment and sentence. In the "Epître au Roy, du temps de son exil à Ferrare" Marot drops the literary pretense of the moralist in hell and of the author hiding behind his surrogate spokesman. His own personality moves to the foreground in compensation for his distant and sudden self-exile in Italy, occasioned by religious purges in the aftermath of the Affaire des

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Placards. In contrast to the limited perspective of l'affaire Sagon, here the manysided issues confronting his letter to the king cause a diffusion of intent and a fragmentization of the poet's personality as Marot becomes in turn advocate, thinker and eulogist. But the poem is no less rhetorical for this diversity, and leads principally to the last-line conclusion—like that of a latter-day Ovid addressing Augustus from the Black Sea—that his loss of the king's service "vient plustost de malheur que de vice." Marot prepares this conclusion by his opening declaration of innocence, which prefaces a long denunciation of judicial corruption and Sorbonne obscurantism. Along the way, certain verbal cues like "Suyvant propos," "Brief," "Autant comme eulx" at the beginning of stanzas relate broad social ills to the particular case of Marot, who suffers from them, and to the king, whose protection they violate; the achievements of Francis, after all, are "Plus reluysants que du temps des Césars" (v. 56). The most serious charge answered in this épître is that of Lutheriste, against which Marot defends himself with a deceptively obvious and tightly structured argument sic et non: "Au nom de luy (Luther) ne suys point baptizé; / Baptizé suis au nom" of Christ. The progression from Francis to Christ to God accounts for an apparent lapse of awareness as he is seized by a prayerful mood," O seigneur dieu . . . vous supply, pere" (w. 103, 1 1 5 ) . God himself is implicitly called to witness the poet's sincerity until his return to more earthly concerns Que dys je? où suys je? O noble Roys Françoys, Pardonne moy, car ailleurs je pensoys. Pour revenir doncques à mon propos . . . (w. 1 2 1 - 2 3 ) Yet his supposed wandering is in reality no digression at all. On one level, the progression is a natural one: in a religious context he was thinking of a greater king, the true King, both his and Francis's.7 But on another, it is a way of strengthening his alleged innocence and at the same time of flattering Francis, the surest instrument of his deliverance. Far from blunting the thrust of his argument, his aside actually frames his plea in a complex logic. The initial comparison of the patronymic Francis to Augustus, the pater patriae, and his subsequent comparison to God the Father is a pretext for his final comparison to his own father, Louis XII. At the poem's conclusion Marot mentions how he himself came as a pitiable exile to Ferrara and the court of Renée, the king's sister and "Fille du Roy tant crainct & renommé, /

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Form

Pere du peuple aux Chroniques nommé" (vv. 203-204). The chronicles in question are most likely the Voyage de Gênes and Voyage de Venise where Jean Marot eulogized his own protector, Louis XII. By the persuasiveness of these complex associations, Clément's subtle logic leaves Francis little choice but to protect him as well. Far from being a celebration of itself, as is the case with that of his predecessors, Marot's poetic logic and rhetoric serve the poem's needs instead of dominating it and give it a clear sense of direction. Again, the skeletal bones of his argument protrude more in his early work, but even in a youthful rondeau like the following, the three stages of the poem's structure, forming the triple movement of a disjunctive syllogism, serve to point up the natural dialectic of statement and response in conversation: En la baisant m'a dit: Amy sans blasme, Ce seul baiser qui deux bouches embasme Les arres sont du bien tant esperé. Ce mot elle a doulcement proféré, Pensant du tout appaiser ma grand flamme. Mais le mien cueur adonc plus elle enflamme, Car son alaine odorant plus que basme Souffloit le feu qu'Amour m'a préparé En la baisant. Brief mon esprit, sans congnoissance d'ame, Vivoit alors sur la bouche à ma Dame; Dont se mouroit le corps énamouré; Et si sa Levre eust gueres demouré Contre la mienne, elle m'eust sucé l'ame En la baisant. (.Rondeau LV) Even when logical structure remains invariable, as in the syllogism, it affords a sense of direction to the contours of Marot's thought, and is capable of embracing moods of levity and high seriousness. In the épître ( X L V ) where amidst an atmosphere of naïve banter he reluctantly requests "le petit saufconduict" from the Dauphin, the patent "Conclusion, royalle geniture, / Ce que je quiers . . ." which introduces the last part of the letter creates a comic effect arising from the incongruity of innocent manner and serious intent. However, the sober last stanza of the so-called "Luther Psalm" (Psaume X L V I ) , "Conclusion, le Dieu des armes / Des nostres est en tous alarmes," which was authorized neither by any extant sixteenth-century version nor by the

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Vulgate, contrasts with the richly imagistic language of the preceding forty verses but reinforces their persuasive intent. The sense of logical connection evidenced in the above examples— whether of a rhetorical introduction or a summarizing conclusion, and whether of a judicial, deliberative, or panegyric nature—demonstrates that beyond considerations specific to the short, fixed-form poem or to the long narrative poem, Marot, the technical craftsman, demonstrated an underlying awareness of the organic process of composition and a constant, but not immediately apparent concern for constituent relationships in poetic structure. The technical craftsman is only occasionally glimpsed beneath the veneer of Marot the relaxed conversationalist. Later in the century, we find a similar concern shown in Renaissance tragedy for the juxtaposition of set speeches in both monologues and dialogues as a means of marking shifts in mood and emotion. The speeches are composed in relationship to the general plot of the play and are structured internally according to a rigid sequence of ideas that may include praise, blame, use of commonplaces, and so forth.8 Dramatic narrative in L'Enfer presents numerous examples of such set speeches used as a means of drawing our attention to the moral lesson to which all true satire aspires. Following his description of torture, two consecutive asides of Marot to his audience attempt to inspire pity, " O chers Amys, j'en ay veu martirer / Tant que pitié m'en mettoit en esmoy! /Parquoy vous pry de plaindre avecques moy" ( w . 284-286), and fear, " E t vous, enfants suyvantz maulvaise vie, Retirez vous . . . Vous vous voyrrez hors la subjection / Des Infernaulx . . ." (vv. 289290, 300-301). And if the "Balladin" is indeed by Marot, then it too shows a distinct effort to set apart a speech and still adhere to the overall context: after the description of the revival of purified Christianity in the person of Christine, she greets her would-be faithful with a paraphrase of Matthew 11:28-29, the form of a quintil that contrasts with the rimes plates of the preceding and following discourses: Venez à moy, vous qui estes chargez, Venez y tous, & jeunes & aagez; N'allez ailleurs sur paine de la vie; Venez à moy qui d'aimer vous convie, Et de tous poinct vous rendray soullaigez. (w. 155-59) Since we possess several authentic versions of it, the Temple de Cupido offers an excellent opportunity to see the concern that Marot

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felt and the difficulties he experienced in polishing the inner workings of an oeuvre de jeunesse. A dramatic scene of primitive innocence is set at the beginning for Cupid, whom we soon see enter and survey the dominion of his powers from his throne. His view encompasses heroes, men and gods : Adonc il veit au tour de ses Charroys D'un seul regard maintz victorieux Roys, Haultz Empereurs, Princesses magnifiques, (vv. 9 - 1 1 ) —a vision which continues up to the next section, "Mais ainsi est que ce cruel E n f a n t , / M e voyant . . ." (vv. 19-20). Through verse 1 1 , the original version composed around 1 5 1 5 accords with the definitive 1538 version. Marot evidently saw no need to modify the former thus far. But a comparison of the verses that follow in both versions shows how and why he attempted to restructure the clumsy original here: Dames portans visaiges deifiques, Mainte pucelle en sa fleur de jeunesse, Et tout humain subject à sa haultesse. Et qui plus est les altitonens dieux Vit trebucher soubz ses dardz odieux. Brief il congneut que toute nation Playoit soubz luy comme au vent le syon.

Laides et laidz, visaiges Deifiques, Filles et filz en la fleur de jeunesse, Et les plus fortz subjectz à sa haultesse. Brief il congneut que toute nation Ployoit soubz luy, comme au vent le Sion. Et qui plus est, les plus souverains Dieux Veit tresbucher soubz ses dartz furieux.

The section's conclusion, "Brief il congneut que toute nation," in the original version embraces "tout humain" but cannot logically accommodate the parenthetical " E t qui plus est les altitonens dieux." Marot's later reconstruction, however, preserves the sense of his conclusion, but deflates its sweep by inserting a reference to the gods which poorly prepares the following inclusion of the fictitious narrator. Comparison of the two texts, which span a whole career, suggests a Marot who attempted to transcend his early limitations less by outright rejection than by transformation. Transformation of original limitations also lies at the roots of the techniques he employed to arrange sequential thoughts, to mark new departures or continuity, and to order whole groups of poems. This is espe-

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daily true of his lyric poetry. The second complainte is constructed around what Sebillet calls rimes concactenées where the last line of a stanza, each one the incipit of a popular song, also initiates the following strophe.9 As a result, thought is subjugated to a predetermined carmen correlativum that is as lifeless as the emotions it serializes, "Dueil & ennuy, soucy, regret & peine." At the same time, when this chain sequence links poems that otherwise would be gathered at random in a collection, we find the same organizing principle that makes individual poems separate but integral episodes in a continuing love story—a unifying urge that characterizes great sequences of Renaissance poetry from the Rime sparse through L'Olive.10 Thus, the close of Chanson III, "En servant aura jouyssance," calls forth "Jouyssance vous donneray" of Chanson IV whose last line, "Tout vient à point qui peult attendre," is transformed by Chanson V, "J'attens secours de ma seulle pensée." As Marot's inspiration became more eclectic, organizing themes became subject to wider variations and adapted themselves more closely to nuances of thought. Styled after the famous wedding poem of Catullus, Epithalame I creates an impression of variety absent in the poem's model, by opposing the refrains that end and begin successive stanzas: . . . Ont appellé la bienheureuse Nuict. O Nuict, pour vray, si es tu bien cruelle . . . Pourquoy es tu doncques Nuict desirée? Je me desdy, tu n'est point Nuict cruelle; . . . (w. 10-11, 20-21) The later Cantique V elaborates the antithesis of war and peace, and weaves the intermittent appearance of Mars at the beginning of stanzas throughout its entire length: "Si Mars cruel vous en feistes descendre, / . . . Vienne sur champs Mars avec son armée" (w. 9, 69). His irregular appearance joins past and present in consecutive stanzas, ". . . Dedans lequel ce cruel Mars se baigne. / Mars cy devant souloit taindre ses dars" (w. 30-31), and coincides both thematically and ironically with the ill-starred peace talks of Francis and Charles V in 1538 which the poem reports. Connecting the disconnected, then, amounts to a general rule of composition, dating from Marot's early poetry but early surpassing the limitations we find there, inasmuch as it serves a variety of ends in a variety of contexts. After an extensive but necessary digression in the "Epître au Roy, de Venise" where he proclaimed his contrition and

5»

Form

apostrophized Francis, "tes faitz et tes vertuz dieter. . . . Or suis je au loing de mon propoz" ( w . 1 1 6 , 1 2 1 ) , his connective word is the means of quickly reestablishing order between sections: " C ' e s t qu'en courroux, sans y penser, t'ay mis. / A ce courroux soudain pour moy print cesse . . ." (vv. 1 3 6 - 1 3 7 ) . And, as we have seen, associating the disparate is the basic trait in the artificial address of the coq-^-l'ine which is dominated by a radically different mood. W h e n Marot incongruously joins two satirical observations with '"Vrayment, puis qu'il vient a propos," we can rest assured that the following statement will be truly malapropos. Incongruity destroys the sense of logic or order which the reader might be expected to bring to the work, and it is from the jolt of this logical form against illogical statement that comedy springs. Such formal ligatures as these are not automatically assigned by an unquestioned tradition; rather, they arise from an active principle of thought as mercurial as the poet's mind and as variable as the circumstances that shape that mind. Desire to reestablish logical form in the first instance cited above is essentially a wish to return to the status quo of his acceptance at court. In the second, the deceptive appearance of order hiding an undercurrent of disorder is symbolic of the social ills the poet is obliquely addressing himself to. Adherence to the constraints of form cannot thwart the natural expression of thought emanating from a creative mind in full command of the mechanics and resources of poetic structure. T h e Rhetoriqueurs did not want for means of expression, but in the absence of initiative became the victims of paralyzing form, and limited commonly accepted structures to commonly accepted ideas. This does not suggest that the great Renaissance poets struck out on their own in search of revolutionary and exotic forms. Trained as they were in similar procedures and manuals of poetic—which is to say rhetorical—composition, and imitating similar models, they inevitably drew on similar structures whose formal details, syntax, and length differ more in degree than in kind. T h e touchstone, both for the Renaissance aesthetician and the modern reader, is the way in which form relates to the active principle of thought, unites accretive details with poetic intent, and illuminates that intent for the poet's audience, real or implied. T o take a rhetorical figure at random, one could cite the figure uniformly labeled merismus in Greek and distributio in Latin, which serves to establish proportion among unordered ideas and relies on a welter of differences set up by the poet on his way to extracting the poem's essential unity. As did Horace before him and Surrey after, Petrarch deployed it in the poem "Ponmi ove '1 sole occide i fiori e 1'erba" where six proportionally varied

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Fonmïs describe a world of circumstances that will not dissuade him from his last-verse "sospir trilustre" of love. But it serves Mars as well as Venus, as we see in Ronsard's Discours des misères de ce temps: Donne (je te supply que cette Royne mere Puisse de ces deux camps appaiser la colere. Donne moy de rechef que son sceptre puissant Soit maugré le discord en armes fleurissantDonne que la fureur de ce Monstre barbare Aille bien loing de France au rivaige Tartare . . - 1 1 where the steady alternation of imperative and intended effect is at once the vehicle for a progressively abstract imagery, in accordance with the poem's compelling description of martial havoc and a consequent wish for peace. Among those contemporaries who exerted an indisputable influence on Marot, merismus is invariably used in the light of its sixteenth-century theoretical definition as a division and an elaborated, enthusiastic and increasingly acute examination of a subject to amplify its properties. 12 In Le Triomphe de l'agneau Marguerite de Navarre stipulates the problem men have in "congnoissant leur Sauveur pleinement" (v. 963). After describing the blinding vision of Moses on Mount Sinai and the comforting glance of Christ, she concludes Jamais Soleil en plein jour esclarcy, Tant bel ne feut que sa face argentine: Jamais ne feut l'estoille matutine Tant clere à voir en sa riche estincelle; Jamais Ruby qui luist et estincelle Ne feut, qu'on sceust justement comparer A ses deux yeux. (w. 996-1001) It is principally the framing of the sustained comparison of brilliant images which makes the enjambement so striking. Like the poets cited above, Marot's choice of the figure is not determined by the genre, nor even by the tone he wishes to give to the poem, but rather by its suitability to dissect, analyze, and express the idea in question. Thus, we find it in poems as apparently shapeless in structure as the épîtres or as complex as the Psaumes. Like Marguerite's poem, Epître XXIII concludes with a comparison of superior to inferior qualities, but more as a witty request than a serious demonstration. Je ne veulx point de ces doulcetz Chevaulx, Tant que pourray endurer les travaulx; Je ne veulx point de Mulle, ne Mullet,

Form

6o Tant que je soys Vieillard blanc comme laict; Je ne veulx point de blanche Hacquenée, Tant que je soys Damoyselle atoumée.

( w . 39-44) T h e preceding description of the protagonist as an alert and vigorous horseman makes the dismissal of the unacceptable horses a natural one and the end of the poem inevitable Que veulx je donc? ung Courtault furieux, . . . Conclusion, si vous me voulez croire, D'homme & Cheval ce ne sera que gloire. (w. 45, 5 1 - 5 2 ) Logic is even more specious, and thus more comical, in Epître XVI, coming in the aftermath of a card game he lost, for which Marot offers the current poem to absolve his debt. He dispenses with any eloquent garnishings and clears himself of responsibility for his loss by a series of prenez vous en: Prenez vous en à ceulx qui me trompoient, Et qui mon jeu à tous coups me rompoient; Prenez vous en à quatre pour le moins, Qui contre moy furent tous faulx tesmoings; Prenez vous en à vous mesmes aussi, Qui bien vouliez qu'ilz feissent tous ainsi. (w. 1 1 - 1 6 ) But the disposition of the series, as it narrows the culprits from an anonymous multitude to the unnamed lady-in-waiting, discloses an aptitude for rhetorical banter. Finally, in another "Epistre perdue au jeu contre Madame de Ponts" ( X X X V I I I ) , Marot places his poem alongside other "oeuvres bien dictées" and, burdened by an affected embarras de richesses, wonders what flowers or colors of rhetoric to choose and how to proceed "pour mon epistre orner" : De te parler de science latine? D'en deviser près de toy ne suis digne! Te deviser des amoureux soulas? C'est temps perdu: tu aymes trop Palas! Chanter la guerre, et des armes la mode? A ton mary la chose est plus commode! De tes vertus bien blasonner & paindre? Taire vault myeulx que n'y povoir attaindre! ( w . 35-42)

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—after which he refuses his poem the title "D'envoy, de lay, d'elegie, n'epistre" (v. 46). W e have here a picture of the poet who demonstrates flexibility of tone at the very moment when he denies himself any such talent, a declaration of ineptitude in poetic form as he demonstrates its mastery. This humble self-awareness of the poet standing both before and within his work is not unlike the convolution of a painter who includes in his picture a mirror reflecting himself standing outside the picture painting it. Despite this theme of flexible response, these last three examples analyze the particular situation of Marot addressing a particular person at a specific moment in his life. Nothing could be farther removed from such literary circumstances than the Psalms, where Marot's personality recedes as he adapts the psalmist's lyric to the technical demands of intricate verse forms. Y e t his signature has not entirely disappeared from the poem. It is felt in the structure of alternation we have been examining which, while it may not be authorized by any extant translation he could have worked from—certainly not by Vatable and probably not by Bucer—is entirely justified by the psalmodic themes, both individual and collective. Thus, if his own voice sounds within the Psalms he has restructured, it is not there by intrusion but as a contrapuntal resonance amplifying the dynamic rapport of God, the world, and man. Psaume CVII attributes the tidal ebb and flow of joy and the thousand natural shocks of life to Divine will, which Faict au vent de tempeste Sa fureur rabaisser; Faict que la mer s'arreste Et ses undes cesser . . . Luy, qui les eaux profondes En desert convertit, Et les sources des undes Asseche & divertit . . . Qui desertz d'humeurs vuydes Convertit en grands eaux, Et lieux secz & arides En sources & ruisseaux (w. 1 1 3 - 1 6 , 1 2 9 - 3 2 , 137-40) Steady alternation of Divine cause and natural effect and the progressive diminution of violence from tempeste through cesser become sensibly apparent and achieve palpable meaning primarily through poetic structure. Restatement of identical ideas through uniform syntax in

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each stanza, and the cyclic occurrence of benevolence and hostility from stanza to stanza, reflect an omnipotence equally to destroy and create—a power that man, if he cannot singly affect, can at least express and petition through praise.13 Reversal of degeneration and destruction by an affirmed or desired recreation is a theme to which Marot gives meaning through other specific, if less uniform, verbal structures; it presumes a retrospective view that is most apparent near the end of his career. Critics have not failed to point out his tentative return during his twilight years to the earliest poetic forms of his first innocence.14 During that youthful innocence itself Marot plied the trade of his predecessors by constructing elaborate series of rimes annexées as a means of neatly closing the circle of his thought. The overture to his collected chansons gives palpable shape to his torment: Plaisir n'ay plus, mais vy en desconfort, Fortune m'a remis en grand douleur; L'heur que j'avoys est tourné en malheur, Malheureux est qui n'a aulcun confort. By beginning each new line with the last syllable of the preceding line, he manages to imitate the actions of Fortune's Wheel and link Plaisir with confort. But the characteristic neatness of the rhyme negates the ravaged existence he alleges. Conceived more broadly and in terms of the central issues of his time, this circularity is even more apparent as a structural principle in a variety of poetic contexts. Apocalyptic dissolution and renewal, embracing at once Genesis and Revelation, is a theme whose treatment ranges from Rabelais's whimsical Enigme en prophétie to the blunt militancy of a poem attributed dubiously to Marot 1 5 whose significance is far too vast to explore fully here. Marot's position, however, falls between these two polarities. Surrender of the 1538 Hebrew Psalms' martial structure and rhythm to the almost inarticulate wish for rebirth of some of his Christian poems cannot be explained by chronology and must therefore reflect in some measure a modification in attitude. To make this modification more apparent, we can briefly cite a group of diverse poems—an epigram, cantique, and rondeau—all composed in 1538. Epigramme CXXXI affirms death as the pivotal agent in transcending the miseries of the eternal human condition: "Nous fusmes, sommes, & serons / Mort, & Malice, & Innocence" ( w . 1 - 2 ) , but the inevitability of death as it is logically set forth here does not jibe with the emotional wish for a desired return to innocence. The

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rebirth motif and cyclical structure had been utilized in 1531 in the "Eglogue sur le Trépas de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye." Set in a lovely outdoor scene with flowers, trees, singing birds, and gurgling brooks, the idyll passes through an apocalyptic scene of sharp contrast when the death of Louise is announced: trees no longer bear fruit, grass withers, and the sun is obscured at midday (w. 92-104). Near the end of the eclogue, the narrator returns to the paradisiac tone as he imagines Louise in heaven: Là ne voyt rien qui en rien luy desplaise, Là mange fruict d'inestimable pris, Là boyt liqueur qui toute soif appaise, Là congnoistra mille nobles espritz (w. 205-208) This return to paradise is singularly comparable to Du Bellay's famous "Idée" sonnet: Là est le bien que tout esprit désire, Là le repos où tout le monde aspire, Là est l'amour, là le plaisir encore . . . De la beauté qu'en ce monde j'adore. where the temporal scheme passes from the limitations of time, through a distant eternity, to the poet's last-line simultaneous participation in both modes. Marot's narrator, however, specifically excludes himself from the paradise regained, "ça bas, pleins d'humaines raisons, / Sommes marriz (ce semble) de son aise" (vv. 203-204), as the rules of court protocol would dictate. For him, the circle never fully closes or, when it does, he remains an outsider incapable of participating in its perfection. Regained perfection is again the devoutly wished consummation of Cantique V and Rondeau LX. Neither poem presents any interesting structural innovations, but in both cases regular structure ironically runs counter to tenuous or vanished stability beneath surface appearances. Cantique V celebrating the abortive peace parleys of Francis and Charles V begins with a standard invocation Approche toy, Charles (tant loing tu sois) Du magnanime & puissant roy Françoys; Approche toy, Françoys (tant loing sois tu) De Charles, plein de prudence & vertu; Non pour tous deux en bataille vous joindre . . . (w. 1 - 5 )

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and embroiders the struggle of Mars and Peace until "le retour de Paix, noble deesse" (v. 84); there follows a verbatim restatement of the initial four verses at the poem's close. The much anthologized rondeau "de l'Amour du Siecle Antique" brings to mind Poliziano's "Laude della Vita Rusticana": Au bon vieulx temps ung train d'Amours regnoit . . . Vingt ans, trente ans; cela duroit ung Monde Au bon vieulx temps. (w. 1, 8-9) Thrust into a distant past, man's prelapsarian innocence is not delimited by specificity of verbal action or temporal description, while the refrain, assured by the sonnet's structure, promises a return to the point of departure. Yet the expected return is subverted by a brusque change of tense at the heart of the rondeau, as the poet surveys the ruins of paradise all around him: "Or est perdu ce qu'Amour ordonnoit" (v. 10). The subsequent invitation to recast disinterested love, "qu'on la meine ainsi qu'on la menoit / Au bon vieulx temps," is reduced to a mild jussive, though set in the perfect symmetry of form. Cyclical structure in these 1538 poems, then, becomes an imperfect means of remaking a world that is imperfect, and imposes a matrix of desired reality on circumstances that are all too real. Merely to identify such verbal schemes, however subtle or apparent, would beg the question of their nature, since ultimately they create and control directions of thought and must be evaluated in that light. Identifying the harmonies or tensions between these directions assumed by structure and the poet's true thought is a way of isolating his borrowed personality from his authentic one as we see him work within an accepted form or at odds with it. In the two poems just considered, Marot writes within traditional argumentative and strophic bounds. Cantique V restates the exordium as the peroration, modified but supported by the intervening argument; Rondeau LX uses the standard reprise of the thematic refrain in an invited return to the Golden Age. Internal form, then, can be as important in guiding the poem and as much a matter of inheritance as the more commonly studied influences of imagery, theme, and genre. But it appears that by 1538 traditional modes were not quite adequate to the shifting realities of life. Marot's continued production of them may in fact connote a desperate nostalgia for the self-satisfaction of a past age, an attitude that argues against the creative viability of closed poetic form at that juncture in his career.

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Thus, specific verbal arrangements that provide the skeleton for contemporaneous poems may prove a means of measuring shades of feeling in differing perspectives at a given moment of his life. Equally, when sustained over many years, they may aid in tracing the poet's evolving attitude toward his work. A shift from the collective view of tradition to an individual perspective is most apparent in the theme and structure of reversal. For convenience it is instructive to look at poems composed during a crucial period of Marot's life when transformation in attitude is most apparent. Although the choice is admittedly arbitrary, the year 1527 marks such a period, following or including as it does the death of his father, his release from prison but not from the pursuing shadow of religious persecution, and his omission from the role of court personnel receiving pensions—all significant reversals in his personal fortunes. The ambiance of the court with its sentimental intrigues, both real and imaginary, inevitably dictated themes involving polite expression of discrepancies between aspiration and realization, merit, and reward: "Ung moins aymant aura, peult estre, mieulx" (Chanson XXXIV, v. 8). Not only does the youthful Marot work comfortably within this convention but he consistently reworks it within the logical configuration of chiasmus: the reversal of word order in the second of two consecutive and syntactically parallel verses. The Chansons composed before the Adolescence weave variations on the theme of unrequited love and its injustice. In its conclusion Chanson XXVII discovers a perfect equivalence between idea and structure D'Amours me va tout au rebours Tout au rebours me va d'Amours. but the ease and self-satisfaction of this discovery robs the poem of any particularized anguish. Following the brief interlude of Chanson XXVIII, where crafty lovers win out over loyal suitors, individuality is further undercut in the next poem's introit and analysis of deceptive appearances: O cruaulté logée en grand beaulté, O grand beaulté qui loges cruaulté. Such early fascination with explicit structure is unlike that of the Rhétoriqueurs only in its sense of economy, although this was ultimately to prove a substantial difference. In a rondeau ( X X V I ) written before 1527 the reader is immediately involved in a building up of

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language that lacks a corresponding development of thought, "En esperant, espoir me desespere." In the emotional paradox which the first stanza resolutely pursues, Me tourmentant de ce qui me contente, Me contenant de ce qui me tourmente the imposition of rigid form rules out the subtle and psychologically credible imbalance of feeling and expression found in Chariteo, its neo-Petrarchan model, which is itself a subtle adaptation of Petrarch and Catullus. 18 By foreclosing the thought from further variations, Marot in effect truncates the rich community of presences in which, wittingly or not, he is working. The point is that Marot went in search of this specific verbal design—nowhere in evidence in the model he was imitating—and no doubt found it in the stock of verbal techniques he carried in his literary baggage. These techniques, which abound in copybooks that circulated from hand to hand and in poetriae that were used as texts for poetic composition, recommended use of similar figures of thought and speech in similar contexts, in order to evoke certain qualities from the subject and elicit certain responses in the reader. Yet if Marot was the child of older Renaissance conventions and nurtured on copybook prolixity, he was also the father of a new awareness of formal economy. In the "Deploration de Florimond Robertet" (1527), the rambling oratory of allegorical Death addresses itself to the relationship between suffering and salvation in a rhetorical derivation of cause from effect: Je diz qu'il n'est desplaisir que plaisance, Veu que sa fin n'est rien que dannement Et diz qu'il n'est plaisir que deplaisance Veu que sa fin redonde & saulvement. (vv. 369-372) Its discourse is remarkable at once for its transparent structuring and for its wordiness. About six years later, in an elegy whose context of sentimental allegory would justify rhetorical amplification and extensive analysis every bit as much as the discourse made by Death, a similar reversal of circumstances, with derivation, this time, of effect from cause, is characterized by an irreducible economy in accord with the propositions of the letter: Craincte est servile, Amour est toute franche; Amour faict vivre, & Craincte faict mourir. (VIII, vv. 24-25)

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Of shorter duration, but equally pervasive in impact with regard to poetic form, was his acquaintance with the rambunctious Basoche and its lessons. One of the highlights of the ritual calendar of the Basoche was the resurrected fête des fous, a throwback to the Roman Saturnalia whose theme of the world-turned-upside-down simply magnified the madness of the real world. The poet working within Basoche conventions correspondingly works outside of society's conventions and comments pointedly upon them. Around 1527 Marot's "Epîtaphe de Jehan Serre, excellent Joueur de Farces" reviews the career of "Le Badin qui rit ou se mord" and summarizes the public attitude before the tomb of the famous basochien: Que dis je? on ne le pleure point? Si faict on, & voicy le point: . . . Ainsi en riant on le pleure, Et en plourant on rit à l'heure. (w. 43-44, 47-48) His description is actually depersonalized by the peculiar details chosen to describe a figure whose identity in the poem becomes more emblematic than individual. His face "Toute couverte de Farine" (v. 30) identifies him with the broad theatrical category of enfarinés, and, even more significantly, the epithet Le Badin (or sot ingénu) typecasts him among other personae familiar to the fifteenth-century theater, such as the Capitain, Copieur, Ecumeur de latin, Mimin, Pedante, and others.17 The audience's graveside reaction thus tends to become equally stylized. Toward the end of 1527 his "Epître au Roy, pour succeder en l'estat de son pere," however, applies the same figure and image of serious badinage to himself Mais la Fortune, où luy plaist, rit & mord. Mords elle m'a, & ne m'a voulu rire, (vv. 1 0 - 1 1 ) in its description of Marot the outsider deprived of his rightful patrimony. The basochien theme of social but especially ecclesiastical injustice, redolent throughout L'Enfer, finds its natural expression in the topsy-turvy world of the various coq-à-1'âne attributed to Marot, where the outside observer not only illumines worldly abuses through his hitand-run whimsy but also turns biting satirist through his desire to reform them: On voyt avenir bien souvent, Que faveur triumphe de droict . . .

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Pleust à dieu que j'eusse la charge De refformer tout ce desordre. Sçavez vous que je vouldroys mordre . . . 18 (w. 132-33, 136-38) When such desires for reform are not so succinctly stated, they are at least strongly implied. Through the juxtaposition of objects and actions, he jolts the reader's standard attitude toward justice by reversing the logical sequence of accusor and accused. This is true of the evangelical "Epistre à deux soeurs savoisiennes" ( X X X V ) , victims whose "bruleurs, juges et députés, / Sont mille fois plus que eulx persécutés" (vv. 31-32) and violate laws they themselves erected. Aside from falling within the persistent topos of "le monde renversé," this reversal of appearance and reality coincides with the Huguenot motif— of which Les Tragiques is the most striking example—of predicting the vindication of the elect and the damnation of their oppressors. The desire to reform the reader's attitude is most strikingly apparent in the "Epigramme du Lieutenant Criminel de Paris et de Samblançay" (XLIII) : Lors que Maillart, Juge d'enfer, menoit A Montfaulcon Samblançay l'ame rendre A vostre advis lequel des deux tenoit Meilleur maintien? Pour le vous faire entendre, Maillard sembloit homme qui mort va prendre Et Samblançay fut si ferme vieillart Que l'on cuidoit (pour vray) qu'il menast pendre A Montfaulcon le Lieutenant Maillart. One year before the composition of this epigram in 1527, the reader privileged to read the Enfer manuscript would have recognized Gilles Maillart in the underworld judge responsible for judicial travesty and who figures prominently in the reversed roles of guilty and innocent, appearance and reality. In the dramatic epigram, the reversal of character and the apposite physical setting assigned to him—the triumphant "Maillart, Juge d'enfer," and "A Montfaulcon Samblançay" his victim—are early implied through structure and cannot be explained as a reordering occasioned by necessities of rhyme. This reversal makes the question that follows entirely rhetorical and conditions the inevitable response to the reader who, by reading attentively and lending assent, cooperates with Marot "Pour le vous faire entendre." The second and more explicit reversal of roles begins with Samblançay's attitude before death as recorded by contemporary observers. On the strength

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Internal Structure

of this historicity, Marot continues his unpunctuated argument through the reinforcing but in fact speculative "on cuidoit (pour vray)" to a final imaginative projection of reversed roles for Samblangay and Maillart, who is now aligned with the Montfaucon gallows. Maillart's name at the end brings the epigram full circle to its point of departure, but the ironically reversed attributes in the first and last lines mark the poem's progress from fact to fantasy. The foregoing poems suggest that in formal statement as in thematic development, Marot was able to individualize the tradition from which he wrote at the very moment when the imprint of that tradition was strongest upon him. They further suggest that the question of whether Marot remained a fils de rhetoriqueur, or whether instead he cast auroral light over a dark medieval landscape, is ultimately an idle one. It remains idle to the extent that it fails to ask what and why he borrows, and how he imitates or adapts his borrowings. This is essentially a failure to assess Renaissance originality in its own terms. Fixation on structure among the Rh&oriqueurs as both a means and an end was attended by paralysis of thought, purblind poetic vision, and a use of poetic figures that remains more decorative than functional. Instead of re-creating the world in its own image for its heightened contemplation, the organizing principle in Rhetoriqueur poetry merely reflects back upon its own inanity with no sense of altering the direction of thought or clarifying the reader's understanding, no sense even of its own identity. A citation from Eustache Deschamps could be abridged or expanded with impunity to make the same point: A l'assault, gallans, a 1'assault! Armez vous tost, saillez armez. Charmez vous, soyez charmez. Briffault, allez devant, Briffault, . . . If he Grup is authentic, then we see a substantial gain over Deschamps's pallid description when Marot asks a question about the nature of life in hell and seems to answer his own query more illustratively than discursively: L'on y rit. A trois pas un sault: A l'assault, paillart, a l'assault! Mettez ces nonnains a la poincte. (w.251-253) The Flighty narration correlates here with the general method of the coq-a-l'^ne. Quick external development of the fragments translates the

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physical action described and responds to the semantic leap, justified by similarities more of sound than of meaning, which thrusts the unidentified nuns into hell and attacks these victims who must have been as startled as Marot's reader.19 Implied reversal of circumstances accomplished through explicit reversal of structure, which we have just considered as an improvement in verbal economy over Rhétoriqueur verbosity, assumes even briefer contours of thought and form in some other poems of attack or praise. Formal and stylistic balance reducible to the pattern xyyx allows us to ascribe to Marot models other than Rhétoriqueur which he may have had before his mind's eye, and by implication to discern stylistic discriminations that are all but absent from his statements on literary theory in his cumulative art poétique. In his response "Aux Dames de Paris" the satirist's intent of recasting the reader's opinion is just as apparent as in the examples just cited. After commenting on superficial speech and manners and comparing them to a delightful garden whose flowers hide a serpent, his simile "Succre en doulceur, & en froideur Glaçons" (v. 58) is entirely capable of imputing fickleness to his adversaries, all the more so through the reversed order of grammatical components. But what is more significant is the tendency to use this striking arrangement of words as a token of high style, the genus grande, and as a means of heightening the value of the person or action under discussion. In no way is this a relapse from functional to decorative figures, since the intent is to influence the reader's attitude through a noteworthy use of words.20 Far from Deschamps's sound and fury ending in nothing, Psaume XI undertakes a description of the celestial hierarchy emanating from God's omniscience and omnipotence: "Tout il espreuve et le juste il approuve." For the damned, however, "Plouvoir fera feu de punition." The grouping of explosive and fricative sounds is at once onomatopoetic and a comment on the level-handed character of divine retribution.21 Yet even when reversal is manifest in this kind of verbal scheme, and when idea justifies structure, the interchange of components in a verse line is regularly colored more by the perfunctory voice of the official court poet than by the trenchant comment of the satirical outsider. As might be expected, this is evident in a poem like Epitaphe XXXVII since the nature of the genre is epideictic and requires a stylized posture from the poet; after a pallid enumeration of the virtues of Robert Gedoyn, a former secretary of finance under Louis XII, the epitaph is capped by an exchange of beatific death for life which might have

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decorated any number of anonymous sarcophagi: "O Vie heureuse, 0 bien heureuse Mort!" But the same stylized balance marks Epitre L V , in which Marot's literary personality, if indeed the poem is from his pen, momentarily dominates the foreground. First, like Perseus, he denies having mounted Parnassus' slope or having drunk from the Hippocrene spring in composing his durtz regrectz, as Du Bellay will later do to personalize the Regrets; then he becomes successively a Petrarchan promeneur solitaire, "Tout a part moy," and a latter-day Vergil apostrophizing a heavenly messenger who would announce the victory of the dauphin Henri. Marot abandons his initial level of personal reference to assume the role of official historiographer and parade the atrophied emotions seen in some of his earlier works (see Complainte II), in anticipation of the last-line reference to the return of the prosperous fortune "Des filz aymes et de l'honnoure pere" that crowns the poem. The historical awareness expressed through this peculiar arrangement of words appears elsewhere in contexts that point to stylistic analogies, and possibly to models, beyond the limited scope of the Rhdtoriqueurs. In his preface to his translation of Metamorphoses I, Marot claims historical discrimination to the end of showing the modern reader "quelle difference peult estre entre les Anciens & les Modernes," as one of the prime justifications of his undertaking. Feeling his muse of too low stature to please the king, since "a prince de hault esprit haultes choses assierent," he has decided to renew 'Tune des plus latines antiquitez & des plus antiques latinitez." His compliment to Francis is pro forma, but the compliment to Ovid demonstrates at once the humanist's broad solicitude for the antiquities of Rome and the more particular concern for the nature of its language and literature. The verbal design elected by Marot expresses his attentiveness to a style that would be sufficiently elevated to suit the king and to withstand the assault of time, for that design was itself one of the most distinctive syntactical features that marked the evolution of classical Latin prose and poetry alike toward an artistry characterized by its symmetry. During the Silver Age and even in the Cicero of the Catalinarians or the Catullus of Peleus and Thetis this symmetry outlived its arresting expressiveness and came to share the same otiose qualities we find in the Rhetoriqueurs and neo-Ciceronian stylists of the Renaissance.22 Among the Augustan writers whom Marot had at his disposal or read, however, use of the figure of genus grande frequently indicates concern both to ennoble the subject and to suggest the action that is accomplished.23 By returning at frequent intervals to this classi-

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cal model in order to define attitudes and illustrate actions, a stylized unity accrues to Marot's collected poems which complements the particular circumstances that call for the pattern of reversal in individual poems. When Francis was begifted with an antique statue of Venus, the event was celebrated in a series of Latin dedications by several neoLatin poets. As a latecomer to the festivities, Marot was obliged to counter their assertions of the statue's mythical or historical past, and make it all the greater to ennoble it, "N'est point Venus & Venus ne se nomme; / Ja n'en desplaise à la langue Latine" (Epigramme X X V I ) , after which he compares it to a divine virtue sent from above. It was in such a community of Latin antiquarians, actual or implied, that Marot strove for this particular kind of formal and functional balance. Since poets of the time used similar copybooks and imitated the same models, it is no surprise to find identical phrasing among disparate poets for the same effect in similar contexts. Stringent adherence on their part to fixed stylistic techniques largely explains the feeling of déjà lu that besets any faithful reader of Rhétoriqueur eulogies, but that is perhaps inevitable for any group that esteems a classical model and aspires to its style. Thus, the dedicatory epigram to Francis that opens the section of "Epigrammes à l'imitation de Martial" focuses on the classical phraseology of its model, "ducum victor, victor et ipse tui," will return some ten years later in Du Bellay's celebration of Henri II, "Externis charus, charus & ipse suis," 24 and harks back to the conclusion of Epitre XXII, "Cheriz du Roy & du Peuple honnorez." Indeed, the patriotic invocation to Renée de Ferrare in Epître X X X I V , "Fertile en bien, en dame bienheureux, / Et bien semé de peuple obéissant," seems to have come from the same mold that we find in later Renaissance poets in France and elsewhere.25 It is thus fallacious ever to attribute apocryphal works, such as the amorphous welter of coq-à-1'âne, to Marot on the sole basis of kindred style, since stylistic pastiche was an integral part of any Renaissance poet's earliest training and, in some cases, of his ultimate purpose. For instance, one could easily enough cite stylistic congruities from the "Balladin" ("Belle Christine ou Christine la belle" [v. 26]; "La grand Symonne ou Symonne la grand" [v. 82]) to dispute Mayer's assertion that its authenticity cannot be established, but the rigid stylistic symmetry of that poem is so clearly dictated by its allegorical theme and so obviously more formulaic than individually expressive as to make any such attribution conjectural at best.26 Similarly, Mayer wisely disallows the authenticity of the epigram

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"J'apperjoy bien qu'Amour est de nature estrange" which Guiffrey includes in his edition (IV, 252). On the surface, this poem's courtly Petrarchan theme of the lover torn between anxiety and satisfaction is similar to the original inspiration from which Marot's epigrams sprang, and is pursued resolutely until the conclusion "Qu'il fault craindre tousjours & tousjours esperer." Further, the characteristics of that concluding line are equally those of Marot's letter from Venetian exile to Francis where Marot addresses the king as pater patriae and makes his request, "Feras ainsy, & ainsy je l'espere" ( X L I V , v. 80) through an adaptation from the Tristia; in a subsequent adaptation of Ovid's exile poetry, he lays out for Marguerite de Navarre his cares "Qui me font craindre où craindre je ne doy" (v. 65) amidst a mass of classical commonplaces.27 On the level of stylistic comparison, then, the epigram could well be by Marot, except that it is in fact by Claude Chappuys.28 It is undeniable that the corpus of Marot's poetry constitutes some sort of biographia literaria and that the character of the épìtres as a journal intime contributes to their unique charm. But to make Marot's every statement—even when he was working beyond the reach of Rhétoriqueur conceits—a reflection of his individual experience, would be to discount a collective experience with form that the Renaissance poet could not and did not wish to escape. At the risk of laboring the point, this is to argue once more against exaggerated critical tendencies to view Marot's experience with the collective form of the Rhétoriqueurs either as a dead weight of tradition that irretrievably seals him off from the following generation of poets or as a harmless madness that he eventually shed to write true Renaissance poetry. While it is useful and even necessary to enumerate the late medieval themes and rhymes that appear in his youth and survive beyond the Adolescence, it is equally necessary to analyze the breakdown of rigidity which begins early in his work as a means of showing that the past survives in Marot primarily through its transformation. His commonly received stature as a transitional figure should make this examination more mandatory than derogative. It is necessary, for instance, not to pass over an inconspicuous epigram like Amy de nom, de pensée & de faict, Qu'ay je mesfaict que vers moy ne prens voye? Graces à Dieu, tu es dru & refaict; Moy plus deffaict que ceulx que mortz on faict, Mort en effect si Dieu toy ne m'envoye. Brief, ne pourvoye au mal qui me desvoye;

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74 Que je te voye, à demy suis guéri; Et sans te veoir à demy suis pery.

(XL) which Villey dates between 1531 and 1532—at the point when Marot first begins to look back on his adolescence. In the poems where he exercises his verbal acumen through couronnée, léonine, équivoquée, rauque, fratrisée, or enchaînée rhymes, similarities imposed on structure become as much visual as they are sonorous. In the epigram just cited, however, rime annexée is more implied than apparent, a vestige whose repetition is at times painfully obvious (mortz on faict, / Mort en effect), at other times absent. Since the Rhétoriqueur influence even in Marot's younger years is transformed from prolixity to verbal economy and from thoughtless structure into the structure of thought, it will be more helpful for our purposes here to dispense with a broad review of his many rhyme adaptations at some length. By its linking of successive verses, rime annexée or its verbal equivalent affords an excellent example of Marot's elaboration or alteration of thought in a structure whose repetition could prima facie have either a dulling or strengthening effect, depending on the poet's talent. In a context of courtly banter, his reaffirmation of a key word in Epigramme CCXXIV (1542) offers his addressee substantially no new information but significantly alters the tenor of his statement: Tant que le Bleu aura nom loyaulté, Si on m'en croyt, il vous sera osté, J'entends osté, sans jamais le vous rendre. (w. 1-3) Playing on popular symbolic values of colors, his explicit repetition is a means of depriving his mistress of loyalty and "choses celestes," and at the same time lending credence to his own position, "Si on m'en croyt." This is the Marot who in his last years returned to the easy wit of his youth. In a context of Rhétoriqueur abstractions, for example, the youthful Marot (1521?) imagines his narrator besieged like an allegorical Christ in the desert.29 Quand Desespoir me veult faire gemir, Voicy comment bien fort de luy me mocque: O Desespoir, croy que soubz une rocque, Rocque bien ferme et pleine d'asseurance, Pour mon secours est cachée Esperance;

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Si elle en sort, te donnera carriere, Et pource done reculle toy arriere. (Epitre V, w . 22-28) Repetition turns with appropriate wit on the verbal association in the name of the epistle's intended recipient, a certain monsieur de la Rocque, but without the kind of interminable wordplay we find in Cretin, Molinet, and de la Vigne. Structural solidity (rocque,/ Rocque bien ferme), leading to the idea of firm reassurance, constitutes the single instance of the word made flesh in an otherwise empty drama. When, however, he cannot (apparently) afford a specific explanation, the construction of redoubling lends a false sense of directness. The most celebrated example of this misleading candor comes in the "Epistre au Roy, du temps de son exil a Ferrare," with its blend of witty court plea and religious effusiveness. At the point where his disclaimer of Lutheranism should evolve into a doctrinal reaffirmation of faith, the poet opposes, essentially, Wittenberg and Rome with Au nom de luy [Luther] ne suys point baptiz6; Baptiz6 suys au nom qui tant bien Sonne . . . (w. 92-93) Given the importance of the Lutheriste label that plagued Marot for almost half his life, recourse to this construction as a way of refuting the charge testifies to its importance as a method of argumentation. Redoubling of the rhyme word for special emphasis, however, has in this case been read either as a deceptively understated truism of evangelical faith or as a deceptively empty adherence to the Roman church.30 Since mere repetition, then, does not always suffice to impose the veracity of the narrator's account, Marot frequently feels obliged to interject an authorial voice that overtly states the conclusiveness of the logic that is only implicit in the structure itself or specifies an emotional response expected from the reader which emphatic redoubling only implies. In the prosopopoeia of the elegies Marot assumes the imaginary voice of the lover exhorting his beloved to stoic acceptance of the tribulations inevitably accompanying her enviable virtue, "Vueillez la done monstrer evidemment / En cest ennuy" (XIX, w . 28-29). T h e remainder of the elegy continues the plea and attempts to establish the repeated dull throb of these troubles, more for the sake of an unidentified audience than for the lady in question, who surely would not need such a graphic demonstration of their effect. Can she be blessed with

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virtue "Et ne vouloir porter ung seul ennuy? / Ennuy (pour vray) n'est pas la pire chose . . ." ( w . 60-61), he asks, after which he tirelessly repeats commonplaces dealing with "Petit ennuy" and "grand ennuy." When he addresses real court personages elsewhere, his questions are no less rhetorical, but instead of admonishing them to higher virtue— an absurd presumption in a milieu where every Maecenas abounds in celestial qualities—his parenthetical assurance simply makes their virtue more obvious. The epithalamion to Renée de France (I) somewhat stiffly divides her obligations to remain chaste among herself, Anne de Bretagne, Marguerite d'Angoulême, and Francis, who in turn will all bestow these rights on Renée's future husband. All this is a way of paying requisite homage to the royal family: "veulx tu combatre à troys; / Troys (pour certain) qui en valent bien huict?" (vv. 47-48). Yet in the more personal, if more pressing, atmosphere of the epistle to Francis from exile in Venice ( X L I V ) , Marot's obeisance to the pater patriae, who pardons all enemy of the realm, is no less stylized, "tu luy a bien fait grace, / Grace, pour vray, laquelle il ne t'eust faicte" ( w . 82-83); a plea for clemency follows. As these examples indicate, whichever construction Marot resorts to depends less on his "sincerity" or momentary mood than on the persuasive intent of a poem at a given moment in its development, whether the work be imagined or real, official or personal. Nor does recourse to stylized expressions broadly shared by his contemporaries make his poems "mechanical" or detract from his artistic individuality, any more than do the Romantic poets' apostrophes to nature or their other stylistic idiosyncrasies. Thus Marot's most seriously authentic expression of "love" for Anne d'Alençon is inevitably dressed in the conventional Petrarchan pose of praise for the artist whose painted image of the beloved is engraved more firmly in the lover's heart than on parchment, "Tu m'as donné au vif ta Face paincte, / Paincte pour vray de Main d'excellent homme" (Epigramme XXVIII), or takes the form of mock blame of Cupid who has made "mon Cueur aymer si haultement; / Si haultement (helas) que de ma peine . . ." (Epigramme CXXIX). His parenthetical sigh is in no sense a spontaneous outpouring of feeling, but rather a commonly understood stage direction indicating appropriate response. In the passage from the Triomphe de l'Agneau analyzed earlier in this chapter, Marguerite alludes to past and future pretenders who would usurp Christ's stature as the emissary of God's love and uses the same device: D'autres aussi l'on trouverait assez,/Assez (helas) autant qu'aux jours passez" ( w . 967-968).

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Specific structures in themselves thus make specific kinds of comments. Marot and his more accomplished contemporaries turn this inevitable causality to advantage as two further comparisons of Marot with Marguerite will show. If the passage from innocence to maturity depicted in Eglogue III (1539) is in any sense autobiographical, its bookish origin and substance make it so primarily on the level of literary biography. At the point where Janot instructs his son like a young Orpheus, he teaches him "De user de l'art je te veulx apprendre. / Appren le donc, affin que montz & boys" (vv. 84-85) and all of nature may be moved to passion and sing "le hault nom" of Francis thinly disguised as Pan. Similarly, at the beginning of Le Triomphe de l'Agneau Marguerite prays to Christ as to her heavenly muse that he might raise the stylistic and devotional level of her reference and . . . exerciter ma plume A tes grans loz, si ton esprit m'allume. Allume donc par ta splendeur illustre Mon bas penser . . . (w.29-32) The formalism in this prayer to attain the high style is already a partial characteristic of that style itself. It is even more self-conscious and more apparent in the young Marot, who was at pains to learn suitable means of reference to figures at court. Two épîtres composed around 1521 smell of midnight oil and hint of copybook exercises. "L'épistre du Camp d'Attigny A ma dicte Dame d'Alençon" (III) opens first with a traditional request for the poor letter to fly to Marguerite and then shows us at length the poet whose trembling pen hesitates to write to such a highly placed person. Finally, after overcoming the humility that convention imposes, he contrasts the unruly German forces with the French troops led by the duc d'Alençon "D'adventuriers yssus de nobles gens./Nobles sont ilz, pompeux et diligens" (vv. 49-50). The letter that follows begins on the same formal tone and in the same stylized syntax. It is addressed to an anonymous "Damoyselle négligente" whose absence will not diminish the poet's affection, "Pour ta longue & fascheuse demeure. / Fascheuse est elle, au moins en noz endroietz" (vv. 4-5). The overweening care that all this demonstrates for ingenious rhyme, and particularly the constraints that patterns like rime annexée placed upon successive lines, make the study of Marot's use of another poetic device, that of enjambement, all the more instructive. When enjambe-

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ment precedes or follows closely upon a paratactic line, the combination of looseness and rigidity which is suggested results in a mixture of high and low stylistic features, a mixture that was generally foreign to the practice of earlier generations. Yet before the Rhétoriqueur tradition began to wane in influence or be transmuted by Marot, he increasingly relieved its rigid formalism with a relaxed playfulness that critics in following centuries would come to find characteristic of his style and of his attitude toward poetic structure, and especially so in the épîtres. Epître XII is to the point in illustrating how mixed stylistic features may effectively reflect an interaction in the poem between the lowly poet and his lofty audience; 31 in this case, Francis and Clément are linked syntactically, when by an oversight the latter's name had been left off the registry of persons in the king's employ: Je quiers, sans plus, Roy de los eternel, Estre Héritier du seul bien Paternel: Seul bien je dy, d'aultre n'en eut mon Pere, Ains s'en tenoit si content & prospéré . . . (w. 31-34) The apparently useless insertions satis plus and Roy de los eternel serve in fact the essential role of playing down Marot's request by postponing it until the next line, and attenuate the author's temerity by flattering the king. The Seul bien in the comparatively rigid repetition actually belongs by protocol to Francis, since it is first his to give and only secondly Marot's to receive; were this not so, the whole épître would be pointless. In this context (seul bien Paternel) Jean Marot's appearance seems natural, as does his pronouncement "Filz, puis que Dieu t'a faict la grace d'estre / Vray Heritier" ( w . 42-43) where this time Clément's place in the verse is usurped by God himself. By force of the comparison with God and Clément's acceptance of his rightful place, the king's immutable grace cannot but accord the young poet his rightful heritage. Obviously, this prosopopoeia is no transcription of what Jean may have told Clément. As the text indicates, it is rather a device by which the poet might with modesty petition the king. When he summons his father to speak and momentarily uses that voice to strengthen his request, this second inflection of Marot enables him to approach his subject from several points of view at once. The poem's playful conclusion imposes a mock-serious logic on his request with all the rigor of a syllogism: through my art I have received my father's spiritual heritage; he also willed me his temporal benefits; therefore I should receive them too.

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Eight years later in 1535, Marot fulfilled his role of court poet in Epître XXXVII by offering to God Graces, o Roy, de ta santé prospéré. Prospéré dy, non pour toy seullement, Mais pour tous ceulx qui generallement Sont soubz ta main. O comme malmenée . . . (w. 2-5) As in the previous instance, the staunch reprise of prospéré enforces the central idea of the king's virtue, while the more conventional rejet of line 5 spatially illustrates the hierarchic idea it contains.32 Following the carryover of both the poetic line and the contextual idea in those lines, he apostrophizes Renée in her anxious concern for the king's health (vv. 5-6). Just as surely as Marot's parenthetical comment clarifies an attitude that is only implicit in the preceding structure, his exclamation following an enjambement succeeds in imprinting his own reaction to a situation he has just related. But just as surely as his explanatory comment is less a radically personal utterance born in momentary passion than a learned response, the succession of rejet and apostrophe conveys the poet's personal comment in a literary voice.33 Contexts in which the cry of isolation is the most piercing are precisely those most dominated by traditional themes and transparent rhetoric. The "Epître de Maguelonne" is generally regarded as an early and not very successful exercise in adapting Ovid's Heroides to a Gallic landscape. Soon after Pierre and Maguelonne declare their mutual love, she goes to sleep and awakes to the frightful realization "Que, maulgré toy, en cestuy boys desert / Suis demourée. O Fortune indecente" (vv. 12425). The rejet here logically accommodates the statement as an expression of abandonment, while the ensuing accusation against Fortune claims an ancestry as old as literary history. Working again in a context of classical prototypes in Elégie XXIV, the mature Marot—perhaps speaking through the voice of the fictional narrator who inhabits the other elegies—calls up such illustrious mythic couples as Endymion and Diana, Adonis and Venus, Paris and Helen, declaims the numerous admirers and bountiful gifts of his nameless lady "Que faicte semble exprez pour estre aymée / D'hommes & dieux. O que ne suys je prince . . ." (vv. 32-33), and laments the lowliness of his own social station and worth. Although in these and in other examples the narrator purports to vent his distress and lament his misfortune, he actually does so for the primary reason of castigating those responsible for his fall or to praise

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a figure more illustrious in Fortune's grace. Pointed continuation of thought followed by apostrophe, observing a sequence of description and commentary, thus falls within the familiar rhetorical category of laus et vituperatio, praise and blame. Epigramme X C , "Contre les Jaloux," lines up Marot's adversaries who, attempting to dissuade his courtly lover from her attachment to him instead increase Dedans m'amye ung feu d'affection, Ung feu lequel par leur invention Cuident estaindre. O la povre cautelle! (w. 4-6) Repetition of the word feu and continuation of the fire imagery furnish structural evidence for his allegation. In the contrast of totally opposite contexts the fundamental similarities of the procedures become most apparent. If nothing else, " L e Balladin" sets out to praise and dispraise personifications of the evangelical and Roman churches, wholly symbolic attributes respectively of the illustration and perversion of sacred love. Unlike Symonne, Christine's simple appearance belies her effectiveness and serious intent to destroy falsity: Mais ceste cy d'ung parler gratieux La deffera. O dieu est il possible Voir d'une vierge ung parler si terrible? (w.183-85) As opposed to Epigramme XC, enjambement here connotes destruction, not continuity; the apostrophe proclaims power, not impotence. But the techniques of realizing these opposites remain the same. It is this Protean ability of structure to alter its meaning as the intent of the poem shifts that ultimately saves Marot from the Procrustean bed of Rh&oriqueur forms. Naturally, the twin intent of enjambement-followed-by-apostrophe makes it more densely evident in a genre like the epitaphe whose purpose is usually to praise; indeed, the close juncture of such figures in that genre accentuates its stylized nature. The termination of Epitaphe XVIII to Jean Cotereau, emphasizing his remarkable longevity, "Devant sa mort des ans pouvoit avoir / Soixante & douze. O longue vie & belle!" is followed shortly afterward by Epitaphe XXI which requires the Deesse Memoire to recount the transfer of patrimonv from generation to illustrious generation of the Lallemand family until the end of the lineage: " E t le puisn6 receut charge semblable / En Languedoc. O Peuple venerable." But Marot's frequent reliance on this

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verbal formulization goes beyond his lifelong need to dispense praise or blame. T h e way it is composed and its purpose, therefore, undergo no basic change as through his career it traces successively his debt to the Middle Ages, the praise he bestows on Francis, the redress he seeks from the Icing's enemies, and the obligation he feels to devote his ars bene dicendi to the praise of God. 3 4 W h e n changes do occur in the makeup of enjambement, its intent and effect may vary as slightly or as greatly as the verbal modifications effected. W h i l e Marot may move toward personal statement in the context of a given poetic line, he often does so in an atmosphere of stylistic identity, of praise or defense against blame that differs little from the situations sketched above. Once again, these mirror reflections allow us to speak of stylistic milestones that mark the events of his life. Marot's self-justifying letter ( I X ) to "Monsieur Bouchart, Docteur en Theologie," proclaims his innocence of any of the doctrinal transgressions for which he was imprisoned in 1526. His polite use of the Ciceronian title doctor doctissimus to address his adversary at the opening, " D o n n e response à mon present affaire, / Docte Docteur," is typical of rhetorical discourse. And it is no less rhetorical when Marot later replaces Bouchard in the rejet Que quiers tu donc, o Docteur catholique? Que quiers tu donc? As tu aulcune picque Encontre moy? . . , 35 (w. 23-25) He will continue to set himself off from his enemies this way: against his nameless detractor in the letter " A u x Dames de Paris" who "Print tant de peine à faire des Epistres / Encontre moy" ( w . 148-49); against those who dragged him from sickbed and " O n t declairé leurs voluntés perverses / Encontre moy" (vv. 3 0 - 3 1 ) , as he recalls from Venice ( X X X V I ) , and against Jehan Morin in the same letter who "Dedans Paris, combien que fusse à Bloys, / Encontre moy faict ses premiers exploicts" (vv. 1 2 5 - 1 2 6 ) ; and again from Venice in his defense to Francis, " M o y donq, qui n'ay en nulz assaulx n'alarmes / Encontre toy jamais porté les armes" ( w . 87-88). W h e n it came time for him to slip into the character of David recently victorious over Saul at the close of Psaume XVIII, Marot had no difficulty in appropriately praising G o d who "M'esleve hault sur tous ceulz qui s'eslevent / Encontre m o y " (vv. 1 1 4 - 1 1 5 ) . In fact, when Marot transcribed Jean Miélot's prose version of the Jugement de Minos into verse, he employed the

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same figure to dramatize Alexander's victory over Darius, "Par quel vigueur fut ma puissance esparse / Encontre luy" ( w . 188-189). As an element of persuasion, enjambement, when it is used sparingly, has the power to arrest the reader's attention and to isolate the narrator from the flow of thought and from prevailing levels of corruption. Defense from accusations of blame is habitually complemented by search for praise or at least support, in which case this poetic-rhetorical technique sets off not the poet but his benefactor. It hardly matters who that benefactor is or even what personality traits he possesses, so long as he occupies a seat of power and may be moved by persuasion. So it is that on his return to Lyons Marot writes to the cardinal of Tournon, governor of the city and virtuous surrogate of the monarch, and asks in the absence of the king "A qui le puis je et doy adresser, f o r s / A Toy, qui tiens, par prudence loyalle . . ." (vv. 40-41). Here the rejet follows a meticulously sustained series of rich rhymes, so that its dramatic sweep gives a stunning effect to the expected appeal. The "Epître Au Roy. Pour la Bazoche," attributed to Marot, poses the same question to Francis himself and celebrates the king's talents in the same way: Mais à quel juge est ce que nous irons Si n'est à vous? qui de toute science Avez certaine & vray experience 36 (w. 8-10) In those instances where Marot attempts to establish a note of casual intimacy with the king, as in the business-like conclusion of Epître XI ("Mais pour venir au poinct de ma sortie" (v. 43), it is again the richness of rhyme words like ensemble-me semble that places the enjambement in bold belief, this time with an effect of offhand casualness appropriate to the putative privacy of their relationship. Que nous avons bien accordé ensemble, Si que n'ay plus affaire, ce me semble, Sinon à vous. . . . (w.45-47) Yet it is precisely this format and vocabulary that call for a comparison with a letter to Marguerite ( X L V I ) composed nine years later in 1536 A qui diray ma doulleur ordinaire, Synon à toy, Princesse débonnaire, . . . Je ne dy pas que bras et cueur ensemble Ne leve à Dieu; mais en effect il semble

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8? Que je ne doy avoir confort de luy Synon par toy . . .aT (vv. 5-6, 21-24)

From the examples cited, it is evident that subverting of rhyme ending through enjambement does not represent a revolt from strophic constraints toward free form any more than, in the opposite direction, adherence to rhyme schemes favored by the Rhétoriqueurs evidences in itself a regressive attitude toward poetic structure. Marot's enjambement never anticipates the eccentric direction or revolutionary verve of Hugo's escalier / Dérobé. Disregard for stichic regularity or for the rule that rhyme mark a focal point and terminus of thought often results paradoxically in a greater formalism of expression, a formalism that habitually embraces the broad and traditional polarities of ringing praise in the high style and satiric blame in the low style. The point is not that Marot trades an older formalism for a new one, but that within traditional or else self-imposed limits he is capable of modifying the effect of any structure according to the shifting demands of theme or varying mood of poetic voice. Far from unimaginatively cutting content to rigid limits of form, the phrasing molded in the ways we have just seen is capable of rendering a mobility of thought that amounts to an extreme test of the expressive possibilities of linguistic resources. All the resources inhering in a given theme are exploited to evoke irony and drama, to align similar components and confront opposites. At the expressive limit of linguistic resources this entails complete identification of theme and structure. Mobility of meaning and its visual illustration in a single structure such as enjambement can be most clearly demonstrated where the context is broad enough to give play both to Marot's expansive form and the more circumscribed and self-contained formalism that accentuates it. In the ballade "A ma Dame la Duchesse d'Alençon laquelle il supplie d'estre couché en son estât," he works within the ordained fixed form of the genre and within the theme orchestrated by Villon in the "Ballade de l'appel." But whereas the interest of Villon's poem centers on the return of the traditional refrain, Marot draws attention to his defense against any accusation of pride and to the suggestion that in Marguerite's entourage there is room enough to accommodate his humble person—a graphic contrast of the ideas of excess and bounty: Je ne suis point des excessifz Importuns, car j'ay la pepie; Dont suis au vent comme ung Chassis

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84 Et debout ainsi qu'une Espie. Mais une fois en la Copie De vostre estât je suis marché . . .

(w. 9-14) This is the same opposition of praise and blame which underlies the fictional "Epître de Frippelippes" to Sagon and sets the traditional poet's laurel wreath against the equally familiar donkey ears of the sot de la Basoche: Contre ta rude Cornemuse Sa doulce lyre . . . Venez donq, ses nobles enfans, Dignes de chappeaulx triumphans De vert Laurier; faictes merveilles Contre Sagon, digne d'oreilles A chapperon! . . . 38 (vv. 71-72, 175-79) Even in the freer form of the épître, expansiveness stands out against a reference to a recognizable stylistic tradition that informs it. Such is the case with the epistle to "Renée de Parthenay partant de Ferrare" ( X L I ) which first makes us recall the Ciceronianism of his letter to Monsieur Bouchard and then demonstrates and comments on the idea of extensiveness Où allez vous, cueur en bonté parfaict? Où allez vous, que vous avons nous faict? Voulez vous bien laisser ceste princesse En ses ennuys, qui n'ont ne fin ne cesse? (w. 7-10) such is also the case in his and Marguerite's thanks to Renée de Ferrare (Epitre X L V I ) "Qui le receut, dont la remercias / Bien tost après. Las! . . ." (vv. 59-60) where this time the succinct rejet immediately illustrates temporal brevity before the poet lapses into the familiar literary sigh. While the mobility evident in these examples attests to Marot's command of language to give vivid and coherent shape to his thought, and to express attitudes ranging from blame to praise, we ultimately see this accomplished within the limitations of a poet whose vision is bounded by the world at court and who recognizes and seeks his place in that world. Instead of representing an individual's rejection of traditional restraints, Marot's use of enjambement gives new life to the expression of conventionally sanctioned attitudes, whether assumed pas-

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sively toward superior rank or taken agressively against inferiors or equals who threaten his position. Recognition of Guillaume du Tertre's social superiority thus assumes a recognition of his supposed literary superiority over Marot who finds nothing in his work "Pour le saulver qu'il ne se trouvast moindre / Auprès du tien" (Epître X X X I , w . 2 1 22). This is essentially the same formal acknowledgment of rank and search for redress which we saw in his letter to Monsieur Bouchard and which, at the highest level but in a different mode, appears in the prayer of deprivation in Psaume XIII Jusques à quand as estably Seigneur, de me mettre en oubly? Est ce à jamais? Par combien d'aage Destoumeras tu ton visage De moy, las! d'angoisse remply? 3 9 (vv. 1 - 5 ) Use of enjambement to describe separation makes Marot a veritable Janus looking forward and backward in time when one compares this prayer for a return to the status quo ante to the disdain of Frippelippes, at the lowest level, for the pretender Huet "Lequel voulut la place / De l'absent" (vv. 48-49). So the range of this structure extended to the extreme reference points in Marot's world, even while resolving itself normally into polarized attitudes, on the one hand, of plea and defense as a way of inspiring pity for the victim of those "Dont la plus doulce [menace] estoit en criminel / M'executer" (Epître X X X V I , w . 65-66) or, on the other hand, of allegation and attack as a means of inspiring revulsion against those who wished "mettre en luy crainte & terreur / D'aigre justice" (Epître IX, w . 5 - 6 ) . T h e limitations of Marot's world with its imperative to blame or to praise are nowhere more evident than in L'Enfer. An extended look at this poem reveals the ways in which recourse to the formalized idiom we have been analyzing is controlled by thematic development at a given juncture, by the ethos of the poet which dictates his attitude toward people and situations, and by the dual impression he wishes to give of himself as both the poem's author and protagonist. W e have already noted that the main breaks in the development of this poem correspond to the shifts in direction recommended by judicial discourse. The exordium outlines the poem's theme which will be recapitulated in its conclusion: Comme douleurs de nouvel amassées Font souvenir des lyesses passées,

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86 Ainsi plaisir de nouvel amassé Faict souvenir du mal qui est passé. . . . Fasché d'ennuy, consolé d'esperance.

(w. 1-4, 488) The poet's vision thus completes the circle of its descent into despair and its return to hope, leaving him in command of the world he has created since he has ordered its components and predestined its conclusion. But inasmuch as the classical purpose of the exordium is to make the poet's listeners benevolent and win their sympathy, Marot immediately drops into a conversational tone where enjambement breaks a conjunctive phrase in half, "Je dy cecy, mes treschers Freres, pource / Que l'amytié, la chere non rebourse . . . ," and stands in relief to the chiastic opening statement. As in the many previous examples, Marot's consciousness of protocol in the use of poetic form is as evident in the breach as in the observance; chaos is defined by and is never far removed from a standard of formal order. Thus, the studied casualness and scattering effect of the enjambement of Epitre XLV, which Marot likens to a conversation, actually creates a rich rhyme . . . or devinez qui est ce Qui maintenant en prent la hardiesse? Marot bany, Marot mis à requoy (w. 3-5) and while it leads to a surprise effect, it also creates a rhythmic balance that observes the routinely required 4 + 6 division of the decasyllabic line. A similar example of coexistence of opposites arises later in L'Enfer, where there is a rejet that is all the more dramatic for the world of order in which it occurs: Car incongneu suys des Umbres iniques, Incongneu suis des Ames Plutonicques . . . En terre aussi des Faunes & Hymnides Congneu je suis. Congneu je suis d'Orphée . . . (w. 311-312, 328-329) No mere flourish, the chiasmus with which Marot's guide opens his description of the damned and their tormentors anticipates through its form the continual restatement of the two-pronged central theme of the poem: that the great figures at the court of Minos devour the smallest, and that the apparent simplicity and openness of judicial procedure there in reality conceals a malevolent and bewildering complexity:

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La les plus grands les plus petitz destruisent, La les petitz peu ou poinct aux grands nuisent . . . Dix grands Serpents dessoubs sa pence couve; Dessoubs sa pence il en couve dix grands, (w. 51-52, 170-71) So we leave the monologue of le Ministre d'Enfer and pass on to Marot himself, who states the same theme as succinctly as he had in the epigram on Samblangay's death, "Les Innocents qui en telz lieux damnables / Tiennent souvent la place des coulpables" (vv. 287-288). At the long-awaited moment when he finally reveals his identity, and does so with as much care as playfulness, he dispels any lingering confusion over nominal appearance and real person, or any doubts that he belongs among the small of this world. Both Marot and his guide understand and relate the central fact of deceit and corruption in the Enfer-Chátelet. Since they both express themselves in the same way, transfer of speech from one person to another—or, rather, modulation in the poet's voice—is barely perceptible. This modulation is distinct from the breach between the author who transcends or exists outside of his work and the narrative role, actions, and thoughts he has assigned to "himself." The author's reflection on experience in a fictional mode may involve a chronology and ordering of thought that is separate from his awareness of the biographical events and calls up different problems. The narrator in L'Enfer who acts out the events as an interested collaborator must establish through the medium of speech a continuity—one that is subsumed and perhaps different from the one the author strives for— between a presumed emotional and episodic past and the retrospective present from which he is speaking. Thus, the timeless observation of the four-line exordium moves immediately to the personalized time of the narrator. The author-narrator discrepancy is separate from the linguistic rapport between the narrator and his guide. Differences in narrative voice are here more of degree than kind, for both narrators are knowingly engaged in formal discourse whose intent is to convince a listener through its persuasive balance. At the beginning of the poem, the poet makes the essential identification of the Chátelet with hell Si ne croy pas qu'il y ait chose au monde Qui mieulx ressemble ung Enfer tresimmonde: Je dy Enfer & Enfer puys bien dire; (w. 1 3 - 1 5 )

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Similarly ("Sans croyre le rebours"), the discourse-within-a-discourse of Marot's guide is loaded with the formalism and legalistic speech of a lawyer: Qui ont debatz & debatz ont heu maincts. . . . Là biens sans cause en causes se despendent, Là les causeurs les causes s'entrevendent, . . . Droict contre tort; l'aultre tort contre droict; . . . Entre la mere & les maulvais enfants, . . . ( w . 4 6 , 57-58, 96, 159) W h e n Marot resumes the monologue in his own name and relates his own life story, he inevitably defines himself in terms of the court, the king, and his service to Marguerite, who is Grande sur terre, envers le Ciel petite; . . . Et d'elle suys l'humble Valet de chambre. C'est mon estât. . . . (w. 418, 422-423) This acknowledgment of humble state is not entirely perfunctory; it involves him at the poem's conclusion in a logical complexity that rests entirely on the distant but precise analogy between the king's supreme position and Marot's low station. When he pleaded his case before the judge ( w . 308 fï.), he explained himself in relation to Francis, whose advancement of learning he eulogized impassionately. Now we learn that Marguerite is going off to Spain to deliver Francis, no less a victim of unjust imprisonment than Marot himself. In his turn, Francis will be able to deliver Marot, who remains "Fasché d'ennuy, consolé d'esperance." T h e poem comes full circle as its aggregate statement receives fuller meaning through its structure.

IV: RHYME AND REASON Maudit soit le premier dont la verve insensée Dans les bomes d'un vers renferma sa pensée Et donnant à ses mots une étroite prison, Voulut avec la rime enchaîner la raison. —BOILEAU, Satires, II, 53

inability, or at any rate his methodical unwillingness, to imprison his thought within the confines of verse lines of any length is all the more striking for the veneration in which he held not only the fact but also the concept of rhyme. The fascination and special sense that rhyme held for him overwhelm his first épître written around 1 5 1 8 - 1 5 1 9 from the first verse to the purposeful conclusion M A R O T ' S APPARENT

Ce Rimailleur, qui s'alloit enrimant, Tant rimassa, rima et rimonna, Qu'il a congneu quel bien par rime on a. If the unfortunate label élégant badinage could have held any meaning for Marot's contemporaries, verses like these would probably have been singled out and either praised or reviled according to the preconceptions of the reader. In the rejoinder to the "Six Dames de Paris à Clément Marot" some ten years later, the persistent ring of these words follows his name which, according to his detractors, will not be immortalized Par t'estimer de beaulx dictz orateur? Desquelz tu n'es disciple ny acteur, Mais ung rimeur de rime ramassée Qu'après aultruy as quise et pourchassée, Et tant en fais que chascun moins te prise Parce qu'au vray tu ne l'as bien apprise. (w. 21-26)

Their biased commentary is less useful to us as a means of judging his talent than as a description of his method. It should be underscored

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that they do not deride him for practicing ars dictandi nor for gathering rhyme; they give assent to his technique but fault him for not applying it well. Determination of how well Marot practiced his art must of course be divorced from the atmosphere of polemic that often attended its composition and reception and be evaluated within the totality and intent of individual poems. That he did seek out elegant rhyme, especially in genres where elegance would be expected and appreciated, can hardly be questioned. The opening section of an epigram to Anne ( C X X I X ) multiplies internal rhymes to enhance the richness of end rhyme (pensée-offensée), "Puis qu'il vous plaist entendre ma pensée,/ Vous la sçaurez . . . ," while another addressed to her ( X X X I ) creates a similar resonance by the return of the rhyme word within the last line, "Pas n'eusse creu que de joye advenue / Fust advenu regret si ennuieux." Internal rhyme, then, becomes a way of amplifying the qualities of the poem's object without resorting to ultrarich end rhyme that draws attention to itself. One example that shows the use of internal rhyme especially well is the lyrical ballade entitled "Chant de May & de Vertu." The poet sets off with internal rhyme the conditions of ephemeral love, and then turns to his immortal love: Que servir sans fin je prêtendz. Et pource quelle est tousjours belle, Mes Amours durent en tout temps. Celle dont je dy tout cecy . . . (w. 1 4 - 1 7 ) Recurrence of sound thus places in relief the attitude of the lover, the object of his love, and the imperfection from which that object differs. Despite the distance we have come, to rhyme that defines the contours of an idea, from Rhétoriqueur rhyme that stifles thought, it is nevertheless against a background of tradition that Marot's innovations and mobility are most clearly observed. When, for instance, he playfully derides Silenus in the medieval chanson ( X X X I I ) , Lequel beuvoit aussi droict qu'une ligne; Puis il trépigné & se faict une bigne; Comme une Guigne estoit rouge son nez the simile he uses unfolds within the emblematic theme of the Serpent and the Vine, and in imitation of Villon's ballade "Pere Noé. qui plantastes la vigne" Comme homme beu qui chancelle et trépigné L'ay veu souvent, quant il s'alloit couchier,

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Et une fois il se feist une bigne, Bien m'en souvient, a Testai d'ung bouchier (Le Testament, w . 1254-1257) But imitation is ancillary to creation in Renaissance aesthetics. The chanson is regular, but Marot seeks out a rhyme whose comic surprise re-creates the wandering gait of Silenus as a departure from Villon's nondescript chancelle. From rhyme that merely terminates a line we have progressed to rhyme that punctuates an action and embodies a thought. Such departures from a norm are all the more significant when compared to Marot's total subscription to Rhétoriqueur procedure in some of his younger works. His "Ballade du Jour de Noel" (XI), for example, treats a serious theme in rime rauque; here the reader is distracted from the progress of thought in the poem by the noise of the rhyme changes in each stanza, which merely alphabetize a vertical series of letters representing vowel phonemes. Similarly, the acrostic formed by the initial letter of each verse in the "Rondeau duquel les letres Capitales portent le nom de l'Autheur" ( L X V I ) advertises the poet's name in advance of the idea he goes on to express. Even when the eye does follow the horizontal progression of thought in line after line, the selection and arrangement of its constituent parts are conditioned by the rhyme words, as in the équivoquée of "O Roy Françoys, tant qu'il te plaira perds le; / Mais si le perds, tu perdras une Perle" (Epitre XXXIX, vv. 33-34) which is reduced to a pointless clash of sound and meaning, and the couronnée of "Car le Cheval que je pourmaine & maine / Est malheureux, & brunche en pleine Plaine" (Epître XXIII, vv. 19-20), which reverts to empty repetition where dramatic action is called for. In both instances Marot fabricates rhyme under circumstances where social conventions dominate most other considerations, in the first case as part of a large apostrophe to the poets who took part in the "Blason du beau Tetin" contest, and in the second as part of a plea he wrote for a friend to the Duchess of Lorraine. The role of Rimailleur, qui s'alloit enrimant was thrust on Marot by training and tradition, which is to say by the conditions that governed a poet's life at court. Amid discreet allusions to Scripture and to the implied approval of the king, Epitre XIII begins a well-reasoned plea to the Chancellier du Prat, "Car si seellez mon Acquict, je suis riche" (v. 24). Soon, however, reason is abandoned and the serpentine line sets off through a sustained series of outrageously contrived rhymes playing on the sound and meaning of sceller. The sudden counterpoint of rationality and madness is commensurate with the gravity of Marot's plight: we

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are again at the crisis point in his life where he had succeeded his father as valet to the king's chamber but, inexplicably, his name had been omitted from the royal payroll. In order to draw attention to his request, he accentuates his poetic talent more than his individual plight —a perfect demonstration that in the Rhétoriqueur credo, ars est revelare artem. Extended runs of rhyming virtuosity are in fact extremely rare, though, within the entire corpus of Marot's poetry, and occur progressively less often as he gains a sense of balance among form, cadence, and meaning in poetry. Faguet is essentially correct in his bald assertion that of the three Malherbes between 1500 and 1610—Marot, Ronsard, and Malherbe himself—the first was neither the least convinced, active, nor influential.1 If Ronsard is more renowned for poetry "mesurée à la lyre," the necessity of measure in poetry is no less tenaciously felt by Marot. His praise of self-styled Ciceronians may be looked at askance, Tes poinctz sont grands, tes Metres mesurez, Tes dictz tout d'Or, tes termes Azurez (Epître XXVIII, w . 9-10) Ses beaulx escriptz de stille mesuré; (Epitaphe II) but he consistently applied the term as a desideratum to his own poetry. To compete with the "voix resonnantes" that greet Queen Eléonore's arrival in Bordeaux, he asks rhetorically "Feray je mal, si de ma plume fluent / Vers mesurez," and in the preface to the 1541 psalms his praise of David for "Ses vers divins, ses chansons mesurées" (v. 59) extends implicitly to himself as the proponent who measured them to his own lyre. Conversely, as a term of reproach, Frippelippes cites Psalm 9 to the effect that just as the wicked will be caught in their own trap, Marot's enemies will be damned by their own attack, Tant sont grossiers & imparfaictz, Imparfaictz en sens & mesures (w. 38-39) The association of mesure and sens is not one of chance. It runs as a variation on a basic attitude toward poetry through many of Marot's statements on his work, and finds its most consistent restatement in the synonyms rime and raison. Joined together in a single statement, they take their place in a tradition of received wisdom that was current

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from Marot's time back through the Middle Ages to classical antiquity.2 It is from the traditionally close association of these two terms that the comic juxtaposition occurring in Epigramme XXXVI arises and evinces a mood of levity toward rhyme in its conclusion, "Parquoy, Monsieur, je vous supply en ryme / Me venir veoir pour parler en raison." Writing for the Doctor Braillon to come to his aid, he links in rhyme the two words with their disparate reference for a good joke. But this comic relief arises equally from the perspective of a poet who sees any phenomenon from several sides, for usually rime and raison taken together and literally are the standards of a craftsman who views his métier seriously and with understanding. As the editor reconstructing the text of Villon, Marot laments that "Tant y ay trouué de broillerie en l'ordre des couplets & des vers, en mesure, en langage, en la ryme & la raison." And as the humble court poet lamenting that his own verse is "mal mesuré," rhyme and reason become the unique criteria, negative or positive, for evaluating the work of Guillaume du Tertre: Quand les Escriptz que tu m'as envoyez Seraient de Rime & Raison desvoyez; Quand ton vouloir (lequel trop plus j'estime Que tes Escriptz, ta Raison, ne ta Rime) (Epître XXXI, w . 1-4) When used as terms of blame or praise, they contribute in turn to the thematic unity of the Rondeaux as Marot first scores ung poete ignorant ( V I I ) , "Lequel gaste (quand il compose) / Raison, Mesure, Texte & Glose," and then limits his Ryme mesurée (Rondeau XVIII) to praise of the scientia et doctrina of Jeanne Gaillarde. Consideration of rhyme or reason in isolation is always temporary, for together they define a sense of proportion that Marot and his critics considered to lie at the heart of light and other verse. This dialectical search for proportion appears even in the childlike letter (LI) of Jeanne d'Albret to Marguerite de France where an invitation to pleasure Pour commencer donc à Rimer, Vous pouvez (ma Dame) estimer, Quel joye à la Fille advenoit, (w. 7-9) is followed by the sober sentence Joye entiere on ne peult avoir Tandis que l'on est en ce Monde

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94 Mais affin que je ne me fonde Trop en Raison, . . .

(w. 50-53) which in turn introduces another scene of innocent delight. Of even greater moment than the alternation between denial and gratification is a grouping together of terms that in Epître LUI strikes at the delicate balance between reason, unreason, and imagination : Amour de soy n'est que folle esperance, Qui faict changer le sens en frenaisie Et la raison en vaine fantasie;8 (w. 4-6) The notion that little is much, which came to characterize Marot of the epigrams, is phrased in the rondeau ( X I X ) which follows the one just discussed as "ta façon en peu de Ryme embrasse / Raison fort grande"; in a generalization on proportion in the Psaumes, chansons, and étrennes, Sebillet concludes that "il n'y ait ryme sans raison." 4 Once he had applied the principle of proportion in all things to rhyme itself, and as a result exchanged an attitude of veneration for one of casualness, rhymed verse became for Marot no longer the object toward which he directed his energies but merely the medium in which he happened to work. This position is typical of his more important poems as early as 1526, even before his letter to the Chancellier du Prat replete with rhymes on sceller, in his effort to "descrire en mettre" L'Enfer (v. 18) and in his masterful "compte en termes rimassez" to Lyon Jamet (Epître X). With the same self-directed irony that Du Bellay will place at the center of his Regrets, he allows offhandedly that Je rys, je chante en joye solennelle, Je sers ma Dame, & me consolle en elle, Je rime en Prose (& peult estre en raison)

5

( Rondeau XXI) Du Bellay, however, went on to paraphrase Horace and sum up their common approach to life in a conversational language (Regrets II) Et peult estre que tel se pense bien habile, Qui trouvant de mes vers la ryme si facile, En vain travaillera, me voulant imiter. (w. 1 2 - 1 4 ) The statement, here at the outset of his great sonnet sequence, that the polish of great art consists in hiding its polish is the succinct expression

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of a principle Marot anticipates in disparate fragments throughout his work. Like Du Bellay, he is not always faithful to his own principles, at least as the latter are deduced by Sebillet. W e frequently catch him rhyming words with clumsy derivatives of them (e.g., desassembler'assemble, assemblez-desassemblez) or even rhyming the same words (faveur-faveur, espouse-espouse) . 8 Still, if he cultivates the Horatian pose of a relaxed manner, his practice is no less Horatian in its insistence that rhyme be worked at. Modern critics resolutely deny any influence whatsoever of Horace on Marot. 7 But if this is the case, then surely there are numerous passages in the French poet which, if not direct reminiscences of the Augustan poet, are at least Horatian in their outlook toward poetry as a craft. His advice, "que limes, / Quand tu rimes, / Tes Mesures / E t Cesures" (Epître XLVIII, vv. 37-40) echoes as a motif throughout his work and recalls the limae labor that is so essential to Horace's aesthetic. 8 Just as he disdains Villon's editors who confused rhyme and reason and, in an Augustan attitude toward language of more primitive times, excuses Villon himself for his "langage mal limé d'iceluy temps," he also deprecates his own work, "cest escript mal poly et limé . . . qu'Orace / N'amenderoit" (Rondeau LVIII). Correspondingly, he defends himself against the "Satyriques top envieux" who accused him of authoring the "Gracieux Adieux aux Dames de Paris," for "ne sortit one de ma forge / Ung Ouvrage si mal lymé." Even when his letter "Aux Dames de Paris" denies any expenditure of effort on his poems, his denial is cast precisely in Horatian terms: "Mais que vauldroit d'en travailler mes doigts / Sur le Papier?" ( w . 75-76).® The contempt expressed in this rhetorical question is not for the making of poetry but for having wasted his talent on so small a rival. Marot's consummate rhyming skill is in fact often most evident in his seemingly casual ability to turn the requirements of rhyme into a stunning coup; or in his apparent failure to do so, as in parenthetical stage directions that usurp the attention of the presumably more important narration in direct discourse. In the appeal " A ma Dame la Duchesse d'Alençon laquelle il supplie d'estre couché en son estât," he dramatizes the refrain "Il n'est que d'estre bien couché" with the passing aside "Mais je respondz (comme fasché)" which precedes it in rhyme and sharply stipulates the poet's point of view as he pronounces the ballade's recurring theme. T o be sure, the rhymes that incumber the dialogue in his fable-épître to Lyon Jamet, "Secouru m'as fort Lyonneusement; / Ors secouru seras Rateusement" (vv. 45-46), self-

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consciously claim the lion's—and the reader's—attention by occupying half the space allotted to the verses. Yet they preserve the poem's balance between fantasy and reality, and catch the inflection of voice and the point of view of the lowly rat who, previously forsaken, now assumes grand manners ("iays toy, Lyon lié"). Marot's two rhyming adverbs are at once clumsy and exactly accommodated to the animal's personality. Rhyme in Marot does not exist only as sound recaptured or as elaborate or fortuitous combinations of acoustically similar words, but also as language that creates meaning through its union. W h e n the rhyme is overly facile, the meaning generated can amount to no more than, for instance, the superficial compliment of the courtier, expressed in rhyming antithetical derivatives "Aussi fasché de ta loingtaine absence / Que toy joyeux de la noble presence" (Epître XXII, w . 53-54). T h e union of opposites can also risk obscuring meaning, as happens in the complicated display of Rhétoriqueur virtuosity at the beginning of L'Enfer (douleurs amassées- lyesse passée; plaisir amassé- mal passé). More often, however, Marot is capable of charging the most common verbal game with a special resonance. His devise " L a Mort n'y Mord," which like any motto of a Rhétoriqueur was the signature tag that he routinely appended to his poems, is thrust into a personal perspective in his bitter epigram " A la ville de Paris" ( C X C I V ) Paris, tu m'as fait mainctz alarmes, Jusque à me poursuyvre à la mort; Je n'ay que blasonné tes armes; Ung ver, quant on le presse, il mord. (w. 1-4) Though the precise allusion is obscure, enough hurt had accrued to Marot by the poem's date of 1538 to justify the last line which sums up his spleen. When, in addition, the coupling of opposites which lends emphasis to verse occurs at the summation of the poem, rhyme is thrust into unusual prominence. At the climax of "Les tristes vers de Philippes Beroalde," Faith and Law—the crux of many doctrinal disputes of the Reformation— S'il est ainsi que j'ensuive ta loy, S'il est ainsi que je vive en ta foy are reconciled in a coupling of terms which is more prayerfully than discursively resolved. Rhyme, like structure, can deepen the semantic rich-

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ness of a poem, in this case by the ability of sound to connote a mood whose imprecise contours linger in the reader's ear. When rhyme reinforces denotative statement, it is capable itself of a kind of statement that cannot be defined but can be illustrated. Both profane and sacred love, for example, when the poet is reduced to despair or adumbrates the hope of his deliverance, are celebrated by Marot in rhyme. By the aura of perfection it specifies, the rhyme vocabulary of Epigramme XIII intensifies the narrator's ultimate exclusion through a technique Du Bellay will practice later La Chapelle qui est bastie & consacrée Pour le lieu d'oraison à Dieu plaist et aggrée. De Contrebas & Hault, la Chappelle fournie Avec Taille & Dessus est tresbelle armonie. . . . Mais toy, Chappelle vive, estant de beaulté pleine Tu ne fais que donner à tes Serviteurs peine.10 Through the reinforcement of internal rhyme, thought and speech combine at the end of Psaume XIX to offer the lost sinner hope Ma bouche prononcer Ne mon cueur rien penser Ne puisse, qui ne plaise A toy, mon deffendeur, Saulveur & amendeur De ma vie mauvaise. Isolation is both dramatized and personalized by Marot's alteration of mood in the Psalms from high optimism to the final downbeat of mauvaise. If Marot demonstrates here a consummate sense of metrical economy and of rhythm as the pulse of emotion, he is not always so successful. The beginning of this same psalm, where David "monstre par le merveilleux ouvrage des cieulx combien Dieu est puissant," in fact reduces the stature of God the omnipotent creator of "Ce grand entour espars" and His omniscience, "sa grande sapience" to a dull repetition that merely fills the line and from which Marot seemed incapable of rising.11 These chevilles inevitably abound in his translations, where he attempts to transcribe what is concise in a synthetic language into an analytic language. At Marot's hands the ironic comedy and lighthanded familiarity of Erasmus is considerably surpassed in length by the dialogue in the "Colloque de la vierge mesprisant mariage" :

98

Form Catherine:

Clement:

Pour abreger Il n'est pas du tout si leger Comme l'on diroit bien. Or Sus (w. 1 1 9 - 1 2 1 )

The first underscored addition makes the demure Catherine, "Est omnino non leve," into a windy Polonius by speaking of brevity while adding prolixity. The second accretion occupies no less than a full line in order to prepare the equally unauthorized rhyme Or sus. Following these verses another alteration transforms the reserve of Erasmus's litotes, "lam pollicita sum," into hyperbolic vulgarity Catherine

le vous l'ay accordé desia: Besongnez. (w.124-125)

In these instances, the translator's license retains the wish of Erasmus to teach people to speak in Latin about everyday matters, but violates the original purpose of the Colloquies of instructing people to write Latin idiomatically. When in Epitre XLVI Marot adapts the image of the return to Ithaca from the Ex Ponto, later immortalized by Du Bellay, and borrows Ovid's measured Ithaci prudentia, his loquacious muse immediately bogs down in a parenthetical aside whose only purpose is to prepare a rhyme with immortel: "Ulixes sage, au moins estimé tel" ( v . 1 5 7 ) . If the evolution of a poet's weaknesses can ever be instructive, it is worth noting that when the mature Marot fumbles for rhyme, he falls into the conversational wordiness of the examples just cited. Later we will explore the dimension this conversationalism nevertheless adds to his manner. In his youth, however, his chevilles are indecisive redundancies occasioned more by the limited resources of the poet's rhyming thesaurus than by the dictates of a rich poetic vision. From this point of view, there is nothing that essentially sets apart the words added merely to create a rhyme "Sentant mon cueur plus froid que glace ou marbre" in the "Epitre de Maguelonne" (v. 147) from "Ne pourroit pas fendre marbre ou pourphire" in the Temple de Cupido (v. 40). Still, a study of the latter poem's variants shows that indecision was also fatal to whatever vision the mature poet could recapture from his youth. Whereas the princeps edition was content with Le ciel ou poisle est ung cedre embasmant Les cueurs humains: sur ce qung oysellet

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Jargonne tant que son chant nouvellet Endort les gens, the 1538 edition "corrected" these verses, leaving the hesitation in the first line, and filling out the second with a gratuitous cheville: Le ciel ou poisle est ung Cedre embasmant Les cueurs humains, duquel la largeur grande Coeuvre l'autel. Et là (Pour toute offrande) . . . ( w.207-209) As a result, we see that scenic description often hinges on convenience of rhyme and that set descriptions of a conventional nature preempt realistic precision of a particular nature. To say that Marot's descriptive techniques often center more on a choice among conventions than on one between convention and realism does not mean that he writes outside the realities of his own creative experience or of the reader's reaction. In his contribution to a reform of French versification, he was not subject to the categorical assertiveness of Malherbe nor even to the limitations of the Marotic aesthetic as codified by Sebillet. The notion of the Art poétique françoys (II, i) that eight-syllable verse is jocular while the decasyllable is grave may hold as a generalization, but the distinction blurs before the example of Marot's peregrine muse. In fact, any distinction blurs in the attempt to make of him either a revolutionary or a mere continuator in the practice of shaping the extremities or the inner workings of the poetic line. Again, his historical role is one of an enlightened intermediary who refines the conventions of verse between their initiation and final polish. Critics have not failed to point out that the alternation of masculine and feminine verse—introduced by Octovien de Saint-Gelais and made famous by Ronsard in his odes and sonnets—kept pace with Marot's interest in setting his poems to music, from the erratic practice of the chansons and rondeaux to the regularity of the Psalms. 12 The importance of his commonsense concern for the internal metrics of verse is less apparent, however, from the limited comment it receives in Sebillet (I, vi) and from his own humble comment terminating the preface to the Adolescence: "les couppes femenines, que je n'observoys encor alors, dont Jehan le Maire de Belges (en les m'aprenant) me reprint." While Lemaire's interdiction of an uncounted and unelided e is limited to the epic caesura that follows the fourth syllable in a decasyllable, Marot applies the precept to both lyric and epic caesurae. More concerned with rhyming for the ear than with Malherbian visual symmetry, in practice he allowed for a succession of vowels when they

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are separated by a major coupe. The point is that this flexibility derives from a reciprocal relation between practice and theory, and that both are inextricably linked to effective expression of meaning in the single line and total poetic unit. Marot relates theory and practice to individual and collective meaning in the introduction to his edition of Villon, published one year after his acknowledged debt to Lemaire, where he claims that Tant y ay trouué de broillerie en l'ordre des couplets & des vers, en mesure, en langage, en la ryme & en la raison, que ie ne sçay duquel ie doy plus auoir pitié, ou de l'oeuure ainsi oultrement gastée, ou de l'ignorance de ceulx qui l'imprimèrent . . . par deuiner auecques iugement naturel, a esté reduict nostre Villon en meilleure & plus entiere forme qu'on ne l'a veu de noz aages, & ce sans auoir touché à l'antiquité de son parler, à sa façon de rymer, à ses meslées & longues parentheses, à la quantité de ses syllabes, ne à ses couppes, tant feminines que masculines.13 Between these passages he cites the text of Galiot du Pré of 1532 and his own emended version. After the first four verses where the two versions agree perfectly Or est vray qu'après plainctz & pleurs Et angoisseux gemissemens Apres tristesses & douleurs Labeurs & griefz cheminemens he leaves the reader to compare the remainder Trauaille mes lubres sentemens Aguysez ronds, comme vne pelote Monstrent plus que les comments En sens moral de Aristote.

Trauail mes lubres sentemens Aguysa (ronds comme pelote) Me monstrant plus que les comments Sur le sens moral d'Aristote.

While Galiot du Pré's octosyllabic line here contains either seven syllables or nine, Marot restores the metrical integrity by deleting improper mute e's, and in doing so restores the balance of Villon's lyricism as well as the meaning of the octave. Transformation of travaille into a noun accords with the syntactic development of the preceding lines ("l'ordre des couplets"), corrects the metrics of verse 5 ("sa façon de rymer"), and aligns it with the verb Aguysa of which it is the subject ("l'ignorance de ceulx qui l'imprimerent"). Although Marot's parenthetical aside (ronds comme pelote) does not agree with the current reading of Esguisez comme une pelote, nor his conclusion with the D'Averroys sur Aristote now accepted as the last line, his minor alterations at least agree with the sense of Villon's text.14

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Despite occasional rough spots in his verse and the failure to apply the limae labor, Marot gained a sense of metrical propriety beyond the grasp and auditory powers of his contemporaries and predecessors. From its infancy, French poetry had observed the caesura after the fourth syllable in a decasyllabic line with such care that, as Pasquier put it, "Quelques-uns ont estimé que ces hémistiches ou demy-vers estaient de pareille nature que la fin du vers." 1 5 Marot's particular contribution was his ability to accentuate the caesura without diminishing the primacy of end rhyme or destroying the bridge between the hemistichs. Proximity of sound and meaning between the two segments can create an ironic effect, as in the second coq-à-l'âne, "Vendent leur chair || cher comme cresme" (v. 75) or emphatic as in "Mais en fin Mort || mort me fera gésir" (Rondeau X X I I I ) and "Cruelle Mort, || Mort plus froide que Marbre (Epitaphe X X X ) . By preserving individuality of sound effect distinct from that of end rhyme, the caesura underscores an alliteration that coincides with the theme of Faulse Fortune of the rondeau in the first instance, and with the funereal theme of the epitaph in the second. As opposed to the tendency of older usage to fragment verse by allowing unvoiced and uncounted mute e's, the distinct juncture in Marot's line brings the caesura into sharp focus without disjoining the two complementary parts. On the contrary, through a play on aural similarity and semantic difference, the court poet repeatedly celebrates an equation between the individual and the many parts of which that personage is the sum and the representative. His épître ( L V I I ) composed around July 1544, declaims the virtues of François de Bourbon, who as the leader of the French forces in Piedmont becomes the king's surrogate O Roy, aussi ton propre nom il porte, Et par Françoys, Françoys en mainte sorte Sera vangé. From the viewpoint of its architecture and the immutable political laws it stipulates, the whole poetic line becomes greater than its constituent parts. In an epigram ( C C X L V I ) written at the same time as the épître just quoted, the same juncture of names is repeated, drawing the components of the French political hierarchy into closer proximity by the chiastic structure that includes them : Si mon Seigneur, mon Prince & plus que Pere, Qui des François, FRANÇOYS premier se nomme, N'estoit point Roy de sa France prospéré, (w. 1 - 3 )

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More than a brief shaft of courtly wit, the identification of Francis with the revival of French culture—if in fact vastly exaggerated—is one that Marot repeatedly made in pronouncements that bore the broadest implications. Thus, an epigram ( C L X X I X ) originally intended in the Chantilly and Soissons manuscripts as the liminal piece of the epigrams imitated from Martial: Roy des Frangoys, Frangoys premier du nom, Dont les vertuz passent le grant renom, Et qui en France en leur entier ramaines Tous les beaulx artz et sciences rommaines, (w. 1-4) was replaced in the 1547 edition by one dedicated in part to the king and based on Martial's "ducum victor, victor et ipse tui." Nowhere is there a more evident contribution of metrics and versification to stichic and strophic unity, and ultimately to poetic meaning, than in the Psalms. Nowhere does the strophic richness credited to his Psalms contribute more to the cultural richness of the Renaissance than in these fifty poems. Although the publication history of the thirty and finally the fifty Psalms is more consistently linked to Calvin and the Genevan Council, from the initial publication in 1533 of Psaume V I together with Marguerite's Miroir de I'dme pecheresse, Marot's undertaking is not to be dissociated from the tradition of Christian syncretism.16 Since the time of the early Church Fathers the "effects" of sacred music on the mind and soul of its listener had been studied with repeated interest.17 Clement of Alexandria, who made the first attempt to combine the teachings of biblical religion and Greek philosophy, made David the successor of Orpheus for his ability to harmonize the elements of the world (Protrepticus, I). This Middle Platonism was continued and strengthened by the neo-Platonism of the Florentine Academy, where Ficino felt it right for him as a Christian apologist to synthesize the Orphic hymns and the Psalms, to claim that just as Apollo is the god of beneficial light and medicine, of poetry and music, David became the vehicle of god by restoring a raging Saul to bodily and spiritual health through his words and music.18 Marot's preface to his Psalm translations certainly lacks the dimension of Pythagorean harmonies with which the thought of the Florentine Platonist is imbued, but neither does its treatment of this philosophical commonplace contain any of Calvin's restrictions on man. (Calvin's—not Calvinistic —restrictions, since a follower of the Genevan reformer like Simon

Rhyme and Reason Goulart will resort to the same analogies as Marot, accentuating the curative powers of music itself.) 1 9 While acknowledging the power of music to assuage melancholia, Calvin resolutely denies it any therapeutic role in the exorcising of Saul's evil spirit, since this would arrogate to song powers of godhead that belong to divine will alone.20 Marot's position is ambivalent between these extremes. After equating Francis with David in prowess, wisdom, and renown, he affirms the primacy of God as the efficient cause of David's inspiration, "l'Eternel en est premiere source" : O donques, Roy, prens l'oeuvre de David, Oeuvre plus tost de Dieu qui le ravit, D'autant que Dieu son Apollo estoit, (w. 39-41 ) In this potpourri of pantheism David—whom Ficino had likened to Apollo—is deprived of conscious Apollonian artistry. Instead, the source of inspiration is transferred to Jehovah-Apollo, and in the following passage the workings of the Holy Spirit are intertwined with the effects of poetic fury. Marot continues to assign levels of responsibility for the soothing effects of psalmodie music which cannot logically or systematically accommodate one another. At times he interprets the role of the Psalms as the manifesting of God's presence and the préfiguration (figura salvatoris) of Christ in David Icy oyt on l'esprit de Dieu, qui crie Dedans David, alors que David prie, . . . Christ y verrez par David figuré,21 (w. 79-80, 83) This continuity between the holy and the human, and the subsequently described consolatory effect of the Psalms (vv. 1 1 1 - 1 1 4 ) , are fundamentally Christian enough to reconcile the aggregate position of patrology and the opinions of Calvin. But then he goes on to proclaim the superiority of David over Horace and others Pas ne fault donc qu'auprès de luy Horace Se mette en jeu, s'il ne veult perdre grace . . . Soit à escrire en beaux lyriques vers, Soit à toucher la lyre en son divers. N'a il souvent au doulx son de sa lyre Bien appaisé de Dieu courroucé l'ire? N'en a il pas souvent de ces bas lieux Les escoutans ravy jusques aux cieulx,

Form Et faict cesser de Saiil la manie Pendant le temps que duroit l'armonie? Si Orpheus jadis l'eust entendue, La sienne il eust à quelque arbre pendue; (w. 129-130, 133-142) To frame David's hypnotic effect between the Roman poet and mythic Greek minstral, and to establish the surpassing beauty of his song by a comparison with theirs, is not in itself remarkable. Horace and Orpheus were both common reference points respectively for artistic perfection and persuasive power, both names came easily to the pens of Renaissance writers, and the mere mention of their names does not require that the writer be acquainted with the body of literature they represented. What is noteworthy, on the one hand, is Marot's acceptance of Calvin's imperative to make the Word "intelligible" by translation into the vernacular, to avoid the obscurantism of hermetic and oracular pronouncements.22 On the other hand, David's gift of charming kings, demigods, and even God himself momentarily confers an autonomy on the effects of the poet's "beaux lyriques vers" which Calvin never allowed. Alternately viewing the sacred hymns as the prime agent in restoring harmony to the troubled mind or as the passive instrument of Divine Will, Calvin and Marot come together at least on the purpose of the Psalms "à esmouvoir les cueurs en une sorte, ou en l'autre." 23 Similarly, in the companion preface "Aux Dames de France," Marot assigned to the combined effects of poetry and music the power to assuage anxiety and convey God's love, Car son esprit vous fera grace De venir prendre en voz cueurs place, Et les convertir & muer, (w. 35-57) Any Renaissance student of suasory art knew that the means of persuasion had to adapt themselves to the ends and varied accordingly. An acute awareness of the necessarily broad appeal of the Psalms is evident in the 1541 version of the thirty Psalms. Each psalm is accompanied by a general or specific indication of its intent which smacks singularly of the fundamental pro et contra of rhetoric. Thus, Psaume IV is destined "pour ung prince qu'on veult deposer de son throsne," while Psaume V is directed "contre les calumniateurs." There is a further indication of the poem's argumentum, not unrelated to the persuasive effect and

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intent of poetry. Psaume IV summarizes how "En la conspiration d'Absalon, il invoque Dieu, reprend les princes d'Israël conspirans contre luy, les appelle à la repentence, & conclud qu'il se trouve bien de se fier en Dieu," and demonstrates this faith in the last line: "Que seur & seul regnant Seray." Psaume V , where "David en exil ayant beaucoup souffert, & s'attendant souffrir davantage par les flatteurs qui estoient autour de Saùl, dresse sa priere à Dieu, puis se console quand il pense que le Seigneur a toujours les mauvais en haine & qu'il favorise les bons," impresses the duplicity of this "flaterie faulse" and bends our sympathies against it by a remarkable manipulation of sound and structure: "Leur cueur est /ainct, /aulx & couvert" (v. 42). Finally, each piece was preceded by a musical cue about the way it could be sung, thus facilitating its adaptation to a variety of familiar airs ensuring the collective popularity of the Psalms. This mobility and popular appeal were by contemporary estimates 24 both Marot's design and the result of his endeavor—an evaluation indicating that in the preface to Francis his claim of David's superiority "Soit à escrire en beaux lyriques vers, / Soit à toucher la lyre en son divers," bore for him a meaning as practical as it was theoretical. The combined tradition of ideas and of precepts and the practical considerations of versifying which he observes or seems to violate are standards against which Marot's individuality has been measured with inevitably mixed opinions. He adheres to the time-honored 4 + 6 rhythmic divisions that serve to organize ideas where one recognizes affinities with the mystical effusion of Marguerite, "Que d'estre rien rien ne se peult vanter, / Et qu'il est tout en ses faictz," 26 or alternatively to enhance the normal oratorical assertiveness of the Psalms without, however, undercutting the climax or rhyme: "Lors à jamais Roy de tous approuve" (Psaume X, v. 54). But it is his rhyming and strophic innovations that represent the culmination of his technical skill and point to a new direction in lyrical form. Long ago these innovations caught the eye of critics who explored them in detail that need not be gone into here.26 They insist on the unfailing alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes and on the forty-one varieties of form in the fifty Psalms which together compose a collection characterized by both unity and variety. Care is taken to show the ways in which rhyme and strophe are now inseparable in a systematic whole, as in Psaume XXXVII or Psaume XI where the new (to French soil via Lemaire) terza rima alternates with the traditionally French quatrain. But in matters of individual rhymes, the great attention that the same critics

Form

io6

have accorded Marot's regularized yet varied collection of Psalms has made his technical innovations merely that. Martinon seems concerned to set him against the Rhétoriqueurs primarily in order to show that while his predominantly rich rhyme in the Psalms is all the more noticeable for its Rhétoriqueur leavening, it leads to a more simplified verse form. Laumonier and others, meanwhile, are more drawn to the ways in which his increase of rhymes from two to three in sixains paved the way for the freedom of Ronsard's odes and how these sixains were to become the sestet of the Marotic sonnet.27 An even greater threat to the unity of Marot's achievement in the Psalms has been the tendency to divorce the psalmodie cadence of his translations from their substance and intent. Verse length and strophic configuration in Marot's verse translations are invariably responsive to length and structure in the versions he worked from, and individual strophes correspond to individual verses in the Hebrew, Vulgate, and other versions, so that the fault imputed to Marot for occasional flat redundancies (Psaumes XXIV, C X V , CXVIII) must be laid instead to the "beaux lyriques vers" of David which they faithfully reproduce. Marot was not only transcribing from a text; he was also adapting for an audience, so that he had to summon means of expression that would have a sufficiently broad appeal as well as suiting the dignity of his subject. That suitability was once questioned in regard to Psaume XXXVIII by Martinon and by Faguet, who dismissed its "plainct fort à Dieu de la vehemence de son [David's] mal" as "le Dies irae sur le mirliton," and as anticipating the levity of Ronsard's Bel aubépin. A glance at its lilting rhythm confirms this impression : Las! en ta fureur aigiie Ne m'argiie De mon faict, Dieu toutpuissant: Ton ardeur un peu retire, N'en ton ire Ne me puniz languissant. (w. 1-6) Vianey, however, cited a text Lais se font cummunement Bien souvent Pour oraison et complainte Devers Dieu omnipotent Ou sa gent Par mainte personne saincte.

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to prove the attachment of this rhythm to popular tradition and its later use in Huguenot psalms and Catholic Noels.28 A further glance at the text containing this lai, L'Art de retoricque pour apprendre à ditter et rimer en plusieurs manières, and at the léonine, équivoquée, and enchaînée rhymes that run through it makes clear the poem's suasive purpose, its Rhétoriqueur provenance and the continuity of poetic tradition, which even through the Psalms, Marot continued both to espouse and alter.29 From the examples cited in the preceding pages, it is clear that neither in the tradition out of which Marot's poetry grew nor in his major alterations of this legacy is there a hard distinction in kind between end rhyme and internal alliteration. The tendency for the ultrarichness of Rhétoriqueur rhyme of all types to encroach back upon—to the point of becoming—the whole line, or for the verse to find alternatives for the end rhyme at any point within the line, as in Molinet's "Sept Rondeaux dans un rondeau," blurs even further any distinction between rhyme and alliteration. At one extreme, alliteration subverts the punctuation of thought afforded by rhyme and submerges ideas in a welter of inchoate and undifferentiated sounds; at the other extreme, when alliteration complements the rhyme, sound reinforcing meaning becomes a vehicle of poetic statement. Although he exhibits both extremes in various genres, Marot resolutely moves from the former to the latter in a quarter-century of writing. In a few cases, his incursion into alliterative poetry expresses a desire to remain faithful to the model he adopts, as in the initial epigram imitated from Martial, "maiora daturus / dona, ducum victor, victor et ipse tui, / diligeris . . ." Dons bien sentans ta royaulté supresme, D'en faire encor bien t'actens, o vainqueur Des cueurs de tous et vainqueur de toy mesme. But in just as many situations, it is apparent that through a consciously elaborated creative process or through the filter of his literary memory Marot strove for an alliterative effect entirely absent from his prose model. The catalog of Flora's gifts to the wedding of Thetis and Peleas in Lemaire's Illustrations de Gaule which we alluded to in chapter a, ". . . romarin, euroine, mente, basilisque, marguerites, soucies, ancolies, jennettes, giroflees, coqueletz, percelles, bacinetz, passeroses, passeveloux, glays, noyelles, liz, pencees, muguetz, roses, et oeilletz herbus," is reshuffled to no evident purpose from the first to the final version of the Temple de Cupido.30

Form

io8 Romarins, lavandes, oeilletz, Nobles marguerittes fleurantes, Les joliz boutons vermeilletz Et roses odoriférantes, Toutes aultres fleurs apparentes

Marguerites, Lis & Oeilletz, Passeveloux, Roses flairantes, Romarins, Boutons vermeilletz, Lavandes odoriférantes; Toutes autres fleurs apparentes, (vv. 353-356)

When the same or similar flowers are gathered for the "Eglogue sur le Trépas de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye," however, organization is guided but not dominated by a concern for alliterative effects that lend magnitude to the funereal décor: Portez Rameaulx parvenus à croissance, Laurier, Lierre & Lys blancs honnorez, Rommarin vert, Roses en abondance, Jaulne Soulcie & Bassinetz dorez, Passeveloux de Pourpre colorez, Lavande franche, Oeilletz de couleur vive, Aubepins blancs, Aubefains azurez, Et toutes fleurs de grand beaulté nayve! (w. 229-236) This continual retouching of passages by the poetic craftsman in order to exploit their aural potential belies Marot's theoretical statements made when he operates within a tradition of received ideas. The cliché about composing under the seizure of Apollonian poetic fury is applied to David in the dedication to the Psalms, "à grans traictz il beut de la claire unde,/Dont il devint poëte en un moment" (w. 48-49) and attributed to the incantation of rhyme in Epître L V Le son plaisant des vertz qui sont rymés, C'est ce qui m'a, et cy ne say cornent, Fait devenir poete en ung momment;31 (w. 14-16) In a sense, however, the realities of Marot's development of alliteration do not so much contradict as they transcend the pose of Corybantic seizure. Renaissance poets and prose writers of all callings frequently employ the rhetorical trope called antonomasia, defined by Henry Peacham as "A figure which of the word going before deriveth the word following . . . to delight the ear by the derived sound and to move the mind with a consideration of the high affinity and concord of the matter," where words and sounds seem to generate their own kind.32 As with Rabelais, generation may proceed by prefixing a root homonym,

Rhyme and Reason witness the niece in Complainte II "Qui a perdu, par fiere Mort immunde/Tante & attente & entente & lyesse" (w. 1 4 - 1 5 ) ; or to describe the diversity of God's action, "Tout il espreuve & le juste il approuve" (Psaume XI, v. 15) proceding from a unified will that "preveut & prévint" (Psaume XVIII, v. 47) it may retain the prefix and alter the root. Aesthetically charged as these moments surely are, they did not spring fully mature from Marot's head. In many instances they return to his early experience with rime enchaînée, Qu'aurons pour vray, doncques (sans longue attente) Tente tes piedz à si decentre sente, Sans te fascher, mais en soys content tant Qu'en ce faisant nous le soyons aultant. (Epigramme

XIX)

and the rime fratrisée that fitfully survives in his middle years, "Celle qui travailla pour le repos de maintz / Repose maintenant" (Epitaphe X V ) . In the most literal sense, his alliteration and the rhetorical devices that account for them are legacies of an immediate past into which he was born but also of a medieval past that doubtless receded beyond any level of consciousness. Especially in his early work, whether satirical or eulogistic, the reader's eye and ear constantly run across alliterations that derive from Marot's acquaintance with Basoche themes which were to reverberate through much of his career, or which are in fact reminiscences of legal jargon the youthful poet would have learned from his first training, or are simply reflex couplings handed down by tradition. Illustrative of the first instance is the kindred description of natural settings in the Temple de Cupido, "Suyvans jardins, boys, fleuves & fontaines" (v. 124) and the late fifteenth-century débat, "Conflit de Caresme et Charnaige": "Tant par les mers que ès fleuves et fontaines." 33 And the "Aulcuns propos ou moyens ou maniérés / Justifiantz les Ames prisonnières" that close L'Enfer (vv. 465-466) are simply too close for dismissal as accidents to the "Toutes gens qui désirent sçavoir / Le bon moyen et manière de vivre" of François Girault's Le Moyen de soy enrichir (1525?). 34 By a similar token, the description of the knight's cruel mistress in the Temple de Cupido moves by turns through "dure forteresse" and "trop rude & grande forteresse" before settling on "Estre trop forte & fiere forteresse" (v. 46). To be sure, the war-of-love metaphor has deep courtly roots, but the alliterative expression of it toward which Marot's variants grope recalls an even earlier

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medievalism. In the middle of the Chanson de Roland Turpin defines for Roland the comportment of the perfect knight "Ke armes portet ed en bon cheval site/Deit en bataille estre e forz e fiers" (v. 1879) which the latter subsequently becomes through his gestes: "Tant se fait forz e fiers e maneriz!" (v. 2125). While recollection of traditionally paired attributes does occur in Marot's middle works, these examples accurately suggest that such grouping is found in closest juncture in early pieces like the Temple. In Epître X V I where Marot says he could have used a "grande levée / De Rhetorique" in composing it and "eusse dit comment on oyt crier / Au fons d'Enfer, plein de peines & pleurs" his expression parallels in imagery and alliteration the account in the "Complaincte de l'Ame dampnée" (1490?) of the soul on its deathbed tormented by devils from hell, "N'en retien que peine et pleurs" and to a lesser extent the "Epitaphes des Roys Loys X I et Charles V I I I " (1497), "Par pleurs et pZains et par larmes me pZaindre" and the later "Puis as perdu, dont je foys pZaingts et pleurs" of Giles Corrozet (1537) who edited the poet, pillaged him in his own work and, after Marot's experiments with the blazon, advocated a more stylized approach to poetic language in 153g. 35 Prescribed imagery and alliteration reach a climax at the end of the Temple Mais à grant peine euz je veu à travers, Que hors de moy cheurent plainctes & pleurs, Comme en yver seiches /ueilles et fleurs. (w. 500-502) where the last line recalls the formulaic oath of the Chanson de Gaydon, "Par icel Deu qui fait et foille et flor." 36 This willy-nilly traditionalism leads the tyro into an egregiously pointless catalog of emotions in conveying the psychological disarray of the despourveu (Epître II, ca. 1519), Triste, transi, tout terny, tout tremblant, Sombre, songeant, sans seure soustenance, . . . Confuz, courcé. Croyre Crainte concluz, (w. 82-83, 88) in which the alliteration continues simply because the line continues, and where the only consistent method discernible is the very madness of the procedure. It also leads him to depersonalize the potent forces that weigh on his life by prefixing customary but bland epithets to "Faulse Fortune" (Rondeau XXIII) or by suffixing to create the mo-

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mentary redundancy of rime couronnée: "L'une moictié de l'infortune forte" (Elégie XXI). But tradition as a presence that shapes the poet's world and circumscribes his material—especially when we view it in modern terms as a current of thought that is essentially foreign to his personality and he thus rightly should have resisted—is by itself insufficient to explain the variety of ways in which he interprets that presence. His Epître X V , in which he comments on both the poet's ability to control the dimensional tones of his poetic world and the effects of an uncontrollable Fortune, places the Cardinal de Lorraine in the company of the muses, "des bien aymez amans, / De dictz dorez & de rymez rommans" ( w . 59-60). This reference to the inspiration, matter and manner of literary activity, reference that instinctively aligns categories by alliterated pairs, illustrates a substantial portion of Marot's overall faconde. T h e seemingly endless parade of words two-by-two throughout Marot's work is too vast to index effectively because it undergoes so many permutations in form even within single poems, as in L'Enfer where syntax alternately joins and separates complements just as the narrator-moralist separates good from evil Ou aultrement les bons bonté fuyroient, Et les maulvais en empirant iroient. . . . Ce sont Serpents enflés, envenimés, Mordantz, mauldicts, czrdantz & animés, . . . Par son venin a bien sceu mettre haine Entre la mere & les maulvais enfants, ( w . 85-86, 139-40, 1 5 8 - 1 5 9 ) but also because it operates at ever different mimetic levels. As in the last example, a reversal of syntax in Psaume XI independent of rhythmic requirements aligns the components in the xyyx configuration we discussed in the last chapter that connotes divine retribution by its unique combination of explosive and fricative sounds: "Plouvoir fera d'Orléans feu de punition" (Psaume XI). Le cry du jeu de l'Empire (Ballade II), however, succeeds in re-creating the hubbub of the Bazoche procession by a series of alliterations that depends on the balanced gait occasioned by the overall effect of pairs of words grouped at random rather than on their particular sound values: "Venez, venez, Sotz, Sages, Folz & Folles" (v. 26). Rabelais uses the same random ordering of alliterated pairs in describing the damage done by Gargantua's horse simply through the casual yet destructive swishing of its tail: "elle en abatit tout le boys. A tord, à travers, deçà, de là, par cy, par là, de long, de large, dessus, dessoubz, abatoit boys comme un fauscheur

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faict d'herbes" (I, 1 6 ) . Dante also uses the random pairing to describe the effect of the passions that buffet men about, "di qua, di M, di giu, di su li mena" (Inferno, V , 4 3 ) , and Ariosto employs it to recreate the psychological storm raging in Orlando's mind, "chi su, chi giu, chi qua, chi là travia" (Orlando Furioso, X X I V , 2 ) . T h e alliance assumed in the later Middle Ages between music and poetry, while actually retarded by the advances in polyphonic music, was significantly stimulated by the realization that both song and verse have rules and formal principles. Lemaire's prosodie reform of avoiding feminine cadence at the caesura, and such innovations as restoring the old alexandrine and introducing strophic form and terza rima, were contributory to his belief that "Rhétorique et Musique sont une mesme chose." But all too often the "musique naturelle" of poetry elaborated by Eustache Deschamps was in practice reduced by the Rhétoriqueurs to syllable count and rime, with no suggestion of the "harmonie imitative" sought later by the Pléiade. As is frequently the case, Marot's participation in both of these trends, negative and positive, describes an arc—irregular but unmistakable—from his early to his later years. T h e presentation in the first elegy of the narrator who wishes to . . . escouter la Musique & le bruyt Des Oyselletz painetz de couleurs estranges, Comme Mallars, Merles, Mauviz, Mesanges, Pinsons, Pivers, Passes et Passerons; (w. 120-123) limits the bird song to mechanical enumeration that is fully contained by the verse line but extraneous to stichic ability to punctuate thought and emotion. While Marot was always conscious of the demands of context and of the appropriateness of alliteration to theme, he increasingly distinguished the different purposes and character of rhyme on the one hand and alliteration on the other as distinct means of making verse divisions and syncopating or accenting their suggestive rhythms: "Leur cueur est fainct, faulx & couvert" (Psaume V ) . . . "Brise la force & le feras plein d'excès" (Psaume X). T h e breach between theory and practice, between random sequences of sound and sound as the vehicle of passion steadily narrowed in Marot, in part because he actually listened to " L e son plaisant des vertz qui sont rymés" (Epître L V , v. 1 4 ) in the poetry he wrote and read; as his eye improved with experience, so did his ear. And while Marot the editor depends on a vague oral tradition rather than a careful manuscript tradition to lengthen or shorten Villon's verse "au plus près

Rhyme and Reason de l'intention de l'auteur," at least Marot the poet is conscious of the mood behind the pronounced word and of alliteration as an aural phenomenon. If his observation "comment on oyt crier / Au fons d'Enfer, plein de peines & pleurs" mirrors a spate of similar common alliterations, it shows that a mere sequence of identical consonants can be individually tailored by the skillful poet to narrative demands as divergent as the cries of the damned, "Mille malheurs, ausquelz ma destinée / M'avoit submis" (vv. 397-398), and the reassuring voice of a benevolent God, "Mille troupeaux en mille montz sont miens; / Miens je congnoys les oyseaulx des montaignes" (Psaume L ) . From these examples it is clear that the suggestiveness of identical sound values was limited only by the poet's imagination and the contexts in which his voice could be brought to bear. Like other poems where persuasive and dissuasive speeches abound, however, the "Déploration" limits those contexts primarily to pro et contra, praise and blame situations and proceeds to illustrate the means of expressing disapprobation . . . N'ont sceu mouvoir fiere mort à mercy. Blasmez la donc, et luy dites ainsi: Vieille effacée infecte, ymage inmonde. (w. 2 1 1 - 2 1 3 ) By the sheer enumeration of word forms and sounds that he is able to draw from a single word, 37 Pinseur pinsant, entre aultres poinctz Je t'ay pinsé de ce mot: pinse; Les Bons n'y sont pinsez ny poinetz, Mais les Meschans, dont tu es Prince. his Epître X X V I I " A ung qui calumnia l'Epistre precedente" conveys the fury of his mental reaction toward the opponent he is attacking, while in Epitaphe XXXII the description of the rider's various maneuvers and the prolonged cadence suggestive of rapid movements La viste virade, Pompante pennade, Le saulx soubzlevant, La roide ruadde, Prompte petarrade Je mis en avant. . . . is but a prelude to his plea in Epitre XXIII for another horse of equal quality. But such unrelieved enumeration is inimical to Marot's verbal mastery, for in most instances he is supremely aware that onomatopoeic

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repetition is most effective when it is judiciously employed within circumspect limits. Thus, in a few artful strokes he succeeds in conveying the extent of God's punishment by what the Pléiade will come to call "sons heroïques," "Le Seigneur Dieu, qui faict horriblement / Terre trembler" (Psaume CIV), and with equal deftness the artist's imagination conveys the scene of Frippelippes whipping a despicable Sagon, "Zon dessus l'oeil, zon sur le groing / Zon sur le dos du Segouyn" ( w . 211-212). 3 8 Whatever one might think about phonetic symbolism, in Marot's case alliteration is primarily a rhetorical device, bound up with the persuasive intent of his art and his desire to inculcate particular ideas, impressions, and emotions in his reader. Since the themes, attitudes, and moods he forwards through his use of rhyme and rhythm condition the art form he chooses and also condition our conception of him as an artist, the next part will turn to the two principal sources of his ideas— the religious and court milieus—to examine how they shaped his world and its expression.

V: LIVING FAITH littera enim occidit, Spiritus autem vivificat. — I I CORINTHIANS 3 : 6

THE RICHNESS of French Renaissance literature as a history of ideas is amply attested by continuing modern controversies over the religious beliefs of its major figures. That the problem of Marot remains alive in this debate is explained by the" greater number of questions his doctrinal pronouncements pose than they answer. Even more intriguing, the answers proposed by critics armed with incisive methods and rigorous documentation are individually convincing but collectively contradictory in varying measure when they ascribe meaning to isolated passages of Marot's works or to the whole of his religious experience. The first of three notable contributions to a definition of Marot's beliefs was Paulette Leblanc's book describing the passage from a "gothic" to an enlightened Christianity that trod a wavering line between orthodoxy and Erasmian humanism. 1 This was followed by Mayer's study of a Marot whose Lutheranism was alleged by ecclesiastical authorities, dated from as early as his contact in 1527 with the reformer Thomas Malingre, but was preempted by a steadier concern for the denaturing moral abuses within the Roman church. Recently, M . A. Screech revealed the scriptural bedrock beneath many of Marot's casual and serious utterances. Placing these allusions within a spectrum of ideas represented by Erasmus, Lefevre, Marguerite, and Luther among others, he concluded that Marot moved gradually from a coincidental sharing of ideas with Luther to schismatic Lutheranism around 1535. Limits of space and intent overrule my contribution here of a fourth full-blown discussion of Marot's religious development. Moreover, these three studies together grasp the complexities and ultimate limitations of defining the theological leanings of any Renaissance mind at work outside of a systematic theology. They all discuss the danger that inheres in codifying implicit attitudes of more than four cen-

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turies ago, the danger that the clarity of present knowledge can paradoxically obscure the transience of doctrinal positions taken during the two decades following the posting of Luther's theses. Recent studies on the Reformation viewed broadly reveal that the line of demarcation between Catholic and Protestant—even once that differentiation acquires some validity—was not as marked as was formerly assumed. It is extremely difficult to isolate the reach of Lutheranism before 1530, owing in part to the unclear and jumbled public mood of dissatisfaction with the established order. Within the ranks of French reformers one can distinguish the intellectual yet deeply Christian Erasmian party and the "heretics of M e a u x " who accepted governmental decrees but went their own radically personal way. Of the latter group, Guillaume Budé supported Luther in 1 5 1 9 and rejected him two years later. T h e n there is a group of freethinkers who made common cause with the reform movement to the extent and only while they shared a rancor toward medieval culture and zeal for Renaissance learning. T h e embracing term Huguenot, of conjectural origin, was not used until 1560. Ambivalence evidenced in many doctrinal issues frequently defies clear delineation, and, like the Bible, one can selectively quote Lefèvre, Erasmus, Melanchthon, Luther, or Marguerite to support many divergent theses. Y e t these competent studies on Marot differ on more fundamental matters. Mayer accepts the validity of contemporary testimony linking Marot with an early Lutheranism, while for Screech the evolving positions of both Marot and Luther make an early identification of the two tenuous if not incorrect. A pairing of Marot and Erasmus point for point would be equally tenuous for the same reasons. T h e roughly eight years separating the different dates these two scholars settle on for Marot's conversion make a substantial difference in our understanding of his spiritual experience. One further difficulty in tracing Marot's inner development and assessing the "sincerity" of his statement of it issues from some of the parareligious considerations we have discussed in the preceding chapters, in particular the unique vantage point from which and to which he was speaking in individual poems. Schooled as he was in the practice of court poetry and the art of persuasion, the notion of truth and reality did not necessarily lead him to paint an objective picture of his motives and deeds, but rather was subsumed under the narrator's purpose and his idea of the person to whom he was writing. Thus, the conclusions of the militant epistle ( X L I I I ) written to Renée de Ferrare and the anodine version of the same poem presented to Anne de Montmorency

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vary according to the profound differences in his attitude toward the recipients.2 Adaptation of statement to purpose in individual poems increases the difficulty of generalizing Marot's attitudes when they are to be based on the totality of his works, and especially when the chronology of some of the most important pieces is uncertain. Finally, Marot's eventual graduation from rhetoric as the banal instrument of propaganda to rhetoric as the eloquent handmaiden of art means that many of his allusions to contemporary events—especially when the poet assumes the role of imagined narrator and inflects his voice one degree farther from (or closer to?) that of the biographical Marot— are filtered and transmuted by the active imagination. This graduation amounts essentially to greater mastery of the ability to manipulate narrative voice, for greater precision of meaning, or for an equally skillful vagueness. It is incumbent, then, to examine Marot's particular use of language and to consider how, how extensively, and in what situations he comments on matters of faith, dogma, and attendant personal conduct. PERE DE NOUS, QUI ES LA HAULT ES CIEULX . . .

T h e amorous liturgy of the Temple de Cupido provides one further example among countless others of Renaissance fluidity of movement between eros and ecclesia Et les sainctz motz, que l'on diet pour les ames, Comme Pater, ou Ave maria, C'est le babil & le caquet des Dames. (vv. 390-392) At first blush, the last two lines seem excessively bold, were it not that the banter inflecting the narrative voice makes them more incidentally risqué and parenthetical than directly assertive, and that within the dimensions of the speaker's voice any derogative emphasis shifts away from the particular reference to the scriptural Pater and Ave Maria to a general allusion—though no less risqué—to the dogma of purgatory. In fact, Marot's interest in the two prayers was serious, and was sustained through the 1533 publication of the Instruction et Foy d'ung Chrestien where the Pater is translated with great care, as is also, with somewhat less care, the Ave Maria. 3 T h e most significant emendations in this version of the Pater occur in the invocation, and are suggestive more of a concern for amplified precision than of chevilles Pere de nous, qui es là hault ès cieulx, Sanctifié soit ton nom precieux;

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A similar concern for precise exegesis occurs in Erasmus's commentaries and paraphrases of the New Testament. In explaining the variant readings of Luke 2:14, "gloria in excelsis deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis" and "gloria in altissimus deo . . . ," the Dutch humanist remarks that "gloriam uni Deo tribuit, idque in altissimus" (his emphasis).4 Erasmus's expression uni Deo resounds throughout Marot's properly religious poems as Dieu seul, for example in the "Déploration de Florimond Robertet": Prie à Dieu seul que par grace te donne La vive foy dont sainct Pol tant escript. . . . Tien toy donc fort du seul Diel triumphant, Croyant qu'il est ton vray et propre pere. . . . Pour à Dieu seul obeyr, laisseras Trésors, amys, maisons et labourage; . . . Ainsi tel foy au mourant personnage Est signe grant de sa salvación. (w. 325-326, 341-342, 383-384, 387-388) Mayer's observation is therefore to the point, that these three occurrences of Dieu seul are eloquent for their omission of any reference to Mary or the panoply of saints, as is the contention of Screech, who sees their importance in the scriptural injunction they contain, and adds that with attention to context the term can be used to measure Marot's progress to the schismatic stance apparent in the epistle to Renée de Ferrare (XLIII) Non toute, non, le Seigneur, regardant D'oeil de pitié ce monde caphardant, S'est faict congnoistre à une grand partie, Qui à luy seul est ores convertie.6 (w. 53-56) For without such close attention to context, Marot's use of Dieu seul is indistinguishable from that of any number of evangelists, schismatic or not, since the expression itself was used by evangelical scholars to define a range of particular positions. It is frequently the case, therefore, that importance can be attached to it only in terms of the tenets of faith it tacitly or overtly excludes. Strictly speaking, the term Deus solus is scriptural, and Marot's reference to seul Dieu in Psaume LXXXVI, v. 40, is no interpretive emendation. Its long-standing traditionalism came from the use it had been made to serve in refining and defining godhead. Augustine blows up

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Psalm 86: xo into an insistence on Deus solus in defining the properties of the Trinity ( D e Trinitate, V , 8). Reformist commentaries simply mark a further variation on this theme. Although in his early years Lefevre d'Etaples upheld the cult of the Virgin and had no difficulty in subscribing to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, he subsequently concluded that adoration of the Virgin, prayer for her intercession, and invocations to saints bordered on idolatry and must be avoided. This conclusion derived from the belief that "Deus solus potestatem habet, postquam occiderit corpus, mittere in gehennan . . . ubicumque sane Christus non regnat, ubi solus deus non colitur, ubi fides et spiritus non agitat." 6 In the Enchiridion (rule V I ) Erasmus's postulate that "solus Deus vere potens est" is an introduction to a lengthy passage redolent with Thomism. And in his colloquy Inquisitio de fide, written in 1524 just three years before the "D^ploration," he puts words into the mouth of Barbatius (Luther) that closely resemble Marot's—or rather, Death's—speech quoted above (vv. 383388): Ilium solum adoro, nihil ille nec praeferens, nec aequans; non angelum, non parentes, liberos, non uxorem, non principem, non opes, non honores, non voluptas: paratus & vitam illius caussa perdere, si jusserit; certus eum non posse perire, qui si totum illi tradiderit. As the colloquy proceeds Barbatius continues to love nothing "nisi unum Deum," and to believe in Christ "natum ex incorrupta Virgine Maria," until the climax of the dialogue; then, in answer to the question "credis in sanctam Ecclesiam?" Barbatius-Luther answers "Non!" for while the "Ecclesia vero proprie dicta" consists of men of goodwill, they are only men, and "in solum Deum esse credendum." 7 Two other poems of Marot's use the phrase Dieu seul, but have received no attention. Perhaps because Rondeau LVII (1529) and Ballade XVI (1530) belong in our minds to Marot's official poetry and youthful verse forms—though he himself withheld them from the Adolescence—they lack for us the serious religious dimension of his more meditative poems. But taken together, the line in the rondeau "Gloire a Dieu seul, aux Humains reconfort" (v. 1 3 ) and the refrain of the ballade "Gloire a Dieu seul, Paix en Terre aux Humains" form a remarkable complement to Erasmus's paraphrase of Luke 2:14.® If the use of Dieu seul in these poems is the same as in the previous instances we have examined, then we are confronted with two statements that are as remarkable for their limitation as for their declaration of faith.

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Declaration of faith in God alone would be entirely appropriate in announcing the arrival of the Son of God, even as a refinement on in excelsis deo or in altissimus deo of the textual announcement itself. But the correlative implication at the moment announcing the Virgin Birth that special worship (Aó£a) be reserved for God tacitly excludes the Virgin from the same kind of veneration. Such an admission would place Marot in line with a substantial group of evangelical reformers ranging from Erasmus 9 to Luther, who endlessly stresses with balanced concern the Virgin's unsullied humanity. 10 The line Marot trod was thin but pronounced in its insistence that Mary should be venerated for her miraculous role and purity, gratia plena, but not as the mater dei participating in the powers of godhead. This mitigated conception of the person of the Virgin was much narrower in the scope of its emotional outlets than that of the waning Middle Ages, whose image oscillated between the notion of woman as understood in the fabliaux, not above cheating God and the Devil on behalf of her suppliants, and the courtly idol deified by Cretin Royne du Ciel, de la terre, et la mer, . . . Tu fus comme es de Dieu si bien voulue Que pour sa mere et fille preesleue. . . . Raymond Lebègue has pointed to the dilations in Marot's translation of the Oraison devant le crucifix which made him even more orthodox than his model. 11 In his translation of Les Tristes vers de Beroalde, however, the effusive descriptions of the Virgin in the original are reduced to notation of her scriptural status: Christe potens rerum, Maria de uirgine nate, Quae genetrix sine pâtre fuit, synceraque uirgo Sola salutiferam peperit sine coniuge prolem

Doulx Jésuchrist, né d'une Vierge mère

Even when describing the different stages in the drama of the Virgin from the messianic prophecy (Chanson XXXIV—Isaiah 7:14) to the Annunciation (Epître IX, vv. 14-15-Luke 1:28), 1 2 there is a sameness in his descriptions of Mary which may be explained by his reliance on the spare inferences of Scripture rather than on the expansive accretions of tradition. The "Chant-Royal de la Conception" makes this clear in its conclusion, "Marie est (vray comme l'Evangile) / La digne Couche où le Roy reposa." Variations woven in dispassionate poems—

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"Vierge," "vierge treshautaine," "Vierge mere"—all cleave to a strict reading of virgo and mater jesu, and the fluctuating cadence of the "Chanson vingtcinquiesme du Jour de Noel" belies its unswerving adherence to a scrupulous exegesis of the Vulgate as foreshadowed by the Old Testament: Te souvient il plus du Prophete Qui nous dist cas de si hault faict, Que d'une Pucelle parfaicte Naistroit ung Enfant tout parfaict? L'effect Est faict. 13 While Marot has been accused of temporizing in his defense to Bouchard by issuing an apparently forthright admission that is cautiously incomplete, the "Déploration" following in the wake of that épître attempts to clarify and delimit a theological position through its insistent use of Dieu seul. It seems likely that Rondeau LVII and Ballade X V I , following, in turn, shortly after the "Déploration," are meant to convey an attitude of worship that is carefully confined within his understanding of Scripture as a whole and further exemplified in the poems on the Nativity which he was writing at the time. Viewed individually, his amendment of Dieu seul in these two poems might pass unobserved, but taken together, their careful wording registers an attempt to define an evangelical hierarchy of relationships that Marot felt he could safely espouse several years after his imprisonment in 1526. 1 4 Whatever the difference in their degree of assertiveness may be, the épître to Bouchard and the "Déploration" each specifies a standard of reference against which Marot takes his stand. Just before his syntax couples Christ and Mary, he claims that Je suis celluy qui ay faict maint escript, Dont ung seul vers on n'en sçauroit extraire Qui à la Loy divine soit contraire. Je suis celluy qui prends plaisir & peine A louer Christ & sa Mere tant pleine De grace infuse . . . and prior to her command "Prie à Dieu seul que par grace te donne / La vive foy dont sainct Pol tant escript" ( w . 325-326) Death addresses the "Peuple seduict, endormy en tenebres / Tant de longs jours par la doctrine d'homme" ( w . 285-286). Likewise, Marot's appeal to the "soeurs savoisiennes" to hallow the name of the heavenly Father and

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his admission that he has failed to suffer enough in "son sainct non" both center around his presumed stance "D'estre contraire aux humaines doctrines" (v. 56). Denigration of "humaines doctrines" is at the core of most reformist discussions—the delineation between theological injunctions revealed purely by Scripture and dogma imposed on Scripture by rationally derived arguments of tradition.15 Opposition to the latter, however, was far from uniform; understandings of the precise nature of human doctrines underwent countless interpretations as they were allied variously with the Law, flesh, "visible things," and other Pauline manifestations of sublunary dross opposing the Spirit and living faith throughout human existence. Against the authority of a visible Church, reformers of various stripes, who saw themselves not as innovators but as the restorers of true Christianity, affirmed the superiority of inward conviction and the authority of the Scriptures "rightly interpreted." By their twin mission of advocating truth and dissuading from falsity, reformist discussions inevitably assumed the lines of pro et contra argument where a particular value was defined by its relation to its opposite. Thus when Lefévre writes "soubz le nom de l'Evangile sont comprises toutes ees saínetes et vivifiantes doctrines, e'est assgavoir tout le nouveau testament. Et ne sont point doctrines d'hommes, mais doctrines de Jesuchrist, doctrines du sanct Esprit," 1 8 he is simply broadening the terms of Paul's "littera enim occidit, Spiritus autem vivificat" (II Corinthians 3:6) or any number of other Pauline antitheses. No single scriptural passage exalted man's spirit while limiting his rational prowess, and no text summoned the attentions of reformists, more than did Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13. The dual character in this passage of lyrical description of the theological virtues and of eschatological vision of God which man sees as through a glass darkly was used as an interpretative key for other biblical passages, and as a theme that was followed both literally and figuratively.17 Like Calvin (Institutio, III, xxv, 1 1 ) , Erasmus uses it time and again to counter scholastic disputations, and makes it the center of his discussions on the nature of faith and the power of the Spirit.18 Similarly, Marot confronts the "lac pharisien" of the Sorbonne with "ces troys nymphes armées" in Epitre XXXIII L'une est Fealle, l'autre e'est Charite, L'autre Esperance. O noble Margueritte, Veulx tu sgavoir que la moindre feroit En ung besoing? Tout ung camp deferoit. Mays vraye amour de si pres les assemble Qu'il fault tousjours qu'elles voysent ensemble.

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His paraphrase of I Corinthians 13:13» "vraye amour," vague as the language may seem at first glance, coincides precisely with Erasmus's and Luther's exegesis of charity.16 When he calls upon the unifying power of agapê the following year in his invocation to the "soeurs savoisiennes," Trescheres seurs, joinctes par charité, Le non des vrays amans de vérité . . . any modification in the meaning of the term is both tempered and controlled in the second verse by a reference to II Thessalonians 2:io. 2 0 If Marot's close attention to language in verses built around key Pauline Scripture tends to draw him to positions identical with the aggregate of reformist positions, his large descriptions of perversions of faith, hope, and charity, however, do not distinguish his own from other critical attitudes in any significant way within or outside the Church. The graphic portrait that he paints in the "Déploration," . . . une fée Fresche, en bon point, et noblement coiffée, Sur teste raise ayant triple coronne Que mainte perle et rubis environne. Sa robe estoit d'un blanc et fin samys Où elle avoit en pourtraicture mis, Par traict de temps, un milion de choses, Comme chasteaulx, palais et villes closes . . . (vv. 57-64) recalls, by its opposition of the Roman church to the downtrodden françoise Republique, Luther's reliance on folkloric tradition in depicting the absence of the three theological virtues behind the façade of ecclesiastical pomp and ceremony. But visions of the prideful Church, garbed ostentatiously in material wealth and standing opposite the spiritual radiance of the humble, purified Church, were common to those anxious for reform within the official Church. 21 The crisp opposition between right and wrong in the "Déploration," or between Symonne and Christine in sharp-etched poems like " L e Balladin" where the identical theme is again labored in allegory, may be deceptive if we attempt to read it as an exact statement on doctrinal matters. It was sharpened in an atmosphere of pro et contra polemic, and dictated by attendant considerations of literary genre which may have had little to do with objective assessment of factual evidence. Marot's condemnation of the meretricious Venetians in Epître XLIII terminates in an address to Renée de Ferrare:

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Parquoy clorray ma lettre mal aornée, Te suppliant, Princesse deux foys née, Te souvenir, tendys que icy me tiens, De cestuy là que retiras pour tien Quant il fuyoit la fureur serpentine Des ennemys de la belle Christine. (vv. 1 2 1 - 1 2 6 ) Screech has explained Princesse deux foys née in this passage as a reference to John 3:3, which Marot had elaborated with much greater concern for nuance and vermiculate dialectic a year earlier in Epigramma C L X X X I X (1535). 2 2 That the epigram is more discursive in tone and written with attention to a different sort of language is not attributable to any loss of evangelical fervor on Marot's part to explicate fully every scriptural implication, nor can it be accounted for by some response to external events in his life. It is explained instead by Marot's intervening recognition and humble admission that his épître so far had been mal aornée (although not unadorned), a failing that he sought to remedy in the last lines of the poem with metaphoric adornment that, just as in the "Déploration" and "Le Balladin," is allegorical in nature. Now, Sebillet prescribes that allégorie tant clére should make its theme "voir tant clérement, comme s'apperçoit la peinture soubz le verre" (II, 8). Allegory hits at the lowest level of intellectual subtlety. Concepts that can be minutely examined in unfigured discourse like that of the earlier epigram are bisected into categories whose properties allow of no confusion, but, by the same token, can no longer be finely nuanced. Marot's doctrinal beliefs are often more surely apprehended in his close distinctions on the validity and worth of intangible qualities, than in the vast sweep of the dramatic conflict he pictures between a pristine spiritualism and a corrupt materialism. Among the immediate causes of disagreement among religious parties of the early sixteenth century, freedom of the will and especially indulgences and the authority of the pope lent themselves to concise statements easily separable from countervailing positions. Not so with the crucial problem of justification by faith, complicated as it was by a long history of contention. Dating from the struggle of Augustine and the Pelagians, the problem had come to occupy some of the greatest minds in Latin Christendom; Luther's contribution came late in the established quarrel. During the critical years that embrace Marot's career between 1520 and the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545 the question degenerated into one

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of nuances and minute language. Melanchthon's desire to avoid official discussion of the issue is understandable, but his keeping it in the background of his Confessio Augustana of 1530 belies the tremendous popular interest, as well as his own, in the problem. Marot's own interest in scrupulously defining the qualities and effects of faith is made clear by his careful but emphatic attention to language, specifically, to predicates that both color and delimit concepts. The vocabulary and context of Eglogue II C'est ferme espoir de la vie seconde, Par Jhesus Crist, vaincqueur et tryumphant De ceste mort! (w. 48-50) do not arrest the reader's eye except when compared with Epître X X X V to the "soeurs savoisiennes" Mais la cher seulle endure cest poyne, Car l'ame franche est de foy toute pleine, Et de liesse en se corps tant ravye Par ferme espoir de la segonde vie, (vv. 27-30) They are thrust into even greater perspective when compared to the apocryphal "Riche en pauvreté," where the interjection "la Foy qui seule justifie" (v. 98) is followed by the concluding remarks "Qui ne voudra croire à ce fermement. . . ." Screech has shown that the nonscriptural "seconde vie" has a parallel in Lefèvre, 23 although for linguistic analogies one might just as easily cite Marguerite, whose Triomphe de l'Agneau, adamantly based on "Foy vive et entiere," closes with the invitation Je dy à ceux qui à moy se joindront Par vive Foy, et qui mon nom prendront . . . Je te requiers que celle charité Que tu me porte en ferme vérité, Ce tien amour invincible, etemel . . . (w. 1 5 2 7 - 1 5 2 8 , 1 5 3 3 - 1 5 3 5 ) It hardly matters here that " L e Riche en pauvreté" is of dubious authorship. For if Marot's expression in poems that are authentic has a ritualistic quality about it, it is because the concepts he was referring to claimed the attention of a whole community of scholars with similar and divergent viewpoints.

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Of the epithets attached to faith that abound in reformist discussions, such as true, full, firm, none is more charged with meaning than that employed by Marot in the lines just quoted: foy vive.2* Taken together, the noun and adjective bridge the apparent discrepancy between Paul's exaltation of faith over good works in the Epistle to the Romans 3 and the statement in James 2 which nullifies the efficacy of faith without works. In the first instance, Luther's translation reads "justification by faith alone"; through all of his subsequent revisions he refused to recant and eschew alone?6 No translator's cavil, this emendation shows to what extent Luther viewed the New Testament through Paul's injunction to live by faith and not by the works of the Law. The book of James, although relegated to the dubious status of "an epistle of straw" in the preface to the 1522 New Testament, was not for all that dismissed but rather was elucidated in light of other Pauline texts. It survived in Luther's realization that "Faith is a living, restless thing" that cannot be inoperative. His concept of justification through living faith is often explained in conjunction with the virtues of hope and charity as set forth in I Corinthians 13: 28 good works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works. At the extremes, this is a verification of the Scholastic tenet that operari sequitur esse and the obverse of the precepts of Burkhardtian individualism. But Luther's general position was subject to significant modifications. In the absence of "true faith," all works remain "foolish" and man, Luther felt, is condemned forevermore to see God through a glass darkly. God's form was fully manifest in the "firm faith" of Christ who did not need any works for salvation, for "he was not puffed up, did not arrogate to himself power," but rather suffered and endured (I Corinthians 13:4-7).*' The power of connotations such as these accounts for the fact that the expression Vive Foy was common currency in the milieu that Marguerite frequented and protected, and assumes dominant importance in nearly all of her works. In the Triomphe de l'Agneau Marguerite specifies Foy vive et entiere as a pure gift of grace from God alone, exclusive of mediation (w. 771-787), by which man can overcome the Law, death and sin, as did Christ "Qui tient la clef des celestes thresors, / Et comme il veult les dispense et met hors" (w. 1501-1502). By their denial of the efficacy of works alone and their invitation to love death, her Chansons spirituelles continue this theme, for it is "Par vive Foy et de charité pure" that in them the faithful overcome the flesh to gain eternity (VI, 31; V I , 1 6 - 1 8 ) . From its first

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appearance in the Miroir de l'âme pecheresse, "La bonne oeuvre, c'est le bon coeur naïf, / Rempli de foy par charité prouvée," this expression recurs with few variations through her works. It is joined again to charité naive in the first of three épîtres written to her brother, in which Marguerite recalls how Abraham worshiped Dieu seul and "Creut fermement à sa seule parole, / Par vive Foy, qui n'est vaine ny foie" ( w . 27-28). In the second of these épîtres, the traditional "vive Foy" Hypocrisie ny superstition N'ont rien en luy; pure devotion Le fait aymer ton Nom ta Vérité, Par vive Foy bruslant par Charité (w.65-68) is strengthened by its association with the new alliance with Christ of II Corinthians 3:6, "Uny à toy par Foy qui vivifie" (v. 84). Scripture and tradition commingle in a strikingly similar way in the "Déploration de Florimond Robertet." Qua allegory, dimensions of religious conflict are not absent from the dispute between the personae Republique françoise and La Mort. But it is only within the isolation of Death's set speech, where the brief and metaphoric language of allegory gives way to discursive reasoning, that filigrained distinctions of Reformation theology become apparent. La Mori's discourse is noteworthy not simply because it resorts to the selective language that distinguished evangelical discussions, but more so because its language is colored and perhaps controlled by an apparent awareness of the matrix of values, Pauline and other, within which these distinctions are made. The monologue opens with an invocation to the "Peuple seduict, endormy en tenebres / Tant de longs jours par la doctrine d'homme" (w. 285-286), a condensation of Colossians 2:8-23 where Paul speaks of the new life in Christ through "firmness of faith." Spiritual allusions here are not random, since Paul's discussion of the seductions of the flesh and shadowy knowledge of things to come informs much of Death's speech. Since Death, as she goes on to explain her role in human destiny, is the minister "des grans trésors du ciel," whoever seeks "vérité pure" and "vye seconde" should learn to love her and follow her instructions. The prime rule from which all other rules derive is then set forth : "Prie à Dieu seul que par grace te donne/La vive foy dont sainct Pol escript" (w. 325-326). Attribution of the traditional vive foy to Paul might have been made on the authority of Galatians 2:20 or, more likely, II Corinthians 3:6-

1

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14—the passage by which Marguerite explains her own "vive Foy"— where Paul discloses that the rending of Christ's veil through the crucifixion of his body allows man to dispense with the old Mosaic convenant and intercession, that is, to accede to Dieu seul. In the following verses Death treats the efficacy of the crucifixion in relieving man "D'ennuy, de peine" Ainsi celluy qui par vive foy voit La mort de Christ guerist de ma blessure 28 (w. 401-402) and exposes how "bien folle est la coustume humaine" (v. 405). After claiming that Ypocrisie or mourning and I'avare prestrise bespeak a lack of faith and hope, Death returns to the necessity of spiritual light to illuminate the dark night of the soul. The discourse comes full circle with an eloquence that is characteristically Pauline Qui vouldra veoir de son vray Dieu la face, Brief, qui vouldra vivre au beau paradis, II fault premier que mourir je le face. (w. 442-444) If Marot's eloquence is Pauline in character, the term vray with which he here qualifies God extended for him over a far wider semantic field than Paul's own usage would have permitted. Although Paul's concept of truth and falsity extended to the whole of human existence as he saw it, with its interweaving of light and darkness, and although his presentation of it was adapted on each occasion to the different audiences he addresses, he always spoke from the single stance of the apostle of God's word laboring to separate and define his notion of spirit and flesh, of right and wrong. At times, Marot, too, speaks with inarguable clarity and with reference to standards that he himself carefully stipulated. En bloc, however, his voice has as many inflections as the numerous personae he speaks through and the shifting vantage points he adopts. In reformist tracts, for example, the adjective vray assumes the status of a category—witness the appeal to vrays servants and Vrays heritiers at the outset of Le Triomphe de I'Agneau—but the full implications of this complex category become clear only in the context of everything that touches it in the following 1,600 verses of discussion. Complexity of meaning is increased when we mix in varying criteria of significance and modes of literary expression of differing genres. Our understanding of the term vraye amour is surely deflected as we pass, in

Living Faith turn, from the vray amour which Sagon professes to have formerly felt for Marot in the "Defense de Sagon contre Marot," to the vraye amour, gift of the muses (Erato?) of Epître LVI, through the allegorical vraye Amour of the faithful Serviteur in Elégie XXII, caught between Desir and Debvoir, to, finally, the courtly feeling that true friends should express in graveside lament for departed friends—in complete contradiction to the bidding of La Mort in the "Déploration" not to mourn because of vraye amour Mais vraye amour est de telle coustume Qu'elle contrainct les amys plaindre fort En grand regret. (Rondeau XXVII) In most of these instances, the meaning is altered by the grammatical context of pro et contra argumentation. An idea, action, or feeling is evaluated not intrinsically and separately, but in a counterbalanced perspective signaled by a coordinating term like mais, marking the passage from an inferior to a superior order, from lesser to greater, from falsity to truth. Truth expressed in a pro et contra scheme must be viewed from the perspective of the speaker's circumstances and the intent of his statement. W e are often faced not with an absolute opposition of Truth to Falsity but with a more mobile contrast of situations, the intent of which may be to narrowly accentuate a carefully bounded concept or broadly embrace several concepts.29 Thus, Marot's dramatized self-introduction in L'Enfer assumes a hierarchy of myth as a standard of evaluation and graduates geographically and morally from the negative. Car incongneu suys des Umbres iniques, Incongneu suis des Ames Plutonicques, . . . (vv. 3 1 1 - 3 1 2 ) through the simply affirmative En terre aussi des Faunes & Hymnides Congneu je suis. Congneu je suis d'Orphée, . . . (w. 328-329) to the superlative Mais par sus tout suis congneu des neuf Muses, Et d'Apollo, Mercure & touts leurs filz En vraye amour & science conflicts. (w. 336-338)

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From L'Enfer to the letter to Renée de Ferrare the reader passes from vaguely biographical allegory to vaguely allegorical biography. Correspondingly, the meaning—or meanings—in his use and understanding of vraye amour follow a hierarchy of values, but one that derives from and coexists with the personal circumstances of his addressée Mais vraye amour vient ma Muse contraindre D'ainsy parler. Je dy amour venant D'un cueur françoys lequel, se souvenant Que tu me feiz en ton parc demourer Lors que les loups me vouloient devorer, A proposé en pseaulmes et cantiques Rememorer les nouveaux et antiques Dons du Seigneur, ses graces et bienfaictz, Et mesmement ceulx que par toy m'a faictz (w. 40-47) As he takes pains in these verses to explain the nature of this love that guides his muse, we see that its national coloration and tendency toward resolution in worship could not but appeal to the patriotic and religious sympathies of Renée. When Marot takes the trouble to elaborate the context in which he is using vraye amour, as in the last example, he leaves no doubt in the reader's mind of the position he is for the moment espousing nor, by deduction, of the nature of the opposing position. Yet when the contextual idea is abbreviated by rapid shifts in the poet's expressed intent, whether by poetic license or as the genre dictates, the reader must be circumspect in specifying the semantic reference of such terms. This is true of the coq-à-1'âne where the speaker limits our entrée en matière to a minimum of information so as to preserve his own safety and preserve as well the integrity of the genre as an enigma. But it is equally true of the fable addressed to Lyon Jamet (Epître X ) , where the nature of the genre requires the reader's complete understanding of the fable's import. The fable is set in motion by the narrator's rhetorical ploy (praeteritio) of dismissing all alternative themes he does not wish to consider, beginning with the corollary of true love, "Je ne t'escry de l'amour vaine & folle, / Tu voys assez s'elle sert ou affolle." In these and in the following verses Marot's use of the figure accords with its standard procedure of reviewing a series of divergent but related categories such as love and war, Fortune and Divine Providence: "Je ne t'escry de Dieu ne sa puissance, / C'est à luy seul t'en donner congnoissance" (vv. 9 - 1 0 ) . Although the narrator furnishes only scant information about each general area, their very breadth assures that the reader

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will have at least some acquaintance with their many implications. This supposition supports Mayer's suggestion that the allusions here to war and Fortune might refer to historical events—such as the defeat at Pavia—with which Jamet would surely be acquainted. The reference in the first two verses to the love that serves may also have held a larger meaning for Jamet who would be pursued into exile after the Affaire des Placards by accusations of Lutheranism.30 In his essay Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, Luther himself appealed to the call to freedom and mutual service of Christian bretheren in love (Galatians 5:6-13). His commentary is not uninteresting in the light of Marot's famous fable. 31 Like Luther, Marguerite's first épître to her brother is primarily concerned with the relationship between faith and service, but also treats the préfigurai connection between biblical combats and those between Francis and Charles V . The exemplar of this relationship is the fidele serviteur Abraham who, for not questioning the omnipotence and omniscience of Dieu seul, was blessed by love and grace. Abraham "Creut fermement à sa seule parole,/Par vive Foy, qui n'est vaine ny foie" (vv. 27-28). Coincidence of language and its use in these instances suggest that the proper context for evaluating Marot's meaning, and for judging the extent to which he may have wished to control meaning, extends beyond the literal surface and language in a single locus to the full scope of contemporary discussions in which these terms were commonly used. While sharpness of meaning is often dependent on textual length, contextual clarity is usually determined primarily by the writer's purpose. At approximately the same time he wrote the letter to Renée, Marot authored his reply to Doctor Bouchard and defended himself against the charge of Lutheranism : "Brief, celluy suis qui croit, honnore & prise/La saincte, vraye & catholique Eglise" (vv. 1 7 - 1 8 ) . As both Leblanc and Screech have observed, his profession of faith here is both partial, by its lack of specific reference to Roman and apostolic, and hyperspecific by its inclusion of vraye, implying the existence of a false Catholic church.32 One year later the "Déploration" will give a clear picture of Marot's attitude toward the falsity of l'église Romaine. The antithesis of the true and false churches motivated Luther's scorn for the ceremonial emptiness that destroys la vraye saincteté.33 In his translation of Les articles de la Foy, Marot declared Je croy la saincte & catholique eglise Estre des sainctz & des fideles une Vraye union, entre eulx en tout commune;84

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and once more emended his text by adding the corrective

Vraye.

Marot's consistent selection of the epithet could not have reassured an orthodox Bouchard, for the profession of faith was hotly debated in reformist discussions and frequently supported by arguments based on Galatians 5:13-15. W h e n Erasmus's Barbatius-Luther resolutely denies belief in the Holy Church, after having concurred on all previous points, he goes on to explain that we must believe in G o d alone for the Church is merely the vehicle for that belief. 35 Marguerite's succinct discussion, shortly after her praise of Abraham's belief in Dieu

seul, is

even closer to Marot's in its emphasis on catholicity, sanctity and, above all, truth Alors sera la Foy par tout plantée, Et sainte Eglise saintement augmentée; Un seul Pasteur et seule bergerie Sera lors veu en vraye confrairie. (w.157-160) It is hardly likely that in 1544 her conception of the one true church extended to the Holy See, since elsewhere (Le Triomphe v. 1022) her use of Catholique

de

l'Agneau,

is specific and deliberate. 36 As for the

idea of sanctity, it lent itself to innumerable emotional variations including anger (Luther), reverence (Marguerite) and, at least in Marot's case, to ironic satire in " D ' u n gros Prieur"

(Epigramme

CCXXXVI)

where, after indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, his prelate sighs " Q u ' o n a de maulx pour servir saincte Eglise." So Marot's profession of faith in " L a saincte, vraye et catholique Eglise," easily apprehended on a literal level and apparently overweening and punctilious in its dramatic setting, is in reality a catalog of emotionally charged terms that acquires meaning and clarifies the author's intent only within the perspective of communal attitudes. ADVIENNE TOST TON SAINCT REGNE PARFAICT . . .

In profoundly theological terms, the elusiveness of truth, the incompleteness of meaning, and the penultimate knowledge of God's will to which faith and love lead in this life pressed themselves relentlessly on inquiring minds of the Renaissance as they had done in the deepest patristic tradition. Returning inevitably to I Corinthians 13:12, Augustine had spoken of the certain faith that initiates knowledge, but cautions that certain knowledge face to

face. 37

occurs only after life when we shall see

Aquinas holds that reflections in the speculum mundi are

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cast in shadows and that manifestations of God's will as revealed in nature are "set forth in similitudes and the obscurities of words." 38 Extending the citation and its central image to man's effort to grasp the mysterious laws of the world, of Providence-Fortune and his place among them, Huizinga asserts that Of no great truth was the medieval mind more conscious than of Saint Paul's phrase: Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem. . . . Symbolism was a defective translation into images of secret connections dimly felt, such as music reveals to us. Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate. The human mind felt that it was face to face with an enigma, but none the less it kept on trying to discern the figures in the glass, explaining images by yet other images. Symbolism was like a second mirror held up to that of the phenomenal world itself.39 Not only the medieval mind. The living mysteries and eschatological clarity held a special fascination throughout the long history of religious disputes of the Renaissance for Catholic and Protestant, and for the many thinkers who fell between or outside these distinctions : for those like Marguerite who wished to "congnoistre leur Sauveur pleinement / D'un zele vray, qui ne fault ny ne ment"; for Sponde who longed for the "Beaux séjours, loin de l'oeil, près de l'entendement" beyond the "obscurité de verre"; for d'Aubigné for whom the "face to face" presence would betoken the reversal of appearances and justification of suffering.40 As in Les Tragiques, the poetic logic guiding the construction of several of the poems attributed to Marot is fundamentally i/ieological both in its reliance on Pauline commonplaces and in the poet's search for re-creation in God's image: Quand conoissons la chair estre rebelle A l'esprit, d'une fasson très belle, . . . Tache acquérir du seigneur Dieu la grace Affin que après nous puissions face à face Le voir là hault tretous en paradis.41 Marot and those who in some sense could be considered as his coreligionists well understood that the commentaries on love and death in I Corinthians 13 went together, perhaps in logical sequence when it came to testimonies of faith—that true love bears and endures all things and that they who would be Christlike in their actions "should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake" (Philippians 1:29). Driven by scriptural commands and the obligations of his station in life, it is not difficult to explain the conviction in his appeal to the

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"soeurs savoisiennes" to honor the primacy of master over servant and to remain steadfast in their faith Car tous ses maulx et poynes que j'é dictes Promist aux siens par son non precieulx; Mais leur loyer certes est grant es cieulx, Et pour apprandre aux autres à souffrir, Droit à la croix premier se vint offrir. Au serviteur n'est pas bessoing qu'il failhe Se repouser, quant le maistre travailhe. Il a premier vérité descouverte, Ausi premier la poyne il a soufferte; Et tous ceulx là qui comme luy diront, Poyne aujourd'uy come luy souffriront.42 Preoccupation with the lugubrious can be partially explained away as a fascination of the gothic mind, but not entirely.43 What comes out of the discussions of vive Foy and its implications is an insistence on the particular dangers of personal commitment that has little, if anything, to do with a literary topos or stylistic predisposition; witness Le Triomphe de l'Agneau Cordes, liens, chaisnes, seps et cousteaux Escorchement, desrompement, posteaux, Roues, tourmens, Chevaux, Lions, Serpens, La terre et l'eau, les flambes et les vents, Rien n'y aura de ce que le Ciel coeuvre Que tout ne soit contre vous mis en oeuvre. (w. 811-816) Even when it is appropriate to avoid a confrontation of faith and suffering, expediency is determined by a mixture of scriptural precept and personal subscription Ne voys tu pas comment Dieu eternel Par ung courroux de zelle paternel M'en veult chasser? Penses tu que l'oultraige Que Ferraroys mal nobles de couraige M'ont fait de nuyct, armez couardement, Ne soit à moy ung admonestement Du seigneur Dieu pour desloger d'icy? Certes, encor quant ne serait ainsy, Mon cueur qui ayme estre franc & délivré Ne pourrait plus parmy telles gens vivre. (Epître XLII, w. 11-20)

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But at the extreme limit, this urgency to remain steadfast and free demands resignation toward death. Amid protests and laments, whether genuine or feigned, against the loss of illustrious court personages, and after grudging admissions of the eventual beneficence of death, Marot comes to the realization that it gives meaning to the Christian life: Mais en fin Mort mort me fera gésir Pour me venger de sa seur, la cruelle Faulse Fortune. (Rondeau XXIII) He may rage against "Cruelle Mort, Mort plus froide que Marbre" but ultimately concludes "Il nous doibt plaire & puis que Dieu l'ordonne" (Epitaphe X X X ) . For all the specificity in his insistence on the necessity of suffering for the good cause and in his graphic concern for the agonies of the martyred, Marot's statements on the character of Divine will in human history do not presume to pass beyond the obscurities of life's enigmatic mirror and, whether by disinclination or inability, lack the expository zeal of both passive and combative evangelism; thus one must be circumspect about extrapolating attitudes and doctrinal positions of Marot at the lexical level of his language. His search for precision of meaning and the conformity he exhorts of human action to God's will in a statement like Qui est celluy (si bien les congnoissoit) Qu'en y pensant, plein de douleur ne soit? Si convient il en douleur et ennuy Nostre vouloir conformer à celluy Du tout puissant; aultrement on résisté A sa bonté; (Epître XXII, w . 31-36) revolves around terms like douleur and ennuy which, as we have seen, become for Marot ritual synonyms for the passion of Christ. The congruence of wills and the working of His goodness are thus made palpable within the span of the Incarnation and Crucifixion, and become subject to the shifting exactions of this imperfect life. Luther's break with the Church was grounded in the effort to grasp the nature and destiny of man, and much more the destiny than the nature. He endlessly sought to define and redefine that destiny within a perspective of predestination and eschatology. A succession of reformers like Calvin and Bèze or a missionary poet like d'Aubigné sought to avoid ultimate

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ambiguities of meaning, to refine their terms of reference, and to divest themselves of sublunary dross by trying to break cleanly with the humanistic learning that had nurtured them. D'Aubigné leaves no doubt of this in his effort to throw off "les feux d'un amour inconnu" in order to devote himself to " U n autre feu, auquel la France se consume." When he holds his reader's attention Tu vois, juste vengeur, les fléaux de ton Eglise, Qui, par eux mise en cendre et en masure mise, A, contre tout espoir, son espérance en toi, Pour son retranchement, le rempart de la foi. Tes ennemis et nous sommes égaux en vice, Si, juge, tu te sieds en ton lit de justice; Tu fais pourtant un choix d'enfants ou d'ennemis Et ce choix est celui que ta grâce y a mis. (Les Tragiques I, 1 2 7 3 - 1 2 8 0 ) there is no doubt that his language is embellished by a close reading of Paul (Ephesians 4 : 1 6 ) and his choice of terms is circumscribed, as it is throughout the seven books of the poem, by the Calvinistic concept of predestination and salvation through Divine grace. Despite similarities of language, Marot's understanding of the accomplishment of God's grand design is more circumstantial or contextual than institutional and more responsive to the cultural patrimony of the Renaissance O seigneur dieu, permettez moy de croire Que reservé m'avez à vostre gloire. Serpentz tortuz & monstres contrefaictz, Certes, sont bien à vostre gloire faictz. Puis que n'avez voulu doncq' condescendre Que ma chair ville ayt esté mise en cendre, Faictes au moins, tant que seray vivant, Qu'à vostre honneur soit ma plume escripvant; Et si ce corps avez prédestiné A estre ung jour par flamme terminé, Que ce ne soit au moins pour cause folle, Ainçoys pour vous & pour vostre parolle; (Epître XXXVI,

w. 103-114)

His temporal reference points extend from "tant que seray vivant" to "par flamme terminé," and in the absence of any expressed concern for soteriology, we must read his use of prédestiné as actually prayerful consent that T h y will be done. As a technique of rhetoric, his prayer is a skillful digression, following his wish that Francis's will be done ("ton

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vueil celeste") as God's vicar on earth, and preceding his claim of poetic license in pursuing arcana—a means of legitimizing his actions while underwriting his seriousness of purpose. When Marguerite takes up the subject of predestination, she divests her discourse of neoPlatonic terminology, wages against curiositas, and restricts her account of the Esluz and "I'inscrutable sçavoir / De ton juger" to the nonPlatonic aspects of Augustinian theology: Or a il donc prédestiné les siens, Pour leur donner à jouyr de ses biens, De quoy il a tant espandu sur eux, Et de ses dons divins et plantureux, Qu'estans à luy pour partage preveuz, De luy tandis héritiers se sont veuz. Pourtant les a en tel ordre choisis Qu'en eux ses biens n'ont point esté oysifs. (Le Triomphe de l'Agneau, w . 417-424) Prior to an explanation of Divine prescience the suasory monologue of La Mort in the "Déploration," however, is alloyed with the neoPlatonic theory of the fiery soul's return from the bodily prison to the world of ideas, Si ton pere est, tu es donc son enfant Et héritier de son regne prospéré. S'il a tiré d'etemel impropere, Durant le temps que ne le congnoissois, Que fera il s'en luy ton cueur espere? (w. 343-347) Marot's praise of Eleanor of Austria is set in a framework of paraChristian science and the "artz subtilz de Medée la sage," not simply in order to confute them but to incorporate them in a larger scheme of values where they serve as standards of knowledge surpassed by a greater knowledge Or (dieu mercy) amenez les as tu Sans Nigromance, ou Magique vertu, Ains par le vueil de Dieu, qui tout prévoit, Et qui desja destinée t'avoit Femme du Roy, (Epître XXI, w . 43-46) Far from being a tract of disinterested speculation, the last line makes clear that his choice of words and the meaning he chooses to give them

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are conditioned by a stratified world view where Divine will is more apparently fulfilled through royal station and where the poet's task is to make that reality convincing. The greatest difficulty in distilling Marot's idea of the workings of Providence and in associating it with the views of early reformers is that he was unwilling to separate Providence from the reach of Fortune and to state their interaction consistently.44 Yet he persistently returns to the medieval notion that the mutability of human existence is attributable to the demigoddess Fortuna, the incomprehensible instrument of an equally incomprehensible but benevolent Providence. The apparent caprice of Fortune demanded a transfer of allegiance from earthly transience to an immutable contentment promised by a future life. A Renaissance humanist like Poggio will agonize at length over the role of inconstant Fortune in the proudly human yet common mortal fate of Rome—the immediate and instinctive reference point for the Renaissance thinker pondering the enigma of human history.45 At the other extreme, Marguerite will attribute the demise of Rome to Providence, but will outline it in such a way as to recall the traditional cycle of Fortune while purposedly not allowing for its influence, or for that of its time-honored surrogate Adventura or any other extra-Christian force: Le tout venant par divine ordonnance, Par le conseil et haulte Providence Du Souverain, qui de rien aggrandist L'homme abbaissé, et le grand amoindrist; . . . Sy hault ne peult l'inconstante fortune Lancer son bras ne jetter infortune. . . . Ne dites plus, o hommes insensez, Ne dites plus, ny en voz coeurs pensez Que sur les cieux Nécessité fatale . . . Où seurement comme emperiere regne Nécessité, ny que d'elle ressort De tous efïectz l'Adventure et le Sort; 46 (Le Triomphe de l'Agneau, w . 1443-1446, 1457-1458, 1465-1467, 1476-1478) This same careful exclusion of Fortuna and her entourage from the realizing of God's plan is evident in " L e Riche en pauvreté," whose unknown narrator denies "Que tout le bien, l'accident & l'envie / Que nous avons vient de dame fortune" (vv. 103-104) and concludes "Respondez moy icy, je vous demande, / Si quelque mal nous vient à l'aventure?" ( w . 139-140). But the resolute discriminations and win-

Living Faith nowings that follow from this overview of life are not apparent in the poems that Mayer has authenticated as Marot's. Even as adversity and concern for religious controversy tempered Marot's outlook and turned it from early playfulness, "Soubz l'estandard de Fortune indignée, / Ma vie feut jadis prédestinée" (Epître V I , vv. 65-66), to the reflective sadness of exile Certes, ung moys avant que ma fortune Me feist savoir ma retraicte importune, Je proposoys en mon entendement (Mais Dieu en a disposé autrement) (Epître XLIV, w . 109-112) the alliance of Fortune with prescience remained laconically unquestioned. Despite the presence of interjected relative clauses like "Dieu, qui les cueurs jusque aux fons congnoist bien" (v. 91 ) and "Mais Dieu, de qui la gloire est indicible" (v. 105) scattered through the épître, it is impossible to attach any probing significance or systematic theology to Marot's acquiescence to Providence. Screech cautions that he may have been unaware of the origin of "homo proponit, sed Deus disponit" which he uses in that poem and is from the îmitatio Christi I, 19. 47 The nearly one hundred editions of that handbook before 1536, in Latin and various vernaculars, make total unawareness improbable. Even if Marot was familiar with the source, his Erasmian bent would make any adherence to the mystic theology of Thomas à Kempis unlikely, and in any case the expression is cast in the form of any number of popular scriptural paraphrases. Calvin, for instance, explores an identical thought in his explication of Proverbs 16:9, saying that humanas deliberationes are always subject to overriding Providentia, and Luther cites "St. James' Reservation" (James 4 : 1 5 ) to prove that even in ordinary actions man should trust in God alone and not presume on the future.48 The more likely explanation is thus that the proverbial thought was common currency serving a multitude of intentions both sacred and profane. In the Orlando Furioso Ruggiero tells Leone that court protocol decrees that he renounce his original intent to kill him, for "ordina l'uomo e dio dispone" ( X L V I , 35). In the same vein of primarily human affairs, a supposed letter of Marot's pleads for his son Michel's employment: "S'il faict ce qu'il propose, / Et que Dieu le dispose." 49 The ubiquitous presence of Fortuna weighs heavily both on the routine affairs of Marot's fictional characters and on his own actions as

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they are transcribed in his missives: Maguelonne inveighs against "Fortune indecente" and Fortune's assistant adventure for her pitiful abandonment by her lover; in Marot's letter ( X V ) to the Cardinal de Lorraine, Et puis Fortune en l'Oreille me souffle . . . Soubz ces propos Fortune l'insensée Languir me faict sans l'avoir offensée; Mais Bon Espoir, qui veult estre vainqueur, Jusques chez moy vient visiter mon cueur, . . . (w. 37, 43-46) the figure of the allegorical goddess enables us to recognize the deep imprint of the Rhétoriqueurs, for whom she was less a formalized emblem than a palpable intermediary between the will of God and the deeds of kings. It is essential to insist on the medieval Christian coloration in Marot's view of the working of Fortune in linking human purpose to the movement of the cosmos, as a means of setting off his conception from that of other Renaissance and reformist attitudes. Since Latin antiquity, discussions of Fortune's intrusion into the lives of men had been set in a pro et contra framework of praise of virtue and dispraise of vice. Inasmuch as the question of the link between merit and reward was subsumed under the larger one of man's individual freedom, expression of an interaction between Fortune and virtue was intimately bound up with a writer's world view and lent itself to innumerable variations. W e are of course familiar with the Renaissance idea of virtù—as distinct from the conventional morality of "virtue"—by which a great individual cast off restraints to shape his own destiny. From its etymology, having virtù meant being a man, a man who could clearly and consciously display his human talents and prowess in the arts, statecraft, or warfare. Marot's concept of virtue has nothing to do with Roman prudence, courage, and fortitude, nor even with the common Renaissance notion of personal accomplishment, even temper and ingeniousness capable of altering—but not opposing— the course of a natural Fortune viewed as providing an opportunity for human prowess.50 Fortune and opportunity, kept clearly distinct in classical antiquity, were seen in an increasingly closer relationship during the Renaissance,51 as men stressed the necessity of material for action while demonstrating the reciprocity of virtue and Fortune and the ways in which virtù discovers opportunity and profits from it. In traditional representations the goddess Occasio was pictured as a figure with a long forelock while the back of her head is bald, symbolizing the

Living Faith golden opportunity that must be seized when it first presents itself, lest, once missed, it escape never to return : brevem occasionem rerum. On a universally graduated scale, opportunity entered into the decisions of individuals, the actions of princes and therefore the fate of nations and the whole course of history.52 On the level of historical change, the Renaissance retained the medieval theme—the profane analogue of original sin—of the triumph of Vice over Virtue brought about by the passing of the Golden Age. But for Machiavelli, for instance, the prince can individually direct the course of history to the extent that he is endowed with virtu. Reviewing history's great princes, he concludes that Fortune gave them "nothing more than opportunity" to alter matter as they pleased. The circle traced by these two potencies is vicious only in the most philosophical sense of that word, for without opportunity virtù is useless, and without virtu opportunity is wasted (II Principe, V I ) . In the Discorsi (II, preface), he adds that those who are "more loved by heaven" will learn the lessons of Roman history and apply them whenever "Fortune gives them opportunity." This psychologically based idea echoes down through Montaigne's assertion that "La fortune ne nous fait ny bien ny mal" which he based on the principle that the mind is the "seule cause et maistresse de sa condition heureuse ou malheureuse." 53 At the same time, d'Aubigné set forth for the ethical instruction of the prince ("Princes," 1107-1486) an extensive débat between Mother Virtue and Dame Fortune, in which the two antagonists display the attributes needed respectively for the attainment of moral excellence and success at court. Virtue, in this débat, operates under the aegis of Providence but also claims identity with Necessity or Anange (avayicrj) Et là tu trouveras mon logis chez Anange, Anange que je suis & (qui est chose estrange) Là où elle n'est plus, aussi tost je ne suis: Je l'aime en la chassant, la tuant je la suis. (w. 1471-1474) Marot's subscription to the idea of the force of destiny falls between the extremes of a psychologically driven virtu that cooperates with Fortune and a morally based vertu that conflicts with Fortune. When at the beginning of Epître XLII he explains to Renée his urgent departure from Ferrara, "L'esprit de Dieu me conseille et enhorte / Que hors d'icy plustost que tard je sorte" ( w . 9-10) and in Epigramme CXC he again tells her

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i44 Quant la vertu congnut que la fortune Me conseilloit d'abandonner la France, Elle me dit: cherche terre opportune

(w. 1-3) we are led to assume in Marot's thinking a productive dialectical alliance if not a total identification between the Holy Spirit and a Virtue adhering to the dictates of Fortune. T h e two terms differ little in intrinsic meaning because Marot frequently views these forces as being operative in a graduated world unified by its hierarchic purpose. T h a t graduated purpose is seen most clearly incarnate in the head of state and throughout the structure of the court world. In Epigramme CCXLVI, Marot hypothesizes and concludes that Si mon Seigneur, mon Prince & plus que Pere, Qui des François F R A N Ç O Y S premier se nomme, N'estoit point Roy de sa France prospéré, Ne Prince avec, mais simple Gentil-homme, J'irois autant dix fois par delà Rome, Que j'en suis loing, cercher son accoinctance, Pour sa vertu qui plus fort le couronne Que sa fortune & Royalle prestance. Mais souhaiter cas de telle importance Serait vouloir mon bien particulier, A luy dommage, & tort faict à la France, Qui a besoing d'un Roy tant singulier. W i t h i n the structure of a near syllogism, he identifies the person of Francis with his titles and station, goes on to destroy that equation by individualizing him and proclaiming that his virtue outstrips the fortune of royal birth, and finally comes full circle by destroying the presumptuously individual wish of the narrator and reaffirming the mutual inclusiveness of Fortune and virtue, of individual virtue and common weal. Whereas Ronsard describes Fortune as dispensing and withdrawing virtue according to her whimsy, 54 for Marot—or rather for Catherine de Médicis supposedly speaking to Marguerite—it is G o d who bestows Fortune commensurate with the merit of Henri II, " Q u e Dieu luy doint, après tout debatu, / Fourtune esgalle à sa grande vertu!" (Epitre L V , w . 5 1 - 5 2 ) . In the épître to François de Bourbon ( L V I I ) he again posits the example of R o m e and the negative reference point of Pompey's loss to Caesar, to affirm

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M5 Or t'a doné le souverain doneur Et l'un & l'aultre: Il t'a doné Fortune A ta Vertu prospéré & opportune.65 (w. 4-6)

Yet if the will of God is less enigmatic in the lives of illustrious men, Marot and most of the characters through whom he speaks knew that for the lowly individuals of this world His grand design is inscrutable and Fortune is alternately propitious and unpropitious. The two lovers of the Elégies move and sway under the sign of a Fatum, an inner necessity withdrawn from human considerations and speculation, whose direction can be read only vaguely in the stars yet remains related to the smallest human action. They understand the stars as the commuting agents of eternity to mutability which, while obedient to God's changeless order, are responsible for the vagaries of Fortune in the realms below the moon.56 In Elégie X V the lover reminds his demoiselle of the god "Amour, qui vainq les Princes" and associates his choleric humor with his element fire, for "flamme engendre flamme" Mais garde bien d'irriter sa vertu; Et si m'en croys, fay ce qu'il te commande; Car si sur toy de cholere il desbande, Il te fera par adventure aymer Quelcque homme sot, desloyal & amer, . . . Ilz diront vray. Que ne faisons nous doncques De deux cueurs ung? Brief nous ne fismes oncq Oeuvre si bon. Noz constellations, Aussi l'accord de noz conditions Le veult & dit. (w. 44-48, 69-73) There follows a long matched list of the two lovers' alert and commendable moral qualities and a description of their desire to avoid gens melancolieux—those unfortunates composed of ill-starred humors and presided over by the degenerate Saturn, demon of inertia and selfindulgent "melancholy adjust," as Robert Burton was later to call it. It was God of course who, prompted by the Fall, set the celestial bodies against one another in their influence on the sublunary world, and it is the stars that influence the mind to certain states by acting on our physical predispositions (cholere, conditions). They are not only signs of Divine will, but its indispensable affective intermediary as well. Such

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considerations overshadow the thoughts and feelings of the central characters from the outset of their long exchange of letters, expand the implications of their discourse, and even effect the sequence of discussion. In the first letter the lover disclaims any knowledge of the ultimate lines of fate, but torn between the counsel of Doute and that of Ferme Amour, and repeatedly goaded by the evil that befalls him, he proceeds to a lengthy examination of the more perceptible manifestations of fate: Ne sçay si c'est par destination; Mais tant y a que je croy que Fortune Desiroit fort de nous estre importune. ( w . 76—78) A bodily prisoner of foreign wars while his heart is imprisoned at home, he imagines a return to a paradise of singing birds, babbling brooks, and talk of love, but then abandons this edenic setting Et n'en sera (ce croy je) offensé Dieu, Puis que la Guerre à l'Amour donne lieu. Mais, s'il advient que la Guerre s'esbranle, Lors conviendra dancer d'un autre branle . . . (w.125-128) When the wheel turns and we fall, then we know how unstable this world is and how different from unchanging Eden. Fortune is the symbol for a condition of this world, and knowledge of this condition is irrevocable and parallel to eating of the forbidden fruit. Extremes of love and war, virtue and vice occur when education or evil communications confirm those whom the stars make naturally virtuous or vicious. Over all is God, who is no more bound to the consistent working of the stars than a prince endowed with virtù to the letter of the law. In a paraphrase of Ovid's ambigua Fortuna,57 followed by the traditional image associating Fortune with the fragile orb of the world, he concludes Que longuement Fortune variable En ung lieu seul ne peult estre amyable; Tant plus les a Fortune autorisez Tant moins seront en fin favorisez; Car la Fortune est pour ung Verre prise, Que tant plus luist, plustost ce casse & brise. Voyla comment avecques Dieu j'espere Que nous aurons la Fortune prospéré. (w. 1 3 7 - 1 4 4 )

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T h e themes explored in the Elégies are, of course, perfectly conventional and lend themselves to conventional situations. Reference to male adventure in Epitre V I is prosopopoeic, placed in the mouth of the Capitaine Raisin; in Rondeau XII, mention of Male Fortune supports a routine plea for assistance; in Rondeau X X V an allusion to "Mes tristes jours en Fortune maulvaise" leads, as Mayer points out, to a standard Petrarchan plaint. But to make conventional the antithesis of personal or "original" would be to evaluate Renaissance art strictly by modern norms. Just as it is wrong to claim biographical referents for every event narrated in Marot's art, it is wrong to claim none in any transmutation of life's experience into the images of art.68 Throughout the elegies the prison theme recurs as a general observation on the effects of love "D'entremesler ses plaisirs d'amertume"—a timeless emblem for the turn of Fortune's wheel and for the mixture of pleasure and pain in this life. 59 But in Rondeau LXIV written on the occasion of his deliverance from prison in 1526, the caprice of Fortune and the ineluctable commixture of good and evil enter as essential ingredients into Marot's vision of a life over which God presides as unmoved mover En liberté maintenant me pourmaine, Mais en prison pour tant je fuz cloué. Voyla comment Fortune me demaine! C'est bien & mal. Dieu soit de tout loué. TON VUEIL EN TERRE AINSI QU'AU CIEL SOIT FAICT . . .

The theme of the man who laughs through tears was common to Rhétoriqueurs like Henri Baude and was imposed upon them by their condition as court entertainers, as Villey explains, or indicative of the satirist's mixed reaction to priestly sensuality and clerical corruption, as Guy suggests, or simply inevitable in the man who sifts appearance from reality, and grasps in his mind the fragility of happiness knowing that change is intrinsic to fortune.60 So it is that in the ballade "Je meurs de seuf auprès de la fontaine," Villon exclaims, "Je ris en pleurs et attens sans espoir . . . Rien ne m'est seur que la chose incertaine." In Marot's case, however, the relationship between his reaction to Fortune's caprice and the character of his writing is more frequently evident. Epitre XII details the effects of Fortune in his unjustified omission from the royal payroll, "Mais la Fortune, où luy plaist, rit & mord. / Mords elle m'a, & ne m'a voulu rire" ( w . 10-11). Correspondingly, in his satirical writing he insists on his ability "Pour faire rire et pour faire pleurer" ("Aux Dames de Paris," v. 74) and, more specifically,

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concludes on the same bittersweet note his picture of the Count of Carpi "Qui se feit moyne après sa mort. / Laisse moy là qui rit & mord" (coq-à-Vâne II, v. 160). Few subjects are more traditionally medieval and gaulois—whatever that terms means—than the representation of monastic venality. Marot's rondeau "Des Nonnes qui sortirent du Couvent" ( X X X V ) and his portraits of Brothers Lubin and Thibaud are in no sense unique or revolutionary in their comic mockery. But since praise of virtue and dispraise of vice presuppose a relatively virtuous life on the part of the narrator, when Marot does not simply represent but also comments on his insight into the disparity between monastic profession and conduct, we also gain an insight into the standards of virtue against which he judges and gain a more precise understanding of any innovation within his traditionalism. The "Second Chant d'Amour fugitif," in which Marot pursues the theme of Venus's search for a lost Cupid whom monasticism has sworn to fetter, has been read by all commentators as an attack on the vow of chastity, Et là dessus vouerent tous à Dieu Et au Patron de leur Couvent & Lieu De Cupido lyer, prendre & estraindre, Et son pouvoir par leurs Oeuvres contraindre; Plus pour loyer Celeste en recevoir, Que pour amour qu'en Dieu puissent avoir. Voila comment, par voyes mal directes, Les presumans, oultrecuydées Sectes Seures se font d'avoir de Dieu la grace Et de garder chose que humaine race Ne peult de soy. (w. 7 1 - 8 1 ) and Screech has classed as traditional the placing of celibacy beyond human power when grace is lacking.61 Not only is the argument traditional but when it is abstracted from the particular question of the merit of monastic celibacy or marriage it is generally Augustinian in its insistence on man's inability to pursue his will.62 Marot's conviction that the unaided will is impotent is just as specific in his treatment of the effects of Eros in Chanson XXXIX Il n'est en ma puissance De ne la desirer; . . . Suis je de fer, ou Ange? Qu'est besoing de mentir?

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Living Faith J'ose encores vous dire Que plus fort vous desire Quand veulx m'en repentir. Et pour anéantir Ce désir qui tant dure, Il vous fauldroit sentir La peine que j'endure.63

But in the "Second Chant d'Amour fugitif" Marot's wrath is directed not only at the Pelagian arrogance of the monks caricatured there— self-assumed of salvation through works independently of grace and agapë—but even more at the discrepancy he espies between word and deed, appearance and reality Mais c'est ung Peuple à celluy ressemblant Que Jan de Mehun appelle Faulxsemblant, Forgeant abus dessoubz Religion. (w. 61-63) Similarly, the glance cast over Venetian society in Epître XLIII takes in the clash between lavish temples and abject poverty, the predominance of the flesh and absence of the spirit: "D'avoir le nom de chrestien ont prins cure, / Puis sont vivans à la loy d'Epicure" (vv. 79-80). An allusion to their idolatry leads him to conjure up the polemic image of the pope as Antichrist and Whore of Babylon, "grande meretrice, / Avec qui ont faict fornicación / Les roys de terre," and terminates in an etymological discussion of Venus, now seen as the patron saint of Venice, the loveless society. He naturally concludes that reverence for Eros and the condonation of prostitution are natural for the Venetians Voila commant ce qui est deffendu Est pardeça permys et espendu. Et t'escriproys, Princesse, bien encores Des Juifz, des Turcs . . . (w. 99-102) Screech views the conclusion of Epître

XXXVII

De vérité, et à ce qu'il me semble, A Turc ne Juif en rien je ne ressemble. Je suis chrestien, pour tel me veulx offrir, (w. 55-57) as a denial of the efficacy of works alone and a tacit acceptance of Lutheranism.84 It is true that in his tract Against the Execrable Bull

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of Antichrist Luther links the pope with the Turks and Jews and uses these two groups again as evidence that even they can overcome temptation as a step toward observing the Ten Commandments.66 But even the archbishop of Trier uses the twin reference points in his efforts to make Luther renounce the Babylonian Captivity.e6 So also, in the Encomium Moriae Erasmus follows a comment on Venetian self-love with an observation that "Turcae totaque ilia vere barbarorum colluvies etiam religionis laudem sibi vindicat, Christianos perinde ut superstitiosos irridens. At multo etiam suavis Judaei . . . ," while in the Enchiridion the taking of monastic orders is likened to a movement from courageous virtue to fearful vice and labeled as "quidam Judaismus." Earlier in that work he posits the force of charity in warding off such fears and temptations and cites the example of adultery: "Quo gravior est morbus, eo majorem curam adhibebit pura caritas. Adulter est, sacrilegus est, Turca est: exsecretur adulterum, non hominem: sacrilegum adspernetur, non hominem: Turcam occidat, non hominem. Det operam, ut impius pereat, quem ipse se fecit; sed ut servetur homo, quem fecit Deus." 67 As in Marot's letter there is a clear attempt in these passages to separate the inner man, whose faith is unassuming and unsullied, from exterior trappings, from the contingency of works and the accretions of sin. W e see, further, that his devout humanism was broad enough to comprehend the extremes of temptation by natural human weakness of the flesh and continence blessed by grace; but not so large as to include complete license or arrogant abstinence. By the latitude allowed for human weakness in his injunction to lead a Christlike life, and by the recognition of individual circumstances which tempers his initial judgment of vice and virtue, Marot's view is relative in immediate circumstances. Ultimately, however, as befits any serious writer who is evangelically inclined, he judges by the absolute standard of Scripture referred to explicitly in serious religious contexts, but applied implicitly as well to the most routine events of daily life. But Marot's evangelizing falls just short of the aggressiveness we often find in some of the apocryphal poems like "Le Riche en pauvreté," because his ability to transform the raw facts of experience into embellished images and to give the cast of life to a literary expression makes categorical assignment of a biblical source of imagery tenuous. When his image is indeed clearly biblical, it is still not safe to assume that the scriptural setting colors Marot's understanding of the event under discussion rather than the event's bending the biblical passage to its own needs. Reference to the marriage at Cana, "Au grand

Living Faith festin de l'eternelle vie" in his épître to Renée de Ferrare (v. 20, Matthew 22:1) is obvious and germane to his discussion of election and his presentation of Venetian vice. Yet in his "Perle de pris" (Epître XXI), no less important a parable 68 is reduced to hyperbolic flattery of Eleanor of Austria, with no suggestion of its original meaning. When the original context is in full evidence, Car voulentiers la chose pretieuse Est mise à part en garde soucieuse. Or est ma Dame une Perle de pris Inestimable à tous Humains espritz Pour sa valeur. Que diray d'advantage? C'est le trésor d'ung riche parentage. Que pleust à Dieu que la fortune advint Quand je vouldrois que Bergere devint. {Elégie XVII, w . 49-56) the treasured kingdom of heaven is translated into the beloved whose tower prison is overseen by the mythological Argus. In such fusion of sacred and profane as this, is it possible to trace the courtly Golden Rule that closes Elégie IX to Matthew 7:12? Is the apocalyptic vision in Elégie III ( w . 47-48) of the sun obscured at midday derived from Revelation, or from his translations of Psalm 18 and the Metamorphoses, or from the Temple d'Honneur et de Vertu—or none of these? 69 One further image of nature running counter to itself will suffice to indicate how context can reshape an image or an image lend meaning to its context. In Elégies VII and X V and Eglogue III Marot has his speaker exclaim that sooner would the Seine or Rhône retrace its course than he would stop serving his beloved or stop praising Francis-Pan. In his notes to those poems Mayer lists a series of classical precedents for the image, including Euripedes, Virgil, Cicero, and Ovid of the Heroides and might also have included Ovid of the Metamorphoses and Tristia, Horace of the Odes, and Ausonius, not to mention Ariosto's Capitolo X I I I and Orlando Furioso, X L I V , 62. Divorced from its mythological retinue, slightly modified by its personalized reference to Renée de Ferrare and integrated into an Italian landscape, the image in Epître XXXIV proclaiming Marot's devotion and Renée's high fortune both supports and derives from her evangelical fervor Croy que plustost l'eau du Pau fera faulte A contreval ses ondes escouler, Que ceste plume à estendre & voler

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l$2

Là où le vent de tes commandemens La poulsera; mesmes les eslemens Lairroient plustost leur nature ordonnée; Car l'Eternel me l'a (certes) donnée Pour en louer premièrement son nom, Puis pour servir les princes de renom (vv. 42-50) Despite resemblances to the Metamorphoses and especially Tristia, I, 8, in context the image bears a much stronger resemblance to Psaume CXTV which Marot was preparing for publication around this time and also recognizes a hierarchical order of obedience to God La mer le veit, qui s'enfuyt soudain, Et contremont l'eau du fleuve Jourdain Retourner fut contraincte.70 (w. 7-9) In fact the whole landscape in which he situates the duchess and which in turn smiles at her Christian virtue ("Toy qui de Dieu recognois tout ce bien") is alive with Biblical reminiscences: coeli enarrant gloriam Dei. 71 The preceding verses Les oyselletz des champs en leurs langaiges Vont saluant les buissons et bocaiges, Par où ilz vont. Quant le navire arrive Auprès du havre . . . (w. 21-24) inevitably call up what appears to be an appeal to Matthew 8:20-26, where Christ lays down the necessity of faith and suffering for whoever would follow him: "volucres coeli nidos (habent) filius autem hominis non habet ubi caput reclinet . . . Et ascendente eo in naviculam secuti sunt eum discipuli eius . . . tunc surgens increpavit vento et mari et facta est tranquillitas magna." In one locus, a 1528 épître (XIII) to Cardinal Duprat, the same scriptural detail occurs in an isolated circumstance that is apposite only to Marot's need for lodging in the royal household, "C'est pour Marot, vous le congnoissez ly; / Plus legier est, que Volucres Coeli" (vv. 51-52). But in later years it does not recur in an atmosphere that is not fleshed out by the kind of psalmodie praise of creation evident in Psaume VIII and controlled by the needs of various contexts: Brebis & beufz, & leurs peaulx & leurs laines, Tous les trouppeaulx des haultz monts & des plaines, En general toutes bestes cherchans

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J

53

A pasturer par les bois & les champs. Oyseaulx de l'air . . . ( w . 25-29) Thus, the scriptural detail serves as a reference point equally for the piquant Chanson XXXVIII Ainsi pour vous, gros Boeufz puissans, Ne traînez Charrue en la Plaine; Ainsi pour vous, Moutons paissans, Ne portez sur le dos la Laine. Ainsi pour vous, Oyseaux du Ciel . . . 72 (w. 5-9) and for Ballade XVIII where the evangelical invocation to vrays amans terminates in the Laudate nomen Domini of the Psalms Où vous, vrays amans curieux, Parlez de l'amour sans laydure. Allez aux Champs sur la verdure Ouyr l'oyseau, parfaict chanteur; Mais du plaisir, si peu qu'il dure, Louez le nom du Createur! ( w . î x - i 6) T h e ability to mix joy and sorrow, dulcit melancholy and saline invective, of Eros and Agape to coexist in the same image inspired by Marot's peregrine muse, has caused endless problems for Marot's exegetes—especially in the question of his religion—and has embroiled them in polemics. One obvious example of a source of contentious interpretation is the refrain "Prenez le, il a mangé le Lard," which Mayer takes literally as a reference to Marot's breach of Lenten abstinence while Screech takes it in its proverbial sense of imputing guilt. 73 Rather than support either contention or propose a third, it is more instructive for our purposes here to look at the contexts Marot creates for that statement and appreciate the way the literal and proverbial conspire to inform his literary personality. In the "Ballade contre celle qui fut s'Amye" he tells the story of his denunciation to a papelard by the mysterious Ysabeau and his surprise arrest, "Par la Morbieu, voila Clement! / Prenez le, il a mangé le Lart!" Again, in the first coq-à-1'âne, following the verses Or est arrivé l'Antéchrist, Et nous l'avons tant attendu! Ma Dame ne m'a pas vendu, (w. 84-86)

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he restates the event Par la mort bieu, voyla Clement; Prenez le, il a mangé le Lard. Il faict bon estre Papelard, Et ne courroucer poinct les Fées.74 (w. 90-93) Without referring to these two passages, Leblanc cites two passages from the third and fourth coq-à-1'âne as evidence that Marot saw in the passion of Jesus a parallel with his own arrest and betrayal by the militant Catholic Sagon, author of "Le Coup d'essay" Nenny non, c'est de l'antecrist. Ce n'est pas luy, et si ne sçay, Il en a faict son coup d'essay. . . . Est ce point Judas ou Symon? Non est, si est, c'est il, c'est mon! Or me croyez, c'est Barrabas; Prenez le, mectez le à bas! (w. 78-80, 83-86) . . . Sinon au sexe féminin. Par faulx Toile Jésus est mort Vendredi, dont Pilate mord Ses levres, mais il n'est pas temps. Sainct Jehan, ainsy comme j'entens, . . ,75 w.140-144) If, as seems likely, these last two passages issue from John 19:15, then, in view of Marot's consistent antagonism toward the Antichrist, it is difficult to separate his betrayal from Matthew 26:48 and Mark 14:44, and the insistent "Par la Morbieu, voila Clement" 76 from the ecce homo of John 19:26. Whatever indeed Marot actually meant by "Il a mangé le lard," it became obvious to him with increasing exactness of vision that the accusations of Lutheranism which were to hound him after 1526, the various betrayals, the new view of life that was taking shape, all imposed a Christlike suffering on him, and charge his poetry with a consistently intriguing and deep resonance. The calling he felt to take up his own cross and the "Lutheranism" that attached itself to his name were not, however, necessarily identical nor simultaneous. Modern critics of Renaissance literature have become increasingly interested in utilizing known facts about semantic change and of the ways in which changes in meaning signal changes in value

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systems. Lucien Febvre has shown that during the Renaissance the term athée was less a theological category' than an instrument of strategic invective, and Will Moore has stressed the mercurial qualities the word lutheriste retained well beyond the Affaire des Placards. 77 Zwingli refused to be called a Lutheran, while Luther considered an Erasmian rationalist "an Arian, an atheist, and a skeptic." To ascribe meaning properly to usage one must first gain an insight into the point of view and motives of the speaker, as we see in a coq-à-1'âne attributed to Marot where the narrator bemoans the fate of "la mere Saincte Eglize" but adds Nous blasmons fort les protestans Et desirons leurs alliances. Pour en dire ce que j'en pance, Papistes et lhuteriens Parlent bien, et ne valient rien.78 It is no surprise, then, that we have come up with a composite picture of a Marot who was early inclined to Lutheranism, gradually inclined, and never inclined. 79 Typical of detailed variants from which substantive conclusions have been sweepingly drawn is the alteration of the belligerent "Point ne suis Lutheriste / Ne Zuinglien, encores moins Papiste" in the 1534 épître to Bouchard into the anodine "Ne Zuinglien, & moins Anabaptiste" in the 1538 version. Screech holds that the letter could not have been sent to a powerful prelate in 1526 because of the aggressive tone of the original reading, Villey attributes its puckish flavor to an unkown hand, and Leblanc rejects it as being inconsonant with the remainder of the letter in which Marot professes—or professes to profess—orthodoxy. 80 Commanding what approaches ultimate authority in the matter of Marot's text, Mayer asserts that the 1534 version indeed comes from Marot's pen, probably reflects his true feelings of 1526 and was palliated in subsequent publications. 81 T h e significance of such a dispute over variants is that the decision one takes toward the readings of 1526, 1534, 1538 . . . will inevitably affect the composite portrait one makes of the man and ultimately of his art. Jourda sees a Marot who tries to bring his views into line with current orthodoxy, and thus concludes that his uncertain denial of Lutheranism "est le point faible de cette apologie logique et vigouresse." 82 Assuredly, Marot may be credited with vigor, but it is debatable to what extent we may judge the quality of his verse by the canon of logic, if we understand that term to imply a consistent

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cause and effect relation between apparent motive and expression. It need not follow logically that he consciously and uniquely adheres to Lutheranism or a schismatic position when his ideas and expressions happen to follow those of the Wittenberg reformer. A clear case in point is Epître XXXVI to the king from exile in Ferrara. Responding to the epithet Lutheriste attached to him by his detractors, he writes "Au nom de luy (Luther) ne suys point baptizé; / Baptizé suys au nom qui tant bien sonne . . . ," proceeds to a litany on baptism in Christ's name where he protests almost too much, and terminates in a prayerful aside to God. In the important section of the Babylonian Captivity on the "Sacrament of Baptism" Luther does insist at length on the formulaic "in the name of Jesus Christ." But so did many good Churchmen, in a controversy that raged as far back as Augustine's "debate" with Cyprian (De Baptisnio IV, x, 15-17). One of the difficulties in evaluating Marot's implicit asseverations is his penchant for conveying meaning as much by omission as commission.83 If his profession of orthodoxy is heretical, it is chiefly so for its selection of one point to the exclusion of such nonperipheral issues as aural confession, the cult of the Virgin, iconolatry, indulgences, intercession of saints, the liturgy and mass, monasticism, purgatory, and transsubstantiation.84 Earlier in the épître to the king he had already defended himself against heresy—and implicated his très catholique sovereign—but with a different antecedent cause. After praising Francis for bringing back the Golden Age of letters through his establishment of the Collège des Lecteurs, Marot turns on syndics who attack the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, "Disant que c'est langaige d'heretiques" (v. 47). In numerous other instances he draws on vituperative images, as he does here, that are commonly associated with the invective of Martin Luther. The second coq-à-1'âne takes a passing swipe at papal hegemony, as does the 1536 épître to Renée from Venice, in terms that could be read as schismatic 85 Pour ceste cause je proteste Que l'Entechrist succombera; Au moins que de brief tombera Sur Babylonne quelcque orage.

(w. 178-181)

But within the enigmatic logic of the coq-à-1'âne this apocalyptic vision is followed by a probable allusion to Marguerite's discouragement by the hard times of enlightened humanism and directly preceded by ceste cause: the survival of medieval glossing

Living Faith

»57 Laisse mourir ces Sorbonistes. Raison: la glose des Légistes Lourdement gaste ce beau texte. (w. 175-177)

Again, in the second eclogue to Renée ( 1 5 3 5 ) prophesying the return of the Golden Age, he exhorts her unborn son to "escouter vérité revellée, / Qui tant de jours nous a esté cellée" : Viens veoir, viens veoir la beste sans raison, Grand ennemy de ta noble maison! Viens tost la veoir à tout sa triple creste, Non cheute encor, mais de tomber bien preste! Viens veoir de Crist le regne commencé, Et son honneur par tourmens avancé! O siecle d'or le plus fin que l'on treuve Dont la bonté dedans le feu's s'espreuve! (vv. 55-62) T h e apposition of secular paradise regained to the apocalyptic dissolution of its prime antagonist becomes apparent from the variant reading in the Chantilly manuscript: Viens veoir ce monde et les peuples et princes Regnans sur luy en diverses provinces, Entre lesquelz est le plus apparent Le roy Françoys qui te sera parent; Soubz et par qui ont esté esclarciz. Tou les beaulx artz paravant obscurciz, O siecle d'or le plus fin que l'on treuve Dont la bonté soubz ung tel roy s'espreuve! 86 Even allowing for the coexistence of the sacred and profane which sketch the history of the Renaissance in its broadest outlines, the degree of symbiosis between Marot's religious calling and his court vocation is still astonishing. The two interchangeable readings of the end of his second eclogue comfortably accommodate both Saint John the Divine and Vergil, the rending of the veil of imperfect vision and the return to prelapsarian innocence. Yet if the relationship of these two spheres of influence was truly symbiotic, their lifespans were not precisely coeval. Like all history, the history of the Reformation was dynamic, and so was Marot's experience of it; court life was a constant and Marot's religious verse matured within the perimeter of this immutable vocation. T h e appellation "prince des poètes et poète des

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princes" was not merely a boutade. Its very structure bespeaks a balance between superiority and subservience descriptive of the polarities in his world view. The court did not so much limit as define his vocation. Turns of his career fluctuate in some cases more according to the practical considerations of the barometer of court favor than to the directives of his religious conscience. Short of an appeal to common humanity, the humiliation of Marot's abjuration in Lyons leaves his commentators at a loss: what after all was he to do? Unlike d'Aubigné and Calvin, there is no intrinsic sense of tension, no feeling of tragic disproportion between the evangelical impulse and court life or the humanistic education it bred. To this extent and to the extent that the imperatives of court protocol are anachronistic in a modern age, the individual figure of Marot is not as romanced as the militant and visionary d'Aubigné. Yet his salutations to a laurel-wreathed Francis framed in an aureate glow, if exaggerated, are not without nobility. More important, it is from the restrictions imposed by his low station, reminding him of decorum yet inviting him to daring, which stem the many moods that we have come to recognize as belonging to Clément Marot. The continual and subtle inflections of the court poet's voice are largely explicative of his controlled mastery of language and make him a more modern wordsmith than Ronsard. It is to this court influence and its attendant influences on the poet's craft that we now turn.

VI: THE PAST RECAPTURED Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo, sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat. —Metamorphoses, I, 89

IN RECENT years the critical attention of Renaissance students has turned profitably to the literary theme of the Golden Age. 1 They have sketched the long history and the common Renaissance usage of this set piece, and have discussed the anatomy of its melancholic backward glance to an imaginary time overseen by Saturn and Astraea when human innocence inhabited a hospitable world of peace, justice, and happiness, of faith, hope, and charity,2 before the eventual degeneration of that world into the Iron Age of the eternal present. Both the charm and significance of the theme for the Renaissance, as these studies go on to suggest, is not in its mythic rejection of all-too-real political and socioeconomic conditions of the present. Rather, it is that the tutelary gods presiding over man's pastoral innocence and the tyrannical sovereigns of succeeding ages (except for the real Maecenas the poet himself addressed) represented projections of the most deep-seated desires and fears of the age, its wish to re-create the world's history in its own image in order to make a place for itself. Thus, the significance also lies in the mortal impulse—much less uniformly acknowledged and expressed than was the simple nostalgia for the contentment of former times—toward a cyclic transmutation of a distant, golden past into a millennial future: sperandorum substantia rerum argumentum non parentum. Whether it be Tasso's ironic dig at I'onor which betokens man's fall from innocence (Aminta, w . 656-723) or Rabelais's eulogy of I'honneur which calls him back (Gargantua, 57), their radically differing dramatizations of the dominion of original sin and free will are immovably set against the glowing twilight and dawn of the Age of Gold.

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W i t h dutiful correctness critics acknowledge Marot's contribution to Golden Age lore in the form of his second eclogue bidding the return of the "siecle d'or le plus fin que l'on treuve" and the fourth eclogue where the myth's essential chronology and protagonists are cataloged Or sommes nous prochains du dernier aage Prophetizé par Cumane, la saige; Des siecles longs le plus grand & le chef Commencer veult à naistre de rechef. La vierge Astrée en brief temps reviendra; De Saturnus le regne encor viendra; 3 Divergence of interest and intent, however, have not allowed a sustained look at his obedience to the dual urge at once to lament the lost Golden Age and confidently to prophesy its return, nor has any comment come forth on the way the loss and recapture of paradise inform his attitude toward his work and the world it illumines. In fact, the theme and the images that give it substance could be used as an index to measure some of Marot's transvaluations, from the rhetorical query of the psalmist in his dedication to the new psalms, sent from Geneva to the "Dames de France," Quand viendra le siecle doré Qu'on verra Dieu seul adoré, Loué, chanté, comme il l'ordonne, Sans qu'ailleurs sa gloire l'on donne? Quand n'auront plus ne cours ne lieu Les chansons de ce petit Dieu . . . ( w . x-6) back through his praise of the petit dieu early in the Temple de Cupido. That youthful poem is set among the interrelated harmonies of body and soul, pleasure and virtue of the locus amoenus, the scene of especial loveliness, appointed with appropriate flora and fauna, whose literary prototype goes back beyond the Elysian Fields of Vergil. In Marot's case the ancestry of the delightful spot is probably traced more directly to the garden of Déduit in the Roman de la Rose and from there to its various efflorescences in Lemaire. That Marot was indebted to these two sources, and to the particular topos of the locus amoenus, is amply clear from his description of the temple of Cupid and its surroundings (vv. 1 1 5 - 1 5 2 ) . Amid fluctuations between the established text and its variants, "Près de ce lieu . . ." ( " E n ce beau lieu . . . " ) , "ung clos flory Verger," there emerges the composite image of the hortus con-

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clusus of Lorris, where formerly the "Paris, jeune Berger" of Lemaire disported himself. Again, in a later rondeau ( X X X I V ) , "Paris, jeune Berger" sleeps the sleep of Endymion while the "lieu de plaisance" is besieged by the same parliament of fowls we find in the earthly paradise of Lorris and in the underworld of Lemaire. 4 In these instances, where the narrator's imagination entertains the garden of delight as a living presence, the garden is safely enclosed or under only mild siege, and his viewpoint is timeless. When, however, his vantage point embraces all three dimensions of time, we find him surveying the present ruins of Arcadian innocence and remanding its cyclic recovery. Such is the case with the later anthology piece " D e l'Amour du Siecle Antique" Au bon vieulx temps ung train d'Amours regnoit Qui sans grand art & dons se demenoit, . . . Or est perdu ce qu'Amour ordonnoit; Rien que pleurs fainctz, rien que changes on n'oyt. . . . (w. 1-2, 1 0 - 1 1 ) The serpent that has infiltrated the garden and condemned unspoiled nature to the ravages of time is explained by the references to art and feigning.5 The European Renaissance held an ambiguous attitude toward art and its ambitious rivalry with nature, seeing each alternately as superior to the other or conceiving them as perfect complements. Direction of vacilliation often depended on whether nature was taken as the particular external object of mimesis or as the cosmos within which the rules of art operated, whether as a superior human nature, which predetermined man's ability to attain the world of forms, or as that of a fallen humanity, which doomed him to the world of appearances. According to Alberti, the artist should not trust his own innate intellectual powers (ingegnio) but rather should contemplate the great model of la natura, an acquiescence of mind before objects, as Bacon would later put it. Leonardo however, defines la pittura as a seconda creazione fatta colla fantasia and Sidney speaks of poets moving "within the zodiac of their own wit." 6 At times Marot's position falls between these antipodes. Like Vasari, in Rondeau LIV he looks back once more on "la buona maniera antica" when painting "non lascia elemento alcuno che non sia ornato e ripieno di tutte le eccelenze che la natura ha dato loro" 7 Au temps passé, Apelles, Painctre sage, Feit seullement de Venus le visage

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But in the last two lines quoted, it is clear that art is a fiction inferior to the truth of nature, and relegated to the fantastic realm of imagination, the mistress of error and falsity,8 for art succeeds only when it conceals itself. Art and nature do collaborate in Epitre L V , where the narrator visits and communes with a "Jardin royal, se dis je, ta verdure, / Tes fruictz, tes fleurs, tout ce que art et nature / T'a peu donner, . . ." but fatally discovers that it ". . . n'a ores la puissance / De me donner ung brin d'esjoyssance" (w. 35-38). As a microcosm, the constituent elements of Marot's garden resemble the Garden of Adonis, "not by art / But of the trees own inclination made" and the deceitful Bower of Bliss with its "art, striving to compaire / With nature" in the Faerie Queene, where the two allegorical bowers are characterized respectively by natural fruitfulness in token of timeless innocence ("There is continuall spring, and harvest there") and by floral abundance in token of the aesthetic nomenclature associating flowers and ornaments with the cosmetic of poetic figures ("With all the ornaments of Floraes pride"). 9 Artificial beauty, for Marot as for Spenser, is a corruption of natural innocence and affords but momentary delight. Marot counsels that art should follow and conform to the dictates of a superior nature. This conformity is occasionally relegated to the level of mere social decorum, as in the épître on the beau Tetin ( X X X I X ) where he concludes that art should reveal nothing "qu'est Nature à cacher coustumiere"—a use of nature that is less a comment on the human body taken as a prima facie instrument than a social convention indicating by itself man's fallen state—but conformity is also called for in recognition of the quasi-divine "Nature, ouvriere sacrée,/Qui tout crée" (Etrenne XIX). Ambiguity of meaning here expresses an intrinsic ambivalence toward nature which is seen as both congenitally imperfect and surpassingly redemptive. The latter aspect of this duality is stylized in such nugatory offerings as Rondeau XXIX (ca. 1525) Comme Nature est en péché ancrée Par art d'enfer, grace qui nous recrée Par art du ciel Marie en garentit; and Epitaphe III (ca. 1527) Autant aymé de Dieu tout pur & munde Comme il estoit du miserable Monde,

Past Recaptured but the unredeemed half of this polarity is seen in certain intervening poems whose relevance to Marot's experience with imprisonment and betrayal has a long history of critical comment. In Ballade XIV the mysterious "celle qui fut s'Amye" (1526) is endowed by Marot with attributes that might have seemed commendatory to others from Lorris to Leonardo, 10 "Ell'a de l'engin largement / D'inventer la science & l'art . . . ," but which here become the cause leading to the deceitful effect " . . . De crier sur moy haultement: / Prenez le, il a mangé le Lart!" And in L'Enfer of the same year disharmony, "La maulvaistié de ce monde mauldict" and of "les hommes discordants," is attributed to their profession and ultimately to their condition, which "est de soy si anormal / Qu'il fault expres qu'il commence par mal" (vv. 69-70). Yet from the thematic standpoint of the return to a chiliastic Golden Age, the most intriguing poems are those chant-royaux that rework the motif of conflicting spirit and flesh in an unregenerate humanity desirous of "Santé au Corps et Paradis à l'Ame": "Ces deux soubhaictz contraires on peult dire / Comme la Blanche et la Noire couleur" (II, w . 1 2 - 1 3 ) . Under its allegorical trappings, the first chant-royal treats the Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth. Looking back in time to la buona maniera antica, Mary is described D'antique ouvrage a composé Nature . . . Aulcuns ont dit noire la Couverture, Ce qui n'est pas; car du Ciel fut transmis Son lustre blanc, sans aultre art de taincture. . . . Transmist au cloz de Nature subtile, . . . ( w . 23, 34-36, 40)

and Marot's description of Saint Anne's incarnate purity is ironically a contaminatio, reminiscent at once both of the hortus conclusus of the Song of Songs and the walled garden of the Roman de la Rose (vv. 129-135) on which are painted the deadly péchés courtois Au Pavillon fut la riche paincture Monstrant par qui noz pechez sont remis; C'estoit la nue, ayant en sa closture Le Jardin clos, à tous humain promis, (vv. 1 2 - 1 5 )

Like nature, art is subject to varying interpretation, according to whether its intent is to conceal or reveal, along a graded scale from prideful isolation at one extreme, as a product of imagination alone unguided by conscience, to function at the other extreme in a tempering context of reason and philosophy, memory and history. As in the exam-

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pies recently cited, it was expected to have a moral-ethical as well as an aesthetic dimension. It is, then, not in the least contradictory that Marot repeatedly invests in Francis, patronym of French glory and God's temporal servant, the responsibility for the revival of learning, of "les lettres & les artz" through his "vueil celeste," for the establishment of "la trilingue & noble Academie," and that he should see it as a primordial conflict between the forces of darkness and light (Epître XXXVI, vv. 39-62). Erasmus does no less in his praise of Francis, and like all humanists since Petrarch defines the approach of a Golden Age as an imminent marriage of eloquentia and sapientia, pietas and ingenium.11 So it is that the fertile ground of "Le beau verger des lettres plantureux" which the king has benevolently overseen returns man not only to the locus amoenus with its attendant "fleurs à grands jonchées" but also to "hault sçavoir . . . Presque periz" and "vérité" pure and simple ( L ' E n f e r , vv. 367-376). The most immediate prominent effect of the cultivation of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin was the path it opened for the translation and numerous resulting uses of the Psalms. After praising David who "Sçavoir voulut toutes sciences bonnes" and comparing his harp to the Orphic lyre, Marot's first preface to the Psaumes goes on duly to recognize the king's part Mais tout ainsi qu'avecques diligence Sont esclairciz, par bons espritz rusez, Les escripteaux des vieulx fragmentz usez, Ainsi, ô Roy, par les divins espritz Qui ont soubz toy hebrieu langage appris Nous sont jettez les Pseaumes en lumiere, Clairs, & au sens de la forme premiere. (w. 158-164) The special place of hault sçavoir and toutes sciences bonnes in his ringing praise of the new accessibility of the keys to venerated religious texts and the superiority in degree, if not in kind, of Hebrew hymns over Orphic hymns, place Marot's use of the motif of return from Iron to Golden Age in broad and bold relief. In successive épîtres ( X X X X I ) he brings on "un grand Frere Mineur . . . excellent Devineur" who cites passages "De Zoroast, d'Hermes, de la Sibylle, / De Raziel & de maint aultre habile / Nigromanceur" (vv. 105-107), but then he commends maternal concern on the part of Eleanor in returning the children of the king from Spain to France "Sans Nigromance, ou Magique vertu, / Ains par le vueil de Dieu, qui tout prévoit" (w. 4445). The difference between the two passages lies not in the kind of

Past Recaptured knowledge they evince of arcane texts, but in the use to which this knowledge is put in each case. To appreciate the implications of this differing use, both texts must be placed in the wide context of discussions that raged through the early sixteenth century. Ficino and the Medici circle had argued and preached about the continuous religious tradition of antiquity that linked Christianity with pre-Christian theologies. The founder of the Florentine Academy planned a history of Platonic philosophy reaching back before the pre-Socratics to forge a tradition of pia filosofia which could include Orpheus, Zoroaster, and Hermes Trismegistos. His prior assumption was simply that God knows things man's mind cannot know, and that all through history He has revealed Himself and the secrets of the created world to different people in dissimilar ways. The three ways he postulated of knowing God—the Book of Nature, 12 the Book of the Law (Moses and the Cabala), and the Christian Book of the Gospel—all required special interpretative techniques (Marot, it might be recalled, referred to "Nature subtile" and the "bons espritz rusez" who decoded the Psalms). Cabalism, then, does not contradict the Christian view of the world: it merely complements it, using evidence unfamiliar to a Christian. This newly discovered but ancient and venerable knowledge was ancillary to an allegorical and anagogical grasp of Christian Scriptures, and the adept became acquainted with numerous emblematic explanations of the mysterious Song of Songs—an insight that Orphic teaching would also have given him. From Hermes he could learn all this and, in addition, develop a feeling for the harmonious interdependency of all learning: esoteric, biblical, and scientific. Alchemy, for instance, which developed internationally into a secret gnosis before and after Ficino, soon claimed to "provide a hermetic interpretation of Christian dogmas" and, in the sixteenth century, "allied itself even more closely with the Cabala, magic and theosophy." 13 In the Defence of Poesy Sidney focused on the etymology of the word poet and made the poet God's assistant, a creator within Creation fashioning new order and transmuting base metal into gold.14 So the possible amalgamation of occultism, mysticism, and Christian theology perceived in sages like Hermes enabled the French and others, as it did the Italians, to extol the Christian truths, and at the same time gave them reasons for advocating and defending the values of the occult. But this attitude toward the family of religions was often misrepresented in the Renaissance as a heretical and anti-Christian sentiment. In his De pace fidei Ficino's much admired predecessor Nicholas Cu-

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sanus had cited Saint Paul's view on religious tolerance and his argument in favor of faith over works as a basis for justifying all religions despite their enormous differences in ritual.15 Catholics and reformists now and again sought to distinguish white magic from the black or demonic variety, that is, to distinguish the aggregate of alchemical and astrological doctrines attributed to Hermes and properly adapted to scholarly and poetic pursuits, from the dark magical vision and arcane science presumptuously claiming to possess the secret of creation, moral salvation, and physical healing, transmitted by a God who speaks only to initiates.16 Essentially, the distinction is between physical or practical magic and theoretical philosophic learning. Bacon, a man of the "new science," later set apart delicate learning from fantastical and contentious learning.17 The Inquisition, however, seldom held to the distinction and in the endless religious conflicts of the period the vague epithet magus—like athée—was hurled back and forth, affixed to Giordano Bruno, for example, by the Roman Curia and to Paracelsus whose pact with the devil was never doubted. A "magician," in short, might be a professor of Ficinian philosophy, a wandering priest, a serious experimental scientist, a reader of horoscopes, a believer in witchcraft, a skeptic, a dabbler in gold conversions, a follower of Hermes, or an astronomer.18 Within this spate of wide-ranging definitions, those thinkers whose circles Marot frequented at diverse moments in his life, took both extreme or fluctuating positions at various times in their careers. Calvin, like Savanarola before him, damned magical studies as obviously inspired by the devil. Reformist dislike of icon- or statue-worship did not overlook its affinities with the icons and figures used by sorcerers, witches, and astrologers; and so interpreted, papists were easily characterized as diabolic citizens of the new Babylon, led on by the Antichrist.19 Expressed hatred of iconolatry and the Antichrist, for example, follow in close proximity in Marot's letter to Renée from Venice (XLIII, vv. 37-66). Yet Luther's cohort Melanchthon staunchly defended astrology and magic, contending that they magnified the works of God. 20 And then there was Lefèvre d'Etaples, who began as a Platonist and mystic, dabbled with alchemy, published a commentary on the fourteen volumes of the hermetica, and then in a violent reversal typical of most converts turned around and reviled Platonists and magicians—but in private continued to open-mindedly research the question. It is within this atmosphere of appeal to occult religious learning on the one hand and ecclesiastical warning against too hot a pursuit of

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knowledge on the other, that Marot's Epître XXXVI appeals to the king in righteous indignation. Speaking of the seizure of his forbidden books as a sacrilege against the sainctes Muses sacres, he pleads his case A ung poëte, à qui on doibt lascher La bride longue, & rien ne luy cacher, Soit d'art magicq, nygromance ou caballe; Et n'est doctrine escripte ne verballe Qu'ung vray Poëte au chef ne deust avoir Pour faire bien d'escripre son debvoir. Sçavoir le mal est souvent profitable, Mais en user est tousjours evitable. Et d'aulte part, que me nuyst de tout lire? Le grand donneur m'a donné sens d'eslire En ces livretz tout cela qui accorde Aux sainctz escriptz de grace & de concorde, Et de jecter tout cela qui différé Du sacré sens, quand près on le conféré. Car l'escripture est la touche où l'on treuve Le plus hault or. Et qui.veult faire espreuve D'or quel qu'il soit, il le convient toucher A ceste pierre, & bien près l'approcher De l'or exquis, qui tant se faict paroistre Que, bas ou hault, tout aultre faict congnoistre. (w. 1 3 7 - 1 5 6 ) At the very moment that he appeals to the poet's license to free inquiry, one of the subjects he proposes to study reveals through its etymological deformation (necros: death > niger: black) the longstanding popular association of necromancy with black magic. 21 Marot's antagonist, "le général Chambor," charges this study with being "perverse ymagination," or "fantastical learning" as Bacon would say, but the poet goes on to allege that it is indeed "delicate learning." In the second paragraph he acknowledges himself a son of Adam by claiming that a little knowledge is not always a dangerous thing—a kind of felix culpa applied to the art of poetry. He hastens to qualify this assertion, however, by rejecting the Faustian urge to master vain learning and apply his illicit intellectual prowess. In the end, his plea reverts to the Scriptures as ultimate touchstone, not only for casting off diabolical learning but also for the hault sçavoir that sustains them, and expresses this hair-fine differentiation in the calibrated language of the alchemists. Never far from the theme of the right to free inquiry is that of free-

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dom of expression. One implies the other. Licentia or free speech of the narrator is the golden thread running through the tapestry of contemporary ills he relates in the coq-à-1'âne. In the second he asks "Lyon, veulx tu que je te dye? / Je me trouve dispost des levres" (vv. 130-131) before proceeding to a discussion of Melanchthon's aborted visit to France, and in the third he assumes the appearance of free souls from Luther to Montaigne: "Parquoy ne me puys repentir / D'en avoir dit ce qui est vray" (vv. 52-53). 22 Just as for his contemporaries from Paracelsus to Pernette du Guillet, for Marot humane knowledge plays an affective role in the love of God, for "il est besoing congnoistre avant qu'aymer" (Epitre XLIII, v. 30). Thus, his second eclogue, in which the fall of the three-tiered papal tiara announces the advent of a Golden Age, centers on the musagnoeomachia, "la guerre commencée / Contre ignorance" in which virtue, books and the beaux-arts form a kind of earthly trinity (vv. 21-32). Still, it would be erroneous to make Marot into a pan-European humanist after the model of Erasmus, or not to see his general prophecy of a return to splendor as at the same time a particular eulogy of his sovereign's deeds—an obligatory carmen saeculare that differs from its French and Italian predecessors more by its vivacious qualities than by the genre models it subscribes to and the pro forma themes it treats.23 To claim that the courtier outweighs the evangelist in the preface "Aux Dames de France" of the 1543 Psalms, which was Marot's hymn to the siecle doré, would be to impose an exaggerated antipathy on interests that are not necessarily mutually exclusive.24 Since court life was the center of newfound elegance, and for the time being the still eye of the ideological storm that was to course through the history of the century, Marot quite naturally localized the "Renaissance" at the court of France, or in its transplanted form at Ferrara (cf. Epître X X X V I ) ; there, he felt sure, the world's present ills might be assuaged or even dissipated. L'église Romaine in the "Déploration" is not counterbalanced as in "Le Balladin" by Christine, whose allegorical features defy situation in time or national boundary, but rather by Republique françoyse who sings paeans to "François, franc roy de France et des François" (v. 189). The patriotic coloration in his vision of the Golden Age is unmistakable, and is inextricably linked to his vocation as a court poet. Guy's truism that for the Rhétoriqueur the loss of his protector equaled the loss of his livelihood 25 applies no less to Marot, who was called upon to make fictional heroes of inept mortals and to laud brazen actions on the part of princes. Thus, Rondeau LXV, for example, although written around 1515, fails to reflect the new

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dawn that France was supposedly witnessing, and settles for routinely traditional Instructions for the Prince, who "Pour eviter ennuy plain de malheur, / Le noble estât des armes doibt comprendre." Marot's counsel that "Armes le font hardy, preux & vainqueur" is hardly consonant with nostalgia for Arcadia or ushering in Utopia. Applied to a new Roland—as, on another occasion, Marot tries vainly to glorify Marguerite's husband, Charles, duc d'Alençon—the dissonace would not be so strident, but as it turns out, Epître III, Rondeau XXXI, and Ballade IX exhibit three facets of a vacuous attempt on his part to glorify that nobleman. In the letter to Marguerite he strains to praise the French troops endowed by Nature with chivalric attributes, and to ennoble the duke as best he can with will, virtue, justice, a stout heart, and other qualities befitting "Cesar diet Auguste"; faute de mieux, though, he is finally reduced to endorsing the way Charles policed the restless troops. Rondeau XXXI conveys the desire to witness the forthcoming battle scene in Hainaut, before it lapses into a comic description of languorous camp life, " E n cestuy camp, où la guerre est si doulce, / Allez sur mule avecques une Housse." In point of fact, history records a Charles, duc d'Alençon who was renowned, if for anything, for his usurpation of military command and his subsequent fumbling generalship. Yet in the ballade Marot composed around the same period the entry of Charles is not unlike a laisse describing Charlemagne Devers Haynault, sur les fins de Champaigne, Est arrivé le bon Duc d'Alençon Avec honneur qui tousjours l'acompaigne Comme le sien propre & vary escusson. as first we are given only the direction of an unspecified geste, then the place, the action and, finally, the major figure with his concomitant virtues, whose shield is identified with the person, as it was in heraldry, and joined to his name in rhyme. T h e dilemma of the poet whose artistic imagination aspires to ideals, but whose moral conscience must confront harsh realities, was least apparent—but would have been most obvious—in regard to Francis himself. T h e Saturnian pere des lettres and founder of the trilingue Académie, as he is portrayed in eclogues and épîtres, bears no resemblance to the shrewd but duplicitous ruler whom we have come to know from less biased sources, the king who in 1521 banned all books not approved by the faculty of theology at the Sorbonne. Wide-ranging swings in the king's attitude toward the humanistic side of the Reformation—altera-

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tions that coincide with the 1526 and 1534 periods of danger in Marot's career—can easily be explained by the European political power struggle in which the king found himself engaged. In his efforts to play off alternately the German Protestants and the Pope against Charles V , Francis repeatedly retraced his steps across the lines separating schismatics and the Roman church without definitively breaking with either, and alternately supported or suppressed the Reform and enlightened humanism as a show of good faith to one or the other camp. Freedom of action in Italy, or an alliance with the German princes against the Hapsburgs, represented enormous stakes. Thus we see him save Louis de Berquin, purveyor of Erasmus and Luther, from the stake, yet after the repression of the Meaux group in 1524 and 1526, he lets him hang. In 1531, again reversing his position, he invites Zwingli to present a Profession of Faith and later unsuccessfully invites Melanchthon to France. In the second coq-a-l'4ne (vv. 130-137) Marot blames the Sorbonne for the failure of this attempted rapprochement, but the king's ends were served all the better: a gesture had been made to the German and Swiss reformers of a good faith that neither the pope nor Francis expected to come about—or even less, would have wanted to have kept —in the aftermath of the Affaire des Placards. From the standpoint of internal politics, the Affaire threatened to upset a centuries-old project of the monarchy to assume greater control in directing the Church's business on French soil, and especially in assuming a louder voice in the lucrative appointment of bishops. This newly won but still tenuous Gallican prerogative depended on both the approbation of hard-line French Catholics and papal tolerance. The political program of Francis I, then, itself depended in large measure on preserving the appearance of a moderate, stable, and unified kingdom, with enough power invested in the crown to impose order on rebellious minorities and alter ideological stance as internal and external conditions might dictate. The Affaire des Placards shattered that appearance with its bold statements on the Mass and its threat to royal authority. But the king's anger was clearly more political than religious. The resulting wave of brutal reprisals by the crown derived in part from the effort to restore the appearance of a balance of power and was never entirely out of character for the Father of French Letters. Naturally Marot does not breathe a word in his poetry which would betray his attitude toward this Realpolitik, but it is clear that his attitude toward the court, where such conduct and such concern for appearance would be undersood and even approved, is ambivalent. In his

Past Recaptured art, as in his life, the contrary demands of accedence to court protocol and distaste for its deceit jostled and rubbed against each other, equally powerful in their imperatives. Invariably, though, when his lasting lovehate affair with the court finds expression in his art, it resolves itself into ( 1 ) a hatred of pretense and (2) an admiration of elegance. Expression of cleavage between town and country and the desire to escape Loing de tumulte & loing des plaisirs cours Qui sont en ces ambitieuses Cours. Là me plairoit mieux qu'avec Princes vivre. (Epître LVI, w . 23-25) has the clear silhouette of a literary commonplace. While the fictional hero of Elegie XVIII who yearns to rediscover pastoral innocence Certes on voit aux Champs les Pastoureaux Leur foy garder mieulx que leurs gras Taureaux, Sans nul mal dire. Mais en Palais, grands Villes & Chasteaux Foy n'y est rien; langues y sont cousteaux Par trop mesdire. (w.31-36) gives his picture a biblical flavor by compounding it with an allusion to the maulvaise Herbe of Matthew 13:30, 40, the overall image is essentially no different from earlier treatment of the theme in Guillaume Alexis's Les Faintises du monde or from the latter postures of the Pléiade. Yet the tension between unadorned simplicity and the veneer of civility relates to the much larger concern of the Renaissance for ethical content in verbal meaning and for the equation of expression and self, of poetry and virtue. Time and again Marot cited the court's moral degeneracy in concealing true motives even if at the same time he revered it as the milieu in which "true learning" was advanced and moral and aesthetic feeling was refined. His attack in the coq-à-l'âne (II, v. 59; III, v. 105) against courtiers for their powdered faces was resumed in countless criticisms throughout the century 26 and suggests both the commonplace image of the mask of appearance hiding reality and the frequent criticism of appliquéd figures and colors of rhetoric in poetry. Ronsard's succinct rejection "D'artifice soigneux, toute peinte de fart; / Car toujours la Nature est meilleure que l'art" 2 7 is basically identical to Marot's tribute to "Ung rond parler sans fard, sans artifice, / Si beau, si bon" (Elegie, XXIV, vv. 20-21) where, in the implied equation of beauty and good-

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ness in the last line, the terms are complementary and not redundant. The implications of the conclusion to the third chant-royal, in which four lovers debate their mutual affliction, "Jugez lequel dit le mieulx sans faintise," therefore extend beyond such debates in bene dicendi that enjoyed immense favor in the Renaissance courts of Europe. In L'Enfer, for instance, we learn of the moral emptiness of Rhadamanthus and "Son parler aigre, & en faincte doulceur" (v. 2 4 1 ) . At the opposite extreme, his Rondeau L esteems an anonymous lady for the coincidence of her words and deeds, "C'est que tu as (toy seulle) double grace, Grande vertu, / Grace en maintien & en parolle belle," and settles on the appropriate image to express this ideal: "D'aultant que l'Or tous les Meteaulx surpasse." In the circles Marot frequented, whether Marguerite's, Renée's, or among the unnamed "Dames de France" whose natural attributes are tied to their religious vocation, he would have found models for such immutable qualities of grace and forthrightness.28 At Ferrara alone he conversed with the Reform-minded Michelle de Saubonne; with Anne de Parthenay, whom Giglio Giraldi eulogized in his De diis gentium for her knowledge of music, classical literature, and mastery of recondite theology; and with her sister Renée, celebrated for her competence in art, music and witty debate.29 With considerable refinement, debate covered amorous topics with a long history in the Middle Ages but for the most part tailored to their sixteenth-century audience. The tag of Provençal tracts on love, -fine amor, becomes Amour vaincra voz responses honnestes, Amour est fin, et sa parole farde Pour mieulx tromper. ( Elégie III, w . 64-66) Elégies VIII and X situate a similar discussion in the traditional Mois de May, and while the author of Aucassin et Nicolette speaks bluntly "d'Amor, qui tot vaint" in "el mois de mai," Rondeau LI takes the theme of Amor vincit omnia, "Par seulle amour qui a tout surmonté" through a discussion of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Frequently, however, discussion resolutely follows patterns well ordained by tradition. One theme of the chansons, "Il est assez maistre du corps / Qui a le cueur à sa commande" ( V I I , ca. 1529), is substantially the same as the theme of a courtly novel like Cligès, "Qui a le cuer, si ait le cors," lacking the minor but important emendation of animo in II libro del Cortegiano's "Chi possédé il corpo delle donne è ancora

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signor dell'animo" (II, 95) which Marot might have known in 1528 but probably knew only later through the loose translation of his friend Jacques Colin (1537). 30 Indeed, his most sustained ars honesti amandi, the elegies, follows the most conventional lines of courtly casuistry Le refïuser est chose honneste et bonne; Mais bien souvent (à dire vérité) Il peult tourner en incivilité.

(XXIII, w. 34-36)

and presses Aristotelian rigor into the service of love, followed by his sadness unto death Si fault il bien que vostre Cueur entende Qu'il n'y a chose au Monde qui ne tende A quelcque fin. . . . Homme ne suit le train d'Amours aussi Que soubz espoir d'avoir don de mercy. Et qui ce poinct en osteroit, en somme, D'amour servir ne se mesleroit homme. (XIII, w. 1 1 - 1 3 ,

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This quintessential poinct en amour places Marot's indelible stamp on an erotic theme whose exaggerated fame and convenient classifications 3 1 have overshadowed its darker and more intriguing side. Taken with Complainte II where the cinq poinctz of despair link the narrator with the don of the Crucifixion, it foretells the century's later erotic mysticism, as in d'Aubigné's Stances XIII. Far and away the most consequential influence of the court on Marot was its refinement of language. So much was this the case that, as Villey argues, he instinctively discovered rather than created his own model of le bon usage, and even integrated it into poetic discourses on participle agreement, correct meaning, and barbarous speech.32 If his impecunious state and missed opportunities constantly allowed court demands to impose on his troubled muse, this mère nourricière steadily gave way to the maistresse d'escolle he never tired of acknowledging. This salute to "La Court du Roy" from Epître X L V became so closely attached to his reputation that a coq-à-1'âne rejected outright by Mayer employs the same enthusiastic greeting, "Vive la court, ma maistresse d'escolle," while another laments that "Ce fut Marot qui par cela / Perdit la court et sa maistresse." 33 In fact, the knot between the court and its impression on the writer became so gordian that his autobiographical introduction in L'Enfer comes immediately to the point

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*74 Que j'oubliay ma langue maternelle, Et grossement aprins la paternelle, Langue Françoyse es grands Courts estimée, Laquelle en fin quelcque peu s'est limée,

(w. 401-404) With its emphasis on the court's pruning and smoothing to perfection both the manners and speech of men, Dieu gard la court des dames, où abonde Toute la fleur et l'eslite du monde! Dieu gard en fin toute la court du lys, Lyme et rabot des hommes mal polys! (Cantique III, w . 35-38) his statements on the life of the mind at court reveal a consciousness of cultural discrimination without indulgence in overblown panegyric. Although it is difficult to follow him as he imagines the advantages that would have accrued to Villon "s'il eust esté nourry en la court des roys & des princes, là où les iugements se amendent & les langages se polissent"—or even to imagine Villon at court in the first place—we must still agree with Guy that he had a sharper sense of history than any Rhétoriqueur. 34 That sense of historical perspective was honed by the various translations Marot made. Because he undertook them at the request, or at least with the blessing, of Francis, Marguerite, and other major figures at the court, they frequently are remolded to praise a benefactor, not so much through sycophantic deformation of the text as through an attempt to enlarge the significance of the undertaking. His version of the Colloquy "L'abbé et la femme sçavante," for instance, takes the license of placing "Les nobles filles de Soubize" (v. 338: Anne and Renée de Parthenay) appropriately enough alongside Erasmus's encomium to Thomas More's celebrated Latinist daughters. In a large sense, however, translation transcends a pedestrian transferring of material from one linguistic medium to another, to become a way of enlarging the matter available to his own creative muse. In the debate over Marot's command of Latin, estimates of it have varied from ignorance to increasing competence, if never expertness.85 T h e poet himself allows that his Latin improved under the direction of Celio Calcagnini ( Epître X X X V I I ) , although in the preface to the Metamorphoses he interrupts his discussion of Latin style with the

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parenthetical "si peu que j'y compris." Long ago, however, Villey pointed out the conventional nature of such admissions of humility, and observed that Boyssone's "Marotus latine nescivit" must be read in the context of a humanistic fervor in which knowledge means complete mastery.36 If Marot did not qualify as a Latinist on the level of a Budé, Erasmus, or Calcagnini, it is clear that he did equate the complete restoration of classical culture with the reign of Francis "qui en France en leur entier ramaines / Tous les beaulx artz et sciences rommaines" (Epigramme CLXXIX), and that in his opinion translation played a key role in this revival. His care in distinguishing translation from self-generated outpouring Pour ce que point le sens n'en est yssu De mon cerveau, ains a esté tissu Subtilement par la Muse d'Ovide (Epitre XXII, w . 41-43) and the options he offered the poet in Epître XII Tu en pourras traduire les Volumes Jadis escriptz par les divines Plumes Des vieulx Latins, dont tant est mention. Après, tu peulx de ton invention Faire quelque Oeuvre à jecter en lumière, (w. 57-61 ) simply underscore the usefulness of translation as an aid to poetry, which was endlessly discussed up to and through the Pléiade. One of the prime arguments in favor of translation defended it as the most direct means of imitation, while counterclaims held that it degraded a muse proclaimed to be autonomous and also undercut attempts to elevate national pride. Marot's practice of contaminatio in combining classical, biblical, traditional, and current themes furnished him with a wealth of poetic material while preserving grosso modo his own artistic integrity and whatever "difference peult estre entre les anciens et les modernes." As we have mentioned, this difference is ordinarily sharper in his theorizing than in the specific mechanics of the métier he had to work with, for the creative imagination always outstrips the limits of praxis. His Epître XLVI will strive for immediacy of detail by clothing Ovid's Romans and Scythians in the garb of modem Frenchmen and Germans, but his more deep-set comments on language are more innovations from Lemaire than true reforms, his break with Rhétoriqueur themes in the Cantiques is more crisscrossed than the

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smooth chronological curve critics like to imagine and, as Scollen has shown, the themes that the elegies grace with Ovidian forms are still medieval.37 Yet the writers and genres that provided him with themes and framework did not dictate procedure, for the simple reason that they were so numerous in their variety and that his eclectic muse was too open to this embarras de richesses. His first eclogue, whose general tone is quickly identified as Vergilian, is, however, laced with reminiscences of Moschos, Theocritus, Sannazaro, and Lemaire, and along with the third eclogue presents episodes in which classical and medieval models are superimposed.38 Among the effects of the overlay of classical and medieval culture is the bastardized mythology analyzed by Jean Seznec in La Survivance des dieux antiques. Seznec explained that the pantheon of GraecoRoman antiquity survived by assuming strange Byzantine and folkloric habits that deformed many of its original characteristics while still preserving its decorative physiognomy in painting, mythographic manuals, and moralizing treatises like the Ovide moralisé. The Renaissance made its own particular use of mythology, now praising the fictions poeticques for the unalloyed truth they hid, now reducing (but not dismissing) the Fables plaisantes, mensongeres to an ancillary but lower level of religious symbolism.39 While Marot's treatment of Apollo and Orpheus in the preface to the Psalms associates him with the achievements of the Florentine academies, his disdain for the vieilles histoires is elsewhere apparent in the brevity of his catalog Le jeune Athis feust aymé de Cibelle, Endymion, de Diane la belle; Pour Adonis, Venus tant s'abbayssa Que les haultz cieulx pour la terre layssa. Mais qu'est besoing citer vieilles histoires Quant à chascun les neufves sont notoires. (Elégie XXIV, vv. 45-49) Even his praise in the preface to the Metamorphoses bespeaks a capsular use of myth destined for the sort of mere ornamentation described by Seznec les noms d'Apollo, Daphné, Pyramus & Thisbée, qui a l'histoire aussi loing de l'esprit que les noms près de la bouche: ce que pas ainsi n'yroit, si en facile vulgaire estoit mise ceste belle Metamorphose: laquelle aux poëtes vulgaires & aux painctres ferait tresproufiitable, & aussi decoration grande en nostre langue: veu mesmement que l'arrogance grecque l'a bien voulu mettre en la sienne.40

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On one occasion he strangely inverts the story of imprisoned Danaë by making her captor Jupiter instead of Acrisius and thereby leaves the myth's suggestive power hopelessly confused; neither his version nor its spelling (Danes) has any parallel in mythographers like Boccaccio, Cartari, Conti, Giraldi—or Ovid. Yet in most instances when Marot eschews critical clichés on the fitting or improper use of myth and concentrates on a particular episode of an individual myth, the result is a provocative combination of native and classical tradition. T h e theme of the damsel imprisoned in a tower recurs unconfusedly in Elégie XVII in the simile of Io guarded by hundred-eyed Argus against the lover, a presumed Jupiter. And the somewhat precious Rondeau XV observes all the finer details of the myth as it wrenches them into a compliment to Benedetto Tagliacarne whose faire et dire surpass the Langue ornée of Mercury, god of eloquence "fonder of actions than words," "Brief, si dormir plus que veiller peult nuyre, / T u doibs en loz par sus Mercure bruyre," and pursues even further points of comparison. Of all the mythical tales called up by Marot, the most irrepressible—the story of Hercules—was also the one that held perhaps the greatest significance for the Renaissance. The image of the spontaneous generation of legal cases, compared in L'Enfer (vv. 1 7 7 - 1 8 1 ) to the many-headed Hydra that Hercules fought, appeared in Gringore, returns in the Hecatomgraphie of his enemy Corrozet who lifted numerous other locutions from Marot, and continues in Ronsard, Passerai, and la Boderie. In more peripheral contexts, the version of the Roman de la Rose attributed to Marot treats the magic cloak that eventually killed Hercules ( w . 9193-9202), and an analogous episode occurs in Epitre XXI ( w . 37-42). But it is in the "Ballade du Jour de Noel" where the subtlest integration of classical, biblical, and folkloric strains occurs. There, the shepherds Colin, Georget, and Margot are called to sing "Noel en Françoys ou en Grec," and are reminded that "en ce grand chemin sec / Ung jeune Enfant se combatoit avec / Ung grand Serpent et dangereux Aspic." Sketchy as it is, the allusion is unmistakably a reference to Hercules at the crossroads of virtue and vice, the heroic préfiguration of Christ who slew a serpent in his infancy and was thereby marked as an exemplar of mankind. 41 When, as in the Hercules myth, Marot maintains the individual characteristics of classical and biblical sources while refusing to see the value systems they represent as mutual contraventions, the aesthetic result is an integration into the poem of the source which escapes the superficiality of ornamental décor and correspondingly updates and en-

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riches the genre in question. Leblanc has brilliantly demonstrated how strophes 2, 3, 5, and 6 of Marot's first Epithalame rely de rigueur on the famous epithalamion of Catullus, interrupted in the fourth strophe by a reference to the colloquy Proci et puellae: "Car le Pommier qui porte bon fructage / Vault mieulx que cil qui ne porte que Fleurs" (vv. 3334) . 42 The interruption accords with the political necessities of the marriage of convenience between Renée and Ercole d'Este. Forming a tryptic with his translations of the "Colloque de la Vierge mesprisant Mariage" and the "Colloque de la Vierge repentie," the image drawn from Erasmus situates itself among numerous contemporary discussions on the nature of Christian marriage and thus enlarges the immediate import of a pièce de circonstance. As Leblanc concludes, this single borrowing emphasizes both the radical differences and the analogies between the poem's twin sources, shows once again that Erasmus served Marot as more than a literary model and, with only slight overstatement, suggests that man's needs, tastes, and aspirations form "la mesure de la beauté et de l'utilité de toutes choses." If the first epithalamion reveals how, as an authorial comment, one source can sharply break into and modify a principal source, the second epithalamion to James V of Scotland and Madeleine de France illustrates the fusion of translation, imitation, and poetic creativity that can blur the distinct origin of sources through modifications effected by the creative mind. The piece interweaves well-known fragments from the marriage celebration of Catullus and the mystic wedding of the Song of Songs, transforming its sources and ultimately itself into an appropriate allusion drawn from the Metamorphoses. But Marot's prime source here, to which he returns time and again, is the Psaumes ( X I X and X L V ) , which he was then engaged in translating.43 Since imitation of models was at the very heart of the Renaissance concept of creativity and was fundamental to its artistic practice, the remainder of this chapter will examine precisely the ways in which Marot approached Ovid, Vergil, and Petrarch, three of the sixteenth century's most cherished guides of ancient and modern times, for whom his own varying degrees of affinity were influenced both by artistic demands and court protocol. Ever since Guy pointed to the extensive ways in which Ovid's Heroides served the Rhétoriqueurs as models for their épîtres, critics like Scollen have discussed this influence on the formal shape of works like Marot's "Epistre de Maguelonne à son amy Pierre de Prouvence." 44 Although the influence in question is habitually cited as evidence that Marot's epistle is a throwback to the limited

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concerns and less polished talents of an earlier age, it should be pointed out that specific episodes of Ovid's collection enjoyed an unbroken vogue as moral exempla well beyond Marot's time. This moral imperative was true not only of the Heroides but also of the Ars amatoria as it was then read.45 The title itself of his "Rondeau duquel les letres Capitales portent le nom de l'Autheur," juxtaposed to "l'Epître de Maguelonne" in all the editions Marot oversaw, spealcs for the Rhéroriqueur influence on it. Its theme, stressing the moral stature of the heroine who "d'un cousteau son cueur ne traspersa . . . et ne fut point felonne Comme Dido," implies a reading of Heroides V I I , w . 189-196, where Dido's honor and death are the principal subject. These verses of Ovid were variously examined, emended, and adapted to the particular needs of writers and contexts as the debate over Dido's felonie continued through midcentury. Jodelle shaped the passage into an oblique attack on religion and the papacy in Didon se sacrifiant (vv. 22522266), leaning slightly in Dido's favor. Du Bellay, the century's most prominent adapter of Ovid, felt so strongly about vindicating Dido's honor, "declarant la vérité de l'hystoire de Didon, pour ce qu'il me sembloit inique de renouveler l'injure qu'elle a receu par Vergile," that he suppressed the incriminating "praebuerim sceleri brachia nostra tuo" (v. 126) in his translation of Heroides V I I , and, led by this feeling, emended his translation of Vergil's momentous "Speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem" (Aeneid I V , 124, 165) while masterfully approximating the dactylic rhythm to accentuate Dido at Aeneas's expense: "Didon la belle et le troien ensemble." As with the impact of Ovidian forms, the extent of Ovid's psychological insight in Marot's epîtres has been repeatedly measured in recent years, even if assessment of Marot's skillful use of the Tristia and Ex ponto has varied. Villey has demonstrated how and why Marot improved over the years in selecting certain passages from Ovid while shunning others, and with greater conviction Pauline Smith has argued that the integration of these passages forms a perfect complement to the uniquely personal vision of the French poet's ennuys and propos tristes.46 Yet again, in order to evaluate fully the lessons that classical texts held for Renaissance writers and to appreciate the creative mind as it responds to shifting contexts, it is incumbent to evaluate the means and reasons for the integration of single literary fragments into divergent texts. Not only do borrowings from different provenance crowd together in single poems but, as readers of Du Bellay, Scève, Ronsard, and Montaigne will attest, snatches from the same classical passages recur in

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separate compositions as a means of binding them together or of marking their individuality. One such case is Marot's Epitre X L V I to Marguerite, which assembles allusions from the Tristia and various books of the Pontic epistles. The most commanding image taken from E x ponto I, ii, 41-56, conjures up the exile whose ills should be assuaged by sleep but who, like Hamlet, is tormented by a lively memory that brings on dreams of a lost happiness. Ovid's transposed image is implanted as a topos into the psychological and even metaphysical concern of the Renaissance for the validity and reality of dreams as a means of cognition. It is based on the aesthetic wish to illustrate a subject by lively and embellished figures for the mind's eye of the reader, "représenter / Apres du vif de mon malheur l'ymaige" ( w . or 108-09), der to make him feel he is actually witnessing an action or experiencing an emotion. Marot's conclusion, Ainsy ayant senty à la legere Ceste lyesse et joye mensongere, Pis que devant je me trouve empiré Du souvenir de mon bien désiré; 47 (vv. 1 2 3 - 1 2 6 ) recurs in Epltre LIII as a way of heightening (Encores plus) a preceding series of images dealing with the distractions of imagination and bittersweet love, and in order to introduce a distant reminiscence of the effects of Cupid from the Amoris remedia: "Encores plus, car le bien, quand il vient, / Ce n'est qu'ennuy, quand après en souvient" ( w . 83-84). This theme populated didactic manuals of Renaissance courts like II Cortegiano where, together with the counsel of familiarity with the examples of Latin literature, the initiate is told that "meglio è passer con silenzio quello che senza dolor ricordar non si po" (I, 4 3 44). From the point of view of modern concepts of creativity, it is curious that at the same time they resort to literary prototypes quickly recognized by the humanist's trained eye, poets proudly announce their creative originality.48 Some ten years after Marot's épître to Marguerite, her own discussion of the misfortunes of love in La Coche appeals to the psychological realism in the image as evidence of the ravages of l'aveugle vainqueur, and from that intimates the novelty of the case Helas! jugez en quel travail je suis! Je n'ay plus rien, sinon que la mémoire Du bien passé, qui entretient mon dueil. Je croy que nul n'ha veu pareille histoire. (w.341-344)

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Aside from a superficial resemblance in the names Marot-Maro on which he occasionally played with skill, Marot seems not to have had with Vergil the consanguinity of parallel careers and emotional isolation he had with Ovid. If indeed he once meditated "D'escripre vers en grant nombre et hault style" like Vergil—in an epigram imitated, significantly, from the short-winded Martial (CLIII)—his most patent imitations in eclogues that embroider bucolic or Golden Age themes are not substantially different from prior or subsequent variations by other poets on the same themes. Mayer is essentially correct in claiming that Marot's locating a group of Rhétoriqueurs in the Elysian Fields "Tout à l'entour des Lauriers tousjours verts" (Complainte V I I ) is not a surrender to Rhétoriqueur procedures.49 It is, rather, an appeal to an image that would be commonly employed from Petrarch to Du Bellay for its association of the magic of the Golden Bough with the immortality promised by the poet's laurel crown. It is, then, a loosely imitative adaptation of a classical model more than a subscription to it through slavish translation, one where creativity is a question of insightful interpretation, not unparalleled use. Poetic imagery from the Rhétoriqueurs to the Pléiade varies less in type than in the programmatic intent of similar images. Variegated literary vignettes traceable to kindred or identical sources are explained by the continued use of popular copybooks or poetriae of "première rhétorique." By judiciously culling from an open book or by exercising the literary memory through ingested readings, poets often conjured up time-honored images upon which they worked variations. These manuals not only suggested treatment of special themes but also furnished verse fragments designed to illustrate them, from which both aspiring and experienced writers constructed centos and pastiches of other writers' style. Vergil was a favorite model for these centos and recurring themes, and the numerous publications, translations, and adaptations of the Aeneid, especially of the first six cantos, in the first half-century made the Mantuan a source constantly pillaged for countless situations that might have given him pause. The dramatic image of Aeneid IV, 88-89, where the building of the fortifications of Carthage came to a halt by the mere presence of the Trojan captain in Dido's life, "pendent opera interrupta," naturally fired the imagination of poets who seized upon its classical flavor and import for their own uses whether in love or in war. In Epigramme XCII Marot reworks the theme of the "knot that binds" both the beloved's locks and the lover's heart, as Mellin de Saint-Gelais and Ronsard would both do later. Classical atmosphere is evident in his treatment of the indissoluble knot ("tu n'as sceu . . .

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L'autre moytié desnouer, ne parfaire j Ton oeuvre empris" ) through the Vergilian reminiscence and allusions to the gordian knot "d'Alexandre tranché." Amid full classical trappings his Epître LVII invokes a different muse. As the circumstances of the poem alter, so does his intent, " N e de flageol soner chant Bucolique, / Ains soneray la Trompete bellique / D'un grand Virgile" (vv. 71-73), but the key image does not. Alluding to the king's loss of Italian territories, he invokes Mars and Minerva to pray " T e doint finir ton oeuvre commancée" (v. 65). Even when ornamental appearances are similar, the image can encompass moods as divergent as melancholy and satire. T h e premise of Epître LU is that if Theseus entered hell for his friend Pirithous, Marot can surely climb Parnassus to sing the sad story of the poet Papillon "Quand maladie extreme luy a fait / Son oeuvre empris demourer imparfaict" (vv. 55-56). Du Bellay, on the other hand, wittily compares a labor of Hercules to the work of the reform-minded pope Marcellus II who, overcome by the stench of Roman vice, "Tomba mort au milieu de son oeuvre entrepris" (Regrets CIX). A comparison of Marot's Vergilian themes and centos with those derived from or associated with Ovid confirms the inherent variety of the procedure, cross-fertilization of sources, and ability to transform a well-known expression into an ingredient of the poet's own personal view and circumstance. The Dies irae theme of Psaume XXXVIII is incorporated into the prayer of an ill and suffering King David who pleads for a diminution of God's righteous anger Las! en ta fureur aigiie Ne m'argiie De mon faict, Dieu toutpuissant: Ton ardeur un peu retire, N'en ton ire Ne me puniz languissant. W h e n Marot patches together Cantique VII from numerous recollections of Psalm fragments, and thus affirms their similarities of theme and genre, God's mitigated anger, "Puis qu'envers nous l'ire de Dieu s'appaise" (v. 98), applies to King Francis who was then recovering from a serious illness. From these poems to Epître X L I V , Marot moves from the evangelical and court milieus to the individual in exile and inevitably calls on the dies irae of Ovid's famous Tristia II for inspiration: "Car qui pourrait m'aymer d'amour ouverte, / Voyant à l'oeil contre moy descouverte / L'ire du roy?" ( w . 147-149). O n another occasion Marot divided his time between the gods of Ovid in his 1539

Past Recaptured translation of Metamorphoses II and the God of David in the thirty Psalms presented to the king. Here he shifts from righteous and mitigated to an implication of wrongful anger. Just as Ovid, protesting his loyalty pro domo in exile to Augustus, had said that even clear-sighted gods are pacified, Marot writes from "Le départir que Dieu me conseilla" in Venice to Francis "du pays roy et pere" in order to suggest that he reconsider the poet's case. Nothing in the career or personality of Francis uniquely singled him out for this comparison with Augustus. Petrarch extended the same compliment to Charles IV and Du Bellay built his "Hymne sur la prinse de Calais" around a supposed parallel in military daring between Augustus and Henri II. Whereas Marot held with some justification that Francis had made "les lettres et les artz / Plus reluysants que du temps des Césars" (Epître X X X V I ) , vv. 55-56) and identified him as the pater patriae, his allowance that "puis le temps de Cesar diet Auguste, / On n'a point veu Prince au monde plus juste" than Charles d'Alençon (Epître III, vv. 123-124) says less for his historical accuracy than for his blind charity. Or for his sycophancy. Yet his comparison of God with Jupiter and finally with the king thrusts such commonly received compliments into the breadth of cultural pluralism discussed earlier in this chapter. Interchange of l'Eternel for Iuppiter in Epître XLIV is occasioned by the sheer necessity of adapting Ovid's Tristia II to the French scene, and the unparalleled force invested in the scepter of the monarch, whom Marot persisted in seeing as God's prime minister as well as his own Maecenas, made the king's creative (and re-creative) powers a natural subject of court tribute. Later Jean Passerat will plead to the king on the death of his fool that "il est presque en vous de le ressusciter," while at the end of the Regrets Du Bellay, recognizing the king's power as the mightiest under God, reasons that Henri II might properly aid the lowly poet: "de rien un grand Roy peult faire quelque chose." 60 It is within this tradition of dependency and graduated power that Marot jocosely lauds Francis as a creator of debtors (Epitre X X V ) , petitions his thaumaturgy, "Prince que j'ayme & crains, / Faictes miracles avecques aulcuns grains!" (Rondeau XXXII), and with earnest intent confuses his plea to the king with a prayer to God (Epître XXXVI). And it is against this alternately real and imagined background that in 1528 Marot praises the "science & divine & humaine" of the cardinal of Lorraine, flatters his alleged familial descent from the king of Jerusalem, and thanks him in advance "De m'avoir faict de néant quelcque chose" (Epitre X V ) . This tradition was not without its countertradition. In 1528 Erasmus's

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Dialogus Ciceronianus reduced to absurdity the Ciceronianism that Poliziano had already destructively analyzed some forty years before. Starting with the error of using a Cicero thesaurus excessively as a handbook for composition, he proceeded to the affectation of draping in Christian robes terms that are proper to classical paganism—Jupiter Optimus Maximus for God the Father, Apollo for Christ. To prove his point, Erasmus amusingly rewrote the Apostle's Creed in Circeronian guise. As usual, his jest is deeply earnest, satirizing not merely the pedantry of such paganism nor even its irreverence but also the unreality of verba dissociated wholly from res, of adaptive verbalism devoid of substance. A style preoccupied with imitation of past usage has no capacity for lively embodiment of contemporary ideas and actions. But the serious failing, as the straw man in his dialogue is forced to concede, is that the cult is illusory, a dream that has never been realized even according to Ciceronian adepts. Erasmus's objections to the excesses of Ciceronian stylistics, however, would not hold when the relation between referent and reference is purposefully ambiguous and broad enough to accommodate a synthesis of initially foreign values. The extensive debate that we have witnessed over the range of meaning and implications in the definition of Mary's stature as "Plaine de grace abondamment" easily accounts for the translator's license in the way he has David address his Old Testament sovereign, "Seigneur plein de grace" (Psaumes VI, CIII). Correspondingly, the tightly structured analogy of Epitre XII, in which he is made to inherit his father's legacy through God's grace, leads Marot to seek the consummation of this bequest through Francis, "Sire, de pleine grace." If he stretches things a bit far in Chanson XXVIII by rhyming "amour mondaine" with "La grace pleine," referring to the erotic "cinquiesme poinct en Amour," the accolade in Epithalame II to Madeleine de France "ou tant de grace abonde" befits the Psalms that furnish the material for many of the poem's images and is entirely understandable by reason of her blood descent from the king her father. Nowhere is there a tighter analogy between past and present—la grande conference, as Marot put it—than in the introduction to the Trente psaumes. At the outset he supports his assumption that the king's benediction makes the work "& royal & chrestien" and with a point-bypoint correspondence between Francis and David in terms of their manifest virtue, mastery of Fortune's caprice, honored kingship and cultivation of "toutes sciences bonnes." This overture on the pluralism of knowing prepares the pantheistic interchange of tutelary gods and

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divine inspiration : "Dieu son Apollo estoit, . . . Le sainct Esprit estoit sa Calliope." The ensuing promise that "Christ y venez par David figuré" through the familiar example of their related suffering is emblematic but no more exclusively theological in its resonance than Ballade XII "de Caresme" which adumbrates the Renaissance topos of the Death of Pan prefiguring the passion of Christ. 51 Clearly, the Renaissance notion of contaminatio in Marot extends beyond a blending of literary sources to embrace a synthesis of cultural milieu—past and present, religious and secular—according to the demands of poetic context and within the dictates of social decorum. Adaption of images and verse fragments according to literary and social conventions is nowhere more apparent than in Marot's flirtations with Petrarchism. Recent scholarship has refined to the point of discrediting Villey's tacit assumption that Marot encountered Italianism more in contact with renewed interest in polished court manners than through acquaintance with the literature of courtliness.52 The extent to which Marot's early work, especially his fixed-form poetry, is charged with reminiscences or direct borrowings from Petrarch and neo-Petrarchan poets like Serafino dall'Aquila, Tebaldeo, Chariteo, and Olimpo di Sassoferrato has become increasingly obvious, as is the ease with which these Italian models coincide with or are mistaken for the survival of an analogous French courtly tradition. 53 When precise literary models exist, they can be adapted to innumerable circumstances, but many socalled borrowings, such as the theme of contrary emotions coexisting, are of such wide occurrence in French and Italian courtly literature that particular models cannot be easily ascribed. Furthermore, conventions peculiar to courtly language were readily translatable, limited as they were to such universal correspondences as that of colors symbolizing emotions which Marot and certain of his Italian sources use,54 or the contaminatio which equates the Christian liturgical calendar with the chronology of an imagined love affair, fundamental to the Canzoniere, to L'Olive, and evident in an accessory function in Marot's Elégie XI. Yet even when we have at hand finely chiseled images and precise conceits, the smooth blend of Petrarchan language with traditional native idiom often makes the attribution of sources conjectural in the absence of extraliterary clues as to whether Marot came across his sources from direct readings in Petrarch or his followers, from his father or from the anthology handbooks and copybooks that circulated widely. Faced with uncertainty about derivation, it is much easier, and perhaps more useful, to identify concetti than to stipulate exact derivation. Is

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the question Marot addressed to the artificer of Nature concerning the king's illness As tu basty pour après ruyner? As tu voulu planter & jardiner Pour ton labeur parfaict exterminer? (Cantique VII) indebted to Petrarch's O Natura, pietosa e fera madre, onde tal possa e si contrarie voglie di far cose e disfar tanto leggiadre? as is L'Olive CIII on the beloved's illness? The surrounding images that Marot drew from the Psalms do not nullify such an attribution any more than they affirm it. And is it possible to attribute Rondeau XI to Olimpo di Sassoferrato Or si je meurs je veulx Dieu requérir Prendre mon Ame, &, sans plus enquerir, Je donne aux vers mon Corps plein de foiblesse; Quant est du Cueur du tout je le te laisse, . . .

Il cuor ti lasso, donna di valore: Di lui fa quel che voi, quel che ti piace, Ch'obedir deve il servo il suo signore. Gli ossi alla terra lasso, dove iace

without also acknowledging Villon Premier, je donne ma povre ame A la benoiste Trinité, . . . Item, mon corps j'ordonne et laisse A nostre grant mere la terre; Les vers n'y trouveront grant gresse, . . . Item, m'amour, ma chiere Rose, Ne luy laisse ne cuer ne foye; (vv. 833-834, 841-843, 910-911) whose so-called Ballade du concours de Blois, "Je meurs de seuf auprès de la fontaine," is recalled by "Auprès de l'eau me fault de soif périr" in Marot's poem. Even more important than the ferreting out of instances of Marot's Petrarchism has been the chronology proposed by Mayer of Marot's reactions to the Petrarchan vogue. As late as 1535— 1536 while he was still in exile in Italy, Marot indulged in the Italianate style of extended and farfetched conceits. That same style had

Past Recaptured been influential in France since the first third of the century. Thus the fact that his return to France brought a diminution in his poetry rather than an increase of neo-Petrarchism in the precious vein may be attributable, according to Mayer's persuasive hypothesis, to his discovery that quattrocentisti like Chariteo, Tebaldeo, and Serafino who exerted the first Petrarchan influence in France had given way to the rising star of Bembo with its weightier and more sober approach.65 Marot's experience with Petrarchism was less a subscription to a philosophy or a codified system of thought than an excursion into literary material that could be adapted to changing needs and court styles or, if need be, even dropped. This lack of true allegiance to the Petrarchan object of love is seen in Epigramme LXXXIX where he apostrophizes and accounts for veneration of Laura's virtues as an effect of the funeral monument than Francis had built for her, not as its cause. In Epigramme LXXXI he abruptly renounces the inaccessibility of that virtue, "Laisse tout là!" and categorizes it simply along the in vita and in morte lines of the Canzoniere: "Ceste doulceur qui d'aymer sgait contraindre / Et ses vertus que mort ne peult estaindre." The six sonnets of Petrarch that Marot later translated, three of those in vita then three of the in morte, follow this convenient scheme and adapt the Italian poet's ethereal qualities to a much more practical setting. In the first sonnet the vario stile from "Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono" becomes Marot's more particular "feis rithme et chanson" and the religious overtones of perdono disappear in excuse. Although Marot copies some of Petrarch's Italian peculiarities (paragona-paragonne), he systematically eschews the votive and theological terminology of the sonnet "Gli angeli eletti e l'anime beate" ("Les purs espritz, les anges precieux"), passing through such non sequiturs as d'heure à heure for più perfetti and terminating in crier instead of pregar. The transferal is, ultimately, from the lover who passively registers an ineffable experience to an assertive narrator who controls a more concrete experience. Thus from the nondescript bei capelli of the sonnet "Da' più belli occhi e dal più chiaro viso" we advance to beaulx cheveulx longs and move from the passive prendean vita i miei spirti of the Italian poet's penseri to the active Je prenois vie of Marot's vueil. In his earlier poems, however, Marot is if anything more courtly than in his translations when he differs from his model Serafino (Rondeau V ) ; when he totally shuns Serafino's rejection of voluntary servitude, "Or poi che regna in te poca pietade / Non ti spiacia s'io troni in libertade," he still remains parallel in tone with the Italian poet

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i88 Le triste Corps! ne le laisse sans Cueur! Mais loges y le tien, qui est vainqueur De l'humble Serf qui son vouloir te mande Tant seullement.

(Rondeau LII) His attitude assuredly evolved, then, toward one of recognizing the appropriateness of neo-Petrarchan themes, imagery and tone to the currency and fashion of his own verse. But his views on techniques of using Petrarch as a literary exemplar among innumerable other favorites did not substantially alter. Epître LUI (ca. 1541) again calls forth the martyrdom of "cueur, corps & ame" before posing the all-important question Qu'est ce qu'amour? voy qu'en dit Saingelays, Petrarque aussi & plusieurs hommes lays, Prebstres & clercs, & gens de tous estophes, Hebreux & Grecz, Latins & Philosophes. Ceux là en ont bien diet par leurs sentences (vv. 35-40) Instead of resolving the enigma, Marot refers the aspirant to an imagined bookshelf where Octovien de Saint-Gelais would stand as an equal alongside Petrarch on the strength of the pithy maxims and moral apothegms that he as well as Petrarch offers. As early as the Temple de Cupido, he cited a similar list Ovidius, maistre Alain Charretier, Petrarche, aussi le Rommant de la Rose, Sont les Messelz, Bréviaire & Psaultier, Qu'en ce sainct Temple on list en Rime & Prose; Et les Leçons que chanter on y ose, Ce sont Rondeaulx, Ballades, Virelais, Motz à plaisir, Rimes & Triolletz, Lesquelz Venus aprend à retenir A ung grant tas d'amoureux nouveletz, Pour mieulx savoir dames entretenir. (w. 323-332) in which Petrarch occupies a more prominent place but is still used as an ars memoriae and for his matière de bréviaire which can be adapted to many circumstances. Petrarch's famous "Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi" is one instance where a single motif, the melancholy isolation of deep lament,

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lends itself to diverse contexts. T h e Pléiade poets knew the sonnet well, and their appeal to it respects the integrity of the incipit by effecting few or no emendations, whether in Du Bellay's "Seul & pensif par la deserte plaine" of L'Olive LXXXTV or in Baïf's "Solitaire et pensif par les lieux plus sauvages" of Amours de Francine, II, cxxi. Clément's son Michel went so far as to make Triste •($• pensif his personal devise.56 If Marot is indeed the author of the "Pastoureau Chrestien's" lament "Qui s'en alloit complaignant par les boys, / Seul & privé de compagnie toute" (vv. 2 - 3 ) , then we see there an example of his hewing close to the spirit and letter of Petrarch. But in authentic poems his inspiration is alloyed with extraneous influences to the point where the reader, remembering the pairing of Petrarch and Lorris in the Temple de Cupido and seeing the Rhétoriqueurs " T o u t à l'entour des Lauriers tousjours verts" (v. 1 7 ) in Complainte VII Peult veoir de loing Loris encor faisant Tout à part soy ses regretz & clamours Apres sa Rose. (vv. 72-74) Study of the Temple's variants reveals the source's fecundity and the transmutation of shaded emotions from "Triste et pensif ainsi ie me pourmaine" and "Triste et dolent" to the present version "Songeant, resvant, longuement me pourmaine" (v. 423). This emotional latitude and the range of sources in individual poem sequences allow him to accommodate both Petrarch and possibly Alain Chartier in Rondeau

XLVI Tout à part soy est melancolieux Le tien Servant, qui s'esloigne des lieux Là où l'on veult chanter, dancer et rire. whereas the "Rondeau à la jeune Dame mélancolique et solitaire" ( L I ) is much closer in provenance and tone to Tebaldeo, Serafino, and Chariteo. 67 In prosopopoeia where the characteristics of the narrator are defined or are obvious to all, such feelings are placed in his mouth or denied to him according to the precepts of decorum. They are thus denied to the ribald Alix in Epigramme CLXVII Jamais Alix son feu mary ne pleure Tout à par soy, tant est de bonne sorte; . . . Mais le vray dueil, sçayz tu bien qui le porte? C'est cestuy là qui sans tesmoings se deult.

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where Petrarch's "sia la mia vita ch'£ celata altrui" coincides with the more evident source in Martial, "ille dolet vere qui sine teste dolet." T h e Florentine model, however, corresponds more appropriately to the introspective feelings of Catherine de Medicis in her supposed lament to Marguerite in Epitre L V , "Aucunesfois, au jardin m'en allant, / T o u t a part moy, & luy je voys parlant" ( w . 3 1 - 3 2 ) . 6 8 Fascinating though Marot's variations on the theme of the Golden Age occasionally are, the vision of return to the lost innocence of an imagined past when the lion would lie with the lamb in undisturbed harmony frequently remains on the level of the rhetorical set piece, or more commonly points to thought development that stems from but transcends the myth itself. But the myth of the Golden Age does gain a deeper significance through the poet's manifold efforts to restore the "paternelle langue frangoyse" to a state of perfection, a character of elegance, and a capacity for finely varied expression which, despite his fascination with the theme of cyclic return, that language had never really known. Similes uniting in time the essence of gold with the cultural excellence of language seem to come naturally to his mind: "tout ainsi que le F e u l'Or affine, / L e Temps a faict nostre langue plus fine" (Rondeau X V I I I ) . Tempered by the corrective influence of his "maistresse d'escolle," and with due allowance for the whims and arbitrariness of the creative influence of the court, Marot the creator roams within "the zodiac of his own wit" as he synthesizes both the disparities and affinities of Latin, Italian, and native French traditions of image, theme, and meaning. His literary experience with language and the means by which he molds his verbal art so as to imitate nature and shape his own literary personality, which we glimpse in and between his lines of verse, will be the subject of the third part of this book.

VII: LANGUAGE: BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum Reddiderit juncture novum —HORACE, Ars poetica, 4 7 - 4 8

cultivation and abandonment of Italianate styling on the basis of alteration in court taste, not unlike the Pléiade's recommendation of Petrarch in 1549 and foreswearing of "l'art de Petrarquizer" around 1553, is part of a broader experience with language that goes far in clarifying his misunderstood status as a "transitional figure." Despite the Deffence et Illustration's attribution of the poverty of French letters and language to "l'ignorance de nos majeure" and their unwillingness to abandon episseries, to seek new avenues of inspiration and create neologisms, the ways in which Marot maintains his links with the past and accommodates those links to the tastes and demands of a constantly shifting present, place him in the forefront of some of the Renaissance's most vital experiments with the nature of literary expression. Linguistic remnants from a past age became the grist for elaborated discussions at court during the period when Marot was moving from archaic usage as a reflex of his surviving cultural past toward the conscious usage that both re-created an atmosphere of former times and marked his distance from them. In II Cortegiano Ludovico da Canossa, the emissary of Francis I to Venice, dismisses from his conversation "quelle parole antiche toscane, che già sono dalla consuetudine dei Toscani d'oggidì rifiutate; e con tutto questo credo che ognun di mi rideria." But Federico Gonzaga retorts that "danno molta grazia ed autorità alle scritture, e da esse risulta una lingua più grave e piena di maestà che dalle moderne," and soon after affirms the worth of such archaisms for "acutezza recondita" (I, 28-30). M A R O T ' S ALTERNATE

Collective critical opinion has recognized the historical perspective

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that imbues Marot's archaic usage as a means of updating his cultural past and later as a means of achieving aesthetic distance for a complexity of reasons. The 1526 version of the Roman de la Rose attributed to him preserves the Old French syntax with its omission of subject pronouns in lines like " E t veirent plaines de palus" (v. 17,979), but adds them when emendation does not entail a major line revision: "Si s'en allerent a confesse" > "Ilz s'en allerent a confesse" (v. 17,984). No editorial indecision, this fluctuation accords with the growing trend of requiring the pronoun before its verb in poetry as in prose, which was not cemented until the 1550s. 1 The reverse tendency of fitting to modern contexts vocabulary that had fallen from usage assures linguistic density and qualities of "splendore e dignità . . . virtù ed eleganzia" as Castiglione's interlocutors had suggested by redoubling the original meaning with accrued authority of tradition. Marot's letter to the aging Chancellier du Prat appeals to the taste of a bygone era with the archaic pronoun ly (lui), "C'est pour Marot, vous le congnoissez ly," while rhyming it with Volucres Coeli, whose importance to the new generation has been discussed.2 Thus, the updating of an older text according to the evolving norms of the language and the antiquating of his own modern work became separately directed but similarly effective ways of insuring the evolution and survival of native tradition. Marot's willingness to blur the distinction between past and present aesthetic norms was not limited to the single word, nor did it go unnoticed. In the wake of the 1534 quarrel with Sagon, Nicole Glotelet felt obliged to justify Marot's reluctance to write in Latin, despite the classical as well as medieval masterworks he offered to his contemporaries, and his efforts to return to the deep resources of the native language, for "Quant il escrit en langage vulgaire, / A tous il sert, mesmes au populaire." 3 Yet as early as the Adolescence, especially in works like Le Temple de Cupido and "L'Epìtre de Maguelonne" that hark back to an earlier taste and for which we know the first stages of composition, we can see that he began to divest his poetry of latinisms and archaic terms like si (v. 6), se diligenter (v. 95), entour (v. 129) and marisson (v. 159), not out of fear of critical reproof but simply because they had lapsed from use at court. When outmoded terms reappear in Marot's poetry, as they do sporadically in later years, it is most often to the contrary effect of suggesting by their very status as outmoded artifacts the superiority of what was no longer in fashion over the customs of a degenerated present. Ver, replaced by Printemps in the first verse of Le Temple de Cupido, is reused as an intentional anachronism in Epitre

Language: Between Past and Future XVII (ca. 1533) which terminates with a wish for longevity known only in sweeter times Que nonobstant que nostre Amytié ferme Tousjours florisse en sa verdeur frequente, . . . Qui reverdir la faict, et eslever Comme la Rose au plaisant temps de Ver. (w. 56-57, 61-62) The poem's termination thus returns us momentarily to Old French, but ultimately its suggestiveness summons the seasonless Golden Age of the classical imagination when "ver erat aeternum," or at least Vergil's Silver Age when "Hic ver adsiduum atque alienis mensis aestas" (Georgics, II, 149). With a similar glance cast backward at the "bon vieulx temps" when friendship reigned supreme, the Rondeau "De l'Amour du Siecle Antique" remained unpublished until 1538 and resumes not only an outmoded vocabulary but an entire poetic form as well which Marot had long since abandoned. Mayer has briefly pointed to the rich complexity of Marot's archaisms of concept, form, and word which must be evaluated, beyond their face value, in light of the author's intent. According to this view, the title of the Chantilly manuscript, Recueil des dernieres Oeuvres de Clément Marot, reminiscent of well-known late medieval anthologies like the Recueil de tout soulas, is descriptive less of its content than of a taste that would have appealed to Anne de Montmorency; the first eclogue, which recalls a classical form while peopling it with medieval personae, innovates synchronically by integrating its classical models with the lamentation of cities and ponderous alliterations so dear to the Rhétoriqueurs: his last Complainte (VII, 1543) however, written years after his earlier ones, is anachronistic both in form and content since it visits the underworld haunt of departed poets in the prosopopeic mode they themselves employed; and even Marot's appeal to rime équivoquée would seem anachronistic by the divergence of his jocular attitude from the predominant seriousness of Rhétoriqueur usage.4 Of course, some of the word games that abound in Marot which might be read as anachronisms do not lack for counterparts in the Pléiade. Despite the supposed modernity of the Regrets, their praise of "Maraud, qui n'es maraud que de nom seulement" (sonnet L I V ) and their implied opposition between the iron age of Italy, " L e peuple de Ferrare est un peuple de fer" (sonnet C X X X I I ) and the supposed Golden Age of France and "Paris sans pair" (sonnet C X X X V I I I ) would

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surely have struck a resonant chord in Marot who also wrote in praise of "Paris sans pareille" (Epitre XXI). But as a Januslike figure Marot revels in wordplays on proper names in precisely the same fashion as his predecessors, whether they center on mythological deities "Pallas palle" and "Mars tout marry" (Cantique VII), on distinguished court personages, "Partenay, ne partez pas" (Epître XLI) or, appropriately or not, on people he befriended in distress like Lyon Jamet or Florimond Robertet: Si son nom propre à dire on me semont Je respondray qu'à son loz se compassé; Son loz fleurist, son nom c'est Florimont, Ung mont flory, ung plus que flory mont, (w. 253-256) The apparently questionable taste of this last example is evidence that Marot invested the homonymie relationship with a potential meaning beyond its superficial coyness. His protracted self-introduction in L'Enfer similarly begins with a comment on the origin of his name "Quant au surnom, aussi vray qu'Evangille," where the more than proverbial tag attests authoritatively to the seriousness and validity of the following argument just as it does in "Marie est (vray comme l'Evangile) / La digne Couche" of the "Chant-Royal de la Conception." As in the "Déploration," the chiastic syntax advances a standard of excellence against which the individual is evaluated Maro s'appelle, & Marot je me nomme, Marot je suis, & Maro ne suis pas; (w. 362-363) Despite the admitted disparity between Clément and Vergil, the attack on purgatory and praise of " L e beau verger des lettres" which surround the taxonomy of names does not allow us to dismiss its speciousness as being intended for a purely comic effect. In the attack of the "Six Dames de Paris" against "un sy vil n'y a comparaison, / Nommé Clement Marot, voyre marault" (vv. 6-7) sarcasm is apparent, but in the Frippelippes defense of the "Maro de France" (v. 252) and in eulogies where its formulaic cast is molded to different circumstances, "Non que Marot, mais Maro te responde" (Epître XXXI), "Non que Marot, mais Maro la recite" (Epître XLIV), levity, for the moment, is absent. The wide range of connotation from praise to blame in individual words, based on the correspondence between their physiognomy and

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meaning, is related to a deep-seated tradition that the Renaissance inherited and enlarged upon from the Middle Ages and classical antiquity. The Etymologiae of the medieval grammarian and philosopher Isidore of Seville enjoyed considerable fame among the Rhétoriqueurs Marot subsequently disavowed (e.g., Molinet's Ad laudem irundinis) but was also venerated by Jean Lemaire who quoted him in the Illustrations and Couronne margaritique and who held in mind Isidore's comments on the Fortumtae Insulae ( X I V , 6, 8) during the composition of his "Isles Fortunées" in l'Amant vert (vv. 301-305). Isidore based his summa of all things knowable on the Horatian link between res and verba and concluded that the origin and force of things and words could be understood if their etymology was known. Throughout his book he comments on the moral value and poetic use of proper names on the strength of their cause, origin and, most interestingly, their contrary properties (lucas a non lucendo). From Justinian through Dante this principle was summarized in the reversible dictum "Nomina sunt consequentia rerum"—the name of an object is the reality of its very substance. This unanimity did not survive the early Renaissance and in literature it developed into a controversy that was roughly equivalent to the earlier contention between Realists and Nominalists in theology. Ever since Petrarch's paraphrase of Cicero to the effect that in literature man could recognize and thus attain the sum and substance of the created world (De vita solitaria, II, 9, 6,), the written or spoken word, guided by formal rhetoric that encouraged imitation of the ancients and assured communal response, became the means of enhancing one's cultural attributes and awareness above and beyond the mere animal stage. Whence comes the simultaneous praise of "Grace en maintien & en parolle belle" (Rondeau L ) . As a consequence of the assumed concordance between res and verba and stemming from the belief that creativity lay in significant variations on eternal themes, the cult of literary form led to phrase books of classical dicta and linguistic expression divorced from concrete experience as in the worst of the Rhétoriqueurs, and to a refined sensual expressiveness capable of being "felt and tasted" according to Leonardo Bruni which would be the adequate substitute for concrete experience. The absolute correspondence between res and verba, however, was steadily undercut by attacks against absolute authority, by the legion of advocates of vulgar tongue and native literature over Latin exemplars and by the insistence on the authority of personal experience over bookish pursuits in positing ex-

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perimental and artistic laws of universal import, as in the case of Leonardo.5 Montaigne's nominalism shows through clearly in the opening sentence of "De la gloire" where he states unequivocally that language reduces unknown particularities in our experience to known generalities in our statements: Il y a le nom et la chose: le nom, c'est une voix qui remerque et signifie la chose; le nom, ce n'est pas une partie de la chose ny de la substance, c'est une piece estrangere joincte à la chose, et hors d'elle. Dieu, qui est en soy toute plenitude et le comble de toute perfection, il ne peut s'augmenter et accroistre par la benediction et louange que nous donnons à ses ouvrages exterieurs. Laquelle louange, puis que nous ne la pouvons incorporer en luy, d'autant qu'il n'y peut avoir accession de bien, nous l'attribuons à son nom, qui est la piece hors de luy la plus voisine. Language is inherently creative and metaphorical in its attempt to identify things and properties that are basically not identical. By the omission of the all-important adjective toute, his claim that the name "signifie la chose" is a whole conception apart from his translation of Sebond's "c'est le nom qui represente et signifie toute sa chose" 8 (my emphasis). But long before Montaigne it was Poliziano and primarily Erasmus in the Dialogus Ciceronianus who shifted emphasis from— but did not revolutionize—ornate to appropriate speech and modulated the cult of form into form as the expression of individual phenomena and natural intellectual gifts of ingenium, and consequently reduced the word from its high formal, figurai, and archetypal status. In the Moriae encomium Erasmus went on at length about the wrong kinds of ingenia, misuses of the "art of rhetoric" and the foolish monk who mathematically explained "nimirum a litteris, syllabis, & oratione" and "Is explicaturus mysterium nominis Jesu, mirasubtilitate demonstravit in ipsis litteris latere, quidquid de illo dici possit." By noting the last letters in the declension Jesus-Jesum-Jesu, we see "clearly" that He is s, the sum, m, the middle figure of the Trinity, and u, the ultimate. Subsequently, we take an excursion further into the name Jesus and somehow conclude that the slim resemblance between s and the Hebrew concludes Jesus' sinless attributes.7 Rabelais's prologue to the Tiers Livre picks up the Erasmian thread from Adagia III, 5, 36 and IV, 1, 1, in his patently fanciful etymological marriage of bella and belle as he purports to propagandize a military enterprise. Erasmus and Rabelais after him were satirizing a long-standing practice, attributable to Isidore and pursued relentlessly through the Middle

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Ages according to Leo Spitzer, of relying on etymologies to pun, draw attention to the writer's purpose and expand the symbolic potential that was latent in language: Various phonetic associations could be used to clarify the res referred to by a particular word. Isidore in his collection of various etymologies started this "poly etymological" approach by putting side by side different traditional explanations with no attempt to decide between them.8 Letter symbolism was profuse among belletrists of Marot's time, both those identified with retrogressive interests and those who supposedly characterize the new élan. Like any mediocre Rhétoriqueur, Lemaire revels in verbal nonsense and accumulates vocables whose sound and fury signify nothing; but he also concentrates on the letters in the name of Marguerite d'Autriche to prove that she is foredestined to be ( M ) malheureuse, and so on.9 Castiglione's manual for the Renaissance gentelman begins with a discussion, never resolved, of the letter s which Elisabetta Gonzaga is wearing on her forehead. Vacillating between a playful game and a serious inquiry, the conversation ultimately becomes a game taken seriously in an attempt to settle the ways Fortuna reveals future occurrences by such small signs : "avvenga che certamente questo ancor sia un artificioso reclame per poter ingannare, per avventura si gli darà qualche interpretazione da lei forse non pensata." Eventually Aretino, whom Marot eulogized in the second coq-à-1'âne (v. 190), offers an explanation that demonstrates his own ingenuità (I, 9). In all seriousness, twenty years later Sebillet asserted his own ingeniousness by speculating on the combined arithmetical and sonorous perfections of Scève's epigrammatic dizain (II, 1 ) . The mysteries, both closed and open, of Marot's own practice with letter symbolism have in one instance been well publicized. Years ago Lefranc demonstrated incontestably that the key to the cryptic Epigramme CCVIH in which Marot explicitly described his lady's features was the identity in sound between the name Anne and the letter N, as in the line " N est la lettre, en mon coeur bien escripte" which in effect names Anne d'Alençon, daughter of Charles d'Alençon's illegitimate brother.10 This procedure is predated and reinforced by Rondeau XVII where social convention did not contravene a more open answer to the question Qui noue mieulx, responds, ou C ou E? . . . C, c'est Clement, contre chagrin cloué, E est Estienne, esveillé, enjoué. (w. 6 , 1 0 - 1 1 )

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But again Marot stands squarely between an old tradition and its countercurrent of more recent vintage by his willingness, on the one hand, to delve deeply and extensively, through investigation of etymologies, into the realities hidden behind verbal appearances, and, on the other hand, an equal willingness to deform that tradition like any other of its debunkers and thus, in effect, to look at it askance. Since nomina sunt consequentia rerum, and conversely since naming an object is a way of expressing its quiddity, the "poly-etymological" approach propounded by Isidore allowed any or all traditional etymologies to stand simultaneously or successively as the correct one leading to puns made more in earnest than in jest. Marot, however, steps out of this tradition by creating a comic shock through etymologies more facetious than traditional and by using them at the point of satirical barbs that, far from elevating culturati above the mere animal stage, often reduce them to the level of physiological appetites or even the literally animalistic. While Marot largely directs his satirical shafts at traditional objects of derision like the sexual habits of monks, the implied etymologies that metaphorically identify the decent with the indecent, superficial appearance with hidden reality, are of his own creation. Metaphorical identification is enhanced by Marot's skillful use of pairing rhyme words as a means of oblique statement. The apocryphal "Grup" insinuates the prowess of "Force evesques, abbez nouveaux" by parodying a dozen verbal constructs built on the prefix con (vv. 76-90). But the authentic pieces rely less on extensive elaboration than semantic density. Thus, Epitaphe XI to "frere André, Cordelier" Cy gist qui assez mal preschoit, Par ces femmes tant regretté: Frere André qui les chevauchoit Comme ung grand Asne desbaté. is followed by an epitaph to "Frere Cordelier Semydieux" who is mourned by his parishioners "Pource qu'il les confessoyt mieulx," and the minor alteration of sound in his invective to the six Dames de Paris, "les six Canonisées,/ Ou (pour le moins) les six Chanoynisées," is at once a way of specifying the peculiar nature of their church sanction and of relating their particular conduct to the general theme of monastic depravation. The considerable distance between Marot's use of satire through etymological deformation and that of his contemporaries is readily apparent in the attacks in which he himself was the victim. Both in

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Marot's poetry and in the poems attributed to him the theme of the banished subject recalled occupies a significant place. Allusions like the rumor "qu'on a rappellé / Le conte Guillaume Allement" of the Coq a l'Asne, 1542 (vv. 148-149), the promise that "De grans douleurs ton cueur supportera, / Mais en brief temps on le rappellera" of the Epistre du Coq au Chappon (vv. 1 5 - 1 6 ) , and especially the conclusion to Cantique I, "Ces choses sont assez / Pour rappeller le plus banny du monde" were quickly transformed by La Huetterie's Responce à Marot, diet Frippelippes which recalled the familiar invective Marrault and introduced a jibe at the rat pellé. Assuming that Marot would indeed be skinned by La Huetterie's rejoinder, the word play does not lack wit. But swift parry and understatement that accompany all successful satire are made sluggish by the engraving on the title page showing a half-skinned rat hovering over a piece of meat under the watchful eye of a cat, dutifully labeled Rat pelle, Le Lart, and Mitouart le gris and followed by the clumsy legend "Mus cavet ire au lart, quando videt mitouart." In Matthieu de Boutigny's later riposte, the frontispiece again bears an engraving of a monkey, labeled Sagouin in memory of the deformation of Sagon in the epistle of Frippelippes, in the process of clawing a rodent named M Rai pele.11 Marot's antagonists thus took great pains to avoid risking subtlety. On the contrary, Marot works with the traditional zoology of satire but invigorates it by increasing the dimensions of its significancy and expanding the intellective steps necessary to pass from the concrete image to its tentative meanings. The fourth coq-à-1'âne composed in the fall of 1536 contains an allusion to the ethics of millers and habits of nostri magistri En danger que ces gros asniers Soient du lignage des musniers, Ayant du sac, bled & farine Toute couverte leur narine, Ostant la febve du gasteau. Si en leur vin mectoient de l'eau, Ceulx de Sorbonne enluminez Si rouge n'auroient pas leurs nez; (vv. 15-22) for which Marot doubtlessly found the basic imagery in his Villonesque friend, Roger de Collerye, whose works were first published that same year

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202 0 trésoriers, amasseurs de deniers, Vous et vos clercs, se n'estes gros asniers, Bien retenir debvez ce quolibet: Que pareil bruyt avez que les musniers Car par larcin, et en ces jours derniers, Vostre guydon fut pendu au gibet.12

These verses furnish a partial clue to the salutation of the third coq-àl'âne, "Lyon, ce malheureulx asnier, / Fol, foliant, imprudent, indiscreet"; the editorial comments of Guiffrey and Mayer have shown that asnier and bédier ( O F : mulish) were frequently applied to Noel Béda, syndic of the Sorbonne and one of Marot's implacable opponents. 13 Again in the fourth coq-à-1'âne he unites two disparate thoughts whose sole common bond is the juncture in rhyme of similar species Mais il est cheut tant de nuez Que demandoient les allouettes. Il ne fut one tant de chouettes Et nuict & jour peuvent voler. (w. 98-101 ) Aside from the deformation of folk wisdom identified by Mayer in the first two verses, allusions to larks in Renaissance poetry normally fix on their sweet song in an absence of any symbolic associations, "La gentile alouette avec son tire-lire." But the owl is usually associated with the crow as an emblem of the bad poets standing apart from the cygnes. This is the meaning it explicitly bears in the Sagon quarrel, both in Frippelippes's letter C'est pourquoy les comes dressas; Et quant tes escriptz adressas Au Roy, tant excellent Poete, Il me souvint d'une Chouete Devant le Rossignol chantant, Ou d'un Oyson se présentant Devant le Cygne pour chanter. (w. 1 4 1 - 1 4 7 ) and in des Périer's rally to Marot's defense against the "Plume d'arpye ou de quelque chouette" (Epistre à Sagon, v. 2), and in Epître XXVII where Marot allows for a significant variant Quel qu'il soit, il n'est point Poëte, Mais Filz aisné d'une Chouette, Ou aussi Larron, pour le moins. (w. 16-18)

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Because of its nocturnal flight and rapacity, the association of owl and thief was undisputed in bestiaries and in poetic tradition. 14 The resulting two meanings of voler in the fourth coq-à-1'âne is traditional in its origins but innovative in its linguistic economy. If the term "transitional poet" has any value and, if valuable, if it has any favorable connotations, we must not only ask ourselves at all times how he freely innovates within the heritage bestowed upon him but also scrutinize the ways in which these innovations respond to the major cultural forces impinging on the poet's consciousness and respond to the freedoms of a future generation. The significance of this freedomwithin-tradition can easily be exemplified by pursuing similar imagery from Villon through Marot and beyond. Freshly released from the Châtelet, the youthful Marot was naturally susceptible to the gallows humor of Villon and attracted to the envoi of his "Question au clerc" Prince, se j'eusse eu la pepie, Pieça je fusse ou est Clotaire, Aux champs debout comme une espie. Estoit il lors temps de moy taire? 1 5 (w. 25-28) While maintaining the rhyme scheme, Marot expands the meaning of pepie, the thirst that prevents birds from singing, and ellipitically transforms the image of the vertical espie swinging from the gallows into the anodyne prayer to be bien couché: Je ne suis point des excessifz Importuns, car j'ay la pepie; Dont suis au vent comme ung Chassis Et debout ainsi q'une Espie. Mais une fois en la Copie De vostre estât je suis marché, Je criray plus hault q'une Pie: Il n'est que d'estre bien couché.

(Ballade V) In the "Second Chant d'Amour fugitif," however, he reviews various monastic orders transmuted into a satirical bestiary which terminates appropriately in a comparison between the Espie and the Dominicans, the prime heresy hunters within the Roman church: L'ung en Corbeau se vest pour triste signe; L'autre s'habille à la façon d'une Cigne; L'autre s'accoustre ainsi qu'un Ramoneur;

Formlessness L'autre tout gris: l'autre, grand Sermonneur, Porte sur soy les couleurs d'une Pie, (O bonnes gens) pour bien servir d'Espie. ( w . 47-52) But the deepest influence of Villon occurs in a poem like the "Complainte du riche infortuné" ( I I I ) where Marot's literary memory recalls the "Ballade des Pendus" with its particular description of yet a generalized human condition in all its attendant imperfection and miseries : Mais ce pendant sa main gauche très orde Secretement me fïloit une Corde Qu'ung de mes Serfz, pour saulver sa jeunesse, A mise au col de ma blanche vieillesse. Et de ma mort tant laide fut la voye, Que mes Enfans, lesquelz (helas) j'avoye Haut eslevé en honneur et pouvoir, Hault eslevé au Gibet m'ont peu veoir. . . . D'estre en Sepulchre honnorable estendu, Suis tout debout à Montfaulcon pendu. . . . Mes yeux, jadis vigilans de nature, De vieulx Corbeaux sont devenus pasture; Mon col, qui eut l'accol de Chevalier, Est accolé de trop mortel collier; ( w . 5 - 1 2 , 37-38,43-46) T h e rime équivoquée and the play on the etymological accretions of col in the midst of sadness unto death might again offend modern sensibilities, but for the Renaissance writer and audience they surely bore a moral preachment on the tenuous equilibrium inherent in all human endeavors which is implicit in the title riche infortuné and explicit in the sententiousness of the last two verses: "or et Argent, dont tous plaisirs procèdent, / Causent douleurs qui tous plaisirs excedent." 1 6 Marot's narration of the individual example of Semblançay and the general lesson it teaches anticipates Ronsard's allusion to the exemplary death of Gaspard Coligny in the 'Hymnes des Estoilles": Ce guerrier qui tantost Terre & mer d'un grand Ost Couvroit de tant de voiles, Court de teste & de nom Pendille à Mont-faucon: Ainsi vous plaist Estoilles. 17 (w. 1 0 5 - 1 1 0 )

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An upward and corresponding downward movement of Fortune's familiar wheel in the preceding stanza set the background for his observation. T h e epic synecdoche in the silhouettes of banners substituted for the whole army, of sails for ships, and the specter of the gallows that immediately succeeds them, all translate the caprice of the stars, the turn in Fortune's fickle wheel as in Marot's "Hault eslevé en honneur . . . Hault eslevé au Gibet," and transform the ironic play on the name of the central figure (CoZigny, v. 108) into an ironic comment on man's fate. T h e quick satiric thrusts against monastic vice and the antagonists spawned by the court milieu, discussed thematically in the last section and described generically in this chapter, attain sharp focus against this background. T w o examples will suffice in attesting to Marot's consummate skill in deriving or implying satirical etymologies of French names from, at least macaronic, Latin. At the beginning of his prolix self-introduction in L'Enfer, he defends himself against the charge of Lutheranism by calling attention to the resemblance of his name to that of Pope Clement V I I who at that time was experiencing serious problems in adjusting the political stance of the Holy See to accommodate the divergent interests of Francis and Charles V : C'est la sainct nom du Pape, qui accolle Les chiens d'Enfer (s'il luy plaist) d'une estolle; Le crains tu poinct? C'est celluy qui afferme Qu'il ouvre Enfer quand il veult & le ferme; Celluy qui peult en feu chauld martyrer Cent mille esprits, ou les en retirer. ( w . 353-358) T h e sense of the latter statement clearly addresses the pope's supposed power to retain or free souls in Purgatory—a question that is not marginal within the allegorical lines of L'Enfer (cf. vv. 249-258) nor unrelated to the selling of indulgences which Luther attacked with such vigor in the ninety-five theses. Indulgences were justified on the scholastic basis of superfluous merits accumulated in heaven by Christ, Mary and the retinue of saints. Merely the idea of a treasury of merits did not scandalize Luther. Indeed, in the midst of her exaltation of Christ's name Marguerite speaks approvingly of . . . celuy qui ha toute puissance, Qui tient la clef des celestes thresors, Et comme il veult les dispense et met hors (Le Triomphe de l'Agneau, w . 1500-1502 )

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What did scandalize Luther was the conclusion that the power to open the treasure and transfer merits was invested in the pope as guardian of the keys, that the transferred merits could reduce the individual's burden of sin and diminish the pangs of Purgatory, and that they could be crassly sold by vendors like the Dominican John Tetzel who proclaimed that when the coin on the money box rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.18 In fact, the Dominicans were not only the prime heresy hunters but also the principal vendors of indulgence (as the cartoons of Holbein show), the champions of orthodoxy, of absolute papal authority and, thus, in the person of Sylvester Prierias, the leading antagonists of Luther. Mayer cites a few verses from Villon's "Ballade en vieil langage françoys" which Marot may in some measure have incorporated into the verses from L'Enfer cited above.19 If this is so, then we witness the skillful transposition of the devil (ly mauffez) of Villon into Les chiens d'Enfer, a likely reference to the popular jab at the Dominicans (Domini canes) which the wordsmith Rabelais projected into his invective in the prologue to the Tiers Livre against monastic orders, notably the Dominicans (mastins cerbericques) ,20 In the "Epitre de Frippelippes" invective against the misuse of Church power gives way to the religion-based court squabble with Sagon, but the paradigm of Latinate satire remains constant. Frippelippes tells Sagon about his master Clément Vray est qu'il avoyt ung valet Qui s'appelloyt Nichil valet, A qui comparer on t'eust peu; Toutesfoys il estoit ung peu Plus plaisant à veoir que tu n'es, . . . (w. 85-89) The witty comparison of Sagon not with Marot himself but with his "valet de Gascogne" (Epitre X X V ) and the conclusion that Sagon is worth a little less than nothing depends on the meaning of Latin nihil valet. In the circles that Marot frequented variations of the expression were current, such as "Homo nichil est omnium" of Charles de Bovelles (Carolus Bovillus), the disciple of Lefèvre d'Etaples.21 But the nearest analogy of any real significance is Aretino's review of popes in II Cortegiano where he asserts that "ALEXANDER PAPA VI, che vol significare, che è stato papa per la forza che egli ha usata e più di quella si è valuta che della ragione," implying that the ordinal V I derives from the ablative form ("by force") of Latin vis, and supports his argument by showing "la inscripzione d'un N, dui PP et un V, che significava

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Nicolaus Papa Quintus, e subito disse: 'Oim£, male nove; eccovi che questa dice: Nihil Papa Valet' " (II, 48). From these few examples it is clear that the conventions within which Marot worked and which were open to public scrutiny preclude our separating the form of words from the larger meanings the words were made to bear, or of their sensible and intellectual properties from the effect they were intended to have on the reader's ear, eye, and mind. To the extent that we grasp these conventions and appreciate divergence from them, we run little risk of committing intentional fallacies in evaluating Renaissance poetry. Chapter four alluded to the effects of psalmodic music and the syncretic tradition that sanctioned them. In fact, this interplay of cause and effect as Marot and his contemporaries understood it was part of a larger and equally venerable scheme that purported to structure and explain nothing less than the creative act in the created universe. Despite the decline and intellectual paralysis of scholasticism in the late Middle Ages, the formative influence it had exerted was too universal not to be powerfully transformed instead of simply disappearing. Formative Aristotelian principles that had structured Thomism, such as causes and their effects that explained the graduation from idea to materialized form, and analogy that defined the links between the creature and his fellow creatures and ultimately between human aspiration and divine will, were integrated into the Renaissance cosmos. Time and again Marot accepts the paradox of goodness issuing from suffering by retracing the multiplicity of effects in human understanding to the unity of divine cause.22 Up to the point where a final shaft of wit undercuts the validity of his inference, the argument of Epigramme CXXXIII is resolutely analogical in its clear reduction of variety to a first cause Les Cerfz en Rut pour les Bisches se battent, Les Amoureux pour les Dames combattent. Ung mesme effect engendre leurs discordz; Yet the book of nature is all too enigmatic for fallen man, Helas, Nature, ou est la bonne grace Dont tu le feis luyre par ses effectz? (Complainte I, w . 25-26) and in assessing the psychic life of another person man is usually reduced to the problematic game of judging qualities of emotion from

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external features and sense impressions that follow from those deeper feelings. 23 In his description of the radiant appearance of Eros in the translation of Le Chant de l'Amour fugitif, Marot's alteration of chose affective in the lines "Mais le droict sens & la cause effective / Correspond mal à sa voix deceptive"

(vv. 31-32) serves to specify his

reference to "efficient cause" and the breach between love's true will and its deceptive expression. W h e t h e r the transition be viewed as evolutionary or revolutionary, an alleged distinction between the medieval and modern mind is often exemplified by a new consciousness of artistic individuality in the Renaissance. In support of the contention that "inner meaning and outer experience no longer seem to reinforce one another. T h e world, instead of manifesting the 'invisible things' of G o d , becomes an enigma without a key," historians cite and solicit a scene like the conversation between Pantagruel and the monks at the sepulcher of Geoffroy "à la grand dent": "les painctres et les poëtes ont liberté de paindre à leur plaisir ce qu'ilz veulent. Mais il (Pantagruel) ne se contenta pas de leur responce, et dist: 'Il n'est ainsi painct sans cause.' "

24

Certainly achieve-

ment of artistic personality and the writer's claim to individual status is one of the distinguishing features of the period, but even as he moves within the zodiac of his wit there is scarcely evidence in any major and minor writer of solipsistic isolation or of absence of concern for the relationship of the writer to his prospective audience, for the correspondence of artistic intent and the literary effects of that will, and for the difficulties attendant upon the transmission of artistic impression to its expression to the reader's understanding. In treatises and in practice, in their own relationship with their audience and in their fictional characters, poets show an extreme concern for the breach or link between the intensity or quality of their feelings and the ways in which these feelings are apprehended by others. In a letter to the king on behalf of the poet Papillon, Marot takes pains to stress the consistency between his plea and its intent C'est tout cela que mon escript desire T e faire entendre, ayant cet espoir, Sire, Que ne diras en moy presumption, Quand de mon cueur sçauras l'intention, Qui de nully ne peult estre reprise, Puis qu'amitié a causé l'entreprise. (Epïtre LU, w . 59-64) His protest is a near formulaic reprise of an earlier statement to Renée in Epître

XXXIV

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. . . si bien tu limites Du salueur la vraye intention, Tu n'y verras brin de presumption. (w. 8 - 1 0 ) It is no longer necessary for critics to point out the equivalence in such pleas between rhetoric and poetry, nor to apologize for the role of Renaissance poetry as an art of persuasion, whether the motivation be aesthetic, propagandists, or meritricious. Mayer rightly observes with no prejudice implied that after his stay in Geneva some of Marot's work smacks of the Huguenot preacher. 25 On occasion the poet himself announces outright that his purpose is to persuade his listener to a particular point of view. " A tout le moins vous y vueille esmouvoir" he tells the king in Epître XII, and the argumentation pro et contra that we have alluded to earlier is a patent preoccupation from the early débats in the fixed-form genres through the last epigrams, despite his protests to the contrary: "Sans arguer le pro ne le c o n t r a , / A vostre avis, qu'est elle devenue?" ( C C L X V I I ) . 2 6 T o the extent that the desire to persuade colors his muse, the poet will resort to schemata that his audience would not fail to recognize. T h e tenor of traditional attitudes toward Marot implies, however, that while the skeleton of his logical argument protrudes by design and not by default and that while on occasion pecuniary circumstances left him little choice as to the side he must plead for, this is indeed unfortunate for the stature of his work. W e can see him contradictorily—but only if we overlook different circumstances and a time lag of fifteen years—exhort at length the French to take up arms in Epître III and eloquently portray the ravages of war in the third coq-à-1'âne. Marot of course laments his personal misfortunes, but he never suggests that they may be deterrents to the qualities of his verse. Any misgivings that he has about his own powers of persuasion and those of others relate, rather, to the solidity of the argument, its faithfulness to the idea behind it, its efficacy and impact on the reader.27 Even though he may seem in Epître XXIX to bow to a cult of Sincerity, . . . l'amytié ne gist en longues Lettres, En motz exquis, en grand nombre de Mettres, En riche Rime, ou belle invention, Ains en bon cueur et vraye intention; (w. 7 - 1 0 ) his apparent dissociation of intent and resultant expression is in fact a careful retracing of his steps from the final product through style, dis-

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position, and invention to the purity of his primal urge to write, followed in the last line by a perfect marriage of content and form, "petite Epistre et amytié bien grande." When in "L'espitre du despourveu" he forbears recourse to rhetoric, "Non pour prier, requeste ou rhetorique, /Mais pour l'amour de vostre Frere unique" (w. 176-177), far from denying its worth he is simply transferring the motivation for his request from himself to the king, and when he does apologize for his eloquence in the letter to Renée de Parthenay (XLI), "noz persuasions / E n vostre endroit ne sont que illusions" (vv. 51-52), he does so because it failed in its aim of forestalling her departure. Such failure may imply a basic speciousness in the argument and a corresponding lack of conviction on the reader's part. Thus Chant-Royal III ends with the injunction to evaluate the ars bene dicendi of each debator: "Jugez lequel dit le mieulx sans faintise." The allegation of faintise is more frequently reserved for persuasion, like Lucifer's, which trades on weakness instead of strength and leads to deception. After a seemingly endless list of the causes and effects of love in Epître LIII, the diverse visages and conditions of Cupid lead to his final description as the "Amy secret & ennemy publique, / Tresdoux parleur en faincte Rhetorique" (w. 49-50). Since the son of Venus also inhabits Lorris's garden and misleads man into a state of mind that is more swayed by the unrestrained imagination than grounded in reason, he too receives the full weight of Marot's disapprobation. In the "Exposition morale" to his attributed edition of the Roman de la Rose he refers to "ce livre, parlant en vain de l'estat d'amours, peult estre cause de tourner les entendements à mal & les appliquer à choses dissolues, à cause de la persuasible matiere de fol amour dedans tout au long contenue." For the writer whose cause is presumably just and who, rather than deceiving, wishes to enlighten his reader, to reveal the true nature of things or construct a psychological analogue, the creation of emotion through rhetorical means becomes a primary and laudable aim. All these ends are present in the announced design of the narrator of the "Déploration" to draw "De mon cueur donc l'intencion totalle" in a "stille plain d'esmoy" (vv. 33-35). The focal point of this use of emotion to convince is a concept that Renaissance poets unerringly call efficace, a mediation between intellectual clarity and unguided imagination, rhetorical pragmatism and spiritual or moral elevation.28 Reference to clarity in a spiritual sense is normally limited to appropriate religious contexts, as in the conclusion to Marot's sixth Oraison: "O Dieu, ton parler d'efficace / Sonne plus clair que fin alloy." 29 In closely joined

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contexts writers more frequently insist on the twofold role of efficace in mental operations that are essentially human. In the Temple d'Honneur Anne de France stands transfixed before the temple, "A ce tant beau spectacle s'arresta la duchesse Aurora toute esmerveillée, tenant sa tresamée fille par la main, et consideroit en soy mesmes l'efficace de ce mistere," but a few lines later Entendement addresses her saying that "II fault que tu congnoisses que je suis mesmes celluy qui en ton dormant t'ay excitée et qui en ce propre lieu t'ay rendue à ces fins de te demonstrer par vives apparences le dueil que tu maines pour ton feu seigneur et mary estre comme vain et de nulle efficace." 80 Lemaire takes "fol amour" to task in the Illustrations de Gaule where "L'eloquence artificielle de dame Venus, ses paroles delicates, et sa douce persuasion causèrent telle efficace et telle emotion au coeur du iune adolescent Paris, que encores en pourra il maudire les rhetoriques couleurs, qui luy seront retorquuees en douleurs" (I, xxxii), but only a few chapters later counters the deceptive powers of eloquence with its moral benefits: "Ainsi disoit la royne, dont la douce eloquence avoit persuasion de grande efficace" (I, xli). 3 1 While Giuliano de' Medici, who recognizes the sottilità in women's minds but is heedful of the excesses of imagination, cautions that "rappresentano tosto le specie allo intelletto e però perturbano facilmente per le cose estrinceche" (Il Cortegiano, III, 18), others laud efficacia and "accostar le cose al senso degli occhi proprii" for wit and subtlety (arguzie) that occasion and arise from them (I, 34; II, 43). Such preoccupation with the vivid representation of deep feeling for the contemplation of the mind's eye throughout Castiglione's spirited dialogue is not unrelated to Marot's more restricted praise of Etienne du Temple in Rondeau XVI, "Tant est subtil et de grande efficace / Le tien esprit." Commentaries on the rhetorical end of poetic language from Cicero (De oratore, I, vii, 30) and Horace (Ars poetica, vv. 99-100) to Du Bellay (Illustration, xi) insistently enumerated the emotions to be set before the reader's senses, not only as an amalgam or check list but in many cases as an appropriate serialization of feeling through which any genre might pass. Renaissance drama can be viewed as a framework for enacting set piece emotions, as an "epistolary novel." Marot's elegies demonstrate that "Refus, Oubly, Jalousie & Langueur / Suyvent Amours" (IV, w . 49-50), and the Temple d'Honneur sets itself forth as a "petit traicté consolatone," aiming " A ceste cause, treshaulte et tresnoble princesse, pour donner effect consequutif à son intencion" of ranging progressively through emotions from douleur to rys. Although

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it does not stipulate any specific serialization of emotions, Scaliger's chapter on efficacia pays special attention to the controlled use of stylistic figures for persuasion to differing emotional attitudes.32 Scaliger's and others' comments suggest at once that style is defined —and therefore generally limited—by the poet's subject, but that within the broad limits of convention it may vary according to the way the poet views and decides to handle his subject. As the reader moves through the emotional sequence of the elegies, the correspondents refer to stylistic modulations from the "stile ardant dont elle est alumée" ( X I V ) to the "langage begnin,/Rien ne tenant du stile femenin" ( X V I ) by terms that are more individually descriptive than they were universally recognized. Writer and reader share concern for an intended effect and experience undergone through certain stylistic tones, and for the harmonic effect of formal proportion on tone. The writer of Epitre III chooses to terminate his missive . . . car les Muses entendent Mon rude stile, & du tout me deffendent De plus rien dire, affin qu'en cuydant plaire Trop long escript ne cause le contraire. (w. 137-140) whereas the recipient of the tragic "stille doulx" in Eglogue I dwells on the prolonged experience: "Le chant me plaist, & mon cueur tu contraincts/A se douloir plus qu'il n'a de coustume" ( w . 263-264). 33 Eccentric though the individual effects of tone may be, Marot's stylistic variations occur against an awareness of the traditional Ciceronian separation of style into high, middle, and low according to considerations of place, genre and theme, social station, and age of fictional characters and addressee.34 In his Art poétique Jacques Peletier stipulates that "Si on escrit aus grans Signeurs, a cause que ce doivent estre propos plus importans, on usera de vers Decasilabes. Aus autres personnes, selon leur dinite et selon le mérité de l'afaire, on changera de mesure" (II, vi); accordingly, the cadence and sentiment of the trisyllabic line in Marot's E pitre L to the enfant Jeanne d'Albret gives a near elliptical impression that would correspond with her likely speech pattern Ma Mignonne, Je vous donne Le bon jour. Le séjour . . .

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while in his letter to Antoine de Lorraine ( X X I I ) he apologizes because "trop est lourde & de style trop mince / Pour s'addresser à tant excellent Prince" (vv. 7-8). Even in moods of deep feeling, selection of a suitable style or its abandonment, whether it be "la muse pastoralle, / Voyre la muse heroyque & hardie" (Eglogue III, vv. 212-213) o r a n y other, is conscious and is betokened by the conventional emblem of the poet's taking down or hanging up his lyre on a hook or tree.35 Most Renaissance critical commentary is reserved for the high style and its exigencies, and Marot's own critical comments do not fail to set forth its demands. Since it is the godlike hero Francis, "Pan, dieu débonnaire" whom he addresses in Eglogue III—a genre that by itself would call for the low style—he insists that the essential ingredients of his effort are "l'exercice & labeur" (v. 160) the earmarks of the elevated style. Equally as anomalous, it is in the short compass of the epigram ( C L I I I ) that he discusses writing "vers en grant nombre et hault style" that would be useful and sweet and would comply with the style's preference for long phrases, lengthy periods, and capacious stanza forms. In effect, the epigram is an apology for not having sounded "la Trompete bellique / D'un grand Virgile ou d'Homere ancien" as he had promised in Epître LVII. Although he never abandoned the terminology and reference points, it seems from these examples and from many others that Marot had increasing difficulty in arbitrarily aligning his muse with stylistic exercises that were foreign to it and in his mature years had decreasing concern for working within the broad restrictions of genre, form, and tone of address which such exercises imposed. In his Epître II (ca. 1519) he had no trouble heeding the advice of "le grand dieu Mercure, / Chef d'Eloquence" on the utility and pleasurable effects of poetry. The acceptance of this advice, right down to Mercury's counsel of abandoning the high style that exceeds his reach, is nothing more than a schoolbook description of the discovery of appropriate material through the process of invention, its arrangement and ultimate embellishment with a fitting and unalloyed style: Les bons propos, les raisons singulières Je voys cherchant, et les belles matieres, A celle fin de faire Oeuvre duisante Pour Dame tante en vertus reluisante Que diray plus? Certes les miens espritz Furent des lors comme de joye espris; Bien disposez d'une veine subtile

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2X4 De vous escrire en ung souverain stile.

(w. 44-51) Nothing is more conventional than this disclaimer of worthiness to pursue the grand style. The adjectival detail ruralle of Marot's admission to Marguerite d'Alençon in Epître III that "je sens bien ma plume trop ruralle / Pour exalter sa maison" (vv. 1 1 1 - 1 1 2 ) significantly points to the low style as being more suitable to a lower, more bucolic subject like the description and dialogue of low characters in Epîtres VIII and X X . The narrator's injunction "Il faut aimer en lieu bas" does not merely reflect personal idiosyncrasy nor does it only reflect a decision imposed by the choice of subject. The letter to the cardinal de Lorraine ( X V ) makes clear that choice of style is also a function of the poet's unalterable station or of the impression of humility he wishes to convey: L'Homme qui est en plusieurs sortes bas, Bas de stature et de joye & d'esbas, Bas de sçavoir, en bas degré nourry, Et bas de biens, dont il est bien marry, . . . Puis qu'il n'a donc que humble & basse value, Par ung bas stile humblement vous salue.36 (w. 1-4, 9-10) In isolating and defining the poet's literary personality it is essential to underscore the latter function and to second—in order to enlarge and sharpen—Laumonier's passing observation that with the advent of Marot the chanson ceases to be "simple et inconsciente" and "ne s'ignore plus . . . elle n'a plus seulement le don de plaire, elle en a l'intention et en connaît les moyens." 37 The more Marot denies an Apollonian pedigree conferred by tradition, the more his stance situates him in a convention that looks back to classical antiquity and anticipates the Pléiade. His "durtz regretz" in a letter ( L V ) attributed to him issue from a denial that . . . dormy n'ay souby les umbres vers De Pemasus, ny beu en la fontaine Où puiser fault science cy haultaine. Peult estre aulcuns n'en seront esbays, Et vous diront que je suys du pays Où, de tous temps, les neuf Muses habitent. (w.4-9) whose imagery and point of view recall at once the prologue to Persius's satires and, some ten years after this letter, the introductory sonnets of the Regrets. But even more significantly than kindred statements of in-

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tent, the posture he assumed has had the net effect of persuading subsequent generations and centuries, which did not recognize his nod to convention, that naive simplicity and unaffected facility somehow explain Clément Marot as he appears in and between the lines of his verse. 38 Equating the manner with the man and judging them both from an unbending concept of correct or improper style have led over the centuries to vacuous, bizarre, and contradictory views of the poet and his work. From the reference point of a classical absolute and the observation that there is in Marot a court, conversational, polemic, and religious poet, Faguet concluded that he separately incorporated a Maurice Scève, D u Bellay, Voiture, La Fontaine, and Voltaire. 39 T h e assertion would not have pleased the latter who alternately condemned Marot for having only one style and in nearly the same breath in a 1738 letter to Helvetius decried the freedom of "ce miserable style marotique, style bigaré" which mixes "monstrueusement le trivial et le sublime, le sérieux et le comique" in works that should supposedly remain uniform. 40 Four years later in the Mercure de France we read an anonymous description of the Marotic style, "mélange monstrueux de sérieux & de comique, de grand & de petit" which shows the ease with which his style had become institutionalized. Even though the author conceives the mixture as a term of praise and points approvingly at "ce beau naturel, cette finesse de pensées qui hait le fard, & qui abhorre ces idées fausses," the generality and implicit identification of the poet and his work are no more reassuring as tools of analysis. 41 Modern and contemporary criticism has fortunately begun to escape the confines of explaining and judging Marot from arbitrary conceptions of the good, true and beautiful, and we are a long way from Artus Désiré's 1550 indictment of Marot's Psalms on the grounds that the author was atheistic, Jewish, Lutheran, Manichaean, and Pelagian. Vianey has alluded to the technique in the "dédoublement" of the poet's personality; Saulnier has discussed the fallacy of rejecting certain elegies because they are somehow not "Marotic"; and Smith, following Mayer, has commented on the manuscript variants as evidence that artistic and suasory content outweigh the confessional. 42 Yet major commentators of Marot in this century have insistently taken the work for the man and have ascribed a frenetic life-style to him in order to explain the countless tonal changes in his verse accomplished by a stroke of the pen. In the midst of an otherwise astute examination of the ways in which his shaded meanings led to his rejection by Catholic and Calvinist alike, Guy explains these shades by offering a picture of

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Marot simultaneously frequenting countless milieus from the Louvre to the lowliest tavern, while Guiffrey saw the coincidence in date of the fervent "Epître aux deux soeurs" and the satirical Coq-à-l'âne II as a personal conflict of spirit and flesh and "la bizarrerie de l'humaine cervelle." 43 More recently, Henri Chamard has attempted to counter the Pléiade's assertion that Marot, gifted with a "bon esprit, mais bien peu d'artifice," moved from "rhetoric" into "simple badinage." In some ways, his urgency to justify "cette finesse, cette bonhomie, cette mesure qui sont toujours d'un si grand charme. Une clarté parfaite . . ." is more disquieting than their censure, and the analytic value of his categorical preliminary statement that "Ses premiers recueils laissent deviner ses vrais sentiments" is as dubious as the limitations imposed by Pléiade polemics. To attribute a literal source to what may be an imaginative projection of experience is as much to say that at times Marot succeeds not too wisely but too well in the artful disguise of art. But in their insistence that his mirror of art must be literally faithful to the daily transience of life, critics discount those random yet recurrent asides where the narrator chooses to reveal the poet at work or expounds on the relative thematic and stylistic freedom he possesses. Marot parades that license in the epistle "Aux Dames de Paris" where the apparently casual attitude toward the transition from speaking against war to suing for peace, praising noble kings to depicting fierce conflict, belies the care he takes in treading the fine line between acknowledging the restraints of convention and asserting the artist's latitude: "parlerais (usant de plus hault stile)" (v. 1 0 1 ) . Not le hault stile, but: plus hault stile. When he moves in the opposite direction by derisive diminution of a base object through the technique styled as meosis his prime concern is for the richness of artistic vision that implies mobility of reference: " E t est le Painctre indigne de louange / Qui ne sçait paindre aussi bien Diable qu'Ange" ( w . 49-50). This statement on the "Blason du laid tetin" (Epitre XXXIX) evidently caught the eye of Sebillet who commented that "autant bien se blasonne le laid comme le beau, et le mauvais comme le bon" (II, x), yet his observation falls short of the infinite elasticity of tone where the ambitions of art bow only to the probity of nature, "Car quel besoing est il mettre en lumiere / Ce qu'est Nature à cacher coustumiere" (in vv. 78-82), and where Marot's will is bounded only by his ability: "Je l'eusse painct plus laid cinquante f o i s , / S i j'eusse peu" (vv. 41-42). Even in such patent exaggerations, it is this idea of stylistic control which predominates in Marot's statements on poetic conventions, leaving the reader with the impression

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that even operating within conventional molds he could move toward the ridiculous or the sublime with equal ease, and that statement and meaning can intentionally move in opposite directions. Thus he creates the conditions of ironic address where the poet steps out of his work to comment upon it, where the literary personality may be seemingly at odds with the work it is engaged in creating. At times Marot as passive onlooker attributes alteration in speech to an experience he had undergone, as he does in a letter from Venice to Marguerite ( X L V I ) , "c'est mon stile qui change / Par trop oyr parler langage estrange" (vv. 193-94), thus recalling the exiled Ovid and anticipating Du Bellay and Ronsard while remaining in this instance incomparably more ironic. Yet in most cases the ironic strain is actively willed, even when the context speaks of congenitally or socially imposed limitations on the poet. The climate is propitious for the dual voice of irony in the letter ( X I I ) to succeed his father in the king's service, for its context embraces both the perquisites and limitations of birth. The voice of Jean Marot makes Clément his "Vray Héritier de mon peu de sçavoir" (v. 43) and affirms its decent, pur & innocent use: "Qu'on n'en sçauroit à creature nuire." But the seriousness of these qualities and this injunction are gradually undermined by a tonal change that foreshadows the bittersweet Regrets Par Preschemens le Peuple on peult seduire; Par Marchander, tromper on le peult bien; Par Plaiderie on peult menger son bien; Par Medecine on peult l'homme tuer; 44 (w.48-51) Change of tone is only promised, or rather threatened, in the no less ironic Epitre X X V where he follows the comic allusion to his chateaus at Clément and at Marot—which in the past was taken seriously through incredible blindness to irony—with a straightforward admission that the elevated style that follows is not to be taken seriously Rien mettre? Las! Certes, & si feray, Et ce faisant, mon stile j'enfleray, Disant: O Roy amoureux des neufz Muses, Roy en qui sont leurs sciences infuses, . . . (w.121-124) and a concomitant implication by demonstration that he is as competent in court flattery as anyone. 45 In fact, the inflated praise is no more eulogistic than his encomium to Francis in E pitre XXXVI, where the sustained tone of seriousness makes it inoffensive.

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Now, the point about Marot's control over a vast range of style(s), whether they be viewed as variations within or apart from the traditional conventions, is that his acquaintance with rhetorical modes made him aware that the varied contexts he treated demanded inflection of voice and perspective. As context alters substantially from genre to genre, poem to poem, paragraph to paragraph, or even phrase to phrase, so may the style and so also may the tacit or explicit fictional personality of the poet. Through extended analysis of dictinctly different poems, we can appreciate the various levels at which Marot's control operates and the ways in which variation informs the reader's understanding of the works. The miniature anthology piece (Epitre X ) addressed to Lyon Jamet and the rambling Temple de Cupido with its strata versions, all of them bona fide, offer intriguing examples of narrative control. In the one case, this control is apparent in the textual fabric of the work itself, that is, we readily glimpse both the dramatis personae and the poet in the wings stage-managing their actions; in the other, it appears only after careful scrutiny of the craftsman at work through the phases of composition. In the epitre the reader in effect experiences two poems in one by seeing the action as the Lion and Rat see it and by watching the narrator as he creates it and becomes involved as one of the principals implied in that action; in the Temple we realize through our study of the extensive variant readings that Marot has in fact composed interchangeable but autonomous tableaux which he presents at given moments as unified, unvarying viewpoints. Epitre X is set in motion by a rhetorical device 46 and splays the several generalities the narrator intends not to treat—the effects of love and war, the wills of God and Fortune—in a hypothetical conversation with Jamet the intended recipient. These broad background themes that are here structurally separated belong intrinsically to separate areas of inquiry, but are not unrelated to the personal concerns and historical circumstances surrounding the immediate principal characters, Marot and Jamet, and their fictional projections in the fable that follows. The narrator's denial that "Je ne t'escry de Fortune puissante, / Tu voys assez s'elle est ferme ou glissante" (w. 5-6) holds true only if the reader keeps in mind the measureless distance between the customary moral and philosophical seriousness of that macrocosmic theme and the microcosm of the animal world which Marot introduces by an appeal to Fortune's surrogate, Aventura: "II advint d'aventure / Que le Lyon . . ." (w. 29-30). But part of Marot's game is the

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successive or simultaneous juxtaposition of contraries. The denials and explanations serialized in the introduction end with an unexpected "Je ne t'escry des Dames de Paris,/Tu en sçais plus que leurs propres maris" (vv. 1 1 - 1 2 ) and thus set the tone for the following comic scenes where the trivial is framed by the sublime. Or at least by conventional wisdom and its language, which on the reduced stage of the fable are made to seem elevated by the grand gestures and attitudes of the protagonists. Yet, in line with the literary conventions of the fable, the conventions of their world are reflections of our own and of the writer's. Thus, when the Lion comes across the imprisoned Rat, we see not only a foreshadowing of the future rat pellé but, along with the now implicated Lyon Jamet, also the Marot of 1526 who had Mangé le lard & la chair toute crue; Mais ce Lyon (qui jamais ne fut Grue) Trouva moyen & maniéré & matiere, D'ongles & dentz, de rompre la ratiere, Dont maistre Rat eschappe vistement, Puis mist à terre ung genoul gentement, Et, en ostant son bonnet de la teste, A mercié mille foys la grand Beste, Jurant le Dieu des Souriz et des Ratz Qu'il luy rendroit. (vv. 19-28) The negative identification of Lion and Crane (Grue) is immediately startling by the physical incongruence of the two animals and becomes eulogistic when one reads Mayer's lexical notation, quoting Cotgrave, that grue was synonymous with fool; this is the sense that Marot gives it in Ballade IV. But the disparity between Lyon and Grue is even more complex than that. Superficial jest has an earnest undertone when we read Cotgrave's further observation that, on the analogy of cranes flying in formation, being a grue was "obstinately to follow together one sect, side, or faction." In view of Jamet's reformist sympathies this proverbial usage would have elicited a nod of recognition. Indeed, Calvin himself gives the expression at once a proverbial and theological cast in the Sermon sur l'harmonie évangélique: "Si nous suyvons la multitude comme les vaches ou les grues (comme on dit) . . . nous serons desadvouez de Dieu." 4 7 The passage's economy of linguistic meaning and gestures only sketched is complemented by redundancies of sound and expression that define attitudes and animate the dialogue.

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Sire Lyon's formulary "moyen et maniéré" (v. 21) 48 and the Rat's poverty "sans serp ne Cousteau" (v. 34) are restated by the Lion Lors le Lyon ses deux grands yeux vestit, Et vers le Rat les tourna ung petit, En luy disant: ô pauvre vermyniere, Tu n'as sur toy instrument ne maniéré, Tu n'as Cousteau, serpe ne serpillon Qui sceust coupper corde ne cordillon, . . . (vv. 47-52) who is now dependent in his captivity on the Rat's "bel os blanc" (v. 58) but imperious toward his tiny benefactor's temerity: "tays toy, Lyon lié" (v. 4 1 ) . The whole narrated fable is replete with the alliterative effects apparent in these excerpts. Recurrent sound values, whether in prefixes or suffixes, are used uniformly to quantify actions, "despita Chatz, Chates & Chatons, / Et prisa fort Ratz, Rates & Ratons" ( w . 37-38) or to qualify attitudes, "Secouru m'as fort Lyonneusement; / Ors secouru seras Rateusement" (vv. 45-46). But since this orchestration of sound obtains throughout shifts in perspective from narration to dialogue to inner monologue, it is only the reader who appreciates them fully while the protagonists hear them only fitfully or not at all. The first long passage quoted above occurs out of earshot of Lion and Rat who then engage in an alliterated dialogue interspersed with the narrator's alliterated commentary, and the whole fable ends with the cacophonous proverb of the reflective Lion "Disant en soy: nul plaisir (en effect) / Ne se perdt point, quelcque par où soit faict." Sustained repetition of sound leads the omniscient reader to witness an exaggerated picture of social conventions and a Bergsonian mécanisme plaqué sur le vivant but denies this perspective—by reducing it—to the central figures whose world is nonetheless a microcosm of our own. The shift in reference makes it impossible to assign specific values to the personae in the fable. "Manger le lard," then, becomes more of a locus communis than a locus proprius. Marot closes Epitre X with the promise to Jamet that "je mettray peine, sens & estude / D'estre le Rat," and in a way the preceding fable testifies to these qualities. Seen from the angle of the classical reference points they recall—labor, ingenium, doctrina—enclosure of native wit between the demands of the craftsman's métier and his awareness of cultural attitudes could stand for the artist's signature in many of the works he undertook. Study of manuscript variants shows us that, as in the "Lettre de Venise à la duchesse de Ferrare," he tailored individual

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221

poems to the ideologies of divergent audiences, and his emendations of edited texts do not represent authorial interjections as much as they serve to reinforce the work's dominant qualities. 49 B u t in some cases the text from which the poet works becomes an excuse to exercise his artistic talents and becomes hypothetically subject to endless variations. So it is that we see him writing separate and distinct versions from a single epigram of Martial ( C L X V I I I , C L X I X ) . Clearly the best text for comparing variant readings is the Temple

de Cupido,

of which the

most important authentic versions, the princeps ( 1 5 1 5 ? ) and the authorized ( 1 5 3 8 ) , show us Marot composing by successive and interchangeable tableaux and clinging to rhyme words while altering the thrust of whole groups of lines. 50 A t the dramatic moment when the narrator identifies ferme Amour,

the object of his quest, he goes on to

describe his pilgrimage: (1515?) E t tant allay celle dame querant, Que circuys Hongrie & Allemaigne, Espaigne: Escosse: Angleterre: Bretaigne. Mais en ces lieux les habitans me dirent Quen leurs pays long temps a ne la virent. De la je vins es parties totales D e Lombardie avec les ytales, Ou men enquis comme bien men souvint.

(1538) E t tant allay celle Dame querant Que peu de temps après ma departie J'ay circuy du Monde grant partie, Où je trouvay gens de divers regard A qui je dy: Seigneurs, si Dieu vous gard! En ceste terre avez vous point eoo gnu Une pour qui je suis icy venu? La fleur des fleurs, la chaste columbelle, Fille de paix, du Monde la plus belle, Qui Ferme amour s'appelle. Helas, Seigneurs, Si la sçavez, soyez m'en enseigneurs. Lors l'ung se taist qui me fantasia; L'autre me dit: mille ans, ou plus, y a» Que d'amour ferme en ce lieu ne souvint. (vv. 7 0 - 8 3 )

Aside from the relative expansiveness of the later version, it evinces a predominant concern to convey the narrator's veneration for his goal and to situate this feeling within an individualized conversational mode. T h e earlier version, however, presses the purely geographical extent of

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the wandering of the absentminded narrator who barely recalls the conversational exchange. W h e n the narrator sets out for the temple, the original text chooses first to emphasize the atmosphere of nature's response to the spiritual quest, but it soon settles into a depersonalized miasma characterized by preciosity and imbalance: Adonc partis: daller me diligente, Par ung matin que Aurora la tresgente Vient esclarer lessence diuturne En dechassant la tenebre nocturne. . . . Faisans de fleurs mainte belle montjoye, Pour esmouvoir plus delectable joye. . . . En la maison du beau dieu Pharetre, Rude a plusieurs & aux aultres loyal.

Ainsi je pars; pour aller me prepare Par ung matin lors qu'Aurora séparé D'avec le jour la tenebreuse nuict, Qui aux devotz Pelerins tousjours nuit. . . . Faisans de fleurs mainte belle montjoye, Qui me donna aulcun espoir de joye. . . . Dedans ce Temple où le Dieu d'amour est Fainct à plusieurs & aux aultres loyal. ( w . 95-98,103-104, 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 )

T h e simplicity of the 1538 version corresponds to the theme of auroral clarity, captures the meaning of nature's sympathy to the generality of lovers and to the narrator in particular, and suggests an antithesis (Fainct-loyal)

that is at once more logical than Rude-loyal

and more

consonant with the traditional attributes of Eros. T h e symbolic pilgrimage that these lines pursue, " L e droit chemin assez bien je trouvoye" (v. 99), becomes a structuring motif and strengthens the thematic unity of the work up to its conclusion, where the redundant "Par tel façon en mon chemin et voye" is transfigured. Like Dante who left the right path in the middle of his life's journey, Marot's narrator at life's crossroad confronts venal and disinterested love, "Par tel façon, au milieu de ma voye, / Assez & trop ces deux amours trouvoye"

(w.

475-476). This concern for greater precision and balance continues throughout the second version Les oyselletz par grant joye & deduyt, De leurs doulx chantz respondent à tel bruyt. . . . Getoit ca bas le lustre de ses raiz,

Les oyselletz par grant joye & deduyt De leurs gosiers respondent à tel bruyt . . . Avoit droit là ses beaulx rayons espars,

Language: Between Past and Future Telle clarté donnoit par les forestz . . . De poursuyvir: & dentrer menhorta, Pour rencontrer ce que mon cueur poursuyt . . . Dont lung est dor l'autre dargent. Cil qui est dor a mainte gent En amours donne guarison, Et celuy dargent marisson.

223 Telle splendeur rendoit de toutes pars „ . . De poursuivir, & mon corps transporta (Pour rencontrer ce que mon cueur poursuit) . . . Dont l'ung ferré d'or tresluisant Cause les Amoureux attraictz; L'aultre, dangereux plus que traictz, Porte ung fer de plomb mal couché Par la pointe tout rebouché, Et rend l'amour des cueurs estaincte. De l'un fut Apollo touché; De l'aultre Daphné fut attaincte. (w. 125-126, 131-32, 140-41, 1 5 5 162)

where internal rhyme, which actual pronunciation was beginning to authenticate, marks more clearly the 4 + 6 decasyllabic divisions, where the antinomy of individual locus and universal context (droit Ih-de toutes pars), corps and cueur, are more resolutely emphasized, and where verse succession equalizes the causes and effects of love in a grouping that is more illustrious than mainte gent.61 These few comparisons of original text and emendations could be sustained through the 538 lines of the Temple and describe a rough progression over the years from adumbrated theory to polished execution.62 While the earlier version prefers la court haultaine to plus hault des Cieulx (v. 147), perhaps underscoring the young poet's awareness of the court milieu he had freshly entered, it is the later version that in fact complies with and directs the evolving tastes of literary circles. The hesitation of variants over "Taillez au vif" and "Paintes au vif les gestes autentiques" (v. 264) bespeaks growing concern for poetry as a "speaking picture" that will set a vivid representation of action before the reader's senses.53 Marot's first version is content with telling the reader about the lively scene in "la queste de ferme Amour," but th 1538 text demonstrates that action: Lascher faulcons, levriers courir aux boys. La on y oyt clameurs et maintz aboys

Lascher Faulcons, Levriers courir au boys, Comer, souffler en Trompes & Haultboys; (w. 431-432)

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Even more telling through a comparison of variants is the diminution of his allegiance to Petrarchism which Mayer explored in other contexts. Just as he purified his earlier versions of Latinisms that had fallen from court favor, he realigned the priorities in the rites de passage of the temple where "Petrarche, aussi le Rommant de la Rose, / Sont les Messelz, Breviaire & Psaultier" (vv. 324-325). Textual comparisons show a transfer from the predominance of will in the Petrarchan lover, "Pour mieulx dames a gre entretenir," to the savoir faire that marks the hero of the Roman de la Rose, "Pour mieulx savoir dames entretenir" (v. 332). From this evolution we more easily understand why the holy water basin in the temple is now equipped with "une Rose fenn^e" (v. 352) instead of "une branche dolyve," the famous "Solo e pensoso" which we espy in "Triste & pensif" is much less apparent in the 1538 "Songeant, resvant, longuement me pourmaine" (v. 424), the temple door "Que le dieu pan faisoit de lauriers verdz" becomes "Faicte de fleurs et d'abrisseaulx tous vers" (v. 499) and why, conversely, a noncommital "honneur larchiprestre" is transformed into the Roman's "Genius, l'Archiprebstre" (v. 366). Epitre X and the Temple point to and represent Marot's growing interest in the conversational mode of address, and raise questions of technique which are central to the problem of understanding the poet as he appears within and outside his work. The infinitely variable presentation of scenes and personae that inhabit them, of "objective" commentary or "personal" vantage points, all depend on the writer's view of the circumstances under which he is writing at the moment or over the years and of the circumstances of the reader, and on his own view of the work's evolution. Correspondingly, alterations in literary perspective and editing, major and minor alike, all work to modify our attitude toward the narrator's assumed personalities at isolated moments, in single poems, in generic collections, and in the entire opus. W e have seen in this chapter and elsewhere that interpretations of Marot's poetry have become confused over the years with the writer's life, that interpretations of the writer's life have been conditioned in turn by the author's advance to the foreground or retreat to the background of his work, and that in some cases evaluation of the work has relied on what the author himself says about the value of his poetry as he writes it. Much of this confusion can be dispelled, or at least explained, by inquiring into Marot's art of conversation, the techniques of perspective, and the split vision of irony.

VIII: DIALOGUE, CONVERSATION, AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE Il n'est bon bec que de Paris. —VILLON, Ballade des femmes de Paris

T H E T R A I N I N G Marot received in traditional school exercises in rhetoric weighed heavily on his poetry at various times, but even its negative qualities furnished him with paradigms for "speaking in tongues" and dramatizing imaginary scenes. The most lamented of these mechanics is prosopopoeia, an echo of the past which wanes yet persists through Marot's mature years. In 1538 he calls upon the honored trappings of allegory to greet the Hapsburg queen, "Ainsi disoit France & Espaigne aussi" (Cantique V I ) , while the 1543 Complainte VII conjures up the dead soul of Jean Marot whose uninfected voice, "Filz (ce dit elle) en noz champs Elisies . . suits not only with the theoretical demand of prosopopoeia to match the absent person's style of speech but also points up the inability of the procedure, as practiced by the Rhetoriqueurs, to attain individualized nuances of expression. In many of the situations where the poet speaks through the mask of another, whether because he is commissioned to do so by a benefactor or is attentive to the demands of a genre, he insistently recognizes the literary exempla that are appropriate to the occasion. The star-crossed "Amant ferme" of Ballade VI must call on "Bel Acueil, qui m'a rys, me mord" to express his shifting fortunes, the lady in Elegie XX is obligated to parade classical heroines such as Eurydice, Dido, and Sapho before coming to the appropriate passage from the Roman de la Rose, and Catherine de M6dicis is made to speak like a neo-Petrarchan in Epitre LV. Yet, as in Epitre LI where the nine-year-old Jeanne d'Albret ad-

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dresses the fourteen-year-old Marguerite de France in the inchoate mixture of direct, indirect, and elliptical discourse appropriate to her age, the necessity to adopt the speech habits of men and women of differing social stations and ages continued to sharpen Marot's ear, perfect his mastery of dialogue, and alter dialogue to circumstantial needs. For instance, at the time when Marot was drafting the letter for Jeanne d'Albret, he was also mixing direct and indirect discourse with a much more serious purpose. The supposedly direct address in Cantique III to Ovid by the newly returned exile Non que je vueille (Ovide) me vanter D'avoir myeulx sceu que ta Muse chanter. Trop plus que moy tu as de vehemence, Pour esmouvoir à mercy et clemence. Mais assez bon persuadeur me tien, Ayant ung prince humain plus que le tien. (w. 49-54) is in reality an indirect address to Francis. The delicacy of Marot's situation requires the subterfuge of art to create the illusion of disinterested devotion and straightforward honesty. Less predominant in its individual strains, but just as important in its aggregate variations, is the dialogue. Since it was found more frequently in vernaculars than in Latin, it became one of the most persistent of ancient literary forms in the Renaissance and one of the favorite forms of exposition. In the second generation of the sixteenth century the vogue of dialogue was stimulated by the increasing popularity of the Platonic dialogues, which convey the illusion of creative conversation that invites the reader to join a quest for truth, to feel his way with the speakers, to measure his objection, to respond to hints, and often to leave him guessing and questing. While Marot's contribution to dialogue anticipates this pattern, his intellectual formation depends on a more substantial draught from the literary type of dialogue typified by Cicero's De oratore. W e can easily understand how the Ciceronian model was grafted onto the allegorical débat, estrif, conflictus, tençon, and the amoeban eclogue of the late Middle Ages. Preoccupation with argument, rebuttal, and progress to a conclusion made them all more debate than conversation, for the Ciceronian-type dialogue is less a quest than the unfolding through logical stages of something already determined. Even though its characters are distinct individuals and speak with ease of Platonic love, the Cortegiano is still more patently modeled after the De oratore.

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique

"7

Marot's experiments with the debate, in the alteration in courtly preference between la Brune and la Blanche of Chansons XXXVI and XXXVII or in the débat between Desir and Devoir (Elegie XXII), do little more than propagate the achievements of his predecessors. The débat developed earlier in the Elegies ( I V ) between the narrator's heart and mind, in a probable recollection of Villon's Débat du cuer et du corps, is pursued with uncertainty over the years. Rondeau LXIII, "De l'inconstance de Ysabeau," attempts the conversational medium Comme inconstante & du cueur faulse & lasche Elle me laisse. Or puis qu'ainsi me lasche, A vostre advis ne la doibs je lascher? Certes ouy, & aultrement fascher . . . (w. 1-4) even though it is locked in by the necessary reprise of form and thematic conclusion "Comme inconstante," while the later Epigramme XLI is devoid of any sense of spontaneity or uncertain dialectic resolution unless we in effect supply irony to the narrator's voice in our reading of the poem. C'est grand pitié que de les ouyr braire. Ha (dit le Corps), fault il mourir ainsi? Ha (dit l'Esprit), fault il languir icy? Va (dit le Corps), mieulx que toy je soubhaicte. Va (dit l'Esprit), tu faulx & moy aussi. Du Seigneur Dieu la volunté soit faicte. Despite such examples of false starts, the progress of Marot's interest in dialogue, arising from the models before his mind's eye and the contingencies that shape the court poet, is inescapable. He does continue to practice the dialogue of ideas in which the speakers are mere symbolic embodiments of special points of view, as in the "Déploration," but he also gets caught up in and contributes to the vogue of dramatic dialogue. Symbolic allegory can only appear at a particular phase of personal and social self-consciousness: a burning desire to understand and describe inner conflict must arise at a time when there is no satisfactory direct means of revealing "inner goings-on." Such a period will be of short duration, and while it lasts, allegory is the only symbolic means of psychological revelations. For symbolic writing is not an alternative or indirect or calligraphic way of saying something— it is at times the only way. As a method, especially in the atrophied forms practiced by the Rhétoriqueurs, allegorical interchange of views

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Formlessness

is cumbersome, inflexible, and doomed to give place to more direct and economical modes of expression. In addition to the dialogue of ideas, Marot discovers, in the dramatic form, the dialogue whose purpose is to exhibit character and personality, and the dialogue of wit that tends not to expose an idea in the direct manner of Cicero but rather to get its effect indirectly by ironic ridicule or felicitous expression. The former may be exemplified by the épître to Jamet where Marot's attention is focused primarily on a more detailed récit than Aesop or even La Fontaine. T h e latter appears in the missives to the king where he involves Francis in the defense against the poet's many detractors. 1 Most of these defensive maneuvers are studies in the necessary art of getting something for nothing. Marot readily admits and even exaggerates the extreme distance between something and nothing, "de néant quelque chose," and assumes the role of humble suppliant: "Faictes miracle avecques alucuns grains" (Rondeau XXXIII). And yet he must involve his benefactor in a common enterprise. That common interest is frequently signaled by the first person command "Venons au poinct," either in order to direct narrative perspective to the plight of the poet's fictional projection (L'Enfer, v. 303) or to admit what is obvious to both parties, Mais que me vault d'aller tant devisant? Venons au point: vous sçavez, sans reproche, Que suis boyteux, aumoins comment je cloche: (Epitre V , vv. 8 - 1 0 ) after which this blunt request for a new horse on behalf of the "Capitaine Bourgeon" is mitigated by the illogicality of a joke (bailler: to give or to yawn) Raison pourquoy? Il n'est plus de bailleurs, Sinon de ceulx lesquelz dormiroient bien. (vv. 1 8 - 1 9 ) In situations where Marot "himself" is more immediately implicated he paradoxically forgoes the stylized directness of "Venons au point" in favor of the more artful appearance of casual, and in some cases disinterested, conversation. T h e password used by Marot and his contemporaries to express the attributes of this spontaneity was nayve, a term whose range of meaning extended from human communication to everything within the parameter of the divine logos. In the "Déploration" Marot speaks of the psychological preoccupation that constrains and "Corrompt du tout le nayf de ma Muse" (v. 29); in the "débat Pour la Blanche" the narrator allies spontaneity and honesty in his

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique admiration of her "beaulté nayve & franche," and he summarizes the random and extensive ordering of flowers in the first eclogue as "toutes fleurs de grand beaulté nayve" (v. 236). In all their manifestations, simplicity and casual manner are identified with the lowliness of the humble speaker and of human imperfection. Thus the Triomphe de l'Agneau places the "Sermon divin, Parole magnifique . . . parler très hault et mirifique" of the deus absconditus beyond the reach of man's vision, but addresses Christ "qui es sa nayve diction, / Serois traduit par incarnation / En tel parler que le monde entendrait" (vv. (1255-1259). An unpredisposed glance at Marot's attributed or authentic poems reveals the flair for all conversational modes that has become his trademark: the brief appearance of inviting response, "Mais quoy? Qu'esse? Sera il paix," the ploy of the rhetorical question that subsumes its answer, "Hola! est il point tant de rire? / Nenny, ne nous debaischons point," and the full-blown dramatic scene whose disorderly animation creates the illusion of partially overheard dialogue, much like the fictional discourse Rabelais was writing at that time: Tout beau! je vous pry, ne bougeons; Vous dictes que ce fut Jeudy. Non fais, non. Voyci que je dy: Je dy qu'il n'est poinct question . . .2 Yet it would be essentially incorrect to assume that the thread of Marot's conversations unwinds outside of any awareness of formal restraints or without tension between open-ended dialectic and the enclosure of structure. At times, as in Chanson XVIII, conversational exchange is fleshed out with greater freedom of fluctuation than the model Marot adopted would have permitted in itself, but an example of the other extreme is Rondeau II in which the repetitions mandatory to the form narrowly constrain the natural give and take between Marot and his imaginary creditors. Thus at the conclusion of Cantique III he steps back from the genre he is undertaking and out of the "argumens suffisans" and Mais that enclose Ciceronian rhetoric in order to pose the question "Doy je finir l'elegie présente, / Sans que ung Dieu gard encores je présente? / Non! Mais à qui? (vv. 69-71 ). The location of the query and the question itself are malapropos to conventional Dieu Gard discourse. The sudden appearance of disorder against a background of rigid control, however, amounts to the proposal of a radically alternate means of issuing the same kind of praise. As we measure Marot's unsteady evolution from the paralysis of the

Formlessness

23°

Rhétoriqueur model to shapeless narrative and dialogue, a certain tension is therefore apparent between preordained form and the casual abandon and unanticipated interjections and disgressions that tend to break out from it. B u t there are moments in the span of his career when tension between the spontaneous and the preformed is more illusory than real, more artful than natural. In most cases the would-be spontaneity of his conversational withdrawal from the line of logical narrative progression is resolved by recourse to rhetorical devices designed to create the effect

of naturalness. Rather than listing an extensive catalog of

recognizable tropes in Marot, the complexity and flexibility of his "art de conférer" may be best exemplified by a glance at the figure styled as "correction," that is, feigned uncertainty or reticence in uttering what one is in fact intent on saying. T h e intention served by the figure remains constant, whatever the context in which it is used, so that a hierarchic distinction of courtly love, C'est qu'il vous pleust pour Amy me choisir D'aussi bon cueur que j'en ay bon désir. Que dy je, Amy, Mais pour humble servant, (Epître VII, w . 9 - 1 1 ) and of religious devotion Je riray donc, non je prendray tristesse. Tristesse? ouy dis je, toute liesse; ("Rondeau du Vendredy sainct") seem to come from the same mold. T h e sudden shift in perspective that inheres in the figure makes it well suited either to express opposition of emotional extremes or to intensify a single feeling. In regard to the latter, as we see in the strikingly similar passage from Ronsard: C'est ce bel oeil qui me paist de liesse, Liesse, non, mais d'un mal dont je vi, Mal, mais un bien qui m'a toujours suivy, 3 its stichic framework easily lends itself to gradation of

emotion—

whether, with Marot, its intent is to praise an unidentified lady at court Qu'en dictes vous, madame, y dois je aller? Non, je y courray, mes emprises sont telles. Comment, courir? Je y pourray bien voiler; (Epigramme or to dispraise the king's enemies

CXII)

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique

231

Trouvé sera que de toy ilz se deulent. Comment, douloir? Mais que grand mal te veulent (.Epître XXXVI, vv. 53-54) In such cases, the clear intention to be served by the device of "correcting" what has been said in pretended uncertainty determines both narrative perspective and poetic structure, and the more so when what is to be expressed is opposition of contrary feelings. Epitaphe XIV (ca. 1 5 2 7 ) , for instance, introduces momentary confusion at its close On ne se peult tenir de rire. Que dis je? on ne le pleure point? Si faict on, & voicy le point: (vv. 42-44) only to resolve it by the chiasmus Ainsi en riant on le pleure, Et en plourant on rit à l'heure. (w. 47-48) T h e latitude the narrator takes in the repeated start and abrupt reversal of his query, set against the fixed structure of the figure of speech it calls forth, creates a degree of tension that correlates with the ambivalence of his attitude toward what he is describing: a fool's death. Around the same period Marot was writing another complainte, the "Déploration de Florimond Robertet," in which the figure again repeatedly corrects the reader's ideas, Par l'aiguillon d'une mort qui le point, Que dis je mort? D'une mort n'est ce point, Ains d'une amour. (w. 1 1 - 1 3 ) and acts as a structural pivot En t'aymant trop, tu hayz et desprymes. Que dyz je aymer? Celluy ne s'ayme en rien, Lequel vouldroit tousjours vivre en ce monde, ( w . 308-310) as the narrator insistently presses the Christian lesson that death is but an introduction to eternal life. Not only is sudden modification of this sort a mode of communication between the speaker and listener but also its appearance over the course of a poem shapes our conception of the speaker's hypothetical

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personality. From the outset L'Enfefs accommodating narrator proves both fearful of his undertaking and solicitous on our behalf, by inviting us to consider for ourselves the terror of this hell and then suddenly withdrawing, "Aller helas! ne vous y vueillez mettre; / J'ayme trop mieulx le vous descrire en mettre" (vv. 1 7 - 1 8 ) . W e see a narrator whose concern is at once a reason given for confiding our trust in him and a patent excuse for telling a story in which he delights. As he pursues his tale, he continues to amend his account, as in the description of Cerberus "Lequel dressa ses troys testes en hault, / A tout le moins une qui troys en vault" (vv. 27-28). The alteration continues to split the narrator's personality by showing the straightforward chronicler ever concerned with precise statement and the sly satirist who changes the hound from a mythological creature into an anthropoid whose new features make him susceptible to allegorical meaning and satirical attack.4 As he continues to demonstrate his control of this delicate balance and introduces himself as Clément Marot, the humble narrator begins to take pride in his skill. After proposing Fortune as the source of his talents, he retracts, "Que dy je, las? O parolle soubdaine! / C'est don de Dieu, non point valeur mondaine" (vv. 4 1 1 - 4 1 2 ) , and thus not only does he succeed in publicizing the talent he has been demonstrating but the reflection following his hasty speech also maintains the conventional illusion of the narrator's veracity.® This game of illusion and reality is central to the role of Marot's narrator, and, as with any theatrical convention, we recognize and give assent to the allusion as we witness the scenes he sets before us and experience them in time. For the most part, Marot's dramatized narration is born from commerce with long-standing conventions—from the imperative to set a living picture before the reader and from his acquaintance with themes, staging technique, and repertoire of characters of the theater of the Basoche. As has been pointed out, allusions to locale in L'Enfer bespeak a familiarity with the dramaturgy of the mystères,6 and the decorous stage directions given to Rhadamanthus bind his emotive gestures to the duplicitous role the author-stage manager assigns to him: "Des qu'il la [la paovre Ame] voit, il mitigue & pallie / Son parler aigre, & en faincte doulceur / Luy diet ainsi . . ." (vv. 240-242). Beyond these near theatrical concerns for place and action, Marot's narration shows a concern for time—or more properly, speed—which later Renaissance theoreticians will codify with reference to dramatized narrative in general. Antonio Minturno lauds Petrarch's Trionfo del Tempo "per la mirabil sua velocitate" and Parthenio and

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique

2

33

Scaliger both hold that speed may be taken both figuratively and literally.7 But in poems of all kinds whose subject or setting is essentially dramatic, Marot creates and controls the impression of speed congruently with thematic line and demands of genre primarily by grouping infinitives to outline gesture and conversation, after which he casts a retrospective glance at the action with a voila to specify its meaning; the technique will have a long history in satirizing religious abuse and the sham of court manners throughout the century.8 Ballade I "Des enfans sans soucy" arranges its infinitives so as to create the illusion of lively camaraderie and to compress the fast and favorable action within the limitations of the fixed form: Boire matin, fuyr noise & tanson; . . . Trancher du Brave & du mauvais Garson, Aller de nuict, sans faire aulcun oultrage Se retirer, voila le tripotage; Le lendemain recommancer la presse. (w. 26, 29-32) The monastic satire in " L e Second Chant d'Amour fugitif," however, elongates the lack of action and drags it out with the narrator's parenthetical commentaries, "(selon eulx) . . . (pour vray) . . . (Selon le cry de Venus)," in order to intimate the dolce far niente life-style of the monks Que diray plus? Bien loger sans danger, Dormir sans peur, sans coust boyre & manger, Ne faire rien, aulcun mestier n'apprendre, Riens ne donner, et le bien d'aultruy prendre, . . . Voila comment, par voyes mal directes, . . . (w. 53-56, 77) Genres like the coq-à-l'âne depend on speed to heighten semantic density, to amuse or bewilder the reader with a stream of questions he could not possibly answer in the allotted time, and to make transitions that are primarily specious or do not exist at all.9 Elsewhere, narrative insouciance in a transition like "Or prenons aultre chance" ("Aux Dames de Paris," v. 162) does not even have the excuse of genre requirements. 10 Like all successful raconteurs, Marot delights in making a short story long and seems to subordinate his conclusion to the introductory meanderings that claim his greater interest. T o write off a hastily dispatched ending as immature grasp of composition, a charge that has been leveled at the expository form notably of the Deffence et

Formlessness Illustration, is to miss the point because even the narrator's ineptitude is part of his game. 11 The confusion and absent-mindedness of the drunken narrator become a frequently imitated literary set piece that will be magnificently exemplified by Rabelais. The garrulous and rambling narrator, attributed to Marot, who stops dead in his tracks Tu le sçauras, s'il m'en souvient. Adieu te diz, je m'en voys boyre. Ne m'en parle plus, allons boyre,12 is too methodical in his madness and too neatly summarized by later poets like Du Bellay, "J'ay du reste (Belleau) / Perdu le souvenir, tant ilz me firent boire" (Regrets C X X X ) , not to belong to a recognizable literary family. Over the years critics have much busied themselves with tracing Marot's literary family but have paid too little attention to the modifications he effected. Indeed, the narrator of L'Enfer might be classed among those prototype Renaissance figures, broadly conceived, who like Gargantua or Pantagruel undergo a series of tests and tribulations which, in theory, reinforce the basic initiatory pattern of the narrative.13 One of the outstanding examples of cross-parentage, revealing his concern for narrative art, is the entry into hell where "Clément" questions his guide about the sights he beholds: Mais, ains que feuse entré au gouffre noir, Je veoy à part ung aultre vieil manoir Tout plein de gens, de bruict & de tumulte, Parquoy avec ma Guyde je consulte, En luy disant : Dy moy, s'il t'en souvient, D'où & de qui & pourquoy ce bruict vient. Si me respond: Sans croyre le rebours, Saiche qu'icy sont d'Enfer les faulxbourgs, . . .

(vv. 33-40)

Frappier has assembled fragments from Lemaire's Second Epitre de l'Amant vert, which Marot surely had somewhere in his mind while composing L'Enfer, to argue direct and conscious imitation.14 Prior to this attribution a more distant source in Dante had been proposed on the basis of resemblance to a scene in Inferno, III, 28-34 w ^ e r e the narrator passes the gates of hell and hears the anguished cries of lost souls tormented by Harpies and other winged creatures which

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Facevano un tumulto, il quai s'aggira Sempre un quell'aria senza tempo tinta, Come la rena quando a turbo spira. Ed io, ch'avea d'orror la testa cinta, Dissi: Maestro, che è quel ch'i odo? Et che gent'è, che par nel duol si vinta? 1 5 Indeed, the sudden appearance of Clément's guide who has not been previously mentioned suggests that in the passage in question the writer's imagination was aided by a retentive literary memory or by recourse to an open source book. Yet any simplistic declaration for one or the other source sidesteps the immensely complex problem of specific attribution and the attendant question of creativity-through-imitation. The most equivalent passage in Lemaire, one that somehow escaped Frappier's notice J'ouoie aussi bien près de mes oreilles Oiseaux bruyans de strideurs nompareilles, Batans de l'esle et faisans grans murmures, Clacquans du bec, comme ung droit son d'armures. Si me tapiz au plus près de ma guide, Car de chaleur ma poictrine estoit vuide, Tant peur avoie. Et lors il me va dire: "Ce lieu umbreux, tout plain de dueil et d'ire, Est le royaume et séjour plutonicque Et le repaire à tout esprit inicque. Tu doibz sçavoir que les fiers animaulx, . . . (w.97-107) is itself indebted to Inferno, III, 20-30, but beyond that to Aeneid V I , 285-289. Vergil's influence was inescapable for Dante and Lemaire— and Marot. A closer comparative look at these passages shows that in some respects the narrative technique of Marot's passage is more Vergilian than Dantesque. Lemaire's peremptory guide does not wait for an introduction, " E t lors il me va dire," and assumes a professorial tone, " T u doibz sçavoir," which tends to separate the narrator and his guide into passive student and formal instructor rather than unite them in relaxed conversation. Dante's guide at least waits for the repeated invitation "che è quel . . . che gente è, che . . ." before proceeding to his explanation. Marot's cooperative listener moves one step further toward the accommodation of narrative form to content. The ingénu Clément compromises between varied and insistent demand for various kinds of information and intervening recognition of human frailty:

Formlessness "Dy moy, s'il t'en souvient, / D'où & de qui & pourquoy ce bruict vient." His questions graduate in importance from the obvious où (hell) to qui? (Rhadamanthus and infernal judgment) to pourquoy? (the most important question of all for Marot the individual and satirist). Like the Folly of Erasmus, Marot allows the guide to make statements that might otherwise be dangerous in the mouth of Clément. As a result of this elaborate buildup we see that the writer attaches considerable importance to what will follow, that Clément has in fact requested a story and not a simple answer, and that he is probably prepared to listen to a lengthy account until his guide breaks off almost two hundred verses later Doncques, Amy ne t'esbahis comment . . . Mais si ne veulx je à ses faicts contredire, Car c'est ma vie. Or plus ne t'en veulx dire. Passe cest huys barré de puissant fer. A tant se teut le Ministre d'Enfer, De qui les mots vouluntiers escoutoye; . . . (w. 203, 209-213) In these lines the guide has told us that he has a mind of his own yet wishes to control his reader's reaction and that he is vitally concerned with the scenes he relates. In turn, Clément assures us that he has been held rapt by the description, and halfway through his tale the guide reminds him that it was he who had requested the initiation into hell Mais puis que tant de curiosité Te meut à veoir la sumptuosité De noz manoirs, ce que tu ne veis oncques Te feray veoir. Or sçaiches, Amy, doncques, . . . (w.123-126) A few lines earlier the guide had responded to Clément's interest by sharpening the focus of his perspective to give a more detailed account of the events they witness: "Approche toy pour de plus près les veoir; / Regarde bien, je te fais assçavoir" ( w . 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 ) which, in the absence of any professed curiosity, would have been gratuitous. When Clément is subsequently asked by the underworld judge to give an accounting of himself, he justifies his long-winded tirade in the same way, "Sçaiche de vray, puis que demandé l'as" (v. 344). It is in this sense that Marot's technique is Vergilian: preparing a well-rounded and extensive discourse where the guide's explanation is

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique set up by the questions of the narrator, who in turn becomes the guide for another inquirer. Shortly after Vergil's description of the Harpies and Gorgons at the gates of hell, Aeneas turns to the Sibyl, " 'Die/ ait, 'O virgo, quid volt concursus ad aranem? Quidve petunt animae, vel quo discrimine ripas hae linquunt, illae remis vada livida verrunt?' " and later the ghost of Palinurus asks Aeneas how he came to the place of tumult and confusion, "Pelagine venis erroribus actus, an monitu divum? An quae te fortuna fatigat, ut tristis sine sole domos, loca turbida, adirés?" (vv. 318-320, 532-534). At the risk of conscious anachronism, we might also have qualified the technique as Rabelaisian. Rabelais the storyteller also shows the same concern for creating a live conversational situation in which a story is begun in response to a series of demands from other characters.16 In similar types of narrative situations such as the story-within-a-story, there is a progressive concern for preparing a conversational atmosphere and gait. Panurge's project for strengthening the walls of Paris (II, 15) is prepared by the desultory questions of Pantagruel, "Comment? . . . et quel?" but the kindred tale of Priapus in the prologue to the Quart Livre is much more intricately prepared by the characters themselves and provoked by the insistent curiosity of Jupiter: "Quoy? Quand? Qui estoient ilz? Où feut ce?" This growing interest in the more conversational than literary appearance of narrative art is further adduced earlier in that prologue by Rabelais's reference to "Aesope le François, j'entends Phrygien . . ." where the time spent correcting himself and filling in needless biographical data—thus giving his reader the time to settle back for a lengthy story—corresponds more to the improvisational mode, much like Marot's "Dy moy, s'il t'en souvient." Narrative pace is a function both of the narrator's personality and of his intent to persuade. The phlegmatic and heretofore anonymous narrator dallies, alludes and is anything but straightforward. The reasons for his oblique statements become obvious when we come to the papal and monastic satire that intervenes between the drawn-out explanations of the names Marot and Clément, which he links to the physiological control of personality factors (eaue liquide-phlegm: v. 347). Motivation for adhering to more "conversational" than 'literary" conventions, then, is as pragmatic as it is aesthetic. The conversational mode allows the author more easily to involve a less exigent reader, whose guard will have been relaxed. Of course the astute reader is onto Marot's game, and this is part of the fun. A brief invitation to play the game

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Formlessness . . . or devinez qui est ce Qui maintenant en prent la hardiesse? Marot bany, Marot mis à requoy, C'est luy sans autre; (Epître XLV, vv. 3-6)

exploits an egregious enjambement and false suspense in order to engage the reader in the dramatic sweep of the clearly punctuated 4 + 6 line which, by the distance created through the third-person luy, is in effect placed in the listener's mouth. As the monologue continues, he stresses that, although written, the letter is really a conversation by proxy: . . . et sçavez vous pourquoy Ce qu'il demande a voulu vous escrire? C'est pour autant qu'il ne l'ose aller dire. (vv. 6-8) His subsequent refusal or inability to get to the point Non Monseigneur, ce que demander j'ose Des quatre pars n'est pas si grande chose. Ce que je quiers, et que de vous j'espere, C'est qu'il vous plaise au Roy, vostre cher pere, . . . (vv. 17-20) characterizes the narrator's reticent humility and, much like Rabelais in the prologue to the Quart Livre, places him squarely in the tradition of the unrehearsed raconteur whose time killing is unpardonable in literary discourse but essential to live storytelling.17 This manner contrasts with the direct economy and formality of the high style in the first dedication of the Psalms where, mindful of the Sorbonne's fury that will fall upon him, he demonstrates his courage while he skillfully makes the king his accomplice Ainsi, ô Roy, par les divins espritz Qui ont soubz toy hebrieu langage appris Nous sont jettez les Pseaumes en lumiere, . . . (w. 161-163) The point is that here we have traded one convention for others, namely that of formal composition for casual oral récit and the theatrical, and in the process have changed literary personalities. Involvement of the reader and coloration of the narrator's personality are frequently achieved by repeated asides that vary in character

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique and intent with different genres, but in ail cases have a fundamentally dramatic or conversational bent. An epigram ( L X X X V I I I ) will set up a dramatic dialogue, "sur ce leur ay dit . . . Lors eulx . . . ," to show how Marot's newly found reputation enhances his credit and to prepare a witty declaration of faith at the end that recalls La Fontaine's "foi d'animal": Mais d'en prester (foy de marchant) encor; Et j'ay promis (foy de Clement) d'en prendre. Light comedy in the epigram turns to serious satire in "L'Epître de Frippelippes" where amassed asides point out the literary inferiority of Clement's enemies (w. 19-20), belittle their intelligence (v. 24), and dramatize the action (v. 26), before appealing to an ultimate authority Si que mon maistre (sans mesdire) Avecques David peult bien dire: "Or sont tombez les malheureux En la fosse faicte par eulx; . . . (w. 29-32) The brief parenthesis lends greater credence to the narrator's attack and to the identity of voice between David and Clément which is almost directly adapted from the Psalm translation he was then undertaking. W e are left with the multiple-perspective inversions of the play-within-a-play and of Alcofribas wandering into the world of Pantagruel's mouth: Marot's valet and literary creation puts his authormaster on stage and lends him dialogue that Clément will later publish. This mixed plane of reference obtains in one form or another in many of the traditional forms of address that fell to his lot as a court poet. Epître LU "Au Roy pour luy recommander Papillon" dramatizes for Francis the alleged conversation between Marot and the absent Almanque Papillon, "Amy trescher (ce luy respondz je alors) / De quoy te plains?" (w. 37-38), whereas the conversational plea of "Capitaine Raisin audict Seigneur de la Rocque" (Epître VI) is dramatized by the absent author, "Mais leur diras : Amys, j'ay des nouvelles / D'un malheureux . . . T u diras vray, car maulx me sont venus" (w. 1 0 - 1 1 , 1 3 ) . Raisin presumes to put words in the mouth of his Maecenas and then congratulates him for his perspicuity, a feigned equality with the listener which is really a way of recognizing the huge difference that separates them. In an even more traditional assignment Marot greets "la Royne de Hongrie venue en France" in Cantique VI with allegori-

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cal figures of Spain and France. Throughout, his asides comment on their attitudes, "(pour vray) . . . (Ce disoient ilz) . . . (pourtant)" as a means of differentiating the ponderous symbolic drama of allegory from the individual attitude of the humble court historian (Chaste Diane, ennemye d'Oyseuse, Et d'honorable exercise amoureuse), Je (de ma part) le plus petit de tous . . . 1 S (w. 3-5) The extent to which the rhetoric of the conversational ploys we have been discussing—the directional shifts of "correction," pace and timing, the dramatized situation, asides to the reader and his subsequent involvement—imbues Marot's mature work may be grasped by looking at a single masterpiece. By its chronological location between the poems of the Adolescence and the innovations of the Suite, Epître X X V "Au Roy, pour avoir esté desrobé" ( 1 5 3 1 - 1 5 3 2 ) affords a significant test case. The proverbial invocation is immediately offhand, and applies the impersonal and timeless observation (On dit) to the particular situation of the lowly innocence of the poet On dit bien vray, la maulvaise Fortune Ne vient jamais, qu'elle n'en apporte une Ou deux ou trois avecques elle (Sire). Vostre cueur noble en sçauroit bien que dire; Et moy, chetif, qui ne suis Roy ne rien, L'ay esprouvé. Et vous compteray bien, Si vous voulez, comment vint la besongne. (w. 1 - 7 ) Hypotactic structure reinforces the conversational manner and the idea of continuity of bad fortune. At the beginning of earlier poems he used vague duration to underline repetition of the moral laxity of Frère Lubin, "Vingt fois, cent fois, ne sçay combien" (Ballade III) and precise dating to impress his own misery on the king, "Quinze jours a (je les ay bien comptez),/Et des demain seront justement seize" (Epitre XI); but here the matter-of-fact enumeration serves the further purpose of preparing his listener for other misfortunes which he will recount later in the poem : "Une aultre pire encores se mesla / De m'assaillir, & chascun jour me assault" (vv. 50-51). Allusion in v. 4 to the king's own misfortune at the battle of Pavia allows him to finish the preamble to the coming tale with the perfunctory "Si vous voulez," as if Francis would refuse or even had any choice in the mat-

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ter but to listen. Throughout the poem the king is implicated in Marot's plight, either by the use of grammatical pleonasms, "Puis vous la mist tresbien soubz son Esselle . . . Et vous laissa Monsieur dormir son saoul" (vv. 20, 39), or more specifically by the constant reminder that what was stolen was coin of the realm that Francis himself had bestowed De quelcque argent que m'aviez departy . . . Mais de l'argent que vous m'aviez donné, Je ne fuz point de le perdre estonné; Car vostre argent (tresdebonnaire Prince) Sans point de faulte est subject à la pince. 19 (vv. 16, 45-48) T h e well-prepared reader has now had the chance to settle in and finds the story worth his wait. Its highly alliterative introduction, uniting moral qualities through sonorous affinities, is the most famous single section of the letter: J'avois ung jour ung Valet de Gascongne, Gourmant, Yvroigne, & asseuré Menteur, Pipeur, Larron, Jureur, Blasphémateur, Sentant la Hart de cent pas à la ronde, Au demeurant, le meilleur filz du Monde, Prisé, loué, fort estimé des Filles . . . (vv. 8 - 1 3 ) This unequal mixture of blame and mock praise is borne out by the actions of the "venerable Hillot . . . ung sainct George" who rose early, moved about noiselessly so as not to disturb his master, and exercised good taste in the articles he appraised—yet he did forget to say good-bye and the depleted Marot worries that he may not return his goods. Almost archetypal in the picaresque lineage it summons, we readily understand how it contributed to Rabelais's contrastive description of Panurge who was "fin a dorer comme une dague de plomb." 2 0 Indeed, the Erasmian theme that "Il n'est point de Presteur / (S'il veult prester) qui ne fasse ung Debteur" (vv. 9 1 - 9 2 ) foreshadows Panurge's style of praising debtors in which the parenthetical interjections are superfluous and yet grow to equal in length and surpass in interest the events they illuminate: "vendant à bon marché (je diz argent comptant) . . . donnant à repaistre aux bons (notez bons) . . . et aux bonnes (notez bonnes) et jeunes gualoises (notez jeunes: car scelon la sentence de Hippocrates, jeunesse est impatiente de faim,

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mesmement si elle est vivace, alaigre, brusque, movente, voltigeante). Lesquelles gualoises . . ." ( I l l , 2). N o less superfluous to the story he is engaged in relating, Marot's asides to the reader allow him to sustain their intimacy and facilitate the transition to his next misfortune, his grave illness : Puis la vous mist tresbien soubz son Esselle Argent & tout (cela se doit entendre). . . De mes Habitz (en effect) il pilla . . . Vous l'eussiez prins (en plein jour) pour son Maistre. . . . Quand tout est dit, aussi maulvaise bague (Ou peu s'en fault) que femme de Paris, . . . Que diray plus? Au miserable corps (Dont je vous parle) il n'est demouré fors . . . Voila comment, depuis neuf moys en ça Je suis traicté. Or, ce que me laissa Mon Larronneau (long temps a) l'ay vendu, . . . ( w . 20-21, 27, 30, 62-63, 65-66, 79-81) This series of authorial comments allows Marot in a conversational vein to translate his sense of humor and bitterness, his search for precise accounting, and his sense of overpowering incongruity. T h e interlacing of these two dimensions—the real and the fantastic —explains much of the épître's charm and method. Like Rabelais's ability quickly to dispatch a story once he has had his fun, the ending of the Valet de Gascongne tale contrasts starkly with the enumerations and asides that prolong what precedes Finablement, de ma Chambre il s'en va Droit à l'Estable, où deux Chevaulx trouva; Laisse le pire, & sur le meilleur monte, Picque & s'en va. Pour abreger le compte . . . 2 1 (w. 3 1 - 3 4 ) T h e suppression of pronouns, staccato movements, and steadily abbreviated actions, all create the impression of speed in the valet's undelayed departure. While on the one hand the narrator's account gains by this realistic touch, on the other we remember that he was asleep during the entire episode. T h e effect of this incongruity is comic, whereas in the single-line narrative of Maguelonne it is ludicrous. Comedy depends on maintaining balance between a pose of naïve innocence and completely transparent irony, a balance he breaks by admitting that his later bereavement is the only drama he could have truly wit-

Dialogue, Conversation, and Narrative Technique nessed. " C e Monsieur 1& (Sire) c'estoit moymesme, / Qui, sans mentir, fuz au Matin bien blesme" (vv. 4 1 - 4 2 ) . W e are thus prepared for the account of his continuing illness and for the lugubrious details that will make his skeletal condition apparent: ". . . la cuisse heronniere, / L'estomac sec, le Ventre plat & vague" ( w . 6 0 - 6 1 ) . Still, his melancholy reminds us of the unfortunate obligation of the court poet "en pleurant tasche ^ vous faire rire" (v. 68) which transforms the irony of poetic manner into the irony of one man's fate. This he does immediately by a masterful use of language. With conscious precision of chronology and action, he tells Francis of his treatment De troys jours l'ung viennent taster mon poulx Messieurs Braillon, le Coq, Akaquia, Pour me garder d'aller jusque a quia. ( w . 70-72) His reference is to three of the most renowned physicians of the time whom Marot celebrated in successive epigrams ( X X X V I - X X X V I I I ) . 2 2 So it is not the choice of names "Braillon, le Coq, Akaquia" which thrusts a comic effect upon a realistic scene, but rather their juxtaposition which creates a greater comic surprise precisely because they were illustrious figures in their time, and, further, allows the rime with the incongruous quia.2S T h e succession Braillon-Akakia-le Coq in his three epigrammatic eulogies would not create nearly the same effect nor would it allow the facetious rhyme. A near identical dissonance in Epitaphe XL restates Marot's concern for comic effect through vocalization Ung qui chantoit Lacouchiqui. Cy gist que dure Mort picqua; Ung qui chantoit Lacouchiqua; Tone continues to shift, jest and earnest continue to play off against each other during the remainder of his letter, and comedy obscures logic on the Erasmian principle "that many times what cannot be refuted by arguments can be parried by laughter." Marot refuses to ask for a gift—but will accept a loan; how will he repay? try him and find out; when will he repay? when the Golden Age returns or when the king's fame will die; in short, Francis's loan will be equally guaranteed whether Marot survives or not. T h e technical range of these poems is striking in its variety and its

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functional virtuosity. They are sometimes tightly formal structures and sometimes quite improvisational ones, and they move easily between colloquial directness and the most exquisitely pure and imaginative language reaching toward complex and concentrated effects. These effects, insofar as they shape the reader's understanding of each poem and alter his attitude toward the poet who creates them, are largely a coefficient of his steady control of point of view and irony.

IX: POINT OF VIEW De ore tuo te iudico LUKE 1 9 : 2 2

Marot's abandonment of the Petrarchan muse on the basis of changing taste at court. His explanation is convincing enough, but it may tell only part of the story. The attitude of the Renaissance poet toward his work had to reflect a so-to-speak triangular relationship between poet, work, and audience in which the relationship between any two of the terms affects, and is affected by the third. Thus the poet, as he surveys his projected work, must take into account the audience that will receive and judge it, such that the taste of his intended audience conditions the character of the work as executed. But at the same time the nature of the relationship possible between the poet and his audience can be determined by limitations inherent in the poetic convention adopted in the work itself. The few and highly artificial means available in the Petrarchan tradition for rendering experience—at least in the poets through whom Marot came to know that convention— imposed severe restrictions on the articulation of a poet-audience relationship, and this, in turn, limited the mode of dramatic action upon the reader. In Serafino, Tebaldeo, and Chariteo—as in Petrarch himself —the audience has all but disappeared and poems are addressed to the Muses, to the moon, to sleep, to conventional ladies with curious names and identical persons, to highways, to joy, to life, to death—or to the air. Rarely do we hear the individual voice speaking, personally or impersonally, with confidence that it is being heard. The poem's substance succumbs to its rhetoric, and the rhetoric celebrates itself. M A Y E R EXPLAINS

In the poems we looked at in the last chapter, L'Enfer, "l'Epitre de Frippelippes," Epitre XXV, and in many others, the purpose is deliberative, judicial, and demonstrative. If, like the Petrarchan poet, Marot feels compelled to mask himself with an assumed persona, to

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work from cunning or to live in exile, still he seems to speak as a reasonable man from his own or from a surrogate intelligence to another reasonable intelligence in his audience.1 W e have seen that the need to engage his reader proceeds from practical considerations but also from the aesthetic demands of irony which works for his praise or seeming dispraise. As in the letter to Jamet where Marot and his friend witness the drama in which they are allegorically represented, irony is always in part a device for excluding as well as including, and those who happen to have the necessary information to grasp the irony cannot but derive at least part of their pleasure from a sense that others are excluded. In Cantique VI, the speaker is himself the butt of the ironic point: the author and the reader are secretly in collusion behind the speaker's back, agreeing upon the standard by which he is wanting. Throughout this continual shift in perspective, it seems that as Marot writes he creates himself and his many representative personalities. The intricate relationship of the so-called real author with his various official versions of himself, and the picture the reader gets of his presence, are among the most important effects of his poetry. In fact, the reader is privy to a great deal of Marot's personality in perpetual motion in those moments when the poet is a poet, that is when he is self-consciously engaged in the act of creating. As the writer's personality shifts from the background where it is subordinated to his subject to the foreground where it becomes the subject, we are again involved in the mirror game in which the writer comments at a distance on his work and on his role in its production while he is still engaged in creating it.2 His introduction to the rondeaux is, appropriately, a rondeau on how to compose a rondeau. As the writer's instructions take us through the routine steps of discovery, judgment, and style, Bien inventer vous fault premierement; L'invention deschiffrer proprement, Si que Raison & Ryme ne soit morte En ung Rondeau. Usez de motz receuz communement; Rien de superflu n'y soit aulcunement, . . .

we see the poem take shape while coming full circle from the initial to the final "En ung Rondeau" and enclose artistic intent and accomplishment within its circularity. Such an attitude may have suited the young tyro at court who was bent on advertising his talents and demonstrating his virtuosity. The mature poet, however, habitually defines his position on the fringe between participation and observation at the

Point of View poem's beginning or end, and initiates or closes the circle without being circumscribed by it. W e are never sure of the extent to which he controls the events he relates, even though they owe their life to his pen. His concern with his own experience as a writer at the outset of the "Déploration" seems to put him in charge, "Jadis ma plume on vid son vol estendre/Au gré d'amours, et d'un bas stille et tendre," and, proportioned to his own reaction, "Lors, curieux, piquay pour veoir . . . ," he continues to pique the reader's curiosity O vous humains qui escoutez ma plaincte, Qui est celluy qui eut ceste esle paincte En son escu? Vous en fault il doubter? (vv. 147-149) But he gets lost amid the clearly more important characters of la Mort, eglise Romaine, and françoise Republique so that at the end he is reduced to the minor role of a historiographer relating events that he did not even witness : "L'ordre funebre, ainsi qu'on m'a compté. / Si l'ay compris succinct en cest ouvrage" ( w . 550-551). Correspondingly, Epître XXXVIII evolves from an almost obsequious tone to the last verse of "Ceste escripture où je impose silence" to state, in effect, that the occasional poetic world is coextensive with and contingent on the creative act of the narrative voice. The detached narrator in Epître XXIV makes it known that he exists apart from his creation and has better ways to spend his time Et sur ce poinct voys ma Lettre ployer, Pour me remettre aux choses ordonnées Que pour t'escrire avoys abandonnées. but he also makes it clear that his creation is no clockwork construction that, once set in motion, survives its author by its own internal mechanism. Epître XXX begins with the author's conventional address and instruction to his work, " V a tost, Epistre," and closes with the mandate "Puis te tairas; car tant debile suis / Que d'ung seul vers alonger ne te puis." From Horace and Pliny through Erasmus, Tyard, and Montaigne the convention centers around an image like the mother bear licking her cub and implies solicitous concern for the work's survival. But here the work's genesis and expiration barely survive the enfeebled creator whose failing energy is elsewhere translated as disdain Et m'esbahis (sans rien desestimer) Comment j'ay prins la peine de t'escrire Tant seullement. (Rondeau LXI)

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All Marot's major critics have noted how much of his conversational poetry tends to shade almost imperceptibly into satire and lyricism, and how the reader must be wary since "sa pensée s'enveloppe de formules un peu ambiguës." 3 But if it is true, as it is with Montaigne for instance, that it is the "indiligent lecteur" who loses Marot, then we cannot blithely assume, without imposing serious qualifications, that his poetry is "une oeuvre qui reflète la vie du poète, qui lui est consubstantielle" and that his work becomes steadily more personalized as he writes.4 These latter generalizations by Villey, which are based on an assumption that Marot's art simply reproduces more than it imitates nature, open the door to the intentional fallacy by presuming biographical motives from artistic expression. Clearly, the resonant voices of the incarcerated Marot who speaks in the name of all star-crossed humanity, of the official poet who speaks for European Christendom, of the Psalm translator who speaks for God the Father, are all reducible to particular and ascertainable biographical circumstances. Yet we have repeatedly stressed that confusion of Renaissance conventions concerning literary models and stylistic variation leads to an untenable confusion, in the assessment of Renaissance poets, of life with art. Confusion also arises in regard to Marot by failing to appreciate his command and modification of perspective, the "bridle and rudder of art" as Leonardo put it. When Montaigne—to continue Villey's implied analogy—speaks impartially as a writer evaluating his former statements, his observations impose a unity that has been fractured by the accidents of time. In an instant Marot steps back from his work within that very work to create a disunity between the commenting first person and the objectively viewed third person as a means of favorably disposing his reader. T h e situation involving Clément, judge of Marot, obtains frequently in the épîtres. 5 In Epître X V the unchallenged but unseen narrator unobtrusively discusses the decorous relationship of social station, knowledge, and corresponding style before leading the reader to the obvious question and answer period. Qui ose ainsi approcher sa lueur Du cler Soleil qui la peult effacer? C'est ung Marot, lequel vient pourchasser (vv. 1 2 - 1 4 ) Preservation of distance is appropriate in this request to the powerful Cardinal de Lorraine to intercede on the poet's behalf with the temperamental Anne de Montmorency. W h e n two letters earlier he writes

Point of View to the Cardinal du Prat, the infamous épître in which he amasses rimes équivoquées all based on seeler, he boldly breaks into the third-person case for "le pauvre Clement" to preempt Duprat's judgment Qu'en dictes vous, Prélat treshonnoré? Doibt son malheur estre estimé offense? Je croy que non. (vv. 4-6) If Marot stretches some conventions to the point of abandoning them, he nevertheless continues to take refuge within others that extend from the narrative je to the object of contemplation. The subject reflects an attitude and an activity, not a thing nor even in some circumstances a person. Not unlike the Cartesian cogito, the subject produces itself by reflecting on itself, and when it is engaged on some other object, it has no being apart from the activity of being so engaged. Saulnier has elegantly demonstrated how Marot's je poétique in the élégies forms a collage of the writer's character, his time and its style, but remains essentially un autre.6 When the voice in Chanson XXXIX links his emotion to the object of his feelings and closes his thought by ending Ce désir qui tant dure, Il vous fauldroit sentir La peine que j'endure. it is more pertinent to speak of conventional rather than emotional filiation with, say, the finality of Du Bellay's similar complaint that "si le temps finist chose si dure, / Il finira la peine que j'endure" (Antiquitez V I I ) . 7 "Humain, typique, exemplaire," first-person testimony may happen to comprehend the author's mood but, set in a conventional time such as the "moys de Mays" and "le temps, qui tout brise" (Chant-royal I I I ) , it transcends the individual witness.8 Even when contexts of a particular emotional attitude completely diverge, the article that modifies their content and the impersonal il that generalizes on their action imply by their common expression a common mold for their origin, and universalize beyond recall to the poet's personal situation the seemingly subjective point of view that initiates the statement. The theme of confession and the relief that derives from psychic energy working outward is the golden thread running through a work like Marguerite's La Coche Un mal caché va tousjours empirant; Et, s'il est tel qu'il ne puisse estre pire,

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Viewed as narrative technique, the invitation to bare inner turmoil sustains the tales that revolve around the central axis of the journey, as does all narrative in the tradition of Chaucer and Boccaccio. But beyond considerations of technique, the capsular psychological insight is remarkable for the proverbial nature of its distanced commentary on the personalized action that follows or, as with the elegiac Du Bellay, precedes: Qu'on ait pitié de moy. O peine trop sujette! Il n'est feu si ardent qu'un feu qui est enclos, Il n'est si fascheux mal qu'un mal qui tient à l'os, Et n'est si grand'douleur qu'une douleur muette. (Regrets, XLVIII) Such jarring shift of perspective from the personal to the general, from the temporally specific first person to the timeless third person typifies this usage of traditional psychological insight in Marot, whether he speaks through the fictional voice of the lady in Elégie X X , "Mes longs ennuyz? Le dueil qui est celé, / Griefve trop plus que s'il est révélé" (vv. 71-72), or in his own, presumably biographical voice in Epitre V I En fin d'escript, bien dire le te vueil, Pour adoulcir l'aigreur de mon grant dueil, (Car dueil caché en desplaisant courage Cause trop plus de douleur et de rage Que quand il est par parolles hors mis, Ou declairé par lettre à ses Amys). (w.67-72) The objects of laudatory or derisive contemplation on the part of Marot's many narrators have inspired energetic, ingenious, and often idle speculation. Identification of Anne d'Alençon behind the letter N is generally accorded, but what of the infamous Isabeau? Candidates have ranged from a "bourgeoise parisienne," to the Catholic church, to a certain Elisabeth Ruzé, to Diane de Poitiers by her heraldic association with the crescent moon and Isabeau's with Luna. Isabeau, however, is a widely applied pseudonym in Marot's various genres, appearing as a shepherdess in Eglogue I (v. 38) and conjured up for his translation of Erasmus's colloquy Abbatis et eruditae, yet even when he attributes his 1526 betrayal and arrest to her, the parallel is obvious with the

Point of View mysterious Ysabeau who supposedly accompanied Villon when he killed Philippe de Chermoye and was pursued for his murder. Even if Isribeau had a specific and unfavorable biographical referent, the various mutations she is made to undergo ally her with the long succession of women whose hair and eyes poets have transformed to colors suiting the intensity of their emotions. In the Lesbia of Catullus we recognize Clodia transformed into the image of love which always carries with it a trace of the self-image, a shadow of the shadow Narcissus saw before him in the pool. As a courtly habit, Italian poets took the image of a lady in their sestinas and sonnets to signify ideas as well as passion, and their English counterparts took their examples from the Italian masters. If indeed Anne Boleyn inspired one of Wyatt's English adaptations of Petrarch, the sonnet stands rather as an example of Wyatt's wit, half concealed in the image of courtly love. Point of view in Marot remains problematic because the distinction between the subject's feeling and the object of those feelings—an Isabeau as the external cause of his downfall, as an emotional projection of the torment he suffers, or as a minor character in a pastoral allegory where the poet does not figure—is constantly blurred for the reader who barely has time to readjust his optic. Confusion, in which the reader is alternately accosted and dropped from the poet's field of vision, is a general function of everything that characterizes Marot's rambling conversations: speed, thinly disguised self-interest, and the ability to shuffle literary conventions for adaptation to the contingencies of a three-dimensional world. W e have seen these characteristics at work as narrative technique in the multiple planes of address of L'Enfer, in the letter to Jamet, and in the request for the petit saufconduict where time seems to come to a standstill. Time accelerates change of perspective, however, in the swift declaration of personal reaction and intended effects on the benevolent reader and adversaries at the conclusion to his dedication to the Psalms: "en vous plaisant me plaist de leur desplaire." Despite his claim in Epitre XLVI that Marguerite understands him as he is revealed in his verses "sans les falloir gloser," her fleeting involvement in the vivid portrayal of his mental chaos and of his hasty exile to Renee's court who received him Bien tost apres. Las! je ne sgay si as Ores de moy souvenances semblables, Je croy que si; mais ces espoventables Doubtes et peurs, non encores tollues, . . . (w. 60-63)

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introduces and illustrates a compendium of the rhetorical devices we have discussed in earlier chapters. The tactic of delay in the form of conventional asides and the illusion of speed through constant shift of perspective come together in the "Epître au Roy pour sa délivrance" ( X I ) , perhaps Marot's most celebrated poem and a model of the épître marotique. Fluctuations among temporal, personal, and mimetic reference points dominate the work and the portrait of the artist it works to convey. His unmistakably earnest plea of the conclusion, "Si vous supply (Sire) mander par Lettre /Qu'en liberté vos gens me vueillent mettre" (w. 59-60), is barely implied amid the mixture of seriousness and comedy in the overture Roy des Françoys, plein de toutes bontez, Quinze jours a (je les ay bien comptez), Et des demain seront justement seize, Que je fuz faict Confrere au Diocese De sainct Marry, en l'Eglise sainct Pris; (vv. 1 - 5 ) In these lines he cultivates a pose of naïveté by taking the figurative in a literal sense in order to dispose the king favorably through the resultant comedy, but also because his letter will be an exercise in feigned innocence. The pro forma exordium, which apostrophizes the addressee and enumerates his traditional attributes, furnishes the key to his argument. Through much of the poem he will refer with calculated confusion to Francis in his personal and official capacities and will take the officious bontez quite literally as he works up to his request. From the rigor and metrical perfection of this opening line we immediately switch to the individual plight of the poet whose literal insistence on the idiomatic "quinze jours" overflows the next three verses. The passage's mixture of the simple past tense and the more modern past indefinite reinforces the narrator's ingenuousness, and the puns Marry (discomfited) and Pris, derived from the existing parishes of SaintMerry and Saint Priest (cf. Rondeau LXIV), continue the refraction of reality into comic poetry.9 Although he must convince the king to dismiss the charges against him, Marot cannot through sustained laughter risk letting Francis dismiss the seriousness of his dilemma; maintaining the delicate balance will be the poet's principal task and triumph in the letter. He unleashes his alliterative fury on the arresting officers and "leur folle fureur" (v.

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33) and on the austere novitiate he is made to suffer, " f u z faict Confrere," because Marot the satirist is pleading a case for his deliverance and against the indignities of the court. As a lawyer and a satirist, he must appear honest, but judicial oratory and satire are by any definition unfair. They seldom present their subject straightforwardly and never present both sides, however much this might be desired in the interests of justice. 10 His story, then, begins with a value judgment that synthesizes the magistrate and his two aids into Trois grands Pendais vindrent à l'estourdie, En ce Palais, me dire en desarroy: Nous vous faisons Prisonnier par le Roy. Incontinent, qui fut bien estonné? Ce fut Marot, plus que s'il eust tonné. (w. 8 - 1 2 ) T h e momentary lapse into direct discourse is outweighed by the poet's emotion, translated by the continued alliteration in his first-person reaction (v. 9) and by his retreat to the third person to witness that reaction (v. 1 2 ) . The occasion for his surprise comes from hearing "par le Roy," the same king who is "plein de toutes bontez." Marot wisely emphasizes and plays on the two senses of being arrested "in the name of the king." In freeing a prisoner by physical violence, he becomes subject to a civil action—a secondary charge against which he would nonetheless have trouble defending himself. By obstructing justice he has more seriously contravened the law of the land and of the state, that is, of the king in whose name it is administered by the magistrate. By quashing the latter charge he can more easily circumvent any remnant of the former. This he begins to do in the following verses, Puis m'ont monstré ung Parchemin escrit, Où n'y avoit seul mot de Jesuchrist; Il ne parloit tout que de playderie, De Conseilliers & d'emprisonnerie. (w. 13-16) by a redundancy ("ung Parchemin escrit") that would have been patently ridiculous after his arrest the year before, by the transparent pretense of simple devotion and by the stuttering cacaphony of vv. 1 5 - 1 6 in which he attempts to pronounce polysyllables that are beyond his ken. Marot refuses to allow the king's officers their day in court by per-

Formlessness mitting the asides to the reader to outstrip the events he pretends to relate. After a brief return to the direct discourse of a query about his part in freeing the prisoner, he quickly moves from denial of guilt to a guilty explanation of his denial, then to further denial and guilty explanation Et moy de le nyer, Car soyez seur, si j'eusse diet ouy, Que le plus sourd d'entre eulx m'eust bien ouy. Et d'aultre part, j'eusse publicquement Esté menteur. Car pourquy & comment Eussé je peu ung aultre recourir, Quand je n'ay sceu moymesmes secourir? (vv. 20-26) The conversational dialectic that embroils him steadily in an increasingly innocuous guilt smothers an otherwise serious confession in its absurdly candid reasoning. His emphatically indignant rejet "Esté menteur" and the immediate recourse to the quidque quare jargon of forensic debate give way to a logical alibi which is at once irrelevant defense and a pointed confidence he shares with the king. Seeming inability to get to the point of his discourse plagues the voluble narrator, "Pour faire court. . . . Mais pour venir au poinct de ma sortie" (vv. 27, 43), but also allows him to continue the tactic of rapid advance and retreat, " E t m'ont mené ainsi que une Espousée; / Non pas ainsi, mais plus roide ung petit" ( w . 30-31) as once again he surreptitiously transfers the guilt to his adversaries. Study of variant readings, for example, the suppression of "ung maistre procureur" in favor of the more specifically ironic "mon beau Procureur" (v. 34) shows that this transfer was uppermost in the author's mind. Although the party tendering a bribe would be as guilty before the law as the party receiving it, Marot preserves the imbalance of his argument by depicting his jailors as rapacious opportunists but describes his own part as a harmonious counterpoint in a polyphonic understanding: "Tant doulcement j'ay chanté ma partie, / Que nous avons bien accordé ensemble" (vv. 44-45). Diminution of his guilt becomes understandable and necessary because the metaphoric referent of partie shifts from the musical to the juridical, from the fanciful to the real, which Marot has resolutely refused to face squarely, for "La partie est bien forte" (v. 47). This forthright admission of what he could not possibly deny is but a prelude to the high point of his fatuous intimacy with

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the king in which he gives with one hand and takes away with the other Vous n'entendez Procès non plus que moy; Ne plaidons point; ce n'est que tout esmoy. Je vous en croy si je vous ay mesfaict. Encor posé le cas que l'eusse faict, Au pis aller n'escherroit que une Amende. Prenez le cas que je la vous demande; Je prens le cas que vous me la donnez; (w. 49-55) While the legal jargon "posez le cas . . . prenez le cas" is serious in a context like Epigramme CXLIV, here it forms the superficial trappings for an argument that will attempt to corrode the validity of those terms. This is precisely what Marot must accomplish and apparently thinks he has accomplished. For he immediately moves to unadulterated seriousness in order to make his plea for clemency before returning to the mock serious excuse that closes his written conversation, "Je ne suis point vers vous allé parler: / Je n'ay pas eu le loysir d'y aller." Throughout this book we have seen that at various times particular considerations of theme or genre, court protocol or religious conflict individually demand that the poet submerge or equivocate his personality. But in works like Epître XI which have come the most universally to bear the stamp of Marot's artistry, the pragmatic and the aesthetic, the useful and the sweet, are inextricably mixed. The mixture is rarely in a same, clear proportion or of a same character amenable to facile generalization. Structure and statement are often accommodating and antagonistic in contiguous moments of the same work. Statement and meaning are often at odds when they seem to harmonize or converge on the poet's intent when they appear to annihilate each other. Ironic counterpoint thus claims our interest at the center of Marot's intrigue. Irony of manner, of fate, and of detachment arises as a natural condition of the events Marot witnessed and experienced, and of the literary poses he assumed in response to those events; life and art again trace parallel and occasionally intersecting lines. Many of the themes that he relates at a distance bring together a plurality of views in a simultaneous vision, not as excogitated illustrations but as ingredients of that vision assimilable into rhyme: "Autant aymé de Dieu tout pur & munde / Comme il estoit du miserable monde" (Epitaphe III). From

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the world seen as a vale of tears, he looks back to the Golden Age and forward to the millennium; but like a Renaissance Poussin he knows that all earthly gardens contain the seeds of their own destruction and must sometime witness death. When he thrusts himself closer to the main action and becomes one of the major players, he cleaves to the traditional pose of the ironist who appears less than he is and says little in order to mean as much as possible and to deflect from, while directing attention toward, his central meaning. Thus, Epître XI posits his innocence in that his missive admits his guilt to the extent that he belongs to a guilty society. Unlike the criminal, the ironist wants to get caught. If his ironic duplicity goes undetected the object of his attack escapes unharmed while he remains the sole and sterile audience to his own cleverness. T h e ironist must put before his readers a false point of view and present it as though he really accepts it. Yet his reader must recognize both that the point of view is false and that he is not accepting but attacking. T h e target of irony is of concern to the writer and presumably to the reader, but the precise attitude of the poet toward his object cannot be determined without an appreciation of his manner. And in the Renaissance that manner revolves around the mimetic traditions of language with which he works. 11 It is possible that if critics had kept in mind the well-known cases of courtesans who built or received lavish homes at the crown's expense—one thinks immediately of Anet —they might not have tripped over Marot's irony and the castles he had built for himself at Clément and at Marot (Epître X X V ) . 1 2 But it is even more likely they would not have erred had they been aware of ironic paradigms that contributed to such fey humor and the great care that Renaissance writers and critics were then taking to define the language of irony. 13 Villon's legacy of "Vicestre, chastel et donjon" (Lais, v. 140) is an obvious instance of questionable real estate— Bicêtre, the fortress that housed lepers, madmen, and other outcasts. Published three years before the composition of Epître X X V , the central portion of II Cortegiano (II, 59-72) treats this same ironic use of language in one of the few episodes where all the characters seem to agree. Irony, then, is one of the prime effects of Marot's use of poetic language insofar as it repeatedly shapes and reshapes the ambiguities of his fictional demeanor. Through its constant and consistent redefinitions and examples in other writers, the reader is well prepared for the

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phenomenon of irony, but he must remain alert at all times, for irony is both the prime instrument and the result of the poet's shifting planes of reference. Marot's irony is felt immediately through the rapid conversions and startling juxtapositions of dissimilars. Like all analogy, it accumulates and condenses meanings with the force of poetic imagery. It first proposes a basic congruence between two things that have a patent incongruence underlying them. Then it presents for consideration certain instances of this incongruence, as though the obvious and basic dissimilarity did not really matter. In Epitre XLVI which Marguerite, he assures her, will not have to gloss, he pours out his heart to her but he does so through the intermediary of the Ex ponto. Mayer's notes point out two long passages that Marot closely reproduces as a means of translating his profound sorrow and wild anxiety. Between these passages, however, he returns briefly to a distich of Ovid's, " E t quot aves motis nitantur in aera pennis, / Quotque natent pisces aequare, certus eris" (II, vii, 27-28); "j'ay plus de douleurs / Que n'a la terre au printemps de couleurs" (vv. 97-98). Marot's emendation is subtly but fatally different. To drive home the suffering he has endured on land and sea, Ovid simply compares the countless number of fish and birds to his pains. The ineffable point Marot is driving at is that "le dernier [ennuy] est de sentir en l'ame / Quel douleur c'est perdre deux foys sa dame" (w. 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 ) . Recourse to the microcosmic analogy linking the mind and the world, the two loci of his suffering, is a natural one. Yet the precious analogy is grounded in the irreconcilable disparity between sorrow and joy, quantity and quality. In effect, then, the absurd possibility of similarity, or even of equivalent and interchangeable identities, is momentarily taken as a serious fact. Irony pretends in this way to confirm a union of opposites by giving abstraction a context in experience that points up the problem of their conjunction. In these instances irony is primarily a tactic of self-defense, but as the ideal stylistic mediation in pro et contra argumentation it is just as frequently a weapon of attack. Within the totality of Marot's entire literary corpus, it puts themes like the Golden Age in their proper perspective. His irony is the traditional mode of the satirist hunting down disparities that are understood to exist between man's moral and physical natures, between all sanguine expression of hope in social ideals and in benevolent intentions and the unregenerate condition of human actuality. In Marot's satire irony is the chief instrument of the writer's critical aims. And these are continually being brought to

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the surface, even at the very beginning of a work, in a figure of speech or an inversion of terms that emphasizes by deliberate distortion. Such a figure begins the Epître de Frippelippes Par mon ame, il est grant foyson, Grant année & grande saison De bestes qu'on deust mener paistre, Considered simply as pro et contra technique, the triple repetition is entirely conventional and was recognized as such by theoreticians through the century.14 Before Marot, Rabelais described the "belle procession, renforcée de beaulx preschans, et letanies contra hostium insidias, et beaulx responds pro pace" of the monks of Seuillé, prefatory to his introduction of Frère Jean (I, 27). After Marot, Du Bellay's Regrets LXXXVI contrasts the feint praise of the social ballet in the opening lines, "Marcher d'un grave pas & d'un grave sourci, / Et d'un grave soubriz à chascun faire feste," with the sympathetic irony of the last lines, "Dont souvent mal monté, mal sain, & mal vestu, / Sans barbe & sans argent on s'en retourne en France." The feint praise in Marot's verse is readily apparent in his run-on line—a token of the satirist's freedom to break all bounds—as it is in the rhetoric of vehemence in the satires of Donne and Marston. 15 Yet Marot's satire does innovate from the prevailing satirical models of his time. With his customary gift for generalization, Guy has described the conservative trends in Rhétoriqueur satire that attacks minor deviations only the better to preserve established institutions and shuns any transvaluation of values that would threaten superannuated traditions.18 The very opposite of Socratic irony, the satire of the doctrinal lacks all perspective because it views society as a participant in and advocate of its most cherished institutions and sanctions a paralyzed world in which everything has its prescribed function and value. By rejecting the corrective, three-dimensional view of the outsider, it deprives itself of the very name and reason of satire. Clear divergence in the variant readings of the Chantilly manuscript, however, bespeak a tension between orthodox and reform views, between anodine and vehement commentary, and show that Marot's satire was uncomfortably but firmly engaged by the central issues of his day. Differences of critical opinion over the nature and significance of that divergence show that the mercurial qualities we have discussed in other reaches of Marot's art pertain to his satirical jibes as well. The nature and rationale of satire in the Renaissance are too prob-

Point of View lematic to be of immediate interest here, except insofar as they inform point of view. Hallet Smith goes so far as to state that "The problem of satire as it faced the writers at the end of the century was primarily a problem of point of view," whether to play the role of the detached and impartial critic or whether to give vent to a personal and savage indignation.17 These two extremes are habitually represented by Horace and Juvenal, whether or not writers actually had their works before their mind's eye—and the ease with which they confuse them suggests that indeed they may not have read them with care, if at all. Even an inveterate classifier and definer like Sebillet writes "lés Satyres de Juvénal, Perse, et Horace, sont Coqs a l'asne Latins: ou a mieus dire, lés Coqs a l'asne de Marot sont pures Satyres Françoises" (II, 9 ) . His penchant for restatement typifies the confusion surrounding the name satire which various writers derive etymologically: from an Arabic word meaning a knife, from saturnine melancholy, from the Latin term satura lanx for a full medley, and from the hairy wood creatures.18 Du Bellay's rejection of the name coq-à-1'âne and his postulation of Horace as the exemplar of moderate and covert satire is no more helpful, because satire was soon to outmode that concept in such forms as La Satire Ménippée and Les Tragiques. Only ten years after Du Bellay's treatise Antonio Min turno allowed for the savage indignation of Juvenal "con tanto più spiegate vele per lo mare dello sdegno." 1 9 The point is that although Horatian and Juvenalian satire are lumped together, a reconciliation is difficult at best between the humble, recessive third style associated with Horace and the untempered vehemence of Juvenal's reproofs. Horace's deft and comic recrimination is often cited as the satiric exemplar while it is the tragic frenzy of Juvenal's attack that we find in practice. Marot's coq-à-1'âne mediates between these extremes. Its comedy is recognizable by the reverse sententiae that undercut logic and traditional wisdom, "Aprens tandis que tu es vieulx" (Coq-à-Vâne I, v. 45) and by the obvious logic that overstates the case, "Ung homme ne peult bien escrire, / S'il n'est quelcque peu bon lisart" (v. 102-103). This "variété inconstante dés non cohérens propos," as Sebillet put it, came to characterize the coq-à-l'âne in the Marotic tradition, such as the apocryphal poem "Si j'eusse plus tost" (1537) : Je ne voy gueres clerc leans Sans des luneaulx ou des lunettes. Adieu vous commandz, bergerettes; Adieu, pasteurs et pastouraige.

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260 Ça, de l'argent pour le fourraige, Pour le fourrier et la fourreure. La peine que pour vous j'endure; Monsieur, soyez le bien venu! Et puys Clement est revenu, Bien habillé à la françoise. Une belle et grosse turquoyse, Bien fine, bien orientalle, Reluit beaucoup en belle salle, Plus qu'un dyamant ou rubys.

(w. 100-113) Amid the illusion of speed and fragmented thought, the author briefly reveals unforeseen meaning beneath surface clarity, and darts at serious ideas while depriving them of serious consideration. T h e verbal irony of luneaulx-lunettes reminds us that the Renaissance associated madness with forbidden wisdom, a mad insight that is not dissociated from the poet's method. 20 Evolution of verbal form and meaning continues unabated through the passage up to the familiar motif of "La peine que j'endure," an obvious reference to Marot's torment in exile. T h e last paragraph with the habitual and perhaps ironic reprise of commendatory adverbs and adjectives is cited only because its meaning totally escapes modern readers and completes the stages of our reading experience of partial, clear, and opaque meaning. Unlike Juvenalian or Swiftian satire, Marot in the coq-à-1'âne does not put the burden of solutions squarely on the shoulders of those whose faults he pointed out, because the shaft comes at an oblique—which is to say compromising —angle and the reader has no time for reflection. Ironic criticism of religious abuse under the anonymous monastic habit, " L e fourmage couvert de mytes / E t d'ordure est tous jours meilleur" (Coq-à-l'âne TV, vv. 60-61) differs in quality and in kind from the generically similar imagery and ad hominem invective of the "Epître aux Dames de Paris." Car vostre honneur resemble ung ne sçay quoy Lequel, tant plus on le va remuant, Moins il sent bon, & tant plus est puant. (w. 168-170) that puts innocence in one column and guilt in the other, with no easy categories for near innocence or near guilt. But Marot's ironic obscurities are never a disguise for indifference

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to or despair over man's fate. On the contrary, they are a deliberate if implied taunt to those who could be so wise and yet are so foolish. The allusions to war, suffering, and martyrdom bind him to his erring fellow man by a Gordian knot of love and destiny. He would not sever that tie if he could. Yet this very relationship provokes his desire to inflict the remedial pain of derision and anger. For those who "dessus moy ont une vieille dent" (Epitre X X X V I , v. 76), Marot has his own sharp tooth. Yet more often than not the Marotic satirical rejoinder arises more from a sense of ill proportion which must be righted Pleust a dieu que j'eusse la charge De refformer tout ce desordre. Sjavez vous que je vouldroys mordre . . . (Coq-i-l'ine, 1542, w . 136-138) Even in the "Epitre aux Dames de Paris" where he insists on showing Combien mieulx picque ung Poete de Roy Que les Rimeurs qui ont faict le desroy. Non que ce soit de picquer ma coustume, Mais il n'est boys si vert qui ne s'allume. (vv. 27-30) the restatement of Juvenal's famous "Difficile est Satiram non scribere" of the first satire (v. 30) is modulated by reluctance and the imagery is reminiscent of merriment and love. 21 Marot's satire in the coq-a-l'ane symbolizes essentially his frustration, his disappointment with his world and its inhabitants. Refusing, however, to withdraw, and reacting as one pulled between the tensions of love and hate, he experiences the tragic need to wound those for whom he harbors affection or pity. As Frippelippes did in the individual case of Sagon, he applies the verbal lash or the jeer as instruments of moral and social therapy. These are painful, but he hopes that they will in time bring about a wholesomeness that must compensate for the hurt. The coq-a-l'ane thus strikes a responsible balance—a witty and sentient appeal for action moderated by the author's visible benevolence. What makes the tragic or savage accents of satire tolerable are their echoes —however muffled—of authorial humaneness, controlled agitation, and feeling intelligence. The genre, despite surface laments, bitterness, or mockery, is often a powerful vehicle of good-natured hope.

X: THE ART OF WIT Talent, goût, esprit, bon sens, choses différentes non incompatibles. Entre le bon sens et le bon goût il y a la différence de la cause à l'effet. Entre esprit et talent il y a la proportion du tout à sa partie. —LA BRUYÈRE, " D e s jugements,"

Les Caractères

THE LICENSE and flightiness of the coq-à-l'âne made it the ideal vehicle for Marot's satiric irony. In the separation they create between the surface of what is said and the depth of what is meant, between the tainted actual and the tolerant ideal that measures its imperfections, irony and satire presume a plurality of coexisting outlooks. In their satiric moments the Pléiade and other later schools could have profited from a measure of the freedom Marot gave to his narrative voice and allowed himself in regard to choice of genre. They could have utilized the freedom from doctrinaire aesthetic and even from doctrinaire religious positions that fall within and result from the purview of the poet's roving eye. Proximity to political and more broadly cultural events and detachment from them in exile give breadth to his glance as it surveys at once the unjustified torment of himself as a representative outsider and man's release from misery by the restitution of order in a beckoning Golden Age. Although maturity eventually brought the Pléiade poets around toward the lessons of Marot's poetics, to the fruitfulness of his themes, and even to his turns of phrase, they never disavowed their original characterization of his general effort as episseries. It is such facile judgments and especially Boileau's misunderstood invitation "Imitons de Marot l'élégant badinage" which have come to form and therefore to deform our understanding of the corpus of Marot's poetry. Whereas by the standard of actual usage he seems to

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have served the seventeenth century more as a model of salacious burlesque than of preciosity, the frozen categories of literary historians have tended to make badinage an immutable property of his verse, allowing the term variation only in such incidental qualities as charmant, doux, and simple.1 With his characteristic attention to detail and original context, Saulnier has bypassed the misleading economies of literary history to place Boileau's comment in perspective. After insisting on the accord of rhyme and reason and inveighing against pointless verbiage, Boileau condemns the burlesque: "Que ce style jamais ne souille votre ouvrage. / Imitons de Marot l'élégant badinage, / Et laissons le burlesque aux plaisants du Pont-Neuf" (I, 95-97). As Saulnier argues, the exhortation is selective and in no way limits Marot's poetry to badinage alone: "le jugement n'indique pas une limite, mais une valeur." 2 As an example of a correct understanding of Boileau's expanded context, Saulnier cites the judgment of Mlle de Scudéry in Clélie—a judgment that gains even more significance when we enlarge the portion Saulnier quoted: "tous les poètes qui voudront être badins chercheront à l'imiter. . . . Cependant il n'y aura jamais d'esprit plus ingénieusement badin que le sien. Il y aura toujours du bon sens dans sa plus folle raillerie." While badin is set up as an approximate ideal, we immediately see that the invitation to imitate it is framed more as an option than an injunction. Presently we will examine the importance of ingénieusement that qualifies the ideal and of folle railleur that stands in apposition to it. Mlle de Scudéry's passage warrants close analysis because its commentary on the concept of badinage predates Boileau's and points to later attitudes toward Marot which will be appreciably different. Writes Fontenelle in 1692: "On dit que ce poète avait la mine sérieuse et l'air grave; il avait plus la phisionomie d'un Philosophe qui enseignoit la Morale que celle d'un poète divertissant; cependant il n'y eut jamais d'esprit plus ingénieusement badin que le sien." 3 Comparison of the two passages shows us, for one thing, that writers read and repeat one another, but more importantly that Marot's style and the personal attitude it supposedly reflected became intertwined at a relatively early date and that Boileau's exemplification of Marot led to a misleadingly narrow, if favorable, understanding of the man and his style. Along this tangent, an anonymous eighteenth-century writer was able even to downplay the stylistic elegance Boileau actually had in mind in favor of a incorruptible moral stance that somehow shines through Marot's text: " C e ne sont pas proprement les expressions de

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Marot, que ce grand homme nous recommande d'imiter; c'est ce beau naturel, c'est cette finesse de pensées qui hait le fard, & qui abhorre ces idées fausses qu'on nous présente souvent, pour nous éblouir sous les plus magnifiques parures." 4 Elégant badinage was thus transmuted from a stylistic option into a philosophical mandate. T h e crux of the problem in understanding the import of Boileau's term is not just that commentators of that one verse have ignored contextual meaning but also that without qualification those terms might have had little or no meaning to Boileau and his contemporaries. W h e n taken as inflexible attributes, they tend thus to obscure rather than inform our understanding of Marot's contribution. T h e nearest equivalent of élégant badinage in the sixteenth century would be the concept of urbanitas. Through the mouth of the Rhétoriqueur Georges Chastelain, Lemaire gives a highly detailed description of urbanitas: elle est toute civile, compaignable .et humaine, sçait bien son entregent, et demonstre avoir hanté bonnes gens et sages. . . . Elle est propice à recreer le courage d'un chacun, pourveu que ce soit en temps et en lieu, et la dignité de la personne observée. Elle donne soulas et passetemps de bonnes devises et de gracieux contes par bon regard, c'est a dire sans excessivité et sans blesser la renommée de personne car Urbanité doit estre toute gentille et non pas comme l'insolence des Jongleurs. Les dits doivent estre sans morsure, les jeux sans offense et deshonnesteté, le ris sans glatissement, la facetie sans fâcherie, et la voix sans clameur . . . Icelle vertu proprement doit converser entre les Princes et Princesses, mesmement quand ilz prennent leur repas, pour leur donner recreation . . . La propre difEnition de ceste vertu est telle: Urbanité est une elegance, une courtoisie ou une gaillardise de deviser plaisamment en resjouissant les assistans sans les fâcher, et est Urbanité moyenneresse de deux extremes" [my emphasis] ,5 In its insistence on moderation, courtliness, and decorum, the concept bespeaks an ancestry with the homo urbanus and urbanitas of Horace, Cicero, and Quintilian which, in turn, insist on complete absence of the dissonant, rustic, coarse, barbaric, and strange (peregrinum), not just in individual sayings (singulis dictis) but in all aspects of thought, language, and attitude (Institutio oratoria, V I , iii, 107). 6 In the actual writing of the Rhétoriqueurs, however, this concept was motivated by prudence and devolved into exclusive praise of great action and the beau geste, so that the artistic sum of "Urbanité moyenneresse de deux extremes" was close to zero. Now what is most striking about Mlle de Scudéry's judgment on Marot's "esprit ingénieusement badin" is that her refusal to reduce him to one dimension is consonant with the

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peregrine muse we have discussed at length; there is "du bon sens dans sa plus folle raillerie." As we have suggested, badinage had no accurate synonym in the early Renaissance, although Henry Estienne later associated it with Marot's criticism of the language of courtiers: "Pensez à vous, 0 courtisans, / Qui lourdement barbarisans, / Tousjours j'allion, je venion dites, / Contre la promesse que fites / Au gentil poete Clement, / Qui s'en courro£oit asprement, / Bien orroit autre badinage / En votre baragoinage." Its earliest recorded use appears in Calvin in 1541 where it simply means folly.7 But in 1541 Susenbrotus enshrined a nonclassical and nonmedieval concept of urbanitas that expands the concept of folly and whose multiple viewpoint is close in spirit to Marot. In his Epitome (15) he defined it as a sort of game based on surprise and incongruity. Essentially, the urbane jest is a civilized form of humor utterly divorced from coarse simplicity. As for bon sens and folle raillerie, it is the mixture noted by Mile de Scudéry that makes Marot's example noteworthy in early sixteenth-century satire. Marot's case is anomalous in this respect, with the single exception of Erasmus whose great work begins with the claim of having praised folly not altogether foolishly and ends with the reminder that even a fool often speaks opportunely. In his translation of Cicero's De officiis in 1534, Roberte Whytinton rendered one passage (I, 29) as "two maners of jestynge gentyll boorde [ME: banter] and raylynge." 8 This parallel and clearly separate alignment of mild good humor and the sharp bite of invective obtained in II Cortegiano six years earlier where Federico tells Bembo that nelle facezie . . . due sorti solamente parmi che se ne trovino: delle quai l'una s'estende nel ragionar lungo e continuato; come si sede di alcun'omini, che con tanto bona grazia e cosi piacevolmente narrano . . . si poria chiamar "festività," 0 vero "urbanità." L'altra sorte di facezie è brevissima e consiste solamente nei detti pronti ed acuti, come spesso tra noi se n'odono, e de' mordaci; né senza quel poco di puntura par che abbian grazia; e questi presso agli antichi ancor si nominavano "detti"; adesso alcuni le chiamano "arguzie." . . . Pero estimo che '1 tutto sia opera dell'ingegno e della natura (II, 43). W e have seen these two concepts touch each other in the dramatic swirl of Marot's changing perspectives, out of which the ambiguities of his work arise, where the resulting urbanity has more to do with the definition of Susenbrotus than with that of Chastelain a generation earlier. Yet insofar as Marot's swift mixture is dramatic, the wise folly

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of his badinage claims a filiation with the traditional Badin of the late medieval sotties.

In the dialogue between the Sot and the superior

Badin in the Farce moralle et joyeuse des sobres sots, the mix of bon sens and follie as a personal characteristic is explicit: Pour ce qu'y a bien difference Entre badins, sages et sos: Les badins ne sont pas vrays sos, Mais ils ne sont ne sos ne sages. . . . Il fault congnoistre C'un badin, qui ne pense à rien, Sçayt plus d'honneur ou plus de bien C'un sot ne sçayt toute sa vye.9 Association of badinage, urbanitas, and arguzie, with the concept of ingenium in the passages cited above adds yet another dimension to the qualities that Marot's contemporaries and subsequent critics attached to his mind and art. Since classical antiquity the term ingenium

had

been used broadly to describe natural gifts of mind, but the Renaissance more carefully codified and enlarged the notion by extending its potential from the illumination of genius to the shadow of madness. 10 Although the "Exposition morale" of his (?) Roman de la Rose spoke of "puéril entendement & indignité de rural engin" and his translation of Metamorphoses

I addressed the "engin maulvais" (v. 247) which led

away from the Silver to the Bronze Age, Marot praised the creative features of this quality in others of his time: "Elle a de l'engin largement / D'inventer la science & l'art" (Ballade X I V ) . His denial to himself of finely honed wit is of course requisite modesty that discounts the vast scope of wit in most of his work. Marot's taste for the epigram may indeed be explained, as Hutton argues, by the accommodation of its form to the gallant "point," but it also offered him the vehicle for incorporating the native wit he admired in Villon. 1 1 More than any other poetic form of the period, the epigram lent itself to witty complications and to the pointe and petit mot the Deffence

et

Illustration

belittled because it misunderstood them. Far from reducing epigrammatic thought to the narowest possible range as the Pléiade did in the case of Marot, Scaliger felt that the low and medium style that characterized the epigram opened it to noble or obscene, generous or trivial subjects and allowed it to pose amusing dilemmas or outline clear definitions. 12 In so doing, the epigram rose above "le petit mot pour rire" that the Pléiade saw in it, to attain the level of w i t — a n aesthetic

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equivalent of Ockham's principle that "it is vain to do with more what one can do with fewer." 18 Humor describes the ludicrous in itself. As it appears in literature, humor imitates the natural or acquired absurdities of mankind, or of the ludicrous in accident, situation, or character. Whether in matters of pleasure or pain, wit hovers around the borders of the light and trifling and thus approaches an eloquence of indifference. It exposes the ludicrous by comparing or contrasting it with something else, and illustrates by heightening the sense of absurdity through some sudden and unexpected likeness or opposition of one thing to another—which sets off the quality we laugh at or despise in a still more contemptible or striking point of view. Epigrammatic conclusions thus rest upon comparison of dissimilars and on the juncture of numerous viewpoints as the epigram continually alters its perspective and ours. In Epigramme CCXVIII "A Cravan, sien Amy, malade," Marot attempts to cheer up his friend and at the same time protest the false rumors of his own death. Pushing the comparison to its unequal extreme amounts to an equation of fact with fantasy: "Que pleust à Dieu que tu feusses malade / Ne plus ne moins qu'à present je suis mort." When the rumormongers succeed against their wishes in increasing his lady's affection for him, he concludes: "Hz sont plus loing de leur intention / Qu'ilz ne vouldroient que je fusse loing d'elle" ( X C ) . Having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, the narrator describes the pleasures of an evening spent with his "Amye" and requests another "Lequel seroit de plus longue durée / E t sembleroit plus court de la moytié" ( X C I V ) . The epigrammatic twist and the wit that guides it are by no means confined to the epigrams. Even in a lengthy poem like the "Déploration," Marot calibrates perspective by exemplifying the sort of comparison of unequals we find in the epigrams: "Le loup cruel craint plus sa [Death's] face seulle / Que la brebis du loup ne craint la gueulle" (vv. 477-478). The brevity underlying the soul of epigrammatic wit reaches into all the poetic forms Marot undertook because it describes an intellectual quality and outlook as much as a literary technique; the former leads to the latter. For Sebillet the epigram's ingenuity required "que lés deuz vers derniers soient agus en conclusion" (II, i) and Peletier paraphrased the need to be "sutil, agu, et bien concluant." The common quality in all three instances is the property agu. In later commentaries Scaliger will make acutus an attribute of style which is evidently witty and full of bite, and Minturno will subsume arguzie under the overriding subtlety of comedy, satire and the epigram.14 But in

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earlier commentaries, this sharpness of wit is initially an effect of ingenium. W e have seen this in the passage we recently quoted from Castiglione ( II, 43 ) ; it stands out in the Folles Entreprises of Gringore, whose cumbersome allegory belies the subtlety he lauds, "Papelardise, qui eut l'engin agu, / Oyant ces motz, voulut prendre l'argu / A l'encontre de Devotion," 1 5 and defines the enlightened potential of Gargantua as opposed to the pedantic sophistry of Tubal Holoferne: "son entendement participe de quelque divinité, tant je le voy agu, subtil, profund et serain, et parviendra à degré souverain de sapience" (I, 14). Marot's poetry mediates between agu taken as a quality of mind and as a nascent attribute of Renaissance style. W e naturally associate it with his epigrams because it is in fact there that he speaks of it most directly. Epigramme XLV turns around a friendly quarrel the poet had over a matter of correct usage with Jacques Colin, translator of Castiglione. Discussion bears on the various legitimate meanings that may be attached to the word viser, "User on en peult soubz la ruse / De Métaphore en maint endroit," but he states his prime argument in the first two verses : "Regarder est tresbon langage; / Viser est plus agu du tiers." The particular character of Marot's wit in the epigrams can be traced to this preference for syllabic brevity and metaphoric density. Epigramme C X X X I I I , for instance, leads the reader through a series of parallel comparisons between stags and lovers, both of whom fight for their mate, issue laments, and are even made to have physical similarities—right up to the final comparison of their heads: "Il ne s'en fault que Ramures & Cors / Que vous Amans ne soyez aussi Bestes." It is in the twofold meaning of the word "Bestes"—animalistic and foolish— that passionate Homo sapiens is at once likened to and divorced from the stag. Yet the ideal of spirited brevity was germinal at the earliest stage of Marot's career. Rondeau I neatly formalizes the principle, Rien superflu n'y soit aulcunement, Et de la fin quelque bon propos sorte. Clouez tout court; rentrez de bonne sorte! And at regular intervals throughout his life it appears in the last-line summaries of E pitre XI (1527), "Je n'ay pas eu le loysir d'y aller," of E pitre XXXVI (1535), "Il vient plustost de malheur que de vice," and in the irreproachable compliment he returns in response to Malingre's three-hundred-line letter to him L'Epistre & l'Epigramme M'ont pieu en les lisant,

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CCXXVI)

T h e credo that little is much, or at least is sufficient, may threaten social amenities or stir the beating mind to savor semantic density, yet with the exception of the coq-à-1'âne it does not lead to obscurity or simple indecision. Indecisiveness in an image like " L e cueur . . . plus froid que glace ou marbre" (Epitre II) is in the nature of youthful inability to measure the idea to the span of verse. As Marot's confidence and ability grew, vagueness or sharpness of imagery became largely a matter of choice dictated by requirements of context. 1 6 In his depiction of low characters in Epître VIII,

it is the scenic precision of gesture

which gives dimension to the voice of the bumptuous Margot: Effacez cela ou l'ostez! En mectant les mains aux costez, Je disois en voix esclatante: . . . ( w . 27-29) Vagueness in subsequent épîtres is no regression, but rather consistency with the same principle of suitability. Quick turns in narrative perspective underscore the narrator's dalliance in getting to the point: mais si le Roy vouloit Me retenir ainsy comme il souloit, Je ne dy pas qu'en gré je ne le prinse, E t puis il fault obeyr à son prince. Il le feroit s'il sçavoit bien comment Depuis ung peu je parle sagement, ( w . 49-53) T h e demonstration comment here in Epître

X L V leads to an image

that D u Bellay will make his own in the Regrets Dessus ung mot une heure je m'arreste, S'on parle à moy, je respondz de la teste. (vv. 59-60) This plasticity that assigns chiaroscuro or sharp values to imagery, according to the dictates of context and poetic vision, stands as one of the triumphs of Renaissance imagery, though it is customary not to recognize this contribution in Marot. Y e t , between the creation of an individual style and the spread of a common style throughout a group of writers or the art of a country or period, there takes place a process

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both of diffusion and assimilation. It is not always possible to trace the origins of a style to the work of one writer, but in any art there are men like Giotto or Michelangelo, Rubens or Poussin whose names can be associated with a style that radiates from a center, that center being a small, incontestable possession (in both senses of that word) of one individual. It remains commonplace to point out the ways in which the experiments with poetic genre and rhyme of the Pléiade, following their facile derision of Marot's "episseries," continued the innovations he never stopped making during the last twenty years of his life. They felt the prolix virtuosity and apparently artless ease of his low muse beneath their calling. Yet these extreme poles represent Marot's ultimate evolution from an aspiring artfulness that overshadows the poet's humanity to a seemingly artless revelation of self that reconciles art with nature from which it had become estranged. Of course growth from literary exercise to personalized statement, from L'Olive to Les Regrets, or from the Pindaric odes to the Sonnets pour Hélène, tells the history in brief of the Pléiade, as it must of any school of art that eventually finds its way. When the excesses of youthful zeal gave way to the sober accounting of maturity, their realization that Marot's "commune maniere de parler" constituted a specialized and inimitable form of art 1 7 made its way into their revised manifestoes, witness the preface and liminal sonnets of the Regrets. Whether or not their actual practice allows us to speak of borrowings or reminiscences must remain a moot question, since in some cases the Pléiade and Marot may have been working from the same texts or copybooks.18 But it is certain that the imagery schoolboys, critics, and anthologists have considered idiosyncratic of Ronsard and Du Bellay finds at least its intellectual or emotional counterpart in Marot. "Quant seras vieille, et chez toy en repos" (Epitre XXXIX, v. 76) and Ulixes sage, au moins estimé tel, Fit bien jadis refuz d'estre immortel Pour retourner en sa maison petite, Et du regret de mort se disoit quitte Si l'air eust pu de son pays humer Et veu de loing son vilage fumer! (Epître XLVI, vv. 1 5 7 - 1 6 2 )

naturally invite comparison with the great sonnets of the Pléiade. Even when a momentary sadness gives way to a tightly structured and un-

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abashed plea, as in Marot's letter "pour succeder en Testât de son pere" Toutes, fors moy, le moindre du Trouppeau, . . . Car, vous vivant, tousjours se sentoit riche, Et, vous mourant, sa Terre estoit en frische. (w. 15, 37-38) the verbal contours sustain the comparison, despite alterations of context. 19 For all of the efforts to reduce the man to a self-satisfied formula like "le prince des poètes et le poète des princes," or the tens of thousands of verses in Marot's collected works to élégant bandinage, it is all the more surprising that the chief Pléiade poets should be drawn into comparison with him on the basis of sharp-edged images whose dominant mood is wistful and elegiac. Inevitably, the choice between badinage and the elegiac was not the only one that confronted the Pléiade or any other succeeding generation that would paraphrase the inimitable. As it befalls any artist who experiments with a large sweep of expressive forms, the choice Marot left to his successors was often one between roughness and polish, the tentative and the accomplished. With Marot as with the Pléiade, not all experiments work, very few work all the time, and none work without trial and error. As his experiments were still in progress up to their publication and beyond, it is often hard to choose the successful trial from the errors. In his earliest efforts, as we saw from a glance at the emendations to the Temple de Cupido, some poems contain hopelessly opaque passages straining to contain immiscibly diverse styles. T h e process of finding the measure takes precedence over the perfecting of individual poems. With the long poems of his "middle period" following the publication of the Adolescence, the extended rhythms, the ability to hold a melodic line throughout a complete stanza, add a gravity appropriate to his inquiring mind. T h e growth is slow, and on the whole unquestioned success often eludes him. One senses that he is continually moving toward something, that not only has he not yet reached it but perhaps he does not even fully know what it is. Yet from the beginning of this period to the end of his life, Marot was able increasingly to convey the emotional center of the issue of poetic identity, the pain of historical change without facile despondency, which dominates his best poems, and with it the merging of the classical and the modern in genres like the elegy, eclogue, and epigram which is the real nature of continuity. Even in the epigrams the Pléiade could have recognized the interlocking of moods and meaning they sought in

Formlessness Martial, achieved by a virtuosity which is perhaps that of a petitmaître, but of a maître nonetheless. Throughout this book I have stressed that the key to the interweaving of feeling and idea, and to the enigmatic figure who both weaves and appears in the texture of the poem lies in Marot's concept and manipulation of language. When he is at his best, his language is accurate not only in the statement of idea but in the statement of feeling. There is an exact correlation between motive and feeling that is more controlled than the more florid enticements even of Lemaire, but that may easily be mistaken for mechanical indifference by the reader accustomed to the label "élégant badinage." The feeling of his poems in these moments resides commonly in the very language in which the idea is defined; the idea is a conceptual statement of the motive of the feeling. Marot's ear for all verbal effects improved over the years until their culmination in the rhyme and meter of the Psalms where they make the artifice of language come alive. There they fix the tone of voice, emphasis and, ultimately, the meaning of the poem. Rhyme, chime, echo, and repetition: they not only serve to knit the elements of an experience but often are the very means, the sole means, by which the density of texture and the returning or circling of perception can be transmuted into language, apperceived. But the most distinctive quality of Marot's manipulation of language is his power to invest impish fantasy, mischievously tender nonsense, with the highest seriousness. The alloy of serious intent with levity can be explained simply as an instrument of survival. It is the chief weapon in a poetic arsenal that serves as a caretaker of the individual identity. Yet even in the most scathing poltical or religious satire, it is rare that the tone of solemity displaces that of buoyancy. A veneer of whimsy in the most bitter poems heightens their power of outrage. Marot's imagination gathers potency from being held in abeyance, half-hidden behind gentle ironies. Marot is never simply funny. His humor, wryness, and irony always enact themselves in a way that serves to open the human condition to the cognitive capacities of the mind. His wit is the source of his creativity and the auspices under which his understanding conducts itself—in short, it provides that groundwork in texture to his work that we call "style." It allows him, as in the jabs of Frippelippes at Sagon, to go far afield for comparisons that produce insights that would not be possible in different, more serious contexts. Marot does not have such casual attitudes toward his subjects as he half pretends. It is simply that the ironic bite that underlies his satire is usually muffled by "unprejudiced" and amiably loose-jointed tone.

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T h e looseness of his conversational mode is not without its risks when the writing loses its texture and grows to resemble a shapeless chopped-up prose. Marot's adherence to conditions apparently inimical to poetry serves to ground his work on the solid terrain of common human experience in such a manner that its values are supported and fortified thereby. But even at its most impressive, there is something ambivalent about such support, a satisfaction and frustration inseparably united. For in order to maintain it, it has compelled Marot to bring about a fusion of various kinds of language that is, in a sense, antipathetic to the very nature of poetry as we commonly know it. W h a t lies behind it is the urge to unite in one person all that is required of a lyric poet with all that is required for full, direct participation in common experience, and to express both. If poetry functions essentially as alchemy—as Renaissance thinkers from Paracelsus to Sidney suggest in other contexts—by transmuting the ordinary and rejecting what it cannot transmute, the eccentricity of Marot's poetry resides in its attempt to forge a permanent alloy of precious and base metals. In a full consideration of his peregrine muse, different levels of reference, and the vatic, officious, and heroic that coexist with the colloquial, are joined by tension, restive or resolved, of idea and form. In some of the later epitres and in the coq-a-l'ane Marot's thought seeks to free itself from any formal pattern, any stricture of form exterior to the immediate line-by-line determinant. The poem aspires to remain openended, resisting closural devices at either extremity. Idea in his letter to the king from exile in Ferrara ( X X X V I ) is embedded in a dissonant matrix that wavers between free verse and formal pattern when the poet, perceiving the possible poem for the first time, modifies his approach to it in terms that strive to anticipate the poem's nature. In its refusal to become either one thing or the other, it nearly asserts the aesthetics of anti-form. But what his poetry really demonstrates for us is that the highest degree of critical self-awareness—a total consciousness of the possibilities and limits of medium articulating itself explicitly in the poem—is not incompatible with a total art. Back of the idea of organic form is the concept that there is a form, whether idiosyncratic or communal, in all things and in our experience, which the poet can discover and reveal. There are no doubt temperamental differences between poets like the Rhetoriqueurs who used prescribed forms and those like Marot who look for new ones, but the difference in their concept of "content" or "reality" is functionally more important. On the one hand is the idea that content, reality, experience, are essentially fluid and must be given form; on the other, the sense of

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seeking out inherent, though not immediately apparent, form. T h e greatest tension revealed by an evaluation of Marot's work and all the resources of language we have examined is that between the writer and the reflection he creates of himself as he writes. Though thought by its own nature is capable of logical development, it can be informed by the whole personality, and therefore be made real, only when that personality is free to adapt itself to the movements of thought. Thought and personality go hand in hand, and their goal, whether confessed or not, is that state of vision or inspiration which all great poets have attained. It is a significant fact that when we talk of pure poetry and when we think of that which is most characteristically the poetic quality in a poet we think of lines, even of single lines; whereas when we think of the whole body of a poet's work, we tend to think either—perhaps too crudely—of the poet's personality, not just as the author of those lines, but as the whole man, or we tend to think of his attitude to life as something that, if not exactly philosophy, is a commentary on experience parallel to philosophy. T h e problem confronting a biographer, however, is one of choosing whether poetic autobiography has its roots in the confession of self-truths which require illumination, or whether the life assumes another role reflective in itself. T h e matter of temperament has become central to an evaluation of Marot's poetry, of the poet as he appears in his verse, and even of Marot when he was not writing. Many—perhaps most—poets do project themselves into their fictions, use their own feelings and plights as subjects for poetry. T h e true test of greatness in such cases is not necessarily the achievement of objectivity, but that the temperament revealed and the vehicle that reveals it be at once symbolic of many other possible temperaments, in the one case, and in the other, that of the vehicle, that it be self-sufficient, self-explanatory, and self-controlled. W h a t is a poem if not an experience seen through a temperament? Both terms of the proposition are indispensable: there must be a temperament, which is the poet's style or voice, and there must be a thing seen or known or experienced. But since the Romantic period poets ask—and criticism of Marot's work even anticipates this request—that the reader assume the poet's own nature when he reads the poems; that is, one is asked to become like the poet in order to see what is done and how, that one in a sense become a poet oneself for the purpose of reading and thus re-creating the poem in such a way that its fullest meaning may be experienced. As a result, readers have felt free to downgrade some of Marot's more stylized poetry and to classify other poems

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as typically Marotic or, even in cases of indisputable authorship, as unMarotic. But in sequential collections, especially when prosopopoeia is involved, it is erroneous to identify the coherence of personality with the fixity of character. Character is an impersonal ideal which the poet selects and to which he sacrifices all other claims, even those of sentiment or emotion. In the eclogues—but even in the complaintes and cantiques—Marot stands so close to his stories that he ceases to be "narrator" and establishes between himself and his characters the same kind of locked-together relationship which they have with each other. Although in L'Enfer the point of view is that of a prime character from the beginning to its conclusive shape, Marot uses the narrator's devices of scene and symbol, vantage point or plot, only as ad hoc conveniences. Unlike the Enfer or Cantique V which begin at the end and end at the beginning, the elegy sequence is one long poem that develops narratively. Each elegy in the sequence is complete in itself, but its meaning never separates it from, and always serves, the whole; each is to some extent the consequence of a previous elegy, the herald of a subsequent elegy. For the purpose of unification, motif is used as a metaphor that extends throughout the poem—a similarity connecting many dissimilarities. Further, it is a love poem in the broadest sense, either addressed to the beloved or observing the progress of a love relationship. To this extent it may be concerned with "actual events" as the reader experiences them, whether or not they be put in a fictional framework. The elegies are, then, classical literary autobiography: mortality and love are inextricably united; the motifs are largely polarized, seasonal, concerned with time: winter with summer, day with night, age with youth, sleeping with waking, fortune with virtue. These are the emotional projections of the poem which interact with persons and events. They are naturally united and unify the poem. Everything is meant and nothing is said. These poems are conventional, public, and occasional, since that is the mask one must wear—or so Marot might have spoken—but each poem reveals just enough of a private inner reflection to make the surface move without breaking. A passionate austerity, a subtle balance, and only perfect poetic attention, far beyond technique, could attain it. A total poem is, in itself, the metaphor of an event. Since it is not the mere description of an event (though it may be partly this), and since a poem cannot possibly exist without the event that engenders it, it operates or migrates between the inceptive event and the ab-

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stracted idea of the event enshrined in the eventual poem. If Marot criticism has employed obscure terminology in this respect, perhaps it is because we are dealing here with the dark side and abysm of the mind. Even when he is clearly speaking from a specific experience, as in the epitres written from exile, the poems are dominated by an expression not so recognizably present in the lines themselves as in the mask or face that hangs like a cloud over them. It is a cloud not of anguish and not even of personal passion but of a kind of ineffable regret—to use his own term (Epitre L V ) . It is not the individual regret of a creature for things done or not done, but the ineffable regret of the mind aware that it can liberate itself only through an act of abnegation, which is torment, or through the intellect, which by itself is inconclusive, or through theology, which is problematic. Like the Tristia, these letters have two subjects: the ostensible subject of the poet's despair, and the unspoken or masked subject, the tragic regret that this despair is not only possible but, unforgivably, poetic. The poems are at odds with their poetry. Put bluntly, here and elsewhere Marot is asking that his case be reviewed and his conviction overturned. But his poems never simply present a case according to the rules of classical discourse, for it is by no means the factual presentation that matters most. What matters more is an expression on the face of the figure which makes this presentation: the never quite visible but never invisible presence of the poet himself. The effect (which may be the same thing as the meaning) of the poem occurs catalytically between the statements of the observed words and the expression of the invisible face. His letters to Francis avoid intrusiveness of thought not so much by quieting the thinking voice as by ensnaring all ideas into the matrix of the poem's fluctuating design. These letters are meditative, cautious, ironic in tone—everything but "safe," full of sudden switches from one level of discourse and consciousness to another. In alternate lines we, along with the king, recognize the face that hints at its own falsity and the face that acknowledges the removal of its innermost mask, as Marot moves from matter-of-fact loquacity to rhetorical rigor, from complacency to hesitance, with a self-indulgence that is central to the poem's intent and message. Quotation is unfair to these poems because there are few truly key passages. At the same time, these poems written from experience are not purely introspective: history reflected as "story" is an important part of them, and references to contemporary religious and political conditions are woven into the fabric of meditation. As in the Psalms, the voice is a speaking voice, moving in slow, careful ca-

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dences, sometimes quietly incantatory, but not striving for cheap hypnotic effect. Even when he bemoans his fate in exile or intones the joy of the psalmist, the J is in a sense characterized as if it were the third person pronoun, for in all personae, je est un autre. Mature poems like the Psaumes or epitres are occasionally flawed by a thin, even shrill voice that speaks with more petulance than passion, more artifice than art, and the epigrams are sometimes limited by an overaddiction to neatness and wit. But it is the mark of a major poet that he exploits his defects and enlarges ennui, self-disgust, complacency, petulance, nervous tension, and mundane anxiety into aspects of a representative man whose total vision is so inescapably human, so completely and easily aware of fallibility, so morally ambivalent when he is most resolute, and so indestructibly speculative, that he is more ourselves than we are.

Notes INTRODUCTION 1 . Georges Guiffrey, Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot (Paris, 1 9 1 1 ) , Vol. I of 5; Becker, Clément Marot, sein Leben und seine Dichtung (Munich, 1926). As a biography, Mayer's Clément Marot (Paris, 1972) is not likely to be surpassed; his other contributions over the past twenty years, mainly in the Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, are too numerous to mention here. 2. Paulette Leblanc, La Poésie religieuse de Clément Marot (Paris, 1955); Mayer, La Religion de Marot (Geneva, i960); M. A. Screech, Marot evangélique (Geneva, 1967). 3. See Emile Picot, La Querelle de Marot et de Sagon (Rouen, 1920); Verdun Saulnier, "Clément Marot: 'bourdican'," Le Français moderne, X X I I I (April, 1955) 1 2 3 - 1 3 0 . 4. Jules Bonnet, "Clément Marot à la cour de Ferrare," Société de l'histoire du protestantisme français, X X I ( 1 8 7 2 ) , 160; Jacques Pannier, "Les Portraits de Clément Marot," BHRen, I V (1944), 1 4 9 - 1 5 1 . In a recent review of Pauline Smith's fine Clément Marot, Poet of the French Renaissance (London, 1970), Floyd Gray concluded that "anyone approaching Marot in the future will, of necessity, want to move outside of the areas it covers into questions of point of view, language and structure. Smith may not have given us a new Marot, but she has given us a more exact portrait of a familiar Marot. Now that we know all we can or need to know about this Marot, would it not be interesting to learn if that is all there is to know?," Modern Language Quarterly, X X X I I I (June, 1972), 188. 5. Oeuvres poétiques de Joachim Du Bellay, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris, 19081 9 6 1 ) , V , 63. 6. These problems are greatly simplified by Mayer's excellent edition of Marot which will be used for all textual citations except for the psalms: Les Epîtres (London, 1958), Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), Oeuvres lyriques (London, 1964), Oeuvres diverses (London, 1966), Les Epigrammes (London, 1970). Less important for our needs, references to the psalms, which have not yet been critically edited by Mayer, will be taken from the Guiffrey edition. CHAPTER I 1. E.g., Ballade II, in Oeuvres diverses (London, 1966), p. 140; Coq-à-l'âne II, in Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), p. 125; Epitaphe X I V , in Oeuvres diverses, p. 202; Epître LTV, in Les Epîtres (London, 1958), p. 268. 2. Oeuvres de Clément Marot (The Hague, 1 7 3 1 ) , IV, 225 (this volume contains the works of Jean Marot and will be referred to as Jean Marot IV for citations from him throughout this chapter); cf. Matthieu de Vendôme, Ars versificatoria, I, 77 ( F i 3 6 ) .

28o

Notes to pp. 1 3 - 2 4

3. Jean Marot, IV, 12. 4. Ibid., p. 265; See Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York, 1939), pp. 95-128. Clément was familiar with this iconographie tradition. See Guiffrey, II, 200, and cf. Erasmus, Opera omnia (Leyden, 1 7 0 3 - 1 7 0 6 ) , V I I , 810C, and F. Joukovsky-Micha, "Clément et Jean Marot," BHRen, X X I X (1967), 557-565. 5. Jean Marot, IV, 234. 6. "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem," closely allied to the Pax Domini. Cf. "Paix, la tant desirée . . . Paix la belle, humble fille de dieu," Cantique V ( 1 5 3 8 ) , 7, 12. It is Clément's earlier image of Peace that is transposed, while his later image is more customary and coincides, for instance, with the description of "Peace so dear to the Republic" of Francesco Sansovino in a series of four bronzes (including Mercury, Pallas and Apollo) he sculpted around 1540. See Venetia descritta (Venice, 1663), pp. 307-308. Jean Marot IV, 60; Marot, Les Epîtres, p. 281. Cf. also Charles d'Orléans, Ballades 17 and 18. 7. Epîtres, p. 277; Jean Marot, IV, 221, vv. 51-54. 8. Villon, "Autre ballade en vieil langage françoys." Marot, Chanson XII. 9. Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot, ed. Guiffrey (Paris, 1 9 1 1 ) , II, 266, 268. 10. For a different understanding of this complex question, see Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., "Marot, Villon and the Roman de la Rose: A Study in the Language of Creation and Re-creation," Studies in Philology, L X I V (January, 1967), 40. See esp. C. A. Mayer, Clément Marot (Paris, 1972), p. 24on and, on the question of allegory and reality, p. 148. 1 1 . Normally the representation of forces of entrapment, the satanic "oyseleur, la serpente tortue," along with rapacious crows, obstructs the mission of the pellican, symbol of Christ (Ballade XIII). In L'Enfer it is the words of Rhadamanthus which "Font souvenir de l'oyselleur des champs" (v. 266). See Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Trésor, ed. François Chabaille (Paris, 1863), Vol. I, no. v. chap. 168, pp. 2 1 7 - 2 1 8 . Cf. Ronsard's "Continuation du Discours des misères" where "subtils oiseleurs" and the "infernale peste" are joined (Oeuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris, 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 6 0 ) , XI, 45, variant). 12. Even in the prolegomenon of the Moriae Encomium where Erasmus situates his work in relation to classical literary prototypes, the expression "impudens assentator . . . cum corniculam alienis convestit plumis" has an exclusively moral value. Opera omnia, IV, 407A. So too, in Villon's Ballade VI, " J e meurs de seuf auprès de la fontaine," reworked by Marot in Rondeau XI, a purely moral import is lent to "Mon amy est, qui me fait entendent / D'ung eigne blanc que c'est ung corbeau noir." A later poet like Tyard, however, will transfer the epithet from the injurious magpie to the corbeaux injurieux where the context deals with the immortality promised by poetry, in Vers lyriques, I, 50-55, Les Oeuvres poétiques de Pontus de Tyard, ed. Marty-Laveaux (Paris, 1875). Cf. Ariosto, Satire, III, 1 4 2 144; IV, 106-108. For another Continental analogue to this tradition, see the thirteenth-century Italian Fiore, sonnet 183, where "l'uccel del bosco" is cited for its flight from the artificial laws of society. 13. Variétés historiques et littéraires, recueil de pièces volantes, rares et curieuses, ed. Fournier (Paris, 1855), II, 345-355. For the most succinct description of the links among pleading pro et contra, the three branches of forensic discourse, and the vast body of knowledge that Renaissance poetry undertakes, see Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire premier, ed. Silvio Baridon (Geneva and Lille, 1950), p. 37. 14. In La vita nuova Dante himself uses the term poeta only to refer to a writer of Latin verse, whereas rimatore or dicitore per rima indicates a writer of Italian verse.

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CHAPTER II 1. Pierre Jourda, Marot (Paris, 1967), p. 61; L'Art poétique françoys, ed. Félix Gaiffe (Paris, 1932), p. 120. 2. See John Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York, 1954), p. 3. See Henri Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris, 1961), I, 162. 4. C. A. Mayer, Clément Marot, Les Epigrammes (London, 1970), pp. 5-76; Mayer and P. M. Smith, "La Première épigramme française: Clément Marot, Jean Bouchet et Michel d'Amboise. définition, sources, antériorité," BHRen, X X X I I (1970), 579-602. 5. Villey, Les Grands Ecrivains du XVI e siècle, Marot et Rabelais (Paris, 1923), pp. 62-67; Mayer, Les Epigrammes, p. 9. 6. The Greek Anthology in France (Ithaca, 1946), p. 43. See also John McClelland, "Sonnet ou quatorzain? Marot et le choix d'une forme poétique," Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, LXXIII (July-August, 1973), 591-607. 7. The Greek Anthology, pp. 34, 46. 8. See "Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot: l'économie de l'édition critique," BHRen, X X I X (1967), 357-372; "Marot et l'archaïsme," CAIEF, XIX (1967), 35. 9. "Introduction à l'explication des pièces de Marot," Revue des cours et conférences, X X X I 1 1 ( 1 9 3 1 - 1 9 3 2 ) , 119; Recherches sur la chronologie des Oeuvres de Marot (Paris, 1 9 2 1 ) , pp. 1 5 - 3 1 ; "Tableau chronologique des publications de Marot," Revue du seizième siècle, VIII (1920), 72. 10. See Mayer, Bibliographie des oeuvres de Clément Marot (Geneva, 1954), Vol. II, no. 15, and Clément Marot (Paris, 1972), p. 439. n . Cf. Scaliger's hesitations on the matter, tone, and form of the elegy in Poetices libri septem (Lyons, 1561 ), III, cxxv; IV, xlix. 12. Art poétique françoys, pp. 154, 156, 178. 13. "Tableau chronologique," VIII, 108; cf, V. L. Saulnier, Les Elégies de Clément Marot (Paris, 1968), p. 43, and Mayer, "Les Oeuvres de Marot: l'économie de l'édition critique." 14. Les Elégies de Clément Marot, pp. 43-44. 15. Mayer, Oeuvres lyriques (London, 1964), reshuffles these three poems back into the complaintes, precisely because they upset the harmony of the other twentyfour elegies. In the instance, the editor's decision is as valid as any other alternative. The arrangement of a poet's work, however, informs our understanding and evaluation. This is especially true in a case like that of the Mayer edition, which is not likely to be equalled or superseded. Despite Mayer's careful justification for his grouping of the poems, the convenient separations that result run the paradoxical risk of illuminating what is an inherently cloudy situation. 16. Scollen, The Birth of the Elegy in France, 1500-1550 (Geneva, 1967), p. 52. But Tyard distinguishes the complainte from the chanson on the basis of the greater intensity of the former; see Les Oeuvres poétiques de Pontus de Tyard, ed. Marty-Laveaux (Paris, 1875), p. 7 1 . 17. Scollen, The Birth of the Elegy, pp. 45-46. 18. Mayer, Oeuvres lyriques, p. 19. Mayer and others after him have argued successfully against any substantial debt in the élégies to the Latin elegiac poets. 19. Scollen, The Birth of the Elegy, pp. 148-149. 20. Art poétique françoys, p. 168. 21. Guiffrey, Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot, III, 206; Charles Kinch, La Poésie satirique de Clément Marot (Paris, 1940), p. 145.

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22. Kinch, La Poésie satirique, pp. 159-190. See Mayer, "Coq-à-l'âne: définition —invention—attribution," French Studies X V I (Jan., 1962), 1 - 1 3 ; "Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot: l'économie de l'édition critique," pp. 366-369; Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), pp. 8 - 1 4 . 23. Quoted by Henri Chamard, ed., La Deffence et Illustration de la langue francoyse (Paris, 1 9 6 1 ) , p. 1 1 9 . 24. See Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, vi, 52; Johannes Susenbrotus, Epitome troporum ac schematum et grammaticorum. et rhetorum (Zurich, 1 5 4 1 ) , 13; Henry Peacham, The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1 5 7 7 ) , p. 27. In classical and biblical antiquity the enigma was associated at once with the importance of events which is hidden from human understanding and the extraordinary ability to see through the veil (alvrypis). In Aeschylus's Agamemnon the chorus complains of Cassandra's "dark prophetic speech" (v. 1 1 1 2 ) , and Oedipus chides Tiresias for his "obscure words and enigmas" (v. 439). Saint Paul compares the teleological confrontation with God to imperfect earthly understanding: "videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate" (I Corinthians 1 3 : 1 2 ) . The Renaissance understanding was every bit as broad. With Ficino's translation of the Second Alcibiades in mind, Montaigne wonders if "nature n'est rien qu'une poésie oenigmatique? comme peut estre qui diroit une peinture voilée et tenebreuse, entreluisant d'une infinie variété de faux jours à exercer nos conjectures," Essais, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris, 1962), Book II, essay 12, p. 599. 25. Art poétique françoys, p. 176. 26. Poetices, libri septem, III, 84, d; Jean-François Straparole, Les Facetieuses nuits, trans, and ed. Louveau and Larivey (Paris, 1857), II, 3. On the coq-à-l'âne and proverbial wisdom, see Mayer, Clément Marot, p. 217. 27. Lemaire de Belges, Le Temple d'honneur et de vertus, ed. Henri Homik (Geneva and Paris, 1957), p. 81. 28. Douen, Clément Marot et le psautier huguenot (Paris, 1878-1879), II vols.; Laumonier, Ronsard, poète lyrique (Paris, 1909); Martinon, Les Strophes, étude historique et critique sur les formes de la poésie lyrique en France depuis la Renaissance (Paris, 1 9 1 2 ) . See also Mayer, Clément Marot, pp. 458-467, and "Prolégomènes à l'édition critique des Pseaumes de Clément Marot," BHRen, X X X V (1973), 55-71. 29. See Philipp A. Becker, "Clément Marots Psalmenübersetzung," Berichte über die Verhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol. 72, no. 1 (1920); Jean Plattard, "Comment Marot entreprit et poursuivit la traduction des psaumes de David," Revue des études rabelaisiennes, X ( 1 9 1 2 ) , 3 2 1 - 3 5 5 . 30. Mayer, Oeuvres lyriques, pp. 21 and 73. 31. "Proinde qui sacros Psalmos prophetarum volet evolvere, meminerit, sese non in Orphei aut Homeri vesari hymnis, qui prophanam habent religionem, sed in divini spiritus oraculis, in quibus arcanas sapientiae suae divitias, piis vestigatoribus voluit esse reconditas," Opera omnia (Leyden, 1 7 0 3 - 1 7 0 6 ) , V . 1 7 1 A . 32. Deffence et Illustration, pt. II, chap, iv, p. 1 1 3 ; L'Art poétique, ed. André Boulanger (Paris, 1930) pt. II, chap, v, pp. 1 7 6 - 1 7 7 . 33. Art poétique françoys, p. 143. 34. Opere (Venice, 1740), I, 357. This last grouping also has a scriptural basis, the faithful being enjoined to celebrate 'in psalmis et hymnis et canticis spiritualibus," Ephesians 5:9. Cf. James 4 : 1 3 . 35. Art poétique françoys, p. 146. 36. As for the variability in themes, Mayer's broad definition of the cantique as a "poème lyrique grave" (Oeuvres lyriques, p. 22) is more circumspect than Paulette Leblanc's "pièce de vers consacrée à célébrer les nouveaux dons, grâces et bienfaits

Notes to pp. 4 7 - 6 7 que Dieu accordait à ses fidèles," La Poésie

283 religieuse

de Clément

Marot

(Paris,

955)» P- 2 7 ° ; 37. See Clément Marot et le psautier huguenot, I, 679-687. 38. Art poétique françoys, pp. 1 4 7 - 1 4 8 . Cf. Mayer's comment in "Clément Marot and Literary History," Studies Presented to H. W. Lawton (Manchester, England, and New York, 1968), p. 255. 1

C H A P T E R III 1. Verdun Saulnier, Les Elegies de Clément Marot (Paris, 1968), pp. 1 7 1 - 1 7 2 . 2. Clément Marot, Les Epigrammes (London, 1 9 7 0 ) , p. 16. See also Clément Marot (Paris, 1 9 7 2 ) , pp. 4 1 7 , 440. 3. Les Grands Ecrivains du XVI' siècle, Marot et Rabelais (Paris, 1 9 2 3 ) , p. 58. 4. Marot's fixed-form poems are frequently dismissed for their adherence to the prescribed forms of earlier generations, while the épìtres are accused of an unguided amorphousness. Cf. Alan Boase, The Poetry of France (London, 1 9 5 2 ) , I, xxxviii; but see also Smith, Clément Marot, Poet of the French Renaissance (London, 1 9 7 0 ) , p. 1 1 9 . 5. Coq-à-l'âne II, v. 1 2 1 ; Le Testament, X X V I , 1 - 2 ; "La Complainte du désespéré," w . 1 2 4 - 1 2 5 . 6. This purpose was recognized unreservedly and uninterruptedly from classical antiquity (Institutio oratoria, IV, i) through the Middle Ages. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, "Qui enim facit prooemium tria intendit. Primo enim ut auditorem reddat benevolum. Secundo ut reddat docilem. Tertio ut reddat attentum," Aristotelis librum de anima, commentarium (Torino, 1 9 5 9 ) , I, i, 2; Erasmus, Opera omnia (Leyden, 1 7 0 3 - 1 7 0 6 ) , IV, 475, A - B . 7. See Henri Guy, Histoire de la poésie française au XVI' siècle: Clément Marot et son école (Paris, 1 9 2 6 ) , "abaissent le sceptre devant l'autel," II, 227. 8. See Richard Griffiths, " T h e Influence of Formulary Rhetoric upon French Renaissance Tragedy," M L R , L I X ( 1 9 6 4 ) , 2 0 1 - 0 8 . Cf. Montaigne, Essais, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris, 1 9 6 2 ) , Book I, essay 26, p. 182. 9. Art poétique françoys, ed. Félix Gaiffe (Paris, 1 9 3 2 ) , pp. 1 9 5 - 1 9 6 . 10. Cf. Joachim Du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris, 1 9 0 8 1 9 6 1 ) Vol. I: sonnets 1 3 - 1 4 , 1 6 - 1 9 , 86-87, 1 0 6 - 1 0 7 . 11. Oeuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris, 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 6 0 ) , XI, 3 1 . 12. See Cicero, De oratore, III, liii, 203; Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhétorique (ist ed. 1 5 3 3 ) , ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), p. 185; J. C. Scaliger, Poetices libri Septem, III, lxx; esp. John Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style ( i s t ed. 1 5 9 9 ) , ed. Hoyt Hudson (Princeton, 1 9 3 5 ) , p. 23. 13. Cf. Psaumes XIV and CXVIII, vv. 2 9 - 3 2 , 1 0 5 - 1 0 8 . 14. See Guifïrey, Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot (Paris, 1 9 1 1 ) , I, 542, 544, and Smith, Clément Marot, p. 88. 15. See Henri Meylan, E pitres du coq à l'âne (Geneva, 1 9 5 6 ) , p. 18: "Le temps viendra que le Reformateur / Fera confondre Babylone et la tour." Chap. 5 will evaluate the thematic implications of this structural principle. 16. Cf. Rondeau LIX, vv. 1 2 - 1 5 . Mayer makes the attribution to Chariteo in Oeuvres diverses (London, 1966), p. 94; the partial attribution of Chariteo's poem to Petrarch's "Beato in sogno" ( C C X I I ) and Catullus' "In vento et rapida scribere" ( L X X ) is my own. 17. See Georges Doutrepont, "Les acteurs masqués et enfarinés du X V I e au X V I I I " siècle en France," Mémoires de l'Académie Royal de Belgique, X X I V ( 1 9 2 6 ) , 30; and Recueil de farces inédites du XVe siècle (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).

284

Notes to pp. 6 8 - 7 2

18. The striking similarity between the sottie and the coq-à-l'âne has been frequently observed; see Emile Picot, Recueil général des sotties (Paris, 1902), I, vi, and Charles Kinch, La Poésie satirique de Clément Marot (Paris, 1940), pp. 159— 190. Cf. Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), p. 74, vv. 1—8; p. 126, w . 94-95; p. 165, w . 1 3 8 - 1 3 9 and the coq-à-l'âne that Meylan cautiously associates with Marot in Epîtres du coq à l'âne (Geneva, 1956), p. 9, vv. 157-160. The implications of the satine viewpoint will be discussed more fully in part III of this book. 19. In this respect, Marot's verse recalls the creative prose of Rabelais in its ability to vary structure according to the action described and to adjust the length of an expression to the duration of action. Cf. "Luctoit, couroit, saultoit, non à troys pas un sault, non à clochepied, non au sault d'Alemant," Gargantua, chap. 23. 20. The figure is styled as epanalepsis by poetriae and rhetorics of the Renaissance with this same function normally assigned to it. Cf. Cicero, De oratore, III, liv, 206; Scaliger, Poetices IV, xxix; Joannes Susenbrotus, Epitome troporum ac schematum et grammaticorum et rhetorum (Zurich, 1 5 4 1 ) , 30, 49. 2 1 . Cf. the context and style of Pliny's Traiani panegyricus, "gaudentibus gaudens, securusque securis," 28, iii; Ovid, Amores, III, 3. 22. This sterility is one of the features distinguishing Cicero's matter-of-fact letters to Atticus from the epistles destined for posterity, where one finds expressions such as "Consules duos bonos quidem sed dumtaxat bonos consules amisimus!" Ad Brutem, I, 3a, i. It was around the period when Petrarch was gaining a universal reputation as the great purveyor of Cicero that his Latin epistles begin to abound with expressions like "Vivimur pariter, pariter memorabimur ambo," Epistulae metricae, I, 7 ( 1 5 3 8 ) . Montaigne discusses this Ciceronian structure in "Des livres," Essais, Book II, essay 10, p. 457. 23. Horace, for instance, inverts components in his line to describe a change in direction of winds, "Romae Tibur amen ventosus Tibure Roman (Epist., I, 8, 1 2 ) , to emphasize the poet's continual need to study in a maxim that the Pléiade knew by heart, "vos exemplaria Graeca / noctuma versate manu, versate diuma" (Ars poetica, 268-269), or to espouse the burlesque epic tone in an elegantly complex fable which Marot could have admired, "rusticus urbanum murem mus paupere fertur / accepisse cavo, veterem vetus hospes amicum" (Sat., II, 6, 8 0 - 8 1 ) . With slight variation but similar effect, the figure in Ovid relates the parallel deaths of fabled heroes: "sive tuas, Perseu, Daedale, sive tuas" (Tristia, III, 8, 6), "Romulus Iliades Iliadesque Remus" (Amores, III, 4, 40), "Memnona si mater, mater ploravit Achillem" (Amores, III, 9, 1 ) . Though he assuredly did not know the Armorum iudicium or Telephus of Accius, they show how far back the figure recedes into the Roman past and both contain a line that is remarkably similar to the close of Epître L V quoted above: "virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris" (Ai, v. 550; Tel., v. 625). While he was never held in high esteem as a dramatic exemplar, Accius was extensively pillaged by Renaissance copybooks for maxims like "Oderint dum metuant" from Atreus, v. 168. Reduced to such anonymity, this would have been a much more likely source of acquaintance for Marot and his contemporaries. 24. Oeuvres poétiques de Joachim Du Bellay, V I , 84. Cf. Seneca, "ad cetera contemnenda a contemptu sui," Epist. L X V I , i. 25. Cf. Pontus de Tyard's description of all-encompassing Divine wisdom, "sa sapience fut le principe, & le principe fut en sa sapience," The Universe of Pontus de Tyard, ed. John Lapp (Ithaca, N.Y., 1950), p. 56; Ronsard's "Hymne de France": "Heureuse en peuple, & en Princes heureuse," Oeuvres complètes, I, 35; Du Bellay in the poem to Henri II just quoted. "Ainsi vesquit Henry, Henry mourut ainsi" (v. 1 2 7 ) , and in his summation on the character and institutions of the Swiss, "La police immuable, immuable les loix," Regrets C X X X V . See also Regrets XLII, CXXXVII and Antiquitez de Rome XXVI, and cf. Ariosto, "Pene e travagli, altri

Notes to pp. j2-81

285

travagli e pene," Capitolo III, 54, and Much Ado about Nothing, "till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace," II, iii. Leonardo's "amor onni cose vince" became so popular that it lent itself to countless popular variations, such as "Vittoria vince e vince tu vittore," Cordex Atlanticus, in the Ambrosiana Library, Milan, and published in facsimile, ed. Ulrico Hoepli (Milan, 1894-1904), 3 4 4 " . T o give an idea of the long reach of the commonplace and the extent to which it determines a structural cast, it is enough to follow the Oderint dum metuant of Accius from its origin through Publilius Syrus, Laberius, the lengthy commentary of Seneca in De ira, I, xx, 4-5, to Macrobius's Saturnalia, II, vii, 20: "necesse est multos timeat quem timent multi," which Scaliger was later to comment. In his The Arte of English Poesie (1589), ed. Alice Walter and Gladys Willcock (Cambridge, 1939), George Puttenham cites an anonymous English poet of the time, "Much must he be beloved, that loveth much, / Feare many must he needs, whom many feare" (p. 200), where an acquaintance with Seneca is likely and a consciousness of the traditional structure pertaining to the thought, undeniable. Cf. Ariosto's Cinque Canti, II; Seneca, De dementia, XII, 4. 26. Though the image is ludicrously incongruous, the simple speech of Christine is later contrasted with the "lire haultain" of Cicero ( w . 1 9 2 - 1 9 4 ) . 27. See Mayer, Les Epigrammes, p. 46. 28. The expression and its numerous variations derived from a classical commonplace that was cited by Renaissance writers from Marot to Montaigne. Seneca quotes Hecaton, "desines timere, si sperare desieris," and makes the observation the basis of a long discourse, Epist. V , vii. 29. Matthew 4 : 1 - 7 ; Psalm 9 1 : 1 0 - 1 1 . Cf. Marot's translation of Psalm 91 in Guiffrey, Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot, V , 268. Renaissance commentators like Lefèvre d'Etaples and Erasmus always studied the two texts comparatively. See Erasmus, Opera omnia, V I , 23D. 30. See M. A. Screech, Marot évangélique (Geneva, 1967), 15-23; C. A. Mayer, La Religion de Marot (Geneva, i960), pp. 1 0 1 - 1 0 3 . 31. Comments on Marot's rhetorical use of hypotaxis to set a poem's mood and win over his audience have unjustly been relegated to footnotes. Cf. Joseph Vianey, Les Epîtres de Marot (Paris, 1962), p. 45. 32. Marot's praise of Francis here is identical in structure, but diametrically opposite in its referents, to his statement in a letter written a few months earlier (Epitre XXXVI) where he claims that Me veult de mal l'ignorante Sorbonne; Bien ignorante elle est d'estre ennemye De la trilingue & noble Academie Qu'as erigée. . . . (vv. 40-43) In this instance, repetition and stylized syntax express the intransigence of the Sorbonne whereas the rejet dramatically places the Collège des Lecteurs Royaux under the aegis of Francis and thus makes him implicitly the enemy of obscurantism. For Marot's penchant for organizing individuals into the logic of "resolutive order" where one proceeds from the greatest to the smallest constituant, see Epître XXXTV, w . 4 8 - 5 1 , and Epigramme CCXLVI. 33. This pattern, to use a term that may offend modem aesthetic sensibilities and preferences for "sincerity" or "spontaneity," recurs among more "modern" Renaissance poets in a multiplicity of contexts with exactly the same effect. Cf. Du Bellay's l'Olive CHI, Antiquitez III and X X I X , Songe XI, and Amours XV. 34. Cf. Complainte VII, vv. 73-74; Epigramme XXVI; Epître XXXVI, w . 1 3 0 1 3 1 , LVII, w . 50-51; Psaume CIV, vv. 1 - 2 . 35. A manuscript version of this épître (quoted by Mayer in La Religion de

z86

Notes to pp. 82-97

Marot, p. 99) is laden with other Ciceronianisms, e.g., "Contraire à tous et à tous interdicte" (v. 8), which disappear in the final version. The 1547 edition of the Epigrammes adds the line "Contraire à nul, n'avoir aucuns contraires" to Epigramme C L V , v. 7, Cf. Erasmus, Opera omnia, IV, 477B. 36. Mention of these talents lacks any personal reference to the extent that it represents standard attributes and commonly accepted ideals. The Quinte Essence speaks to Pantagruel and Panurge of "la nouveauté de l'experience entrant en leurs sens, non prevoyans la facilité de l'oeuvre, quand jugement serain associe estude diligent," and Montaigne praises "Feu mon pere, homme pour n'estre aydé que de l'experience et du naturel, d'un jugement bien net," Essais, Book I, essay 35, p. 253. 37. In a long discourse imbued "d'un parler elegant" (Triomphe de l'Agneau, v. 555), Marguerite herself treats the subject of bien paternel in a religious sense and makes Christ state that there can be no intercessors to help man reach heaven, "Ny pour avoir quelque bien paternel, / Fors par moy seul" ( w . 786-787). Cf. Epitre XLVI, vv. 1 - 2 . 38. The deeper implications of the satirical language in these poems will be discussed in chap. 7. Cf. Coq-à-l'âne II, vv. 80-84. 39. Cf. Phèdre, vv. 584-585, 596-597, 623-624, 665-666. CHAPTER IV 1. Emile Faguet, XVI" siècle (Paris, n.d.), p. 46. 2. Cf. Satyricon, 37, "nec quid nec quare," and La Farce de Pathelin, "Il n'y a ne rime ne rayson en tout quancque vous refardez," vv. 1345-1346. Among some of Marot's contemporaries the expression is used with the same insistence or the same synonyms, but never as strictly literary terminology. Cf. John Skelton's Poems Against Gamesche (1529), "For reson can I nor Fynde/Nor good ryme in yower mater . . . Ys ryme yet oute of reson" (vv. 104-105, 128), and John Palsgrave's Acolastus, (1540), III, iv, "In love is neyther meane nor measure, or neyther ryme nor reason." See also Ariosto's I Suppositi, II, i. 3. Cf. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (New York and Toronto, 1967), pp. 23-33. 4. Art poétique françoys, ed. Félix Gaiffe (Paris, 1932), p. 70. 5. "Soit de bien, soit de mal, j'escris à l'adventure. / Je me plains à mes vers, si j'ay quelque regret:/Je me ris avec eulx . . ." (Regrets I), "Soit une prose en ryme ou une ryme en prose" (Regrets II). The expression is a frequent term of derision in satire before and after the Renaissance. Cf. Pathelin, "Tu fais le rimeur en prose" (v. 1567) and Régnier, "S'ils font quelque chose, / C'est proser de la rime, et rimer de la prose" (Satires, IX). 6. Cf. Sebillet, pp. 185-186; Oeuvres lyriques (London, 1964), p. 207, w . 1 3 16, pp. 1 3 6 - 1 3 7 , vv. 19-20; "Colloque de la vierge mesprisant mariage," w . 6 1 1 612. 7. See C. A. Mayer, "Clément Marot and Literary History," Studies in French Literature Presented to H. W. Lav/ton (Manchester, England, and New York, 1968), p. 252; Pierre Jourda, Marot (Paris, 1967), p. 61; Pierre Villey, Les Grands Ecrivains du X V I e siècle, Marot et Rabelais (Paris, 1923), p. 45. Yet Marot's E pitre LVI, w . 61-70, is a sure reminiscence of E pistulae, I, 1 1 . 8. Ars poetica, w . 285-295, Satires, I, iv, n . The verb forger (Epitre X X X V I I I , v. 22) translates the same concern for extracting finished form from raw matter. 9. "vivos et rodere ungues" (Satires, I, x, 7 1 ) , "Praesectum decies non castigavit ad unguem," Ars poetica, v. 294. 10. Cf. Antiquitez V I I and Regrets V.

Notes to 97-105

287

1 1 . Cf. Eglogue II, "Viens voir de terre et de mer le grant tour," v. 51 var. 12. See Joseph Vianey, "L'Art du vers chez Clément Marot," Mélanges offerts à Abel Lefranc (Paris, 1936), pp. 50-51. 13. Iudicio natwralis, a surprise coming from the pen of such a supposedly unlettered poet, is a reference to the method derived from Aristotelian logic and used by Cicero and Quintilian for leading a learned audience from universal to derivative truths. See Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I, 2, 71b 30-723 8; Metaphysics, D, 1 1 . 14. For commentary on Marot's innovations in a larger context, see Kenneth Urwin, Georges Chastelain, la vie et les oeuvres (Paris, 1937), pp. 1 1 8 - 1 1 9 , Georges Doutrepont, Jean Lemaire de Belges et la Renaissance (Brussels, 1934), p- 349; Jean Frappier, "Sur quelques emprunts de Clément Marot à Jean Lemaire de Belges," Mélanges de philologie et d'histoire littéraire offerts à Edmond Huguet (Paris, 1940), pp. 162-164; Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., "Marot, Villon and the Roman de la Rose, A Study in the Language of Creation and Re-Creation," SP, LXIII, 2 (April, 1966), 1 4 1 - 1 4 3 . 15. Les Recherches de la France, VII, vii, in Les Oeuvres d'Estienne Pasquier (Amsterdam, 1723), 712B. 16. Nor from the mysticism exemplified by Marguerite. Similarities of language relate the reference to the ames bienheurées of the 1541 preface to the Psalms, "Pour que là trouvent leur doulx amant / Plus ferme & clair que nul vray diamant" (w. 61-62) and the Triomphe de l'Agneau, "Toy, coeur humain, au nom de ton aymant, / Grave dens toy comme en dur diamant" (vv. 533—534). 17. Various aspects of the "effects" of music, and the broad philosophical tradition they adhere to, have been studied with admirable precision by Renaissance scholars. Those discussions providing a particular background for Marot's undertaking are found in Frances Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1947), pp. 38-40; D. P. Walker, "Orpheus the Theologian and Renaissance Platonists," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, X V I (1953), 101; H. P. Clive, "The Calvinist Attitude to Music and its Literary Aspects and Sources," BHRen, XIX (1957), 87, 94; X X (1958), 90, 97; Michel Jeanneret, "Marot traducteur des psaumes: entre le néoplatonisme et la réforme," BHRen, X X V I I (1965), 629-643. 18. Opera omnia, facs. repr. of 1576 Basel edn., eds. Mario Sancipriano and Paul Oskar Kristeller (Turin, 1959), pp. 650-651. 19.

Par le mesme instrument [luth], Pluton fut incité, A donner Euridice au grand harpeur de Thrace. David (c'est vérité) sonnant devant la face De Saul forcené, son esprit irrité Appasoit tout soudain

"Suite des Imitations Chrestiennes de S.G.S., Poemes chrestiens de B. de Montmeja, & autres divers auteurs (Geneva, 1574), p. 183. 20. See Clive, "The Calvinist Attitude to Music," XIX, 87. 21. Luther makes a similar comment in the middle of The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. 22. See Clive, "The Calvinist Attitude to Music," pp. 88-90. 23. Ibid., p. 86. 24. E.g., Etienne Pasquier, Les Recherches de la France, VII, vii, 714C. 25. 1541 preface, w . 92. Cf. Le Dialogue en forme de vision nocturne, "Tout est par luy et par tout d'une essence, / N'ayant besoin de rien, ou indigence," quoted by Abel Lefranc, Les Idées religieuses de Marguerite de Navarre (Paris,

288

Notestopp. 105-122

1 8 9 8 ) , p. 1 4 . But cf. also " ( D e u s ) qui ex nihilo potest aliquid producere; ita cum dicitur aliquid vertibile in nihil, non importatur in creatura potentia ad non esse, sed in Creatore potentia ad hoc quod esse non influât," Summa Theologien, I, 75, vi. 26. See Walther de Lerber, L'Influence de Marot aux XVII' et XVIII' siècles (Paris, 1 9 2 0 ) , p. 28; Faguet, XVIe siècle, pp. 64-73; esp. Philippe Martinon, Les Strophes (Paris, 1 9 1 2 ) , pp. 8-20; Paul Laumonier, Ronsard, poète lyrique (Paris, 1 9 2 3 ) , pp. 6 5 1 - 6 6 0 . C f . Jourda, Marot, pp. 7 5 - 7 6 . 27. Martinon, Les Strophes, p. 8; Laumonier, Ronsard, poète lyrique, p. 658; N . H. Clement, " T h e First French Sonneteer," Romantic Review, X I V ( 1 9 2 3 ) , 1 9 1 . 28. Faguet, XVI' siècle, p. 69; Vianey, " L ' A r t du vers chez Clément Marot," Mélanges Lefranc, p. 53. 29 In Anatole de Montaiglon's Recueil de poésies françoises des XV' et XVI' siècles (Paris, 1 8 5 6 ) , III, 124. 30. See Jean Frappier, "Sur quelques emprunts de Clément Marot à Jean Lemaire de Belges," Mélanges Huguet (Paris, 1 9 4 0 ) , pp. 1 6 8 - 1 6 9 . 3 1 . And also exploited by Du Bellay, "D'une fureur apollinée, . . . Naistre poete en un moment," as Mayer points out in Les Epîtres, p. 270. 32. The Garden of Eloquence, 1 5 J J , ed. W . G . Crane (Gainesville, Fla., 1 9 5 4 ) , p. 49. The definition is probably guided by the classical examples of Cicero's Orator, X X X I X , 1 3 5 , and Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, I X , iii, 66 f. In fact, Peacham cites John 1 : 1 , " I n the beginning was the logos," as an example of the figure. 33. Montaiglon, Recueil de poésies françoises, X , 1 1 7 . 34. Ibid., X , 86. 35. Ibid., V I I , 98; V I I I , 97; V , 239. C f . Epitre X L V I , v. 90. In the Illustrations Lemaire speaks of "les pleurs des enfants, les plaints des mourans" (II, 8 ) , and D u Bellay adapts the pianto, pianger, pena of Ariosto to L'Olive X X V . 36. (Paris, 1862; 1966 reprint), p. 286, v. 9, 498. 37. Probably in reference to its previous mention in Epitre XXV, w . 45-48, for which he evidently drew some form of reproach. 38. For a similar kind of enumeration and its relation to whipping as a basoche custom, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass., 1 9 6 8 ) , p. 204. CHAPTER V 1 . See Introduction, n. 2. 2. C f . Introduction, pp. 5 - 6 . 3. See Paulette Leblanc, La Poésie religieuse de Clément Marot (Paris, 1 9 5 5 ) , p. 1 4 2 . 4. Opera omnia (Leyden, 1 7 0 3 - 1 7 0 6 ) , V I , 2 3 1 F . 5. Mayer, La Religion de Marot (Geneva, i 9 6 0 ) , pp. 1 3 0 - 1 3 1 ; Screech, Marot évangélique (Geneva, 1 9 6 7 ) , pp. 5 1 , 58, 1 1 2 . 6. Quoted by Karl Spiess, Der Gottesbegriff des J. Faber Stapulensis (Marburg, 1 9 3 0 ) , pp. 55, 58. 7. Opera, V , 4 3 B ; I, 729A. 8. Leblanc reads the second as a "simple transposition de l'hymne de louange que chante, dans l'Evangile selon S. Luc, la multitude de l'armée céleste, à l'avènement du fils de Dieu." It gives the ballade "une tonalité religieuse et grave," La Poésie religieuse, pp. 84-85. 9. As Screech has pointed out, Marot évangélique, p. 35. 10. Unsullied yet human: Werke (Weimar Ausgabe: Weimar, 1 8 8 3 - ) , I X , 4 3 9 46; X , 1 , 6 2 - 6 3 , 65-66; X L I , 480; X V I I , 2, 3 0 2 - 3 0 3 ; X X X I I , 2 5 3 - 2 5 5 ; L I I , 38.

Notes to pp.

122-125

289

1 1 . "La Source d'un poème religieux de Marot" in Mélanges offerts à Abel Lefranc (Paris, 1936), pp. 67-68. 12. Aside from the early "Rondeau de la Conception nostre Dame" ( X X I X ) which was assigned and prescribed by the poetic competition at the Puy de Rouen. "Mais il peult tout, & veult, & luy aggrée / Qu'un filz sacré aye mere sacrée, / Ce qu'elle fut, & vice ne sentit / Comme Nature." (w. 6 - 8 ) , which forms the basis of the derived argument favoring the Immaculate Conception, shows no real awareness of the argument of "appropriateness" as debated by Duns Scotus and Aquinas. Cf. L'Enfer, v. 359. 13. See Leblanc, La Poésie religieuse, p. 69, and Screech, Marot évangélique, p. 47, on Isaiah 7 : 1 4 and Matthew 1 : 2 2 - 2 3 . The qualification "Vulgate" must be maintained, since the reading of virgo for the Hebrew almah (young woman, maiden) creates ambiguities. Elsewhere in the Bible almah is used to describe young women who are clearly not virgins. See also Oeuvres lyriques (London, 1964), p. 355 n. 3. 14. Indeed, the motif "Gloire à Dieu seul" continues to reverberate well into the more aggressive evangelism of his first exile. The letter to the "soeurs savoisiennes" ( X X X V ) closes on the wish that their faith remain alive and on the assurance that "à mon Dieu toute gloire je donne." 15. Mayer, La Religion de Marot p. 126; Screech, Marot évangélique, pp. 89-90; Smith, Clément Marot, Poet of the French Renaissance (London, 1970), p. 46. In the "Apologie" Montaigne contrasts these moyens humains with the foy vive we will take up in the next few pages, Essais (ed. Maurice Rat [Paris, 1962], I, 482, 554), before proceeding to a discussion of the knowledge and works of Dieu seul. 16. Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1 5 2 3 - 1 5 2 4 ) , II, Epistre exhortatoire à tous chrestiens. 17. Mlle Leblanc, for instance, sees an elaborated reference to I Corinthians 1 3 : 1 4 in the Ballade de May et de vertu and understands Ferme Amour of the Temple de Cupido as an allegorical projection of Pauline charity, La Poésie religieuse, pp. 31, 263. See also Norman O. Brown, Love's Body (New York, 1966), pp. 1 9 1 214. 18. Opera omnia, V , 30B-C. Cf. IV, 466A; II Corinthians 3:6, Hebrews 1 1 : 1 . 19. "Paulum hîc loqui de charitaté, non quancumque, sed de vera & Evangelica," Opera omnia, V I , 724B; Luther, W A , VII, 38. Whether it was actually authored by Marot or not, the conclusion of " L e Riche en pauvreté" demonstrates the same Pauline concern for opposing penultimate and ultimate knowledge (I Corinthians 13:12-13): Brief ce monde est une deception Qui nous déçoit souz sa plaisante masque; . . . Pour faire fin, de rechef je vous prie De suyvre Christ, non en vaine apparence, Mais ayans Foy de Charité munie. Mettez en luy toute vostre esperance, . . . (Si vous voulez à Jésus ressembler) Priez qu'en tout sa volonté soit faicte. (vv. 269-270, 291-294, 299-300) Though Paul uses the term àyâirn, the "charity" of the A.V. at I Cor. 13 derives from Jerome's and Augustine's caritas. For the latter, caritas includes man's aspiration toward God as the supreme good, that is, the satisfaction of the desire for happiness innate in man, brought about by a humble response to the love with which God in Christ has sought men out and given Himself for them.

2Ç0

Notes to pp.

125-128

20. See Screech, Marot évangélique, p. 85: "iis qui pereunt: eo quod charitatem veritatis non receperunt." 2 1 . See Will G . Moore, La Réforme allemande et la littérature française (Strasbourg, 1930), pp. 33, 303; J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York, 1954), pp. 209-210. 22. Marot évangélique, p. 104; Née deux foys de nom et d'ame, Enfant de roy par sa naissance, Enfant du ciel par congnoissance De celluy qui la saulvera; . . . . 23. Ibid., p. 88. It is was doubtless Lefèvre who first suggested to Luther the formula of his famous "sola fide." 24. All these terms, however, exist in close proximity in reformist tracts, for Paul allies them on a spiritual level. He speaks of a "firm hope" in Hebrews 3:6 and again in Hebrews 1 0 : 1 9 - 2 2 he discusses the "full assurance of faith" in Christ as the "living way" which he opened through the curtain of his body (cf. Matthew 27:51 and II Corinthians 3:14)- These passages were of the utmost importance to the evangelical mind, for the rending of the curtain through the crucifixion betokened the death of the Old Law and the end to the need for intercession by the priesthood. This is precisely the meaning they hold for Marguerite whose Chanson spirituelle V begins "Voicy nouvelle joye, / La nuict pleine d'obscurité / Est passée . . ." and ends with "Vérité, Vie et Voye: / Voicy nouvelle joye." Again, in her Epistre au Roy son frere III from the Suyte des Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses she proclaims "Il va tout nud et veult bien qu'on le voye, / Car il est seul Vérité, Vie et Voye. / Il fut couvert à tous yeux esblouis" (vv. 66-68). The "Sermon du bon pasteur et du mauvais" brandishes the same banner: "C'est luy qui est vérité, vie et voye" (v. 2 5 ) , a straight translation of John 14:6, which goes on to say that no one comes to the Father, but by Christ. In the Genealogia deorum (II, 2 ) , citing John 14:6, Boccaccio argues a similar continuity in concept between antiquity and modern man. 25. W A , X X X , 2, 637. 26. Ibid., V I I I , 361. On the basis of these distinctions, I must quibble with Screech who claims that Luther "n'afïectionait guère l'expression fides viva" (Marot évangélique, p. 52) and with Mayer who sees in " E t son pouvoir par leurs Oeuvres contraindre; / Plus pour loyer Celeste en recevoir, / Que pour amour qu'en Dieu puissent avoir" from the "Second Chant d'Amour fugitif," vv. 74-76, a "'négation de la valeur des oeuvres" per se (La Religion de Marot, p. 1 2 1 ) . It seems to me that Marot, like Luther rejects the wrong kind of works done in the absence of living faith, and that his comparison Plus-Que (italics mine) implies a violation of the primacy of faith and its cause-effect relation to works. Cf. The Rabelaisian Marriage (London, 1958), p. 68n. 27. W A , X X X I I , 328; VII, 53, 59-64. Screech (Marot évangélique, pp. 52-53) mentions Erasmus's definition of fides viva as fides combined with caritas. The combination was a traditional one, extending deep into patristic tradition. For Aquinas, it is the means by which man rises to the Divine good, Quaestiones disputatae, de virtutibus in generali, V , ii, 1 1 . Augustine couches his discussion of sola fide in these terms, Epistolae, C X X . References to "Augustin, de Dieu tant escrivant" are not farfetched, since Marot's narrator in Elégie XVI, following the lead of Jean Marot, claims even to have read Paulus Orosius, one of Augustine's major disciples and commentators. The special use of "true" before "Faith," "Church," "God," and "Light" was, of course, also traditional among certain troubadours and in early Renaissance' pastoral poetry. See Boccaccio, II Ninfale Fiesolano, 199.

Notes to pp. 1 3 0 - 1 4 0

291

28. On the basis of stylistic affinities, W . G Moore attributes the authorship of the first cantique of the French reformation to Marguerite in preference to Marot, and suggests its date as 1527. (La Réforme allemande, pp. 1 8 8 - 1 8 9 ) . Because of its brief account of Christ's passion "D'ennuys et de douleurs" and the 1527 composition date of the "Déploration," one might revise the attribution of authorship or else argue for an affinity between Marot and Marguerite which is even closer than generally assumed. Elsewhere, in the "Chant-Royal Chrestien," the ritualistic series "Ennuy, Peine et Douleur" (v. 1 5 ) returns in the form of Christ's promise to the faithful, and following Christ's death in Complainte II the narrator's own envisioned pain before death is resolved into cinq pointz: Dueil, Ennuy, Soucy, Regret, and Peine. See Charles d'Orléans, Ballades 57 and 108. 29. An example of a more specific meaning, narrowed by its context of abundant Pauline references, is the "Ains vraye amour à l'aymer vous attire!" of the spurious " L e Riche en pauvreté," v. 196; the broader use will be discussed below in the letter to Renée de Ferrare. 30. See Mayer, La Religion de Marot, pp. 69-70. 31. "Darum soll seine Absicht in allen Werken frei und nur dahin gerichtet sein, dass er andern Leuten damit diene und nütze sei, nichts anderes sich vorstelle, als was den andern not ist. Das heisst dann ein wahrhaftiges Christenleben, und da geht der Glaube mit Lust und Liebe ins Werk, wie Paulus die Galater lehret," W A , V I I , 34. 32. La Poésie religieuse, pp. 69, 145; Marot évangélique, p. 34. Cf. the Inquisitio de fide quoted above, and Mayer, La Religion de Marot, pp. 9 7 - 1 0 3 . Luther did not even use the word "church" (Kirche) in his Bible, using in its place "congregation" (Gemeinde). 33. Moore, La Réforme allemande, p. 305. 34. Guifïrey, Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot (Paris, 1 9 1 1 ) , IV, 420. 35. "ut nihil aliud sit Ecclesia, quam unius Dei, unius Euangelii, unius fidei, unius spei professio . . . breviter, talis quaedam communio bonorum omnium inter omnes pios, qui fuerunt ab initio mundi usque ad finem, qualis est membrorum corporis inter ipsa societas; sic ut aliorum benefacta subveniant aliis, donee viva sunt membra corporis," Opera omnia, I, 7 3 1 , E - F . 36. Cf. H. Heller, "Marguerite de Navarre and the Reformers of Meaux," BHRen, X X X I I I ( 1 9 7 1 ) , 292. 37. De trinitate, IX, 1; XII, 1 4 - 1 5 ; De civitate dei, XI, 24; Epistulae C X X ; Sermones L X X . As Augustine put it, in the classical phraseology we discussed in chap. 3, God's judgment is "secretly just, justly secret," whereas men, "being condemned, are seduced, and, being seduced, are condemned." 38. Summa contra gentiles, IV, 1 , vi-vii. 39. The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York, 1954), pp. 201, 2 1 3 - 2 1 4 . 40. Le Triomphe de l'Agneau, vv. 963-64; Sponde, "Sonnet de la Mort" V I ; Méditations (Paris, 1954), pp. 36-37. Cf. W A , X X X I I , 328-329. 4 1 . Cf. n. 19 as well as E. Droz and P.-P. Plan, "Les Dernières Années de Clément Marot d'après des poèms inédits," BHRen, X (1948), 40, 43. 42. The same insistance on faithful service and commensurate suffering runs through "Le Riche en pauvreté." Cf. Rabelais, II, 20. 43. Cf. Leblanc, La Poésie religieuse, p. 62. 44. The tripartite concordia mundi that Ficino labels Providentia, the realm of the mind, fatum, the realm of the soul, imagination and sensibility, and natura, the realm of general cosmic laws, tinges the discourse of the lovers in the Elégies (Ficino, Theologia platonica, XIII, fol, 289). But cf. Epistohe I (to Cavalcanti) in Opera omnia, facs. repr. of 1576 Basel edition, ed. Mario Sancipriano and Paul Oskar Kristeller (Turin, 1959), fol. 633.

292

Notes to pp.

140-148

45. "De varietate fortunae," in Latin Writings of the Italian Humanists, ed. F. A. Cragg (New York, 1 9 2 7 ) , pp. 1 1 2 - 1 1 6 . Cf. Montaigne: "Les astres ont fatalement destiné l'estat de Romme pour exemplaire de ce qu'ils peuvent en ce genre. Il comprend en soy toutes les formes et aventures qui touchent un estât; tout ce que l'ordre y peut et le trouble, et l'heur et le malheur," Essais, Book II, essay 9, p. 398. 46. This is a distinction that neither earlier nor later Renaissance poets are disposed to make. Cf. Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Laumonier (Paris, 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 6 0 ) , I, 89; VIII, 1 0 5 - 1 1 4 ; X , 335; X , 1 1 1 , 212; Pontanus, Carmina, ed. Oeschger (Bari, 1948), I, 38; Sannazaro, Arcadia, ed. Comiani (Milan, 1806), Sonnet 44; Burchiello, Sonetti, no ed. (London, 1 7 5 7 ) , p. 26. See also A. Dören, Fortuna im Mittelalter (Hamburg, 1923), pp. 1 2 2 - 1 2 8 . 47. Marot évangélique, pp. 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 . Cf. Rabelais, II, 12. 48. Institutio, I, 17, iv; W A , X V , 302. 49. Les Epitres, ed. C. A. Mayer (London, 1958), p. 285, vv. 59-60. 50. Cf. Leone Battista Alberti, "Proemio" to Deila famiglia in Opere volgari, ed. Bonucci (Florence, 1844), II; Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, X V I I , 195; Du Beilay, Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard (Paris, 1 9 2 3 ) , V , 393; Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1927), p. 25; and Descartes, Discours de la Méthode, ed. Etienne Gilson (Paris, 1962), p. 64. The modern attitude probably dates from the conversation of Franciscus and Augustinus in the Secretum. 51. See John E. Matzke, "The Source of 'To Take Time by the Forelock,'" P M L A , V I I I (1893), 303-334. 52. See Du Bellay, Regrets C X X I V . 53. Essais, Book I, essay 14, p. 67. For a terminus ab quo, see Pomponazzi's De naturalium effectuum admirandorum causis. 54. Oeuvres complètes, X, 333-334. 55. The subjection of Pompey and Caesar to Fortune was to become a Renaissance topos. Cf. Les Antiquitez de Rome XXXI. Coupling Vertu with opportune and two lines later with chenue is understandable within the full range of Fortuna and its aggregate personae. Many humanists, such as Erasmus, willingly confused the goddess Occasio with Tempus, both marked by their abundance of hair. In Marguerite's separation of para-Christian forces from Providence, she also dismisses Le Temps chanu (Le Triomphe de l'Agneau, v. 1459). 56. A likely chronological terminus for the bond between the pull of the moon, the sway of Fortune and the power of virtu would be Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, V I I I - I X . 57. "passibus ambiguis Fortuna volubilis errat, / Et manet in nullo certa tenaxque loco," Tristia, V , viii, 1 5 - 1 6 . 58. This zone of chiaroscuro between life and art partially explains Marcel Françon's confused attempt to refute Mayer and the historicity of Marot's 1526 imprisonment, in "L'Enfer de Clément Marot," BHRen, X X I X (1967), 1 5 7 - 1 5 8 . 59. Oeuvres lyriques, pp. 214, 219, 220, 224, 262, 265. 60. Villey, Marot et Rabelais (Paris, 1 9 2 3 ) , p. 42; Guy, Clément Marot et son école (Paris, 1926), II, 22. 61. La Religion de Marot, pp. 1 0 8 - 1 1 1 ; La Poésie religieuse, pp. 126-128; Marot évangélique, pp. 77-80. In The Rabelaisian Marriage (chap. 5), amid references to Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Calvin, Screech discusses the idea of continence-through-grace as it relates both to marriage and monastic celibacy. Marguerite also asserts that, armed with vive Foy and charité, man can actively seek (requerir) grace as a means of combatting his natural condition: "De tous costez

Notes to pp.

148-154

293

se verront assaillir, / Tant qu'ilz pourront assez de fois faillir" (Le Triomphe de l'Agneau, w . 1 5 4 7 - 1 5 4 8 ) . 62. See especially, De natura et gratia, caps. 53, 58; De gratia et libera arbitrio, cap. 32; De spiritu et littera, cap. 52. 63. For an identical reaction, cf. Du Bellay's Antiquitez Vil ("Tristes désirs, vivez donques contents: Car si le temps finist chose si dure, / Il finira la peine que j'endure.") as he surveys Fortune's destruction of the virtuous, but indeed unChristian, venture of Rome. 64. Marot évangélique, p. 100. In the same way, one would suppose that his denial of Lutheranism and claim to be nothing but a Christian put him squarely in the same camp as Luther, pp. 27-30. 65. V I , 597-612; Briefwechsel, 1593 in W A . 66. WA, VII, 836-838. 67. Opera omnia, IV, 448D-E; V , 65C; V , 44F-45A. 68. "Simile est regnum caelorum thesauro abscondito in agro quem qui invenit homo abscondit et prae gaudio illius vadit et vendit universa quae habet et emit agrum ilium. Iterum simile est regnum caelorum homini negotiatori quaerenti bonas margaritas inventa autem una pretiosa margarita abiit et venditit omnia quae habuit et emit earn," Matthew 13:44-46. 69. In the appendix II, 3, to his edition of the Epitres, Mayer includes a dubious attribution to Marot where the biblical Golden Rule is clearly in evidence: S'aulcun y a qui se fourvoyé tant Faire à aultruy ce que il ne vouldroit Luy estre fait, soudain on fera droit A ung chescun, ainsi que Jesus Crist L'a comandé, . . . (vv. 40-44) Lemaire, ed. Stecher (Louvain, 1 8 9 1 ) , IV, 207. See also "Les fleuves changeront leurs cours, / Quant femes ne seront volages," in E. Droz and P.-P. Plan, "Les Dernières Années de Clément Marot," p. 12. 70. Both images are preceded by a chiastic introduction in which Marot counterposes the great and the small: himself and Renée, the Hebrew people and God. 7 1 . Psaume XVIII. Cf. Ballade XII. 72. C f . "La Complaincte d'un Pastoureau Chrestien" A te louer se monstreront legieres, Et (qui plus est) gras boeuf en brameront Et par plaisir brebis en besleront; Oyseaux du Ciel de differens plumages T'en rendront los en leurs beaux chans ramages. (vv. 280-284) 73. Mayer, La Religion de Marot, pp. 1 5 - 1 9 , Oeuvres diverses (London, 1966), p. 163; Screech, " 'Il a mangé le lard' (What Marot said and What Marot Meant)," BHRen, X X V I (1964), 363-364; Marot évangélique, pp. 39-45. 74. The proverbial expression in the last line was frequent advice to those who might incur the wrath of Franciscans or Dominicans. Cf. Philippe de Mamix de Sainte-Aldegonde, Oeuvres (Brussels, 1 8 5 7 - 1 8 6 0 ) , I, iii, 1 3 ; I, iv, 4; and "Déploration," w . 57-60, 73-78. 75. La Poésie religieuse, p. 193. She takes Symon to be Simon Magus on the basis of Guiffrey's fanciful explanation, III, 437. In view of the Christological allegory, a more likely candidate would be the inconstant Simon Peter of John 18.

N o i e s to pp. 1 5 4 - 1 6 0 76. Mortbieu: Mort de Dieu. See Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française (Paris and London, 1889), III, 625. 77. Le Problème de l'incroyance au seizième siècle (Paris, 1947); La Réforme allemande, pp. 283-287. Cf. Guiffrey, I 250. In the notes to his edition of the Epitres (London, 1958), Mayer quotes interestingly from F. Decrue: " L e roi écrivit à différentes reprises aux princes allemands, afin d'excuser . . . ses persécutions à l'égard des luthériens, qu'il s'efforçait de faire passer pour des anabaptistes" (p. 206). In fact, well into the century's religious controversies and beyond, terminology moves through a spectrum of meaning according to an adherent's particular persusasion. Cf. André Thevet, "Si l'evesque et ses chanoines vouloient renoncer le pape, et quitter les ceremonies papistiques, pour embrasser la persusasion de Luther . . . " La Cosmographie universelle (Paris, 1 5 7 5 ) , X I X , 4; and Pierre Charron, "Toutes les sectes et parties modemes d'un accord appellent la catholique comme d'un nom propre, mais par injure, papistique, romaine," Trois veritez, III, 8, in Toutes les oeuvres de Pierre Charron (Paris, 1635). For a summation of mercurial qualities in Luther himself, see Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther, A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York, 1962 ), p. 254. 78. "Les Dernières Années de Clément Marot," p. 18. 79. La Religion de Marot, pp. 66-69; Marot évangélique, pp. 30, 36, 38; La Réforme allemande, p. 1 8 1 . 80. Marot évangélique, pp. 28-29; Marot et Rabelais, p. 1 1 1 ; La Poésie religieuse, p. 68. One of the more intriguing aspects of the variants is that if they are for all purposes interchangeable, they leave Marot midway between the extremes of popery and Anabaptism. 81. See Les Epitres, p. 69; " L e Texte de Marot," BHRen, X V ( 1 9 5 3 ) , 73; La Religion de Marot, pp. 17, 33, 50. 82. Marot (Paris, 1967), pp. 17, 33, 50. 83. As Jean Plattard, Marot, sa carrière poétique et son oeuvre (Paris, 1938), p. 61, and Guy, Clément Marot et son école, II, 226, have cogently suggested. 84. For a discussion of the straightforwardness of Marot's oblique statements on the mass, see Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), p. 1 7 1 , v. 80; Oeuvres lyriques, p. 157, v. 421; and Marot évangélique, p. 63. 85. Cf. Marot évangélique, p. 1 1 2 , and Oeuvres satiriques, p. 176: "Il nomme le Pape Antéchrist, / Ce malheureux Martin Luther" ( w . 66-67). 86. See Mayer, Oeuvres lyriques, pp. 64-67 for Sagon's attributive confusion on the basis of manuscript variation. CHAPTER VI 1 . Most recently in the richly insightful studies of Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington, Ind., and London, 1969), and Elizabeth Armstrong, Ronsard and the Age of Gold (Cambridge, 1968). In a review article on the two works C. N. Smith demurs, "The relationships between Christianity and conceptions of the Golden Age certainly require closer examination," "Golden Wakening," Journal of European Studies, I ( 1 9 7 1 ) , p. 83. For a particular interest in the Golden Age within a European setting, see A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton, 1966). 2. For the conjunction of the Golden Age and the secularized theological virtues, see Armstrong, Ronsard and the Age of Gold, p. 34. 3. E.g., ibid., p. 6; Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age, p. 70; Guy Demerson, " L e Mythe des âges et la conception de l'ordre dans le lyrisme de la Pléiade," in

Notes to pp.

161-171

Humanism in France, ed. A. H. T . Levi (Manchester, England, and New York, W 0 ) ' PP- 279-280. 4. Cf. Roman de la Rose, v. 651; L'Amant vert, w . 394-402; "Temple de Venus," w . 227-230. 5. See Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), pp. 158, 1 7 1 , for other examples of the desire to return to innocence from court degeneracy and religious excess. 6. See Trattato della pittura (Vienna, 1877), p. 1 5 1 , and Bacon's "ingenium rebus submitentem" in Novum organum, I, cxiii. Giordano Bruno echoes Leonardo in his belief that a man who does not know how to paint and feign is no philosopher, in Opere latine (Naples, 1 8 7 9 - 1 8 9 1 ) , II, ii, 34. Cf. Montaigne, "moy je me roulle en moy mesme" (II, 17, p. 61 ). 7. Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite dei più celebri pittori, scultori e architetti (Florence, 1908), p. 13. 8. Cf. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, II. 9. Ili, vi, 34, 42, 44; II, v, 29, xii, 50. 10. Cf. Le Roman de la Rose, v. 499. 1 1 . Opus epistolarum (Oxford, 1 9 1 0 ) , II, 488-492. 1 2 . See E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York and Evanston, 1963), pp. 320-322. 13. M. Caron and S. Hutin, The Alchemists (New York, 1 9 6 1 ) , p. 124. 14. Ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (London, 1965), p. 100. 15. See Augustin Renaudet, Humanisme et renaissance (Geneva, 1958), pp. 260-267. 16. See Henri Weber, " Y a-t-il une poésie hermétique au XVI* siècle en France?" CAIEF, X V (March, 1963), 4 1 . 1 7 . Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human, in Rollins and Baker, eds., The Renaissance in England (Boston, 1954), p. 909. 18. "id genus omne," as Montaigne put it in "Qu'il faut sobrement se mesler de juger des ordonnances divines," I, 32, p. 247. He goes on to state that God "les [les fortunes and infortunes] manie et applique selon sa disposition occulte." 19. See Samuel Kinser, "Agrippa d'Aubigné and the Apostasy of Henry I V , " SRen, X I (1964), 245-268. 20. See Don Cameron Allen, The Star-Crossed Renaissance (Durham, N.C., 1 9 4 1 ) , pp. 64, 78. 2 1 . Cf. Oeuvres complètes d'Agrippa d'Aubigné, eds. E. Reaume and F. de Caussade (Paris, 1873), I, 452. 22. C f . Oeuvres lyriques (London, 1964), p. 395, vv. 1 7 5 - 1 7 8 ; and Oeuvres satiriques, p. 168, "Je prens la plume pour t'escripre, / Car il n'est tous jours bon de dire / La vérité de ce qu'on sçayt" ( w . 3-5) anticipating a discussion of Gallicanism. 23. Cf. E. H. Gombrich, "Renaissance and Golden Age," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, X X I V ( 1 9 6 1 ) , 307. 24. See Michel Jeanneret, "Marot traducteur des psaumes: entre le néoplatonisme et la réforme," B H R e n X X V I I ( 1 9 6 5 ) , 639. 25. Histoire de la poésie française au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1 9 1 0 ) , I, 47-48. 26. Pauline Smith, The Anti-Courtier Trend in Sixteenth-Century French Literature (Geneva, 1966), p. 69. Cf. Oeuvres satiriques, p. 158, 66-73, Oeuvres Lyriques, p. 385, w . 92-94. 27. Ed. Laumonier, XIII, 77. The coincidence of aesthetic and moral beauty is neatly summed up by Amadis Jamyn, "la vérité simple et nue se trouve parmy les vertueux plus luisante sans aucun artifice qu'autrement, à raison qu'elle est assez

296

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omée de soy mesme et qu'estant fardée de paremens extérieurs, elle se corrompt. Le mensonge, au contraire, ne plaist sinon par l'apparence extérieure d'un embellisement emprunté s'evanouyssant et s'escoultant, si elle n'est polie de fards qui l'embellissent," quoted by Edouard Fremy, L'Académie des derniers Valois (Paris, 1887), p. 361. 28. Saulnier speculates that the Elégies were written at the behest of Marguerite who would have furnished not only a literary but also a living model for this livret de civilité, Les Elégies de Clément Marot (Paris, 1968) pp. 1 7 6 - 1 7 7 . C f . Cantique III and Etrenne III. 29. De diis (Basel, 1548), II, introd. Lamartine was not far off in his comparison of the Ferrara court to those of Augustus, the Medici and Leo X , replete with "princes lettrés, des princesses héroïnes d'amour, de poésie ou de roman, des cardinaux aspirant à la papauté, des érudits, des artistes, des poètes, moitié chevaliers, moitié bardes," Cours familier de littérature (Paris, 1856-69), X , 12. 30. Elsewhere (Rondeau XLIII) the mind-body question is reworked without, however, the psychological complexities of Scève's Dizain C L X I which it closely resembles. For the background of Colin's translation, see Reinhard Klesczewski, Die französischen Übersetzungen des "Cortegiano" von Baidasare Castiglione (Heidelberg, 1966), pp. 25-26. "Amor vincit omnia" was Boiardo's motto, adorned the forty-five pound gold plate of Gargantua, and was the same that Chaucer's Prioress wore on her brooch; the theme originates, of course, in Vergil, Eclogues X , v. 69. The nurse in Boccaccio's Fiammetta blandly assumes an acquaintance with this tradition when she chides her mistress, "non sai tu che Amore vince tutte le cose?" (chap. 4). That Marot was familiar with this work is clear from the second coq-àl'âne, v. 100. 3 1 . Jourda, Marot, (Paris, 1967), p. 148; Laumonier, Ronsard, poète lyrique (Paris, 1 9 2 3 ) , p. 5 1 5 . Epigramme LII is commonly cited with its Regard, Devis, Baiser, Atouchement and don de mercy. The pentad of love goes back at least as far as Donatus's Commentum on the works of Terence ("visus, allocutio, tactus, osculum sive suavium, coitus") and lent itself to association with the embodiment of "virtue in action" and "sweet suffering" of mystical ascension. Cf. my chap. 5, n. 28, and Ficino's "Commentaria Platonis" in Opera omnia, facs. repr. of 1576 Basel edn., ed. Mario Sancipriano and Paul Oskar Kristeller (Turin, 1959), chap. 28, p. 1 4 5 1 . Reference to this long passage in Ficino is apposite because it emphasizes the continuation in the Renaissance of the mixture of the sacred and profane which characterized much courtly poetry in the Middle Ages. The troubadour Cuiraut Riquier speaks of the castle of devotion with its five doors: Desire, Prayer, Service, Kissing, and Doing. See also Lemaire de Belges, Illustrations, I, 25. 32. "Introduction à l'explication des pièces de Marot," Revue des cours et conférences, X X X I I I ( 1 9 3 1 ) , 1 1 4 . 33. Oeuvres satiriques, pp. 33-34; Henri Meylan, Epitres du coq-à-l'âne (Geneva, 1956), pp. 15, 27. Cf. Ronsard, ed. Laumonier, V I I I , 357, v. 98. 34. Guiffrey, Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot (Paris, 1 9 1 1 ) , II, 266; Guy, Histoire de la poésie française au seizième siècle, I, 379. 35. See Villey, Les Grands Ecrivains du XVIe siècle, Marot et Rabelais (Paris. 1923) p. 17, for Sagon's polemic dismissal of Marot's ability, and Leblanc, La Poésie religieuse de Clément Marot (Paris, 1 9 5 5 ) , p. 185, for an example of the moderate estimate. 36. Marot et Rabelais, pp. 1 7 - 1 8 . 37. The Birth of the Elegy in France, 1 5 0 0 - 1 5 5 0 (Geneva, 1967), p. 51. Cf. Jean Frappier, "Sur quelques emprunts de Clément Marot à Jean Lemaire de

Notes to pp.

iy6-i8o

Belges," Mélanges de philologie et d'histoire littéraire offerts à Edmond Huguet (Paris, 1940), pp. 1 6 2 - 1 6 3 ; Leblanc, La Poésie religieuse, p. 286. 38. As Alice Hulubei has shown (L'Eglogue en France au XVI' siècle [Paris, 1938], pp. 2 1 7 - 2 2 0 ) , refuting Villey's assertion that they are motivated purely by the desire to restore antiquity (Marot et Rabelais, p. 66). 39. Cf. Le Temple d'honneur et de vertus, ed. Henri Hornik (Geneva and Paris, 1957), p. 46; Guiffrey, V , 196. 40. Mayer's reference to Ovid's Calendar in Elégie X X I V is all the more interesting since Ovid fleshes out the same myths with details that make them living presences. The arrogance grecque in Marot's explanation is an allusion to Planudes's fourteenth-century translation replete with fantasized illustrated engravings. 4 1 . See Jean Bouchet's Triomphe du . . . Roy de France, François premier de ce nom and Marc-René Jung, Hercule dans la littérature française du XVIe siècle (Geneva, 1966). 42. "Les Sources humanistes du chant nuptial de Renée de France," Bulletin de la société de l'histoire du protestantisme, C (1954), 64-74. 43. Leblanc states the case exactly: "qu'il s'inspire de l'Ecriture Sainte ou de la littérature païenne, il ne doit, à l'une comme à l'autre, aucune formule littérale, mais seulement des thèmes et des images qu'il a complètement refondus, et ses emprunts, présentés dans un ordre différent, sont au reste absolument renouvelés," La Poésie religieuse, p. 2 3 1 . Screech (Marot évangélique [Geneva, 1967] pp. 1 2 0 - 1 2 1 ) rejects Mayer's editorial attribution of Psalm 45 in favor of Matthew 19:5-6. But that very passage goes on to discuss marriage against a background of Mosaic Law ( 1 9 : 7 - 1 0 ; Deuteronomy 2 4 : 1 - 4 ) which served as a touchstone for comment on marriage practice from Genesis 1:27, 2:24 through Mark 10:8-9, Ephesians 5 : 3 1 , and I Corinthians 6:16. In light of this cross-reference between Old and New Testament and of Marot's own synopsis of Psalm 45, "C'est le chant nuptial de Jesus Christ & de son Eglise, soubz la figure de Salomon & de sa principale femme, fille de Pharaon," it does after all seem to be the likely source. 44. Guy, Histoire de la poésie française au seizième siècle, I, 107; Scollen, The Birth of the Elegy, p. 47. 45. Sy l'art d'aimer tu as leu de bien près, Tu trouveras qu'il enjoinct par expres A tout amant que des moeurs il se informe De sa maistresse, & puis qu'il se conforme. "Le Balladin," vv. 270-273 The tradition shaping this point and the following discussion of Dido is vast and germane. See Augustine, Confessions, I, 13; Jerome, Adversos Jovinianum, I, 43, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, XXIII, 286; Ausonius, 1 1 8 ; Macrobius, Saturnalia, V , 17; Petrarch, Rerum senilium, IV, 5 and Triumphus pudicitie, 1 0 - 1 2 ; Boccaccio, De claris mulieribus, 40; and Ronsard, preface to the Franciade. 46. Villey, " A propos des sources de deux épîtres de Marot," RHLF, X X V I ( 1 9 1 9 ) , 220-245; Smith, Clément Marot, Poet of the French Renaissance (London, 1970), pp. 1 2 1 - 1 2 2 . 47. "Sic, ubi percepta est brevis et non vera voluptas, / Pejor ab admonitu fit status isteboni," Ex ponto, I, ii, 53-54. 48. Aside from the appeal of its psychological realism, the linguistic economy of the sententia made it easily transportable from sourcebooks into the poet's creative effort. In the 1578 version of the "Rencontre de Genèvre" Ronsard interjected the lines "Souvent le souvenir de la chose passée, / Quand on le renouvelle, est doux à la pensée" which have no equivalent in the original 1563 text; Oeuvres, ed.

298

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181-198

Laumonier, XII, 256-257. Ariosto had earlier affixed the stamp of tradition on this commonplace by pronouncing summarily that "Questo creduto f u " (Orlando Furioso, I, 56). The idea had a rich history in the Renaissance, owing to its broad use in emblematic literature and in texts that were widely used as source books. Cf. Petrarch, Rime CCVII and Triumphus mortis, w . 145-146; Boccaccio, II Ninfale Fiesolano, 1 1 7 ; Scève, Délie CCCXXI, emblem 36. 49. "Marot et l'archaïsme," C A I E F , X I X (1967), 33. 50. "Sur la mort de Thulène, fou du roi"; Regrets, CXCI. See also the satirical eulogy of Panurge, "rien ne tenent, ne matiere premiere, estoys facteur et createur," Tiers Livre, chap. 3. 51. Cf. Screech, "The Death of Pan and the Death of Heroes in the Fourth Book of Rabelais, a Study in Syncretism," BHRen, X V I I ( 1 9 5 5 ) , 36-55; Alban Krailsheimer, "The Significance of the Pan Legend in Rabelais' Thought," MLR, L V I (Jan., 1 9 6 1 ) , 1 3 - 2 3 . 52. Marot et Rabelais, p. 16. 53. See Smith, Clément Marot, pp. 78-79, 1 4 1 - 1 5 4 . 54. See Diana Magrini, "Clemente Marot e il Petrarchismo" in Guido Mazzoni, Miscellanea di Studi Critici (Florence, 1907), I, 494. 55. "Clément Marot and Literary History," Studies in French Literature presented to H. W . Lawton (Manchester, England and New York, 1968), p. 257; with D. Bentley-Cranch, "Clément Marot, poète pétrarquiste," BHRen, X X V I I I (1966), 47. 56. For Tyard, the phrase is a catchall for any sad emotional state: "Triste & pensif, misérablement maigre," "J'estois pensif, melancoliq, & sombre" (Erreurs amoureuses, I, 58 and 66). 57. As Smith has suggested, Clément Marot, pp. 147, 152. See also Mayer and Bentley-Cranch, "Clément Marot, poète pétrarquiste," p. 45. 58. In a letter to Catherine de Médicis Ronsard resorts to Petrarchan melancholy and explains it on the basis of his being an ill-starred child of Saturn: "L'autre jour que j'estois, comme toujours je suis, / Solitaire et pensif (car forcer je ne puis/Mon Saturne ennemy)," Oeuvres, ed. Laumonier, XII, 174. For recent statements on the importance of the theme, see my "Pontus de Tyard's 'Le Curieux* and the Forbidden Fruit," L'Esprit Créateur, X I I (Fall, 1972), 214-225, and Luzius Keller, " 'Solo e pensoso,' 'Seul et pensif,' 'Solitaire et pensif,' mélancolie pétrarquienne et mélancolie pétrarquiste," Studi Francesi, LI (January-April, 1973), 3-14CHAPTER VII 1 . "il semble bien qu'il y ait là fréquemment un fait d'ordre conscient, provenant de l'imitation du style marotique," Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française (Paris, 1927), II, 412. 2. See chap. 5. 3. See Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., "Marot, Villon and the Roman de la Rose," SP, L X I V (Jan., 1967), 27-28, 42-43, and "Les Disciples et amys de Marot contre Sagon . . . , " in Emile Picot, Querelle de Marot et Sagon (Rouen, 1920), no. 8, w . 107-108. 4. Mayer, "Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot: l'économie de l'édition critique," BHRen, X X I X (1967), p. 365; "Marot et l'archaïsme," CAIEF, X I X (1967), 2 7 37. The homonym found in the next paragraph, "Paris sans pair," was a thirteenthcentury proverbial saying, "Paris absque pare." 5. See chap. 6.

Notes to pp.

198-208

6. Oeuvres complètes, ed. Annaingaud (Paris, 1 9 2 4 - 1 9 4 1 ) , IX, 343. Cf. Erich Auerbach's chapter "Figura" in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York, 1959), pp. n - 7 6 . 7. Opera omnia (Leyden, 1 7 0 3 - 1 7 0 6 ) , IV, 475B-476A. 8. "Eng. Dismal = O.F. Dismal," MLN, L V I I (Nov., 1942), 602-613. Spitzer further notes that "The series of word etymologies that purported to teach the reality of the res expressed by the word, is a parallel to the series of moral interpretations ('moralizations') given to 'things' by medieval commentators on animals. . . ." 9. Oeuvres, ed. J. Stecher (Louvain, 1 8 8 2 - 1 8 9 1 ) , III, 122, 189. 10. Grands Ecrivains de la Renaissance (Paris, 1 9 1 4 ) , p. 9. Such letter symbolism was often the key to amorous exchanges in poetry, witness Pernette du Guillet's reply in Epigramme VII to a dizain of Scève's where the letter R simultaneously bears the meanings of erre (error or speed), erres (habits) and air (song). See Odette Meyers, "Le Symbole du miroir: point de jonction entre l'oeuvre de Pernette du Guillet et la 'Délie' de Maurice Scève," Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1972, pp. 1 2 5 - 1 2 9 . 1 1 . See Emile Picot, Querelle de Marot et Sagon (Rouen, 1920), sections 16 and 2 1 . 12. Oeuvres, ed. Charles d'Héricault (Paris, 1 8 5 5 ) , p. 278. 13. Les Oeuvres de Clément Marot, ed. Georges Guiffrey (Paris, 1 9 1 1 ) , III, 428430; Mayer, Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), pp. 1 3 4 - 1 3 5 . 14. Cf. Jean Molinet, Faictz et dictz, débat des trois nobles oiseaux (Paris, 1 9 3 7 ) , II, 652. 15. Cf. Margaret Pelan, "The Influence of Villon on Clément Marot," in Mélanges offerts à Rita Lejeune (Gembloux, 1969), II, 1472. 16. Saulnier has grasped this point with brilliant simplicity in Les Elégies de Clément Marot (Paris, 1968), pp. 38-39. 17. Oeuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris, 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 6 0 ) , X V I I , 42. Cf. Ariosto's Satire, II, 220: "col capo mozzo." 18. The Epistre du Coq à l'Asne puts it this way: "Romme ne vient plus à l'argent / Pour emporter tous noz pechez. / Ilz estaient par trop empeschez / De convertir le plomb en or. / Religion c'est ung trésor . . ." (vv. 1 8 8 - 1 9 2 ) . 19. "Car, ou soit ly sains apostolles, / D'aubes vestus, d'amys coeffez, / Qui ne saint fors saintes estolles / Dont par le col prent ly mauffez" (vv. 385-388) in Oeuvres satiriques, p. 68. 20. Cf. Walter Kaiser, Praisers of Folly (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 1 2 1 22. Allusion to Domini Canes, inhabiting an allegorical hell replete with a tripletongued monster, is prominent in Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia, chap. 3. 2 1 . De sapiente (Paris, 1 5 1 0 ) , I, v. In "Dudict Cretin audict Charbonnier," Guillaume Cretin tells François Charbonnier of the suitor who "Repeu sera d'un beau nichil-au-doz" and goes on to string together a series of Franco-Latin puns and rhymes like "Main te salue affin que in hac valle / Mainte ça leue epistre en soit. Valle," Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Kathleen Chesney (Paris, 1 9 3 2 ) . Cf. Machiavelli's ser Zero, Opere (Milan, 1 8 2 1 ) , V I , and Barbara C . Bowen, "Nothing in French Renaissance Literature," From Marot to Montaigne, Essays in French Renaissance Literature, ed. Raymond C. La Charité, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, Vol. X I X ( 1 9 7 2 ) , Supplement no. 1, pp. 55-64. Luther contemptuously referred to the seditious multitude as Herr Omnes. 22. See Oeuvres lyriques (London, 1964), p. 155; E pitres (London, 1958), p. 194. Cf. Marguerite de Navarre, Trois epistres, I, v. 9. 23. Aquinas said no less: "Quia vero efïectus per causam cognoscitur, manifestum

300

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208-215

est quod causa secundum sui naturam est magis intelligibilis quain effect us, etsi aliquando quoad nos effectus sint notaries causis, propter hoc quod ex particularibus, sub sensu cadentibus, universalium et intelligibilium causarum cognitionem accipimus," Expositio de libro causis, Propositio I, 2. In Marot the word effect often takes on the cast of "conjectural meaning." Epitre XX, vv. 97-98. 24. G. D. Josipovici, "From Analogy to Scepticism" in French Literature and its Background, I, (London, Oxford and New York, 1968), p. 12. 25. See Mayer, Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Clément Marot (Geneva, 1954), I, 61; Les Epîtres, p. 225; and Smith, Clément Marot, Poet of the French Renaissance (London, 1970), p. 126. 26. As his contemporaries did not fail to recognize. Sebillet defines the Blason as "une perpétuelle louenge ou continu vitupère de ce qu'on s'est proposé blasonner," Art poétique françoys, ed. Félix Gaiffe (Paris, 1 9 3 2 ) , II, 10. 27. Even Guy's claim that Marot's antiwar writing is more personal than Molinet's Ressource du petit peuple is misplaced, unless he means that it is more skillful or at least more personalized. Histoire de la poésie française au XVI' siècle (Paris, 1 9 1 0 ) , I, 168. 28. As the surrogate cause of divine will and as a microcosm of this will through his creative powers, the poetic voice in the last canto of Les Tragiques intones "Pour me faire instrument à ces effects divers / Donne force à ma voix, efficace à mes vers" (w. 7-8). 29. Resemblance of this passage to one from the Institution chrestienne is more than accidentally metaphoric: "La parole de Dieu est semblable au soleil: car elle reluyt à tous ceux ausquelz elle est annoncée: mais c'est sans efficace entre les aveugles," ed. Abel Lefranc, 1541 version (Paris, 1 9 1 1 ) , chap. 4, p. 204. 30. Ed. Henri Homik (Paris and Geneva, 1957), pp. 75, 80. 31. The same terminology and associations recur in the description of the "parler de si grand efficasse" and the "effect evident" of Christine in Le Balladin (vv. 5 7 - 7 3 ) . Synonymous association with evidentia—implying both clarity and action— which could easily provoke many more pages than are appropriate here, is consistent from classical Latinity (cf. Institutio oratorio, V I , ii, 32) through the Renaissance. In his Réplique aux furieuses défenses de Louis Meigret Des Autels speaks of "mouvant jusques à tout l'affection de misericorde . . . une evidence & vive representation des choses y narées." 32. Poetices libri septem (Lyons, 1 5 6 1 ) , pp. 270-272. 33. Marot's momentary concept of "stille doulx" is evidently unrelated to the notion of Jean Leblond who criticizes its nefarious persuasive force, " T u penses mal par ton fard curial, / Ton stille doulx & art Mercurial" (quoted by Mayer in La Religion de Marot [Geneva, i960], p. 165). 34. W e need not enter here into the complexities of Horatian harmony or decorum as understood by Hermogenes, nor into the practical impossibilities, understood by classical and Renaissance theoreticians alike, of preserving any real separation among all the attributes of the three styles. It is sufficient to understand that Marot's recognition of separate styles and his willingness to blur many of their attributes make him a child of his century. 35. Cf. Oeuvres lyriques, pp. 393, 396, 398; Oeuvres diverses (London, 1966), p. 158; ed. Guiffrey, V , pp. 199, 291. 36. See Laumonier, Ronsard, poète lyrique (Paris, 1909), p. 5 1 1 ; Oeuvres lyriques, p. 253, w . 7 2 - 8 1 . 37. Ronsard, poète lyrique, p. 615. 38. These terms are those of an eighteenth-century discussion of Marot's mixture of "L'utile avec l'agrément" and are based precisely on the image cited

Notes to pp.

215-232

above. See Gustave Van Roosbroeck, "Un débat sur Marot au X V I I I e siècle," RSS, IX ( 1 9 2 2 ) , 281-285. 39. XVIe siècle (Paris, n.d.), pp. 47, 74. 40. Quoted by Walther de Lerber, L'Influence de Marot aux XVII' et XVIII' siècles (Paris, 1920), p. 17. 4 1 . "Réflexions au sujet du style marotique," Mercure de France (June, 1 7 4 2 ) , pp. 1 3 5 6 - 1 3 6 1 . 42. Vianey, Les Epîtres (Paris, 1962), pp. 38, 80; Saulnier, Les Elégies, p. 143; Smith, Clément Marot, p. 265. See also Plattard, Marot, sa carrière poétique et son oeuvre (Paris, 1938), p. 147 and Jourda, Marot (Paris, 1967), pp. 89, 1 1 5 , 143. 43. Guy, Clément Marot et son école (Paris, 1926), II, 324-325; Guiffrey, Oeuvres, I, 243-244; Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris, 1 9 6 1 ) , I, 1 3 8 - 1 4 0 . 44. Cf. esp. Regrets LXXIX. 45. See Mayer's perceptive comment in Epîtres, p. 43. 46. Praeteritio, discussed earlier both in a general and particular sense. See chap. 3 and chap. 5. 47. Opera omnia (Berlin, 1863-1900), X L V I , 413. 48. Cf. above chap. 4. 49. See Nichols, "Marot, Villon and the Roman de la Rose," pp. 34-35; Mayer, Bibliographie des oeuvres de Clément Marot (Geneva, 1954), I, 1 7 - 1 8 , 27; Jourda, Marot, p. 173. 50. W e have already seen that combinations of imagery or attributes are incorporated from traditional sources (chap. 4 and chap. 6). In some cases whole passages are transposed, as in vv. 283-323. 5 1 . See Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, II, 269, 271, 302-304. 52. Not all emendations are, of course, improvements. Cf. 353-362, 404-407, 53. Cf. Sebillet, Art poétique françoys, I, iv; Peletier, Art poétique ( 1 5 5 5 ) , ed. André Boulanger (Paris, 1930), I, ix; Du Bellay, Deffence et Illustration, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris, 1 9 6 1 ) , pt. I, chap, v; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, ed. H. E . Butler (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1953), VIII, vi. CHAPTER VIII 1. And, as Nichols has shown, it is obliquely apparent in his edition of the Roman de la Rose, "Marot, Villon and the Roman de la Rose: A Study in the Language of Creation and Re-Creation," SP, L X I V (Jan., 1967), 34, 37. Marot's emendations are much more prominent and attentive in the scenes of polemic dialogue that approach his own satirical bent. The appearance of debate in these passages is undercut by demeaning one of the principals and obfuscating any merits his position might have. 2. Oeuvres satiriques (London, 1962), p. 172, v. 1 1 4 ; Henri Meylan, Epîtres du coq à l'âne (Geneva, 1956), p. 33, w . 143-144; Oeuvres satiriques, p. 1 3 1 , w . 1 5 2 - 1 5 5 . Only the third poem is authentically from Marot's pen. The conversational "Or ça!" of the fourth coq-à-1'âne, used also by Eustorg de Beaulieu, is of course raised to comic proportions by Rabelais's Grippeminault. 3. Oeuvres complètes, ed. Laumonier (Paris, 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 6 0 ) ; Scève, Délie CCCLXXXII; and Pernette du Guillet, in Poètes du X V I e siècle, ed. Albert-Marie Schmidt (Paris, 1953), p. 244; Du Bellay, Oeuvers poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard ( 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 6 1 ) , V , 86. 4. This procedure of the knowledgeable satirist hiding behind the naïve reporter reappears in the letter (XI) written one year later where he relates the manner of

302

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232-241

his arrest: " E t m'ont mené ainsi que une Espousée; / Non pas ainsi, mais plus roide ung petit" ( w . 30-31 ). 5. No less conventional or illusory than Villon's sudden burst of honesty, "Item, a Thibault de la Garde . . . /Thibault? je mens, il a nom Jehan" (w. 1 3 5 4 - 1 3 5 5 ) where correction reinforces the satire of Jean de la Garde. Jean and Thibault were both popular personifications of the cuckold husband. 6. Charles Kinch, La Poésie satirique de Clément Marot (Paris, 1940), pp. 65-66. 7. Quoted by Annabel Patterson, Hermogenes and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1970), pp. 1 5 8 - 1 5 9 . 8. Cf. Du Bellay, Regrets, LXXXIV, LXXXV, CXIII; Ronsard, ed. Laumonier, X I , 74-75; d'Aubigné, Les Tragiques, II, 1 2 8 2 - 1 2 8 3 , 1298; Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, 1593 (Gainesville, Fla., 1954), pp. 138—159. 9. See Oeuvres satiriques, pp. 1 2 1 , 162, 1 8 1 . 10. Cf. Villon, "Car j'ay mys le plumail au vent, / Or le suyve qui a attente. / De ce me tais doresnavant, / Car poursuivre vueil mon entente" ( w . 7 2 1 - 7 2 4 ) . 1 1 . Henri Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris, 1 9 6 1 - 1 9 6 3 ) , I, 212. 12. Oeuvres satiriques, pp. 167, 174, 178. 13. Cf. Stanley G . Eskin, "Mythic Unity in Rabelais," PMLA, L X X I X (Dec., 1964), 548-549. 14. Lors Cerberus, le portier laid et noir, En abbayant nous ouvrit son manoir . . . Plus aprouchons, plus oyons de tumulte, ( w . 75-76, 1 1 5 ) "Sur quelques emprunts de Clément Marot à Jean Lemaire de Belges," Mélanges Huguet (Paris, 1940), p. 173. 15. Alexandre Eckhardt, "Marot et Dante, l'Enfer et l'Inferno," RSS, X I I (1926), pp. 140-142. 16. See Abraham C. Keller's excellent The Telling of Tales in Rabelais (Frankfurt, 1963), and Erich Auerbach, "The World in Pantagrael's Mouth" in Mimesis (New York, 1 9 5 7 ) , pp. 234-235. 17. Cf. also Villon's tautological legacy of Le Lais, "Chascun de mes biens ung fesseau, / Ou quatre blans, s'ilz l'ayment mieulx" (vv. 205-206), with Marot's skillful dimunution, when he finally gets around to making it, of "le petit saufconduict / De demy an, qui la bride me lasche, / Ou de six moys, si demy an luy fasche" ( w . 22-24). From the opening verse, "En mon vivant n'apres ma mort avec," restatement of the obvious creates a comedy of superfluity, and aligns the narrator with the tradition of Captain de la Palisse, who was famous for stating the obvious; a song composed in his honor after he was killed at the battle of Pavia said that a quarter of an hour before his death he was still alive. 18. Pauline Smith has mentioned that the formal rhetorical introduction to the letter to Jamet makes the latter the silent party in an imaginary conversation and that "in his official capacity, his task is not merely to present an inventory of circumstances, a report of a spectacle but to express or interpret the feelings, emotions, reflections which take hold of the spectator or witness directly involved," Clément Marot, Poet of the French Renaissance (London, 1970), pp. 96, 167. It is necessary to underscore the interplay of the fluid and the formal in Marot as an inroad to understanding the way he dramatized and individualized the traditional dross he inherited. 19. As Mayer points out, the last verse alludes specifically to embezzlements from the royal treasury. Cf. Pauline Smith, The Anti-Courtier Trend in Sixteenth-Century French Literature (Geneva, 1966), p. 87.

Notes to pp.

241-248

20. "malfaisant, pipeur, beuveur, bateur de pavez, ribleur, s'il en estait en Paris; au demourant, le meilleur filz du monde" (II, 1 6 ) . Cf. Decameron, V I , 10. 21. Cf. Villon's "Il ne s'en est a pié allé / N'a cheval: helasl comment don? / Soudainement s'en est voilé / Et ne m'a laissié quelque don" ( w . 1 7 3 - 1 7 6 ) . Fragments of Marot's verbal mastery recur in spurious works attributed to him, such as the "Coq, mon amy": "Nostre herault plus ne parla; / T i e n l'estrier, picque et t'en va" (w. 23-24). 22. In his De la vicissitude ou variété des choses en l'univers Loys Le Roy ranked Martin Akakia among men like Femel, Rondelet, and Vesalius. 23. "Terme de l'argumentation scolastique désignant la mauvaise position de celui qui se trouve à court d'arguments," as Mayer notes. Perhaps Marot knew that Akakia was a Hellenizing of the doctor's real name (Martin-sans-malice). As a professor at the Collège de France, Akakia shared the mania of countless humanists for classicizing proper names (cf. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy [New York, 1961], p. 190). The playful rhyming of Akaquia and quia is thus all the more striking. Cf. Epigrammes XXXVI, XXXVII, and XXXVIII. C H A P T E R IX 1 . An intriguing question, but one somewhat separate from the problem we have engaged, is the idea that Marot has formed of the particular audience he addresses. The personality of the prospective audience can be no less ambiguous than that of the narrator. Screech has ingeniously proposed that the invocation of L'Enfer to "mes treschers Freres" (v. 5), explicated in v. 196, "Au vray Chrestien, qui de touts se diet frere," should be understood in light of the specific evangelical greeting to "fratres charissimi" (Marot évangélique [Geneva, 1967], p 7 1 ) . Yet the preface to the Adolescence and its invocation to "mes treschers Freres" have nothing whatsoever to do with Christian charity. Moreover, the call in L'Enfer, " O chers Amys, j'en ay veu martirer" (v. 284) to consider "Les Innocents qui en telz lieux damnables" (v. 287) is more akin to the cry from hell to a generalized humanity, "Freres humains qui après nous vivez . . . Se freres vous clamons, pas n'en devez / Avoir desdaing" in Villon's Ballade des pendus which Marot was at that time adapting for the complainte for Samblançay. For a structuralist reading of "treschers freres," a reading that I feel is essentially incorrect, see Alain Lerond, "Marot et la 'rhétorique': le style du début de L'Enfer," Mélanges de langue et de littérature du moyen âge et de la renaissance, offerts à Jean Frappier (Geneva, 1970), p. 636. 2. Marot's concern for interpreting himself to his audience continues to assure the validity of Rosemond Tuve's observation on Renaissance poetry: "This recognition of author's interpretation as controlling subject must be distinguished from the modem author's portrayal of his own process of interpreting or feeling, of 'the very movement of thought in a living mind,' the 'interplay of perception and reflection' . . . his subject was still 'his meaning,' not 'himself-seeing-it,' " Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery (Chicago and London, 1965), p. 43. While it may not be the case, as Leblanc urges, that Marot "n'écrit jamais pour lui seul, mais seulement pour entrer en rapport avec les autres, ou pour servir de porte-parole aux autres" (La Poésie religieuse de Clément Marot [Paris, 1955], p. 353), even in the midst of the most jumbled points of view and disorder Renaissance theoreticians, authors, and characters alike assure the existence of some underlying order which the astute reader may grasp. The attitude is summed up by characters like the fool Polonius and the astute Bushy: " . . . Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon, show nothing but confusion,—eyed awry, Distinguish form," Richard II, ii, 2, v. 14. 3. Villey, Les Grands Ecrivains du XVI' siècle, Marot et Rabelais (Paris, 1 9 2 3 ) ,

Notes to 248-258 p. 29. Smith, Clément Marot, Poet of the French Renaissance (London, 1970), p. 87; and Jourda, Marot (Paris, 1967), p. 127. 4. Villey, Marot et Rabelais, p. 29. See also p. 20 and "Introduction à l'explication des pièces de Marot," Revue des cours et conférences, X X X I I I ( 1 9 3 1 ) , 1 1 9 . 5. Since the step back from the work within the work itself is such a prevailing idiosyncrasy and is creative in the sense that it alters both tone and the probable source from which he works, it is a helpful clue to the rationale and measure of the effect of Marot's originality. In Elégie III he adapts, for instance, the clichéridden rondeau of Jean Marot Car si Amour qui les cueurs fait pasmer, Que ce pendant Amour ne prenne soing Vouloit ses yeulx aveuglez deffermer, De desbander ses deux aveuglez yeux Pour contempler ta très belle figure, Pour contempler les vostres gracieux; (Jean Marot, Oeuvres [Paris, 1723], p. 229) ( w . 56-58) yet he alters the reverent humility of his source with the observation " E t qu'il ne m'oste, à l'aise et en ung jour, / Ce que j'ay eu en peine et long séjour" ( w . 61— 62) to add that the loss of the beloved object would carry with it the loss of a lot of hard work! 6. Les Elégies de Clément Marot (Paris, 1968), p. 53. For the absurd extent to which all literary allusions can be taken as biographical facts, see Emmanuel Philipot, "Sur un amour de Clément Marot," R H L F , " X I X ( 1 9 1 2 ) , 59-74. 7. Almost any later lyric poet could have been cited to establish this convention. Cf. Pontus de Tyard, "Du grief mal que j'endure," "transi du grand mal que j'endure," "Un si doux mal, helas (di-je) j'endure," " E t me fait plus sentir la peine que j'endure," Les Oeuvres poétiques, ed. Marty-Laveaux (Paris, 1875), pp. 75, 79, 82, 166. 8. Les Elégies de Clément Marot, p. 176. Cf. Elégie II. Ballades XVIII, XIX. 9. Cf. Guy, Clément Marot et son école (Paris, 1926), II, 159: "Moins marri, en vérité, que pris." Despite Guy's succinct phrase and Marot's easy jest, we should not underplay the reality that faced him. On the Continent the presumption was held to be against the accused, and the rack and its ghastly retinue of instruments of pain were freely used to procure confession. Calvin's hard saying that when men felt the pain they spoke the truth merely expressed the current delusion, for legislators and judges, their hearts hardened in part by the example of the church, concurred in his opinion. Montaigne's protest against torture was exceptional. 10. Cf. " I am very well up in the opposite calling, too: I mean the one with love for a base; for I am a truth-lover, a beauty-lover, a simplicity-lover, and a lover of all else that is kindred to love. But there are very few who deserve to have this calling practiced upon them." Lucian, trans. A. M. Harmon (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1947), III, 33. 1 1 . I disagree completely with the view on ironic satire expressed by Hallet Smith: "The significant sources of satire are not literary or philosophical; they are social and economic," Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. 194. Vianey is closer to the point in Les Epltres de Marot (Paris, 1962), pp. 35, 1 0 1 . 12. Charles d'Héricault went so far as to locate one of these castles at SaintClément and even the tree under which the poet was accustomed to sit, Oeuvres de Clément Marot (Paris, 1867), p. xlix. 13. Irrespective of Horatian, Ciceronian, or Aristotelian leanings. Cf. Institutio oratoria, ed. H. E. Butler (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1 9 5 3 ) , VIII, vi, 5455; IX, ii. 44-46; Scaliger, Poetices libri septem (Lyons, 1 5 6 1 ) , III, lxxxv. 14. Cf. John Hoskins, "small, slender, reasonable amplify as much as if you had said great, exceeding, incredible," in Directions for Speech and Style (1599), ed. H. H. Hudson (Princeton, 1 9 3 5 ) , p. 30; and my chap. 5.

Notes to pp. 2 5 8 - 2 6 6 15. See Annabel Patterson, Hermogenes and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1970), pp. 1 7 1 - 1 7 2 . 16. Histoire de la poésie française au XVI' siècle (Paris, 1 9 1 0 ) , I, 378. See also Jourda, Marot, p. 39. 17. Hallet Smith, Elizabethan Poetry, p. 253. 18. For this last suggestion as it relates to genre, see Mayer, "Satyre as a Dramatic Genre," BHRen, XIII ( 1 9 5 1 ) , 327-333; J. W . Jolliffe, "Satyre: Satura: •Z&Tvpo,," BHRen, X V I I I (1956), 84-95. 19. L'Arte poetica (1559) (Venice, 1564), p. 272. 20. See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (New York and Toronto, 1967), chap. 1 . 2 1 . Cf. "Tout vient a point qui peult attendre,/Le jeune boys faict bonne cendre" in Henry Meylan's Epitres du coq-à-l'âne (Geneva, 1956), p. 19, v. 1 5 7 158, and Petrarch's sonnet "L'ardente nodo ov' io fui d'ora in ora": ". . . i' sarei preso ed arso / tanto più quanto son men verde legno." The same image may, like many others, be put to any use, witness Orlando Furioso, VI, 27, and Fiammetta, chap. 1. CHAPTER X 1. See Walther de Lerber, L'Influence de Clément Marot aux XVII• et XVIII' siècles (Paris, 1920), pp. 14, 54; Jules Bonnet, "Clément Marot à la cour de Ferrare," B S H P , X X I ( 1 8 7 2 ) , 160; Henri Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris, 1 9 6 1 - 1 9 6 3 ) , I, 139. 2. Les Elégies de Clément Marot (Paris, 1968), pp. 1 9 1 - 1 9 3 . In his edition of L'Art poétique Brunetière misunderstood the selectivity of Boileau's polemic by disputing the universality of elegance in Marot: "en général il est terriblement prosaïque . . . (we have) une grande quantité d'épigrammes parfaitement obscènes" (Paris, 1907), p. 1 3 . In the Satires ( X ) , however, Boileau did use badinage in a pejorative sense. 3. Quoted by Lerber, L'Influence de Clément Marot, p. 6. 4. "Réflexions au sujet du style marotique," Mercure de France (June, 1742), pp. 1 3 5 6 - 1 3 6 1 . 5. Oeuvres de Jean Lemaire de Belges, ed. J. Stecher (Louvain, 1 8 8 2 - 1 8 9 1 ) , IV, 102-107; see Migne, P.L. 79, C. 356, for Gregory on urbanitas. 6. See Cicero, De offic. I, 104, on the "liberal jest": "elegans, urbanum, ingeniosum." 7. Estienne, Deux Dialogues du nouveau langage françois italianizé, ed. P. Ristelhuber (Paris, 1885), I, 1 3 - 1 4 ; Calvin's usage is cited by Oscar Bloch who fails, however, to identify his source in Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française (Paris, 1950). 8. An Augustan like Dryden will later compare Pope's satire to the "elegance, and fine-turned raillery, on which they [the French] have so much valued themselves," The Works of Alexander Pope, ed. J. Croker, W . Elwin, and W . Courthope (London, 1 8 7 1 - 1 8 8 9 ) , II, 1 1 6 . 9. In Recueil général des sotties, ed. Emile Picot (Paris, 1 9 1 2 ) , III, 60-61. I can only assume that the 1541 date given by Oscar Bloch for Calvin's original use of badinage refers to the French version of the Institution. However, Calvin's persistent moral alignment of badin or badinage with sot may have sprung from their initial association in drama. Cf. Sermon sur l'Epistre aux Galates, 42 (LI, 1 1 9 ) ; Sermon sur l'harmonie évangélique, 38 ( X L V I , 465). 10. Noam Chomsky cites the example of the sixteenth-century Spanish phvsician

Notes to pp. 266-2 71 Juan Huarte whose definition of ingénia passes through "docile wit" to the creative faculty of mind to "a third kind of wit, 'by means of which some, without art or study, speak such subtle and surprising things, yet true, that were never before seen, heard, or writ, no, nor ever so much as thought of.' The reference here is to true creativity, an exercise of the creative imagination in ways that go beyond normal intelligence and may, he felt, involve 'a mixture of madness,' " Language and Mind (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta, 1968), p. 8. 11. The Greek Anthology in France (Ithaca, 1946), pp. 301-302. Cf. Epigramme XLII. 12. Poetices, libri septem (Lyons, 1 5 6 1 ) , VI, cxxvi. 1 3 . For an early Renaissance discussion of the principle of "breviusque expressius," see Petrarch, Rerum familiarum, V , 5. 14. Peletier, Art poétique ( 1 5 5 5 ) , ed. Boulanger (Paris, 1930), p. 161; Scaliger, Poetices, IV, xiv; Mintumo, L'Arte poetica (1564), (Venice, 1564), p. 439. By evidentia Scaliger is referring to the dramatic evocation of a vivid scene or idea in a minimum of words. Cf. Erasmus, De duplici copia verborum ac rerum (Basel, 1 5 2 1 ) , p. 47. 15. Oeuvres complètes, ed. Ch. d'Héricault, A. Montaiglon, and J. Rothschild (Paris, 1877), I, 107. 16. Nichols's observation on the "imagery which transforms the Châtelet into a grotesque spatial dimension where objects and persons acquire the appearance of their evil motivations" is nicely to the point, in "Marot, Villon and the Roman de la Rose: A Study in the Language of Creation and Re-Creation," SP, L X I V (Jan., 1967), 41. 1 7 . Cf. Guillaume des Autels, Réplique aux furieuses defenses de Louis Meigret (Lyons, 1 5 5 0 ) , p. 71; Peletier, Art poétique, ed. André Boulanger (Paris, 1930), pp. 78-79. 18. Although his statements must often be accepted with caution, Claude Binet claimed that Ronsard frequently carried Marot's works with him. 19. Cf. the conclusion to Du Bellay's "Sur la mort du duc Horace Famaize": Car vif Hector, Troye estoit asseuree: Horace mort, Hedin devoit perir.

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Index

Accius, Lucius, 284, 285 Adam de la Halle, 30 Aeschylus, 282 Aesop, 228, 237 Akakia, Martin, 243, 303 Alberti, Leone Battista, 1 6 1 , 292 Albret, Jeanne d', 93, 2 1 2 , 2 2 5 - 2 2 6 Alençon, Ann d', 49, 76, 90, 199, 250 Alençon, Charles d', 77, 169, 183, 199 Alexander V I (pope), 206 Alexis, Guillaume, 1 7 1 Allen, Don Cameron, 295 Andreas Capellanus, 19 Aneau, Barthélémy, 40 Anne de Bretagne, 34, 76 Anne de France, 2 1 1 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 1 3 4 , 283, 288, 289, 290, 299 Aretino, Pietro, 199, 206 Ariosto, Ludovico, 1 1 2 , 1 5 1 , 280, 284, 285, 288, 298, 299 Armstrong, Elizabeth, 294 Aubigné, Agrippa d', 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 , 1 3 8 , 1 4 3 ,

158'

z

95' 3°°> 302

Auerbach, Erich, 198, 302 Augustine, Saint, 1 2 1 , 126, 1 3 4 , 289, 290, 297 Augustus, Octavian, 53, 1 8 3 , 296 Ausonius, Decimus, 1 5 1 , 297 Bacon, Francis, 1 6 1 , 166, 1 6 7 Baïf, Jean-Antoine de, 189 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 288 Baude, Henri, 1 7 , 1 4 7 Beaulieu, Eustorg de, 39, 301 Becker, Phillip A., 1 , 282 Béda, Noel, 202 Bembo, Pietro, 1 8 7 , 265 Bently-Cranch, D., 298 Berquin, Louis de, 1 7 0 Bèze, Théodore de, 1 3 7 Binet, Claude, 270 Boase, Alan, 283

156,

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 42, 1 7 7 , 250, 290, 296, 297, 298 Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 296 Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, 262-264, 3°5 Boleyn, Anne, 2 5 1 Bonnet, Jules, 279, 305 Bouchard, [Jean?], 8 1 , 84, 85, 1 2 3 , 1 3 3 1

34> J-55

Bouchet, Jean, 297 Bourbon, François de, 1 4 , 1 0 1 , 144 Boutigny, Matthieu, 201 Bovelles, Charles de, 206 Bowen, Barbara C., 299 Boyssoné, Jean de, 1 7 5 Bracciolini, Poggio, 1 4 0 Braillon, Louis, 93, 243 Brown, Norman O., 289 Brunetière, Ferdinand, 305 Bruni, Leonardo, 1 9 7 Bruno, Giordano, 166, 295 Brunot, Ferdinand, 301 Bucer, Martin, 61 Budé, Guillaume, 1 1 8 , 1 7 5 Burchiello, Domenico, 292 Burton, Robert, 1 4 5 Calcagnini, Celio, 174, 1 7 5 Calvin, Jean, 44, 102, 1 0 3 - 1 0 4 , 1 2 4 , 1 3 7 , 1 4 1 , 1 5 8 , 166, 2 1 9 , 292, 304 Canossa, Ludovico da, 1 9 3 Cartari, Vincenzo, 1 7 7 Castiglione, Baldassare, 1 7 2 - 1 7 3 , 1 9 3 194, 199, 2 1 1 , 268 Catullus, 57, 66, 7 1 , 1 7 8 , 2 5 1 Chamand, Henri, 2 1 6 , 2 8 1 , 302, 305 Chappuys, Claude, 73 Chariteo, Benedetto, 66, 1 8 5 , 189, 245 Charles I V , 1 8 3 Charles V , 14, 45, 57, 63, 1 3 3 , 170, 205 Charles V I , 32 Charles d'Anjou, 30 Charles d'Orléans, 1 7 Charron, Pierre, 294

3i8

Chartier, Alain, 188, 189 Chastellain, Georges, 25, 264, 265 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 250, 296 Chermoye, Philippe de, 251 Chomsky, Noam, 305 Chrétien de Troyes, 19 Cicero, 51, 71, 1 5 1 , 197, 2 1 1 , 226, 228, 264, 265, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288 Clement V I I (pope), 205 Clement, N. H., 288 Clive, H. P., 287 Coligny, Gaspard, 204 Colin, Jacques, 173, 268 Collerye, Roger de, 201 Colonna, Francesco, 299 Constantin, Antoine, 5, 34 Conti, Natale, 177 Corrozet, Gilles, 4, 110, 177 Cotereau, Jean, 80 Cotgrave, Randle, 219 Cretin, Guillaume, 1 1 , 12, 19, 24, 75, 122, 299 Cusanus, Nicholas, 165 Dante2 5 5Alighieri, 1 1 2 , 197, 222, 234David, 81, 97, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 182, 183, 184, 239 Decrue, F., 294 De la Vigne, André, 75 Demerson, Guy, 294 Des Autels, Guillaume, 300, 306 Descartes, René, 292, 295 Deschamps, Eustache, 23, 69, 1 1 2 Désiré, Artus, 215 Des Périers, Bonaventura, 40, 202 Diane de Poitiers, 1, 250 Dolet, Etienne, 5, 25 Donatus, Aelius, 296 Donne, John, 258 Dören, A., 292 Douen, Orentin, 44 Doutrepont, Georges, 287 Droz, E., 291 Diyden, John, 305 Du Bellay, Joachim, 2, 25, 28, 29, 30, 32, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 63, 7 1 , 72, 94~95» 97' 98» *79> l 8 l > 1 § 2 > l 8 3> 189, 2 1 1 , 215, 217, 234, 249, 250, 258, 259, 269, 270, 283, 284, 285, 288, 292, 301, 302 Du Guillet, Pernette, 168, 299, 301 Duns Scotus, John, 289 Du Pont, Gracien, 25 Duprat, Antoine (cardinal of Sens; chancellor of France), 17, 51, 91, 94, 152, 194, 249 Du Pré, Galiot, 100

Index Eck, John (archbishop of Trier), 150 Eckhardt, Alexandre, 302 Eleanor of Austria (queen of France), 92, 139, 1 5 1 , 164 Erasmus, Desiderius, 45, 97-98, 1 1 7 , 120, 1 2 1 , 122, 124, 125, 134, 150, 164, 168, 170, 174, 175, 178, 1 8 3 184, 198, 236, 247, 250, 265, 267, 280, 283, 285, 286, 290, 292 Erikson, Erik, 294 Eskin, Stanley G., 302 Este, Ercole d', 178 Estienne, Henri, 265 Euripides, 1 5 1 Faguet, Emile, 92, 106, 215, 288 Faifeu, Pierre, 18 Febvre, Lucien, 155 Femel, Jean, 303 Ficino, Marsilio, 102, 103, 165, 282, 291, 296 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de, 263 Foucault, Michel, 286 François I, 6, 12, 30, 31, 34, 46, 53, 54, 57-58, 63, 7 1 , 72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 88, 91, 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 , 103, 105, 133, 138, 144, 156, 157, 158, 164, 168, 169-170, 174, 182, 183, 184, 187, 205, 213, 217, 226, 228, 239241, 243, 252-253, 276, 285 Françon, Marcel, 292 Frappier, Jean, 234-235, 287, 288, 296 Gaillarde, Jeanne, 93 Gedoyn, Robert, 70 Giamatti, A. Bartlett, 294 Giotto di Bondone, 270 Giraldi, Giglio, 172, 177 Girault, François, 109 Glotelet, Nicole, 194 Gombrich, E. H., 295 Gonzaga, Elisabetta, 199 Gonzaga, Federico, 193, 265 Goulart, Simon, 102 Gray, Floyd, 279 Grffiths, Richard, 283 Gringore, Pierre, 2, 47, 177, 268 Gryphius, Sebastian, 5 Guifïrey, Georges, 1, 73, 202, 216, 283 Guy, Henri, 147, 168, 174, 178, 215, 258, 283, 294, 300, 304 Hannibal, 14 Heller, H., 291 Helvetius, Claude-Adrien, 215 Henri II, 71, 144, 183, 284 Héricault, Charles d', 304 Hermes Trismegistos, 165, 166

Index Hermogenes of Tarsus, 300 Holbein, Hans, 206 Homer, 16, 213, 282 Horace, 58, 94-95, 103-104, 1 5 1 , 2 1 1 , 247, 259, 264 Hoskins, John, 283, 304 Huarte, Juan, 306 Huetterie, Charles de la, 85, 201 Hugo, Victor, 2, 83 Huizinga, Johan, 135, 281 Hulubei, Alice, 297 Hutton, James, 33, 266 Isidore of Seville, 197, 200 James V of Scotland, 178 Jamet, Lyon, 94, 95, 1 3 2 - 1 3 3 , 196, 218—220, 228, 246, 251, 302 Jamyn, Amadis, 295 Jeanneret, Michel, 287, 295 Jerome, Saint, 289, 297 Jodelle, Etienne, 179 John the Divine, Saint, 157 Josipovici, G. D., 300 Joukovsky-Micha, Françoise, 280 Jourda, Pierre, 26, 155, 258, 286, 288, 296, 301, 304 Jung, Marc-René, 297 Justinian I, 197 Juvenal, 259 Kaiser, Walter, 299 Keller, Abraham C., 302 Kinch, Charles, 39, 284, 302 Kinser, Samuel, 295 Klesczewski, Reinhard, 296 Krailsheimer, Alban, 298 Laberius, Decimus, 285 La Boderie, Guy Lefebvre de, 177 La Boétie, Etienne de, 4 La Fontaine, Jean de, 215, 228, 239 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 296 Latini, Brunetto, 22, 280 Laumonier, Paul, 44, 214, 288-289, 296 Lebègue, Raymond, 122 Leblanc, Paulette, 1 1 7 , 133, 154, 155, 178, 279, 282-283, 288 > 289, 291, 296, 297, 303 Leblond, Jean, 300 Lecoq, Jacques, 243 Lefèvre d'Etaples, Jacques, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 1 2 1 , 124, 166, 206, 285, 290 Lefranc, Abel, 199 Lemaire de Belges, Jean, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 31, 39, 48, 99, îoo, 105, 107, 1 1 2 , 1 6 0 - 1 6 1 , 175, 176, 197, 199,

3*9 2 1 1 , 234-235, 264, 272, 282, 288, 296 Leo X (pope), 296 Leonardo da Vinci. See Vinci, Leonardo da Lerber, Walther de, 288, 301, 305 Lerond, Alain, 303 Le Roy, Loys, 303 Levin, Harry, 294 Lorraine, Antoine de, 213 Lorraine, duchess of (Renée de Bourbon), 91 Lorraine, Jean de (cardinal), 1 1 1 , 142, 183, 214, 248 Lorris, Guillaume de, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 48, 1 6 1 , 163, 189, 210 Louis XI, 17 Louis XII, 13, 53, 54, 70 Louise de Savoie, 14, 63 Lucian, 304 Luther, Martin, 4, 53, 75, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 1 2 1 , 122, 125, 126, 128, 133, 134, 137, 1 4 1 , 150, 155, 156, 166, 168, 170, 205-206, 287, 290, 293, 294, 299 McClelland, John, 281 Machaut, Guillaume, 26 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 143, 299 Macrobius, Ambrosius, 285, 297 Madeleine de France, 178, 184 Magrini, Diana, 298 Maillart, Gilles, 68-69 Malherbe, François de, 92, 99 Malingre, Thomas, 1 1 7 , 268 Marcellus II (pope), 182 Marguerite d'Angoulême (duchesse d' Alençon; queen of Navarre), 14, 5 1 ' 59- 73> 77' 8l> 84> 88> 93. 1 0 2 > 105, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 127, 128-129, 130, 1 33> 134> »35. 1 3 9 ' 140. J44> 169, 172, 174, 180, 190, 214, 217, 290, 291, 292, 299 Marguerite d'Autriche, 199 Marguerite de France, 266 Maria of Hapsburg (queen of Hungary), 225 Mamix de Sainte-Aldegonde, Philippe de, 293 Marot, Clément Ballades, I, 22, 233; II, 1 1 1 , 279; III, 34, 2io; IV, 219; V , 83, 208; VI, 22Ç; VII, 12; IX, 169; XI, 91, 177; XII, 24, 185, 293; XIII, 280; XIV, 153, 163, 266; X V , 31; XVI, 1 2 1 123; X V I I , 37; XVIII, 153, 304; XIX, 90, 289, 304

320 Marot, Clément (continued) " L e Balladin," 5, 55, 72, 1 2 5 , 126, 168, 297 Cantiques, I, 44, 201; III, 38, 44, 174, 226, 229, 296; IV, 44; V , 57, 6 3 64, 275, 280; VI, 225, 239, 246; VII, 182, 186, 196 Chansons, I, 62; III, 57; IV, 57; V , 57; VII, 172; XII, 280; X X V , 1 2 3 ; X X V I , 227; X X V I I , 65, 227; X X V I I I , 184, 229; X X I X , 65; XXXII, 90; XXXIV, 122; X X X V I I I , 1 5 3 ; X X X I X , 148 Chants-Royaux, I, 1 2 , 122, 163, 196; II, 163; III, 20, 1 7 2 , 2 1 0 , 249, 291 "Complaincte d'un Pastoureau Chrestien," 189, 293 Complaintes, I, 207; II, 28, 36, 57, 7 1 , 109, 1 7 3 , 291; III, 18, 35, 87, 204; IV ("Déploration de Florimont Robertet"), 1 2 , 22, 34, 44, 66, 1 1 3 , 120, 1 2 1 , 1 2 3 , 1 2 5 , 126, 1 2 9 - 1 3 0 , 1 3 1 , 139, 168, 196, 227, 228, 2 3 1 , 247, 267, 293; V , 35; V I , 35; VII, 19, 20, 24, 34, 1 8 1 , 189, 1 9 5 , 225, 285 Coq à l'âne, I, 1 5 3 - 1 5 4 , 259; II, 4 1 , 1 0 1 , 148, 156, 168, 170, 1 7 1 , 199, 2 1 6 , 276, 286; III, 154, 168, 1 7 1 , 204-205, 209; IV, 154, 2 0 1 , 202, 260, 301 "Coq à l'Asne, 1 5 4 2 , " 67, 2 0 1 , 261 Eglogues, I, 1 4 , 16, 20, 63, 176, 195, 2 1 2 , 2 5 1 ; II, 30, 3 1 , 44, 160, 168, 287; III, 16, 23, 3 0 - 3 1 , 34, 77, 1 5 1 , 176, 2 1 3 ; IV, 6, 30, 160 Elégies, I, 38, 1 1 2 , 146; II, 304; III, 1 3 , 1 5 1 , 1 7 2 , 304; IV, 2 1 1 , 227; V , 13; VII, 1 5 1 ; VIII, 66, 172; IX, 1 5 1 ; X, 1 3 , 37, 1 7 2 ; XI, 185; XIII, 1 3 , 1 7 3 ; X I V , 2 1 2 ; X V , 145, 1 5 1 ; X V I , 2 1 2 , 290; XVII, 1 3 , 36, 1 5 1 , 1 7 7 ; XVIII, 1 7 1 ; XIX, 75, 76; X X , 2 1 , 22, 37, 38, 225, 250; XXI, 38, I I I , XXII, 20, 1 3 1 , 227; XXIII, 1 7 3 ; X X I V , 79, 1 7 1 , 1 7 6 "L'Enfer," 5, 52, 55, 68, 85-88, 94, 96, 109, 1 1 1 , 1 3 1 - 1 3 2 , 163, 172, 1 7 3 - 1 7 4 , 1 7 7 , 196, 205-206, 228, 234-237, 245, 2 5 1 , 275, 280, 289 Epigrammes, XIII, 97; XVII, 24; XVIII, 24; XIX, 109; X X V I , 72, 285; X X V I I I , 76; X X X I , 90; X X X V I , 93, 243; X X X V I I , 243; X X X V I I I , 243; XL, 73; XLI, 227; XLII, 34, 306; X L V , 268; X L V I I , 34; LU, 296; LIX, 19; L X X I X , 49; L X X X I , 187; LXXXVITI, 239;

Index L X X X I X , 187; X C , 80, 267; XCII, 1 8 1 ; X C I V , 267; CXII, 230; C X X I X , 76, 90; C X X X I , 62; C X X X I I I , 207, 268; C X L I V , 255; CLI, 49; CLII, 72, 107; CLIII, 1 8 1 , 2 1 3 ; C L V , 286; C L X V I I , 189; CLXVIII, 221; CLXIX, 221; C L X X I X , 102, 1 7 5 ; C L X X X I I , 33; C L X X X I X , 126; C X C , 143; CXCIV, 96; CCVIII, 199; C C X V I I I , 267; C C X X I V , 74; C C X X V I , 269; C C X X X V I , 134; C C X L V I , 1 0 1 , 144, 285; C C X L I X , 34; C C L X V I I , 209; C C L X X I V , 18 Epitaphes, II, 92, 162; III, 255; XI, 200; XII, 200; X I V , 67, 2 3 1 , 279; X V , 109; XVIII, 80; XXI, 80; X X X , 1 0 1 , 1 3 7 ; XXXII, 1 1 3 ; X X X V I I , 70; XL, 243 Epithalames, I, 57, 76, 178; II, 178, 184 "Epître au Roy sur la traduction des pseaumes," 1 0 2 - 1 0 4 , 108, 164, 185, 251 "Epître aux Dames de France," 45, 46, 47, 104, 160, 168, 200 "Epître aux Dames de Paris," 2 1 , 25, 70, 81, 95, 147, 216, 233, 260 "Epître de Frippelippes," 52, 84, 92, 1 1 4 , 196, 202, 206, 239, 245, 258 "Epître de Maguelonne," 36, 79, 98, 142, 1 7 8 - 1 7 9 , 194 E pitres, I, 89; II, 20, 24, 5 1 , 1 1 0 , 210, 2 1 3 , 269; III, 77, 1 8 3 , 209, 2 1 2 , 214; IV, 77; V , 74-75, 228; V I , 1 4 1 , 147, 239, 250; V I I , 230; VIII, 214, 269; IX, 81, 84, 85, 1 2 2 , 1 2 3 , 1 3 3 , 1 5 5 , 285-286; X, 94-96, 1 3 2 - 1 3 3 , 2 1 8 - 2 2 0 , 224, 2 5 1 ; XI, 82, 240, 252-256, 268, 3 0 1 - 3 0 2 ; XII, 1 7 , 23, 67, 78, 147, 1 7 5 , 184, 209, 2 1 7 , 2 7 1 ; XIII, 9 1 , 92, 94, 1 5 2 , 194; X V , 24, m , 142, 1 8 3 , 214, 248; X V I , 60, 1 1 0 ; XVII, 1 9 4 - 1 9 5 ; XVIII, 38; X X , 164, 214; X X l , 139, 1 5 1 , 164, 177, 196; XXII, 72, 96, 137, 1 7 5 , 2 1 3 ; XXIII, 59-60, 9 1 , 1 1 3 ; X X I V , 247; X X V , 183, 206, 2 1 7 , 240-243, 245, 256, 288; X X V I I , 1 1 3 , 202; X X V I I I , 15, 92; X X I X , 209; X X X , 247; X X X I , 50, 85, 93, 164, 196; XXXIII, 124; X X X I V , 22, 72, 1 5 1 - 1 5 2 , 208, 285; X X X V , 68, 1 2 3 - 1 2 4 , 1 2 5 , 1 2 7 , 136, 2 1 6 , 289; X X X V I , 52-54, 75, 81, 85, 138, 156, 167, 168, 183, 2 1 7 , 2 3 1 , 261,

Index 268, 273, 285; X X X V I I , 79, 149, 174; XXXVIII, 60-61, 247; X a X I X , 91, 162, 216, 249, 270; XLI, 84, 196, 210; XLII, 45, 132, 136, 143, 239; XLIII, 5-6, 1 1 8 1 1 9 , 120, 125, 149, 1 5 0 - 1 5 1 , 156, 168, 220; X L I V , 23, 57-58, 73, 76, 81, 1 4 1 , 182, 183, 196, X L V , 54, 86, 1 7 3 , 238, 269; X L V I , 2 1 , 82, 84, 98, n o , 175, 180, 2 1 7 , 251, 257, 270, 286; X L V I I , 95; L, 212; LI, 93, 225; LU, 182; LUI, 4 1 , 94, 180, 188, 210; L I V , 15; L V , 7 1 , 108, 1 1 2 , 144, 162, 214, 225, 276, 284; L V I , 1 7 1 ; LVII, 15, 1 0 1 , 144-145, 182, 2 1 3 , 285; LXI, 1 3 1 Etrennes, I, 29; III, 296; X I X , 162 "Le Grup," 69, 200 Psaumes, IV, 104-105; V , 104-105, 1 1 2 ; V I , 184; VIII, 152; X, 105, 1 1 2 ; XI, 70, 105, 109, 1 1 1 ; XIII, 85; X I V , 283; X V I I I , 81, 109, 293; XIX, 97, 178; XXIV, 106; X X X V I I , 105; X X X V I I I , 1 0 6 , 1 8 2 ; X L V , 178; X L V I , 54; L, 1 1 3 ; l x x x v i , 120; x c i , 285; c m , 184; C V I I , 61-62; C X I V , 152; C X V , 106; C X V I I I , 106, 283 "Le Riche en pauvreté," 127, 140, 150, 289, 291 Rondeaux, I, 268; V , 187; V I I , 93; VIII, 17; XI, 17, 186, 280; XII, 147; X V , 177; X V I , 15, 2 1 1 ; X V I I , 199; X V I I I , 93, 190; X I X , 94; X X I , 94; XXIII, 1 0 1 , n o , 137; X X V , 147; X X V I , 65-66; X X V I I , 1 3 1 ; X X V I I I , 230; X X I X , 162, 289; X X X I I , 183; X X X I I I , 228; X X X I V , 1 6 1 ; X X X V , 148; XLIII, 296; X L V I , 189; L, 172, 197; LI, 172, 189; LU, 188; L I V , 1 6 1 - 1 6 2 ; LVII, 1 2 1 - 1 2 3 ; L V I I I > 95; L X 63-64, 1 6 1 , 195; LXI, 33; LXII, 37; LXIII, 227; L X I V , 147, 252; L X V , 168; L X V I , 179 "Le Second Chant d'Amour fugitif," 1 5 , 23, 148-149, 203, 233 Sonnets, I, 187; III, 33; IV, 33 " L e Temple de Cupido," 4, 6, 13, 34» 55~5 6 ' 98-99, 107-108, 109, 1 1 0 , 1 1 9 , 160, 188, 189, 194, 218, 221-224, 2 7 J > Marot, Jean, 6, 12, 13, 14, 16, 23, 24, w 34. 54. 78. 2 1 7 . 2 2 5» 290, 304 Marot, Michel, 189 Marston, John, 258 Martial, 22, 33, 102, 107, 1 8 1 , 190, 221, 272

321 Martinon, Philippe, 44, 288-289 Matthieu de Vendôme, 279 Matzke, John, 292 Mayer, Claude A., 1 , 4, 34, 37, 38, 39, 4 1 » 42> 44> 49- 72> 1 1 7 - H 8 , 120, 1 3 3 , 1 4 1 , 147, 1 5 1 , 153, 155, 173, 1 8 1 , 186-187, 195, 202, 206, 209, 2 1 5 , 219, 224, 245, 257, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 286, 289, 290, 291, 2 97> 301» 3 02 > 303 Medici, Giuliano de', 2 1 1 Médicis, Catherine de, 144, 190, 225, 298 Melanchthon, Phillip, 1 1 8 , 127, 166, 168, 170, 292 Meschinot, Jean, 1 1 Meung, Jean de, 2 1 , 22, 23, 37, 149 Meyers, Odette, 299 Meylan, Henri, 283, 284, 296 Michelangelo, 270 Miélot, Jean, 81 Mintumo, Antonio, 232, 259, 267 Molinet, Jean, 25, 27, 75, 107, 197, 203, 300 Montaigne, Michel de, 4, 143, 168, 179, 198, 247, 248, 282, 283, 285, 286, 289, 292, 295, 304 Montmorency, Anne de, 5, 6, 1 1 8 , 248 Moore, Will G., 155, 290, 291 More, Thomas, 174 Morin, Jehan, 81 Moschos, Johannes, 176 Murner, Thomas, 4 Neufville, Nicolas de (seigneur de Villeroy), 6 Nichols, Stephen G., Jr., 280, 287, 298, 301, 306 Olimpo di Sassoferrato, 185, 186, 187 Orosius, Paulus, 290 Ovid, 19, 21, 22, 36, 38, 53, 7 1 , 73, 79, 98, 146, 1 5 1 , 175, 1 7 6 - 1 7 7 , 1 7 8 - 1 8 3 , 188, 217, 226, 257 Palisse, le Capitaine de la, 302 Palsgrave, John, 286 Pannier, Jacques, 279 Panofsky, Erwin, 280 Papillon, Almanque, 182, 208, 239 Paracelsus, Philippus, 166, 168, 273 Parthenay, Anne de, 172, 174 Parthenay, Renée de, 172, 174, 210 Parthenio, Bemadino, 232 Pasquier, Etienne, 101 Passerat, Jean, 177, 183 Patch, Howard R., 292 Patterson, Annabel, 302, 305

Index

3 « Paul, Saint, 1 2 4 , 1 2 8 , 129, 1 3 0 , 1 3 8 , 166, 282, 290 Peacham, Henry, 108, 282, 302 Pelan, Margaret, 299 Peletier, Jacques, 25, 45, 2 1 2 , 267, 3 0 1 , 306 Persius, Aulus, 2 2 - 2 3 , 2 1 5 , 259 Petrarca, Francesco, 50, 58, 66, 164, 178, 1 8 3 , 1 8 5 - 1 9 0 , 1 9 3 , 1 9 7 , 224, 232, 245, 2 5 1 , 284, 297, 298, 305, 306 Philipot, Emmanuel, 304 Picot, Emile, 279, 284 Pio, Alberto (count of Carpi), 148 Pisan, Christine de, 39 Plan, P.-P., 291 Planudes, Maximus, 297 Plattard, Jean, 282, 294, 301 Pliny, Gaius, 247, 284 Poliziano, Angelo, 64, 184, 198 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 292 Pontano, Giovanni, 292 Pope, Alexander, 3 0 ; Poussin, Nicholas, 256, 270 Puttenham, George, 258 Quintilian, 40, 5 1 , 264, 282, 287, 288, 301 Rabelais, François, 40, 62, 108, m , 1 5 9 , 198, 206, 229, 234, 2 3 7 , 238, 2 4 1 - 2 4 2 , 258, 284, 286, 2 9 1 , 292, 301 Régnier, Mathurin, 286 Renaudet, Augustin, 295 Renée de France (duchess of Ferrara), 6, 45, 53, 76, 79, 84, 1 1 8 , 120, 125, 132, 143, 1 5 1 - 1 5 2 , 157, 172, 178, 2 5 1 , 291 Riquier, Guiraut, 296 Robertet, Florimond, 196 Rojas, Fernando de, 42 Rondelet, Guillaume, 303 Ronsard, Pierre de, 2, 1 5 , 30, 32, 47, 59, 92, 99, 106, 144, 1 5 8 , 1 7 1 , 1 7 7 , 1 7 9 , 1 8 1 , 204, 2 1 7 , 230, 270, 280, 284, 292, 296, 297, 302 Rubens, Peter Paul, 270 Rutebeuf, 26 Ruzé, Elisabeth, 250 Sagon, François, I, 5 2 - 5 3 , 84, 1 3 1 , 1 5 4 , 194, 2 0 1 , 206, 296 Saint-Gelais, Mellin de, 1 8 1 Saint-Gelais, Octovien de, 99, 188 Sannazaro, Iacopo, 3 1 , 176, 292 Sansovino, Francesco, 280 Saubonne, Michelle de, 1 7 2

Saulnier, Verdun, 2 1 5 , 249, 263, 279, 2 8 1 , 283, 296, 299 Savanarola, Girolamo, 166 Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 4 1 , 2 1 2 , 233, 266, 267, 2 8 1 , 283, 284, 304 Scève, Maurice, 179, 199, 2 1 5 , 296, 298, 299, 301 Scipio Africanus, 1 4 Scollen, Christine M., 36, 1 7 6 , 1 7 8 Screech, M . A., 1 1 7 - 1 1 8 , 1 2 0 , 1 2 6 , 1 2 7 , 1 3 3 , 1 4 1 , 148, 1 5 3 , 1 5 5 , 279, 285, 289, 290, 297, 298, 303 Scudéry, Madeleine de, 2 6 3 - 2 6 5 Sebillet, Thomas, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 38, 40, 45, 46, 47, 57, 94, 95, 99, 126, 199, 2 1 6 , 259, 267, 300, 301 Sebond, Raymond, 198 Semblançay, Jacques de Beaune (seigneur d e ) , 1 8 , 68-69, 87, 204 Seneca, 284, 285 Serafino Aquilano, 1 8 5 , 1 8 7 , 189, 245 Seznec, Jean, 1 7 6 Sidney, Philip, 1 6 1 , 1 6 5 Simon Magus, 293 Simon Peter, 293 Skelton, John, 286 Smith, C . N., 294 Smith, Hallet, 256, 259 Smith, Pauline, 179, 2 1 5 , 279, 2 8 1 , 283, 289, 295, 298, 300, 302, 304 Songecreux, 1 7 Spenser, Edmund, 162 Speroni, Sperone, 46 Spitzer, Leo, 199 Sponde, Jean de, 1 3 5 Steelsius, Joannes, 5 Straparole, Jean-François, 282 Surrey, William Howard (earl o f ) , 58 Susenbrotus, Johannes, 265, 282, 284 Syrus, Publius, 285 Tagliacarne, Benedetto, 1 7 7 Tasso, Torquato, 1 5 9 Tebaldeo (Antonio Tebaldi), 1 8 5 , 187, 189, 245 Templier, Estienne, 1 5 , 2 1 1 Tertre, Guillaume du, 50, 85, 93 Tetzel, John, 206 Theocritus, 1 7 6 Thevet, André, 294 Thomas à Kempis, 1 4 1 Tournon, François de (cardinal), 82 Tuve, Rosemond, 303 Tyard, Pontus de, 247, 280, 2 8 1 , 284, 298, 304 Urwin, Kenneth, 287

Index Van Roosbroeck, Gustave, 301 Vasari, Giorgio, 161 Vatable, François, 61 Vergil, 30, 31, 7 1 , 1 5 1 , 157, 160, 178, 179, 1 8 1 - 1 8 2 , 195, 196, 213, 296 Vesalius, Andreas, 303 Vianey, Joseph, 106, 215, 285, 287, 304 Vinci, Leonardo da, 1 6 1 , 163, 198, 248, 285 Villey, Pierre, 4, 32, 34, 35, 43, 50, 74, 1 47» *55> m > 1 75> 179> l 8 5> M». 286, 296, 297, 303 Villon, François, 2, 12, 17, 18, 19, 25, 27, 48, 51, 90-91, 93, 95, 100, 1 1 2 ,

3a3 147, 174, 186, 203-204, 206, 227, 251, 256, 266, 302, 303 Voiture, Vincent, 215 Voltaire, 215 Walker, D. P., 287 Weber, Henri, 295 Whytinton, Roberte, 265 William of Ockham, 267 Wilson, Thomas, 283 Wyatt, Thomas, 251 Yates, Frances, 287 Zwingli, Ulrich, 155, 170