Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance 184384317X, 9781843843177

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VIrgIlIan IdentItIes In the French renaIssance Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach

Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach

PhIllIP John Usher is assistant Professor of French and comparative literature, Barnard college, columbia University. IsaBelle FernBach is assistant Professor of French at Montana state University, Bozeman.

VIrgIlIan IdentItIes In the French renaIssance

Virgil’s works, principally the Bucolics, the Georgics, and above all the Aeneid, were frequently read, translated and rewritten by authors of the French renaissance. the contributors to this volume show how readers and writers entered into a dialogue with the texts, using them to grapple with such difficult questions as authorial, political and communitarian identities. It is demonstrated how Virgil’s works are more than ancient models to be imitated. they reveal themselves, instead, to be part of a vibrant moment of exchange central to the definition of literature at the time. In addition to discussing how Virgil influenced questions of identity for such authors as Jean lemaire de Belges, Joachim du Bellay, clément Marot, Pierre de ronsard and Jacques Yver, the volume also offers perspectives on Virgil’s French translators, on how French writers made quite different appropriations of homer and Virgil, and on Virgil’s reception in the arts. It provides a fresh understanding and assessment of how, in sixteenthcentury France, Virgil and his texts moved beyond earlier allegorical interpreations to enter into the ideas espoused by a new and national literature.

Gallica

Gallica Volume 27

virgilian identities in the french renaissance

Gallica ISSN 1749–091X

General Editor: Sarah Kay

Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval and Renaissance French studies. Literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to works written in English, although publication in French is not excluded. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Sarah Kay, Department of French, New York University, 13–19 University Place, 6th floor, New York, NY 10003, USA The Editorial Director, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer Ltd., PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK

Previously published titles in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

virgilian identities in the french renaissance

Edited by

Phillip John Usher and

Isabelle Fernbach

D. S. BREWER

© Contributors 2012 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2012 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978–1–84384–317–7 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

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Contents List of Illustrations vii Foreword ix Timothy Hampton List of Contributors xi Acknowledgements xv Note on Editions and Translations xvi Introduction 1 Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach Part I: Pastoral and Georgic Modes 1. Virgil and Marot: Imitation, Satire and Personal Identity Bernd Renner

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2. Virgil’s Bucolic Legacy in Jacques Yver’s Le Printemps d’Yver 39 Margaret Harp 3. On the Magical Statues in Lemaire de Belges’s Le Temple 59 d’honneur et de vertus Michael Randall 4. Temples of Virtue: Worshipping Virgil in Sixteenth-Century France 73 Stéphanie Lecompte (Translated by Penelope Meyers) 5. From Copy to Copia: Imitation and Authorship in Joachim Du Bellay’s Divers Jeux Rustiques (1558) Isabelle Fernbach

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Part II: The Epic Mode 6. Virgilian Space in Renaissance French Translations of the Aeneid 117 Valerie Worth-Stylianou 7. Virgil versus Homer: Reception, Imitation, Identity in the French 141 Renaissance Philip Ford

8. The Aeneid in the 1530s: Reading with the Limoges Enamels Phillip John Usher

161

9. At the Helm, Second in Command: Du Bellay and La Mort 189 de Palinure Corinne Noirot-Maguire 10. Du Bellay’s Dido and the Translation of Nation Todd W. Reeser

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11. “Avec la terre on possède la guerre”: The Problem of Place in Ronsard’s Franciade Katherine Maynard

237

Index 257

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

Illustrations Figure 1: The Judgment of Paris: Paris, Venus, Juno, and Pallas. 164 From: Virgil, Opera (Strasbourg: Johannis Grüninger, 1502), fol. 121r. Rare Book Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. Figure 2: The Judgment of Paris: Paris, Venus, Juno, and Pallas. 165 Master of the Aeneid, Limoges Enamel. Image used with kind permission from Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inventory number NM 7323. Figure 3: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple. From the illuminated manuscript 168 known as the Vergilius Vaticanus. Image used with kind permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica, Vatican, Cod. Vat. lat. 3225. Figure 4: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple. From: Virgil, Opera, fol. 253r. 169 Rare Book Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. Figure 5: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple. Master of the Aeneid, Limoges 170 Enamel. Image reproduced from Hermann Schnitlzer, Peter Bloch, and Charles Ratton, Email, Goldschmiede- und Metallarbeiten, europäisches Mittelalter (Lucern: Räber, 1965), plate 69. Figure 6: The Mouth of Hell. From: Virgil, Opera, fol. 265v. 176 Rare Book Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. Figure 7: The Mouth of Hell. Master of the Aeneid, Limoges Enamel. 177 Image used with kind permission of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, inventory number 44–205. Figure 8: Anchises Reveals the Future History of Rome. From: Virgil, 180 Opera, fol. 286r. Rare Book Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. Figure 9: Anchises Reveals the Future History of Rome. Master of the 181 Aeneid, Limoges Enamel. Image reproduced from Catalogue de vente de la collection Ducatel (Paris, 21–26 April 1890).

The contributors and publishers are grateful to these institutions for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Pour mon acolyte Phillip

Foreword Timothy Hampton

In 1546, virtually at the mid-point of the sixteenth century in Europe, François Rabelais published his Tiers Livre, or Third Book, in which he depicts the foolish and willful character Panurge seeking advice as to whether he should marry. After an initial discussion with his friends regarding several fine points of conjugal life and a momentary flirtation with dicing, Panurge, on the advice of the giant Pantagruel, sets out on a series of consultations that will eventually bring him into contact with a whole series of authorities, from philosophers and judges to witches and poets. Yet his first move is to seek advice from the writings of a long-dead author. That author is Virgil. Panurge starts his quest by engaging in the time-honored practice of the sortes virgilianae, the technique of opening Virgil’s works at random as a way of gaining guidance – something like the Renaissance version of the fortune cookie. And, to be sure, each passage he draws, from the Eclogues and the Aeneid, has an obvious resonance with his situation. Unfortunately, he is too perplexed to interpret them in any way that would lead him to decisive action – and so his search continues. It is not by accident that the greatest fiction writer of the French Renaissance should place Virgil at the beginning of a great quest for identity and certainty. For the Latin Middle Ages Virgil was, of course, the great poet of empire. As seer, prophet and necromancer his work provided a monumental achievement, such that Dante, as we remember, takes him as his guide through the other world. Virgil’s authority did not come merely from the powerful fiction of the Aeneid, with its appropriation of earlier epic for the new purposes of Roman Latinity, or from the elegance of his pastoral and georgic songs. It may be traced to the unique combination of history and moral reflection provided by his works. Through the Aeneid, Virgil forged the great myth of Western empire, even as he constantly offered reflection on the nature of that myth – on what it meant, in fact, to write history or poetry. Thus he was both historian and philosopher of history. His work offered no opposition between fiction and commentary, thereby seeming to transcend the famous opposition between philosophy and fiction posited earlier by Plato. Similarly, in the Eclogues and the Georgics he offered both parables of everyday life and reflections on the limits of his own fiction, on the fragility of song and

x FOREWORD

the loss that haunts writing. The stories of Aeneas’ abandonment of Dido, of the exile of Melibœus, and of the mourning of Andromache, to take only the most famous examples, offered material for moral reflection that could speak to Christian readers both secular and saintly, male and female. The combination of moral or ethical commentary and historical narrative is one of the things that makes Virgil’s central role in the French Renaissance – the topic of this excellent collection of essays – so complex. It had been Virgil’s countryman Ovid who had been the great “French” poet of the Middle Ages. Ovid’s accounts of changing shapes, of the nature of desire, and of the art of love had been central to such masterworks as the Romance of the Rose and had been appropriated for Christian moral philosophy in the fourteenthcentury Ovide moralisé. Yet the onset of rapid political transformations in the early sixteenth century rendered Virgil’s more politically inflected accounts of human action relevant in new ways. Such great Virgilian themes as the tension between history and prophecy, the nature of leisure, the relation of city and country, and the moral duty of the hero became central concerns of the new humanist-influenced court culture that emerged as a consequence of both political centralization and rapid social transformation. Thus Virgil’s texts, as these essays show, emerged as central mediating elements through which Renaissance French writers sought to understand their own positions in history and society. Yet Virgil’s influence does not end with the Renaissance. His example and fictions remain cogent for all of subsequent French culture, from postRenaissance parodies such as Paul Scarron’s Virgile travesti to André Gide’s life-long obsession with the Eclogues. Indeed, just as it is impossible to understand French political rhetoric and philosophy without a knowledge of Cicero, so are the great narratives of French identity deeply interwoven with the history of the reception of Virgil. These essays, with their focus on the sixteenth century, define the terms whereby Virgil is made modern and made French. As such, they open the way to a renewed sense that the reception and transformation of Virgil’s legacy – across all of his works – is central to our understanding of all of French culture, from literature to the visual arts, to architecture. These essays speak of the dynamic dialogue between the Latin tradition and the French tradition. This is a dialogue that continues to this day, in the work of such authors as Francis Ponge and Pascal Quignard. Yet it is also a dialogue that much recent critical writing on French literature has tended to neglect or ignore altogether. Thus we can understand these essays as both contributions to Renaissance Studies, and as instances of the kind of focused critical reflection that is necessary to the future re-imagination of French Studies. This volume reminds us that Virgil’s texts, like resonant songs of his shepherds, echo through the history of French literature. Whether we hear those texts or foolishly disregard them like Rabelais’s Panurge, this volume at least provides us with superb examples of how to listen.

Contributors Isabelle Fernbach received her Ph.D. from the University of CaliforniaBerkeley. Philip Ford is Professor of French and Neo-Latin literature at Cambridge University (Clare College). He specializes in particular on the relationship between humanism and writing, and between vernacular and Latin texts, particularly poetic ones. His publications include George Buchanan, Prince of Poets, a book on Ronsard’s Hymnes (1997), an annotated edition of Jean Dorat, Mythologicum, ou interprétation mythologique de l’Odyssée X-XII et de L’Hymne à Aphrodite (Geneva: Droz, 2000), and proceedings of nine conferences organised in Cambridge on the French Renaissance. His most recent work is on the reception of Homer in the Renaissance: De Troie à Ithaque: Réception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2007). Timothy Hampton is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California-Berkeley. He is the author, most recently, of Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). Margaret Harp is Associate Professor of French at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Tulane University in 1984 and 1991. She teaches courses on French literature, culture and language. Her publications have appeared in Aevum, Romance Notes, Romance Quarterly, Rocky Mountain Review, and Sixteenth Century Journal. Stéphanie Lecompte, agrégée des lettres modernes, received her doctoral degree at the Université de Nantes in 2005 where she worked on a thesis under Pierre Maréchaux, now published as La chaîne d’or des poètes fabuleux. La réception de Macrobe dans l’Europe humaniste (Geneva: Droz, 2009). Since 2006, she has been teaching at the Lycée Paul-Louis Courier in Tours. Katherine Maynard is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Modern Languages Department at Washington College in Maryland. She is currently working on a book-length monograph entitled Edge of Empire: Writing Epic in Early Modern France. She has published articles on Du

xii CONTRIBUTORS

Bartas, Ronsard, and d’Aubigné. Her most recent article on Du Bartas’ La Judit recently appeared in the Romanic Review. Penelope Meyers has pursued research on the reception of Greek tragedy in South African and French Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University. Corinne Noirot-Maguire is Assistant Professor of French at Virginia Tech. A former fellow of the École Normale Supérieure, she received a joint Ph.D. from the Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3 and Rutgers University. She has published essays on the French Renaissance as well as French poetry, in journals such as Littérature, L’Information littéraire, Montaigne Studies, Europe, and EMF. She is the main editor of “Revelations of Character”: Ethos, Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy in Montaigne (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2007) and the author of “Entre deux airs”: style simple et ethos poétique chez Clément Marot et Joachim Du Bellay (Québec: Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2011). Michael Randall is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University. He is the author of Building Resemblance: Analogical Imagery in the Early French Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) and The Gargantuan Polity: On the Individual and the Community in Renaissance France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Todd W. Reeser is Associate Professor of French at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and Masculinities in Theory (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2010) as well as of numerous articles on Renaissance literature/culture, gender studies, critical theory, and French film in journals such as Romanic Review, French Review, Romance Quarterly, French Literature Series, and Exemplaria. With Floyd Gray, he is co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of François Rabelais (New York: Modern Language Association, 2011). Bernd Renner is currently Professor of French at Brooklyn College and at the CUNY Graduate Center. In 2007–09 he was also Bernard H. Stern Professor in Humor Studies. He is the author of numerous articles about French Renaissance literature, as well as Difficile est saturam non scribere: L’Hermeneutique de la satire rabelaisienne [Etudes rabelaisiennes 45] (Geneva: Droz, 2007). He is also the editor of La Satire dans tous ses états: Le meslange satyricque à la Renaissance française (Geneva: Droz, 2009). Phillip John Usher is Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of numerous articles and of Errance et cohérence: Essai sur la littérature transfrontalière à la Renaissance (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010), of a translation,



contributors

xiii

with notes and introduction, of Ronsard’s Franciade, published as The Franciad (1572) (New York: AMS Press, 2010), and of a forthcoming study about the relationship between epic and the sister arts in Renaissance France. Valerie Worth-Stylianou is Professor of French and Senior Tutor at Trinity College, Oxford University. She is the author of many articles on translation and literature in the Early Modern period and of three monographs; Practising Translation in Renaissance France: The Example of Etienne Dolet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), Confidential Strategies: The Evolving Role of the “Confident” in French Tragic Drama (1635– 1677) (Geneva: Droz, 1999) and Les traités d’obstétrique en langue française au seuil de la modernité (Geneva: Droz, 2007).

Acknowledgements This volume began in a Korean restaurant with a conversation between its editors, then colleagues at Barnard College, about the relationship between Du Bellay and Virgil. That was in 2007. Over the following years, many people have helped turn the original idea into a reality. The editors would like to express sincere thanks to: the dedicated contributors for their intelligence, insights, and boundless patience; Elspeth Ferguson, who first welcomed the project to Boydell and Brewer; Caroline Palmer, Rohais Haughton and Vanda Ham also at Boydell and Brewer, for their generous and careful marshalling of the final manuscript; Timothy Hampton, for his encouragement and advice, and for accepting our invitation to write the volume’s foreword; Tom Conley, for his interest in, and support of, this project; Laura Broderick for help with securing permissions for image use; and Penelope Meyers, who spent a month in Dijon formatting the book’s chapters with diligence and dedication, searching tirelessly for missing references, and producing a beautiful translation of Stéphanie Lecompte’s chapter. Without these various individuals, this volume would have remained an idea – we thank you.

Note on Editions and Translations Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in Latin from Virgil’s Works are from the two-volume edition in the Loeb Library by H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G. P. Goold (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). English translations throughout, unless otherwise noted, are also based on this edition, although frequently modified. All other translations are by the authors of the individual articles or by the editors and approved by the authors.

Introduction Phillip John Usher

and Isabelle

Fernbach

Virgil’s three main texts – the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics and the Aeneid – were widely read in Renaissance France. Despite this fact and although many recent studies demonstrate a renewed interest in the ways that Virgil has been read, translated and appropriated in different places and at different periods, to this day no monograph has been dedicated to Virgil’s place in sixteenth-century France.1 The most complete study to date is an article by Alice Hulubei published in 1931, a thorough account that nevertheless awaits a successor.2 The essays of the present study, a partial and far from exhaustive response to this lack, investigate authorial, political and communitarian models by tracing how authors in sixteenth-century France read, interpreted and translated Virgil’s three works. Such an undertaking seems to call for a framework that relates (to) the three different Virgilian genres. The history of Virgilian criticism suggests that we might turn to the medieval interpretive tool of the Rota Virgilii (Wheel of Virgil), which posits an alignment between Virgil’s three modes (pastoral, georgic, epic), three spaces (countryside, field, town or city/nation), three trees (beech, fruittree, laurel or cedar), three implements (crook, plow, sword), three animals (sheep, cow, horse), and three corresponding social ranks (shepherd, farmer,

1 Important recent scholarship on this topic includes Craig Kallendorf, The Virgilian Tradition. Book History and the History of Reading in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot UK: Ashgate, 2007) and The Virgilian Tradition. The First Fifteen Hundred Years, edd. Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2008). Appearing too late to be taken into account by the authors or editors of this book is David Scott Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), reviewed by Lee Fratantuono in the online Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2011.03.60) http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011-03-60.html. Forthcoming is the Virgil Encyclopedia, edd. Richard Thomas and Jan Ziolkowski (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming). A bibliography pullulates – a regularly updated bibliography for Virgilian studies is to be found on David Wilson-Okamura’s site: www.virgil.org. 2 Alice Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” Revue du XVIe siècle, 18 (1931): 1–77.

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soldier).3 The rota would seem a particularly pertinent tool here, for it schematizes the connections between Virgil’s works and questions of form and function that have to do precisely with authorial, political and communitarian identities. Indeed, the collection would like both to foreground the specificities of each of the three works and to situate them within the context of Virgil’s triadic oeuvre. The rota in a sense reaches back even further: the idea of Virgil’s tripartite career is already present in the Virgilian Vitae, which “impose on the poet’s life a strong pattern of linear development, a teleology which constructs the Aeneid as the simultaneous closure – ideological and narrative – of Virgil’s life and his writings.”4 The Rota Virgilii suggests, moreover, not just the plan of a career, but how the various genres relate to social rank and to questions of collective identity.5 Despite the long history of the triadic organization – bucolic, georgic, epic – that harkens back to the Vitae and the rota, the tripartite model is singularly challenged by the facts on the ground in Renaissance France. The model would, ultimately, show its limits or, perhaps, its internal coherences. Firstly, epic was clearly a much more significant genre than either the bucolic or the georgic, quantitatively and qualitatively, in Renaissance France. Du Bellay, in his Deffence, and his successors all placed significant emphasis on the centrality of epic to the definition and promised success of a French national literature,6 a topic widely discussed by many critics.7 3 For an image of the rota, see Edmond Faral, Les Arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 1962), p. 87. 4 Elena Theodorakopoulos, “Closure: The Book of Virgil,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 155. On the Vitae, see also see Theodore Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 27–56. 5 For further comment on the rota, see Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 201 n. 35, p. 232. See especially A. T. Laugesen, “La Roue de Virgile. Une page de la théorie littéraire du Moyen Age,” Classicalia & Medievalia, 23 (1962): 248–73. 6 Du Bellay announced that a French epic “fer[a] hausser la tête [à notre pauvre langage]” (will allow our poor language to raise its head proudly) and bestow on the vernacular such glory as to make it equal “aux superbes langues grecque et latine” (to the stately Greek and Latin tongues). Joachim Du Bellay, Les regrets. Les Antiquités de Rome: La défense et illustration de la langue française, ed. S. de Sacy (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), pp. 240–1. Jacques Peleter du Mans notes that “L’œuvre héroïque est celui qui donne le prix, et le vrai titre de Poète” (The heroic opus is the one that decides the poet’s worth and bestows on him true title of poet) (L’art poëtique. Lyon: J. de Tournes et G. Gazeau, 1555), p. 75. 7 See Denis Bjaï and Klára Csűrös, “Le long poème narratif à la Renaissance: essai de présentation,” Nouvelle revue du seizième siècle, 15:1 (1997): 7–25; Denis Bjaï and Klára Csűrös, “Le long poème narratif à la Renaissance: tableau chronologique,” Nouvelle revue du seizième siècle, 15:1 (1997): 185–214. See also Siegbert Himmelsbach, L’Epopée ou la case vide (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988), Klára Csűrös, Variétés et vicissitudes du genre épique de Ronsard à Voltaire (Paris: Champion, 1999), and Bruno Méniel, Renaissance

INTRODUCTION 3

The Aeneid itself was translated earlier and more frequently: Guillaume Le Roy published the Enéides in 1485 and Octovien de Saint-Gelais’ fuller Enéide appeared in 1509; whereas the Bucolics only become available in French in 1516 (translated by Michel Guillaume) and the Georgics only in 1519. And the impact of Virgilian epic on French Renaissance literature far outstrips the impact of either of the other two genres. Of the some two hundred epics written in Renaissance France, a significant majority situate themselves within a Virgilian trajectory, from works like Valerand de la Varanne’s heavily Virgilian – and unfortunately more or less forgotten – epic poem about Joan of Arc, De gestis Joanne virginis (1516)8 to Ronsard’s much more famous Franciade (1572).9 Secondly, the line separating the bucolic and georgic modes became rather blurred throughout the sixteenth century, as will be explored in the next section of this introduction. For these two main reasons, then, the present volume adopts a two-part structure instead of the three parts that might seem the more obvious choice.

The Pastoral Mode and Georgicization The first part of this volume gathers together chapters about two different modes, namely the pastoral and the georgic, represented in Virgil’s career by the Bucolics and the Georgics.10 While Virgil did not invent the eclogue format, namely a short poem in a dialogic form dealing with rural life, pastoralism generally refers to the Virgilian tradition, as opposed notably to Theocritus’ idylls, where the correspondence between literary mode and the protagonists’ way of life is less obvious, and the shepherd’s otium less frequently portrayed. Virgil’s shepherds in the Bucolics, on the other hand, are characterized by a more sophisticated style;11 they belong to a tighter, more limited, poetic circle at the origin of the amœbean discourse, and their songs, de l’épopée. La poésie épique en France de 1572 à 1623 (Geneva: Droz, 2004). See also Phillip John Usher, Epic Arts in Renaissance France (forthcoming). 8 A biographical sketch of this author is available in James K. Farge, Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of Theology (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980), entry no. 269. On his Joan of Arc epic, see D. Murarasu, La Poésie néo-latine et la renaissance des lettres antiques en France (1500–1549) (Paris: Gamber, 1928), pp. 63–69. 9 A recent English translation, with introduction, is provided by Phillip John Usher, Ronsard’s Franciad (New York: AMS Press, 2010). 10 “Mode” is here preferred to “genre,” to the extent that pastoral and georgic are closer to a mood or a spirit and can thus be expressed through various forms, in prose or verse, and within different genres, such as satire or comedy. On the difference between genre and mode, see Paul J. Alpers, What is Pastoral? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 44–78, and Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 7–12. 11 On the ‘birth’ of pastoral as a genre, see E. de Saint-Denis’ introduction to Virgile, Bucoliques (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), pp. 2–4, pp. 8–20. See also Nancy Lindheim,

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eventually, are all inscribed in a form of trade or exchange, mirroring the patronage system. As has often been noticed, Virgil’s Bucolics revolve around a tension, determined by the Civil Wars on the one hand, and the peaceful setting of the eclogues on the other; Tityrus’ carefree idleness responds to Melibœus’ forced exile, and silence stands in opposition to singing. Margaret Harp’s study of Jacques Yver’s Le Printemps in the present volume illustrates the appropriation of the pastoral genre in sixteenth-century France. There, as elsewhere, pastoralism functions primarily as literary escape from the tensions tied to the contemporary Wars of Religion, as illustrated by Harp, a conclusion that echoes Norbert Elias’ thoughts on the pastoral as articulating escape from oppressive court culture.12 It is only in the background of Yver’s Le Printemps that war is represented, at a far remove from bucolic scenes devoid of tension or opposition between the protagonists and their immediate environment. Another example of this use of pastoral can be found in Rémy Belleau’s Bergerie (1565), with its lengthy description of shepherds whose work transforms them, for a moment, into bird-catchers and grape-pickers.13 The Bergerie remains nonetheless an idealized representation of the court of Antoinette de Bourbon, widow of the first Duke of Guise. Belleau’s text uses the bucolic setting as a diversion from the French Wars of Religion, just like the landscapes of Virgil’s Bucolics, written during the Civil Wars, function as literary escapism. Yet, as Harp shows, through a subtle parallel between religious conflict and gender tensions between courtiers, Yver’s pastoralism also suggests that court rivalries, just like civil war, pose a threat to social harmony. Yver’s advocacy for a politics of peace shares a similar ideal with Jean Lemaire de Belges’s Temple d’Honneur et de vertu, as the studies of Michael Randall and Stéphanie Robert-Lecompte in this volume show, where the poet makes a similar plea to his king. The question of the poet’s status, and his role as the prince’s counselor, is further seen with Marot’s translation of Virgil’s first eclogue, which illustrates the same need for poetic recognition, and where pastoral also appears as an acknowledgment of the poet’s courtly functions. The importance of Virgil for Marot is studied by Bernd Renner, whose chapter on the translation of the first eclogue in the Adolescence clémentine focuses on appropriation of literary authority. The article shows how Marot constructs an idea of authorship through the rewriting of pastoral, enabling the poet to embody the turning point from the era of the Rhétoriqueurs to that of the Pléiade, and ultimately to establish Marot’s own literary voice. These examples show the allegorical function to be a main component of The Virgilian Pastoral Tradition (Pittsburgh PA: Duquesne University Press, 2005), pp. 6–12. 12 See Norbet Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), pp. 224–66. 13 See Rémy Belleau, La Bergerie (Genève: Droz, 1954), pp. 57–59.

INTRODUCTION 5

pastoral, at the origin of its success throughout the centuries, especially in comparison with the georgic mode.14 In addition to voicing criticism against official authorities and, as studied by Annabel Patterson, countering censorship, pastoral also became a courtly genre par excellence as its allegorical properties, the idleness of its protagonists, the dialogism and wit displayed in the songs, evoking the quality of inventio dear to Castiglione’s courtier, all mirror court culture.15 Both pastoral and georgic modes situate action within landscapes, but with different characters (shepherds versus farmers), and to different ends. Although in Virgil’s works the two modes are in many ways distinct – “nature’s uncertainties and harshness are more prominent [in the Georgics], because it is conceived as the habitation of farmers”16 – the two modes are not completely separate and, by the Renaissance, come to exert a clear influence on each other. The merging of the genres, for Paul Alpers, happened “largely because in Christian thought ideas of humility are connected with the curse of labor”,17 thus leading to a contamination of one mode (the pastoral) by the other (the georgic). Annabel Patterson has identified this phenomenon in the context of English Renaissance literature, with an emphasis on how georgicization often reveals critical attitudes towards government.18 The contamination of pastoral by the georgic mode can be seen in France as well, with Ronsard’s long decasyllabic poem La salade (c. 1568) for instance, where the detailed preparation of a lettuce gives way to an aggressive criticism of the French court. Fernbach’s chapter in this volume highlights this Early Modern revisiting of the georgic tradition in France whereby tending the land, once reminiscent of the fall of mankind, becomes a promise of return to the Golden Age.19 Fernbach examines the case of Joachim Du Bellay’s “Moretum de Virgile,” published in his Divers jeux rustiques (1559), where the author’s very choice of a georgic topic appears as an open criticism of the court system. The tone remains that of a courtier, though, as Marsault 14 As Paul Alpers explains, “poetic representations of nature or landscape are not all of a piece; they answer to and express various human needs and concerns; pastoral landscapes are those of which the human centres are herdsmen or their equivalent” (Alpers, What is Pastoral?, p. 28.) 15 See Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), pp. 18–20 and, by the same authors, “Pastoral versus Georgic: The Politics of Virgilian Quotations,” in Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). 16 Alpers, What is Pastoral?, p. 28. 17 Alpers, What is Pastoral?, p. 28. 18 See Patterson, “Pastoral versus Georgic,” p. 38. 19 While attributing agricultural labor to Jupiter’s will, Virgil also shows the god’s benevolence towards men, who “has willed that the path of husbandry should not run smooth, … sharpening men’s wits by care, not letting his kingdom slumber in heavy lethargy” (Georgics 1:121–24).

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the plowman is presented tending his garden rather than plowing a field. Still, this poem reads as a very clear example of the use and function of Virgilian genres within a political discourse. The articles by Michael Randall and Stéphanie Robert-Lecompte illustrate particularly well the ambiguous interest, in Early Modern France, in the georgic tradition. While both authors discuss the third Georgics’ description of the temple of Octavian, their analysis of the sixteenth-century topos of the Temple of Virtue leads to a courtly portrait of the ideal prince. Michael Randall compares Jean Lemaire de Belges’s Temple d’honneur et de vertus (1503) to the proem of the third Georgic. In Lemaire’s eulogy to his patron, the recently deceased Pierre II de Bourbon, Randall notices a strong pastoral influence, illustrated by the presence of shepherds, whose depiction is heavily influenced by the Virgilian eclogues. As Randall demonstrates, Lemaire’s Temple describes statues used to symbolize the virtues of the deceased king, in the same way Virgil does in his Georgics for Octavian. Commenting on the breathing statues (spirantia signa), Randall shows how the author is able to enunciate his prince’s greatness rather than represent it, as happens in Du Bellay’s and Ronsard’s respective temples. In the same spirit, Bernard Palissy’s project of teaching statues, built nearby a temple, may be read as another instance of the incarnation of virtue, in this case a direct illustration of Calvinist precepts to the visitor of his garden.20 Lemaire’s Temple offers yet another insight into the poet’s self-fashioning as a prince’s adviser, a prelude maybe to his ambassadorial functions for Margaret of Austria. Unlike the temples of Virgil, Ronsard and Du Bellay, whose display of the king’s warfare link them to epic tradition, Lemaire’s pastoral temple emphasizes diplomacy and philosophical wisdom serving politics, through the opposition, for instance, of a series of murderous kings to a peaceful sovereign. In the context of an individual address to the prince, Lemaire’s appropriation of the Octavian temple also suggests that the Virgilian model provides, here again, a space for authorial voice. Stéphanie Robert-Lecompte compares the early example of Lemaire’s Temple d’Honneur et de Vertu (1503), again, with François Habert’s Temple de Vertu (1542), chapter 57 of Rabelais’ Quart Livre (1552), and Ronsard’s “Discours” addressed to Jérôme de la Rovère in the Bocage Royal (1560). Lemaire’s temple of virtue appears as a place of memory, a glorification of Aeneas’ followers on the path to a “contemplative life,” and the divine. While distancing themselves from Virgil, Lemaire’s successors became critical of his neoplatonist reading, which they either reject or mock in favour of a Christian vision. Habert and Ronsard interact with Virgil, as their temples found their model once again in the Georgics. Yet both poets present the 20 See Bernard Palissy, Recette véritable, ed. F. Lestringant (Paris: Macula, 1996), pp. 166–68.

INTRODUCTION 7

rejection of sensual pleasures in favour of civil or Christian virtue, thus giving an unambiguous, moralizing version of the motif of the temple of virtue. The only work that preserves the polysemy of the Georgics is Rabelais’ description of Gaster’s manor, whose parodic dimension creates the possibility for multiple interpretations. Although all these variations on the temple of virtue find a model in the proem of the Georgics, their various representations of wisdom are not georgic in spirit. The temple is here portrayed as a refuge to the traditional values of frugality, chastity, and piety, but the celebratory songs, and the various dignitaries present in each temple make it closer to courtly idleness than to an ethic of work. Although the articles selected for this volume discuss only a small number of specific moments of translation and appropriation of the pastoral and georgic genres, they give an accurate representation of the general disaffection for Virgil’s second major work. Studies on pastoral texts, on the other hand, show that authors rely on this mode to reassert literary authority, in the case of Marot, as well as political and courtly allegiance, in the case of Jacques Yver or Jean Lemaire de Belges, through the tradition and prestige associated with Virgil’s name. In addition to illustrating the potential political function of literary genres, this imbalance between pastoral and georgic modes also presents texts featuring an ethic of work as oddities, oftentimes relegated in the minor works category. It also elicits a new interest as to the author’s choice of such a mode, potentially questioning our very definition of minor literature. I.F. Epic The Aeneid tells the epic story of Aeneas’ flight from Troy, his arrival in Carthage and brief love story with Dido and his eventual arrival in Italy where he fights Turnus and becomes the ancestor of Augustan Rome. As Virgil’s last work, the Aeneid (composed 29–19 BCE) is often seen as the third part of a teleological progression through the poet’s career and the three modes he practiced. As the Eclogues (4:1–2) announced the Georgics, so the latter announced the Aeneid: “mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas / Caesaris et nomen fama tot ferre per annos, / Tithoni prima quota best ab origine Caesar” (Yet anon I will gird me to sing Caesar’s fiery fights, and bear his name in story through many years as Caesar is distant from the far-off birth of Tithonus) (Georgics 3:46–8).21 The Aeneid sits at the end of Virgil’s career and as the completion of a literary project that stretched across genres, as if one genre succeeded another until Virgil reached epic.22 Before Tithonus is the brother of Priam. See Duncan F. Kennedy, “Virgilian Epic,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 145–6. 21 22

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developing this idea in the context of sixteenth-century France, it is worth recalling just how important a text the Aeneid has remained and how often it has been translated, appropriated and reworked. Almost immediately, the Aeneid entered into an interpretive controversy. Just as quickly and with ever-greater momentum as the text was transmitted to other countries and languages, Virgil’s epic began to be appropriated.23 To begin at the end, so to speak, one might think of how in the 1930s and ’40s, in the contexts of fascism and National Socialism, the Augustan reading of the Aeneid, according to which the epic is read as supporting empire, “created an easy link between Virgil and contemporary leader-cult.”24 As well as political appropriations, throughout the century, the Aeneid influenced writers as different as Cyril Connolly (author of the ironic modernization of the Aeneid called The Unquiet Grave [1944]) and T.S. Eliot.25 The so-called Harvard pessimistic school of post-Vietnam reading of the Aeneid, according to which the epic is not pro-Augustan, but rather that it offers a critique of the emperor, is actually of much more distant pedigree, dating back to the Early Modern period and even much closer to the time of the text’s first publication.26 To return to the period that interests us here, one can begin by noting that Renaissance France inherited a medieval and Christianized Aeneid under which it strived to rediscover a Roman author through the application of new philological and editorial methodologies; on the other hand, Renaissance authors, as they penned their own works in dialogue with the Ancients, would re-appropriate Virgil from Rome into France, allowing his texts and ideas to shape their own literary enterprises related to the historical and political context of a nation in the throes of defining itself. The first development, from a medieval back to a Roman Virgil, can be usefully framed by a change in editorial strategies between the beginning and end of the century. The Latin editions of Virgil published in Paris by Josse Bade between 1500 and the 1530s were heavily cloaked in commentary, which emphasized both medieval allegorization and Italian Neoplatonism. 23 Much has been written about the Aeneid’s influence and about how the text has been appropriated. As a starting point, see the chapters of the first section (“Translation and reception”) in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Martindale, especially Duncan F. Kennedy, “Modern Receptions and Their Interpretive Implications” (pp. 38–55), R. J. Tarrant, “Aspects of Virgil’s Reception in Antiquity” (pp. 56–72), and Colin Burrow, “Virgils, from Dante to Milton” (pp. 79–90). 24 Richard F. Thomas, Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 223. For a wider perspective on twentieth-century receptionappropriation of the Aeneid, see Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid, ed. Stephen J. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 1–20. 25 For a thorough study of Virgil’s influence in the twentieth century, especially between the two world wars, see Theodore Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 26 See Craig Kallendorf’s recent (and excellent) The Other Virgil: ‘Pessimistic’ Readings of the Aeneid in Early Modern Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

INTRODUCTION 9

Beneath Virgil’s paganism was sought a message of moral virtue and Christian piety, to be found in the Aeneid of course, as well as in the Bucolics and, to a lesser, degree, the Georgics. The assertion made first by Lactantius (c. 240–c. 320) about the fourth eclogue still had a certain amount of currency. And the Aeneid was to be read as a kind of Bildungsroman wherein the hero evolved from birth to maturity and from Trojan laziness, through a period of active life in Carthage, and finally to a contemplative life in Italy. This trend continued well into the century. Beginning in 1500, each of the volumes – the Bucolics, the Georgics, followed by the Virgiliana (texts attributed to Virgil by Servius), and finally the Aeneid – was preceded by a prefatory epistle that underlined the moral value of the texts. The Aeneid was also accompanied by the preface written for the Italian edition by Cristoforo Landino. Over the next three decades, Bade would continue to add more commentary, so that his final editions would include ten commentaries, Maffeo Vegio’s Aeneidos Liber XIII, and other texts.27 The weight of commentary and medieval allegory soon gave way to (literally) lighter editions, as smaller in-16 and in-8 editions replaced folios. Although a small-size Latin edition was initially issued in 1507, this would become the rule from the 1530s. A major turn occurred with Peter Ramus’ editions beginning in the 1550s and those of Henri Estienne starting in 1577. In his praelectiones, Ramus clearly criticizes allegorization; Estienne’s paratextual matter, furthering Ramus’ critique, would be even more polemical, suggesting a new awareness for the need to read Virgil purely. Estienne’s Aeneid has thus been said to be “le résultat définitif des recherches de tout un siècle” (the final product of a whole century’s research).28 This evolution from excess commentary to more modern philology results in Virgil returning to his Roman and pagan roots. The chapters of this volume that deal with the Aeneid relate to both of these developments, i.e. to how the epic was, in a sense, progressively re-­Romanized and de-allegorized and to how it was simultaneously appropriated by French writers and made French. As Philip Ford notes at the beginning of his contribution to this volume, Virgil’s texts, unlike Homer’s, were never lost. The Aeneid was an important text in medieval Europe. Read, translated and variously appropriated, it was seen as something closer to a chanson de geste or medieval romance than as the successor to the (unavailable) Odyssey and Iliad.29 (The trend was not, of course, limited to France: in 27 For a modern edition and translation, see Maffeo Vegio, Short Epics, ed. Michael J. Putnam (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press/I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2004). 28 Alice Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” p. 21. 29 For the place occupied by the Aeneid in medieval France, see especially Francine Mora, L’Enéide médiévale et la chanson de geste (Paris: Champion, 1994) and, by the same author, L’Enéide médiévale et la naissance du roman (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994). For a more general perspective on the Aeneid’s place in medieval Europe, see the dated but invaluable study by Domenico Comparetti, Virgilio nel m ­ edio

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medieval England, too, there grew a tradition of the romance Aeneid thanks to the Roman d’Enéas,30 penned in and for Henry II’s Anglo-Norman court, and Chaucer’s House of Fame and Legend of Good Women.) 31 How, then, do we begin making sense of the Aeneid’s place in Renaissance France? By studying seven full or partial translations of the Aeneid realized between 1483 and 1582, Valerie Worth-Stylianou makes several trends clear in terms of how translation functions as appropriation and how appropriation is always in one sense a reflection on the text’s genre and place within the Virgilian corpus.32 She shows that a first pattern, echoing the growth of humanist scholarship and largely in line with what is known of the history of print culture in general, is a gradual but definite shift from prose to verse, a change that relates directly to the text’s perceived genre, i.e. the Aeneid, often seen as a prose romance in the early years of sixteenth-century France, again earned its full status as verse epic. As Worth is careful to point out, the development was not perfectly linear. Indeed, the famous remark (made by D.R. Stuart) that every age “has tended to fashion a Virgil after its own image,” proves quickly insufficient, in that many ages (and Early Modern France is no exception) fashion many Virgils for many reasons.33 Hélisenne de Crenne’s Les Quatre Premiers Livres des Eneydes du treselegant poete Virgil (1541) is a prose romance version of the Aeneid which discounts Octovien de Saint-Gelais’ preference for rhyming decasyllabic couplets in his 1509 translation. Even evo (Florence: B. Seeber, 1896), available as Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. M. Benecke, intro. Robinson Ellis (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1966). 30 A modern French translation is provided by Le Roman d’Enéas, trans. Martine Thiry-Stassin (Paris: Champion, 1985). For perspectives on its status as romance, see Raymond Cormier, One Heart, One Mind: The Rebirth of Virgil’s Hero in Medieval French Romance (University, Mississippi: Romance Monographs, 1973); Jean-Charles Huchet, Le Roman médiéval (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984); Jerome Singerman, Under Clouds of Poesy: Poetry and Truth in French and English Reworkings of the Aeneid, 1160–1513 (New York: Garland, 1986). On the key topic of fatum (a defining characteristic of epic, but here in romance), see Dirk Jürgen Blask, Geschehen und Geschick im altfranzösischen Eneas-Roman (Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 1984). 31 On these works as romance versions of the Aeneid, see Chapter 5 (Roman d’Eneas) and Chapter 6 (Chaucer) of Christopher Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 32 In addition to the anonymous author of the Livre des Eneydes (1483), the translators are Octovien de Saint-Gelais, Hélisienne de Crenne, Louis Des Masures, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre Trédéhan, and the two brothers Robert and Antoine Le Chevalier d’Agneaux. 33 D.R. Stuart, quoted from Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns, p. 27. In his review of Ziolkowski’s book, William M. Porter makes a similar critique of Stuart’s phrase, suggesting that Virgil and the Moderns shows “that a single age can possess an almost mind-boggling diversity of Virgils: a popularized Virgil, a protofascist Virgil, a protoChristian Virgil, a hermetic Virgil, a millenarist Virgil, an agrarian Virgil, and so on and so on” (Modern Philology, 91:1 [August 1996]: 60–63, p. 61).

INTRODUCTION 11

this exception, though, connects the wider ongoing debate between epic verse and prose romance, as evidenced, for example, by Etienne Dolet’s recasting of his Latin mini-epic – Francisci Valesii, Gallorum regis, fata (The Fates of the King of the Gauls, François Ier) (1539) – into French prose as Les Gestes de Françoys de Valoys (1540), a generic shift that Worth has studied elsewhere.34 Domestication of the Aeneid in medieval Europe often went hand-in-hand with allegorization.35 This, too, is something that reverses itself throughout the Early Modern period. The second main trend identified by Worth (in addition to this shift from prose romance to verse epic) is that the Aeneid was, in sixteenth-century French translations, repeatedly appropriated in matters of national identity. One of Worth’s closing comments is particularly striking, that the most successful translation of Aeneid in sixteenthcentury France, Louis Des Masures’ L’Eneide de Virgile (1547–1560), was also the least politicized, the one that most greatly emphasized not appropriation, but rather that epic’s timeless and eternal qualities as text.36 The other chapters of the volume that deal with the Aeneid develop within this overall framework, showing that the Aeneid was not much appropriated in the first half of the sixteenth century in France, as evidenced inter alia by the small number of Virgilian epics written at this period. It would take many decades for the allegorized medieval Aeneid to give way to something more modern. To approach this topic, Phillip John Usher studies a series of eighty-two enamels, produced in Limoges in the 1530s, which recount visually the story of Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy. Based on engravings executed by Sebastian Brant for a 1502 edition of the Aeneid by Johannis Grüninger, the French enamels have their own style and priorities. In Usher’s article, they function to enter into a discussion about the plurality of readerly approaches to the Aeneid in 1530s France. Although retaining much of Brant’s original style, the French enamels testify to the presence of a classicizing and Italianate influence. In addition to emphasizing Aeneas’ role as hermeneutic guide, and de-emphasizing Roman glory, the enamels are of interest in their depiction of Aeneid 6. Following the lead of medieval allegorization in general and of Silvestris in particular, the Limoges enamels give specific attention to the sixth book. The enamels pursue and publicize 34 See Valerie Worth, “Etienne Dolet: From a Neo-Latin Epic Poem to a Chronicle in French Prose,” Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani, ed. I.D. McFarlane (Binghampton NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1986), pp. 423–9. See also the appropriate sections in the same author’s Practising Translation in Renaissance France. The Example of Etienne Dolet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). For a recent perspective on this text and on a reflection on its status as epic, see Phillip John Usher, “Narrating National Defeat: Recuperative Epic in Renaissance France,” Romance Studies, 28:3 (2010): 166–78. 35 See Chapters 3 and 4 of Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England. 36 Louis Des Masures published the first two books in 1547, the first four in 1552, the fifth book in 1557, and all twelve books in 1560.

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such a reading of the catabasis as a search for knowledge of virtue and vice leading to knowledge (scientia). The images highlight the presence of the sibyl at Aeneas’ side, securing the episode’s pedagogical and allegorical function within the epic. A moral reading is emphasized instead of the plot. Thus, the meeting with Palinurus in the underworld occupies strikingly little space compared with the (necessarily Christian) Mouth of Hell. In his conclusion, Usher underscores that the enamels are contemporaneous with Robert Estienne’s 1532 edition of Virgil’s Opera, the last great folio edition of Virgil to include the various commentaries. In subsequent editions, editors would criticize the search for allegory – and they would likely have found the enamels quite out of date. The enamels thus stand as a monument to a preRenaissance and overly Christianized Aeneid that would soon disappear as humanist scholarship, new translations, and the poets of the Pléiade restored and appropriated the epic. The Aeneid was obviously a central text for poets of the Pléiade who, as is obvious from Du Bellay’s comments on the long poëme in his Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoise (1548), in which he makes the following request of the future French poet: “choisis-moi quelqu’un de ces beaux vieux romans français, comme un Lancelot, un Tristan, ou autres: et en fais renaître au monde une admirable Iliade et laborieuse Enéide” (For me select one of those fine old French romances, a Lancelot, a Tristan, or some other one. And then from it give birth to an admirable Iliad or a worked-over Aeneid).37 Cultural renewal – and in particular the renewal of the French language and of the French literary canon – would be made possible thanks to epic: Du Bellay says that it is the epic that “fer[a] hausser la tête [à notre pauvre langage]” (will allow our poor language to raise its head in pride) (p. 240) and that it will make French equal “aux superbes langues grecque et latine” (to the superb Greek and Latin tongues) (p. 241). Such a program was not unique to Du Bellay. Several years later in his Art Poëtique (1555), Jacques Peletier du Mans, another associate of the Pléiade, echoes Du Bellay’s endorsement of the epic’s status and potential for giving the French language the prestige that many felt it lacked: “L’œuvre héroïque est celui (sic) qui donne le prix, et le vrai titre de Poète” (Epic is the kind of work that will win the poet laurels and earn him his title).38 The fact that epic was seen as the most prestigious and most sought-after genre in the period can be traced through the liminary encomiastic verse that accompanies Ronsard’s Franciade (1572).39 There we read, in a poem by Ronsard’s secretary, Amadis Jamyn, about how much “la 37 Joachim Du Bellay, Les Regrets, Les Antiquités de Rome, La Défense et illustration, p. 241. 38 Jacques Peletier du Mans, L’Art poétique (Lyon: de Tournes, 1555). 39 For a reading of these encomiastic poems, see Phillip John Usher, “Of Mute Dolphins and Taking Leave of Kings: The Praise Poems of Ronsard’s Franciade,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 71:1 (2009): 61–75.

INTRODUCTION 13

trompette ame du belliqueur / Passe d’un son hardy la musette rurale” (the warrior’s trumpeting soul / Thunders more greatly than the rustic flute), a comparison between genres here invoked to describe how much Ronsard surpasses all other poets), a hint that Ronsard’s status as a poet depends on his status as author of epic.40 Other articles in the present volume unveil how Virgil was appropriated by two key poets of the Pléiade, namely Du Bellay and his rival Ronsard. Although Du Bellay himself never wrote an epic, he did make attempts in that direction,41 he did translate several parts of the Aeneid, an appropriation studied here by Corinne Noirot and Todd Reeser. Noirot focuses on Du Bellay’s appropriation of Palinurus; Reeser on his articulation of Dido. The two studies underscore that translation, here, was much closer to creative imitation – as Du Bellay defined it in the Deffence – and that two of the Aeneid’s most memorable characters were appropriated to specific ends. Reeser argues that Du Bellay’s translations of the Aeneid can be read productively as “[a] sophisticated statement on the act and role of translation itself,” in constant dialogue with ideas about the French nation – specifically as affirmation and critique of France. Amongst other things, Reeser studies Du Bellay’s choice to place side-by-side renderings of Aeneid 4 and Ovid’s response to Virgil (Heroides 7), demonstrating the inherent plurality of Du Bellay’s collection, in which Dido’s Ovidian lament gestures towards “Roman infidelity instead of a step toward Roman hegemony,” thus questioning Virgil’s authority over the subject matter. Furthermore, Reeser shows that the presence of the two texts (Ovid/Virgil) alongside Du Bellay’s “Complainte du desespéré” (Complaint of a Desperate Man) allow the poet to appropriate for himself Dido’s vocabulary and emotions, such that he can “hide and then resurrect his textual self in a kind of compensatory translation, and to put those two selves in dialogue.” As Reeser comments, “To translate is to put the national and its others in dialogue, to allow one to critique the other.” Noirot focuses on Du Bellay’s translations of Palinurus’ death (to which Reeser also makes passing reference), again demonstrating Du Bellay’s preference for the plurality of readings of a given moment in the Aeneid, for he translates the versions of Palinurus’ death in both his partial translation of Aeneid 5 (where Palinurus’ death is first recounted) and in his full translation of Aeneid 6 (where it is accounted anew to Aeneas during his catabasis). The episode shows Aeneas at a moment of weakness, for he has just lost his helmsman. Du Bellay’s appropriation of the moment, which portrays male bonding and service, thus suggests the need for a meta-poetic reading 40 Pierre de Ronsard, La Franciade (1572), Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: Nizet, 1982), p. 22. The translation is from Ronsard, The Franciad (1572), ed. and trans. Phillip John Usher (New York: AMS Press, 2010). 41 On this topic, see Phillip John Usher, “Victor est quisquis patriam tuetur: Du Bellay and the Elusive French Epic” (forthcoming).

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that delineates a complex relationship between poet and king. Noirot reads Palinurus as a figure of the second, someone at once in charge and yet secondin-command, to which she likens Du Bellay as leader of a generation of poets and guide for the king. Part of the point, suggests Noirot, is that Du Bellay is underscoring the importance of aides and friends for the king. Du Bellay’s texts are thus a celebration of friendly (princely) care, but also a demonstration of human vulnerability and a set of carefully articulated warnings. She also studies the echoes of the Palinurus to be found in the Regrets and the Palinurus schema in terms of Du Bellay’s poetic rival, Ronsard. From these two chapters, it thus appears that Du Bellay’s appropriation of the Aeneid is both subtle and plural. By the actual French words with which he rendered Virgil’s text and by the editorial choices, Du Bellay tells his reader not to accept Virgil’s Aeneid in any wholesale fashion. Rather, he encourages the reader to consider various points of view on key episodes, setting in dialogue Virgil’s and Ovid’s accounts of the story of Dido and Virgil’s two accounts of the death of Palinurus. In both cases, Du Bellay seeks to articulate the poet’s position in relation to the nation and the king; but in neither case is that relationship a simple one, such as the French king being a new Augustus. Rather, Dido and Palinurus allow Du Bellay to express the ambiguity, uncertainty but also hope for the poet’s role and relationship to the king. In turning to Ronsard, we move from Du Bellay’s call for epic (in the Deffence) and what Reeser calls his “crawl toward epic” to the Franciade, the only epic of any importance produced by a member of the Pléiade.42 The importance of Virgil for Ronsard’s epic is unmistakable, as can be gleaned by glancing at the footnotes of any scholarly edition and some aspects of which have already received critical treatment.43 Katherine Maynard’s contribution to the present volume therefore demonstrates how Ronsard’s epic, while a narrative about empire in the same way the Aeneid is often thought to be, differs from its Virgilian model as it plots space via narrative. She demonstrates that whereas Virgil’s Aeneid functions largely in terms of “place-memory,” which connects and contextualizes Aeneas’ journey, the Franciade establishes rather “sites of amnesia,” a difference that Maynard 42 For a modern English translation and an introduction to the text and its political and literary contexts, see Ronsard, The Franciad (1572), ed. and trans. Usher. 43 Donald Stone, for example, has shown the importance of the Aeneid in Book 3’s love plot. See Donald Stone, “Dido and Aeneas. Theme and Vision in the Third Book of the Franciade,” Neophilologus, 49 (1965): 289–97. In a more general way, François Rigolot has demonstrated how Ronsard positions himself as a successor to Virgil in the same way that Virgil succeeded Homer. See François Rigolot, “Entre Homère et Virgile: Ronsard théoricien de l’imitation,” Ronsard. Colloque de Neuchâtel (1985), ed. A. Gendre (Geneva: Droz, 1987), pp. 163–78, reworked in English as “Between Homer and Virgil. Mimesis and Imitation in Ronsard’s Epic Theory,” Renaissance Rereadings. Intertext and Context, ed. M.C. Horowitz (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 67–79.

INTRODUCTION 15

explains in terms of the need to forgive and forget in this period of religious and civil strife. Other critics have discussed the issues of Virgilian spaces in the Franciade;44 Maynard’s particular contribution here is to underscore, as indeed do Noirot and Reeser in respect of Du Bellay, that for the poets of the Pléiade, although they situate epic (and in particular Virgilian epic) as a top priority for literary renewal, the Aeneid cannot be imported as is. Rather, it can be adapted and molded to fit the specific circumstances of Early Modern France, not only in royal or imperial praise, but also to express the period’s ambiguities and uncertainties, its fears and regrets, the need to forget as well as remember. *

P.J.U.

Thus divided into two sections, the following pages trace out some of the ways in which Virgil can be read not just as a source of French Renaissance literature, but as a set of modes through which identities – authorial, communitarian, and national – were negotiated. We hope that the ideas discussed herein will not only call for, but also help to shape, further study of Virgil’s impact on the literature and history of Renaissance France. Within the interstices of each chapter and stretching out from the footnotes, numerous possibilities of quite different types suggest themselves. Further study of particular translations or adaptations would be welcome, such as of Michel Guillaume’s translation of the Bucolics (1516), fascinatingly accompanied by other poems – Virgille du Vergier, La lettre pytagoras y graecum, L’invention des muses, Le chant des seraines, and La rose (by Ausonius) – and by plentiful commentary. More study of the presence and reception in France of Virgilian commentaries and of Italian works like Maffeo’s would likewise be welcome. A full exploration of the Virgilian epic tradition in Renaissance France is clearly long overdue – the list of epics provided by Klára Csűrös is a veritable call for action.45 The growing interest in gardens, landscaping and their connection to (proto-)georgic forms should also generate more study.46 Many other possible projects are clearly on the horizon of the various chapters. The appearance of David Scott Wilson-Okamura’s Virgil in the Renaissance, which came into print too late for the chapters or this introduction to enter into a dialogue with it, as well as the forthcoming Virgil Encyclopedia, 44 See, most recently, François Rouget, “Sans plus partir de France: Ronsard et l’écriture du voyage,” Romanic Review, 94.1–2 (2003): 185–205 and Phillip John Usher, “Non haec litora suasit Apollo: la Crète dans la Franciade de Ronsard,” La Revue des Amis de Ronsard, 22 (May 2009): 65–89. 45 Klára Csűrös, Variétés et vicissitudes du genre épique. 46 See, for example, Tom Conley, “Civil War and French Better Homes and Gardens,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 98:4 (1999): 725–59.

16 VIRGILIAN

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will also likely bring new impetus to inquiry.47 It is notable, indeed, that the editors of the Virgil Encyclopedia, for example, purposely commissioned articles on authors of Early Modern France, such as Montaigne, Ronsard, and Corneille.48 Montaigne, for one, is notably absent from the present volume – his relationship has been frequently taken up elsewhere.49 Whatever else still needs to be researched, the contributors of this volume make it evidently clear that the ways in which Virgil was translated, adapted, and appropriated, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, by the writers of Renaissance France, mark a turning point in the long history of Virgilian interpretation. As medieval allegory and sprawling commentary gave way to newer scholarly editions and translations and while at the same time French writers made use of Virgilian texts to formulate various kinds of French identities, Virgil became at once more foreign – less Christian, more Roman – and more intimate, for his works were now part of how French writers came to understand themselves and their nation.

47 David Scott Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance; Virgil Encyclopedia, edd. Thomas and Ziolkowski. 48 Phillip John Usher, entries “Montaigne,” “Ronsard” and “Corneille” in Virgil Encyclopedia, edd. Thomas and Ziolkowski. 49 A chapter was commissioned about Montaigne and Virgil, but it could not be included in the final volume. For other points of departure on Montaigne’s relationship to Virgil, see Erica Harth, “Sur des vers de Virgile (III, 5): Antinomy and Totality in Montaigne,” French Forum, 2:1 (1977): 3–21; Mary B. McKinley, Words in a Corner: Studies in Montaigne’s Latin Quotations (Lexington KY: French Forum, 1981); Cathy Yandell, “Corps and corpus: Montaigne’s ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’,” Modern Language Studies, 16:3 (1986): 77–87; Marc-André Wiesmann, “Intertextual Labyrinths: Ariadne’s Lament in Montaigne’s ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’,” Renaissance Quarterly, 53:3 (2000): 792–820.

PART I PASTORAL AND GEORGIC MODES

1

Virgil and Marot: Imitation, Satire and Personal Identity Bernd Renner The importance of Virgil for Clément Marot is evident from the fact that the first text of his first published collection, the Adolescence Clementine (1532), is a translation of Virgil’s first eclogue – also Virgil’s earliest published work (c. 39–38 BCE). Marot’s obvious intention to draw on the prestige of the Greco-Latin tradition is, of course, in tune with the general aspirations of Renaissance humanists, but the connection is all the more important for a poet at the very beginning of his literary career. Already in this early poem, Marot sought, via his connection to Virgil, to appropriate literary authority and, perhaps even most importantly, to hint at the future glory that an association with Virgil might promise. Many aspects of the relationship between Virgil and Clément Marot have already been studied by critics, such as Marot’s translations and imitations of Virgil, their status as royal poets – Marot repeatedly pleaded for patronage and protection as did Virgil –, and their stylistic and poetic similarities (even though Marot is, in many respects, closer to Ovid).1 In the present article, emphasis is to be placed not on Virgilian intertexts, a topic treated quite convincingly by many other critics, but on the poetic, and more precisely satirical, uses and implications 1 See for example Florian Preisig, “L’Intertexte virgilien et ses enjeux dans L’Enfer de Marot,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme of Renaissance, 57 (1995): 569–84, p. 584. For Marot’s debt to Virgil, see also Alice Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” Revue du seizième siècle, 18 (1931): 1–77; Cynthia Skenazi, “De Virgile à Marot: l’‘Eglogue au Roy, soubs les noms de Pan, & Robin’,” Clément Marot, Prince des poëtes François, 1496–1996, Actes du Colloque International de Cahors en Quercy, edd. Gérard Defaux and Michel Simonin (Paris: Champion, 1996), pp. 57–66; Michel Magnien, “Marot et l’humanisme (suite): Jean de Boyssoné et le Maro Gallicus,” La Génération Marot: Poètes français et néo-latins (1515–1550), Actes du Colloque International de Baltimore, ed. Defaux (Paris: Champion, 1997), pp. 261–79. For Marot and Ovid, see for example Georg Luck, “Tenerorum lusor amorum: Marot disciple d’Ovide,” Clément Marot, Prince des poëtes François, 1496–1996, Actes du Colloque, edd. Defaux and Simonin, pp. 67–76. See the introduction to the volume for more general information on Virgil’s overall presence and impact in France in the period.

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of what Florian Preisig has so aptly named “le jeu Marot/Maro,” i.e. the play on Marot’s own name, homophonous with Publius Vergilius Maro.2 The fact that Preisig talks of a “game” hints at the ludic background of Marot’s exploitation of what was, in a first instance, merely a lucky coincidence. But this “game” goes far beyond the harmless “badinage marotique” (Marotic jesting) that was so unjustly tied to Marot’s literary achievements by Boileau. The Maro/Marot homophony actually opens up onto a complex and frequently subtle exercise in serio ludere, an exercise tailor-made for a poet whose Erasmian, evangelical and satirical inclinations are well established. Indeed, satire, the form most closely linked to extra-literary circumstances as well as to Horatian utile dulci mixtum, requires the deepest humanist learning, a moral purpose and aesthetic variety – hence without a doubt its virtual omnipresence in sixteenth-century France.3

Marot and Creative Imitation The aim of the following pages, then, is to trace three key ways in which Marot exploits the Maro/Marot homophony in a process of forging his own poetic identity. Firstly, I will show how the homophony functions in Marot’s depiction of his relationship to François 1er. Secondly, focus will be placed on the centrality of that same homophony in Marot’s quarrel with one of his rivals, François Sagon. Thirdly, I will discuss the homophony in Marot’s L’Enfer. My analysis attempts to add a new element to the recent discussion of the complex development of the poetic persona, whose beginnings are 2 Florian Preisig, Clément Marot et les métamorphoses de l’auteur à l’aube de la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2004), p. 159; see pp. 109–26 and 159–63 for a summary of the various occurrences of this jeu. 3 Sixteenth-century satire has increasingly come to the fore in the critical discourse of the last decade or two. In addition to SATVRA: Ein Kompendium moderner Studien zur Satire, ed. Bernhard Fabian (New York: Olms, 1975); and La Satire au temps de la Renaissance, ed. Marie Thérèse Jones-Davies (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1986); see Wells Scott Blanchard, Scholars’ Bedlam: Menippean Satire in the Renaissance (Lewisburg PA: Bucknell University Press, 1995); the numerous studies of Pascal Debailly, especially “Plaidoyer pour la satirologie,” XVIIe siècle, 205 (1999): 765–74; or Sophie Duval and Marc Martinez, La Satire (littératures française et anglaise) (Paris: Armand Colin, 2000). For the latest assessments and a comprehensive bibliography, see La Satire dans tous ses états: Le “meslange satyricque” à la Renaissance française, ed. Bernd Renner (Geneva: Droz, 2009). For satire in Marot, see above all Charles E. Kinch, La Poésie satirique de Clément Marot (Paris: Boivin, 1940); Jean Eudes Girot, “La Poétique du coq-à-l’âne: Autour d’une version inédite du ‘Grup’ de Clément Marot (?),” La Génération Marot. Poètes français et néo-latins (1515–1550), Actes du Colloque, ed. Defaux, pp. 315–46; David Claivaz, Ce que j’ay oublié d’y mettre, Essai sur l’invention poétique dans les coqà-l’âne de Clément Marot (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 2000); and Bernd Renner, “‘Clément devise dedans Venise’: Marot’s Satirical Poetry in Exile,” Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 12 (2005): 139–54.

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commonly tied to Marot (at least in France).4 This aspect provides a pertinent but often neglected parallel between Virgil and Marot: both, as David Quint has noted for Virgil, “explor[e] the link between poetry and human identity,” although Marot’s appropriation of the Virgilian approach seems even more personal.5 The link between the two poets, triggered initially by homophony and well in tune with the custom of neo-Latin poets who quite frequently bestowed such attributes on each other – and Marot’s humanist friends are no exceptions to this phenomenon – is to be found at least as much in extraliterary and personal circumstances, reasons, motivations and objectives of Marot’s writing, as in the intertext.6 As Marot hones his craft, the homophony gradually ends up taking on a life of its own that functions as an illustration of Marot’s poetic genius, of the writer’s personal situation, of his own distinct voice and therefore of his persona at this crucial crossroads in literary history and, more generally, of contemporary poetic and rhetorical theories. Before moving on to the first of my three sections, it is worth recalling the status that Marot has regained among sixteenth-century scholars in the last fifteen years. In addition to being a key figure of the French Renaissance in his own right, he is doubtless the most important representative of the transition – or poetic revolution – between the age of the grands rhétoriqueurs and the lyrical heights of the Pléiade, not in the least because of his “creative imitation” of classical models, such as Virgil and Ovid, but also Horace, Martial, and others.7 Marot’s translation of the first eclogue – mentioned 4 This is one of the main topics of Preisig’s study, Clément Marot et les métamorphoses de l’auteur à l’aube de la Renaissance. See especially p. 126. See also François Rigolot, “Clément Marot et l’émergence de la conscience littéraire à la Renaissance,” La Génération Marot: Poètes français et néo-latins (1515–1550), Actes du Colloque, ed. Defaux, pp. 21–34; François Rigolot, Poésie et Renaissance (Paris: Seuil, 2002), pp. 99–113; and Gérard Defaux, Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne: L’Ecriture comme présence (Paris: Champion-Slatkine, 1987). 5 David Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 32. 6 Among a multitude of examples, one could cite the definitive edition of Nicolas Bourbon’s Nugae (1537) or the various epitaphs at Marot’s death; see Preisig, Clément Marot et les métamorphoses de l’auteur à l’aube de la Renaissance, pp. 116–22. 7 See Gérard Defaux’s representative observation in his introduction to his edition of Marot’s Œuvres poétiques (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1996), v. 1, p. clxviii: “Marot avait pourtant fait accomplir à la poésie française une prodigieuse métamorphose. En l’espace d’une trentaine d’années, il l’avait conduite de la Grande Rhétorique et de ses vers équivoqués aux strophes lyriques de Ronsard et aux confidences des Regrets. Il l’avait nourrie de la sève humaniste et l’avait enrichie de nouveaux genres, l’épigramme, le cantique, l’églogue, le chant nuptial, l’élégie, voire le sonnet.” (Marot had however changed French poetry in a prodigious manner. In the space of thirty years, he led its development from grande rhétorique and equivocal rime to the lyrical stanzas of Ronsard and the confidential tones of the Regrets. He brought to it the spirit of humanism and new genres, the epigram, the cantique, the eclogue, the wedding song, the elegy, perhaps even the sonnet). See also Pauline M. Smith, “Clément Marot and Humanism,” Humanism and Letters in

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above – is his first step towards becoming not a translator-scholar, but a translator-poet. His goal was to write an adaptation, a “French naturalization,” of Virgil’s work, hence the proliferation of what might be called errors and inaccuracies – such as the translation of “servitium” by “service” instead of “esclavage.”8 Such changes both made Virgil’s texts more accessible to a contemporary public and constituted Marot’s first step towards forming his own literary identity.9 The elimination of Greek and Roman (cultural) references is even more extensive in later eclogues, thus underlining the process.10 In the second text of the Adolescence, Le Temple de Cupido, also inspired by Virgil, Marot’s introduction of “Ferme Amour” (Strong Love) becomes a mediator between the classical past and the contemporary context, adapting the “Amour venerique et ardante” (burning carnal love) of Dido and Aeneas to the “paix divine” (divine peace) of the royal couple François Ier and Renée de France. This “poétique du déplacement” (poetics of displacement) allows for the Christianization of the model and enables the poet to “mieux nous transmettre les vérités que déjà il porte en lui” (better transmit the truths he carries within).11 As Pauline M. Smith observed, “Marot’s work displays a conscious and active participation in the humanist agenda,” namely to transmit, preserve and recreate the past.12 These activities are often organically fused in his texts and symbolize his attempt at establishing an independent voice by means of “transformative imitation,” thus anticipating Joachim Du Bellay’s metaphor of “imitation” as “digestion.” Docile and mechanical word-for-word translation or imitation is of no interest to him and should be left to the François Sagons of this world, as we will see later.13 After all, it is the Age of François Ier: proceedings of the Fourth Cambridge Renaissance Colloquium 19-21 September 1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 1996), pp. 133–50. 8 The terms are from Gillian Jondorf, “Marot’s Première Eglogue de Virgile: Good, Bad, or Interesting?” Humanism and Letters in the Age of François Ier, pp. 115–32, 123 and 116. See pp. 116–24 for a discussion of such alleged mistranslations that rehabilitates Marot. In general, the struggle between literal and free translation was a major concern for translators at the time; see Glyn P. Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France (Geneva: Droz, 1984). 9 See Skenazi’s representative observation on this process (“De Virgile à Marot,” Clément Marot, Prince des poëtes François, 1496–1996, Actes du Colloque, edd. Defaux and Simonin, p. 66): “Sans cesser de mimer son modèle, l’imitateur n’imite personne puisque son activité a une portée ontologique; elle est découverte de soi” (While still imitating his model, the imitator imitates no-one, since his activity has ontological reach, for the latter implies self-discovery). 10 See Jondorf, “Marot’s Première Eglogue de Virgile,” p. 125. 11 The terms are taken from Defaux’s introduction in Œuvres poétiques, v. 1, pp. xxxvii–xxxix. 12 Smith, “Clément Marot and Humanism,” p. 134. 13 See also Smith’s comments on the difficult distinction between translation and adaptation at the time (“Clément Marot and Humanism,” p. 147). On the role of the translator, see also Marot’s epigrams to Antoine Macault (Œuvres poétiques, ed. Defaux, v. 2, pp. 323–4; Book 3, epigrams 66 and 67) and Thomas Sebillet, Art poétique français,

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Marot who is considered the “prince des poëtes françoys” (prince of French poets) well before Pierre de Ronsard, and who is the main vernacular model in the first French Art poétique by Thomas Sebillet (1548), a treatise that has more in common with Du Bellay’s more famous manifesto, La Deffence, et illustration de la langue francoyse (1549) than is often admitted.

Marot, Maro and François Ier At the most basic level, the Virgilian homophony lends authority to Marot’s requests for protection and financial support directed at his king by endowing his name and persona with a certain intrinsic glory, a sign of things to come.14 At the same time, it lifts the king to the status of Maecenas and of the future Augustus, thus transforming the protection and support of his poet into an illustration of his own glory, as is perhaps most evident in the laudatory preface to Marot’s translation of the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Marot begins the volume, addressed to the “tresillustre, et treschrestien Roy des Françoys, premier de ce nom” (most celebrated and most Christian King of the French, Francis, the first of this name), by noting as follows: “pour rendre l’œuvre presentable à si grande majesté, fauldroit premierement, que vostre plus que humaine puissance transmuast la Muse de Marot en celle de Maro” (in order to make this work presentable to such a great majesty, it would first be necessary that your more than human power change Marot’s Muse into Maro’s Muse) (406–7).15 The topos of humility thus puts the burden on the king to rise to the level of his august Roman predecessors, a moral obligation that the poet’s satire will not fail to explore. These lines precede a translation of Ovid, suggesting that Marot’s connection to Virgil has much more to do with status and with the Renaissance concept of transformation of models, rather than with narrow poetic criteria. The “Epistre envoyée à Monsieur d’Anguyen” (1544) underlines such observations, as Marot draws parallels to both Virgil and Homer: Plus ne m’orrez Venus mettre en avant, Ne de flageol soner chant Bucolique, Ains soneray la Trompete bellique D’un grand Virgile ou d’Homere ancien: Pour celebrer les haults faictz d’Auguyen, Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance, ed. Francis Goyet (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1990), pp. 145–7. 14 For the relationship between Marot and François Ier, see for example Ehsan Ahmed, Clément Marot: The Mirror of the Prince (Charlottesville VA: Rookwood, 2005). 15 Œuvres poétiques, ed. Gérard Defaux (Paris: Bordas-Dunod, 1996), v. 2. Unless otherwise stated, all subsequent references in the article will also be to volume 2 of this edition.

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Lequel sera (contre Fortune amere) Nostre Achiles, & Marot son Homere.  (p. 709, lines 70–6) (You will no longer hear me praise Venus, Nor on my flute sing bucolic songs, Rather I will take up the war trumpet Of great Virgil or ancient Homer To celebrate the great deeds of Anguyen, Who will be [against bitter Fortune] Our Achilles and Marot will be his Homer.)

Once again, it is clear that the poet is above all interested in his own brand of transformative imitation of the Ancients for his own glory and the glory of French letters. As has been suggested before, it seems in these lines as if Marot was about to undertake yet another facet of his complex translatio studii, a Homeric epic, a genre still missing from his project of “French naturalization” of the Ancients, when he passed away somewhat abruptly. Two more examples will further enrich these comments on Marot’s Virgilian connection to François Ier. In his “Dieu Gard … à la Court” (1537), Marot reiterates the vital protection of his king, which allowed him to return from his first exile in Ferrara and Venice: Remerciez ce noble Roy de France, Roy plus esmeu de moy de pitié juste, Que ne fut pas envers Ovide Auguste. Car d’adoulcir son exil le pria, Ce qu’accordé Auguste ne luy a. Non que je veuille (Ovide) me vanter D’avoir mieulx sceu, que ta muse chanter. Trop plus que moy tu as de vehemence Pour esmouvoir à mercy, & clemence: Mais assez bon persuadeur me tien Ayant ung Prince humain plus, que le tien.

(p. 134, lines 44–54)

(Thank this noble king of France, A king more moved by me in just pity Than ever was Augustus by Ovid, For he requested that his exile be relaxed, Which Augustus did not grant him. Not that I wish [Ovid] to sing my own praises For having better sung than your muse. Much more than I do you have the power To cause as much emotion as you want, and clemency, But I hold myself to be fairly persuasive Having a prince more human than yours.)

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In a kind of rhetorical chiasmus, the humility topos – Marot’s inferiority to his classical models – is cleverly combined with lavish praise for the new and improved version of Augustus, François Ier, whose superiority is just as cleverly tied to another facet of Marot’s onomastic strategy: clemency. By thus conflating a quality (clemency), his first name (Clément), and his sponsor François Ier, Marot strengthens his association with his protector and subtly undermines the humility topos. Marot thus again stresses the monarch’s moral perfection, which is solely responsible for compensating for his own shortcomings.16 L’Enfer will further develop such intrinsic onomastic and satirical links between the poet and his king. The epistle “Au Roy, nouvellement sorty de maladie,” written in exile in Ferrara, does not exploit the Virgilian homophony explicitly, but seems noteworthy as one of the most daring confirmations of the king’s support. In the poet’s forced absence, Marot’s main adversaries, François Sagon and Charles de La Hueterie, tried to displace him from his position at court. Despite his troubles, Marot was forcefully lobbying for an unequivocal reaffirmation of François Ier’s support in the Dieu Gard: O Sire donq, renverse leurs langaiges: Vueilles permettre (en despit d’eulx) mes gaiges Passer les montz, & jusqu’icy venir, Pour à l’estude ung temps m’entretenir Soubz Celius, de qui tant on aprent. Et si desir apres cela te prent De m’appeler en la terre gallique, Tu trouveras ceste langue italique Passablement dessus la mienne entée, Et la latine en moy plus augmentée, Si que l’exil, qu’ilz pensent si nuysant, M’aura rendu plus apte, & plus duysant A te servir myeulx à ta fantaisie, Non seullement en l’art de poesie, Ains en affaire, en temps de paix ou guerre, Soit pres de toy, soit en estrange terre.  (p. 93, lines 37–52) 16 See most notably in L’Enfer, where his first name, which he shares with Pope Clement VII, acts as a powerful defense against the accusation of Lutheranism: “Car tu es rude, & mon nom est Clement: / Et pour monstrer, qu’à grand tort on me triste, / Clement n’est poinct le nom de Lutheriste: / Ains est le nom (à bien l’interpreter) / Du plus contraire ennemy de Luther: C’est le sainct nom du Pape” (For your are harsh and I am Clement / And, to show that I am being badly treated, / Clement is in no way the name of a Lutheran. / It is, rather, the name [when well understood] / Of Luther’s most vehement enemy, It is the sacred name of the pope) (348–52). See also François Rigolot, Poétique et Onomastique (Geneva: Droz, 1977), p. 66. In this context preoccupied with ethical questions, we also see the typical satirical image of the cure applied to the difficult situation of the exile (“adoulcir”).

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(Oh Sir, throw over their languages. Please allow my wages [in spite of them] To cross the mountains and arrive here, So that they might keep me in studies for a while Under Celius, from whom one learns so much. And should you so desire thereafter To call me to the land of Gaul, You will find this Italic language Fairly well grafted onto my own And Latin, in me, much augmented, Such that exile, which they think so harmful, Will have made me more apt and more fitting To serve you better as I wish, Not only in the art of poetry, But in business, in times of peace or war, Either near you, or when in foreign lands.)

Marot’s confidence in his king’s unwavering support is quite astounding in these lines. Yet again, the poet’s humility – as well as his forced exile and personal dilemmas (persecution, censorship, the king’s disappointment) – are transformed into assets. They end up being subtly relativized, even negated, as Marot presents his stay at the renowned humanist court of Ferrara as a pleasant, exciting and stimulating educational sojourn. Thanks to the presence of famous humanist scholars such as Celio Calcagnini, the hopes of his scheming adversaries will be drastically altered. Once more, a satirical remedy of ills can be observed in these lines. Even the common reproach of his weak Latin, which was not unfounded but quite exaggerated, would be nullified by this “educational” journey.17 As we noticed before, Marot’s artful handling of the situation presents the king with an easy choice, as he will be the main benefactor of his own charitable actions towards his poet. François Ier’s unwavering support will turn out to be solely in his favour, as he will be able to call upon the services of a much more skilled and erudite servant upon Marot’s return. It is thus in the king’s fundamental interest, not so much in Marot’s, as he would have us believe, to grant his poet’s requests: securing the poet’s rise to Virgilian status would greatly enhance the reputation of François Ier’s court. Consequently, both protagonists need to present a united front against their common enemies, and Marot’s art, flourishing thanks to royal support, will help them vanquish those adversaries.18 17 The most commonly quoted comment on this topic, Boyssoné’s “Marotus Latine nescivit,” was grossly taken out of context and usually misinterpreted, as Magnien has shown, “Marot et l’humanisme,” pp. 275–7; see also his commentary and edition of Boyssoné’s letter from which the quote is taken: “Lettre de Boyssoné à Jacques Delexi (1er mars 1547 [N.S.?]),” Clément Marot, Prince des poëtes François, 1496–1996, Actes du Colloque, edd. Defaux and Simonin, pp. 819–24. 18 In another epistle from Ferrara, “Au Roy, du temps de son exil à Ferrare,” Marot

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The king is, therefore, instrumental in fulfilling the ambitious humanist agenda that Marot himself put forward to France’s writers. The Virgilian homophony thus adds a powerful facet, an easily recognizable label and a favourable context to Marot’s request and functions on these occasions as a useful tool of his circumstantial poetry. However, it is only fully exploited as a lyrical, rhetorical and satirical device in situations where Marot sees no other remedy to his dilemmas than to use his poetic genius as a defence and illustration of his status, which brings us to the Querelle Sagon.

Virgil’s Name in the Querelle Sagon The dispute with François Sagon, the ultraconservative secretary of the Abbé de Saint Evroult, begins on 16 August 1534, when the latter severely criticizes the “evangelical” epistle that Marot had composed to celebrate the marriage of Marguerite de Navarre’s niece, Ysabeau d’Albret, with the viscount René de Nohan.19 After claiming that Marot had physically assaulted him, Sagon composed a Défense contre Marot, which was the starting point of a literary dispute that lasted several years and which mobilized France’s humanists. The many intricacies and vast poetic production of this dispute are impossible to retrace here, and I will focus on the use of the Virgilian homophony and the related questions of imitatio and satire. Marot’s most famous contribution to the dispute is his epistle “Le Valet de Marot contre Sagon. Frippelippes, Secretaire de Clement Marot, à Françoys Sagon, Secretaire de l’Abbé de Sainct Evroul” (140–8). Its composition is one of Marot’s last contributions to the Querelle and shows his exasperation with an artistically inferior adversary, unworthy of receiving further responses from the master himself; hence the mask of the servant:

does not cease to present this point: “Certes, ô Roy, si le profond des cueurs / On vault sonder de ces Sorboniqueurs, / Trouvé sera, que de toy ilz se deulent. / Comment douloir? Mais que grand mal te veulent, / Dont tu as faict les Lettres, & les Arts / Plus reluysants, que du temps des Cesars” (For sure, oh King, if one wants to sound out / The depths of the hearts of these Sorbonne chaps, / It will be found that they are in pain for you. / How to have pain? What great ill they wish you, / Whose Literature and Arts you have made / Much more brilliant than in Caesar’s days) (p. 82, v. 49–56). 19 “Epistre presentée à la Royne de Navarre par Madame Ysabeau et deux autres damoyselles habillées en amazones en une mommerie” (75–6). For the Querelle Sagon, see above all Claude Albert Mayer’s edition of Marot’s Œuvres satiriques (London: Athlone Press, 1962); his edition of Clément Marot (Paris: Nizet, 1972), pp. 258–63, 381–94; Philippe Desan, “Le Feuilleton illustré Marot-Sagon,” La Génération Marot: Poètes français et néo-latins (1515–1550), Actes du Colloque, ed. Defaux, pp. 348–80; and Thierry Mantovani, “La Querelle de Marot et de Sagon: essai de mise au point,” La Génération Marot: Poètes français et néo-latins (1515–1550), Actes du Colloque, edd. Defaux and Simonin, pp. 381–404.

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T’advisant, Sot, t’advisant, Veau, T’advisant, valeur d’ung naveau, Que tu ne te veis recevoir Oncques tant d’honneur, que d’avoir Receu une Epistre à oultrance D’ung valet du Maro de France. Et crains, d’une part, qu’on t’en prise: Puis (d’avoir tant de peine prise) J’ay peur, qu’il me soit reproché Qu’ung Asne mort j’ay escorché.  (p. 147–8, lines 247–56) (Warning you, Fool, warning you, Calf, Warning you, you nothing but a turnip, That you will never receive Such an honour as to receive An angry letter from A valet of France’s Maro. I fear that you would be praised for it Then [for having taken such pains] I am afraid that I will be blamed For having flayed a dead Donkey.)

Marot’s exasperation is not only visible in the violent wording of the missive, but even more so in the fact that – here and only here – the poet unequivocally establishes the artistic equality between himself and his model. The (albeit transparent) mask of the servant undoubtedly facilitated this breach of the humility topos. Marot’s supporters, for example Salmon Macrin, Bonaventure Des Périers and Jean de Boyssoné, also focused on the homophony in their contribution to the dispute and were never bound by Marot’s humility. Des Périers confirms Marot’s prominent status: “Veu qu’en Françoys a la veine autant digne / Que Maro l’eut en sa langue Latine” (For his style in French is as worthy / As was Maro’s in the Latin tongue).20 The significance of Marot’s prestigious classical affiliation in what amounts to a struggle for political and poetic supremacy at court is underlined even more clearly in the texts of the opposite camp, which tend to focus even more on the impact of the homophony. In his Coup d’Essay, Sagon, reminiscent of obsolete rhétoriqueur techniques, composed an entire, annoyingly repetitive poem around it: 20 The contributions to the Querelle have been collected in Émile Picot, Querelle de Marot et Sagon (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), n.p. For Boyssoné, see also Magnien, “Marot et l’humanisme,” pp. 267–8 and 273–4. As for the significance of the homophony for his supporters, Smith (“Clément Marot and Humanism,” p. 135) observes that they are “eager to applaud Marot’s achievements, to recognize him for one of their own, to accord him the status of national poet, ‘Maro gallicus ille’ writes Dolet, on a par in his time with Virgil in ancient Rome, paying tribute thereby to Marot’s mastery of his craft and his learning.”

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Maro sans .t. est excellent poete, Mais avec .t. il est tout corrumpu. Il prent de .t. marotte pour houllette Et peult sans .t. ce que plusieurs nont peu. Avecques .t. cest ung beau nom rompu Tourne sans .t. cest le latin de Rome Droict avec .t. le francois dung sot home Maro sans .t. triumphe en latin grave Et avec .t. demonstre en francoys comme Ung glorieux sans raison faict le brave.21 (Marot without a .t. is an excellent poet, But with a .t. he is wholly corrupted. Via the .t. Marotte [Scepter] resembles Houlette [Crook] And without the .t. can do what others can’t. With the .t. it is a name so finely fatigued Without the .t. it is Latin from Rome Straight with the .t. the French of a stupid man Maro without .t. triumphs in serious Latin And with .t. demonstrates in French How a mindless vain man plays at being brave.)

This laborious, mechanical attack illustrates the contrast between Marot’s genius and Sagon’s mediocrity. The latter’s inferiority complex is probably as much at the root of the dispute as the adversaries’ religious differences. Marot is keenly aware of his superiority, the main reason for his lack of modesty in this episode, and does not mince his words when it comes to exposing the impostor Sagon, capable at best of mechanical imitation: “Voy cy que je luy vueil offrir: / Luy bailler mon art & ma muse, / Pour en user comme j’en use” (see what I want to offer. / To give him my art and my muse, / So he can use it as I do).22 It is “Frippelippes” once again, who reveals that Marot had done just that. He had “lent his art” to Sagon, at the beginning of the latter’s career at the famous “Puy de la Conception” poetic competition in Rouen: Vrayement il me vient souvenir, Qu’ung jour vers luy [Marot] te vey venir Pour ung chant Royal luy monstrer, Et le prias de l’accoustrer, Car il ne valoit pas ung œuf. Quand il l’eust refaict tout de neuf, A Rouen en gaignas (paovre homme) D’argent quelcque petite somme, 21 “Dizain addressant audict Marot qui se faisoit nommer Maro par abstraction de .t. lettre finale de son nom,” Picot, Querelle de Marot et Sagon. 22 “Du coq à l’asne faict à Venise par ledict Marot le dernier jour de juillet MVCXXXVI,” p. 108, lines 100–02.

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Qui bien à propos te survint, Pour la verolle qui te vint.23  (p. 143, lines 105–14) (I just remembered That one day towards him [Marot] I saw you headed To show him a Royal Chant, And you asked him to dress it up, For it was not worth an egg. Once he had recreated it from scratch, In Rouen you won [poor man] Some small sum of money, Which arrived at the right moment, Because of the pox you would soon catch.)

Marot paints himself thus not only as a superior artist but also as a good Samaritan, whose kindness is being shamelessly abused by Sagon. His triumph at the Puy of Rouen quite logically incited the secretary of the Abbé de Saint Evroult to rely on the same source, namely Marot, for his first collection, the Coup d’Essay, a title which is taken straight from the preface to the Adolescence Clementine, as “Frippelippes” does not fail to underline: Car tu le grippas au prologue De l’Adolescence à mon maistre: Et qu’on lise à dextre, ou senestre On trouvera (bien je le sçay) Ce petit mot de coup d’essay.  (124–8) (For you seized it from the prologue Of my master’s Adolescence. Read on the right or on the left One will find [I know it well] This little word ‘trial piece’.)

This tendency of mechanical and therefore “bad” imitation is further illustrated in Sagon’s response, for which he, in turn, invents his own servant.24 These observations paint a convincing picture of Sagon’s dilemma, which is then best summarized in Marot’s final contribution to the dispute, the epigram “Contre Sagon.” Here Marot clearly says that purely imitative strategies are 23 Prior to this passage, “Frippelippes” had clearly judged the quality of Sagon’s “unassisted” writings: “Au reste de tes escriptures, / Il ne fault vingt, ne cent ratures / Pour les corriger. Combien doncq? / Seullement une tout du long” (For the rest of your writings, / Twenty or a hundred corrections are not needed, / To make them better. How many then? / One – that goes all the way through) (p. 142, lines 65–8). 24 The full title is Rabais du caquet de Frippelippes et de Marot dict Rat pelé, adictioné avec le comment. Faitct par Mathieu de Boutigny, page de maistre Françoys de Sagon. See also Mayer’s edition of Marot’s Œuvres satiriques, pp. 93–95.

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to be avoided, as they leave out the “digestive” process and amount therefore to what today we would call pure plagiarism: Si je fais parler ung vallet, Sagon fera parler ung page: Si je pains le premier fueillet Sagon painct la premiere page: Si je postille mon ouvraige, Sagon tout ainsy vouldra faire. Quant tout est dit, veu son affaire, Je trouve que le babouyn Ne fait rien, sinon contrefaire, Comme vray singe, ou sagouyn.  (301–10) (If I give voice to a valet, Sagon will chose a page. If I fill the first folio, Sagon will paint the first page. If I gloss my book, Sagon will do just the same. When all is said and done, given his business, I find that this crafty baboon Knows nothing except from forging Like a true monkey or a marmoset [in French: Sagouin].)

The onomastic attacks can thus cut either way, here via the near-homophony “sagon-sagouin,” to underline Sagon’s ape-like uninventive copying of his model, Marot. The pun also reacts to the Quercinois’ adversaries’ plays on “Marot-Marault” and “rat pelé,” as our poet had repeatedly pleaded with his king to be “recalled” (“rappelé”) from exile. The Virgilian homophony is, therefore, only one element in this struggle, albeit by far the most visible and the most exploited one, thanks to the prestige attached to the lineage. The satirical attacks are very straightforward, one might even say unrefined, and become increasingly brutal in the course of the dispute – underscoring the radical nature of the “cure” that Marot calls for – even though the underlying moral issue, plagiarism, is treated far more subtly. It is in this fashion that the satire is linked to the complex issue of the rise of the individual author and the formation of the unique personal voice. On the whole, however, the satire of the Querelle is clearly situated on the univocal end of the satiric spectrum, much closer to farcical attacks and Juvenalian indignatio than to more refined satura or, at times, even Horatian ridentem dicere verum, another strong indication that the Virgilian model served more as a status symbol than anything else, especially later in Marot’s career.25 The satire of the Querelle Sagon announces in many respects the 25

Towards the end of the “Frippelippes” the violence reaches its peak, as the valet

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violent pamphlets of the second half of the century, even if the circumstances, the Wars of Religion, are far more serious and consequential than the events of our episode, which frequently caused the satire to descend into pure invective. For the purpose of this study, the Querelle thus contextualizes the Virgilian homophony in an episode far removed from any obvious literal connection to the Latin master, which complements and radicalizes the occurrences of “French naturalization” of classical models that we observed earlier. The differentiation between “good” and “bad” imitation is pertinent here, an opposition that will be made most forcefully by Joachim Du Bellay at the end of the following decade: according to Du Bellay, anyone not following his rules for “good” imitation will produce an imitation that “ressembleroit celle du singe” (will resemble that of an ape).26 One cannot help but think threatens Sagon with corporal punishment: “Zon dessus l’œil, zon sur le groin, / Zon sur le dos du Sagouyn, / Zon sus l’Asne de Balaan. / Ha vilain, vous petez d’ahan, / Le feu sainct Anthoine vous arde! / Çà, ce nez, que je le nazarde, / Pour t’apprendre, avecques deux doigts, / A porter honneur où tu doibs. / Enflez villain, que je me joue: / Sus, apres, tournez l’aultre joue” (A thump to your face, a thump to your nose, / A thump to this baboon’s back, / A thump on Balaan’s donkey. / Aha, you nasty one, you fart sighs / Saint Anthony’s fire burns you up! / May I rap you on the nose / To teach you, with two fingers, / And bring honour where due. / Take a breath, nasty one, and I’ll begin / My deriding. Then lend me your other cheek) (p. 146–7, lines 211–20). 26 Joachim Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (Œuvres complètes, edd. Francis Goyet and Olivier Millet [Paris: Champion, 2003], v. l. p. 53). All translations are from The Regrets; With, The Antiquities of Rome, Three Latin Elegies, and The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language, ed. and trans. Richard Helgerson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Here, p. 372. Such imitation “à pié levé” (lightly), without the least “profict à nostre vulgaire” (worth to our vulgar tongue), in other terms Sagon’s pure plagiarism, does not do anything other than “luy [le poète imité] donner ce, qui estoit à luy” (give it what it already has) (Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, edd. Goyet and Millet, v.1, p. 32; Du Bellay, The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language, trans. Helgerson, p. 340). Just prior to this condemnation, Du Bellay had defined the proper way of imitating classical models, a theory fundamental to Renaissance poetics: “Immitant les meilleurs Aucteurs Grecz, se transformant en eux, les devorant, & apres les avoir bien digerez, les convertissant en sang, & nourriture, se proposant chacun selon son Naturel, & l’Argument, qu’il vouloit elire, le meilleur Aucteur, dont ilz observoint diligemment toutes les plus rares, & exquises vertuz, & icelles comme Grephes … entoint, & appliquoint à leur Langue” (By imitating the best Greek authors, transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and after having thoroughly digested them, converting them into blood and nourishment, selecting, each according to his own nature and the topic he wished to choose, the best author, all of whose rarest and most exquisite strengths they diligently observed and, like shoots, grafted them … and adapted them to their own language.) (Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, edd. Goyet and Millet, v.1, p. 30; Du Bellay, The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language, trans. Helgerson, p. 336). It is this concept of “digestion,” which Du Bellay had taken from Quintilian, Ange Politian and Erasmus, that helps distinguish between legitimate imitation, which Marot practises, and the “sagouin” Sagon’s unacceptable “ape-like” approach, which is criticized particularly harshly in the “Frippelippes” and

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that the ape image is at least a subconscious hint at the Querelle and thus a very reluctant (and hence implicit) endorsement of Marot, an unusual but not impossible reaction of Du Bellay’s, whose digestion metaphor seems to correspond quite well to Marot’s way of imitating Virgil. It also becomes clear in this context why the Pléiade had to discredit Marot’s achievements. As the example of the imitation of classical models shows without a doubt, Marot had already established, albeit often in more rudimentary forms, many of the core principles of what was to become “Pléiade poetics,” thus preempting, or at least weakening significantly, the claims of originality or revolutionary renewal of French letters that were instrumental to Du Bellay, Ronsard and their group’s aspirations.

Virgil in Hell In L’Enfer, Marot turns the Virgilian homophony itself into a full-fledged rhetorical and poetic device.27 After 302 detailed and rather long-winded lines, an allegorical portrait of the Parisian Palais de Justice, its inhabitants and the judicial process, the poet finally finds his voice as he is literally invited to defend himself against the allegations that led to his imprisonment.28 It is at precisely this moment that the poem reaches lyrical heights. The very structure of the poem thus stages and mirrors Marot’s journey from poetic captivity in his rhétoriqueur past to the liberation of his voice in a new golden age of French letters that he was instrumental in bringing about.29 the “Contre Sagon.” See also Grahame Castor, Pléiade Poetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), especially Chapters 4 and 5. 27 For L’Enfer, see above all Timothy Hampton, “Vergers des Lettres: l’allégorie morale et politique chez Marot,” Clément Marot, Prince des poëtes François, 1496–1996, Actes du Colloque, edd. Defaux and Simonin, pp. 237–48; Jacques Berchtold, “L’Enfer: les enjeux d’une transposition mythique,” Clément Marot, Prince des poëtes François, 1496–1996, Actes du Colloque, edd. Defaux and Simonin, pp. 627–44; and Bernd Renner, “Poetic Liberation from Hell: Clément Marot’s L’Enfer,” La Satire dans tous ses Etats, ed. Renner, pp. 203–19, who, following Preisig, Clément Marot et les métamorphoses de l’auteur à l’aube de la Renaissance, pp. 114–15, makes a strong argument in favour of the belated composition of L’Enfer, i.e. after the publication of the Adolescence Clementine (1532), which would explain its rhetorical and poetic refinement. 28 The poem is part of the series that deal with what Etienne Dolet later called the “prinse de Marot,” his incarceration in the Châtelet in 1526; see Defaux’s comments (Œuvres poétiques, ed. Defaux [Paris: Bordas-Dunod, 1996], v. 1, pp. lxi–lxv). See also Frank Lestringant, “D’un Enfer à l’autre: Clément Marot et Erienne Dolet,” Mélanges Longeon, ed. Gabriel-André Pérouse (Geneva: Droz, 1993), pp. 121–35; and Mireille Huchon, “Rhétorique et poétique des genres: L’Adolescence clémentine et les métamorphoses des œuvres de prison,” Le Génie de la langue française: Autour de Marot et La Fontaine, ed. Jean-Charles Monferran (Paris: ENS Editions, 1997), pp. 53–71. 29 See Defaux, Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne, pp. 85–97; and Renner, “Poetic Liberation from Hell.”

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After the aforementioned multifaceted use of his first name, the Virgilian homophony reaches its most accomplished state: Quant au surnom, aussi vray qu’Evangille, Il tire à cil du Poëte Vergille, Jadis cheri de Mecenas à Romme: Maro s’appelle, & Marot je me nomme, Marot je suis, & Maro ne suis pas, Il n’en fut oncq depuis le sien trespas: Mais puis qu’avons ung vray Mecenas ores, Quelcque Maro nous pourrons veoir encores. (p. 29, lines 359–66) (As for the nickname, as true as the Gospel, It connects to the name of Virgil, Formerly cherished by Maecenas in Rome. He is called Maro and Marot is my name, Marot I am and Maro I am not. Since his death, never has there been another. But since we now have a true Maecenas, Some Maro we might once again see.)

In this passage, the idea of “digestion” has reached its climax and Marot completes his journey “towards being a poet.” He rejects facile homophonic puns, which were at the centre of the pamphlet-like Querelle Sagon, to paradoxically better establish his Virgilian lineage, different, but similar to Maro (“Quelcque Maro”). Here is the main difference between “good” and “bad” imitation in our context, between Marot’s and Sagon’s projects. Whereas the former strives to carry on a venerated tradition in his own voice, influenced and inspired by but clearly different from his models, the latter literally wants to replace his model by plagiarizing Marot’s art and occupying his position at court. Furthermore, it might be precisely this apparently paradoxical undertaking of finding one’s own voice through the imitation of classical models that favours the satirical contexts in which the Virgilian homophony frequently expresses itself, the paradox being one of the main tools of Renaissance satire after all, which, in turn, enables the poet to tell the truth under the protective veil of laughter (“ridentem dicere verum”).30 While defending himself in front of Judge Rhadamantus in the hellish prison of the Châtelet, the poet finds his own voice and poetic identity precisely at the moment when he identifies himself literally. He truly has the potential of becoming the “Maro

30 For the paradox see above all Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica. The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966) and Le Paradoxe au temps de la Renaissance, ed. M.T. Jones-Davies (Paris: Touzot, 1982).

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de France,” which even incites him to tone down the modesty topos, claiming indirectly that he would be the first one to deserve this title since the death of Virgil (lines 364–6). Such comments powerfully underline the growing importance of the individual author, a monumental change that Marot was one of the first humanists to promote actively and with increasing complexity, as L’Enfer shows. The key role belongs again to the king, however, whose protection and support (“vray Mecenas”) proves to be indispensible for this translatio studii, this rebirth of a golden age of letters, this time in France. This is why the last third of this long poem evolves into an elaborate praise of the Christ-like king, who, upon his return from his own imprisonment in Spain, will save his poet: Elle [Marguerite] va veoir ung plus grand prisonnier Sa noble mere ores elle accompaigne Pour retirer nostre Roy hors d’Espaigne, Que je souhaitte en ceste compaignie Avec ta layde & obscure mesgnie Car ta prison liberté luy [François Ier] seroit Et comme CHRIST, les Ames poulseroit Hors des Enfers, sans t’en laisser une Umbre: En ton advis, seroys je pas du nombre?  (pp. 31–2, lines 436–44) (She [Marguerite] is going to see a greater prisoner As she now accompanies her noble mother To rescue our King from Spain. I wish him to join us here With your ugly and obscure family For your prison would be freedom to him [François Ier] And like CHRIST he would drive the souls Out of hell without leaving you a shade. In your opinion, will I be one of them?)

Yet again, the destinies of king and poet are intertwined in this elegant satirical attack of what amounts to despotic acts that characterize the corrupt judicial system. The despot Rhadamantus will be vanquished by the saviour, François Ier, whose moral authority and curative powers have reached their peak. Consequently, he will unflinchingly support his poet, who, in turn, will thank him by lifting French letters, and thus French prestige, to unparalleled heights: Et d’aultre part (dont nos jours sont heureux) Le beau verger des lettres plantureux Nous reproduict ses fleurs, & grands jonchées Par cy devant flaistries, & seichées Par le froid vent d’ignorance, & sa tourbe,

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Qui hault sçavoir persecute, & destourbe: Et qui de cueur est si dure, ou si tendre, Que verité ne veult, ou peult entendre. O Roy heureux, soubs lequel sont entrés (Presque perys) les lettres et Lettrés!  (p.32, lines 367–76) (And moreover [our days are happy] The fine orchard lush with letters Furnishes us with its flowers and great rushes Over here in flower, and dried By the cold wind of ignorance, and its rabble, Which persecutes high knowledge, and disturbs. And whose heart is so hard, or so tender, That it does not want truth, nor cannot understand. O happy king, who ushered in [As if from death] letters and Men of Letters.)

The praise of the king (367–9, 375–6) visually surrounds a dark period for letters, reminiscent of Ovidian imagery, as if this interim were only a fleeting occurrence rectified by the royal gardener of the “beau verger des lettres plantureux” (fine orchard lush with letters). This allegory is paralleled by the dark interim of the king and the poet’s imprisonment, a microcosm symbolizing the overall importance of the new Maecenas and the new Virgil for the development of French letters. Satire’s traditional role as a remedy of the ills of society is thus enhanced structurally while it turns to the familiar “praiseand-blame” pattern and displays its most direct attacks without sacrificing its lyrical force.31 The full extent of Marot’s transformative or creative imitation comes to the fore in this poem, as the poet actually imitates Martial in the Maro/Marotlines and is inspired by Ovid in the “golden age” passage.32 His aim is clearly a “French naturalization” of the classical tradition in general. Virgil, whose prominent role in the French Renaissance is underlined in the process, is “merely” one of Marot’s major models. The Latin master adds authority to the French poet’s ambitious project of translatio studii, even if Marot’s imitation is frequently dissociated from Virgil’s literary work per se, as I have attempted to show in these pages, and mixed with other prestigious models. This syncretism is further heightened by the Christian context in which these references are put and the satirical context that they are frequently being used in. Via the inviting initial homophony, which Marot could hardly refuse to exploit given his rhétoriqueurs roots and his supporters’ insistence on it, 31 On praise and blame, see François Cornilliat’s monumental Or ne mens: Couleurs de l’Eloge et du Blâme chez les “Grands Rhétoriqueurs” (Paris: Champion, 1994). 32 Skenazi, “De Virgile à Marot,” Clément Marot, Prince des poëtes François, 1496– 1996, Actes du Colloque International de Cahors en Quercy, edd. Defaux and Simonin, p. 65.

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Virgil ends up becoming a symbol – in addition to his undeniable value as a purely literary model – of the status that the poet, and through him French letters, strives for. Consequently, the Roman master is transformed into a poetic program in and by itself, blended with other worthy models, to create original sublime poetry in the vernacular. This product of an unmistakable personal voice will itself be worthy of imitation by future generations and François Sagon is immediate proof, albeit of the unwanted sort, of Marot’s success. After translating Virgil at the very beginning of his “journey towards being a poet,” it thus took Marot the better part of his career – especially if one accepts the conjecture of a later date of composition for L’Enfer, in the mid-1530s, that has been suggested lately – to become not Virgil, but a French incarnation of the prominent status of his classical models, a composite Maro de France so to speak, which, unfortunately, would soon be overshadowed by successors, whose debt to the Quercinois was, until recently, insufficiently recognized.

2

Virgil’s Bucolic Legacy in Jacques Yver’s Le Printemps d’Yver Margaret Harp Jacques Yver’s Le Printemps d’Yver is a work of prose in which three gentlemen and two noblewomen spin tales in an attempt to distract each other from the horrors of the recent third religious war (1568–70) and to rejoice in the brief 1570 Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Immediately evocative of Marguerite de Navarre’s collection of seventy-two French stories, the Heptameron (1559), itself modeled after, and partly translated from, Boccaccio’s Italian story collection, the Decameron (1350), Le Printemps d’Yver also appropriates and reworks, as will be discussed here, the world of Virgil’s Eclogues. While bearing few of the Eclogues’ formal traits, the narrative tone throughout Printemps is reminiscent of that same uneasy balance between sadness and peace that we find particularly in Eclogues 1 and 9.1 First published in 1572, Le Printemps d’Yver would appear in twenty more editions over the following twenty years, a period that corresponds almost exactly to the most violent period of civil war between Catholics and Protestants (1562–98).2 Many critics have seen in Le Printemps d’Yver a portrait of prosperous provincial society in the late sixteenth century and of this milieu’s attitudes towards love, war, morals and, most significantly, the evolution of relationships between men and women. Indeed, Le Printemps d’Yver belongs, in part, to the literary tradition of the querelle des femmes, here recast against a violent political backdrop. The text’s passing references to battles which occurred in Poitou and Saintonge, the areas of France that experienced the most intensive battles during the religious wars, have provided one of the few contemporary accounts of these conflicts. Deborah N. Losse has rightly noted that this military motif underscores the emotional tensions between men and

1 Nancy Lindheim, The Virgilian Pastoral Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Modern Era (Pittsburgh PA: Duquesne University Press, 2005), p. 7. 2 By 1635, ten more editions were in circulation.

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women described throughout the narrative.3 Yver does not, however, present the civil war as an evident metaphor for the battle of the sexes. Indeed, the courtly and playful disagreements between the storytellers contrast greatly with the brutality of both their tragic tales and their surrounding political realities. I would argue that just as Virgil’s first critical reader, Servius, saw in the Eclogues an attempt on the part of the author to “configure his own situation at the end of the Roman civil wars and the beginning of Octavian’s supremacy,” so Yver’s Le Printemps is a later author’s attempt to portray the anxiety of a period marked by political uncertainty, heteroclite literature and social transformation.4 Little is known about Jacques Yver, who is identified simply as a “gentilhomme poitevin” and who held the title of Seigneur de Plaisance et de la Bigottière. Until the twentieth century, Yver was a presumed victim of the August 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, an orchestrated mass killing of Protestants by Catholics throughout France at the time of the wedding of the future Henry IV, a Protestant, and Marguerite de Valois, the Catholic sister of King Charles IX. It is considered the nadir of the thirty-year conflict. Given his reflections in the work on the futility and tragedy of the religious wars, namely in his opening (and gloomy) ode, “Complainte sur les misères de la guerre civile” (Lament on the Misery of the Civil War), this belief fueled interest in the work. Contemporary readers saw in the work a prescient forewarning of the massacre and perhaps of the author’s own death. More recent scholars confirm that he in fact died around 1570, having just completed Le Printemps, most likely in joyful response to the seemingly permanent end to the wars.5 It was Yver’s brother Joseph and sister Marie who published Le Printemps posthumously. As fellow poets who offer introductory sonnets alluding to Yver’s death, they clearly intended the edition to be a tribute to the deceased. In addition, the original publication concluded with three brief memorial poems signed “J. Th.,” presumably the initials of Jean Tharon, a minor nobleman who owned one of the most complete private libraries in France of this period and who was both friend and patron of writers. The close friendship he reveals for Yver in his closing poems suggests that Yver was as closely linked to the literary world as to the political life of Poitou. Tharon’s first memorial, a quatrain, is addressed to Yver and emphasizes that he will be immortal as long as 3 Deborah N. Losse, “Jacques Yver’s Le Printemps d’Yver and Trans-Gender Phantasmagoria,” Narrative Worlds: Essays on the nouvelle in Fifteenth- and SixteenthCentury France, edd. Gary Ferguson and David Laguardia (Scottsdale: Arizona State University Press, 2005), pp. 159–72, p. 161. 4 Annabel Patterson, “Pastoral versus Georgic: The Politics of Virgilian Quotation,” Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation, ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 241–67, p. 241. 5 Pierre Jourda, ed., Conteurs français du XVIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), p. xl.

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his work lives on. A subsequent sonnet reinforces this motif, claiming that Yver’s book provides him a strong enough shield to disappoint Death and its force. By identifying Yver as a warrior, this sonnet reinforces the themes of conflict and war that permeate the preceding stories. The anagram of Yver’s name, J’acquiers vye, or “I obtain life,” are the last words of the concluding four-line anagrammatism and hence of the entire work. In later editions this anagram appeared as frequently as did Yver’s formal name. Thus, the original edition evokes everlasting fame for the author, much in the same vein as do poems composed by poets of the Pléiade of the 1550s and 1560s. Despite the early popularity of his work, Yver has been relegated to the ranks of France’s minor Renaissance writers. Pierre Jourda guardedly praises Yver as “not without merit,” with his stories “[deserving] better than the nearly total oblivion into which they have fallen.”6 Other current scholars, understandably, remain puzzled by Yver’s writing: Gabriel-André Pérouse virtually abandons the study of Le Printemps d’Yver’s narrative frame and first four stories in order to justify that the fifth story is the key to this collection; after acknowledging Yver’s “plume diaboliquement habile” (diabolically clever pen), Pérouse asks, to conclude, whether due to the narrative’s lack of the announced sixth day and accompanying story: “cet étrange Pentaméron nous dit-il par sa forme même la victoire du désordre?” (Does this peculiar ‘Pentaméron’ announce to us by its very form the victory of disorder?).7 Before attending to the Virgilian nature of the collection, we must also note that the word printemps evokes rebirth, nascent love and beauty and that it is these very themes that are broached, if not maintained, in all the stories. Yver emphasizes that the five days of story-telling begin not just during an interlude of military peace at the height of spring, but also on the feast of Pentecost. As a moment that proclaims the arrival of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost is associated with the special graces of enlightenment and, by extension, communication, represented by the gift of tongues accorded the Apostles.8 The consistently witty banter of Yver’s storytellers, even as they recount tales of unrequited love, reinforces the celebratory atmosphere. Narrative descriptions interspersed throughout the five stories highlight as well the château of Printemps, an abode offering every elegant Italianate architectural feature while also being surrounded by productive gardens and farmland. It is an otherworldly refuge that offers a welcome, but often uneasy, respite to the Jourda, Conteurs français du XVIe siècle, pp. xl–xlii. G.-A. Pérouse, “Symétries narratives et désordres conjugaux dans Le Printemps de Jacques Yver (1572)”, Ordre et Désordre dans la civilisation de la Renaissance: Actes du Colloque Renaissance, Humanisme, Réforme Nice–Septembre 1993, edd. Gabriel-André Pérouse and Francis Goyet (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1996), pp. 321–28, pp. 323, 328. 8 The feast of Pentecost served as backdrop in two well-known French courtly romances with which Yver would have been familiar, namely, Le Chevrefeuille by Marie de France and Yvain by Chrétien de Troyes. 6 7

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war-weary inhabitants. Its harmonious features and dimensions, coveted by sixteenth-century French courtiers in general, belie the verbal and philosophical discord demonstrated by its inhabitants, the storytellers. It also stands in even starker contrast with its surrounding barren and ravaged lands. Unlike other pastoral poems of the Renaissance, Yver’s work, with its regular references to the bleak and ravaged Poitevin landscape that lies just beyond Printemps’ borders, does not present a completely idealized setting. Virgil’s Arcadia, too, located in the mountainous and desolate Peloponnesian area of southern Greece, presumably served as the incongruous setting for the idyllic Eclogues. It is doubtful that Yver would have been aware of the real Arcadia’s landscape; his text, however, with its emphasis on a similar uninviting landscape, accurately replicates, perhaps unwittingly, the marked contrasts between realism and idealism found in the Eclogues. Though there has been some study of Yver’s literary debt to Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Bembo and Bandello, none exists of the direct influence of classical literature. And yet Yver, like virtually all of his fellow Renaissance writers, regularly references classical myths and epics. As the five stories are attempts to prove the source of unhappy love, the narration often touches on the power of Love and upon Love’s victims. In his opening dedication, Yver alludes to Ixion, the king doomed to be tied to a perpetually spinning wheel because of his forbidden love for Hera, Zeus’ wife. Yver subsequently reveals that his work has as its theme the tyranny of Venus: “ce petit livret lequel (si vos yeux bénins lui font tant d’honneur ... ) ... s’efforcera de tromper cet ennui, en vous contant la tyrannie qu’Amour (quand lui plaît) exerce sur ses plus fidèles sujets” (this small booklet which [if your gentle eyes give it such an honour] will attempt to fool your boredom, by telling you of the tyranny [when it so deems] to exercise on its most faithful subjects).9 While it is reasonable to assume that Yver would have been equally familiar with Virgil’s Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogues, there are no explicit formal parallels found in Printemps. Indeed, the work has no single clear literary model. While the Heptaméron would be the most apparent model, Le Printemps’ inclusion of poetry and the thematically linked stories rightly distinguish it from mere imitation. The first four stories, with their emphasis on tragic plots and bloody outcomes, closely resemble those found in Bandello’s Novele (1554). Yver implicitly acknowledges the heterogeneous nature of his texts in his dedication, which opens with a summary of the types of writings with which most writers are engaged – namely histories, anecdotes, fables. Yver does not classify his own work and is reduced to calling it a generic livret (a small booklet), a term emphasizing its size and length rather than its form. 9 Jacques Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver contenant cinq histoires discourues par cinq journées en une noble compagnie au château du Printemps, ed. Paul La Croix (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), p. 519.



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Most Renaissance texts inspired by Virgil – French and English alike – are in verse. Indeed, Alice Hulubei’s seminal work, L’Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle, precludes prose works from consideration and offers no reference to Yver. Yet, ten of her eleven conclusions on the sixteenth-century French eclogue correspond remarkably well to the structure and themes found in Le Printemps.10 Indeed, her fourth conclusion about the French eclogue would seem to be a general summary of Le Printemps’ narrative: “ses sujets appartiennent au monde des rustiques: amour, discussions autour des affaires, disputes et combats, mais ils peuvent se reporter à des questions plus élevées” (its subjects belong to the world of the ‘commoners’: love, business discussions, arguments and fights, but they can refer to more lofty ideas).11 These subjects lend themselves, certainly, to Yver’s gentlefolk. And like their neighboring peasants, they have little control over their circumstances in time of war. * The present chapter, then, suggests that Virgil’s Eclogues serve as a thematic model for Yver’s Printemps. The political circumstances surrounding the composition of the Eclogues are strikingly similar to those surrounding Le Printemps. Written during the tumultuous aftermath of Julius Caesar’s 10 The fourth conclusion is given above; the other ten conclusions are: (1) L’églogue française et néo-latine admet une conception double, la conception simple et littéraire de l’églogue rustique, la conception symbolique de l’églogue virgilienne (the French and neo-latin eclogue assumes a double design: the simple and literary design of the rustic eclogue and the symbolic design of the Virgilian eclogue); (2) Elle accueille pour cadre la campagne, la forêt, la mer (It welcomes as framework the countryside, the forest, the sea); (3) Ses personnages sont des bergers, des pêcheurs, des chasseurs, véritables campagnards, ou des citadins travesties (Its characters are shepherds, fishermen, hunters, authentic countrymen or displaced citydwellers); (5) Son but est d’instruire, de moraliser, de plaire (Its goal is to instruct, moralize and to please); (6) Le ton de l’églogue doit être humble, mais il peut s’élever lorsque le poète aborde des sujets plus nobles (The tone of the eclogue must be humble but it can be loftier when the poet addresses more noble subjects); (7) Le vocabulaire et le langage des personnages se conforment à leur condition (The vocabulary and the language of the characters reflect their social status); (8) L’églogue fait partie du genre narratif, dramatique ou mixte (The eclogue belongs to either the narrative or dramatic genre, or a combination thereof); (9) Le mètre qu’elle adopte est le décasyllabe et l’alexandrin, ou l’hexamètre, pour les poèmes latins (The meter that it adopts is decasyllabic or alexandrine, or hexametric for latin poems); (10) Le nombre des pièces qui composent un cycle de bucoliques ne doit pas, en principe, dépasser dix; leurs sujets seront très variés (The number of sections that compose a bucolic cycle must not exceed, theoretically, ten. Their subjects will vary greatly); (11) Le poète suivra l’art des bons modèles: Théocrite, Virgile, Sannazar et même celui des poètes modernes. (The poet will follow the ideal models: Theocritus, Virgil, Sannazar and even that of modern poets). Number (9) refers to verse and hence does not correspond to Le Printemps. 11 Alice Hulubei, L’Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle: Epoque des Valois (1515– 1589) (Paris: E. Droz, 1938), pp. 24–25.

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assassination, Virgil’s pastoral creation reflects the “wasteland of the dying Roman Republic,” as Guy Lee phrased it.12 It does so most pointedly in Eclogues 1 and 9, in which the characters discuss abrupt but politically sanctioned land seizures. Such expropriations were instigated by Octavius as payment to his victorious soldiers in the aftermath of the Battle of Philippi in 42 BCE waged against an army led by Julius Caesar’s assassins. First Melibœus and Tityrus, then Lycidas and Moeris ponder the resultant threats to their livelihood and well-being as well as to the very existence of song and poetry. Melibœus’ lament in the opening stanza of Eclogue 1 simultaneously announces the theme of displacement and repose: “nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arva; / nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas” (we are leaving our country’s bounds and sweet fields. We are outcasts from our country; you, Tityrus, at ease beneath the shade, teach the woods to re-echo ‘fair Amaryllis’) (Eclogues 1:3–5). Tityrus, who, in contrast, has been allowed to stay on his land, concludes the poem not so much with an expression of sympathy as by making an offer to Melibœus to share with him the fruits of the day: “Hic tamen hanc mecum poteras requiescere noctem / fronde super viridi: sunt nobis mitia poma, / castaneae molles et pressi copia lactis; et iam summa procul villarum culmina fumant / maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae” (Yet this night you might have rested here with me on the green leafage. We have ripe apples, mealy chestnuts and a wealth of pressed cheeses. Even now the housetops yonder are smoking and longer shadows fall from the mountain heights.) (Eclogues 1:79–83). In an idyllic setting, Yver’s narrator – presumably a figure of himself – and his storytellers offer variations on the same scene of loss, trauma and anguish, given nuance by hope for the future as described by Virgil’s shepherd poets. The religious wars as well as the perpetual tensions between men and women all contribute to this anxious atmosphere. There is not one narrative ‘key’ to Yver’s amalgam of genres and themes. It would appear, however, that a better understanding of the work will arise not so much from the stories themselves as from the author’s introductions, narrative framing and intermittent poetry and that they, in turn, reference the pastoral tradition found in Virgil’s Eclogues. It is thus primarily through the liminary texts of Yver’s work that Virgil’s influence enters and from which it extends throughout the text as a whole. Order and disorder, both on thematic and formal levels, are inherent in both the Eclogues and Yver’s Le Printemps. Nancy Lindheim offers an eloquent description: “Virgil’s first eclogue, the poem the Renaissance thought of as the paradigm of pastoral, is not geared to resolution, but to what I have called suspension. The term points to the way the final moments of Virgil’s poem leave unresolved the tensions 12 Virgil, The Eclogues, ed. and trans. Guy Lee (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 20.

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between sadness and peace, settledness and dispossession.”13 In a similar way, Yver leaves his principal characters still continuing to recount stories in an attempt to cope with the effects of war. Rather than being a disordered or neatly circumscribed narrative, this suspended closure, from the sixteenthand early seventeenth-century reader’s perspective, provides a source of much-needed continuity and perhaps may have been one of the sources of Le Printemps’ popularity. The shepherd’s return to song remains a constant in all the Eclogues and Yver has his Printemps’ characters return regularly not only to storytelling but specifically to song and verse. In her study of the poetry of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Ingrid de Smet astutely notes that “primarily through the study of Virgil’s Eclogues Renaissance readers and writers had gradually learnt to appreciate how various personal, political and poetic meanings could be integrated into a single discourse.”14 Yver’s work, certainly, offers a similar integration. * To set discussion of Yver’s appropriation of Virgil in a wider context, it is useful to look at the ways in which Le Printemps opens out onto other literary models, too, for we are dealing with a work that weaves together various modes and models. From his opening pages Yver establishes parallels with famous texts, ancient and more recent alike. The narrative structure of these stories follows roughly that of the Heptaméron: in the wake of calamity, genteel folk gather and seek distraction via the debating of questions of love and honour between men and women as represented in stories they swear to be true and accurate. The listeners then respond to the merits of the stories, the majority rarely ever being convinced by the moral the stories were supposed to demonstrate. A full third of the work consists of descriptions of the six friends, their discussions, their activities and the poems which they regularly share with each other. Hence, the framing of the formal stories plays a significant role for the reader. The stories could also be categorized as a response to the French Pléiade poet Joachim Du Bellay’s call for authentic, if not original, French literature in his Deffence, et illustration de la langue francoyse (1549). In his prologue addressed to the reader Yver explains that Le Printemps is an attempt to demonstrate the validity of the French language without resorting to borrowing from other languages, most specifically Italian. The Deffence has always been considered a nationalistic work, a call for French unity, at least on the linguistic level. Yver’s evocation of it calls the contemporary

Lindheim, The Virgilian Pastoral Tradition, p. 56. Ingrid de Smet, “Pastoral Politics in the Poetry of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553– 1617),” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 33.1–2 (2006): 115–32, p. 116. 13 14

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reader back to this moment of a comparatively ordered and peaceful France and evokes nostalgia for a Golden Age, evocative of Virgil’s. Yver echoes this longing in the chatelaine’s “Hymne pour le bienviennement de la paix,” sung to lighten the bleak tone established by her opening “Complainte sur les misères de la guerre civile”: O Paix, mère de tous biens … Tu fais les herbes fleurir Par ton œillade gentille; Tu fais les herbes mûrir, Et rends la vigne fertile; Tu apaises dans les cieux L’orage malicieux. Pendant l’horrible tempête; Tu accordes les saisons, Et fais l’air où nous vivons Sereiner sur notre tête.15 (O Peace, mother of all good … you make the flowers bloom by your tender glance, you make the plants grow, and make the vine fertile; in the skies you calm the destructive storm. During the awful storm you reconcile the seasons, and make the breeze in which we live soften over us.)

Her praise of the natural fruits of peace parallel Melibœus’ wistful description of Tityrus’ tranquil future: “fortunate senex, hic inter flumina nota / et fontis sacros frigus captabis opacum. / hinc tibi, quae simper, vicino ab limite saepes / Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti / saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susorro” (Fortunate old man! Here amid familiar streams and sacred springs, you shall enjoy the cooling shade. On this side, as of old, on your neighbour’s border, the hedge whose willow blossoms are sipped by Hybla’s bees shall often with its gentle hum soothe you to slumber.) (Eclogue 1:51–5). Yver also borrows common devices from Guillaume de Lorris’ thirteenth-century allegory, Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose), the quintessential work on love. Not wishing to identify by name the three gentlemen visiting the home of the three ladies, he gives them the allegorical titles of Bel-Accueil, Fleur-d’Amour and Ferme-Foy. Similarly, the ladies are virtually anonymous, with the chatelaine identified simply as la Dame. The reader learns the given names of only la Dame’s daughter, Marie, and niece, Marguerite. By describing five days of leisurely pursuits, Yver also replicates the fanciful atmosphere of Lorris’ narrative which is described as a songe, or dream. Finally, the refined atmosphere maintained in its lively dialogues

15

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 528.

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links Le Printemps to Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (1528) and may well have influenced Stefano Guazzo’s La Civil Conversazione (1574). Dedicating his work to the damoiselles of France, Yver proclaims that he follows all writers in hoping to “louer le bien et blâmer le mal” (praise good and condemn evil), but he adds that he also wishes to foreground the gracious, virtuous and well-educated young women who serve as the most worthy of subjects for a writer. Of course, a substantial number of women of this period made up the reading public, and hence this dedication is relatively commonplace for writers. Nonetheless, Yver’s announced intention to write both for and about women reinforces the themes of love, marriage and the role of women in society as they are presented in the tales. It is noteworthy that Yver refers to the maidens of France in general, specifying neither their region nor their faith. During this moment of truce, Yver offers an image of national unity in which his protagonists are only defined by their gender and common nationality, not by their political leanings. He does not, however, allow the theme of war to dissipate in his narrative: both the narrator and the storytellers appropriate regularly a bellicose vocabulary in order to underscore love’s tribulations. Yver describes his protagonists as two “camps ennemis” (enemy camps) who engage in an “âpre combat de la langue” (a fierce battle of the tongue).16 * The title Printemps (Spring) has multiple references, the most obvious being a playful juxtaposition with Yver’s own name being a homonym of the French term for l’hiver (winter). Yver’s reference to his own name in the title emphasizes the contrast between two seasons and, by extension, the work’s contrasting themes of war and peace, enmity and love, danger and security, which pervade both the stories and the framing narratives. The title can also be heard as Printemps divers, or various/diverse/diverting Spring, a subtle reference to the many genres, narrations and themes found in the collection. Printemps is also the name Yver attributes to the residence where the stories are told: it is thus a physical incarnation of this season of political and spiritual hope – we hear, then, how the influence of the Eclogues has entered into the collection’s functioning. The château Printemps perhaps continues a literary motif of a refined and luxurious household first established by Rabelais in Gargantua (1534) with the idyllic Abbaye de Thélème and continued by Claude de Taillemont in his Champs faëz (1553). Resembling the spectacular château Lusignan in Poitou, Printemps is described as surpassing the splendor of the sultan of Ultibie’s palace which itself “annihiloit la gloire des pyramides du Caire” (annihilated the glory of the pyramids of Cairo). This curious image of Printemps’ powerful and destructive force 16

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 552.

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in eclipsing other man-made wonders is followed by a remarkable inventory of Printemps’ architectural and decorative features, culminating in the narrator’s first claim that this is a paradise on earth: “bref, de tout ce où la main industrieuse montre le plus son beau ménagement, on trouve là plus qu’on ne sauroit désirer pour la perfection d’un délicieux paradis terrestre” (in short, of all the things through which the industrious hand shows its greatest skill, one finds here [in the castle of Printemps] more than one could ever desire for perfecting a delightful earthly paradise).17 Exotic and multiple comparisons are common to all of Yver’s descriptions throughout Le Printemps. To yet further convince the reader of the château Printemps’ otherworldly nature, Yver declares that it is one of the many castles, fortresses and churches that, according to local legend, the fairy Mélusine constructed in one night throughout the Poitevin region. This is important, because what we have, in a sense, is a figure (Mélusine) who is responsible for creating the bucolic Virgilian locus as it is present in Renaissance France. Evocation of the wellknown Mélusine establishes, moreover, a sense of female ambiguity. Mélusine is a beautiful fairy in love with her human husband for whom she has built these dwellings in tribute. She nonetheless hides a terrible secret: having killed her father, she is forced to turn into a serpent one night a week. Her regular disappearance on these evenings awakens her husband’s jealousy and he bursts in on her during her transformation. She flees, wrecking all the buildings that had stood as monuments to her love. Yver does not repeat this legend – one which would have been well-known to his readers – but its theme of secrets and suspicion between lovers fits in well with the tales about to be told. The character and actions of Mélusine would reinforce the opinion of Fleur-d’Amour, the storyteller who believes firmly that “tout le mal d’amour, … procède toujours du côté de la femme” (all of love’s misery … originates from the woman).18 As Printemps is a château that has escaped Mélusine’s fury as well as that of the ravages of war, the reader is convinced of its singular, peaceful and protected atmosphere–the kind of bucolic respite evoked in the Eclogues.19 And yet, at moments when the narration’s hyperbole becomes too vague to be either interesting or believable, Yver carefully reasserts the reality of this idyllic world by reminding the reader of its place in the region of Poitou and its legends, thus localizing and de-Romanizing that atmosphere. The narrator emphasizes the superiority of the terracotta figurines and depictions found in Printemps’ gardens to those in other admittedly splendid – and better known – gardens in France: “Et ne faut comparer à ce figment, le tant renommé ouvrage des Tuileries, de Meudon, ou d’Anet, ou le jardin Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 523. Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 577. 19 Ironically, the Printemps/Lusignan château was ultimately destroyed by the Duke of Montpensier in 1574 in subsequent religious battles. 17 18

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tant artificiel de Liencour, en Normandie” (And one must not compare to this replica the much renowned works at the Tuileries, Meudon, Anet or the expertly crafted Liencour in Normandy).20 Mélusine, we learn, has exploited every skill of her group of demons and goblins to create the finest sculptures and masonry within a secluded grotto. This retreat is nonetheless highly structured: a perfect square, each of its walls representing a season. The narrator is most taken by the wall of Autumn where a raucous scene of Bacchus astride Silenus’ donkey appears next to a fourteen‑stanza elegiac poem extolling this god’s merits. The grotto includes artfully placed chairs, seemingly naturally-occurring curves of tree trunks and rounded-out boulders. In cool shadows with a pleasant stream nearby, this garden corner has been designed for the gathering of storytellers. And so it is here in this grotto that a story illustrating the principal role of envy – both men and women’s – in unhappy love is told.21 This shaded setting beside a cave appropriates and echoes the setting in which we find Mopsus and Menalcas in Eclogue 5, which Virgil describes as follows: Menalcas: Cur non, Mopse, boni quoiniam convenimus ambo, tu calamos inflare levis, ego dicere versus, hic corylis mixtas inter consedimus ulmos? Mopsus: Tu major; tibi me est aequum parere, Menalca, sive sub incertas Zephyris motantibus umbras, sive antro potius succedimus. Asice, utantrum silvestris raris sparsit labrusca recemis.  (Eclogues 5:1–7) (Menalcas: Mopsus, now that we have met, good men both, you at blowing on the slender reeds, I at singing verses – why don’t we sit together here, where hazels mix with elms? Mopsus: You are the older, Menalcas: it is right for me to defer to you, whether we pass beneath the shadows that shift at the Zephyrs’ stirring, or rather into the cave. See how the wild vine with its stray clusters has overrun the cave.)

The château Printemps’ physical perfection knows limits: the narrator insists that the beauty and virtue of its inhabitants far surpass its splendor. The women themselves are described as having been formed by a god, rather than born humanly. These are a noblewoman and her daughter and niece who, as perfect hostesses, devote themselves to games, music and rich foods. In 20 21

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 599. Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, pp. 599–624.

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short, they personify the demoiselles (young maidens) of France to whom Yver dedicates his stories. It becomes evident that the three hostesses relish the five days of sustained storytelling, not only for diversion, but tellingly, for cathartic reasons. The narrator explains that the noblewomen were newly returned to their château: je peux bien assurer que, entre tous les François, les habitants du pays de Poitou retournèrent avec extrême joie en leurs désolées maisons, pensant entrer en nouveaux ménages … si qu’après s’être accommodés tellement quellement selon que la nécessité pouvoit permettre, n’eurent rien en plus singulière recommandation, que de s’entrevoir les uns les autres, conter et communiquer entre eux leurs pertes et se consoler par la pratique d’un devoir d’amitié en leur commune misère.22 (I can surely attest that of all the French, it was those of Poitou who returned to their ravaged houses with extreme joy, thinking to enter new homes … after being lodged hither and yon as necessity permitted and who had no more compelling recommendation than to meet with each other, to tell each other stories and to recount their losses and console each other by practicing the duty of friendship in their common suffering.)

The preoccupation found in all the stories with the hazards of fate, betrayal, suicide and the violent ends of seemingly perfect lovers betrays the trauma of the vagaries of war, particularly a civil one. The telling of tales confers order on a unique misfortune: the chaos of war. Whereas the storytellers of the Decameron and the Heptaméron pass time in the face of natural disasters – a plague and floods, respectively – Yver’s group has momentarily survived a strictly man-made catastrophe. Printemps is a refuge from the “arena of turmoil” surrounding it.23 The shared stories, songs and dances are therapeutic and it is these activities and the idyllic château Printemps in which they take place that correspond closely to the pastoral setting described in the Eclogues. Michael C.J. Putnam has described the result as “the soul’s absorption by poetry and spiritual calm.”24 The elaborate ceremony the women draw out into entertainment and dining extends to their spiritual exercises. Unlike Marguerite de Navarre’s Catholic storytellers who attend daily mass, Yver’s six provincial nobles are said to be neither specifically Catholic or Protestant. Rather, they are called merely practising Christians and are shown to begin their day with a prayer to God. With no mass mentioned, one might infer that they are indeed Prot-

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 523. Tom Conley, “Civil Wars and French Better Homes & Gardens,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 98.4 (1999): 725–59, p.726. 24 Michael C.J. Putnam, Virgil’s Pastoral Art (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 47. 22 23

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estants, but certainly not partisan ones. Instead, in his opening description of the storytellers’ daily routine, Yver emphasizes that their practice of faith is most valuable for lending order to daily life: [elles ont] présenté à Dieu leur première oeuvre concernant le devoir de piété et de dévotion requise, non-seulement requise pour le bon règlement d’une famille bien instituée, mais selon le tribut que doivent tous chrétiens.25 (They presented to God their first task concerning the duty of requisite piety and devotion, not only necessary for the good rule of a well-ordered family but according to the tribute that all Christians owe.)

La Dame, the established lady of the house and whom Yver labels as a widow, does not often engage in debates. Rather, she generally provides continued order to the gatherings. It is she who serves as arbiter, designating each day’s storyteller with a ceremonial passing of a laurel branch encircled with flowers. She concludes the tales with a promise to offer a prolonged discussion on Platonic love for the following day. Her role evokes that of Oisille in the Heptaméron, the oldest storyteller and organizer of stranded travellers. In contrast to la Dame, the principal participants are all young, unmarried men and women – they represent the future of France. While none have the verve or complexity of the devisants found in the Heptaméron, their overall joyful attitudes reflect the optimism of the brief moment of peace. The seventh participant of Le Printemps is the narrator, presumably Yver himself, who is an intimate friend of the others, revealing all that is said and told, while rarely offering his own asides to the readers. Despite its splendour, the relatively meagre provisions at Printemps reflect the reality of post-war conditions in Poitou: meals are never described and, while the guests praise the gracious dining atmosphere, they never extol the menu itself. The hostess, upon hearing of the herb spartanie which causes one to fast for twelve days, concludes that she could use a large amount: “j’aurais bien besoin d’en avoir fait provision, puisque je suis si depourvue de ce qui est requis pour vous bien traiter selon votre merite et mon bon desir” (I truly wish I had a good supply of this, for I am so lacking in what is required to treat you well, according to your merit and my wish). She offers no reason for the paucity of provisions – it is a given. In this post-Lenten and joyous moment there is a notable lack of meat. The villagers bring milk and honey, certainly an evocation of Moses’ Promised Land as evoked first in Exodus, “I will bring you out of the misery of Egypt, to … a land of milk and honey” (3:17) and then further described in Deuteronomy as where the

25

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 523.

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Israelites will have “eaten their fill and grown fat” (31:20), but it is nonetheless an atypical offering, given the realistic elements provided elsewhere. Le Printemps’ inclusion of the lyrics of five traditional Poitou dances, known as branles, with varying length and meter offers one of the clearest tributes to the Virgilian pastoral tradition. Their stanzas consist of short verses, no more than eight syllables in length, and offer multiple rhyming combinations. Playful in tone, they most resemble the poems found in Ronsard’s Livret de Folastries (1553). Yver presents four of the branles in an idyllic pastoral setting: playing flutes and bagpipes, local villagers have spontaneously arrived early in the morning to entertain the château’s inhabitants. This encounter between the sophisticated and the rustic members of a community serves as a hallmark of the pastoral.26 Yver affirms that they appear as angels from a village paradise. The residents of Printemps come down from their rooms, half-asleep and half-dressed, to listen and eventually join in the revelry. Claiming to fear that the colloquial language will be difficult for the non-Poitevin to understand, Yver translates the lyrics of those songs he best remembers and it is these which appear in the text. Hence, the text does not repeat the authentic branles nor even all that are sung. This adaptation simultaneously presents but veils them from the larger French public. In so doing, Yver cleverly underscores that this is a world apart from that of the reader. From a narrative standpoint, the first branles serve as an interlude at the beginning of the third story, breaking the tragic tone established in the first two stories. The four different songs of courtship, love and seduction reinforce the themes of the tales. The first cleverly reintroduces the spring/winter dichotomy in a pastoral setting: “Puisque tout ce, ma belle / Le printemps nous fait voir, / Serez-vous bien rebelle / A l’amoureux devoir? / Pourrezvous seule avoir / L’hiver en la poitrine / Pour éteindre, inhumaine, / D’un doux feu le pouvoir?” (Since all this, my beauty / Spring makes us see / Will you really be rebellious / Against the duty of love? / Will you alone be able to have / Winter in your heart / in order to extinguish, inhuman you, / the power of a sweet fire?).27 The fifth branle appears at the very end of FermeFoy’s narration of the final story. It is a duet sung by a newly married couple, whose acts of infidelity constitute the basis of the tale. Happily reconciled, their alternating stanzas of the branle tell of their present joy and deep love. With the husband and wife each singing eight stanzas, Yver gives balance to the feminine and masculine points of view and thus provides a fitting closing device to this work on the disputes between the sexes. Yver’s stories, so few in number compared to Marguerite de Navarre’s seventy-two, are comparatively cohesive in their intent. The storytellers aim to determine whether it is women or men who are at fault when it comes to the

26 27

Lindheim, The Virgilian Pastoral Tradition, p. 6. Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 574.



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misfortunes of love. And yet the tales, all of comparable length, often contradict the moral they purportedly impart and at times the storyteller admits as much. Hence, despite the purportedly tragic elements of these tales, the ironic tone of their narrators reveals that they are meant to amuse as much as to instruct. Like the subsequent stories, the first tale is preceded by a lengthy description of the storytellers and their discussions. However, the first day’s preface maintains a relatively sombre tone, offering a curious mixture of narration, poetry and prose which best evokes the anxious atmosphere created by the religious wars. La Dame sings a heart-rending “Complainte sur les misères de la guerre civile” (Lament on the Misery of the Civil War). This lament offers striking images of the ravages of war while making pointed and doleful accusations against the king, Charles IX. The final lines suggest that by showing his strength with sword and cannon, the king is only burying his name under the rubble of France. Contemporary readers saw in the lament a forewarning of the type of massacre in which they believed Yver died. Realizing the pall she has cast over her guests, la Dame concludes with a hopeful “Hymne pour le bienviennement de la paix” (Hymn for the Happy Arrival of Peace). Bel-Accueil lauds his hostess by asserting that her songs have left their hearts to both break and rejoice at the same time. Fleurd’Amour adds that the most striking aspect of her song is that it managed to have kept the rest of their company speechless, as they are all prone to chatter. The praise for la Dame’s narrative art echoes that of Menalcas for Mopsus’ lament for Daphnis: “Tale tuum Carmen nobis, divine poeta, / quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum / dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo” (Your lay, heavenly bard, is to me even as sleep on the grass to the weary, as in summer heat the slaking of thirst in a dancing rill of sweet water) (Eclogues 5:45–8). Bel-Accueil continues to offer the tragic story of Perside and Eraste as positive proof that women’s inconstancy, albeit unwitting, is at the root of the conflict between men and women. Set in early sixteenth-century Greece, the story is not persuasive, as the beautiful and virtuous Perside ultimately kills herself rather than succumbing to the desires of her husband’s rival. It is Perside and not Eraste whose heroism is highlighted: while Eraste is summarily imprisoned and executed, Perside dresses herself as a knight to draw the arrows of her enemy’s army, dying a heroic death. This blurring of gender roles is in fact a source of inconstancy for the social order that the storytellers have seen deteriorate, largely due to the tumult of war. Marie responds to this opening salvo, as she calls it, with a tale intended to demonstrate man’s blame in Love’s misfortunes. Fleur-d’Amour precedes her story, however, with a cautionary fable intending to prove the Turks’ claim that women may not enter heaven due to their provocative natures. An Egyptian woman, faced with assault by two angels, convinces them to let her first go ahead of them to heaven. Once they agree, she rises quickly away from them and escapes their grasp, eventually turning into the moon. With

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angels serving as the villains, the fable is a retooling of the Heptaméron’s well-known story of the batelière of Coulon who outwits two monks who try to rape her.28 By replacing the monks with angels, Yver first offers a new twist on a common source of derision and second, sidesteps a clear attack on an aspect of Catholicism. The motifs of Marie’s story contrast greatly with Fleur-d’Amour’s mythic fable. Set in the German town of Mayence in the sixteenth century, it describes two prosperous bourgeois families who hope to expand their wealth with the marriage of their two children, Fleurie and Herman. These two, in fact, love each other and their happiness is seemingly sealed. However, the villainous Ponifre, obsessed with Fleurie, takes extreme measures to possess her: he drugs and then rapes her. Having no memory of this attack, Fleurie is horrified to discover herself pregnant. Herman, believing her to have betrayed him, marries another. All three eventually die tragically. The true love endures, however, as their offspring do marry and live happily. The storytellers’ subsequent lengthy discussion broaches specifically and pragmatically the challenges of maintaining both love and desire within marriage. Citing multiple classical references, they explore the link between pleasure and conception, the role of wine as both desirable aphrodisiac and treacherous drug and, finally, the rectitude of remarriage for widows or widowers. These reflections reveal inherent dangers to love. As Fleur-d’Amour states, “Le mal est si près du bien, que souvent l’un est pris l’un pour l’autre, tant le voisinage en est contagieux” (Evil is so close to goodness that often one is taken for the other, as they are so close to each other and likely to contaminate each other).29 In the third story, Bel-Accueil attributes lovers’ unhappiness to the vagaries of Fortune, with neither man nor woman being solely responsible. He recounts the story of the beautiful Clarinde of Milan during the Italian Wars who is inadvertently poisoned by her true love, Alègre. He, in turn, drinks the poison as well. Here, the horrors – not of the present religious wars but of a comparatively distant foreign war – serve as backdrop to this tale of star-crossed lovers. Bel-Accueil offers the most vivid and threatening images of Love, describing him as a monstrous marauder who devours his victims: “… Amour, que tu es une étrange chose et d’étrange nature! … toi, goulu, dévorant à grands morceaux le Coeur de tes sujets, sans le consumer, tu ne te soûles [pas]” (Love, you are such a strange thing of such a strange nature! … you, gluttonous, devouring in huge chunks the heart of your subjects, without consuming it, … your hunger is never satisfied).30 His listeners, however, focus on the eventual triumph of Love as these lovers have become immortal.

28 Marguerite de Navarre, L’Heptaméron, ed. Michel François (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1964), pp. 35–8. 29 Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 538. 30 Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 588.

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Marguerite protests Bel-Accueil’s denial of free will and claims with her story that the vice of envy, which can overcome both sexes, is at the root of all unhappiness. She chooses to set her example in the eleventh century at the time of William the Conqueror. The king of England would have remained happily with his true love, Viergine, had it not been for the machinations of the embittered king of Denmark. The force of Marguerite’s narration lies not in her emphasis on envy but rather on the ambivalence felt by the reluctant lover. He resembles a warrior who both needs an enemy for battle and yet hates him: “… ores qu’il la voit, il la haït à mort, et ne sait pourquoi, tant y a que, quelque perfection qu’il remarque en elle, il ne se peut garder de la haïr: dont, se dépitant et voulant grand mal à soi-mème, ne savoit à qui se prendre, ne à qui demander raison, qu’à sa propre légèreté” (Thus as he sees her, he hates her to death, and does not know why, so much so that no matter the perfection that he notices in her, he can’t prevent himself from hating it: of which, frustrated and seeking self-injury, not knowing whom to blame, nor from whom to seek satisfaction, than from his own fecklessness.)31 The outcomes of these four tales are certainly not happy: all eight principal protagonists die, either from broken hearts, suicide, execution, or extraordinary accidents. They are also unsatisfactory insofar as none offers the company sufficiently persuasive lessons on whether men or women are at the root of their mutual discontent in the realm of love. Love as a source of anguish, confusion and strife, much like war, is the common denominator in these otherwise dissimilar stories. Ferme-Foy provides the tiebreaker of sorts, offering a tongue-in-cheek tale of woe of two best friends who each sleep with the other’s wife. Despite this betrayal, the young couples end up reconciled and happy, creating a bond of history but also friendship. The contrasts of this story with the four relatively similar tales which precede it are myriad. First, the principal couple is not a love match but rather a pair of French chevaliers errants (travelling knights), as Yver calls them, Claribel and Floradin, who have met while attending school in Padua. Second, while the previous stories are set in foreign lands and, for three of them, decades or centuries in the past, these protagonists live in the present and are natives of the Poitou region. Hence, they closely resemble their narrator and his listeners may well know them. Third, both young men quite willingly submit to the practicality – and profitability – of arranged marriages. There is no question of their grand passions reflecting an absolute fidelity. And yet, these arranged marriages lead ultimately to love and esteem between the husbands and wives, much as in several of Marguerite de Navarre’s tales of roving husbands.32 Despite the contemporary war-torn milieu, Claribel and Floradin are so preoccupied with themselves that they remain oblivious to

31 32

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 609. Marguerite de Navarre’s Huitième Nouvelle would offer the best comparison.

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the military strife surrounding them. Most significantly, they are indifferent to the religious principles at stake in the civil war. In a telling scene, the two young men travel together through the countryside, each keeping handy both a Catholic book of hours and a Protestant book of Psalms. As they pass through alternately Protestant- or Catholic-controlled checkpoints, they pull out the appropriate text in order to ensure their own safety. There is also the sense, like all good courtiers, that they simply wish to please all whom they may encounter. As their route takes them through principally Catholicheld territory, one might assume they are Catholic. There is, however, no revelation of their own religious convictions and it is quite likely that they have none. For them, faith would appear to be but a partisan position in the current civil war rather than a matter of the spiritual state of their souls. It is clear that Yver does not wish to engage in religious debate and so provides a final burlesque tale to mute any pointed references to contemporary conflicts. The fifth story’s narrative tone is light-hearted with jocular asides and ribald comments passed directly to the reader. It is not surprising that it ends happily with the couples reconciled, content after truly upsetting events but well aware of each other’s moral strengths and weaknesses. Ferme-Foy offers it as proof positive that the source for all unhappiness in love stems equally from men and women. In the closing branle, Claribel and his wife Marguerite sum up their feelings toward each other and the love they share. Claribel makes a plea for passionate love before Death extinguishes it: Belle, reprenons ore l’ère De nos amours, Et aux combats de cette guerre Passons nos jours. Las! Quand une froide pâleur Nous cache en terre, Le feu de l’amour le meilleur Perd sa chaleur.33 (My beauty, let us once again take up the era of our love and in the battles of this war spend our time. Alas! When a cold pallor hides us in the ground, the best love’s fire loses its heat.)

Marguerite evokes eternal love: Ami, la gaillarde jeunesse Et l’amour fol, Fuyant la temblante vieillesse D’un même vol; Plutôt donc dessous la mer Le feu s’abaisse, Qu’on nous voie désaffamer De nous aimer. 33

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 651.



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(Friend, bold youth and mad love flee trembling old age in the same way. Better that fire slip away below the sea than for us to be seen quenched in our love for each other.)

These verses reflect all the storytellers’ preoccupation with love – both carnal and emotional – and its primacy over other earthly concerns. ­Claribel’s explicit analogy between love and battle provides a final allusion to the specter of war. * After the cheery conclusion of the stories, Yver re-establishes a jarring and melancholy tone with his concluding ode, “Congé à son Livre” (Farewell to his Book). Yver is loath to let it go forth: “Demeure un peu, demeure; où vas-tu, mon enfant?” (Stay a bit, stay; where are you going, my child?). His concern over the public’s reception of the book reveals a modern sensibility and parallels Montaigne’s view of the Essais (Essays) of 1580–8 as an extension of himself. At the same time, it echoes the theme of wayward fortunes for “song” or literary creation as articulated by Moeris in Eclogue 9: “Omnia fert aetas, anumum quoque; saepe ego longos / cantando puerum memini me condere soles: / nunc oblita mihi tot carmina: vox quoque Moerin / iam fugit ipsa; lupi Moerin videre priores” (Time robs us of all, even of memory; oft as a boy I recall that with song I would lay the long summer days to rest. Now I have forgotten all my songs. Even voice itself now fails Moeris; the wolves have seen Moeris first) (Eclogues 9:51–4). The joy of creating, remembering and performing songs and stories is simultaneously powerful and transitory. Unlike the Heptaméron, Le Printemps offered contemporary readers a clear, practical moral of truce between the sexes during a fleeting moment of military truce. For a public starving for nuance and refinement in the midst of horror, this clever, erudite and well-written text met an aesthetic need of the late sixteenth-century public. The prevailing social tensions of inconstant lovers and internecine war remain and dominate but are reassuringly circumscribed within tales told in a courtly refuge. Readers, male and female alike, could appreciate the multiple thematic dichotomies that Yver establishes in this first short narrative to appear since the Heptaméron and that echo Virgil’s famous motif, lachrymae rerum (tears in things). Against a backdrop of war and peace, they could easily relate to the conflicts described between men and women in their struggles over love and hate while savouring the witty way in which they were told. Horace described Virgil’s poetry as molle atque facetum (sensitive and witty). While not a great piece of literature, Le Printemps is, undeniably, a similarly pleasing and at times thought-provoking work. Yver appropriated and adapted Virgilian motifs principally from Eclogues 1 and 9 to better underscore and maintain the tension between war and peace, deprivation and prosperity, while still avoiding “both anger and melancholy,” Nancy ­Lindheim’s

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description of Eclogue 1’s overriding narrative tone. In his preface, Yver describes the religious wars as a sickness: a “douloureuse maladie de France” (painful malady of France) marked by a “fièvre frénétique” (frenetic fever).34 Le Printemps offered a salutary medicine to its victims, if not a cure, and its narrative complexity, derivative of Virgil’s Eclogues, merits continued attention.

34

Yver, Le Printemps d’Yver, p. 521.

3

On the Magical Statues in Lemaire de Belges’s Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus Michael Randall The Virgilian origins of Jean Lemaire de Belges’s Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus (1503) are obvious. Throughout the poem, shepherds, whose literary configuration is strongly influenced by Virgil’s Eclogues, proclaim the glories of a politically powerful person, the recently deceased Pierre II de Bourbon. However, another less obvious Virgilian connection might also be seen in this poem. Like Joachim Du Bellay’s Chant triumphal sur le voyage de Boulongne (1549), and Pierre de Ronsard’s Le Temple de Messeigneurs le connestable, et des chastillons (1573), Lemaire’s Temple describes an edifice that contains statues and images that that are used to symbolize the virtues of an eminent person in ways that are highly redolent of another Virgilian source: the temple and statues that Virgil describes in the proem to his third Georgic. The differences are significant nonetheless. Whereas in Du Bellay and Ronsard the statues are described as being “life-like,” in Lemaire’s Temple these statues actually come to life. The political and poetic function of the poem is radically altered: political greatness is not represented through mimesis but through prophetic discourse and metaphysical participation. The living statues enunciate the virtues they represent symbolically in the other poems, and participate in transcendent glory, just as the subject of the poem, Pierre II de Bourbon, is understood to have done. Written as an encomium to the recently deceased Pierre II de Bourbon, who had died on 10 October 1503, the poem was presented to the Count of Ligny.1 Unfortunately, Ligny himself was to die shortly afterward on 31 December 1503, and Lemaire had to rededicate the poem to Pierre II de Bourbon’s widow, Anne of France.2 The poem’s structure is as complex as 1 For a detailed analysis of historical context of the poem, see James B. Wadsworth, “Jean Lemaire de Belges and the Death of Pierre de Bourbon,” Romance Notes, 1 (1959): 53–8. I would like to thank my colleague Patricia Johnston for availing me of her considerable knowledge of Virgil during the redaction of the article. 2 See Pierre Jodogne, Jean Lemaire de Belges: écrivain franco-bourguignon (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1971), p. 171; “Introduction,” Jean Lemaire de Belges, Le

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its historical context. A first long pastoral section, in which shepherds such as Tityrus, Galatée, Amyntas, Mopsus, Eglé, Argus and Mélibée sing the praises of the god Pan, is followed by a deploration of the defunct Pan. The shepherds represent the various provinces that had been in the duke’s domain, and Pan represents the recently deceased Pierre II of Bourbon.3 At the end of this section, the duchess Aurora, who represents Anne of France, has a dream in which she, her daughter, Suzanne de Bourbon, and the shepherds discover a richly ornamented temple in which the speaking statues are found. This is the temple of honour and virtue to which the title refers. At the end of this section, Aurora is led into the temple with her daughter in the company of illustrious people from the past, while the shepherds are left outside to comment on what they have seen. The structure of the poem has given rise to much critical debate. Some scholars, such as Alice Hulubei, claim that the poem was actually written at two different times, with the first pastoral part being written earlier.4 James B. Wadsworth agrees with the idea that the poem was written at two different times, but also claims that the deploration belongs to the second (i.e. temple) section of the poem.5 Another critic, Panos Paul Morphos, claims that the poem is divided into three sections, all written as part of one unitary vision.6 As a general rule, it would seem that all these critics see the first part of Temple d’honneur et de vertus, ed. Henry Hornik (Geneva: Droz, 1957), p. 12. See also Jean Stecher, Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de Jean Lemaire de Belges (Louvain: np, 1891), pp. xviii–xxi; Kathleen Miriam Munn, A Contribution to the Study of Jean Lemaire de Belges: A Critical Study of Bio-Biographical Data, Including a Transcript of Various Unpublished Works (Scottdale PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1936), pp. 50–1. 3 The representation of political power through the pastoral mode is common in Virgil and Lemaire, as well as to other poets working in Virgil’s wake. See Alice Hulubei, L’Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle: époque des Valois (1515–1589) (Paris: Droz, 1938), pp. 5–6. A. Perutelli notes a propos of Virgil’s Bucolics, that “[a]s happens with many other kinds of characterisation, the name guarantees the conventions of the bucolic genre, but behind the name there stands an individual solidly inserted in the real Roman life of the period,” “Bucolics,” A Companian to the Study of Virgil, ed. Nicholas Horsfall (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), p. 44. See also Michael Lipka, Language in Vergil’s Eclogues (Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 2001), pp. 171–93. 4 See Hulubei, L’Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle, p. 160; “Introduction,” Lemaire de Belges, Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus, ed. Hornik, pp. 17–18. 5 James B. Wadsworth, “Lyons 1473–1503, The Beginnings of Cosmopolitanism,” The Medieval Academy of America, 73 (1962): 177–84. 6 Panos Paul Morphos, “The Composition of Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus of Lemaire de Belges,” Studies in Philology, 59 (1962): 501–13; and Morphos, “The Pictorialism of Lemaire de Belges in Le Temple d’Honneur et de vertus,” Annali, 5 (1963): 5–34, p. 11. Pierre Jodogne agrees with Morphos about the tripartite structure of the poem, but disagrees with him about the “pictorial” aspect of the poem. See Jean Lemaire de Belges, écrivain franco-bourguignon (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1971), p. 171–2; and “Structure et technique descriptive dans ‘Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus’ de Jean Lemaire de Belges,” Studi Francesi, 28 (1966): 269–78.

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the poem, with or without the deploration, as being beholden, directly or indirectly, to Virgil’s Eclogues.7 The last part, composed of the description of the temple, is also generally understood as being influenced by writers working within the Rhétoriqueur school of poetry. Georges Chastellain’s Le Temple de Bocace (c. 1463) and Jean Molinet’s Le Trosne d’honneur (after June 1467) are considered among the most important influences.8 This distinction between the Virgilian first part and the rhétoriqueur second part is born out in two of the most important thematic studies of sixteenth-century literature that treat Lemaire’s Temple. Alice Hulubei’s very complete study of the Ecologues in Renaissance France, L’Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle, does not look at the last section of the poem devoted to architectural form, and David Cowling’s equally magisterial study of architectural elements in rhétoriqueur poetry, Building the Text: Architecture as Metaphor in Late Medieval and Early Modern France, largely ignores the first pastoral part of the poem.9 7 Hulubei sees the deploration as being highly redolent of the description of Daphnis in Virgil’s Eclogue 5, see L’Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle, p. 161. Francisque Thibaut sees the influence of Virgil’s description of the death of Caesar in the Georgics in Lemaire’s deploration, see Marguerite d’Autriche et Jehan Lemaire de Belges ou de la littérature et des arts aux Pays-bas sous Marguerite d’Autriche (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), p. 238. Georges Doutrepont criticizes Thibaut, explaining that “[j]e confesse humblement n’avoir pas découvert une imitation du célèbre texte latin dans la description du deuil de la nature au moment du trépas du seigneur du Bourbon” (I humbly confess that I have discovered no imitation of the famous Latin text in the description of the mourning of nature at the time of Bourbon’s death), Jean Lemaire et la Renaissance (Geneva: Slatkine, 1974), p. 102. Doutrepont sees a “ressemblance vague” between the Concorde des deux langages and the Georgics, but does not mention any connection between the Temple d’honneur and the Georgics, see Jean Lemaire et la renaissance, p. 305. Hermann Gmelin sees a possible connection between the proem to the third Georgic and a passage from the Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troye, see “Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen der Renaissance,” Romanische Forschungen, 46, Part 2 (1932): 256–7. 8 On the influence of the Rhétoriqueurs, especially of Jean Molinet, on the Temple d’honneur, see Doutrepont, Jean Lemaire et la Renaissance, p. 179; Jodogne, Jean Lemaire de Belges, p. 174; Diane Desrosiers-Bonin, “Le Temple des Grands Rhétoriqueurs,” Le Moyen Français, 34 (1994): 43–52; and Wadsworth, “Lyons 1473–1503,” p. 181. For Le Trosne d’honneur, see Jean Molinet, Les Faictz et dictz de Jean Molinet, ed. Noël Dupire (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1963), v. 1, pp. 36–58. For Le Temple de Bocace, see Georges Chastellain, Œuvres de Georges Chastellain, ed. M. Le Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: F. Heussneur, 1865), v. 7, pp. 75–143; and Ulrike Bergweiler, Die Allegorie im Werk von Jean Lemaire de Belges (Geneva: Droz, 1976), pp. 118–65. For use of decorative richness in Lemaire’s La Concorde des deux langages, see Doranne Fenoaltoa, “Doing it with Mirrors: Architecture and Textual Construction in Jean Lemaire’s La Concorde des deux langages,” Lapidary Inscriptions: Renaissance Essays for Donald A. Stone, Jr. (Lexington KY: French Forum, 1991), pp. 21–32. For another possible French pastoral influence on Lemaire, see Jean Molinet, Le Bergier sans soulas, in Faictz et Dictz, ed. Dupire, v.1, pp. 209–24. 9 See David Cowling, Building the Text: Architecture as Metaphor in Late Medieval and

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In order to understand the basic question underlying the poetic and political status of the statues in these Renaissance poems, we must consider how the statues in Virgil might have been interpreted in the sixteenth century. In the proem to his third Georgic, Virgil erects a temple to the glory of Caesar Octavian. Virgil describes his temple in great detail, emphasizing its architectural opulence: primus ego in patriam mecum, modo vita supersit, Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas; primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas et viridi in campo templum de marmore ponam propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius et tenera praetexit harundine ripas. in medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit. illi victor ego et Tyrio conspectus in ostro centum quadriiugos agitabo ad flumina currus. … in foribus pugnam ex auro solidoque elephanto Gangaridum faciam victorisque arma Quirini, atque hic undantem bello magnumque fluentem Nilum ac navali surgentis aere columnas. addam urbes Asiae domitas pulsumque Niphaten fidentemque fuga Parthum versisque sagittis et duo rapta manu diverso ex hoste tropaea bisque triumphatas utroque ab litore gentes. stabunt et Parii lapides, spirantia signa, Assaraci proles demissaeque ab Iove gentis nomina Trosque parens et Troiae Cynthius auctor. Invidia infelix furias amnemque severum Cocyti metuet tortosque Ixionis anguis immanemque rotam et non exsuperabile saxum. (Georgics 3:10–18 and 26–39) (I first, if life but remain, will return to my country, bringing the Muses with me in triumph from the Aonian peak; first I will bring back to thee, Mantua, the palms of Idumeaea, and on the green plain will set up a temple in marble beside the water, where great Mincius wanders in slow windings and fringes his banks with slender reeds.  In the midst I will have Caesar, and he shall possess the shrine. In his honour I, a victor resplendent in Tyrian purple, will drive a hundred four-horse chariots beside the stream.… On the doors I will fashion in gold and solid ivory, the battle of the Ganges’ tribe and the arms of conquering Quirinus; there, too, the Nile, surging Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), especially pp. 166–7, 169, 171–2 and 172–87. See p. 178 for allusion to the pastoral.

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with war and flowing full; and columns soaring high with prows of bronze. I will add Asia’s vanquished cities, the routed Niphates, the Parthian, whose trust is in flight and backward-shot arrows, the two trophies torn perforce from farsundered foes and the nations on either shore that yielded twofold triumphs. Here, too, shall stand Parian marbles, statues that breathe – the seed of Assaracus and the great names of the race sprung from Jove, father Tros and the Cynthian founder of Troy. Loathly envy shall cower before the Furies and the stern stream of Cocytus, Ixion’s twisted snakes and monstrous wheel and the unconquerable stone.)

Virgil uses ecphrasis to depict Octavian’s military victories, architectural detail to represent his greatness (gold, ivory, bronze, marble), and the statues to represent the race of Jove, “father Tros” and the Delian Apollo. Both Du Bellay and Ronsard seem to have understood the term Virgil uses to describe his statues, “spirantia signa” (statues that breathe), as having a metaphorical meaning. They were not really alive, only “life-like.” The glory of the political subjects of the poems would in this case be understood as represented through the powers of mimesis. The poems reflect their subjects’ glory through art’s ability to reproduce natural phenomena through imitation. The artistic hand plays an important role in Du Bellay’s Chant Triumphal, in which the poet constructs a temple in honour of Henry II that is similar both geographically and architecturally to Virgil’s: De marbre noir au milieu d’un beau pré J’edifiray un temple dyapré Tout au plus pres, ou Loyre plus profonde En l’Ocean fait couler sa clere onde. De marbre aussi les coulonnes seront, Qui en blancheur la neige passeront, Avec l’autel construict de mesme pierre Encourtiné de laurier & de l’hyerre.10 (I will build a temple Speckled with marble in a lovely meadow As near as possible to where the waves of the Deepest Loire flow to the Ocean. The columns also will be of marble White as snow. And the altar, also constructed 10 Joachim Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, Recueils lyriques de 1549, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Nizet, 1983), v. 3, p. 84, lines 169–76. Françoise Joukovsky notes that Du Bellay could have been influenced by a neo-Latin poet such as Amaltheo who had also constructed a temple for Cosimo de Medici, see Joukovsky, La Gloire dans la poésie française et néolatine du xvie siècle (des rhétoriqueurs à Agrippa d’Aubigné) (Geneva: Droz, 1969), pp. 537–8.

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Of the same stone, will be curtained off By laurel and ivy.)

In the centre of the temple, Du Bellay places the “grand Roy” whose great military victories will be depicted in painting: Là mon grand Roy sera mis au milieu Sur piliers d’or, qui tout au tour du lieu Tesmoingeront sa louange notoire: Et sera dict le temple de Victoire. Là je peindray comme il aura donté Calaiz, Boulongne, & l’Anglois surmonté, Puis l’Hibernie, & tout ce qui attouche L’humide lict ou le soleil se couche.11 (There, in the middle, my great King will be placed. On golden pillars, which all around will bear Witness to his noteworthy fame: And this will be called the temple of Victory There I will paint how he tamed Calais, Boulogne and overcame the English And Hibernia and all that touches The watery bed where the sun sets.)

Henry II’s victories are clearly to be understood as having been represented (je peindray) by the artist/poet. The glory of the king is represented in the poem, which imitates the paintings in the “temple of Victory.” The value of the king is reflected by the artistic value of the representation. Pierre de Ronsard’s Le Temple de Messeigneurs le connestable, et des chastillons also adopts architectural elements similar to those in the proem to the third Georgic. Like Du Bellay, Ronsard constructs his temple alongside a river: Je veux, mon Mecenas, te bastir à l’exemple Des Romains et des Grecs, la mervielle d’un Temple, Sur la rive où le Loing trainant sa petite eau, Baigne de ses replis les pieds de ton chasteau.12 (I want, my Mæcenas, to build you Following the example of the Romans and the Greeks A marvellous temple, On the banks where the Loing trailing its small waters, Bathes with its waves the feet of your castle.) Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 3, p. 85, lines 185–92. Pierre de Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, edd. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager and Michel Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), v. 2, pp. 633, lines 1–4. 11

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Chastillon’s ancestors will be depicted in bronze, “airan,” around the temple built of marble, including a statue of Chastillon’s father: Tout le Temple sera basti de marbre blanc, Où, gravez en airain j’attacheray de rang Tes ayeux eslevez à l’entour des murailles, Qui tous auront escrit aux pieds de leurs medailles Leurs gestes et leurs noms, et les noms ennemis Des chevaliers qu’en guerre à mort ils auront mis.  A part, vers la main dextre, appuyé sur sa lance Ton pere, qui jadis fut Mareschal de France, Sera vivant en marbre, et tellement le trait De sa face premiere au vif sera portrait, Qu’on luy reconnoistra vivement en la pierre La mesme audace au front, qu’il eut jadis en guerre.13 (All of the temple will be made of white marble, Where, engraved in bronze, I will attach in a row Your exalted ancestors around the walls, All of whom will have written at the foot of their medals Their feats and their names, as well the names of enemy Knights whom they have killed in battle.  To the side, toward the right, leaning on his spear Your father, who once was field-marshal, Will be living in marble, and the features of His pure face will be portrayed so life-like That the audaciousness that showed in war in times past On his brow will be recognized in the stone.)

Ronsard’s poem depicts a “life-like” statue in which the subject’s military prowess will be recognized in the stone’s material form. The subject’s glory is reflected in the artist’s skill in rendering military virtue in stone. The viewer of the statue will be able to recognize in the stone the courage the subject had shown in war.14 It is clear that in Ronsard, as in Du Bellay, the expression “Spirantia signa” would not be interpreted as “filled with life” but rather “life-like” (as Ronsard says “au vif sera portrait”). Henry II and Chastillon’s greatness is rendered through literature’s ability to render moral greatness and virtue through mimesis; the poetic paintings and statues resemble their Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 2, p. 633, lines 11–22. 14 As David Cowling remarks: “Ronsard’s statues of members of the Chastillon family share with Virgil’s spirantia signa (Georgics 3:34) the desire to imitate and reproduce the living, as the description of the effigy of Coligny with its triple repetition of the root viv makes clear,” Building the Text, p. 212. Cowling makes a distinction between the metaphorical nature of the temple in Lemaire de Belges and its more visual nature in Ronsard. See also Fenoaltea, “Doing it with Mirrors,” which is cited by Cowling. 13

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subjects’ virtue just as real statues resemble their subjects’ physical appearance.15 The bottom line is calculated according to the degree to which the sculptor, painter or writer is able to reflect that initial greatness in his artistic work. The aesthetic value of the work, and by extension its political value, is calculated by how well the artist achieves this representation. In Lemaire’s poem, aesthetic and political value is measured quite differently. He begins by describing his edifice as an “anticque temple,” richly decorated with marble and fine stones, which is built on a grassy plain: Et en la plaine spacieuse et herbue se monstroit de front ung eddifice sumptueux à merveilles, à maniere d’ung temple anticque en ouvraige mais riche oultremesure en sa façon, lequel donnoit de prime face esbayssement à l’oeil, tant pour l’excellence de sa beaulté que pour la reflamboyance de l’or et des pierres precieuses dont il estoit garny. A l’entrée de ce temple y avoit ung portail tout estoffé de fin marbre poly et enrichy d’elegant ouvraige. Ouquel temple estoient posées tout de nouveau, comme il apparoit par la demonstraction de l’oeuvre recente, six ymages exquises et precieuses taillées de main si ouvriere qu’il sembloit de prime face que le supernel facteur des choses y eust mis la main que Phidias ne Praxiteles, jadis souverains maistres de sculpture.16 (On the spacious and grassy plain the front of a marvellous and sumptuous edifice could be seen in the manner of a temple antique in its workmanship but rich beyond measure in its making, which at first amazed the eye as much for the excellence of its beauty, as for the flamboyance of the gold and the precious stones it was festooned with. At the entrance to the temple, there was a door covered with fine polished marble and enriched with elegant workmanship. In this temple had been placed six exquisite and precious images sculpted by a hand so adroit that it seemed at first that the 15 Sixteenth-century translations of Virgil also seem to understand the term “spirantia signa” metaphorically, or at least, not realistically. A translation of the Georgics by Guillaume Michel published in 1519 rather awkwardly translates this expression as “[s] ignes spirans.” See Les Georgicques de Virgille Maron: translatees de Latin en françoys: et moralisées (n.p.: M. Durand Gerlier, 1519). An edition of Virgil’s Œuvres in 1580 emphasizes the mimetic and metaphoric nature of the statues. They are so life-like that they “seem to breathe”:“De marbre fin les images seront, /Qui respirer illec nous sembleront,” Les Œuvres de Public Virgile Maron, Prince des poètes latins. Traduits de Latin en François: les Bucoliques & Georgiques par Cl. & R. le Blanc: Et les xii livres des Eneides par Loys Des Masures (Paris: Chez Claude Micard, 1580), p. 71. Another edition of Virgil’s Œuvres from 1583 also underlines the metaphoric nature of these statues:“Là du vieux Assarace /En marbre Parien respirera la race,” Les Œuvres de Virgile Maron, latin et françois, traduites de nouveau, trans. Robert et Antoine Le Chevalier d’Agneaux (Paris: Chez Guillaume Auvray, 1583), p. 62. In all of these examples from the sixteenth century, it would seem clear that these statues were supposed to have been so well-turned that they seemed to be life-like. The genius was in the artist who had rendered their resemblance so exact. 16 Lemaire, Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus, ed. Hornik, p. 74, lines 676–90.

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creator on high of things had had a hand rather than Phidias and Praxiteles, who long ago used to be sovereign masters of sculpture.)

The value of Lemaire’s temple, like Virgil’s and those of Du Bellay and Ronsard, is emphasized by the richness of the decor: they are all made of marble and filled with objects made of precious materials (for example, gold and precious stones in Lemaire, and gold, ivory and bronze in Virgil). The artistic worth of the statues would seem similar to that of the paintings in Du Bellay or the statues in Ronsard in that they seem so life-like that it would appear that God himself rather than a sculptor, even one as talented as Phidias or Praxiteles, had made them. Political glory, however, is not represented through artistic mimesis in Lemaire’s Temple. When the seven shepherds who have come upon the temple dispute the meaning of the letters with which all the statues are adorned, the statues stand up and begin to talk: Et comme ils perseveroient en cest estrif, lesdictz six personnaiges de maintien virginal qui sembloient estre statues immobiles se dresserent tout doulcement sur bout que à paine apparcevoit on leur mouvement et, de leurs bouches corallines, pronuncent par ordre les dictiers cy apres escripte, ung chascun des assistens faisant silennce taciturne et sa’pareillerent à escout, comme ouÿr le saint oracle d’Apollo en Delphos.17 (And as they continued to argue, the six named characters of virginal bearing who seemed to be immobile statues stood up so smoothly that they barely seemed to move and, from their bright red mouths, pronounced in order the sayings written down here, each of those present silent with closed mouths and prepared to listen, as though hearing the holy oracle of Apollo in Delphi.)

Unlike the poems by Du Bellay and Ronsard, in which the meaning of the statues is interpreted through mimetic resemblance, Lemaire’s statues reveal their meaning themselves.18 The statues literally serve a performative rather than a mimetic function. They do not resemble the virtues of great men, they are those virtues. Lemaire, Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus, ed. Hornik, p. 76, lines 722–30. In Chastellain’s Le Temple de Bocace, an inscription over the entryway “en lettres d’or” explains the function of the temple. Spectral figures of dead historically important people try to gain entry, and the spirit of Boccaccio himself comes out of the temple, but none of the architectural elements come to life. See Chastellain, Œuvres de Georges Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, pp. 75–143. In Molinet’s Le Trosne d’honneur, allegorical personnages share the same letters as all the letters in the name “Philippus.” The parts of the throne itself do not come to life. See Molinet, Les Faictz et dictz de Jean Molinet, ed. Dupire, v. 1, pp. 36–58. The architectural elements in Molinet’s Le Temple de Mars are sometimes given highly fantastical or abstract descriptions but they are never animated, see Faictz et dictz, ed. Dupire, v. 1, pp. 65–76. 17 18

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A clue to understanding Lemaire’s statues might be found in the allusion to the Delian Apollo found in both Lemaire and in Virgil but not in Du Bellay or Ronsard. Lemaire says that the statues will be listened to as though they were the “Apollo en Delphos,” just as Virgil describes the statues in his temple as the “seed of Assaracus, and the great names of the race sprung from Jove, father Tros, and the Cynthian founder of Troy.” This last epithet, as R.A.B. Mynors points out, is a Callimachean description of the Delian Apollo.19 The Delphic aspect of Lemaire’s poem can shed light on why the statues breathe and talk: they reveal a truth that is otherwise hidden.20 The meaning of the statue is not interpreted by anyone, not even by the character Entendement, who magically appears to Aurora and the other princesses after the statues have spoken, but is revealed by the statues themselves. Instead of existing in a past interpreted by a narrator working in the poem’s present, the meaning of the statues is revealed in the poem’s present and draws the narrator and the reader into the future.21 In Du Bellay and Ronsard’s poems, the meaning of statues needs to be explained by a narrator or a character through a process of mimesis. The statues have meaning because they resemble a living person, or one who had recently been alive. The life-like quality of the statues is what reveals the political importance of the poet’s subject. In these poems by Du Bellay and Ronsard, the term “spirantia signa,” used by Virgil to describe his statues, is clearly metaphoric. Quite differently, in Lemaire, Virgil’s spirantia signa Virgil, Georgics, ed. R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 185. On the Alexandrian nature of the Georgics, see Horsfall, A Companion to the Study of Virgil, p. 79 and pp. 96–8. Although many critics have seen Pindar’s sixth Olympian ode as the source of the temple in the proem to the third Georgic, one critic has identified Callimachus’s Aetia as a model for Virgil’s temple, see Richard F. Thomas, Reading Virgil and His Texts: Studies in Intertextuality (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 75. Of most interest for this discussion is the fact that in Fragment 114 of Callimachus’s Aetia, a statue of the Delian Apollo conducts a conversation with the poet. See Thomas, Reading Virgil and His Texts, pp. 74–5. For the conversation with living statue in Callimachus, see Aetia, Iambi, Hecale, and Other Fragments, ed. and trans. C.A. Trypanis (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 88–9, lines 4–11. For the Pindar model, see The Odes of Pindar, ed. and trans. John Sandys (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 55. On Apollo in the Georgics, see Patricia A. Johnston, Vergil’s Agricultural Golden Age: A Study of the Georgics (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980), pp. 125–9. 20 It must also be kept in mind that throughout the Middle Ages there was a long-standing legend that Virgil was the creator of magical statues. Lemaire’s statues are different from these other “Virgilian” statues in that they are not considered to have been made by the Mantuan. However, this legendary tradition does provide a cultural context for the magical powers of the statues. For this legend, see, The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years, edd. Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 825–74, especially pp. 860–74. 21 Panos Paul Morphos says that the statues are part of an ecphrastic description of the temple and are exemplary of what he calls Lemaire’s “pictorialism.” See Morphos, “The Pictorialism of Lemaire de Belges,” pp. 25–6 and 28–30. 19

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would need to be understood as “statues that breathe” as the term is translated in the modern Loeb edition.22 The statues in Lemaire take on a more prophetic nature; they provide information about the defunct duke and about the future that others in the poem are incapable of knowing or expressing. Lemaire’s poem functions not only at the junction of the past and the present, but also at the junction of the present and the future. Prudence, the first statue, explains that she has the ability to know the future: J’ay temps passez en mon intellecture Et des futurs certaine conjecture.23 (I have time past in my understanding And certain conjecture of future time.)

Esperance, the third statue, also vaunts her ability to see beyond the common experience of men: J’ai œil voyant clere beatitude, A quoi aspire, et là gyst mon estude. J’actens les cieulx, je fuyz terrestre noyse.24 (I have an eye which sees unclouded bliss, To which I aspire, and there lies my study. I reach for the heavens, I flee earthly quarrels.)

This prophetic discourse is of a piece with the general drift of the work as a whole. In the original dedicatory letter to the Count of Ligny, Lemaire explains that contemporary writers needed to try to understand the prophetic nature of unhappy current events: Il me semble que les nobles escrivains de l’aage present ont matiere assez fertile pour deplorer la triste conjecture du temps futur, voire trop fecunde, pour s’employer à graver en marbre, c’est-à-dire, en perpetuelle cronicque, les merveilleux cas funebres qui adviennent de jour en jour.25 22 The Loeb translation of the Georgics translates “spirantia signa” as “statues that breathe,” (3:34). In the same Loeb edition, the term “spirantia,” when found in the Aeneid, is also translated in a similar way. It gives “quivering entrails” for “spirantia ... exta” (4:64), and, more importantly, “breathing bronze” for “spirantia … aera” (6:847). A modern French translation also underlines the living aspect of the statues: “Debout, les pierres de Paros seront des statues qui respirent: la race issue d’Assaracus y revivra, accompagnée par les grands noms de la famille des descendants de Jupiter ainsi que Tros notre père et le Cynthien, auteur de Troies.” Virgile, Géorgiques, trans. Alain Michel, Jeanne Dion and Philippe Heuzé (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1997), pp. 223, lines 34–8. 23 Lemaire, Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus, ed. Hornik, p. 76, lines 737–38. 24 Lemaire, Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus, ed. Hornik, p. 76, lines 757–79. 25 Lemaire, Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus, ed. Hornik, p. 48.

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(It seems to me that the noble writers of the present age have enough fertile material to deplore the unhappy conjecture of future times, even too much, in order to busy themselves with engraving in marble, in perpetual chronicle, the marvellous funereal events which happen these days.)

The death of Pierre II de Bourbon provides the occasion for writers such as Lemaire to deplore the ominous signs of “future times.” Far from being a bizarre detail unworthy of critical notice, the speaking statues create a narrative and thematic bridge with the professed intent of the poem evoked in the dedicatory letter. This desire to understand the prophetic meaning of current and past events is also particularly strong in other works by Lemaire such as his Traité des schismes et des conciles de l’Eglise (1511).26 Just as importantly, the statues also participate in a transcendent harmony. At the end of the statues’ speeches, the narrative voice of the poem, Acteur, explains that the statues filled the air with a “souefve armonye” (sweet harmony) and that it seemed to Aurora, the allegorized Anne of France, that the excellence of the statues “n’estoit point sans quelque participation de divinité” (was not without some participation in the divine). Aurora then bends her knees in honour of the “venerables representacions dessusdictes” (above-mentioned venerable divinities) (pp. 78–9, lines 791–800). The statues reveal the glory of Pierre II de Bourbon through their participation in divine perfection. Rather than imitating political greatness in imperfect human form, the statues actually enact that greatness by participating in divine perfection. Lemaire’s prophetic and metaphysical statues are not allegorical or mimetic symbols meant to be understood in relation to absent models. In fact, the statues themselves are opposed to this sort of interpretation; when they come down to lead the princess Aurora and her daughter Suzanne of Bourbon into the temple, the golden doors of the temple then close on their own “car point nestoit licite aux cinq bergiers et deux bergieres, dessus mentionnez, de mettre le pied en lieu tant benit et tant sacré” (because the five shepherds and two shepherdesses, mentioned above, were not allowed to put their feet in such a blessed and sacred place) (p. 93, lines 1233–35). The shepherds do not take umbrage at being shut out, and while waiting for their ladies and princesses, they carve into the walls of the temple “chascun ung epytaphe et superscription rude, mais de bonne affection” (each one a crude and superstitious epitaph, but with good affection) in order to honor their prince (p. 94,

Prophecy plays an important role in other works by Lemaire such as the Traité des schismes et des conciles de l’Eglise (1511). See Jennifer Britnell, “Jean Lemaire de Belges and Prophecy,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 42 (1979): 144–66. See also Judy Kem, “Magic and Prophecy in the Works of Jean Lemaire de Belges” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1986). 26

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lines 1240–1). The epitaphs left by the shepherds represent a “rude” interpretation that is contrasted with the sacred understanding of the magical statues. In some ways, the shepherds in Lemaire’s poem have the same function as the narrator in Du Bellay and Ronsard’s poems. They interpret the meaning of the literary statues by their resemblance to real ones; the literary statues stand to the glory of the subject in the same way that real statues stand to the glory of their subject. However, in Lemaire’s poem, that interpretative step is deemed secondary in importance to what the statues themselves say. No one needs to interpret the statues’ meaning by their resemblance to a monument in stone. They are not “like” anything, not even “life.” They are alive and unlike anything else. Lemaire’s statues enunciate the glory of Pierre II de Bourbon. The poem itself becomes a monument to the glory of Lemaire’s deceased patron. The animated statues distinguish Lemaire’s temple from those of Du Bellay and Ronsard, and extend the boundary of what we might call the Virgilian space of the poem. This does not make the temple a part of the Virgilian pastoral in the first section of the poem, and does not create a single, homogeneous space that Lemaire would have created in one act of creative genius. It does, nonetheless, suggest that the poem’s organization is perhaps more rhetorically and logically unified than is sometimes believed. The animated sculptures become the central point of the poem, enunciating the virtues of the defunct duke and fulfilling the prophetic intention found in the first dedicatory letter. The pastoral scene in the first half of the poem thus becomes the background for the erection of the literary monument whose meaning is not deduced by the shepherds’ understanding, but rather expressed by the “Delphic” statues themselves. Their vision is that of the hidden truth represented by the inhabitants of the temple of honour and virtue. This vision is open only to the politically and culturally elite, and not to the profane.27 The poem’s structure thus becomes more unified. The shepherds and the temple function together as ways of illuminating and praising the glory of the defunct duke. If Lemaire is referring to Virgil’s third Georgic in Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus, he appropriates that source and transforms it into something uniquely his own. Like the stones and geometric forms which have magical values in Lemaire’s La Couronne margaritique, the statues in Le Temple d’honneur et de vertus participate in the magical properties of the divine; they also enjoy prophetic properties that separate them from the imperfect understanding and expression of the shepherds. Just as Virgil, Du Bellay and Ronsard used their temples and statues to sing the glory of politically

On the elite nature of prophetic knowledge in Lemaire, see Britnell, “Jean Lemaire de Belges and Prophecy,” p. 166.

27

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powerful individuals, Lemaire’s temple and statues proclaim the glory of Pierre II de Bourbon. And yet, unlike the other poems studied here, Lemaire’s temple represents glory not through artistic mimesis, but through magical and prophetic discourse. Words, rather than stone, become the material of the monument.

4

Temples of Virtue: Worshipping Virgil in Sixteenth-Century France Stéphanie Lecompte (Translated by Penelope Meyers) There is no shortage of temples of virtue in sixteenth-century French poetry, and even if their authors never claim Virgil as their source, the dominant quest structure in these works nevertheless presents connections with the great epics of Antiquity, and in particular the Aeneid. It is difficult to determine the exact origin of this topos, of which Jean Lemaire de Belges’ Le Temple d’Honneur et de Vertu seems to be one of the first French examples, but two ancient works emerge as rather obvious sources. In the Works and Days, Hesiod describes the arduous and barren path that one must follow in order to reach the summit of the Mountain of Virtue.1 Xenophon, too, presents Prodicus of Ceos’ speech about Hercules at the crossroads between the paths of virtue and vice: this myth alternates between the discourses of Arete and Eudaimonia who attempt to conquer Hercules, who himself concludes predictably by rejecting vice and choosing virtue.2 Nevertheless, neither of these two authors mentions a temple of Virtue, so it is conceivable that Jean Lemaire de Belges combined this tradition with the tradition of the temple inherited from the Georgics, which is found in the writing of Froissart, or Chapelain, for example. Indeed, in Book 3 of the Georgics, Virgil erects a marble temple in honour of Augustus in a peaceful and pleasurable place, thus providing a model of encomiastic poetry: Primus Idumeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas: Et viridi in campo templum de marmore ponam, Propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat

1 Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. and trans. Glenn W. Most (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 289–92. 2 Xenophon, Memorabilia, ed. and trans. E.C. Marchant (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 2:1.

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Mincius et tenera prætexit arundine ripas. In medio mihi Cæsar erit, templumque tenebit. (Georgics, 3:12–16) (First I will bring back to you, Mantua, the palms of Idumaea, and on the green plain will set up a temple in marble beside the water, where great Mincius wanders in lazy windings and fringes his banks with slender reeds. In the midst I will have Caesar, and he shall possess the shrine.)

In glorifying Augustus, Virgil glorifies not only the emperor, but also the warrior, and it is thus Roman virtus which is honoured. Established by the Consul Marcellus after his victory over Syracuse, the temple of Honour and Virtue serves the sole function of displaying Roman supremacy to the world and glorifying the warrior’s virtue.3 For all of that, what remains of Roman virtus in Renaissance temples of Virtue? What significance did Virgil bestow upon the word, or rather, what meaning did his exegetes attribute to it? More so than Le Temple d’Honneur et de Vertu (1503), La Concorde des deux langages (1511), another poem written by Jean Lemaire de Belges, gives respectability to the topic of the mountain of Virtue and presents multiple connections with the Aeneid while still preserving the model of the idealized temple from the Georgics. The two texts both take place within the frame of a dream, but Le Temple d’Honneur et de Vertu is static, whereas the Concorde presents a progression, a true quest which drives the narrator-protagonist (who is referred to as the Actor) all the way to the temple of Minerva (an avatar of Hesiod’s Arete) after having left Venus’ temple. Whereas the dream in the Temple d’Honneur et de Vertu is inscribed within an eclogue featuring Melibœus and Tityrus, two eminently Virgilian characters, the quest structure in La Concorde marks a return to the epic genre, despite the fact that the evocation of the temple of Venus is made within a bucolic setting. La Concorde des deux langages is important because it served as a matrix for numerous major works of the French Renaissance: Le Temple de Vertu by François Habert (1542), Chapter 57 of the Quart Livre by Rabelais (1552), and the “Discours” which Ronsard addresses to Jérôme de la Rovère in Le Bocage royal (1560).4 The four texts have numerous elements in common and all valorize the choice of virtue over vice upon the protagonist’s completion of a quest strewn with hazards and pitfalls. This structure begins to resonate with the journey of Aeneas, a hero whom numerous interpreters have viewed as a model of virtue. Virgil allows for this interpretation by implying 3 The anecdote is recounted by Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings, trans. Henry John Walker (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004), 1:1. 4 On the importance of this topos in the Renaissance, see Henri Franchet, Le Poète et son œuvre d’après Ronsard (Paris: E. Champion, 1923), Chapter 2:5.



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Aeneas’ ascent to the position of indigète, i.e. a god who will lord over the new Italian nation (Aeneid 12:794). The absence of a temple of Virtue throughout the Aeneid does preclude a quest for virtue on the part of Aeneas; the deification that awaits him after death is the sign of a true purification, or so many exegetes of Virgil in both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance would like to believe. The purpose of the present pages is thus to determine to what extent the topos of the temple of Virtue might have been influenced by the exegetic tradition of the Aeneid and thus to establish how it allows for the illustration of the spiritual progression of the soul towards virtue, whether it be Neoplatonist or Christian. From the Active Life to the Contemplative Life: Neoplatonist Interpretations of Aeneas’ Journey in the Renaissance The history of how the Aeneid has been read is tied in large part to the transmission of Neoplatonist and even Plotinian conceptions of virtue. Research by Paule Demats and Francine Mora-Lebrun has made it possible to measure the influence of fourth-century commentaries on interpreting Virgil.5 Up to the ninth century, manuscripts of the Aeneid were accompanied by Servius’ commentary, whose exegetic method consisted of grammatical analysis. Attention to detail was thus brought to the overall perception of the text. At the beginning of the sixth century, the interpretive tradition surrounding Virgil was markedly altered by Fulgentius’ Liber de expositione Virgilianæ continentiæ, which presented a structured commentary explaining the complete framework of the text: according to Fulgentius, each of the first six books of the Aeneid corresponds to one of the ages of life. Fulgentius thus offers an approach different from line-by-line commentary. He opened up a new method, which would be followed, based on Macrobius’ reading of Virgil, by the philosophers of the School of Chartres, and subsequently both French and Italian Neoplatonists. Macrobius’ two major works, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and the Saturnalia, were very influential in the Renaissance and can be seen as a true temple erected to the glory of Virgil.6 Macrobius practises a primarily Neoplatonist reading, believing that Virgil had known to combine “poeticum figmentum” (poetic invention) and “veritas philosophica” (philosophical truth), which legitimizes an allegorical interpretation of the work whose scope would be philosophical, or even metaphysical.7 5 Paule Demats, Fabula, Trois études de mythographie antique et médiévale (Geneva: Droz, 1973); Francine Mora-Lebrun, L’Enéide médiévale et la naissance du roman (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994). 6 See Stéphanie Lecompte, La Chaîne d’or des poètes: presence de Macrobe dans l’Europe humaniste (Geneva: Droz, 2009). 7 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. Mireille Armisen-Marchetti (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), 1.9.8: “Ut geminæ doctrinæ observatione præstiterit

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This postulate makes clear, therefore, that Virgilian exegesis is based entirely on allegory, and the philosophers of the School of Chartres made this new interpretation their own. If Fulgentius gave them the canvas for a structured analysis which takes into account the progression of the work, book after book, then Macrobius must be credited with the exegetic method that was adopted. For instance, in Fulgentius, the storm illustrates the birth of Man thrown into the midst of the trials of life. Bernard Silvestris, on the other hand, who had read Macrobius at length, proposes a Neoplatonist analysis of the same passage. Silvestris interprets the storm as an illustration of the fall of the soul within the body, and in the continuation of his commentary he goes on to evoke the journey of the soul.8 In the prologue of his Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil’s Aeneid, he formulates the direction of his exegesis in specifying the role of the poet, illustrated by the Virgilian example: Scribit enim in quantum est philosophus humanæ vitæ naturam. Modus vero agendi talis est: sub integumento describit quid agat vel quid patiatur humanus spiritus in humano corpore temporaliter positus. Atque in hoc scribendo utrumque narrationis ordinem observat, artificialem poeta, naturalem philosophus.9 (Insofar as he is a philosopher, he writes concerning the nature of human life, and this is his method of proceeding: under the cover of allegory he describes what the human spirit, placed for a time in the human body, undertakes or undergoes. In writing this work he respects two arrangements in the narrative: as a poet, the artificial, as a philosopher, the natural.)

Consequently, Aeneas’ journey no longer represents Man’s journey as Fulgentius believed, but rather the journey of the soul which must purify itself in order to return to its divine origin. This idea appears in Italy in the writing of Coluccio Salutati: Macrobius, Fulgentius, et omnes qui sanius intellexerunt volunt Maronem anime descensum in corpus suo poemate descripsisse. Unde ab ‘enos,’ et poeticæ figmentum et philosophiæ veritatem” (thus giving evidence of his twofold training, the poet’s imagination and the philosopher’s accuracy) (Translation from Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. William Harris Stahl [New York: Columbia University Press, 1990], p. 126). 8 It seems that the attribution to Bernard Silvestris is erroneous and that it is necessary to turn instead to Bernard of Chartres, but the editions of this commentary list as author Silvestris and we will follow that tradition. For a discussion of this attribution, see Francine Mora-Lebrun, L’Enéide médiévale et la naissance du roman (Paris: PUF, 1994), pp. 94–7. 9 Prologue to Bernard Silvestris’ glosses, quoted by Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: a Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 42.



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quod Grece, Latine, “habitator” dicitur, Enee nomen deflexum est, quo non incongrue rationalis anima designatur.10 (Macrobius, Fulgentius and all who understood Virgil’s true wisdom believe that he described in his poem the descent of the soul in the body. Hence Aeneas’ name which comes from the Greek word ‘enos’ which means ‘dweller’ so that the reasonable soul will not be called by an inappropriate name.)

It must be said that Salutati’s remark is not entirely accurate. Its source is probably Silvestris, who derived the name of Aeneas from “ennos demas,” that is to say, “the inhabitant of the body.” And it is Macrobius who must be credited with the explanation that the word “demas” designates the body; the word originally signified “chain,” proof that the soul and the body are chained together.11 This new interpretation of the epic takes on its full meaning and is fully deployed in the Disputationes Camaldulenses of the Florentine Cristoforo Landino, published in 1480. The first and second books of these dialogues deal with the relationship between “active life” and “contemplative life,” as well as the nature of the supreme good. The third and fourth books apply this theory through an allegorical reading of the Aeneid. Quapropter pulcherrimis poeticisque figmentis eum nobis virum informavit: qui plurimis ac maximis vitiis paulatim expiatus, ac deinceps miris virtutibus illustratus, id quod summum homini bonum est: quodque, nisi sapiens, nullus assequi potest, tamen assequeretur.12 (This is why, thanks to such beautiful poetic inventions, he fashioned for us this hero who, having atoned for his numerous and serious vices, and having henceforth illustrated himself via marvellous virtues, was able to reach Man’s ultimate good, that which only a wise man can succeed in.)

Landino borrows only a part of Fulgentius’ interpretive framework, as he does not at all follow the order of the books and he re-establishes their chronology by beginning with the Trojan episode in Books 3 and 4. From the perspective of the unified reading he presents, Aeneas’ journey represents the journey of the soul which has fallen in the body and is forced to cross through different degrees of Plotinian virtues – civil virtues, purifying virtues 10 Coluccio Salutati, De Laboribus Herculis, ed. B. L. Ullman (Zurich: Di Piero, 1951), Book 3, p. 345. 11 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, 1.11.3: “Nam ut constet animal, necesse est corpore anima vinciatur. Ideo corpus [demas …]” (For a creature to have existence, it is necessary that a soul be confined in the body; for this reason, the Greek words for body are demas …) (trans. p. 130). 12 Landino, Disputationes Camaldulenses, ed. P. Lohe (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1980), Book 3, p. 119.

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and virtues of the purified soul – in order to become pure and return to its divine origin.13 Each one of these stages contains the four cardinal virtues – prudence, temperance, courage and justice – which are expressed differently depending on the extent of the soul’s purity. As presented by Macrobius, the classification of Plotinus’ virtues provided Landino with a particularly subtle exegetic frame which allowed him to connect Aeneas’ journey to the passing from an “active life” to a “contemplative life.” The Trojan episode depicts vice – everything in it is negative, and it is only because he listens to Venus, his mother, that Aeneas escapes death. His fate thus differs from that of Paris, who turned resolutely toward excessive sensual pleasure and perished in Troy, the location of his sensual life. Landino applies the doctrine of the two Venuses developed by Marsilio Ficino in his Commentary on Plato’s Symposium to his reading of the Aeneid. In such a reading, the earthly Venus is responsible for the reproduction of the human race, and the heavenly Venus is responsible for intellectual life and the desire that drives Man to elevate his spirit towards divine contemplation.14 Even if the second Venus took precedence over the first, they were nonetheless perfectly complementary. Inspired by Ficino, Landino associates Aeneas’ mother with the heavenly Venus. With her guidance, the hero is finally able to pass through the different degrees of virtue and access the supreme good. Landino thus transforms the interpretations of Venus given by Petrarch and Boccaccio, who see the goddess only in terms of vice and debauchery.15 The whole interpretation of the Aeneid is thus reconfigured. Something similar occurs in the Carthage episode. Often considered as another moment of debauchery, the episode takes on a positive light, despite marking a setback in Aeneas’ journey towards the supreme good. The first degree of virtues consists of civil virtue, also referred to as political virtue by Macrobius and Plotinus, and corresponds to a pronounced inclination towards life in the public sphere; it is a state which drives Man to turn toward his fellow Man. But the positive nature of this state must be nuanced: Aeneas cannot rid himself of his passions because he is completely attached to his humanity. Such is the definition given by Macrobius, for whom political virtues characterize Man as a “social animal”:16

Plotinus, Enneads, 1:2, and Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, 1.8 Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium, 2, 7. 15 On the interpretations of Venus preceding those of Landino, see Craig Kallendorf, “Cristoforo Landino’s Aeneid and the Humanist Critical Tradition,” Renaissance Quarterly, 36 (1983): 519–46, pp. 536–7. 16 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, 1.8 and 6. It is also the definition given by Plotinus in the Enneades, 1 and 2. 13

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His boni viri rei publicæ consulunt, urbes tuentur ; his parentes venerantur, liberos amant, proximos diligunt; his civium salutem gubernant; his socios circumspecta providentia protegunt, iusta liberalitate devinciunt.17 (It is political virtues that lead good men to take care of the state and to defend cities; to honor their families; to love their children; to cherish their loved ones; to protect the salvation of citizens; to protect allies with careful foresight; and which bind them with just generosity.)

Plotinus devotes little space to political virtues as he is preoccupied with the higher degrees of virtue through which the soul can return to its divine origin. On the other hand, political virtues also allow Virgilian commentators to redeem the Carthage episode. Landino, as we have seen, gives a similar definition of civil virtues as Macrobius. It is apparent that he considered Carthage not only as a place of pleasure and debauchery, but also as a beautiful and good place fostering an “active life” in which Aeneas is able to demonstrate his political qualities. Civil virtues drive Man toward others; however, this quality becomes an obstacle for Aeneas, as it causes him to linger in Carthage and distracts him from his goal: Huiuscemodi igitur portum subeunt, qui suprema diu sectati ac postremo difficultate deterriti se in vitam socialem conferunt, in qua civilibus virtutibus exculti cum versentur laudem non mediocrem reportant. Longe tamen ab ea divinitate, quam quærimus absunt.18 (After having called upon death with all their will for a long time, and after escaping difficulties, they reach a harbor where they give themselves over to life in society. They receive sincere praise for this for they are very dedicated, dressed as they are in civil virtues. However, they remain away much longer from the divine state to which all aspire.)

Rather than lending itself to a negative interpretation, the marriage plot with Dido illustrates Aeneas’ political ambition in the same way as did his ascension to the first degree of virtues after his flight from Troy.19 Carthage is merely a stop on the path towards the supreme good. If he had been content to stay with Dido, Aeneas would not have been able to get beyond the first degree of virtues, as it would have been impossible for him to break away from the world and thus to fully purify himself:

Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, 1, 8 and 6. Landino, Disputationes Camaldulenses, p. 174. 19 Craig Kallendorf demonstrated the originality of this interpretation in the context of the tradition that sees Carthage only as a place illustrating vice, “Cristoforo Landino’s Aeneid,” p. 543. 17 18

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Quæ cum dicit Maro, divina pæne sapientia vitam socialem depingit. In qua cum ita quidem excelso animo versentur, ut humana contemnes ex hoc primo virtutum genere paulo post in eas venturi sint, quas purgatorias appellant, atque inde ad illas tandem, quæ sunt animi purgati, pervenire contendant, tamen illecebris rerum terrenarum ita molliuntur, ut cælestium, quas sibi solas proposuerant, pæne obliviscantur. Libido enim imperandi Æneam Didoni coniungere, id autem est virum excellentem regno præficere cupit.20 (When Virgil speaks in this way, he is depicting life in society with wisdom that is almost divine. When Man raises his mind and turns away from the human realm, he is ready to move on from the first kind of virtues to reach for those that we called “purifying.” From there, finally, he can reach for those which define a purified soul. He strives to reach there, however, slowed down by terrestrial charms, which are the only ones visible to him, such that he almost forgets celestial charms. Indeed, Aeneas wants to rule thanks to his marriage to Dido, i.e. he wants to see a superior man on the throne.)

Hell and the wars in Italy are nothing but stages which allow Aeneas to fully purify himself and to reach “contemplative life,” as represented by Italy. For Landino and the Neoplatonist commentators Cœlius Rhodiginus and Lambertus Hortensius Montfort who followed him, the coherence of Aeneas’ journey is founded on the idea that it represents the progress of the soul as it gradually detaches itself from the body and returns to its origin by passing through the stages of virtue determined by Plotinus.21 Indeed, in Jean Lemaire de Belges, the temple of Virtue stands out as the object of a quest: the protagonist overcomes trials in order to be finally distinguished and raised to the level of Virtue. It is thus simple to establish a parallel between the Aeneid and its interpretations.

La Concorde des deux Langages or the Two Venuses The genesis of this major work by Jean Lemaire de Belges is not without direct connection to the politics of Franco-Italian relations and the Italian Wars. The Actor aspires towards the reconciliation of the French and Italians, and thus embarks on a quest at the outset of the text, demonstrating a desire that the two nations become closer. Jean Frappier, who prepared the standard scholarly edition of the text, interprets Lemaire’s choice to evoke the temple of Venus in terza rima and the temple of Minerva in alexandrines as a way to

Landino, Disputationes Camaldulenses, pp. 184–5. Rhodiginus, Lectionum antiquarum Libri triginta, 1516, Book 4, Chapter 1; Lambertus Hortensius Montfort, preface to the Works of Virgil, (Oporin, Bâle, 1559). 20 21



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combine modes of expression characteristic of the two languages and to bring about a renewed friendship between the two cultures. La Concorde des deux langages has Virgil as a major source, both in its structure and the complexity of its allegorical montage; though the Aeneid is only an indirect source, it shapes the work in significant ways. The work itself acts as another way to renew bonds with Italy, for it is a discrete homage rendered to the greatest of the Latin poets by means of subtle innutrition rather than servile imitation: French poetry grew and approached maturity thanks to Virgil, whose implicit presence avoids provoking sentiments of inferiority in relation to the model. A detailed examination reveals the presence of Virgil to be constant but diminished, filtered through past interpretations. At the opening of La Concorde des deux langages, the Actor explains that he is choosing a new life, rejecting affairs of war in favour of a quest for love: Si changeay Mars au noble dieu d’amours, Et chant bellicque aux amoureuses larmes.22 (17–18) (I thus swapped Mars for the noble god of love And songs of war for amorous tears.)

Like Aeneas, who leaves behind the walls of Troy and then makes a peaceful stopover with Dido, the Actor sets out in search of the temple of Venus and then falls asleep. The use of a dreamlike frame for a story of this nature presents several advantages. Firstly, it is a setting conducive to allegorical narrative, and had been since the Middle Ages.23 Secondly, it had been believed since the time of Hippocrates that dreams could allow the soul to detach itself from the body, to liberate itself from its servitude and return to its divine origin.24 The soul of the dreamer could thus access divine mysteries and rise up in the same manner as Aeneas, as believed by the Neoplatonist interpretations discussed earlier. It is thus in a dream that the Actor arrives at the temple of Venus and marvels at its riches. This episode recalls in many respects Aeneas’ discovery of the temple of Juno erected by Dido in Book 1 of the Aeneid. In the Concorde, Venus arrives at the temple in her chariot, with Tityrus, the shepherd from the Bucolics, in her retinue (89). Like Dido, who is accompanied by a thousand oreads (Aeneid, 1:500), the goddess of love is surrounded by nymphs (97) and above all by oreads (108). The geographical location of the temple of Venus refers both to the presence of what is supposed to have been at the time a temple in Lyon dedicated to the goddess, and above all to the mythical city of Troy, to which the 22 All references are to Jean Lemaire de Belges, La Concorde des deux Langages, ed. Jean Frappier (Geneva: Droz, 1947). 23 Take, for example, the success of the Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung. 24 Hippocrates, On Regimen, 4, “Dreams,” 136.

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capital city of Gaul is compared and which inevitably recalls the birthplace of Aeneas (137). Like the temple made of gold, ivory, bronze and marble in the Georgics, the temple of Venus shines with countless precious materials (diamonds, sapphires, gold and ivory) and which evoke a comparison with Paradise: Les piliers sont de dÿamans poliz, Le fondement est d’argent bien duisant, L’avant-portal, tout de saphirs joliz. L’ordre du comble, ordonnée en croisant, Fait enlasser les beaux piliers ensemble, Qui sont d’ivoire et de fin or luisant. Tout le dehors ung paradis ressemble.  (151–7) (The columns are made of polished diamonds The foundations are in fine silver The entry door is made of pretty sapphires. The roof’s shape, like a crescent moon, Weaves the beautiful columns together, Which are made of ivory and fine glowing gold. The whole exterior resembles a paradise.)

However, the Actor evokes a “bodily paradise,” that is, a place where the soul has not yet been purified, a place where the soul privileges the active life and worldly pleasures. This bodily paradise evokes the earthly Venus of the Neoplatonists, the first Venus described by Marsilio Ficino and Cristoforo Landino. This interpretation is confirmed by the speech that Génius makes in the heart of the temple, as his speech aims to celebrate procreation. It is in this sense that Ann Moss interprets the text, though she does not compare Lemaire de Belges’ conception of virtue to the Plotinian virtues guiding the progression of Aeneas’ journey.25 The Neoplatonist coloring of the text is also evident when, following Génius’ speech, some of his supporters find themselves taken over by “fureur amoureuse” (love’s fury) (p. 34). After having made an offering to the goddess that was judged unworthy by Dangier (Danger), the Actor is chased from the temple and forced onto a dangerous and lonely voyage across a locus terribilis (“une merveilleuse solitude … desert sterille, pierreux, areneux, et tout heremiticque”) (a marvellous solitude … a sterile, stony and sandy desert, all of it eremetic) (p. 36). Though Aeneas was not chased from Carthage, he was pushed by Mercury 25 Ann Moss, “Fabulous Narrations in the Concorde des deux Langages of Jean Lemaire de Belges,” Philosophical Fictions and the French Renaissance, ed. Neil Kenny (London: The Warburg Institute, 1991), pp. 17–28, pp. 19–20. Moreover, Moss points out that Jean Lemaire de Belges had an in depth knowledge of the works of Landino which he cited in Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularités de Troie, ed. J. Stecher (Louvain: Lefever, 1882), see Book 2, pp. 23–24.



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to flee rapidly and he encountered many obstacles, among them a second storm. The protagonist’s journey in the Concorde takes him over land and sea, amidst difficulties and shipwrecks. The Actor is on a truly epic journey, but condensed into the space of a single page: “tant erray par mes journées sur mer et sur terre … après loingtains voyages et erreurs plus que vagabundes, et après plusieurs perilz et nauffrages eschappéz” (I wandered for many days over land and sea … after long journeys and much wandering and error, and after escaping numerous dangers and shipwrecks) (p. 36). Jean Lemaire de Belges does not give details about the wanderings of the Actor, and essentially condenses the entire voyage of Aeneas into several lines, signalling Aeneas simply as one of his avatars. What interests the poet is not the voyage, but rather the destination at which the protagonist finally arrives. The Actor finds himself at the foot of a steep mountain, whose summit is inaccessible (“poignans, fiers au toucher, tortuz et plein de neux” [craggy and proud to the touch, twisted and full of turns] [p. 38]). He circles it and finds a fountain, beside which an inscription is engraved explaining the mountain’s nature and the means by which one can arrive at its summit. At the very top stands the palace of Honour, inside which is a temple erected to Minerva, “déesse de science, d’estude et de vertu” (goddess of science, learning and virtue) (p. 46). The temple can be accessed only by devoting oneself to virtue. The virtue in question is not meant in a Christian sense, but rather comes down to “estude et labour et soucy” (study, labour and due care), that is, to working towards attaining wisdom, to acting as a philosopher (p. 42). This conception of virtue prefigures the interpretation that Rhodiginus will give of the Aeneid shortly after, exposing the duty of the philosopher from the perspective of Plato’s De Philosophia.26 Translated by Ficino, this obscure treatise with uncertain origins recalls that the philosopher must act in line with wisdom – and in doing so, come to know the divine – by devoting himself to the contemplation of celestial things. This act requires control of one’s impulses and the practice of virtue. Rhodiginus quotes Plotinus, but his direct source seems more likely to be Macrobius, whom we have shown to have permitted the diffusion of this treatise. Indeed, his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio launches the treatise on virtue by evoking the duty of the philosopher. He defines wisdom as the knowledge of the divine which one can access only through contemplation. This knowledge is only possible if one possesses the first three types of virtue defined by Plotinus, the fourth being the prerogative of God: political virtues, purifying virtues, virtues of the purified soul and exemplary virtues. In defining the role of the philosopher and the way in which he must act, Rhodiginus prepares his audience to read Aeneas’ journey through this frame, that is, as an illustration of the philosophical approach presented by Macrobius. The wise must purify their 26

Rhodiginus, Lectionum Antiquarum, Book 4, Chapter 1.

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spirits with political virtues and then purifying ones: such is the transformation undergone by Aeneas over the course of his story. Such, too, is the future promised to the Actor in the Concorde, provided that he applies himself seriously to his studies. Furthermore, just as Aeneas attains the status of indigenous hero only after his death, the Actor must also wait in order to hope to enter the temple of Minerva. Study, the practice of good authors, constitutes a sort of preparation for death, a purification in anticipation of the ultimate elevation. The temple of Minerva appears thus as a place of memory dedicated to the great authors of Antiquity. In order to reach it, Labeur Historien recommends the reading of all books that are likely to teach wisdom and to cultivate a contemplative life. As suggested via a polyptoton: “en hault sçavoir contemple ... en ceste contemplation” (contemplate in lofty knowledge ... in this contemplation) (pp. 41 and 44). Indeed, the Actor passes from an active to a contemplative life and the two goddesses can be compared with the two Venuses in Landino’s commentary.27 He begins by rejecting war (like Aeneas leaving Troy), and by giving in to the pleasures of the flesh, which he must then renounce in order to finally devote himself to a hermitic life that can be identified as one of contemplation. Ann Moss pointed out Jean Lemaire de Belges’ originality in respect to his predecessors who had dealt with the struggle between vice and virtue. The rhétoriqueur does not completely reject sensual pleasure, but in founding his work on the Neoplatonist texts he had read, and above all on the interpretations of the Aeneid, he establishes a hierarchy between the two Venuses, the encounter with the first being an essential stage in order to arrive at the second. In contrast with Hercules who rejects Eudaimonia, the Actor passes through this first stage but reaches the supreme good when he accesses the temple of Minerva. His journey can also be interpreted as a passage through the different degrees of virtue: political virtue in the temple of Venus, purifying virtue when he is chased from the temple (in the same way as Aeneas is when leaving Carthage) and virtue of the purified soul when he hopes to one day enter the temple of Minerva with the express condition of being free from vice. More than a Concorde des deux langages, it is a concord of the two Venuses that Jean Lemaire de Belges seems to produce in demonstrating his admiration for Virgil and the Neoplatonist interpretations of his work. The virtue that he celebrates is the wisdom of the philosopher, wisdom which is incarnated by Aeneas and which seems to have migrated to the banks of the Rhône thanks to the translatio studii.

27

Ann Moss, in “Fabulous Narrations”, also presents an interpretation to this effect.



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Breaking with Neoplatonism: The Disintegration of the Virgilian Model The other three texts to be discussed here and which describe temples of Virtue are based on Jean Lemaire de Belges, and thus Virgil. They are, however, at quite a distance from their models. In François Habert’s Le Temple de vertu, the narrator-protagonist sets out immediately on a quest for the temple of Virtue, following a long and difficult path. He passes through the temple of Cupido (Cupid) (an homage to Marot) which recalls the temple of Venus, but he quickly distances himself from it as the men he sees there are plagued by contradictory emotions, mixtures of joy and pain. At no point is he faced with the choice of sensual pleasure, and thus the Neoplatonist interpretations give way to an overtly Christian morality. In contrast with Jean Lemaire de Belges’ text, the allegory which presides over this poem is transparent. If the protagonist suffers in his journey, it is because, in line with the Hesiodic tradition, virtue must be earned. For example, the mountain of Virtue is surrounded by thorns. It touches the heavens, since virtue is associated with the divine: Et j’apperçoys le temple magnificque De la déesse ou mon vouloir s’applicque, D’espines cloz aspres tout à l’entour Circuyt d’ung roc, en façon d’une tour28 (63–6) (And I caught a glimpse of the magnificent temple Of the goddess to whom my will is attached, Circled all around by sharp thorns Next to a tall rock, shaped like a tower.)

As in Jean Lemaire de Belges’ text, the entrance to the temple is strictly guarded, but Honour is replaced by a simple doorwoman. The definition of virtue, as viewed by Habert, remains vague, and is glossed merely as “faictz vertueulx” (virtuous deeds) (88 and 170). On the other hand, the poet borrows from Jean Lemaire de Belges his narrator-protagonist’s modesty, which makes him humble in relating his virtuous deeds (166). The similarities end there, however, as the narrator is immediately allowed to enter the temple, whereas the Actor is forced to give proof of his patience. Furthermore, Lemaire de Belges recommends the reading of all of the great authors, whereas in Habert, only sacred books are authorized. Habert, thus, is concerned only with Christian virtue. His library gathers together the works of the Church Fathers (Jerome, Augustine, Bernard), but rejects all the major pagan texts starting with Virgil, who is the first name on the list of the expelled: “Non point Virgil aux fables de Priam” (No to Virgil and his tales about Priam) 28 All references are to François Habert, Le temple de vertu (Paris: Champion, 1923), pp. 39–40.

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(244). Likewise, Habert excludes Le Roman de la Rose, a major reference for Lemaire who made use of its characters (Génius and Dangier) and also of its author, Jean de Meung, whom Lemaire introduces as the source of alexandrines which describe the temple of Minerva. The poem concludes with a reflection on love, but the motif of the two Venuses is Christianized: the first Venus, immediately rejected, represents sensuality and disappointments, a bit in the manner of Eudaimonia; the second Venus symbolizes the love of God. Thus, Le Temple de Vertu seems to be an anti-Concorde. Furthermore, Habert adopts a more ambiguous attitude in relation to Virgil, as he explicitly refuses the presence of the Aeneid in his temple. He presents a thorough re-writing of La Concorde des deux langages whose goal is to affirm the superiority of Christian virtue. In accordance with this principle, Habert also proposes a re-writing of the Dream of Scipio in the Dream of Pantagruel in which Christian virtues would be exalted whereas Cicero celebrated civil virtue and those who devote themselves to their country.29 It is thus apparent that the contemplation which concludes Le Temple de Vertu no longer has anything to do with the wisdom of the philosopher, but is limited to the practice of the Christian faith. Rather than following interpretations of the Aeneid and reconciling the two Venuses, Habert reverts to an older and more simplistic version of the myth and his protagonist is much more similar to Hercules than to Aeneas. There is no hierarchy of temples or of virtues, but rather an irrevocable rejection of vice, brought about all the more simply because faith allows for the freedom from doubt. There is no need to listen to the speeches of the goddesses. There is no longer even a question of free choice. Ronsard, for his part, was very familiar with La Concorde des deux langages but it seems equally possible that he had read Habert’s Temple de Vertu. Dedicated to Henri III in 1584, Ronsard’s Bocage Royal is characterized by the diversity of its pieces, in which he follows the tradition of Silvan poetry. His Discours, however, dates from 1560.30 It is addressed by Ronsard to the Archbishop of Turin, Jérôme de la Rovère, the former bishop of Toulon, and recounts a dream at sunrise in which the poet highlights the paradox of the two different parts of the soul “Qui veille tout ensemble, et tout ensemble dort” (Which stay awake together and together sleep) (3). The dream is conceived of as an experience of death, as the liberation of the soul. 29 This text can be compared to Erasmus’ Enchiridion militis Christiani (2, “De armis militiæ christianæ”), in which Achilles and Aeneas act as examples illustrating the unequal conflict between man and his passions (anger for one, love for the other) and the impossibility to protect oneself merely with arms. Both men run a risk, in contrast with David, who triumphs thanks to his faith and his study of sacred texts. In opposition to Habert and Erasmus, Montfort sees in Aeneas the qualities of a philosopher, or even a Christian soldier (Montfort, Enarrationes in sex priores libros Æneidos Vergilianæ, 1559) 30 All references are to Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, edd. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager and Michel Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 123–29.



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Attracted by “les choses immortelles” (immortal things) (10), the soul takes flight toward the summit of a mountain of Virtue, a rock that is inaccessible without wings: Au plus haut du sommet de ce Rocher pointu, Et un temple d’airain qu’a basti la Vertu: D’airain en est la porte, et par grand artifice D’airain plus clair que verre est parfait l’edifice.  (11–14) (At the very top of this pointed Rock, There is a bronze temple built by Virtue: Its door is bronze and with great workmanship The building is made of bronze brighter than glass.)

In this brief description of the temple, Ronsard’s model could well be Virgil rather than Jean Lemaire de Belges, who emphasized the materials’ richness whereas the temple of Juno constructed by Dido was built essentially from bronze: bronze entryway, bronze fasteners to assemble the beams, bronze doors. The repetition of the adjective aereus (made of bronze), repeated twice within the space of two verses, appears again in Ronsard’s text through the use of the noun “airain” (bronze). The two poems emphasize force, constancy and the intransigence of the goddess being glorified. On the other hand, the parallels between Ronsard and Jean Lemaire de Belges are evident, despite the fact that Ronsard’s poem does not depict a quest. As demonstrated by Henri Weber, Ronsard combines the two functions of the allegorical temple so as to celebrate an individual (Jérôme de la Rovère) at the same time as an abstraction.31 The temple of Virtue represents the universe in which all people are seated; its source is obviously Jean Lemaire de Belges.32 The character called Sweat is seated next to Virtue, just as Labour accompanies Minerva in La Concorde des deux langages: “Tu es sur mon rocher par estude monté” (Through study you have ascended upon my Rock) (127). This verse recalls the poetic labour in which the poet is involved under the guidance of Labeur Historien in order to access the temple of Minerva. The goddess closely resembles the celestial Venus. Ronsard’s goddess is similar to Pallas, and above all, is in opposition to the earthly Venus, she “qui est des flots de la mer née” (who is born from the waves of the sea). Her amorous dimension is highlighted by the recur31 Henri Weber, “Le temple allégorique de Froissart à la Pléiade,” in L’Allégorie de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, edd. Brigitte Pérez-Jean and Patricia Eichel-Lojkine (Paris: Champion, 2004), p. 481. 32 This rock of Virtue can be likened to the rock of Philosophy to whom the second part of the Hymn is dedicated. This part in the version produced by the Pléiade disappeared in 1578, but one can still read, however, the 1560 version in the Laumonier edition. Philosophy and Virtue merge together.

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rence of a vocabulary focused on love. She becomes enamoured with men and guides them to the summit. Judging by what the goddess brings them, this virtue is comprised fully of civil or political virtue, that which drives men to care for their fellow men and to rise up in society, and which has several traits in common with ambition: “Quand elle aime quelcun, comme maistresse douce / Le souleve aux honneurs, aux richesses le pousse” (When she loves someone, as a sweet mistress / She raises him up to honor and drives him toward riches) (45–6). If Ronsard has in his dream arrived at the temple of Virtue, it is merely as a spectator, for the discourse of the goddess is addressed to Jérôme de la Rovère, whose quest was long and whose path was difficult: Où tu es arrivé par cent mille travaux, Par rochers, par torrens, par plaines et par vaux, Par halliers et buissons, qui les autres retiennent.  (75–7) (Where you arrived after a thousand labours, Over rocks, through torrents, via plains and valleys, Through thickets and bushes which hold others back.)

Virtue describes the temple of Sensual Pleasure (Volupté) which is located at the foot of the mountain and which recalls Venus’ temple. Virtue represents the spirit and the ascension of the soul toward truth, whereas Sensual Pleasure, whose deceitful intentions are recounted by Virtue, personifies the submission to bodily desires and to dishonesty. Though there is no verbal contest between the two goddesses, Sensual Pleasure has no power or possibility of redemption. She rejects the labours and the values of Virtue as an unrealizable dream, but her speech does not constitute a danger, as it is embedded within the discourse of Virtue. This portrays a more archaic notion on Ronsard’s part than that of his model, and comes much closer to the myth of Hercules at the crossroads: there is no hierarchy between the goddesses, merely an inevitable and violent rejection of Sensual Pleasure, as takes place in Habert. The sole element of originality on Ronsard’s part resides in the fact that it is Virtue that recounts the intentions of Sensual Pleasure. Though the arrival at the temple of Virtue is conceived as a “rejet du souci mondain” (rejection of worldly cares), that is, as a preference for the contemplative life, the type of virtue which is glorified is slightly different. The poem praises labour and study, valorizing the virtue that pushes men towards distinction. Much more than the virtues of the purified soul, it is civil virtues which are celebrated in the poem: Jérôme de la Rovère is not Aeneas, he cannot rise up through the different degrees of virtue. The Ficinism that extends throughout the Concorde is absent from the Discours and the model of the epic hero has lost some of its legitimacy. The failure of the Franciade also resonates as evidence of the impossibility of transposing ancient virtues onto the French world.



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Virgil is rejected by Habert, Ronsard is only very indirectly inspired by him, and paradoxically, it is in Rabelais that the topos of the temple of Virtue finds its most original expression since Jean Lemaire de Belges. It is also in Rabelais that the temple is farthest removed from Greek models. In its overall structure, the Quart Livre shares a number of obvious elements in common with Homeric epic, but it also presents significant features in common with Virgilian epic. In the storm scene (Chapters 18–22) Pantagruel shows that he has the makings of a hero, for by firmly holding together the mast he prevents a shipwreck, whereas Panurge does nothing but complain and whine about his fate. Once the danger has passed, Pantagruel recalls Aeneas’ attitude, who, when in a similar circumstance, regrets not having been killed in Troy: De faict Æneas en la tempeste de laquelle feut le convoy de ses navires prés Sicile surprins, regretoit n’estre mort de la main du fort Diomedes, et disoit ceulx estre troys et quatre foys heureux qui estoient mortz en la conflagration de Troie. Il n’est ceans mort personne. Dieu servateur en soit eternellement loué.33 (In fact, in the storm during which his fleet of ships was surprised near Sicily, Aeneas regretted not having died at the hands of strong Diomedes, and he said that those people were thrice and four times happy who had died in the sack of Troy. However, no one died therein. May God who saves be praised eternally.)

The following episode, which takes place on the Island of the Macreons, tells of the fate of great men after their death. It celebrates those who served their country in practising civil virtue. This account takes place over the course of four chapters (Chapters 25–8) which are situated roughly half-way through the book and which can be justly likened to the Aeneid: indeed, when Aeneas arrives at the Elysian Fields, he too learns of the fate of great men – heroes, and above all, those who exercised virtue in Roman history. Pantagruel and his friends converse with Macrobius, who explains to them that the storm was certainly a sign of someone important dying, as heroes’ deaths are usually accompanied by violent phenomena. Epistemon develops a comparison with the death of Guillaume Du Bellay, but Pantagruel finds an example that is even closer to what he has just experienced in the Aeneid – the death of Anchises: “Ainsi (dist Pantagruel) mort Anchises à Drepani en Sicile la tempeste donna terrible vexation à Aeneas” (Thus [said Pantagruel] died Anchises at Drepanum in Sicily. The storm gave great worry to Aeneas) (Chapter 26, p. 600). While the arrival at the manor of Arete in Chapter 57 can be read as an ascension to the virtues of the purified soul, the parodic and polysemic 33 Rabelais, Quart Livre, ed. Mireille Huchon (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), Chapter 22, p. 593. All subsequent references will be to this edition.

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dimension of the passage goes against this interpretation and forces us to depart from the model of the Aeneid. According to the topos which inspired Rabelais and which finds its source before that in Hesiod, and even according to the author, the island is difficult to access: Elle de tous coustez pour le commencement estoit scabreuse, pierreuse, montueuse, infertile, mal plaisante à l’œil, tresdifficile aux pieds, et peu moins inaccessible que le mons du Daulphiné.  (p. 671) (On all sides, to begin with, it was rough, stony, steep, barren, unpleasing to the eye, very difficult to the feet and a little less accessible than the Mount Dauphin.)

As with the rock of Minerva in Jean Lemaire de Belges or that of Virtue in Ronsard, one must undertake a perilous ascent in order to reach the summit, a place which resembles an earthly paradise: Surmontant la difficulté de l’entrée à peine bien grande, et non sans suer, trouvasmes le dessus du mons tant plaisant, tant fertile, tant salubre, et delicieux, que je pensoys estre le vray Jardin et Paradis terrestre.  (p. 671) (Getting beyond the difficulty of the rather small entry and not without sweat, we found the top of the mount so pleasing, so fertile, so salubrious and delicious that I thought that it was the true Garden and Earthly Paradise.)

However, instead of the Hesiodic Arete, Pantagruel and his companions discover a usurper in the temple in the person of Gaster, the parodic double of Honour.34 A brief reading leads us to understand that it is hunger that drives the world and not virtue, that it is always hunger that drives men to be ingenious, to invent, to struggle, and in doing so, to develop proficiency in everything from agriculture to war. It is for this reason that Rabelais qualifies Gaster as “premier maistre es ars de ce monde” (supreme master of arts in this world) (p. 672). The ingenuity of men is spurred on by hunger. But one can also see in this title a way of mocking the Platonist notion of love according to Ficino, which defines the concept by the periphrasis magister artium.35 In contrast with the allusions to the celestial Venus in Jean Lemaire de Belges

34 See Robert Marichal, “Quart Livre, Commentaires, VIII, Messere Gaster, Chapitres LVII-LXII,” Etudes rabelaisiennes, I (1956): 183–202; Terence Cave, “Transformations d’un topos utopique: Gaster et le rocher de vertu,” Etudes rabelaisiennes, 21 (1988): 319–25; Michael A. Screech, Rabelais (London: Duckworth, 1979). They underline the major ambiguity in the episode which is one of the elements that poses the most significant problem to commentators (I do not intend to present in depth and get involved in this debate). 35 Ficino, Commentary on the Symposium, 3.3.



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which reveal a reading of Ficino and his disciples, Rabelais goes in reverse and mocks Ficinian love. In these chapters in which all is parody, Pantagruel has none of the qualities of the Virgilian hero whom he had seemed to be in the rest of the work. To conclude, the influence of readings of Virgil on the motif of the temple of Virtue seems to be unrivalled. Habert and Ronsard interact with Virgil, as the temples they create are inspired by the literary tradition of temples beginning with the Georgics, but both authors reject sensual pleasure in favour of either civil or Christian virtue, and thus present an unambiguous, moralizing version of the topos, far removed from the allegorical interpretations of the Aeneid. Jean Lemaire de Belges skilfully articulates Ficinism in France and turns to Landino’s analysis of Virgil in order to accentuate the profundity of his allegory. The only author who attains a similar polysemy is Rabelais, but the parodic dimension of the Quart Livre acts as a screen obscuring comprehension and produces a multiplicity of possible interpretations. The temple of Virtue appears as a place of memory, a place to glorify those who followed the path of Aeneas towards a state of wisdom and contemplation of the divine, whether this divinity is of a Christian nature, or more broadly, allowing access to the secrets of the universe. It is necessary, however, to consider separately the work of Jean Lemaire de Belges, who pays without a doubt the most faithful homage to Virgil through the complexity of the allegorical montage that he presents. The temple of Virtue is a place of celebration of Virgil in the work of Jean Lemaire de Belges, much more so than in his successors, because it is imbued with Neoplatonist readings whose layers are themselves multiple. In distancing themselves from Virgil, his successors distance themselves above all from Neoplatonism, which they either mock or reject in favour of a more resolutely Christian vision.

5

From Copy to Copia: Imitation and Authorship in Joachim Du Bellay’s Divers Jeux Rustiques (1558) Isabelle Fernbach Joachim Du Bellay published his Divers Jeux rustiques upon his return to France, after a period of four years in Rome spent in the service of his uncle, Cardinal Jean du Bellay. The collection’s eclecticism – it ranges from rustic poems to love poetry and satire – illustrates the various aspects of the author’s poetry and has prompted comparison with Pierre de Ronsard’s Bocage (1554) and Meslanges (1555).1 Together with the Regrets and the Antiquitez de Rome, also published in 1558, the Divers Jeux rustiques signalled Du Bellay’s “rentrée littéraire” (return to literature), which carried with it hopes for a royal appointment at the court of Henri II.2 The collection presents two distinctive aspects. Firstly, half of its forty poems, described by Henri Chamard as being the collection’s most original, dwell on the rustic topos.3 Secondly, two thirds of the pieces are direct translations or imitations of Latin, neo-Latin, or Greek poetry. The opening text of the collection brings these two aspects together, for “Le Moretum de Virgile” (Virgil’s “Moretum”) is a fairly scrupulous translation of a Latin poem attributed to (pseudo-)Virgil and which details a ploughman preparing his meal. In what follows, I contend that Du Bellay’s recourse to georgicism in the “Moretum” (a) expresses a critique of court culture, which further resounds throughout the general architecture of the Divers Jeux rustiques, and (b) makes a plea for the poet’s own position at court, following his difficult return from Rome. Virgil’s text is thus, in two complementary ways, appropriated into France. Translation’s role here is not that of allowing readers access to Virgil’s text. Rather, it functions to bring that text into a new time and place, serving the modern poet’s own set of concerns and priorities. 1 The comparison is found in Henri Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris: Didier, 1963), vol. 2, p. 228 and Joachim Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Verdun L. Saulnier (Lille: Giard, 1947), pp. xx–xxi, p. xx. 2 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, p. xxiii. 3 Henri Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), p. 406.

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Du Bellay’s interest in literary rusticism is, as noted above, the first distinctive aspect of the collection. The term rusticity is here defined by a search for realism and by a certain influence of the georgic mode, in which agricultural labour is presented as a noble activity and necessary for the common good.4 This particular combination sets it off from pastoralism, wherein nature exists in and as background or landscape, and where the primary value appears to be idleness. Like pastoral and georgic texts, rustic pieces are characterized by a low style, appropriate for expressing rural themes.5 Moreover, the use of the French language for the collection – as opposed to Latin, in which Du Bellay also composed – actually resonates with the etymology of rusticus, which means “from the countryside,” a synonym of “rural,” “country-like, simple, plain, provincial or rough,” at the origin of the expression rustica lingua, referring to a vernacular language, i.e. a language other than Latin.6 While many rustic pieces in the Divers Jeux rustiques combine elements of the pastoral and georgic modes, its opening poem “Le Moretum de Virgile” appears more wholly georgic, a rather uncommon choice for poets frequenting courtly circles.7 In the first book of the Georgics, Virgil complains about the mode’s under-representation: “non ullus aratro / dignus honos; squalent abductis arua colonis / et curuae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem” (respect for the plough is gone; our lands, robbed of the tillers, lie waste, and curved pruning hooks are forged into straight blades) (Georgics 1:506–8). The situation remains unchanged in sixteenth-century France and Ronsard, too, will illustrate how the georgic mode can fall by the wayside, for example in his tribute to the poet Jean de Boyssières: “Virgile, pour essay chanta sa Bucolique, / Puis le 4 For a definition of georgicism, see Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 12–23. 5 From the Middle Ages, the middle style is limited to purely didactic examples; its function is reduced to the illustration of the three styles, corresponding to Virgil’s three main works: the Bucolics for the low style, the Georgics for the middle style, and the Aeneid for the high style. The three categories defined the rota Virgilii, or Virgilian wheel. See the article “Stile,” in Leo Spitzer, Critica stilistica e storia del linguaggio (Bari: Gius. Laterza e Figli, 1954), pp. 551–3. 6 Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 1608. 7 The georgic influence on pastoral, in the Renaissance, is mentioned for instance by Paul Alpers, who links it to the correspondence between an ideal of Christian humility and the glorification of a work ethic, spread for instance through Protestantism: “In Virgil’s works, pastoral and georgic are distinct: in the latter, nature’s uncertainties and harshness are more prominent, because it is conceived as the habitation of farmers. In the Renaissance the two types merge in various ways, largely because in Christian thought ideas of humility are connected with the curse of labour. But the principle remains: poetic representations of nature or of landscape are not all of a piece; they answer to and express various human needs and concerns; pastoral landscapes are those of which the human centres are herdsmen or their equivalent.” (Paul Alpers, What is Pastoral? [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996], p. 28.)



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Troyen Aenée: Ainsi premierement, / Boyssieres a chanté son amoureux tourment, / Et ores son Hercull’ d’un long vers Heroique” (Virgil, as a trial sung his Bucolics, / Then of Trojan Aeneas. Thus, Boyssières first / Sung of lover’s torments / And then of his Hercules in long epic verses).8 The Georgics here simply do not appear in Ronsard’s praise, in spite of the poetic quality of its composition, and their absence in turn reflects the general distaste among the elite for manual labour.9 However, with the preference for the vita activa model (negotium) over that of the vita contemplativa (otium) in the first song of his Bucolicum Carmen (1346–1352), Petrarch paved the way for a georgic revival. This renewal finds its inspiration in the fact that the Georgics remain, from the first century BCE to Renaissance France, the refuge of certain specific traditional values: frugality, chastity, and piety.10 Like the other two Virgilian modes, the georgic mode is inscribed within a political agenda, from the general address after the Civil Wars to small property owners, to the statement on good citizenship in Augustan Rome through the bee episode in the fourth book.11 For late sixteenth-century England, Anthony Low links the renewed interest in georgic values with the idea of social promotion through manual labour and the spirit of religious reformation, which was accompanied by the growing intervention of lay people in the management of church-owned lands.12 Low defines the georgic discourse as follows: Georgic is a mode that stresses the value of intensive and persistent labour against hardships and difficulties; that it differs from pastoral because it emphasizes work instead of ease; that it differs from epic because it emphasizes planting and building instead of killing and destruction; and that it is pre-eminently the mode suited to the establishment of civilization and the founding of nations.13

8 Pierre de Ronsard, Sur les Secondes Œuvres de J. de Boyssieres (1578), in Pierre de Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, edd. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager and Michel Simonin (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1993), p. 401. 9 See Low, The Georgic Revolution, pp. 5, 14, 189, 353; William Fitzgerald, “Labour and Labourer in Latin Poetry: the Case of the Moretum,” Arethusa, 29.3 (Fall 1996): 389–218, p. 389. 10 Eugène de Saint-Denis, “Introduction,” Virgil, Géorgiques, ed. Eugène de SaintDenis (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), p. xi. 11 See Low, The Georgic Revolution, pp. 353–57. Just as the georgic tradition gave shape to Early Modern social reform in England, it also resonates with the Christian notion of industria described in Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Its spirit and values lived in the French nineteenth-century roman rustique, or Rustic novel, with works by George Sand, René Bazin, Zola, or Ramuz, drawing on the values of the simple life and the love of the land to promote or reinvent a French national identity. 12 See Low, The Georgic Revolution, pp. 156–66. 13 Low, The Georgic Revolution, p. 12. Low then adds: “To be truly georgic, a poem

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We can retain two principles from Low’s definition: dialogism with the two other Virgilian modes on the one hand, and the allegorical dimension of georgiscism on the other. The renewed popularity of agriculture among the nobility and the bourgeoisie in Early Modern France can be measured by the success of Charles Estienne’s Agriculture et Maison rustique (1564) and Olivier de Serres’s Théâtre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs (1600). However, works like Joachim Du Bellay’s “Moretum de Virgile,” the object of our present study, Béroalde de Verville’s Serodokimasie (1600), or even Palissy’s Recepte véritable (1563), are not limited to a purely practical knowledge. Unlike works coupling a mainstream political discourse with popular literary genres – like Ronsard’s epic La Franciade (1572) or Honoré d’Urfé’s later six-volume romance narrative L’Astrée (1607–27), epitomizing pastoralism – works like the “Moretum de Virgile” rely on georgicism as a literary tool to express, under the cover of the agricultural metaphor, more subversive views. This is obvious with Palissy’s apology for Calvinism through the agricultural teaching present in his Recepte. But georgicism fulfills the same function when it comes to particular topics, such as the promotion of trade to the French nobility in Verville’s defence of the silk industry.14 This relative disaffection for the genre, which Virgil bemoans, seems to define why Du Bellay is interested in that same genre in the context of his Divers Jeux rustiques in general, and in “Le Moretum de Virgile” in particular, in the context of the poet’s conflicted relationship to the French court. The poet’s interest in translation echoes this use of the literary function of rusticity; it is a way to assert his poetic authority. Most of the pieces in the Divers Jeux rustiques, as mentioned earlier, vary between direct translations and loose imitations of Greek, Latin, and neo-Latin works. Despite the fact that contemporary poets made extensive use of ancient literary models and despite the influence of Italian poetry in Europe and in particular in France, the promotion of one’s poetry through the translation of others can seem paradoxical. Du Bellay’s use of (good) translation15 is first tied to his undershould come face to face with the realistic details of farming life, see them for what they are, yet accept them and even glorify them” (p. 23). 14 On Palissy’s religious discourse, see the critical introductions of Frank Lestringant and Keith Cameron in their respective editions of the Recepte véritable (Paris: Macula, 1996; Geneva: Droz, 1988). 15 The opposition between educated and ignorant reading publics reminds us of Du Bellay’s dichotomy, in the Deffence, between good and bad translation, or traduction and translation. Translation for Du Bellay is redeemed when executed by the learned translateur, as opposed to the ignorant traducteur (Joachim Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse, I.10, Œuvres Complètes, line 1, ed. Francis Goyet and Olivier Millet (Paris: Champion, 2003), p. 37. [All future references to the Deffence are to this edition.] While the latter (the traducteur) only works on the surface of the text, translating words (in uerbis), the former (the translateur) understands the genius or Platonic Idea of the original text and is able to bring it back to life, to give it its “uera uis,” in his own language (pp. 36–7).



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standing of inventio,16 a concept at the crux of the debate on poetic creation between Du Bellay on the one hand, and Ronsard and Sebillet on the other. While essentially in agreement on what makes a good poet: namely creativity, or genius,17 literary theoreticians disagreed on how the poet could achieve it. Du Bellay criticizes Ronsard and Sebillet’s belief in a divine gift or esprit divin,18 and advocates instead a theory of labour, illustrated in the foreword to the Divers Jeux rustiques, where he contrasts courtly entertainment (“voluptez de plus grands fraiz” [most costly voluptuous distractions])19 with the making of the poet’s laboriously-wrought verses, an opposition that keeps appearing throughout the collection. His theory of poetic labour is closely tied to the practice of imitatio, or rather imitatio docta,20 of classical models, whose reproduction should lead to a renewal of French poetry. Du Bellay’s use of imitation in its various forms in the Divers Jeux rustiques offers a concrete illustration of his theory, since the translated poems result in an original work, which also happens to offer a portrait of the author. Although a faithful translation of its Latin model, “Le Moretum de Virgile,” it reads as an intimate scene from the life of a French labourer, as I will detail below. Other poems in the collection such as the “Vieille courtisane” (The Old Courtesan) or the “Hymne à la surdité” (Hymn to Deafness) will qualify as “original works” despite certain passages having been grafted on directly from other poems.21 The blurred boundaries between imitation and translation may well illustrate Du Bellay’s belief in the didactic value of translation, where the imitation of classical models ultimately leads to the acquisition of good judgment (or consilium), fundamental for the creation of an original work. But more importantly for the analysis of “Le Moretum de Virgile,” it also explains how, 16 This is one of the five parts of discourse described in manuals of rhetoric, essential to a poem, a key concept to judge the literary quality of a work, yet lacking in bad translations. In his celebration of Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar, the poet Gascoigne gives a definition of inventio as follows: “This notion of a fine invention (a rhetorical term that indicates the basic conceit or initiating idea of a poem) is the specifically literary criterion that emerges from the witty displays, the charming pleasures, and the controlled selfassertions characteristic of courtiers’ poems,” in Paul Alpers, “Pastoral and the Domain of Lyric in Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender,” Representations, 12 (1985): 83–100, p. 88. 17 See Du Bellay, La Deffence, I. 4, p. 29. On the rhetorical quality of inventio, see Graham Castor, La Poétique de la Pléiade: Étude sur la pensée et la terminologie du XVIe siècle, trans.. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris: Champion, 1998), pp. 137–62. 18 Thomas Sebillet, Art Poetique françois (Geneva: Droz, 1972), p. 58. See also Du Bellay, La Deffence, II.3, p. 53. 19 Du Bellay, “Au lecteur,” Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, p. 4. 20 See the commentary on the Deffence, in Du Bellay, Œuvres complètes, vol.1, p. 303. 21 Quoted in Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, line 2, p. 227. For the connection between Deafness’ palace and Philosophy’s, see Joachim Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Librairie Marcel Didier, 1947), p. 196.

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for Du Bellay, translatio and inventio are not mutually exclusive, and how this concept expresses his opposition to the views held by court poets Pierre de Ronsard and Thomas Sebillet. Du Bellay’s understanding of imitatio draws on Erasmus’ own theory of imitation, whereby ancient models are considered the primary sources of literary creations.22 Originating in the early Renaissance concept of copia that informs “dialectical invention,”23 this belief is echoed in the foreword of Du Bellay’s Olive augmentée, where the poet declares: “Et puis je me vante d’avoir inventé ce, que j’ay mot à mot traduit des aultres” (I pride myself on having invented everything that I translated word-for-word from others).24 Du Bellay here plays with the idea that authorship is a function of the text, as expressed in Foucault’s well-known concept of the “author function.” In the case of Du Bellay’s rediscovery of the sonnet form in the Olive, and his translations in general, authorship arises from the poet’s appropriation of a model or tradition. Referring to the imitation of Petrarchan sonnets, and Sebillet’s criticism of the practice, such a disclaimer illustrates perfectly the creative principle behind the Divers Jeux rustiques, whereby translation enables ‘Du Bellay the author’ to appropriate an existing text and at the same time to claim literary authority as an alternative to court poetry. This concept is reinforced by Du Bellay’s self-proclaimed need to publish his Divers Jeux rustiques before dishonest printers could steal his work or deprive him of his authority over the text, as the author insists in his foreword to the reader. “Le Moretum de Virgile” is an efficient demonstration of the building of Du Bellay’s literary authority. Opening the collection, it is the first assertion of Du Bellay’s authorship, in a context of poetic rivalry for patronage and 22 Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 18–39; Erasmus elaborated his theory in De Copia. The poet’s work mainly consists of this process of digestion, expressed through Du Bellay’s famous metaphor borrowed from Quintilian and Erasmus, to prevent imitation from being a mere copy. Comparing Du Bellay and Erasmus, Cave describes Erasmus’ theory as follows: “any new and valid discourse must arise from an enactment within the author of the primary linguistic impulse exploited by the great writers of antiquity” (p. 59). 23 Cave, The Cornucopian Text, p. 14. 24 Joachim Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Nizet, 1931– 84), line 2, p. 155. The same message is conveyed by Du Bellay’s title for his Aeneid translations: Le Quatriesme livre de l’Eneide de Vergile, traduict en vers francoys. La complaincte de Didon à Enée, prinse d’Ovide. Autres oeuvres de l’invention du translateur (my emphasis) (Paris: Vincent Certenas, 1552); quoted in Todd W. Reeser, “Du Bellay’s Dido and the Translation of Nation,” in this volume. Following Du Bellay’s dichotomy between learned and ignorant writers, the poet reserves translation, and translation of the classics in particular, to the former category, sending his detractors back to Virgil’s answer to his own critics: “il est plus facile de dérober à Hercule sa massue qu’à Homère un vers,” in Du Bellay, Olive augmentée, in Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, line 2, p. 155. This pun illustrates Du Bellay’s belief that only learned poets should take up translation, still according to the concept of the Platonic “Idée” lying at the heart of a text, missed by bad translators; see Du Bellay, La Deffence, I. 11, p. 6.



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courtly favours, through the character of Marsault the peasant. The Latin “Moretum,” published in the Appendix Vergiliana as part of the author’s original work up until Scaliger’s 1572 edition of Virgil’s Opera omnia, details the making of a sauce – the eponymous moretum, which is to be served atop a kind of flatbread – by a peasant, before his departure to plough a field with his ox. Through various kinds of adaptation, such as the “Frenchification” of names – Simylus becomes Marsault, Scybale the African slave becomes a maid from Limousin – and the extensive use of paraphrasis,25 Du Bellay appropriates the Latin original to make it his own. In accordance with his goal of identifying with the translated author – i.e. his attempt to “penetrer aux plus cachées, & interieures parties de l’Aucteur” (delve into the most hidden and inward parts of the author)26 – “Le Moretum de Virgile” appears to have three authors, since the poem’s protagonist (Marsault), his Latin author (Virgil), and the modern author (Du Bellay) all appear to be its creator. The identification with Marsault is extended to the peasant’s labour, characterized by the repetitive gestures leading to the creation of the moretum, a metaphoric representation of the otherwise unfathomable poetic creation.27 The title “Moretum de Virgile” (italics mine), therefore, highlights the fact that both poets draw on the same poetic tradition, since the poem, or metaphorical moretum, is both (Pseudo-) Virgil’s and Du Bellay’s creation.28 The choice of Virgil as the poet’s double at the beginning of the Divers Jeux rustiques takes on particular significance in the larger context of the collection. Indeed, the reference to such a prominent name – Virgil epitomizing the author par excellence – is a strong assertion of Du Bellay’s authorial identity for translations and original pieces alike. The poem’s georgic mode here reinforces Du Bellay’s sense of authorship, as it distinguishes him from court poets, yet he can still benefit from Virgilian patronage. The rustic trope, echoing the Deffence,29 is further developed in the series inspired by 25 That is, a loose adaptation rather than a word-for-word translation. Du Bellay also calls the translator a “paraphraste” (Du Bellay, La Deffence, I.10, p. 37). 26 Du Bellay, La Deffence, I.8, p. 32. Du Bellay opposes this attitude to superficial translations, done by translators who “s’adaptent seulement au premier Regard, & s’amusant à la beauté des Motz” (conform themselves only to the first glance and play around with the beauty of words). This transformation project further orders the translator to “quasi comme se transformer” (as is to transform himself) into the translated author (Du Bellay, La Deffence, I.8, p. 32). 27 See Fitzgerald, “Labour and Labourer,” pp. 411–14, and the traditional metaphor of ploughing for writing. See in particular his explanation of the passage evocative of dispositio. Other metaphors, such as weaving or the work of the honeybee, still draw on the ethic of physical labor. 28 Ironically, the pseudo-Virgil’s Moretum itself may be adapted from a Greek poem by Parthenius. 29 The positive value of work or labeur is already present in the Deffence; see Du Bellay, La Deffence, p. 24. The enhancement of French language for instance is compared to good husbandry in I.3.

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Navagero’s Lusus (poems 4–15), where the peasant figure essentially voices the poet’s plea to the Muses or to a potential patron. Other poems from this series articulate a more pastoral tone. However, as both Annabel Patterson and Anthony Low notice for seventeenth-century England, the valorization of manual labour distinguishes this rustic style from courtly pastoral,30 here influenced by georgic values. The poem “A Cérès” (To Ceres), for instance, features the topos of the field as the poet’s domain but also as a prosperous kingdom (lines 21–4). The same metaphor appears in Olivier de Serres’ dedication to the king in his famous Théâtre d’agriculture (1600), paraphrasing the Bible: “le roi consiste, quand le champ est labouré” (The king rules, when the field is ploughed).31 Marsault’s countryside may not be as crowded with courtiers as is Du Bellay’s Rome, where the author composed his collection, but it is still a place of exile, reflecting the poet’s spiritual alienation, yet yearning for recognition. The image of Virgil as a second Homer, often acknowledged by Du Bellay,32 further reaffirms the creative power emerging from the blended poetic material, illustrated by the metaphor of the mixed ingredients in Marsault’s mortar. Consequently, the identification with Virgil sends a message to both Du Bellay’s fellow poets and potential patrons, already voiced in the Deffence: “Certainement si nous avions des Mecenes, & des Augustes, les Cieux, & la Nature ne sont point si ennemis de nostre Siecle, que n’eussions encores des Virgiles” (If we had any Maecenases and Augustuses, then surely Heaven and Nature are not so hostile to our age that we would not also have some Virgils).33 In other words, if there is a financial or political commitment to it, poetry will blossom. “Le Moretum de Virgile” takes this statement one step further. The identification of Du Bellay with Virgil through the truchement of the peasant, and through bread-making and ploughing metaphors, shows that the talent necessary for the continuation of the classical tradition already exists. Poets, in turn, depend on the patron figure, whose absence in “Le Moretum de Virgile” and throughout the collection brings the future of French poetry into question. Du Bellay’s complaint about the lack of interest in poetry is, of course, an oft-heard battle cry amongst past, present and (most

30 See Annabel Patterson, “Pastoral versus Georgic: The Politics of Virgilian Quotation,” Renaissance Genres, ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 241–9. 31 In Olivier de Serres, Le Théâtre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs (Arles: Actes Sud, 2001), p. 56. 32 See Du Bellay’s quote on Virgil and Homer in the Olive augmentée, in Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, line 2, p. 155 and Du Bellay’s recurrent association between Virgil and Homer in the Deffence in general, e.g. where Virgil is said to have surpassed Homer (Du Bellay, La Deffence I.7, pp. 30–1) and where both authors appear to be of equal value (I.5, p. 57). 33 Du Bellay, La Deffence, II.5, p. 58.



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likely) future literary circles.34 In what follows, I will thus consider how Du Bellay’s self-proclaimed literary authority also informs, according to the poet, the collapse of French letters, directly linked to the lack of enlightened patrons of the arts in the kingdom. * In the Divers Jeux rustiques, one finds a plurality of French Virgils. Like Du Bellay in “Le Moretum de Virgile,” fellow poets Bertrand Berger and Olivier de Magny are both compared to the illustrious Latin forerunner in poems 21 and 32. Each poet also represents a different aspect of Du Bellay’s life: the identification of Bertrand Berger to Melibœus, forced into exile, on the one hand, is an obvious reference to Du Bellay’s alienating stay in Rome. The contrast between Du Bellay’s position and that of Magny-Tityrus, who is blessed with patronage, on the other, evokes the poet’s unlucky relationship with his own patron, Cardinal Jean du Bellay.35 Beyond the adaptation of this well-known dynamic structuring Bucolics 1, the two poems are another diatribe against court poets: in both instances, Du Bellay identifies with the Melibœus character, leaving the comfort of patronage to another, luckier poet. The quote from Bucolics 1 also demonstrates another function of imitation. In addition to the poets’ affiliation with a prestigious tradition, Du Bellay’s comparison of Magny and Berger to Virgil also emphasizes the resemblance between these fellow poets and himself. Both become Du Bellay’s double, mirroring at the same time the poet’s talent and his unfortunate condition.36 Bertrand Berger is presented as a precursor, as is Du Bellay with his Olive (1549), a sonnet collection introducing Petrarchan poetry into France. The importance of Berger’s bucolic poetry is therefore compared to the originality and influence of Virgilian pastorals: “Les Bergiers, avec leurs musettes, / … Premiers inventèrent les sons / De ces poëtiques chansons” (Shepherds, with their pipes, / … Invented first the sounds / for these poetic songs).37 The only thing comparable to Berger’s poetic skills, Du Bellay continues, 34 Du Bellay borrows his quote from Martial’s Epigrams (8.56.5), also quoted by Jacques Peletier in his Art Poétique (1555) (see Du Bellay, La Deffence, p. 398, n. 1). 35 The description of the cardinal’s expensive life in Rome and the work of stewardship expected from Joachim makes it clear that our poet had neither the time nor the money to live off his art; see Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, line 2, pp. 229–33. 36 George Hugo Tucker expresses the same idea through the concept of various “masks” worn by Du Bellay (see G.H. Tucker, Les Regrets et autres oeuvres poëtiques de Joachim Du Bellay [Paris: Gallimard, 2000], p. 121), an image used by the poet himself in his “courtisane” character, as we will see below. The critic also mentions Du Bellay’s financial ease in Rome (p. 30). The poet’s complaint I am referring to here, however, deals with the cardinal’s lack of appreciation of Joachim’s poetry, not the poet’s financial situation. 37 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 32, lines 37–40. While not limited to Virgil – shepherds playing pipes are also found in Theocritus’s Idylls – bucolic

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is the depth of the oblivion in which the poet lives. Indeed, the second to last stanza points out the value of Berger’s advice to the prince: “Si les roys avoient cognaissance / De toy et de ta suffisance, / Sans toy ilz ne prendroient repas, / Et sans toy ne feroient un pas” (If kings only knew / About you and your bravery / They would not eat without you / Nor without you would they take a single step).38 While the conditional makes it clear that Berger’s poetry remains unknown, the last stanza concludes by evoking the poet’s good nature, making it clear that he is a greater loss to the kings than the kings are to himself. Talent, paired with the lack of official recognition, also characterizes Du Bellay throughout the collection: in “Chanson” (Song), the poet represents himself as a supplicant in front of a patron, maybe Diane de Poitiers.39 In “Contre les Pétrarquistes” (Against the Petrarchans) and “A Magni” (To Magny), he portrays himself as a poet without readership: “May moy, que veulx-je plus chanter … / Si de tant d’amour qu’on souspire / La France ne faict plus que rire?” (As for me, why would I continue singing … / If love, lamented at length, / is only mocked by France?).40 On the same note, the “Hymne à la Surdité” (Hymn to Deafness) explains that Du Bellay owes his readership to Ronsard, as a benefit of their friendship (line 16). While these examples all describe a situation of total dependence on a patron, they also explain the position of the tribute to Berger within the collection. Included in a series of satirical epitaphs – to the poet’s pets, for instance – it says that in courtly society, an unknown poet is a dead poet. This parallel makes Bertrand Berger another Du Bellay, owing his literary redemption to his Virgil-like poetry, and not to a benevolent patron.41 The poem to Olivier de Magny functions according to the same model. Here, Du Bellay defines his own position and poetic style from a mediated point of view, using Magny, “parfait amy d’espreuve” (dear friend in arms) as another, yet luckier, double.42 The celebration of Magny’s poetic excellence is defined by the adjective utile-doux. Invented to describe the Pléiade’s ideal of the function of poetry – the Horatian sweetness and utility, according to which poetry pleases as much as it instructs – the adjective utile‑doux was traditionally applied to the best authors of the French Renaissance period,

scenes were associated with the Virgilian tradition in the Middle Ages, following the adoption of the famous Virgilian wheel described in the Georgics. 38 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 32, lines 89–96. 39 See Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Chamard, p. 82, n. 1. 40 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 21, lines 153–6. 41 In addition to the stress on the ‘classical’ quality of Berger’s poetry, a further comparison to Virgil appears in lines 77–78. 42 Quoted in Henri Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay, p. 348. On the friendship between Magny and Du Bellay, see pp. 347–51. Each theme in the poem – patronage, fame, style – is applied to both poets, with Magny, who shared the Roman exile, succeeding where Du Bellay failed.



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essentially as a “critical concept.”43 As Du Bellay says about Magny: “Bien heureux celuy qui assemble / L’utile et le doulx tout ensemble” (Blessed is he who brings together / Utility and sweetness at the same time).44 Du Bellay’s use of the adjective certainly conforms to its general function for the Pléiade, as it applies to authors as different as Marot, Rabelais, or Ronsard.45 In the ode to Magny, the extensive definition of the concept suggests that utile-doux suits Du Bellay especially well as an author. As he explains to Magny, the style is first defined by both poets’ topic of predilection, i.e. love: “Amour, auquel tout est suject, / Du poëte est le seul object / Et à bon droit celuy se vante / De tout chanter, qui l’amour chante” (Love, to whom everything is subjected / Is the poet’s only subject / And one would rightfully pride himself / To sing everything, by singing love).46 The identification of love as the worthiest subject enables Du Bellay to emphasize what he sees as the most innovative aspect of Magny’s work: “avoir le premier de tous / Chanté l’Amour d’un style doux” (to have, for the very first time, / Sung Love in a sweet style).47 Du Bellay praises here the innovative quality of his poetry, clearly another reference to Du Bellay’s own achievement with the Olive, evoked earlier. The enjambement which connects the two verses puts emphasis on Magny’s position as a precursor. As the poet reminds his reader at length (lines 105–12), this first collection provided a model of love poetry for French poets. Imitated and improved by “autres meilleurs esprits” (other better spirits) (line 113), like Magny, the Olive therefore fostered the advancement of French letters. The praise of Magny’s poetry enables Du Bellay to remind the reader of the importance and usefulness of his own work, thereby solidly hitching it to the utile-doux qualification, emphasizing both aspects of the poet’s work – useful and pleasant at the same time. The second part of the poem brings back the Virgilian comparison already seen with Bertrand Berger. Du Bellay and Magny both favour the topic of love. Yet, while Du Bellay’s muse grows silent due to the absence of a worthy patron, Magny writes happily under Jean d’Avanson’s protection.48 The statement is followed by the comparison of D’Avanson to a new Maecenas, suggesting that Magny is, in turn, a French Virgil (lines 174–80), or a new 43 Quoted in R.J. Clements, Critical Theory and Practice of the Pléiade (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1969), p. 123. Clements points out that the authors defined by these terms oftentimes shared nothing in common. On the ‘invention’ of the adjective by Du Bellay himself, and its adoption by the Pléiade members, see pp. 133–35. 44 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 21, lines 187–8. 45 Du Bellay applies utiledoux in his epitaph to Clément Marot (Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay, p. 67, n. 4). 46 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 21, lines 225–8. 47 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 21, lines 121–2. 48 Magny followed his patron, French envoy to the Holy See, in Rome, in 1555. Chamard mentions several poems from Magny celebrating D’Avanson (Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Chamard, p. 66, n. 2).

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Tityrus. Du Bellay’s adverse fate – burdened by administrative functions for the service of Jean du Bellay, while aspiring to poetic recognition – transforms our poet into a Melibœus figure again, devoid of protection, like a vagrant in the selva, lamenting his silent muse (lines 33–6, 45–52, 101–4, 153, 189, 203). While this reference to an exiled Virgil emphasizes Du Bellay’s material difficulties, it also honours the poet’s skills, questioning the ability of the prince, rather than his own, to advance French letters. A last comparison between Du Bellay and Magny happens through the direct link between a public commitment to the arts, and the future of poetry. D’Avanson’s role as a patron of the arts is mentioned twice (lines 175–6, 190–2), and his ability to recognize talent makes him the ideal protector of letters: “Comme un Mécène dont la gloire / Doit à Virgile sa mémoire” (Like a Maecenas whose glory / Owes to Virgil its lasting memory).49 The protection awarded to Magny opposes the crowd’s taste for “monstrueuses fantasies” (line 168), or bad love poetry, generated by courtly society. In the Divers Jeux rustiques, no other patron figure matches D’Avanson in wisdom. Throughout the collection, Du Bellay keeps bemoaning the disastrous effect of a courtier mentality, interrupting the progress of French poetry made “sous Henry” (under Henry) (line 163); that is, with the Pléiade poets. Far from the Valois court, and unable to interest Cardinal Jean du Bellay in his poetry, Du Bellay represents himself as reduced to silence. Ironically, these Roman years turned out to be his most productive. The mediated portrait of the poet is further developed via the character of the courtisane, an extreme representation of the poet’s condition in the absence of a patron. The topic is developed in poems 34–39, almost all adapted from neo-Latin models.50 In the courtisane series, prostitutes become substitutes for the figures of peasants and fellow poets, allowing focus to be placed on the haphazard and contingent nature of the patronage system. The poet’s dependency on a patron’s good will naturally lends itself to a comparison with the high-class prostitutes of Renaissance Rome. Du Bellay’s identification with this character appears in the ode to Magny, where the lengthy description of poetry on commission is evocative of faked love: “Croy moy, Magny, et je le sçay / Pource que j’en ay faict l’essay, / Mal voluntier chante la bouche / De l’Amour qui au cueur ne touche” (Believe me, Magny, I know

Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 21, lines 179–80. Poems 24 and 35 are translated from Pierre Gilbert’s neo-Latin work, now lost. Poem 36 is another adaptation of Gilbert’s poems, and lines 228–30 are inspired by Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti. Du Bellay may owe the idea of the metamorphosis into a rose of poem 37 to Ovid and the Roman de la Rose, but Chamard notes the accuracy of Du Bellay’s description of a prostitute’s life, informed by his personal experience in Rome. See also Arturo Graf, “Una cortigiana fra mille: Veronica Franco,” Attraverso il Cinquecento (Turin: Loescher, 1888), pp. 215–366. 49 50

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of it / For I experimented with it; / A mouth only sings unwillingly / About a love that does not touch the heart).51 While the courtesan character opposes the happier figure of the hardworking peasant portrayed in the first half of the collection, the prostitute trope also focuses on the process of metamorphosis, the ability to “Changer par art [sa] forme naturelle” (artfully change [one’s] natural shape),52 which seems to define the life of the poet who makes versification his mestier. Metamorphosis is also reminiscent of the courtier character, Du Bellay being essentially a courtier at the service of a Roman prelate. Courtiers’ taste for masquerade indeed was a common metaphor for the delusional nature of courtly life. Like the aging prostitute described in each of the poems, the courtly poet relies on artefacts, the prostitute’s fard or make-up,53 in order to please his public. Yet, unlike the rustic pieces opening the collection, the courtisane series brings out the negative side of poetic art:54 while the peasant’s skills could turn barren soils into abundant harvests, the prostitute’s tricks, like courtly poetry, only generate illusion. Du Bellay underlines the paltriness of courtly poetry in “La courtisane repentie” (The Repentant Courtesan) (line 96) and “La vieille courtisane” (The Old Courtesan) (line 352), where prostitution is directly linked to poetry through the Petrarchan verses sung to impress suitors. Conversely, in “Contre les Pétrarquistes” (Against the Petrarchans), love poetry is synonymous with lying, as the author draws on the vocabulary of courtly masquerade to warn against the excess of artefacts in love poetry: “J’ay oublié l’art de Petrarquizer, / Je veulx d’Amour franchement deviser / … sans me deguizer” (I have forgotten the art of Petrarch-ing, / I want to talk honestly about love / … without wearing any mask).55 As opposed to the praise of love poetry in the ode to Magny, this piece exposes the practice of bad imitation already evoked in the Deffence, for it deprives the text – Italian love poetry – of its inner force. The defence of the poet’s value and status returns with the character of Achelous, the river god in “Le combat d’Hercule et d’Achéloys” (The Battle of Hercules and Achelous), whose Protean nature functions like a mise-enabyme of the author’s true nature. Loosely translated from the ninth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the story of the horn of plenty recalls Du Bellay’s Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 21, lines 49–52. Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 26, line 74. 53 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, xxvi, line 70. Robert Griffin notes the frequent occurrence of the word farder, evoking the courtly masquarades and connected to the lies of Petrarchian poetry (Robert Griffin, Coronation of the Poet: Joachim Du Bellay’s Debt to the Trivium [Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1969], pp. 68–9). 54 On the poet’s ability to transform reality, which can either be seen as delusional artefact or reveal the world’s hidden beauty, see Griffin, Coronation of the Poet, pp. 67–79. 55 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 20, lines 1–3. 51 52

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previous poem “Description de la corne d’abondance” (Description of the Horn of Plenty) published with his Olive augmentée in 1550.56 After a brief evocation of the fight between Hercules and Achelous in the first stanza, this earlier piece focuses on the horn and its content and evokes the poet’s ability to immortalize those he celebrates. “Le combat” instead focuses on the events preceding the creation of the horn, namely the fight between Hercules and Achelous at the court of Deianira’s father, Oeneus, and which ends with Hercules’ victory after he tore off one of Achelous’ horns, which became the horn of plenty. We saw how Du Bellay recalled his pioneering role for French poetry in the ode to Magny, and the progression he described from the publication of his Olive, to the blossoming of love poetry, to Magny’s career illustrating the maturation of French letters. The representation of the Olive as a “thesaurus of themes”57 is expressed again here through the image of Achelous’ horn: both the sonnet collection and the horn provide poets with rhetorical tools, or poetic copia, through assimilation and reproduction. Like the “Le Moretum de Virgile,” “Le combat” suggests yet another evocation of poetic creation where, unlike the industrious peasant, the river god is left without any reward. The end of the poem departs from its original Latin model: whereas Ovid has the river god simply return to the water after Theseus’ departure, Du Bellay juxtaposes the victorious hero and his prize to the defeated god hiding his shame in the solitude of the river. While the poet’s oblivion is reminiscent of the situation described in the pieces dedicated to Magny and Berger, “Le combat” features an opposition, a rivalry, where the poet is deprived of his most important belonging, the horn, or, in Du Bellay’s case, recognition for renewing French poetry, as shown by the dramatic staging of the different fates of Hercules and Achelous. Once again, this opposition also appears at the generic level, since the epic hero Hercules wins courtly honours, and Achelous retrieves into a rustic exile. While reminiscent of the poet’s sense of isolation, both “Le combat” and “Le Moretum de Virgile” celebrate the same transformative process – the changing colour of the mixed ingredients composing the moretum under the action of the peasant’s mortar, Achelous’ continuous metamorphosis, and the endless regeneration of his horn are all reminiscent of Erasmus’s principle of copia-as-varietas, according to which the use of tropes permits the repetition of the same thought, while avoiding a monotonous discourse.58 Modelled after the variety of things found in nature, this principle of copia, celebrated in “Le Moretum,” announces the variety found in the Divers Jeux rustiques.

The second piece of his Aultres oeuvres poetiques. Quoted in Griffin, Coronation of the Poet, p. 78. 58 Quoted in Cave, The Cornucopian Text, p. 23. The principle of “copia as varietas” is developed at pp. 22–6. 56 57



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Contrary to the collection’s apparent disorganization and unevenness,59 Du Bellay’s ever-changing identity60 gives the book its homogeneity, as the topos of metamorphosis celebrates the poet’s skills even as it bemoans the precariousness of his condition. * Questions of literary authority and poetic agenda come together with the last, more personal theme developed in the Divers Jeux rustiques: Du Bellay’s ambiguous relationship with Pierre de Ronsard. Their opposition is subtly displayed in various poems of the collection, starting with “Le combat d’Hercule et d’Acheloys,” mentioned above. The piece describes, of course, the fight between Hercules and Achelous, the river god characterized by his ability to change shape, for the love of Deianira. The poem also displays a fight for glory, a classical theme among poets claiming a theoleptic nature.61 This passage concludes the encounter between Hercules and Achelous at the court of Oeneus: L’un pour le pris de sa peine De son peuplier couronné Sa doulce guerrière emmeine, L’autre demeure écorné: Et se couronnant de saule, Jusqu’au dessus de l’espaule Se tappit dedans ses eaux.62 (One, to reward his trouble / Crowned with his poplar / Takes away his sweet warrior, / The other remains without a horn: / And crowning himself with willow / Up to its shoulders, / Crouches into his waters.)

The chiasmic construction of lines 192–5 opposes Deianira to the lost horn on the one hand, and Hercules’ poplar crown to willow branches masking the wound on Achelous’ head on the other. While the mention of a crown at the end of the fight brings up the long-lost practice of poetic coronation, it also evokes Du Bellay’s rivalry with Ronsard. The detail of the poplar crown (line 192) on Hercules’ forehead, added by Du Bellay, is a likely reference 59 Chamard describes the Divers Jeux rustiques as an “oeuvre inégale et mêlée” (unequal and mixed work) (Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay, p. 411). 60 As noted by Chamard, even the two Baysers (25 and 26) dedicated to Faustine are the occasion for Du Bellay to become a new Catullus, “loving a Roman woman in Rome, in Latin verses, with a Latin soul” (Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, line 2, p. 260). 61 On the development and implications of glory in poetry, see Clements, Coronation of the Poet, pp. 42–83. 62 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 17, lines 191–6.

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to Ronsard’s own laurel crown, mentioned in the preliminary remarks of the “Chant de l’amour et de l’hyver” (Song of Love and Winter).63 By the time the Divers Jeux rustiques was composed, Ronsard was indeed at the height of his glory – he published the second book of his Amours and two books of the Hymnes and he had been baptized the “Poet of Princes” by Maclou de La Haye in 1553, to honour his status at the Valois court.64 The figure of Hercules therefore lent itself well to the evocation of Ronsard, a Gallic Hercules rescuing French eloquence,65 honouring his role in the elevation of French letters, as the leader of the Pléiade, and his appointment as a royal poet. The figure of Hercules is also evocative of the association, in the Divers Jeux rustiques, between the epic genre and Ronsard. When love, or rather the loss of it,66 drives Du Bellay into a rustic exile (lines 7–12), Ronsard, the “plus heureux sonneur” (happiest singer),67 records the king’s gestae during the Italian Wars. The “Hymne à la Surdité” (Hymn to Deafness) renews the opposition between Ronsard’s “gravité” (serious tone) (line 21), traditionally associated with high style – the style of epic68 – and Du Bellay’s “facilité” (ease) (line 19), typical of frivolous subjects. In the same poem, Ronsard is compared to Horace, Pindar, and above all Homer (line 151), the greatest writer of epic of all times. To this rather caricatural portrait of Ronsard as an epic poet corresponds a parallel association of Du Bellay to love poetry and low style. In both the “Chant de l’amour et du printemps” (Song of Love and Spring) and the “Chant de l’amour et de l’hyver” (Song of Love and Winter), Ronsard’s poetic production is set in opposition to Du Bellay’s, characterized by sweetness and amorous poetry: “D’Amour soyez donq, mes chants … Autant, mes vers, soyez-vous / Rempliz de doulceur naïve” (Let my poems sing Love … You too, my verses, may you be / filled with naive sweetness).69 These portraits of the two poets do not do justice to their work, as shown by 63 Quoted in Malcolm C. Smith, “The Hidden Meaning of Ronsard’s Hymne de l’Hyver,” Renaissance Studies: Articles 1966-1994 (Geneva: Droz, 1999), p. 91. As noted by Saulnier, the poplar was sacred to Hercules (Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, p. 35, n. 192). 64 Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, line 2, p. 355. 65 On this topic, see Robert E. Hallowell, “Ronsard and the Gallic Hercules Myth,” Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962): 242–55. See also Tucker, Les Regrets, p. 86. 66 The poem may be related to the news of Marguerite de France’s marriage with Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy decided, as part of the peace terms, after the disaster of the battle of Saint-Quentin; according to Chamard, “Chant de l’amour et de l’hyver” was written after the military debacle (Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Chamard, p. 46). 67 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, xviii, line 5. 68 See Clements, Critical Theory and Practice of the Pléiade, p. 135: “… the word [‘grave’] connotes a seriousness of purpose, as well. This may be discerned in either the thought content or the form of expression (tragedies, elegies, Pindaric odes, as opposed to comedies, epithalamiums, Anacreontic verses, etc.).” 69 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 28, lines 29–36.

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the success of Ronsard’s Amours, for instance, or Du Bellay’s Antiquitez de Rome, the themes of which sway between exile and the loss of (humanist) identity. While limiting and untrue to both poets’ works, this literary opposition enables Du Bellay to pursue the topos of truth, associated with a lower style and humility, remote from courtly hypocrisy and mundane honours. In the Divers Jeux rustiques, Du Bellay’s distance from court culture is indeed marked by rustic exile, whether imposed or chosen, yet presented as a topographic reality. In the “Moretum de Virgile,” Marsault’s garden is carefully gated (lines 83–7);70 the “plaines” (plains), “champs” (fields) and “bois” (woods), displayed in other rustic pieces (4-10), all set the poetic space apart from courtly or urban circles; in the “Villanelle,” dedicated to Marguerite de Valois, the poet becomes a hermit in the woods after his patroness’s departure; in “Le combat d’Hercule” (Combat of Hercules), Achelous leaves the Aetolian court to hide in the reeds; in the “Chant de l’hyver” (Song of Winter), the abandoned poet retreats in the “veuve campaigne” (lonely countryside),71 and opposes Ronsard’s poems and the knights, both standing “devant les yeux des rois” (before kings’ eyes)72 to his own situation, “soubs l’horreur de ces bois” (under the horror of these woods).73 The tone shifts in “Hymne à la Surdité” (Hymn to Deafness), the collection’s last poem, where exile becomes voluntary. Strategically placed after the courtesan series, where the poet has painted courtly vices, the poem stages Deafness, the poet’s patron, in an isolated cave, “un antre tapissé de mousse et de verdure” (a den carpeted with moss and greens).74 Once shared by his ‘patron,’ exile becomes a token of the poet’s bravery, and truthfulness, ensured by the geographical distance from the court. The collection’s concluding poem, the “Hymne à la Surdité” (Hymn to Deafness) sheds new light on Ronsard’s identification as an epic poet and as Hercules. It is dedicated to Ronsard and, as the title implies, praises deafness, from which both Ronsard and Du Bellay suffered. The poem is modelled after Ronsard’s “Hymne de la Philosophie” (Hymn to Philosophy) (1555) dedicated to Odet de Châtillon. In the same way Ronsard praises the many virtues of his patron, Du Bellay appears to celebrate his friend’s poetic success, using deafness as a way to highlight the parallel between the two poets. In the light of Ronsard’s portrayal as an epic poet, the following verses suddenly appear ambiguous: “ton Francus que [la France] adore / Pour ton nom seulement, et le bruit qui en court” (Your Francus, whom [France] adores / For the sake of your name only, and the rumour of it).75 Ronsard’s celebration here reads as 70 71 72 73 74 75

Du Du Du Du Du Du

Bellay, Bellay, Bellay, Bellay, Bellay, Bellay,

Divers Divers Divers Divers Divers Divers

Jeux rustiques, Jeux rustiques, Jeux rustiques, Jeux rustiques, Jeux rustiques, Jeux rustiques,

ed. ed. ed. ed. ed. ed.

Saulnier, Saulnier, Saulnier, Saulnier, Saulnier, Saulnier,

poem poem poem poem poem poem

3, line 108. 19, line 11. 19, line 147. 19, line 150. 60, line 228. 60, lines 152–3.

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a questioning of the poet’s fame, since Du Bellay refers to the problematic Franciade, which only exists in the crowd’s imagination. The juxtaposition of Ronsard’s mundane glory to an unwritten, or unwritable, work, suggests that in confining the poet to the epic genre, and ignoring his recent Bocage (1554) or the acclaimed Amours (1552), Du Bellay also confines his rival to a failed project, therefore undermining his authority as the prince’s poet. The questioning of Ronsard’s authority becomes fully articulated in the “Hymne à la Surdité” for the poem describes Du Bellay’s ultimate metamorphosis into none other than Ronsard himself. Both Philosophy and Deafness stand for an expression of wisdom, illustrated by the presence of Jugement as one of the personifications present in their respective caves. The concept of judgment is described in the Deffence as the quality according to which one is able to recognize good poetry.76 It reappears in Du Bellay’s identification with the Cumaean sibyl – the vaticinatrice – in both the foreword and the ode to Magny (poem 21, lines 37–52), which refer to the Horatian function of the poet as a vates (inspired prophet), offering “moral observation and guidance to its readers.”77 Ronsard’s attitude towards deafness, according to Du Bellay, suggests that the Prince of Poets seems to lack this primary quality, as he is said to have given up courtly life not out of wisdom, but due to illness only: La Surdité, Ronsard, seule t’a faict retraire / Des plaisirs de la court et du bas populaire … Elle seule a tissu l’immortelle couronne … Tu luy dois ton laurier … Dois-tu donques, Ronsard, te plaindre d’estre sourd?78 (Deafness, Ronsard, was the only one who had you withdraw from / Courtly pleasures and base glory … Only deafness wove the immortal crown … You owe her your laurel … Must you really, Ronsard, complain about being deaf?)

The insistence on the role of deafness in the poet’s career is an implicit disavowal of his talent and suggests that Du Bellay, rather than Ronsard, should take on the role of the poet-vates. Ronsard’s popularity, paradoxically, becomes a token of quality for Du Bellay’s denigrated poetry, echoing the Horatian scorn for the vulgus, and mundane glory.79 In Writing from History, Timothy Hampton points out the double function of Hercules: representing 76 See Du Bellay, La Deffence, II.11, p. 74. Du Bellay offers a cautionary disclaimer on the subjective value of his judgment when it comes to defining good poetry. His judgment is yet retained as the most valuable one. 77 Quoted in Randall L.B. McNeill, Horace: Image, Identity, and Audience (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 79–80. The concept of vates draws on the idea of the poet’s divine inspiration, as explained in Horace’s Satires and in the Odes. 78 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 60, lines 143–54. (Emphasis mine.) 79 The opposition between Ronsard’s taste for mundane glory and Du Bellay’s solitary work recalls the definition of Glory in the Deffence (Du Bellay, La Deffence, II. 6, p. 59).



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Gallic eloquence, as we saw earlier, but also standing for an exemplary political or virtuous figure,80 as expressed in the Horatian concept of the poetvates. While this moral responsibility adequately describes a quality necessary to the service of the prince, the lack of it would seem incompatible with a royal appointment. As a result, the questioning of Ronsard’s judgment in the “Hymne à la Surdité” is also a questioning of his status as a royal poet, repeatedly mentioned in Du Bellay’s poems. The parallel, in the “Hymne à la Surdité,” between Du Bellay and Ronsard, consequently presents Du Bellay as Ronsard’s better double. Among Du Bellay’s last works, the Ample Discours au Roy sur le faict des quatre estats du Royaume de France (Ample Discourse, Addressed to the King, on the subject of the Four States of the Kingdom of France) is a concrete example of the poet’s claim to hold a role in the public sphere. Heavily influenced by Du Bellay’s earlier translation of a Latin treatise by Michel de l’Hospital, dedicated to François II,81 the Ample Discours, deemed his “best work” by Chamard,82 exalts the poet in his advisory function of vates while displaying the civic virtues necessary to the service of the prince.83 This claim appears in the Divers Jeux rustiques through the recurring figure of the patron, sought after or cherished. Prominent in the collection, it is however not always represented as a defining element of the poet’s production. A few poems in the collection also present the flipside of this relationship, emphasizing the patron’s need for a poet, embodied in the 1549 Olive’s motto: “CAELO MVSA BEAT” (The muse gives the gift of heaven).84 Borrowed from Horace’s Odes, it relates to the poet’s unique ability to confer immortality, thereby justifying his role in public life. In the Divers Jeux rustiques, the only harmonious relationship between poet and patron – aside from Du Bellay and deafness – features Olivier de Magny and Jean D’Avanson: “Et que peult un homme de nom / Mieulx acheter qu’un beau renom?” (What better buy can a man of good name make / Than a good reputation?)85 While 80 See Timothy Hampton, Writing from History: the Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 42. 81 De sacra Francisci II. Galliarum regis initiatione, regnique ipsius administrandi providentia Sermo (1560), quoted in Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, line 2, p. 340. 82 In the light of Du Bellay’s Discours, Chamard considers Ronsard’s Remonstrance “beaucoup moins originale” (much less original) (Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, line 2, p. 343). Chamard adds that in spite of its close rendering of the Latin original, the emotion emanating from the verses makes the poem Du Bellay’s very own work; see in particular the critic’s quote on the care for the people (341). 83 Clements comments on the emptiness of the function for the poet, opposed to sixteenth-century privileged “men of action, courtiers, and those whose political utility was unquestioned” (Clements, Critical Theory and Practice of the Pléiade, p. 81). 84 Horace, Odes, 4.8.20–29, quoted in McNeill, Horace, p. 81. The same idea is expressed in Du Bellay’s epistle to Marot, where poetry is said to grant immortality to the poet (Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay, pp. 29–30). 85 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 21, lines 197–8.

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this distich highlights the patron’s prestige, his literary (good) taste, and the poet’s skills at the same time, the collection’s last poem, the “Hymne à la Surdité” (Hymn to Deafness) describes a different situation for Ronsard, who cannot claim to honour his king with a worthy epic. As a result, Du Bellay’s apparent tribute to Ronsard’s fame reads more like a veiled critique of the Princes of Poets,86 while his own re-writing of the “Hymne de la Philosophie” (Hymn to Philosophy) makes him a new, wiser Ronsard. Du Bellay’s new positioning is confirmed by his comparison to Ronsard throughout the poem, represented as a mirror image of himself. Du Bellay first stresses the impossibility of a parallel between “the Poet of Princes” and himself (“faire à toy de moy comparaison” [comparing you to me]),87 due to Ronsard’s favour at court. While the first twenty-eight verses develop this humility topos, these same verses nonetheless emphasize Du Bellay’s resemblance to Ronsard through the repetition of the phrase “comme toy” (like you),88 questioning our poet’s initial modesty. The imitation of Ronsard appears again with the description of deafness, which, like Ronsard’s own description of Philosophy in his “Hymne de la Philosophie” (Hymn to Philosophy), is likened to Philosophy and Virtue.89 The description of Deafness’ palace is introduced by a literal borrowing from Ronsard’s poem: “Je te salue, ô saincte & alme Surdité!” (Here is to you, holy and divine deafness!).90 The expression, commonly found in Ronsard’s hymns, also concludes the “Hymne de la Philosophie”: “Je te salue ô grand PHILOSOPHIE” (Here is to you o great PHILOSOPHY).91 The palace itself closely resembles Ronsard’s model, from its carved dwelling in the rock-face of a mountain at the end of a perilous path, to the various personifications that inhabit the palace. While these descriptions are typical of scholastic teaching,92 both also describe the poet’s work through the choice of various personifications: Ronsard’s Philosophy is assisted by Judgment (Jugement), Reason (Raison), Truth (Verité), and Sweat (Suëur) holding a laurel crown (lines 217–25); Du Bellay’s Deafness is helped by Silence, Melancholia (Melancholie), Study 86 Ironically, in his Latin poem Ad P. Ronsardum ut relictis Amoribus Heroica scribat, Du Bellay exhorts Ronsard to leave the amorous genre to dedicate himself to epic (See Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay, p. 352). 87 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 60, line 2. 88 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 60, lines. 7, 24, 26. 89 Deafness is defined by philosophy or virtue for instance at lines. 60, 146 and 243. The sound of silence is compared to the celestial music of the spheres (lines 167–78). Du Bellay had already alluded to Ronsard’s poem in sonnet 3 of the Regrets. 90 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 60, line 225. 91 In Pierre de Ronsard, “Hymne de la Philosophie,” in Œuvres Complètes, ed. P. Laumonier (Paris: Nizet, 1982), line 8, p. 102, line 323. See also Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, p. 187, n. 225 and Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Chamard, p. 195, n. 2. 92 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Chamard, p.97, n. 1.

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(Estude), Creative Soul (Ame imaginative), and Judgement (Jugement) again (lines 231–41). In both poems, the personifications are all anti-courtly tropes. The later vices mentioned by Ronsard traditionally refer to court idleness (Ignorance, Vanité, Paresse, Volupté, lines 224–25), while Du Bellay’s personifications insist on the poet’s solitude, or remoteness from the court. Both poems also stress the conflicted position of their authors, torn between art and the contingencies of patronage. Yet, while the “Hymne de la Philosophie” celebrates Odet de Châtillon’s numerous qualities (lines 249–322), Du Bellay introduces Deafness as his new patron (lines 225–50). This claim comes as a surprise, expressed in the final “Donq’, ô grand’Surdité, nourrice de sagesse” (Therefore, o great Deafness, fount of wisdom),93 which interrupts the faithful imitation of the Ronsardian model. It signals Du Bellay’s withdrawal from the patronage system, as well as pointing out the deceptive nature of Ronsard’s poetry. It also opposes Du Bellay’s earlier position to deafness in the “Complainte du Desesperé” (Complaint of a Desperate Man) (1552), where the illness was lamented at length.94 This self-election of Deafness as his new patron places the poet at the same level as Ronsard, in a sharp contrast with the earlier verses. Instead of displaying his perceived inferiority: “ceulx qui trop me favorisent, / Au pair de tes chansons les miennes authorisent” (those who gratify me too much, / Suffer my songs under the aegis of yours).95 Du Bellay challenges the reception of his poetry at court and presents Deafness as a token of wisdom, or good jugement. The shift in tone at the end of Hymne à la surdité therefore suggests that Du Bellay promotes himself from (Ronsard’s) follower to (Ronsard’s) contender. * Du Bellay’s use of imitation in the Divers Jeux rustiques, illustrated in the poet’s relationship with the Virgilian literary legacy, offers a new understanding of Early Modern literary identities and of their social challenges. The poet’s recourse to a literary mode, or translation, serves indeed a selffashioning project, mentioned in the collection’s liminary poem, carried out through the praise of fellow poets and the adoption of various poetic personae.96 Du Bellay’s politics of translation in the Divers Jeux rustiques therefore applies the linguistic theory as exposed in the Deffence, et Illustration (1549) through the famous digestion metaphor, as the figures of the poet and his model blend into one original work. Du Bellay’s feeling of isolation Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 60, line 243. Chamard reports that deafness presented a serious handicap in Du Bellay’s courtly activities; see Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, line 2, p. 332. While in the early 1550s Du Bellay was confident of his good poetic fortune, just a few years later nothing is left from the poet’s enthusiasm but sheer delusions. 95 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 60, lines 15–16. 96 Du Bellay, Divers Jeux rustiques, ed. Saulnier, poem 2, lines 34–9. 93 94

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characterized his entire career, and it is best expressed in Ronsard’s verses in memory of his friend, who: … apres avoir d’une si docte voix Tant de fois rechanté les Princes et les Roys, Est mort pauvre et chetif, sans nulle recompense, Sinon d’un peu d’honneur que luy garde la France.97 ([A]fter he so eloquently sung / Over and over again the glory of princes and kings / He died poor and puny, with no reward, / Save for a little gratitude from France.)

The literary function of georgicism in the Divers jeux rustiques puts Ronsard’s epitaph in perspective. The rustic exile described repeatedly in the collection, from “Le Moretum de Virgile” to the “Hymne à la Surdité,” presents Du Bellay’s isolation as having been chosen and a necessary pre-condition for literary authority. The portrait of the lone poet, deprived of financial support, broken and sick, yet faithful to his art, whose style is characterized by melancholy, may turn Du Bellay into a precursor of the poètes maudits, making him closer to modern sensibilities. His appropriation of the less popular mode of the Virgilian tradition, in the Divers Jeux rustiques, provides the reader with a new literary tool, where the truchement or use of other pieces inscribes the author in a poetic tradition, as well as defining a privileged space for the poet to freely express his own self. It also offers a Renaissance version of the song coming from Melibœus’ exile, never heard in the Georgics, yet offering an alternative poetics, emancipated from the patronage system, and therefore truer to the poet’s art. A direct enactment of the Deffence, et Illustration, the Divers Jeux rustiques therefore illustrates the passage from a definition of poetry to autobiography, where translation lends itself to both literary authority and self-portrait. With the author’s death a few months following its publication, the collection potentially becomes Du Bellay’s literary testament.

97 See Pierre de Ronsard’s Recueil de 1563-1564 and Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, v. 2, p. 348.

Part II The Epic Mode

6

Virgilian Space in Renaissance French Translations of the Aeneid Valerie Worth-Stylianou Recent critics of the Aeneid in compendia such as The Cambridge Companion to Virgil still debate the exact nature of Virgil’s epic and the political sentiments its author sought to impart. For example, that volume’s editor, Martindale, focuses in his introduction on the unresolved debate over whether the poem is firmly pro-Augustan or a subtle critique of empire and emperor;1 Hardie proposes a reading emphasising the tragedy which runs through the work,2 while in contrast Barchiesi demonstrates the importance of a device such as ecphrasis in contextualising heroic elements.3 Other contributors remind us of the range of reactions provoked by what T.S. Eliot termed “the classic of all Europe.”4 Not only have earlier readers of Virgil often disagreed fiercely with each other, but – as readers of the Aeneid still intuitively feel – they are often torn in their own reactions: witness most famously St Augustine rebuking himself for weeping over Dido’s fate.5 If it is unsurprising that this work left its mark on poets as individual and different as Dante, Milton, Scarron, Dryden and Eliot, it is nonetheless remarkable that so many other writers, both famous and pedestrian, felt impelled to undertake and publish translations into their own vernacular, not least in the first two centuries of print culture. Such translations may tell a rather different tale from more creative forms of imitation, or rather they may tell several different tales simultaneously. Seven translations into French of the whole of the Aeneid or of selected whole books from it were published over the first century of French 1 The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 10. 2 Philip Hardie, “Virgil and Tragedy,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale, pp. 312–26. 3 Alessandro Barchiesi, “Ecphrasis,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale, pp. 271–81. 4 Thomas Stearns Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber, 1957), p. 70. 5 St Augustine, Confessions, trans. William Watts (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press [Loeb]), 1912), v. 1, p. 39.

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print culture, from 1483 to 1582: see Table 1. In this chapter, I propose to examine what these different renderings tell us about the appropriation of Virgil in Renaissance France. Although previous studies have not brought all seven translations together, various translations have been considered within a comparative framework. The approach has usually been to appraise them primarily as works of poetry: the study by Hulubei6 set the essential frame of reference, and others such as Raue,7 Coleman,8 Griffin9 and more recently Brückner10 have followed in her footsteps.11 Less attention has generally been paid to the political factors motivating the individual translators, with the notable exception of two articles by Scollen-Jimack.12 Furthermore, more recent critical approaches afforded by the history of early print culture invite a fresh analysis of the significance of the physical space occupied by the first published translations of the Aeneid. It is thus with the book as artefact that I propose to start, before turning to the political significance of the appropriation of Virgil’s epic.

The Transmission of Translations of the Aeneid within Early French Print Culture A glance at the printed volumes, from the earliest version in 1483 to that published in 1582, confirms the shift of genre which the Aeneid underwent in its transition from prose romance to work of epic poetry. However, a closer comparison of the seven versions shows that the history of translation does not follow a simple linear development: see Table 2. Five of the translators opt for verse, starting with the posthumous edition of Octovien’s version in 1509, 6 Alice Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” Revue du seizième siècle, 18 (1931): 1–77. 7 Helmut Raue, “Französische Vergilsűbersetzungen in der zweiten Hälfte des 16 Jahrhunderts” (Ph.D. diss. Cologne, 1966). 8 Dorothy Coleman, The Chaste Muse: A Study of Joachim Du Bellay’s Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 1980), pp. 51–64. 9 Robert Griffin, Coronation of the Poet: Joachim Du Bellay’s Debt to the Trivium (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 84–95. 10 Thomas Brückner, Die erste französische Aeneis. Untersuchungen zu Octovien de Saint-Gelais’ Ubersetzung. Mit einer kritischen Edition des VI. Buches (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1987). 11 See also my summary of the development of poetic style in translations of the Aeneid up to the early seventeenth century in “Translations from Latin into French in the Renaissance,” The Classical Heritage in France, ed. Gerald Sandy (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 152–62. 12 Christine Scollen, “Octovien de Saint-Gelais’s Translation of the Aeneid: Poetry or Propaganda?” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 39 (1977): 253–61; Christine Scollen-Jimack, “Hélisenne de Crenne, Octovien de Saint-Gelais and Virgil,” Studi Francesi, 78 (1982): 197–210.

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Table 1: Printed translations in French of the Aeneid before 1600 First Printed Edition

Place of Publication

Translator Anon.

Title

Livre des Eneydes 1483

Lyons

Octovien de Saint-Gelais

Les Eneydes de Virgille

Paris

Hélisenne de Crenne

Les Quatre Premiers Livres des Eneydes du treselegant poete Virgile Les Deux Premiers 1547 livres de L’Eneide 1552 Les Quatre Premiers livres de L’Eneide 1557 Le Cinquiesme Livre de L’Eneide L’Eneide de Virgile 1560 (from 1574 included in Les Œuvres de P. Virgile Maron)

Lyons

Louis Des Masures  "  "

 "

Joachim Du Bellay

1509 (posthumous) 1541

1552 Le Quatriesme Livre de l’Eneide de Vergile   " 1561 Deux livres de l’Eneide de Vergile, le quatrieme et sixieme … avec la complainte de Didon à Enee, prise d’Ovide, La Mort de Palinure du cinquieme de l’Eneide Pierre 1575 Les Quatre Trédéhan premiers livres de l’Eneide Robert et 1582 Les Œuvres de Anthoine Le Virgile Maron Chevalier d’Agneaux freres

Printer

Dedicatee

Subsequent Editions

Guillaume Le Roy Antoine Louis XII Verard

–

Paris

Denys Janot

–

Paris

Chrestien Wechel Jean de Tournes

Lyons Lyons

François I

Jean de Tournes, Guillaume Gazeau Jean de Duke of Tournes Lorraine

Paris

Vincent Certenas

Paris

Frederic Morel

Geneva

Abel Rivery

Paris

Guillaume Auvray

1514, 1529, 1532, 1540

1558 1553, 1554

1567, 1572, 1574, 1575, 1577, 1578, 1580, 1581, 1588, 1596, 1606, 1608, 1615

1568, 1569

1583, 1607

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Table 2: Layout of printed translations in French of the Aeneid before 1600 Translator and Date of First Edition Anon (1483)

Format of First Edition

Books of Aeneid Monolingual/ Translated Bilingual Text

Prose/ Verse

Remaniement of Books 1–12

61 half-page 4o woodcuts, most heading chapters Rhyming 11 full-page 2o decasyllabic woodcuts in couplets 1509 edition; 106 quartercolumn woodcuts by 1540 edition Prose 30 woodcuts 2o

Monolingual

Illustrations

Prose

Octovien de Saint- Books 1–12 Gelais (1509)

Approx. one third of Latin text in margin

Hélisenne de Crenne (1541) Louis Des Masures (1547–60)

Books 1–4

Monolingual

Books 1–12

Complete Latin text Rhyming 12 woodcuts 4o in margin decasyllabic (one before each couplets book, occupy one third of page)

Joachim Du Bellay (1552–61) Pierre Trédéhan (1575)

Books 4 and 6 and extract from Book 5 Books 1–4

Monolingual

Robert et Books 1–12 Anthoine Le Chevalier D’Agneaux (1582)

Rhyming None decasyllabic couplets Latin text occupies Rhyming None left-hand page alexandrine opposite French couplets translation on right-hand page None Monolingual (Latin Rhyming text included in alexandrine 1583 and 1607 couplets editions)

8o 8o

4o

but Hélisenne’s prose reworking of Books 1–4 in 1541 stands out, even at the level of the printed artefact, as a deliberate return to the medieval tradition of romance and remaniement. Perhaps the fact that – unlike her successful sentimental novel, Les Angoysses douloureuses (1538) – the translation was not reprinted, and that remarkably few copies of the single edition survive,13 indicates that her approach appeared too dated for the 1540s, when humanist values had weaned many readers away from allegorical prose re-workings to more sober and faithful verse translations.14 13 I have traced one copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France-Arsenal and one in Geneva, but none is listed for the UK on COPAC, and no others in France on the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s electronic catalogue. 14 The same development is apparent in translations of another very popular Latin work of poetry, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. See the study by Ghislaine Amielle, Recherches sur les traductions françaises des Métamorphoses d’Ovide illustrées et publiées en France à la fin du XVe siècle (Paris: Editions J. Touzot, 1989).

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Of the complete verse translations of the Aeneid, Octovien’s (with later corrections by Jean Ivry),15 was published five times between 1509 and 1540. The commercial interest of Louis Des Masures’ version was evident even from the appearance of Books 1–2 (1547) and 1–4 (1552), since Arnoul and then Charles L’Angelier produced pirated editions in 1553 and 1554; Des Masures protested, and ultimately sought a royal privilege (granted in 1557, for ten years) to protect all his works.16 Once completed, his translation of the Aeneid was published alone and in its entirety three times (from 1560 to 1572), and then at least eleven more times within compendia of French translations of Virgil’s works (1574–1615). The version produced jointly by the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers appeared three times between 1582 and 1607, overlapping with the circulation of Des Masures’ version. Given that in the Renaissance printed volumes would often continue to be used and circulate within families and reading communities for several generations and sometimes longer, we can conclude that after 1509 a verse translation of the entire Aeneid would rarely have been unavailable to any who wished to own it, and that such works were repeatedly seen as sound investments by printers. The explanation for the sustained popularity of the translations lies not just in the high regard which Virgil commanded in literary circles. Since the Aeneid was a staple text of the classroom, many sixteenth-century readers would have had practical reasons for obtaining a French ‘crib.’ However, the 1483 remaniement and Hélisenne’s version banish the Latin entirely; French romance versions of Virgil have supplanted the verse Aeneid.17 Similarly, but for different reasons, Du Bellay’s translation never stands beside any part of Virgil’s text; it asks to be read and judged on its own poetic merits – albeit that many humanist readers may have carried the Latin text in their memory. In most editions of the other four translations of the Aeneid, on the other hand, the Latin text appears alongside the French, so that the textual layout reaffirms the relationship with Virgil, inviting the reader to measure the French against the Latin. In the earliest case, both the original printer of Octovien’s version and those responsible for later editions reproduce only about a third of the Latin, set in Roman type and with a typeface distinctly smaller than the heavy Gothic type used for the two columns of French translation. Thus, the French 15 On the importance of Ivry’s corrections, and errors committed by earlier scholars who assumed later editions were the same as the 1540 edition, see Brückner, Die erste französische Aeneis, pp. 17, 53–8. 16 See the discussion by Emma Herdman, “Changing Sides, Changing Styles: The Example of Louis Des Masures (c. 1510–1574)” (D.Phil. diss., Oxford, 2004), p. 4. 17 In addition, Hélisenne’s version is the only one to include copious marginal notes on mythological and historical references, thereby providing a compendium of general classical culture to accompany the text.

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text is primary, whereas the Latin excerpts resemble a marginal commentary, and while the extracts from the Latin would have sufficed to allow students to follow closely if they also had a parallel volume of the Latin, the volume was not a self-sufficient bilingual tool. Octovien’s work, however, appeared when polyglot texts were still in their infancy. By the time the first books of Des Masures’ translations became available (1547), parallel Latin-French texts were well established in many areas of print culture.18 Printers as astute as Chrestien Wechel and Jean de Tournes would certainly have had an eye to potential markets – and we need to remember that the inclusion of the parallel Latin text may have been a choice imposed by the publisher rather than the translator, for the former would have had to weigh up the relative additional cost of paper for printing both texts against the additional revenue from increased sales. In the first complete edition of Des Masures’ translations in 1560, the French text is set in italic characters, and the contrast between text and commentary is maintained since the complete Latin text is in smaller Roman type in the margins. Additionally, the introduction of regular paragraph breaks in the translation allows Des Masures discretely to guide the reader through the structure of the work.19 The various reprints of his translation attest to the success of the format, as does the fact that three out of the four editions of the translations by both of his successors, Pierre Trédéhan and the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers, are bilingual. The version of Books 1–4 by Trédéhan, of which very few copies indeed survive, was probably composed around the same time as Des Masures’ version, while Trédéhan was based in Anjou, but was published rather later, 1575, in Geneva.20 Again, the presence of the entire Latin text in the margin indicates that the publisher anticipated a scholarly readership, but uniquely, the Latin occupies the entire left-hand page, and the translation the opposite right-hand page, giving both texts equal status.21 In contrast, the version by the brothers Robert and Antoine Le Chevalier d’Agneaux, which was intended to elevate the French language, appeared initially in 1582 in a handsome quarto edition, with only the French text of each book, preceded by an eight-line 18 See my chapter “Reading Monolingual and Bilingual Editions of Translations in Renaissance France,” Translation and the Transmission of Culture between 1300 and 1600, edd. Jeannette Beer and Kenneth Lloyd-Jones (Kalamazoo MI: Kalamazoo Press, 1995). 19 See the reproduction of the 1560 edition: L’ Enëide de Virgile: prince des poëtes latins, translatée de Latin en François, par L. Des Masures, ed. Ruth Thomas (Paris: S.R. Publishers, 1972). 20 I have consulted the copy held in Geneva. 21 The full title draws attention to the unusual textual layout: Les quatre premiers livres de l’Eneide […] ausquels les vers latins mis au long respondent aux François, page par page (The four first books of the Aeneid […] in which the Latin lines correspond to the French, on facing pages).

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summary (in verse) of the plot, but no other margin notes.22 However, this format was rapidly superseded since the re-editions the following year and in 1607 included the Latin as well. Indeed, David Le Clerc, the printer of the 1607 volume, adds a letter to the reader, drawing attention to the lengths he went to in order to ensure the accurate proof-reading of the parallel French and Latin poetry, and makes a particular feature of the bilingual format he adopts, with a heavy vertical rule indicating the separation between the French text (in Roman characters) and the Latin (in smaller italic characters).23 As the Renaissance translations of the Aeneid cross into the seventeenth century, it is the bilingual versions of both Des Masures and Le Chevalier d’Agneaux which survive. Among the various other aspects of the layout of Renaissance translations which are indicative of the translator’s and/or printer’s perception of the work, and of the audience they believed likely to be attracted by it, the most obvious is illustrations. I have argued in my general survey of classical translations in Renaissance France that, after the first third of the sixteenth century, illustrations are the exception rather than the rule in published translations.24 In most cases, as humanist scholarship imposes sobriety on French versions of the classics, they become visually distinct from either medieval manuscript traditions or more popular reading matter. Pasquier’s study of the use of illustrations in French and Italian editions of Virgil’s works certainly confirms this trend.25 Thus, it is unsurprising that the 1483 remaniement published by Guillaume Le Roy or Antoine Vérard’s early printed editions of Octovien’s translations should be illustrated, just as one of the two surviving manuscripts of Octovien’s translation was.26 Le Roy is unstinting in his use of half-page woodblocks, sixty-one of them being interspersed throughout the text, especially at the start of new chapters of the narrative. Saunders has observed that the printer used the same woodblocks as we find in “romans de chevalerie” from his press, a fact which reinforces the conflation of the

22 In contrast, the translation of the Georgics which appeared in the same volume has practical indications in the margin of points of interest such as “Qu’il ne faut attacher les plantes de la cime des arbres” (that one should not secure plants from the top of trees) (fol. 48v). 23 “L’Imprimeur au lecteur,” fol. Aviiiv. 24 Worth-Stylianou, “Reading Monolingual and Bilingual,” p. 334. 25 See especially her analysis of illustrations in sixteenth-century editions of the Aeneid (Bernadette Pasquier, Virgile illustré de la Renaissance à nos jours en France et en Italie [Paris: Jean Touzot, 1992], pp. 99–107). Her study is particularly useful in allowing us to appreciate that developments in French translations broadly mirror those in monolingual Latin editions of the text. 26 For a description and black-and-white reproductions of the eleven beautiful miniatures which adorned one of the manuscripts (now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France), see Brückner, Die erste französische Aeneis, pp. 80–93.

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Virgilian text and its chivalric counterparts.27 Vérard is similarly unconcerned with distinguishing the eleven illustrations accompanying Octovien’s text, the woodcuts of battle scenes being, in Saunders’ words “unspecific.”28 Printers reproducing Octovien’s translation in editions of the complete works of Virgil until 1540 built upon the association between Octovien’s text and visual imagery by including more and more woodcuts, albeit smaller than the full-page illustrations of the 1509 text; by the 1540 edition, there are no fewer than 106 woodcuts throughout the twelve books, but each occupies only a quarter of a column.29 If illustrations were most typical of the earlier sixteenth century and an essential hallmark of the style of printers such as Vérard,30 they still occasionally featured in some mid-sixteenth-century verse translations of other poets, for example the editions of translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses produced by the Lyonnais printer Jean de Tournes.31 Yet de Tournes included only a single woodcut at the start of each book of the Aeneid in his 1560 edition, a fact which probably indicates the very different standing he accorded to Virgil’s epic as opposed to Ovid’s mythological tales.32 None of the other late-sixteenth-century verse translations of the Aeneid is illustrated, not even the luxury 1582 edition of the version by Le Chevalier d’Agneaux; in French, as in Latin, after the middle of the sixteenth century, Virgil’s epic has become a humanist text. In this respect, once again the 1541 prose translation of Books 1–4 of the Aeneid by Hélisenne de Crenne runs counter to this general progression from illustrated romance to un-illustrated humanist epic, for it is generously interspersed with illustrations. The printer Denys Janot presumably perceived 27 Alison Saunders, “Sixteenth-Century Book Illustration: The Classical Heritage,” The Classical Heritage in France, ed. Gerald Sandy (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 515. 28 Saunders, “Sixteenth-Century Book Illustration,” p. 516. 29 Bernadette Pasquier has shown that the woodcuts used in conjunction with Octovien’s translation are copied more or less closely from those which the engraver Sebastian Brant made for a Latin edition of the Aeneid first appearing in 1502 (Virgile illustré de la Renaissance à nos jours, pp. 226–9). Brückner, in his full bibliographical description of the separate editions of Octovien’s translation, lists the illustrations (Die erste französische Aeneis, pp. 38–50). For the 1540 edition, I note that the number of woodcuts in each book varies (from 5 in Book 4 to 13 in Book 3), with seven being the average number. Apart from the principle of a woodcut at the start of each book, there is no obvious pattern for the positioning of the woodcuts at the given point in the text, which suggests that the printer was guided above all by the woodcuts available. 30 See Mary Beth Winn, Anthoine Verard Parisian Publisher 1485–1512: Prologues, Poems, and Presentations (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1997), p. 517. 31 Saunders, “Sixteenth-Century Book Illustration,” p. 524. 32 The illustrations, which occupy approximately a third of the page, depict a key incident from each book: e.g. a ship sailing the ocean (Book 1), the Trojan horse (Book 2), Turnus and Aeneas locked in combat, against a backdrop of a city (Book 12). Pasquier identifies them as engravings by Bernard Solomon, the leading engraver of Latin editions of Virgil (Pasquier, Virgile illustré de la Renaissance à nos jours, p. 230).



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these as entirely complementary to Hélisenne’s conception of the Aeneid, which in all respects is far closer to the 1483 remaniement than to any of the verse translations. However, while these woodcuts may appear luxurious in comparison with those used nearly sixty years earlier in 1483, Wood has demonstrated that with his habitual frugality Janot in fact reused some woodcuts, borders, frames and typefaces which he had employed the previous year in his edition of Nicholas Herberay Des Essarts’s translation of the popular Amadis de Gaule.33 In other words, a proportion of the illustrations were drawn from Janot’s large stock of woodcuts rather than being specific to Hélisenne’s text, so that they are of interest primarily as generic examples of luxury woodcuts in mid-sixteenth-century works of fiction, rather than specific to the appropriation of Virgil.34 Nonetheless, it is important to note that they bear witness to the continuity of late medieval reading practices alongside humanist ones. In summary, the marked differences between the layouts of the seven versions reflect above all the general typographic developments of Renaissance print culture. At one extreme, in 1483, we find very densely packed text, in Gothic characters, with very few paragraph breaks; there are no running headings, only signatures of folios but not page numbers, no margin annotations, and the chapter headings are barely distinguished spatially from the rest of the text. The illustrations alone provide respite for the eye. However far from Virgil’s poem the reworking might be on the level of content, it is worth noting that the textual presentation anticipates a high level of reading skills. In contrast, the 1582 edition of the translation by the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers is much easier to assimilate visually, since the text is generously spaced and elegantly laid out in italic characters.35 However, we have seen that the later editions of this last version tell a more nuanced story, reminding us that once a translation was in the public domain, it was passed from the translator into the stewardship of successive printers. We can conclude that the transmission of Renaissance French translations of the Aeneid cannot be understood outside the general cultural frame of Early Modern print culture. 33 Diane Wood, Hélisenne de Crenne: At the Crossroads of Renaissance Humanism and Feminism (Madison NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 63–4. Wood particularly draws our attention to the liminary woodcut which might appear to be a portrait of Hélisenne offering her book to the king; in fact it had previously been used in Janot’s 1540 edition of the Amadis translation. 34 He owned over 900, according to Stephen Rawles (“Denys Janot, Parisian Printer and Bookseller, fl. 1529–1544: A Bibliographical Study” [Ph.D. diss., Warwick, 1976], p. 55). 35 It must, however, be noted that the 1607 re-edition is far more functional and appears comparatively cramped due to the presence of the Latin text in the margins. Later editions of Louis Des Masures’ translation also lack the stylish layout of Jean de Tournes’ 1560 edition, suggesting that subsequent printers were looking to produce a cheaper book, perhaps largely for a student readership.

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The Appropriation of the Aeneid and National Identity The foregoing analysis of evolutions in the layout of translations of Virgil suggests that printers, translators and readers became increasingly confident with the concept of an Aeneid poised between two cultures; by the midsixteenth century, the many bilingual editions presented the text as a work of French verse which simultaneously recognised its Latin origins. Is the same balance present when we look at translators’ appropriation of the Aeneid as a statement of national or political identity? The translation studies theorist Susan Basnett asserts that translations are more commonly produced in cultures uneasy about their own status than in those confident about the strength of their national literature, and this holds true for the early translators of Virgil into French.36 Three translators – the author of the 1483 remaniement, Octovien and Hélisenne – all hold the epic up as a mirror to the aspirations of their own society. According to the 1483 prologue, the exemplarity will function on both a very practical level (e.g. instructing citizens on how to withstand a siege) and a moral one: [Le livre] a este translate de latin en commun langaige auquel pourront tous valereux princes et aultres nobles veoir molt de valereux faictz darmes. Et aussi est le present livre necessaire a tous citoyens et habitans en villes et chateaulx car ilz verront comme jadis troye la grant et plusieurs aultres places, fortes et inexpugnables ont este assieges aprement et assaliez et aussi courageusement et vaillamment deffendues. Et est ledit livre au temps present fort necessaire pour instruire petis et grans pour chascun en son droit garder et deffendre. Car chose plus noble est de mourir que de villainement estre subiuge. (fol. a2r) ([The book] has been translated from Latin into the common language in which all heroic princes and other nobles will be able to see many heroic feats of arms. And the present book is also necessary for all citizens and inhabitants of towns and castles for they will see how formerly the great Troy and various other strong and unassailable places were harshly besieged and attacked and also courageously and heroically defended. And this book is most necessary at the present time to instruct great and lower people to protect and defend themselves. For it is more noble to die than to be wretchedly subjugated.)

The reference to Troy and the aphoristic final sentence with its implicit endorsement of a reading of the Aeneid as a study in heroic tragedy set a trend for various translations which followed. If the French monarchy was increasingly eager to employ the legend of the Franks as the true descendants of the Trojans in order to forge a stronger sense of national identity, any translator of the Aeneid had to contend with the problem that the Trojans 36

Susan Basnett, Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 2005), p. xii.

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had lost the battle of Troy, and that the early books depict heroes in flight before their new land is attained. Surveying English Renaissance translations of Virgil, Burrow remarks that English translators were usually among those supporting losing causes; the task rarely appealed to those with royal patronage.37 In contrast, however, French poets seem to consider the Aeneid a potential passport to royal favour. As Scollen has shown, Octovien intended a highly illustrated original manuscript version of his translation (dated 1500) to be presented to Louis XII, as a means to gain the new king’s favour by implicitly comparing his aspiration to conquer northern Italy, especially the Duchy of Milan, with Aeneas’ divinely sanctioned imperial mission, carried out by the “premiers fondateurs de l’Ytalie, nobles Troyans” (first founders of Italy, noble Trojans).38 While Octovien’s reference to the Trojans befits his flattery of the monarch, Hélisenne’s preoccupation with Aeneas’ heroic status sits less easily with the dedication to the ageing François Ier (and there is no evidence that the king paid any attention to the volume or its translator). Heavily steeped in medieval legends surrounding the figure of Virgil, and influenced by Lemaire de Belges’s interpretation of the Aeneid as a defence of Troy and thus of France, Hélisenne associates François Ier with Hector, but, since her translation ends with Book 4, she does not show us Aeneas triumphant. Furthermore, Wood is quite correct to assert that Hélisenne’s primary focus here, as in other of her writings, is the tragic figure of Dido,39 yet because of her definition of the Aeneid as a tale “en maniere d’une lamentable tragedie” (in the form of a lamentable tragedy), the translator also cannot resist – as she admits in her preface – embellishing the account of Hector’s death in the second book.40 Although we have seen that this prose translation appears to have met with little success (perhaps in part because of the very ornate and unfashionable prose style Hélisenne adopted), it stands as a strange testament to the passion with which the Aeneid could be appropriated as a tale of both tragic failure and national identity. Of course, the episodes of the sacking of Troy and the death of Dido attracted many Renaissance writers, and Pierre Trédéhan’s version of Books 1–4 also stops well short of Aeneas’ arrival in Latium (Book 7), as does Du Bellay’s choice of only the two most poetically challenging books – Books 37 Colin Burrow, “Virgil in English Translation,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale, p. 21. 38 Scollen, “Octovien de Saint-Gelais’s Translation of the Aeneid,” p. 253. 39 See Wood, Hélisenne de Crenne, pp. 135–50. 40 “propos y estre par moy adioustées, et par especial au Second livre: auquel est faict mention de la deplorable fin du tresprestant et magnanime Hector, de l’illustrité duquel vostre preclaire progeniture et tresanticque generosité a prins origine” (phrases added by myself, especially in the second book, which mentions the sad end of the heroic and great figure of Hector, from whose illustrious race your outstanding line and most ancient nobility are descended) (Epistre dedicatoire, fol. Aiiir).

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4 and 6 – to provide what he self-deprecatingly described as an “exercice de plus ennuyeux labour, que d’allegresse d’esprit” (exercise requiring more tiresome labour than agility of mind).41 Griffin’s analysis of Du Bellay’s translation within the context of his other writings does show the poet’s sensitivity to the centrality of Rome in Book 6, but above all, both the preface and Du Bellay’s version demonstrate a concern with the transposition of Virgil’s poetic achievement rather than the desire to make a political statement.42 In contrast, both Des Masures and the Le Chevalier brothers follow Virgil’s epic all the way from the flight from Troy to the founding of Aeneas’ new kingdom; thus, tragedy and success are potentially balanced. There is a certain piquancy when we realise that Des Masures’ own conversion to Protestantism probably took place at the middle point of the thirteen years during which he laboured over the Aeneid, but no trace of his personal struggles of faith emerges in the work itself.43 The dedication of 1560, addressed to his longstanding patron, Charles, duke of Lorraine, is confined to standard compliments (including several references to Charles’ family line being descended from Aeneas) and protestations of his own poetic limitations in contrast with Virgil’s style. Similarly, Robert and Antoine Le Chevalier d’Agneaux (who claimed to have spent only two years on the translation) combine compliments to their dedicatee, Henri III, with an apology for the stylistic imperfections of their version, notwithstanding the obvious parallel they draw between their celebration of the French monarch and Virgil’s celebration of Augustus. In addition, they cleverly couch their defence in Virgilian metaphors of warfare: Mais la defiance de nostre phrase rude et grossiere nous a depuis tenus assiegez d’un doute craintif, si nous oserions le laisser aller instruit et accoustré à nostre mode, par ce vostre Royaume sous la faveur et protection de vostre Majesté.44 (But the roughness and lack of polish of our style for a long time besieged us with doubt and fear as to whether we should be so bold as to let it go forth, drawn up and decked out in our manner, into your kingdom under the favour and protection of your Majesty.)

In the decades following the Deffence, et illustration and Ronsard’s early success at court, the ground has shifted. Whereas the anonymous translator 41 Joachim Du Bellay, Deux livres de l’Eneide de Vergile (Paris: Frederic Morel, 1561), p. 2. 42 Griffin, Coronation of the Poet, pp. 84–95. 43 Emma Herdman suggests that the conversion probably occurred in the period 1550–7, although it was not made public until January 1562 (“Changing Sides, Changing Styles: The Example of Louis Des Masures” [Ph.D. diss., Oxford, 2004], p. 19). 44 Les Oeuvres de P. Virgile Maron (Paris: David Le Clerc, 1607), fols aiiv–aiiir.

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of 1483, Octovien and Hélisenne had all used the Aeneid to express a vision of France as the new Troy, Des Masures and the brothers Le Chevalier understand, as Du Bellay had done, that the poetic battleground had moved from simply extolling the kingdom of France to simultaneously defending the status of the French language. To appropriate Virgil’s epic in the second half of the sixteenth century meant, as these last translators affirmed to their king, to recognise it as “digne d’estre entendu en vostre France parler François. Nous avons donc mis peine de luy apprendre fidelement ce langage, au mieux que nous l’a permis nostre rudesse impolite” (worthy of being heard speaking French in your France. We have thus taken the trouble to teach it this language faithfully, as far as our unpolished roughness allowed us to do).45 It is thus in the detail of the rendering of each line that, consciously or not, each translator could refashion Virgil in a French context as he or she saw fit. My research to date on Renaissance translations has led me to argue that translation is always an activity combining both interpretation and rewriting: on this basis, I propose to conclude my remarks here with the analysis of a short extract from each of the three translations which achieved the greatest longevity; those of Octovien, Des Masures and the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers. The episode near the end of Book 6 in which the shade of Anchises predicts to his son the future history and glory of the Roman nation sets translators the challenge of reworking Virgil’s celebrated statement of national and political identity for appropriation by a sixteenth-century French readership. Huc geminas nunc flecte acies, hanc aspice gentem Romanosque tuos. Hic Caesar et omnis Iuli Progenies, magnum caeli ventura sub axem. Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, Augustus Caesar, Divi genus, aurea condet Saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva Saturno quondam, super et Garamantas et Indos Proferet imperium (iacet extra sidera tellus, Extra anni solisque vias, ubi caelifer Atlas Axem umero torque stellis ardentibus aptum): Huius in adventum iam nunc et Caspia regna Responsis horrent divum et Maeotia tellus, Et septemgemini turbant trepida ostia Nili. Nec vero Alcides tantum telluris obivit, Fixerit aeripedem cervam licet, aut Erymanthi Pacarit nemora, et Lernam tremefecerit arcu; Nec qui pampineis victor iuga flectit habenis Liber, agens celso Nysae de vertice tigris.

45

Les Oeuvres de P. Virgile Maron, fol. Aiiv.

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Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis, Aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra? (Aeneid, 6: 788–807) (Turn hither now your two-eyed gaze, and behold this nation, the Romans that are yours. Here is Caesar and all the seed of Iulus destined to pass under heaven’s spacious sphere. And this in truth is he whom you so often hear promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will again establish a Golden Age in Latium amid fields once ruled by Saturn; he will advance his empire beyond the Garamants and Indians to a land which lies beyond our stars, beyond the path of year and sun, where sky-bearing Atlas wheels on his shoulders the blazing star-studded sphere. Against his coming both Caspian realms and the Maeotian land even now shudder at the oracles of their gods, and the mouths of sevenfold Nile quiver in alarm. Not even Hercules traversed so much of earth’s extent, though he pierced the stag of brazen foot, quieted the woods of Erymanthus and made Lerna tremble at his bow; nor he either, who guides his car with vine-leaf reins, triumphant Bacchus, driving his tigers down from Nysa’s lofty peak. And do we still hesitate to make known our worth by exploits or shrink in fear from settling on Western soil?)

Octovien’s version is substantially longer than that of his successors, with fifty lines of decasyllabic verse. His prolixity is due in part to the earlysixteenth-century taste for doublets (e.g. in lines 1, 15, 22, 29, 33 and 49), but it is above all a product of his wish to elaborate upon the Virgilian text in order to intensify the impression it creates. We are struck by the number of times that the translator adds epithets or descriptive phrases to emphasise the divine ancestry and the military glory of Aeneas’ lineage. Thus “omnis Iuli / progenies” (789–90) becomes “Et la lignee de ton beau filz Yule / Toute divine et qui sans faulte nulle” (5–6), and the comparison with Hercules’ labour of bringing peace to the woods of Erymanthus is expanded from Virgil’s concise “aut Erymanthi / Pacarit nemora” (802–3) to “Et que par les boys du hault mon Erimante / Il appaisa par force vehemente” (39–40).46 In the key description of Augustus, in particular, Octovien adds the phrases “en son aige” (11) and “semblant ung paradis” (14) to emphasise the dawn of a new golden age, as well as a line defining this idyllic time “en doulce paix sans guerre” (17). Octovien’s additions to Virgil’s text balance the impression of military might – and even savagery in his extension of the comparison with Bacchus’s tigers (“Sur celles bestes rudes et effrenees”) (46) – with a sense of Augustus heralding a secure, settled order (“Jusques a la sera cil obey / Et son hault nom exaulsé et ouy”) (25–6). While making almost no attempt to 46

The italics to distinguish the elements added by Octovien are mine.

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domesticate the Latin names and references, Octovien has nonetheless woven into his whole translation an implicit commentary celebrating the coming of Augustus, leaving his readers to draw for themselves the comparison with the military and political ambitions of Louis XII suggested in his preface.47 Or gecte apres ton regart et ta veuhe Sur ceste gent de tout honneur pourveuhe, Voy tes Romains! Car icy certes est Celluy Cesar, ton glorieux acquest, Et la lignee de ton beau filz Yule Toute divine et qui sans faulte nulle Viendra apres dessoubz l’axe celeste; C’est celluy homme, laissant d’aultres l’areste, Que si souvent l’on t’a dit et promys, Cesar Auguste de qui dieux sont amys. Cil bastira siecles d’or en son aige, Comme Saturne quant il tint l’eritage Dessoubz sa main et le regne jadis Dedans Lacie, semblant ung paradis; Cil estendra son empire et son sceptre Jusques aux Indes et si sera le maistre Des Garamantes en doulce paix sans guerre, Si que pour vray s’il n’y a nulle terre Oultre les astres et oultre le lymites Ou le soleil tourne ses circuites, La pour certain ou le puyssant Athlas Sur ses espaules, sans estre grief ne las, Soubstient le ciel et l’axe convenable D’estoilles cleres, ardentes admirable, Jusques a la sera cil obey Et son hault nom exaulsé et ouy. A la venue de cestuy s’esbayssent Regnes caspies et de grant peur fremissent Pour les respons et augures des dieux, Qui sont de luy ouys en plusieurs lieux: Sy fait certes la terre meotide, Et les sept huys du Nil cler et limpide En sont troublez tous, conflitz et esmeuz. A Alcides oncques ne furent deuz Honneurs si grans, ne mais de terre oncques Tant ne passa en parties quelconques, Jaçoit hores que la cerve legiere Il transperça par puyssante manière, 47 Most proper names are simply translated by their French cognate form, e.g. “Garamantas” (794) as “les Garamans” (13); “Maeotia” (799) as “meotide” (24); “Lernam” (803) as “Lerne” (32).

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Et que par les boys du hault mon Erimante Il appaisa par force vehemente, Et esbaïst au son arc vigoureux L’Ydre lernee doubtable et rigoureux; Ne mais Liber, qui tygres vainct et dompte, Quant sur Nyse, haulte montaigne, monte, Flectant les rennes et fueilles pampinees Sur celles bestes rudes et effrenees. Doubtons-nous doncques estendre noz vertus Par faitz louables, de peur non abattus, Ou si craincte nous reffuze et nous nye, Prendre sejour en la terre ausonnye?48 (Now cast your eye and your gaze Upon this people full of honour. Look at your Romans! For here indeed Is that Caesar, your glorious ancestor, And the lineage of your fine son Iulus, Most divine and which without a break Will come later under heaven’s vault. This is the man, leaving others behind, That so often was announced and promised to you, Caesar Augustus, of whom the gods are friends. He will build golden ages in his time, Like Saturn when he held the land In his hand and at that time reigned Over Latium, like a paradise. He will extend his empire and his sceptre As far as India and he will be the master Of the Garamants in sweet peace without war, So that in truth there is no land Beyond the stars and beyond the earth’s ends Where the sun makes its rounds, There, indeed, where powerful Atlas On his shoulders, without being either troubled or weary, Holds up the sky and the fitting axis Of the bright stars, burning and bright. That far will he be obeyed And his high name praised and heard. Upon his arrival, there is shock In Caspian realms and they shake with great fear At the gods’ answers and prophecies, Which are told of him in many places: Indeed, the Maeotian land 48 Octovien de Saint-Gelais in Brückner, Die erste französische Aeneis, pp. 362–4. The English translations of the sixteenth-century French versions aim to give a literal, unornamented transmission of the style.

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And the Nile’s seven doors, clear and limpid, Are all troubled and in turmoil and fright. Hercules never earned Such great honours, nor ever roamed So many lands in so many parts, Even if, once, the nimble doe He speared down with great might, And although to the woods of high Erymanthus He brought peace with great might And although he stunned with his powerful bow The redoubtable and rigorous Lerna. Nor Bacchus, who triumphs over and tames tigers When on Nysa, the high mountain, he climbs, Holding the reins and the vine leaves Over these wild and frenzied animals. Do we therefore hesitate to extend our power In glorious deeds, not beaten back by fear, Or does fear refuse and deny us From dwelling in the Ausonian land?)

Adopting the same verse form, Des Masures writes a version of this passage which is ten lines shorter than that of Octovien. It is true that his use of doublets is very restricted (“Meine et conduit” and “douter ou attendre” in lines 36–7 are rare exceptions), but the essential difference lies in the far more limited scale of his elaborations, coupled with his particularly confident and flexible control of French syntax within the rhyming decasyllabic couplets.49 Like Octovien, Des Masures looks mainly to the addition of epithets to heighten the poetic effects: for example, Hercules reaches the doe “d’un trait fervent” (29), and Liber holds reins “ornee / De verte vigne” (35). Moments in Anchises’ vision which have direct political significance are intensified in a similarly discreet way, thus “hanc … gentem” (788) becomes “Ceste gent toute” (2), and, like Octovien, Des Masures translates Virgil’s simple naming of Aeneas’ son, “Iuli” (789), by adding the possessive adjective “de ton Iüle” (3). The key image of the coming of the Golden Age under Augustus is not in itself developed beyond the Latin. Instead, it is the subsequent description of Atlas which is elaborated: “Ou le puissant Atlas qui le ciel porte, / Robustement sur son espaule forte / Soustient l’entour, auquel on voir espars / Les astres clers ardans de toutes parts” (17–20). Even allowing for the fact that some additions may have been adopted to meet the requirements of metre or rhyme, overall Des Masures has elevated the heroic tone of the passage, as he 49 On the one hand, he is prepared to break up more lengthy Virgilian periods (notably reworking lines 791–800 into five sentences in French, lines 7–26). On the other hand, his dexterous use of inversion (e.g. lines 3–4, 8, 10–11, 15 and 26) achieves the sense of poetic fluidity.

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does again (through the addition of epithets) in the lines depicting Hercules and Bacchus (27–36). This attention to great mythological heroes rather than political leaders might remind us that Des Masures is first and foremost a humanist, rather than a writer seeking the favour of a monarch. Furthermore, humanist pedagogic principles are evident in the treatment of proper names, which are discreetly glossed – “es lieux / Du Latium” (11–12), “De Meotide aussi tout le païs” (24) – or clarified – “le bois d’Erimanthe” (31), “sur Nise le mont” (35) – or, in the case of “Alcides,” simply transposed to the common French form “Hercules” (27). We may surmise that it was the clarity and poetic dexterity of Des Masures’ version, rather than a specific appropriation of the Aeneid’s political context, that ensured it such notable success for over half a century. Or tournez icy tes yeux, et y pren garde: Ceste gent toute, et tes Romains regarde. Cy est Cesar, de ton Iüle aussy La progenie entiere marche ici. Qui cy apres doit sortir a l’ouvert Sous le grand tour du beau ciel descouvert. Cil, vez le cy, cil que par trait de temps, T’estre promis si souvent tu entens, Cesar Auguste, origine des Dieux. Qui l’aage d’or restablira es lieux Du Latium: païs ou se tenant Au temps jadis, Saturne fut regnant. Les Garamans, les Indiens tiendra, Et sus iceux son Empire estendra. Terre est qui sied des astres hors du cours, Du cours de l’an, du soleil, et des jours: Ou le puissant Atlas qui le ciel porte, Robustement sur son espaule forte Soustient l’entour, auquel on voir espars Les astres clers ardans de toutes parts. Jà le Royaume, et tout le tenement Des Caspiens, pour son avenement, Au sort des Dieux sont d’horreur esbahiz. De Meotide aussi tout le païs. Desja le Nil, qui sept fois se redouble, Par grand effroy l’eau de ses bouches trouble. Certainement Hercules qui tant erre, N’a point encor circuï tant de terre: Combien qu’il ayt atteint d’un trait fervent La biche au pied leger comme le vent, Qu’en paix le bois d’Erimanthe ayt rendu, Et fait trembler Lerne, à son arc tendu: Ne le vainqueur Liber, ayant tournee

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Le couple au joug, qui tient la resne ornee De verte vigne, et sur Nise le mont Meine et conduit les tigres en amont: Et devons nous plus douter ou attendre Par nobles faits nostre vertu estendre? Avons-nous crainte encor qui nous denie De demeurer en la terre Ausonie?50 (Now turn your eyes here and take note. Look at this whole people, your Romans. This is Caesar, and also of your Iulus All descendants march on here Who hereafter will come into the open Under the great vault of the fine heavens. This man, look on him here, he who over time You so often hear promised to you, Caesar Augustus, son of the gods, Who a Golden Age will restore In Latium, the country where, In times gone by, Saturn used to reign. The Garamants and the Indians he will hold And will extend his empire over them. There is a land situated beyond the stars’ path, The path of the year, the sun and the days, Where mighty Atlas who carries the sky, Powerfully on his strong shoulder, Holds all up, where one sees The bright and shining stars spread in all directions. Now the realm and all the lands Of the Caspians, as he arrives, Are shaken in horror at the gods’ oracles. All of the Maeotian land too. Already the Nile, which multiplies sevenfold, Finds the waters of its mouth tremble in great fear Surely, Hercules who wanders so much, Never travelled over so much land. Even though he shot with piercing arrow The doe whose foot is as light as the wind, And although he brought peace to Erymanthus’ woods, And caused Lerna to shake at his taut bow. Nor did triumphant Bacchus, having submitted The pair to the yoke, who holds the reins Decorated with green vines, and from mount Nysa Leads and drives down his tigers. And should we still doubt or wait

50

Louis Des Masures, reproduced in L’Enéide de Virgile, ed. Thomas, pp. 325–7.

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To extend through noble feats our powers? Do we still harbour fear which prevents us From settling in the Ausonian land?)

In transposing the Aeneid into alexandrines, the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers took a bold leap.51 Their version of the episode is the shortest of the three, at thirty and a half lines,52 freed almost entirely of doublets, but also compressed by the brothers’ willingness to use complex (one might sometimes say convoluted) syntax, notably inversions.53 The other most striking difference for the reader between this version and that of Des Masures – along with some bold neologisms – lies in the abundant use the brothers make of run-on lines and enjambment.54 Where Des Masures had sought clarity and a steady rhythmic pace, with enjambment reserved for rare occasions,55 the later version expects a far more skilled reader, able to keep up with the translators’ twists and turns.56 Some of the combined inversions and enjambments create simple effects, as in lines 1–2: “Or icy tes deux yeulx / Tourne.” Others are far more intricate, such as lines 16–21 (the fractured lines of the French perhaps mirroring the consternation occasioned by the prophecy of Augustus’ arrival). Yet despite the apparent concision of this later version, like Octovien and Des Masures, the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers have also added their own small elaborations. While similar to Des Masures’ in scale and form, I would suggest that the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux achieve a slightly different effect in their version. Through a series of short additions (mainly adjectives), they underline the political significance of Augustus’ reign. Iulius’ name is not elaborated, but line 3 adds that his family line “s’offre toute gaillarde” and line 5 reminds us it is destined to “glorieuse venir.” The short phrase “Divi genus” is extended to “sang, qui des dieux prend son estre,” and we are left in no doubt of the extent of the dominion he will enjoy in “et prolonger l’étente / De son puissant empire” (10–11) or in the reference to “Les Royaumes lointains” (19). As this section reaches its climax, the translators also add several epithets to Anchises’ resounding rhetorical question: “par faits nobles et beaux” (29) and “une crainte coüarde” (31). All of these discreet accretions build up the impression of the power of the 51 A decade earlier, Ronsard had still, at the instigation of Charles IX, used the decasyllable as the metre of heroic epic for his Franciade (1572). 52 A more accurate comparison, given the distinction between decasyllables and alexandrines, would be the number of syllables: 500 for Octovien, 400 for Des Masures and 366 for Le Chevalier d’Agneaux. 53 See the example of double inversion in lines 16–18, or the successive inversions in lines 22–4 and 26. 54 E.g. “Le porte-Ciel Atlas” (15) and “d’une pampreuse bride” (26). 55 E.g. the highlighting of “Du Latium” the rejet of line 11. 56 See the first part of this chapter for the significance of the monolingual layout in the original edition (1582), as opposed to bilingual formats imposed by later printers.

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temporal ruler. Furthermore, the relative domestication of the setting – with references to “foréts” (23), “marescs” (24) and “coupeaux” (27) – encourages the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux’s contemporaries to see in the announcement of the glorious reign of Augustus a worthy compliment to their own monarch. The Trojans may have lost the battle on their own soil in the early books of the Aeneid, but in Book 6 at the critical turning point as Virgil proclaims the glorious future of Rome under his emperor, the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers could also look to win literary favour from their king.    Or icy tes deux yeux Tourne, voy ceste gent, et tes Romains regarde. Icy Cesar, icy s’offre toute gaillarde La lignée d’Iül, qui doit à l’avenir Sous le grand tour du Ciel glorieuse venir. C’est ce prince, celuy, que tant tu t’ois promettre: Cesar auguste, sang, qui des dieux prend son estre, Qui dans Latie encor un jour remettre doit Les siecles d’or esquels par les champs commandoit Jadis Saturne Roy, et prolonger l’étente De son puissant empire, et sur le Garamante, Et sur le peuple Indois. Un pays écarté Hors les étoilles sied, hors le cours limité De l’an, et du Soleil, ou de sa forte échine Le porte-Ciel Atlas, soutient la grand machine D’Astres ardants semee: Or d’epouvantement L’estonnent ja des Dieux à son avenement Les oracles rendus, et de Caspie ensemble Les Royaumes lointains: toute encores en tremble La terre Meotique, et ses bouches troublé Sent de crainte fremir le Nil sept fois doublé. Ny n’a point tant de terre Alcide traversee, Combien qu’il ait la biche aux piés-d’airain percee: Bien qu’il ait d’Erymanthe asseuré les foréts, Et de Lerne effrayé par son arc les marescs: Ny Liber qui vaincueur d’une pampreuse bride Par des Lynces porté son char attelé guide, Les Tygres dechassant des Nyseens coupeaux. Et douton[s]-nous encor par faits nobles et beaux Nostre vertu étendre? ou asseoir nous retarde Nostre siege en Ausonne, une crainte coüarde?57    (Now, here your two eyes Turn, see this people, and look at your Romans. Here is Caesar, here stand all brave, 57 Robert et Antoine Le Chevalier d’Agneaux frères, Les Oeuvres de P. Virgile Maron (Paris: Thomas Perier, 1582), fol. 203r–v.

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Iulus’ descendants, who will in the future Appear in glory under the great vault of the sky. This is the prince, the one you hear so often promised to you, Caesar Augustus, blood which originates from the gods, Who in Latium will again one day re-establish The ages of gold in which over the fields King Saturn once used to reign and extend His powerful empire to the Garamant, And to the Indian people. A faraway country Lies beyond the stars, beyond the borders Of the year and the sun, where with his strong backbone Sky-bearing Atlas holds up the great machine Studded with bright stars. Now bringing terror The fulfilled oracles of the gods, at his arrival, Astonish it, and also Caspia’s Distant kingdoms; also all trembling from it Is the Maeotian realm, and the anxious mouths Of the Nile shudder with dread, seven times over. Nor such great expanses did Hercules cross Although he struck the bronze-footed doe, Although he made safe the forests of Erymanthus And terrified Lerna’s marshes with his bow; Nor Bacchus who, in triumph, with a vine-laden bridle Borne by lynxes, drives his harnessed chariot, Hounding the tigers down from Nysa’s heights. And do we still hesitate, through our fine and noble feats, To extend our power? Or are we held back From settling in Ausonia by a cowardly fear?)

The story of Renaissance translations of the Aeneid is thus composed of interweaving and complex threads. On the one hand, the advances of Early Modern print culture ensured, far more than in preceding centuries, a regular renewal of the formats in which the text was transmitted. If cheaper bilingual verse editions with no illustrations came to dominate, probably because of pedagogic requirements, the trail is nonetheless punctuated by some notable exceptions, from Hélisenne’s anachronistic tome to the luxury monolingual original edition of the translation by the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux. However, in recording the history of transmission, it is important not to overlook the way in which later printers frequently appropriate and re-clothe existing translations, even if the voice of individual translators is perpetuated in the rendering into French of the source text. Again, as far as the practice of translation is concerned, we can discern a single main line with almost all translators eschewing free remaniements in favour of the humanist philological principle of close translation. However, there are notable differences between the translators’ styles, and these are due to more than simply the evolution of the French language, developments in versification, or changing literary

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tastes. In terms of chronology, Des Masures’ version may be situated between Octovien’s and Le Chevalier d’Agneaux’s, but a different distinction needs to be drawn. Some poets (like Octovien and the Le Chevalier d’Agneaux brothers) are drawn to emphasise the Aeneid’s power as a statement of political and national identity; others (like Des Masures) focus more on timeless poetic qualities in Virgil’s representation of men, heroes and gods. Perhaps it is telling that Des Masures’ version, which looked more to Virgil’s age and less to his own, enjoyed the greater success over the longer period.

7

Virgil versus Homer: Reception, Imitation, Identity in the French Renaissance Philip Ford Of all the poets of the ancient world, Virgil is clearly the one who survived most successfully throughout the Middle Ages, despite the competition of perhaps his closest rival, Ovid. Manuscripts of Virgil were frequent in medieval libraries,1 and his status as a messianic prophet, founded on the fourth Eclogue, clearly did much to enhance his reputation.2 Moreover, his compositions in a range of poetic genres made him an ideal model for later poets, while the propagandistic elements in his works provided material which could be exploited for patriotic purposes later on by Renaissance writers who were developing a sense of national or local identity. For centuries his position went unchallenged but, with the rediscovery of Homer, humanists developed a greater awareness of Virgil’s debt to his Greek predecessor. The works of Homer were unknown in the West throughout the Middle Ages except by reputation, and it was not until around 1353 that Petrarch finally realized his ambition of obtaining a manuscript of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Even then, he was unable to read them, relying eventually on a word-for-word translation into Latin by Leontius Pilatus.3 It was not until 1 On the number of Virgil manuscripts mentioned in library catalogues, see R.R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (London: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), p. 413. Bolgar records that “Virgil is mentioned 27 times in the catalogues of the ninth century, 33 times in those of the eleventh, 72 times in those of the twelfth.” The comparable figures for Ovid are 3, 24 and 77. 2 On Virgil as a messianic prophet, see Ella Bourne, “The Messianic Prophecy in Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue,” The Classical Journal, 11 (1916): 390–400. Bourne records that Constantine the Great was the first to speak of Eclogues 4 in these terms, as mentioned in Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, 4:32. See too Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam edd., The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 491–6. 3 On Petrarch’s engagement with Homer, see Agostino Pertusi, Leonzio Pilato, fra Petrarca e Boccaccio (Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1964); and Philip Ford, De Troie à Ithaque: Réception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2007), p. 25.

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the last decades of the fifteenth century, however, that the Homeric epics became known to a wider audience, thanks in part to the editio princeps of the Greek text in 1488, and also to the various Latin translations of Homer that found their way into print.4 Amongst other things, this led to a re-evaluation of Virgil. On the one hand, readers were struck by the extent to which the Roman poet had borrowed from Homer, down to the level of individual lines of verse. The reaction of the German humanist, Hieronymus Baldung, in the preface to the translation of the Odyssey by Francesco Griffolini, published in Strasbourg in 1510, is typical: Versanti inquam mihi doctissime vir eius diuini poetæ nobile opus quod Odysseam vocant … admiratione immodica substiti: offendens tot honesta Vergilij nostri furta ut ad integros etiam interdum sensus Poetam ipsum loqui audias.5 (As I was leafing through, most learned man, that divine poet’s noble work known as the Odyssey …, I stood in utter amazement as I came across so many honest thefts by our Virgil that you might hear Homer himself speaking with regard to the, at times, completely unaltered sentiments expressed.)

Later, it became standard practice amongst humanists to identify such lines, and Eobanus Hessus’ 1540 translation of the Iliad marks all the Virgilian borrowings in the text’s margins.6 On the other hand, early readers of Homer found his style repetitive and at times somewhat primitive, especially in regard to the use of epithets. Another early reader of Homer, Raffaele Maffei, remarks about his own Latin translation of the Odyssey: Breuior etiam sum illo quod epitheta pene innumerabilia et apud eum sæpe repetita et quasi perpetua omiserim quæ adposita ut ei decori sunt: sic fastidium nostris pariunt.7 (I am more concise than Homer because I have omitted the epithets, which are almost countless, frequently repeated and virtually never-ending in

4 On the printed translations, see Ford, De Troie à Ithaque; and Robin Sowerby, “Early Humanist Failure with Homer,” I and II, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 4 (1997): 37–63 and 165–94. 5 Homeri poetarum clarissimi Odyssea de erroribus Ulyxis (Strasbourg: Johann Schott, 1510), fol. 1v. 6 The first edition of this popular verse translation appeared days after the author’s death as Poetarum omnium seculorum longe principis Homeri Ilias (Basle: Robert Winter, 1540). 7 Raffaele Maffei, Odissea Homeri per Raphaelem Volaterramum conuersa (Rome: Jacopo Mazzocchi, 1510), fol. Aiiv.

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him. While these adjectives give charm to his writing, they create tedium in ours.)

In other words, while Virgil may well have imitated Homer, his own poetry was more elegant and refined than that of his model, which was good news for Renaissance writers, brought up in the tradition of literary imitation. Quintilian’s dictum “necesse est enim semper sit posterior qui sequitur” (for a follower must always be in the rear) was not necessarily always true: the possibility of outdoing one’s model existed, at least in the area of elocutio.8

Renaissance France and the Italian Tradition Attitudes to Virgil and Homer in Renaissance France were to a large extent conditioned by Italian humanists, and I should like to focus here on two in particular: Angelo Poliziano and Marco Girolamo Vida. Poliziano’s innovative approach to classical authors in his teaching at the Florentine Academy had earned him an international reputation in his own lifetime, and his influence was certainly still apparent in the opening decades of the sixteenth century in France. Josse Bade published his complete works in Paris in 1512 (reprinted 1519), and interest in some quarters was sufficient for individual works to appear in print, including Poliziano’s homage to Virgil, the Manto (Sylvae 1), edited probably in 1516 by Nicolas Bérault.9 As early as 1513, Bérault had lectured on another of the Sylvae, Rusticus, at the Collège de Tréguier in Paris.10 Poliziano was thus something of a household name amongst humanists at this time.11 As a result, his views on the comparative merits of Virgil and Homer would have been taken seriously, though it has to be said that to some extent he hedges his bets. In the poem which served as the prolusio to his lectures on the Eclogues in 1482, he writes: Editus ecce Maro, quo non felicior alter, seu silvas seu rura canit sive arma virumque;

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 10:2.10. On this, and Poliziano’s reputation more generally in early sixteenth-century Paris, see Alejandro Coroleu, “A Rare French Edition of Poliziano in Princeton University Library,” The Library, 20 (1998): 264–9. 10 See Coroleu, “A Rare French Edition of Poliziano,” p. 267. 11 This was not only for positive reasons, however. On the scandal surrounding his plagiarism of Pseudo-Plutarch’s Life and Works of Homer, see Philip Ford, “Le Commentaire d’Homère par Politien et son influence en France,” L’Italie et la France dans l’Europe latine du XIVe au XVIIe siècle: influence, émulation, traduction, edd. Marc Deramaix and Ginette Vagenheim (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, n.d.), pp. 47–59. 8 9

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namque Syracosiis cum vix assurgat avenis, Hesiodum premit et magno contendit Homero.12 (29–32) (Maro was born, with whom none can compare, whether he sing of woodlands or countryside or “arms and the man,” for though he barely rivals the Syracusan piper, he surpasses Hesiod and contends with great Homer.)

This relative assessment of the three canonical Virgilian texts is interesting, with the Georgics seen as the clear winner, at least with regard to a comparison with its model, while the Aeneid is neck and neck with Homer. In more general terms, Virgil’s fame is seen as eternal, a source which will nourish future poets: “semper inexhaustis ibunt haec flumina venis, / semper ab his docti ducentur fontibus haustus” (these rivers will always flow in inexhaustible streams, learned draughts will always be drunk from these fonts) (346–7). And a similarly aquatic image is used to characterize his styles of writing: Sic varios sese in vultus facundia dives induit; et vasto nunc torrens impete fertur fluminis in morem, sicco nunc aret in alveo. Nunc sese laxat, nunc exspatiata coercet; nunc inculta decet, nunc blandis plena renidet floribus; interdum pulchre simul omnia miscet.  (362–7) (So rich eloquence assumes different appearances: now it is a torrent borne along by a powerful impetus like a river, now it lies parched in a dry river bed; now it releases itself; now after overflowing its bounds it hems itself in; now an unpolished style is fitting, now it is resplendent, filled with charming embellishments [literally flowers]; and sometimes it combines them all beautifully together.)

The emphasis here is entirely on the stylistic variety exhibited by Virgil, rather than its effect on the reader. Virgil is also seen, in contrast to Homer, as being closely associated with his home city of Mantua. Unlike the wavering poet, the eponymous prophetess of the poem, Manto, does not hesitate in seeing Virgil as superior to his Greek model in the speech that Poliziano has her deliver:  Nec iam supremi certent de sanguine vatis Smyrna Rhodos Colophon Salamis Chios Argos Athenae, quippe Bianoream manet haec victoria gentem.  (199–201) 12 Here and below, references are to Angelo Poliziano, Sylvae, ed. Charles Fantazzi (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

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(May Smyrna, Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos and Athens dispute the birthplace of the supreme poet no more, because this victory now belongs to the race of Bianor.)

Manto’s point, of course, is that Mantua can lay claim to having given birth to the greatest of all poets because Virgil has supplanted Homer, whose birthplace was in doubt. However, this can also be seen as emphasizing the local patriotism associated with the Roman poet as opposed to the supranational appeal of Homer.13 Poliziano wrote Ambra three years after Manto as the prolusio to his Homer lectures, given in 1485, and there is a clear difference in emphasis in the way the Greek poet is presented here. Whereas it is principally the poetic qualities of Virgil that Poliziano praises (elocutio), it is in addition the content of the Homeric epics (inventio) that receives attention in the later poem. Ille deum vultus, ille ardua semina laudum ostentat populis ac mentis praepete nisu pervolitat chaos, immensum caelum, aequora, terras vimque omnem exsinuat rerum vocesque refundit, quas fera, quas volucris, quas venti atque aetheris ignes, quas maria atque amnes, quas dique hominesque loquantur. (21–6) (He shows the faces of the gods to peoples and the sublime beginnings of deeds and glory, and in a soaring flight of the mind he flies over vast chaos, sky, seas and lands and reveals all the power of the elements and reproduces the language that wild beasts, winged creatures, winds and fires of the ether, that seas and rivers, gods and men speak.)

Homer is presented, then, as having knowledge beyond human capabilities; it is he “cuius de gurgite vivo / combibit arcanos vatum omnis turba furores” (from whose fresh-flowing torrent the whole throng of poets imbibed their secret frenzies) (12–13). Although Poliziano does not explicitly compare the two Homeric epics as he had done Virgil’s poems, he nevertheless shows a clear preference for the Iliad, not least in the amount of space he devotes to each of the two works: 133 lines spent on the Iliad, but only 23 on the 13 As Charles Fantazzi indicates in his notes, line 200 is based on a series of much imitated epigrams on Homer in the Greek Anthology (Anthologia Palatina, 16:294–9). Some of these poems point to Homer’s divine origins, e.g. no. 296 (“great Heaven is thy country, and thy mother was no mortal woman, but Calliope”). The name Bianor occurs in Eclogues 9:60 and Robert Coleman explains in his commentary that “Servius identifies Bianor with Ocnus, son of the Etruscan river god Tiberis and the prophetess Manto … who was the legendary founder of Mantua.” (Virgil, Eclogues, ed. Robert Coleman [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977], p. 271).

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Odyssey. Moreover, Achilles looms large in the Ambra as an inspirational figure (260–98). Despite the reservations about Homer’s style already noted by some of his early sixteenth-century readers, Poliziano is expansive on the subject, devoting some 34 lines to the theme (481–514). He presents it in terms of its colours (“quae tanta colorum gloria” [which, with its so-great glory of colours]) (485–6), as a river (“celeri seu se brevis incitat alveo, / gurgite seu pleno densisque opulentior undat / vorticibus” [whether it hastens, in brevity, in a swift channel or more luxuriantly swells, with a brimming whirlpool and thick eddies]) (492–4, etc.), or in floral terms (494–5). But it is also the content that is praised: “Non causas doctius alter / personamque locumque modosque et tempus et arma / remque ipsam expediat” (No other can expound more learnedly the causes, the personalities, the place and the circumstances, the time, the arms and the action itself) (499–501). Poliziano ends his eulogy underlining the emotional appeal of Homer: Nunc teneras vocat ad lachrymas, nunc igneus iram suscitat; interdum retrahit, probat, arguit, urget; nunc nova suspendunt avidas miracula mentes feta bonis, ipsum utiliter celantia verum.  (511–14) (Now he incites to tender tears, now with passion he rouses to anger; at different times he holds back, approves, rebukes, urges forward; now unheard of marvels, abounding with good things hold avid minds in suspense, usefully concealing the inner truth.)

It may well be wrong to compare two poems written three years apart, yet to the Renaissance reader of the Sylvae, there would have been perceptible differences in Poliziano’s attitude to these two great poets, with Homer coming out as the fuller and more inspired of the two. With Vida, however, there is no such equivocation. The French connection with his De arte poetica, first printed in Rome in 1527 by Lodovico Vincentino, is that the work was dedicated to François Ier’s eldest son, the dauphin François, and its popularity in France was considerable.14 Nevertheless, Vida is unashamedly nationalistic in his assessment of the ancient poets, and clearly believes that, through imitation, it is possible to improve on one’s model. Towards the end of Book 2, he writes of Virgil: Aspice ut insignis peregrino incedat in auro Fatidicae Mantus, & Mincî filius amnis, 14 References here will be to Marco Girolamo Vida, The De arte poetica of Marco Girolamo Vida, ed. Ralph G. Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976). In addition to the Rome edition, there was also an edition printed by the Estienne press in Paris in 1527; see ibid., p. 199.

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Fulgeat ut magni exuvias indutus Homeri, Nec pudet. egregias artes ostenderit, esto, Graecia, tradiderit Latio praeclara reperta, Dum post, in melius, aliunde accepta, Latini Omnia rettulerint, dum longe maxima Roma Ut belli studiis, ita doctis artibus omnes, Quod Sol cumque videt terrarum, anteiverit urbes.  (549–57) (See how the son of the prophetess Manto and the stream Mincio advances, gloriously clad in foreign gold. How splendid he appears, dressed in the spoils of the great Homer! Nor is there any cause for shame in this. Greece showed the way in the excelling arts: so be it. Grant her that she transmitted illustrious material to Latium. But thereafter the Latins reproduced and improved upon everything which they had received from elsewhere, until Rome, greatest by far of the nations, surpassed in the arts of learning as she had in the pursuits of war every city in every land the sun sees.)

Through the different genres which he practised, Virgil provided the aspiring poet with everything that he needed in the way of models, and he is omnipresent in the poem. Indeed, the work finishes with a eulogy of Virgil, which virtually takes the form of a hymn (3:554–92). Again, we are struck by the strong nationalistic feelings expressed:     Decus a te principe nostrum Omne, pater. tibi Grajugenûm de gente trophæa Suspendunt Itali vates tua signa sequuti. Omnis in Elysiis unum te Græcia campis Miraturque, auditque ultro, assurgitque canenti. Te sine nil nobis pulchrum. omnes ora Latini In te, oculosque ferunt versi. tua maxima virtus Omnibus auxilio est.  (565­–72) (All our glory, father, is ours because you are our leader. Italy’s poets have followed in your steps, and have hung as votive offerings in your praise the trophies they have won from the Greeks. And in the Elysian Fields, you alone are he at whom all Greece wonders; to you alone she listens uncompelled; in your honour she rises as you sing. Without you we are bereft of beauty. To you have all Latins turned, their gaze intent on you. Your surpassing excellence is their common help.)

To French readers, such a view of Virgil must have presented both an encouragement and a challenge. While it was true that he had outdone even the great Homer, he was being claimed as a purely Italian author, and his achievement could not be surpassed: “Ne tibi quis vatum certaverit” (Let no poet ever dispute your supremacy) (3:574).

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Early French Attitudes to Virgil In the opening decades of the sixteenth century, outside a very small humanist circle centred on Guillaume Budé, Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples, Jacques Toussain and Josse Bade, the rivalry between Homer and Virgil was scarcely an issue. To a non-humanist public, Homer would have been known in the Latin translations of Lorenzo Valla and Raffaele Maffei, and it is to Valla’s translation of the Iliad that Jean Lemaire de Belges turns in his Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye, first published 1510–12. The Homeric content is largely limited to Chapters 15–19 of Book 2, though the author shows himself to be a sensitive reader of Homer. Nevertheless, Homer’s poetic status is less an issue than his historical accuracy (which for Lemaire is in doubt).15 In general terms, then, it is undoubtedly to Latin authors that the first generation of post grands rhétoriqueurs poets turn, with Virgil as an obvious starting point. For Clément Marot, Virgil was a literal starting point in that the very first composition of his Adolescence Clémentine, first published in 1532, was a decasyllabic version of Virgil’s first Eclogue.16 The primacy given to Publius Virgilius Maro here is no accident, in that Clément wished to be seen as the French Maro, a conceit that appears in more than one epigram of the period. Typical is a couplet by Nicolas Bourbon, which reads: Carmina quae scribit Gallo sermone Marotus,  Vivent, dum vivent & tua, magne Maro.17 (The songs which Marot writes in French will live as long as your own songs, mighty Maro.)

Obviously, there was more to this than mere paronomasia, and for the prePléiade generation of French poets, whether they were writing in the vernacular or Latin, Marot was their undisputed leader. It may also be significant that, in terms of the rota Virgiliana, Marot’s juvenilia begin with the pastoral genre, no doubt meant as a harbinger of greater things to come. 15 On Lemaire’s debt to Homer, see Ford, De Troie à Ithaque, pp. 195–201; and Noémi Hepp, “Homère en France au XVIe siècle,” Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, 96 (1961–2): 389–508, especially pp. 464–9. 16 Clément Marot, Œuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 2007). On Marot’s skill as a translator, see Gillian Jondorf, “Marot’s Première Eglogue de Virgile: Good, Bad, or Interesting?” Humanism and Letters in the Age of François Ier, Proceedings of the Fourth Cambridge French Renaissance Colloquium, 19–21 September 1994, edd. Philip Ford and Gillian Jondorf (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 1996), pp. 115–32, who corrects some of the less charitable comments made by Alice Hulubei in “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” Revue du seizième siècle, 18 (1931–2): 1–77, especially pp. 33–4, based in several cases on Servius’ commentary on the poem. 17 Nicolas Bourbon, Nugarum libri octo (Lyon: S. Gryphius, 1538), p. 294.

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While Bourbon’s epigram simply equates the poetic achievements of Marot and Virgil, an earlier poem by the eminent neo-Latin poet, Jean Salmon Macrin, introduces a note of nationalism. It appears as one of the liminary verses to the Suite de L’Adolescence clementine, which was published in 1533–4.  Si Græcis Maro litteris vacasset, Magno par potuisset esse Homero. Esset si Latias sequutus artes Clemens Francigenûm decus Marotus, Aequaret dubio procul Maronem.  Sed primas Maro maluit Latino Quàm sermone pares habere Græco. Et noster patrio Marotus ore Princeps maluit esse, quam Latinæ In linguæ eloquio pares habere: Huic vt Gallia debeat, quod ipsi Hellas Mæonidæ, Ausones Maroni.18 (If Maro had devoted himself to writing in Greek, he could have been the equal of the mighty Homer. If Clément Marot, the glory of the French nation, had been a follower of the Latin arts, there is no doubt that he would have equalled Maro. But Maro preferred to have the best poetry in Latin rather than be equal in Greek. And our Marot preferred to be first in his native tongue, rather than have equals in Latin eloquence, so that France may owe to him what Greece owed to Homer and Italy to Maro.)

Here, then, national pride is tied up with the use of the national language, and the competition to be the best is no longer in a single league, but divided up into separate national leagues. This runs somewhat counter to Vida’s assessment of Virgil’s achievement as supreme poet in any language, though the same element of patriotism is present. Virgil, then, was clearly a benchmark for the first generation of humanist poets in France, but in terms of the rota Virgiliana, Marot never went beyond the pastoral genre (in which he also produced some original compositions). While Thomas Sebillet, whose Art poétique françoys (1548) marked in some ways the end of the Marot era, refers to Virgil, the Roman poet does not occupy a special place in his work. Tracing the history of poetry in Chapter 1, he writes: “De la Livius Andronicus, de la le pére Ennius, de la le plaisant Plaute trouvarent nom et faveur entre les Romains: et apres euz Virgile, Ovide, Horace, et autres infinis, furent enrichis, favoris, et honnorez a Rome des Cesars, des Senateurs et du peuple” (First Livinius Andronicus,

18

Marot, Œuvres complètes, v. 1, p. 262.

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then father Ennius, then pleasant Plautus found name and favour among the Romans: and after them, Virgil, Ovid, Horace and countless others were enriched, favoured and honoured in Rome by the Caesars, the Senators and the populace).19 Virgil is lumped together with the other Roman poets as having found favour in his nation, but nowhere in the treatise is he singled out as being in any way exceptional. But Sebillet does not show himself to be particularly interested in the nationalistic dimensions of poetry. This particular concern would be taken up by the Pléiade.

The Pléiade’s Nationalist Agenda and the Place of Homer and Virgil When Joachim Du Bellay’s deliberately iconoclastic Deffence, et illustration de la langue francoyse appeared the year after Sebillet’s treatise, rivalry with Italy was at the top of the agenda, and it is this that to a large extent nuances his attitude towards Virgil and Homer.20 In his chapter on epic, “Du long poëme francoys” (2:5), addressing the potential French epic poet, he writes: si tu as quelquefois pitié de ton pauvre langaige, si tu daignes l’enrichir de tes thesors, ce sera toy veritablement qui luy feras hausser la teste, et d’un brave sourcil s’egaler aux superbes langues greque et latine, comme a faict de nostre tens en son vulgaire un Arioste Italien, que j’oseroy’ (n’estoit la saincteté des vieulx poëmes) comparer à un Homere et Virgile.21 (if you ever take pity on your poor language, if you deign to enrich it with your treasures, you will truly be the one to give it a new proud stance, and with a brave brow, make it equal to the superb Greek and Latin tongues, as in our time an Italian, Ariosto, did with his vernacular, whom I would dare [save the sanctity of ancient poems] compare to a Homer or a Virgil.)

He refers en passant to the “admirable Iliade et laborieuse Eneïde,” a typical assessment of Homer’s and Virgil’s masterpieces. Randle Cotgrave glosses the word laborieux in its positive meanings as “industrious, diligent,” a sentiment that would be echoed by Ronsard who, many years later, refers to Virgil’s “curieuse diligence” (scrupulous diligence) in contrast to Homer’s “naïve facilité” (natural ease).22 However, what is also evident here is the 19 Thomas Sebillet, Art poétique françoys, ed. Félix Gaiffe (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1932), pp. 13–14. 20 Joachim Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration de la langue francoyse, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1904). 21 Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Chamard, pp. 234–5. 22 Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1611). Ronsard’s assessment is to be found in the 1572 liminary epistle “Au lecteur” in the Franciade (Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier [Paris: STFM, 1924–1975], v. 16, p. 5). No one, of course, had any notion of the oral nature of the Homeric epics in

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challenge, as well as model, presented by Ariosto, whose Orlando furioso had first appeared in 1516, under the patronage of the duke of Ferrara.23 Indeed, the esteem of national leaders is presented as a compelling endorsement of poetry, not least because they have realized that poetry is able to confer immortality on those whom it celebrates. Du Bellay refers to Augustus saving the Aeneid from the flames to which Virgil wished to consign it on his deathbed as an indication of the emperor’s esteem. He also mentions Alexander the Great’s admiration for Homer.24 In a passage concluding Chapter 11 of the second book, he seems to echo Poliziano’s praise of Homer cited above (Ambra 511–14) in privileging the emotional impact of his ideal poet: celuy sera veritablement le poëte que je cherche en nostre langue, qui me fera indigner, apayser, ejouyr, douloir, aymer, hayr, admirer, etonner, bref, qui tiendra la bride de mes affections, me tournant ça et la à son plaisir.25 (The poet whom I am searching out in our language will be the one who makes me feel indignant, calm, elated, in pain, who makes me love, hate, admire, be astonished – in a word, who seizes control of my emotions, turning me this way and that as he so pleases.)

However, he is not unaware of the importance of imitation, and in the chapter titled “Comment les Romains ont enrichy leur langue” (How the Romans enriched their language), he puts forward the famous theory of innutrition which allowed the Romans to “enrichir leur langue, voyre jusques à l’egaller quasi à la greque” (enrich their language, indeed to make it almost equal to Greek).26 By totally assimilating Greek literature, the Romans almost succeeded in equalling and rivalling them in their own works. Echoing the Poliziano passage cited above (Manto 29–32) Du Bellay writes: L’autre [i.e. Virgil] immita si bien Homere, Hesiode et Thëocrit, que depuis on a dict de luy, que de ces troys il a surmonté l’un, egalé l’autre, et aproché si pres de l’autre, que si la felicité des arguments qu’ilz ont traitez eust esté pareille, la palme seroit bien douteuse.27

the Renaissance, although what they might well have had in mind is Horace’s distinction between natura and ars as the essential constituents of poetry (Ars poetica 408–18). 23 Ronsard was less impressed, referring in 1572 to “Poësie fantastique comme celle de l’Arioste, de laquelle les membres sont aucunement beaux, mais le corps est tellement contrefaict & monstrueux qu’il ressemble mieux aux resveries d’un malade de fievre continue qu’aux inventions d’un homme bien sain” (Ronsard, Franciade, “Au lecteur,” Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier, v. 16, p. 4). 24 See Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Chamard, 2:5, pp. 241–3. 25 Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Chamard, p. 314. 26 Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Chamard, p. 99. 27 Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Chamard, pp. 100–1. In his edition,

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(The other poet [i.e. Virgil] imitated Homer, Hesiod and Theocritus so well that ever since it has been said of him, that of these three he surpassed one and equalled the other, and that he approached so closely to the third, that if the ease of the subjects that they treated had been equal, it would be uncertain which poet would win the laurels.)

He nevertheless stops short here of a total endorsement of Virgil over Homer (again on the grounds of inventio – la felicité des argumens – rather than elocutio), though, on a highly positive note, in the preface to his translation of Book 4 of the Aeneid, he writes: “Je diray seulement qu’œuvre ne se trouve en quelque langue que ce soit, ou les passions amoureuses soyent plus vivement depeinctes, qu’en la personne de Didon” (I will say only that no work can be found in any language in which the passion of love is more vividly depicted than in the person of Dido).28 There is nevertheless a feeling that, from a practical point of view, Virgil is more susceptible to being imitated than Homer, and this is confirmed by Jacques Peletier Du Mans’ 1555 Art poétique. In his chapter “De l’Œuvre Héroïque,” as well as endorsing the notion that the epic is the highest form of poetry, Peletier also cites Virgil far more often as a model than Homer, both from the point of view of style and, unlike Du Bellay, in regard to content.29 In particular, Aeneas is presented as a more moral hero than Achilles, the Greek hero being characterized by his “si grand’ cruauté Martiale” (such great martial cruelty).30 Despite an underlying sense that Greek literature must inevitably be superior to Latin literature, Peletier, for all practical purposes, cannot help but follow Vida’s assessment of Virgil as the pinnacle of poetic achievement: Vrai est que nous le [i.e. Virgil] trouvons redevable de la meilleure partie à Homère inventeur, et premier écriteur du genre Héroïque: qui fait que bien souvent nous détournons notre admiration de lui: quand nous voyons le lieu où il a pris son patron: et en référons l’honneur à son origine. Fors que telle fois, quand nous trouvons les choses qu’il a prises d’autrui, si bien enrichies, si bien polies, et accommodées, et d’un si grand jugement: et quand nous voyons ce qui est du sien, si entier, si net, et si bien agencé: nous ne pouvons penser, sinon que quand il n’eût point eu d’exemplaire: Chamard does not identify the source, but suspects that it may come “de quelque huma­ niste peut-être” (from some humanist, maybe). More recently, Jean-Claude Monferran refers to a “source inconnue” (unknown source) in his edition of La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549), ed. Jean-Charles Monferran (Geneva: Droz, 2001), p. 92. 28 Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1908–31), v. 6, p. 249. 29 For a modern edition of this work, see Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance, ed. Francis Goyet (Paris: Livre de Poche classique, 1990), pp. 235–344. 30 Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance, ed. Goyet, p. 308.

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il n’eût laissé de faire aussi bien qu’il a fait. Il est si excellent, il est si propre et si exquis en comparaisons: si fréquent en la représentation des choses par résonance de mots: qu’il n’a bonnement laissé en cet endroit aux suivants, que l’imitation: laquelle encore semble être difficile jusques à impossibilité.31 (It is true that we find that he [i.e. Virgil] owes the most to Homer, the inventor and first writer of the epic genre, which means we often turn our admiration away from him when we recognize where he found his model and we attribute all honour to the original. Except that sometimes, when we find the things he has taken from others so enriched, so polished, so adapted and with such great judgment – and when we see that which is his so whole, so clear and so well set out – we can only think that, had he had no model whatsoever, he would have nonetheless accomplished as much as he did. He is so excellent, he is so appropriate and so exquisite in his comparisons, so frequent in the representation of things through resonating words, that he has left only imitation for those who follow him – and even that seems so difficult as to be impossible.)

He concludes the chapter both by setting Virgil up as a model (“Soit donc Virgile patron et exemple au Poète futur” [May Virgil thus be the pattern and model to the future poet]) and also by calling for a protector of the Muses in France who might rival Augustus: “Ô qu’il y eût un Auguste: pour voir s’il se pourrait encore trouver un Virgile!” (Would that there were an Augustus, so that we could see if there might be a new Virgil!)32 Both Peletier and Du Bellay are agreed that their ideal poet should write in French. Du Bellay also feels that, from a nationalistic point of view, Latin is more part of the Italian heritage than of France’s, the Italians having “beaucoup plus grande raison d’adorer la langue latine que nous n’avons” (a much greater reason to love the Latin language than we do) (2:12). However, in an unattributed Virgilian eulogy (taken from Georgics 2:136–76), Du Bellay sets out his own praise of France as the best endowed country in the world: Je ne parleray icy de la temperie de l’air, fertilité de la terre, abundance de tous genres de fruictz necessaires pour l’ayse et entretien de la vie humaine, et autres innumerables commoditez, que le Ciel, plus prodigalement que liberalement, a elargy à la France. Je ne conteray tant de grosses rivieres, tant de belles forestz, tant de villes, non moins opulentes que fortes, et pourveuës de toutes munitions de guerre. Finablement je ne parleray de tant de metiers, arz et sciences, qui florissent entre nous, comme la musique, peinture, statuaire, architecture et autres, non gueres moins que jadis entre les Grecz et Romains. Et si pour trouver l’or et l’argent, le fer n’y viole point les sacrées entrailles de nostre antique mere: si les gemmes, 31 32

Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance, ed. Goyet, pp. 315–16. Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance, ed. Goyet, p. 317.

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les odeurs et autres corruptions de la premiere generosité des hommes, n’y sont point cherchées du marchant avare: aussi le tigre enraigé, la cruelle semence des lyons, les herbes empoisonneresses, et tant d’autres pestes de la vie humaine, en sont bien eloignées.33 (I will not speak here of the temperate climate, the fertility of the earth, the abundance of all types of fruit necessary for the enjoyment and maintenance of human life, nor of the innumerable other advantages that the Heavens, rather prodigally than liberally, offered to France. I will not talk of the great rivers, of so many beautiful forests, of so many cities, no less opulent than well defended and provided with all sorts of war munitions. Finally, I will not talk of all the professions, arts and sciences which flourish among us, such as music, painting, statuary, architecture and others still, barely any less so than formerly among the Greeks and Romans. And if, to find gold and silver, our iron does not violate the sacred entrails of our ancient mother, if the jewels, smells and other forms of corruption from the first noble generation of men are not sought out by the avaricious merchant, so too are the enraged tiger, the lions’ cruel seed, poisonous herbs and so many other plagues of human life, kept far away.)

Here, the French poet is tacitly attributing to France all the qualities that Virgil had attributed to Italy, or if they do not exist (cf. Virgil’s Italian rivers, flowing with silver, copper and gold [Georgics 2:165–6]), he makes a virtue of their absence in another tacit allusion, this time to Ovid’s description of the corrupt Iron Age, when men first violated the “viscera terrae” (the earth’s entrails) in search of gold (Metamorphoses 1:138). Ronsard’s own Hymne de France34 would similarly draw on the Virgilian text, which was a locus classicus for any form of patriotic expression in the Renaissance, even being applied by George Buchanan to Scotland in the epithalamium he wrote on the wedding of Mary Stuart to the French dauphin in 1558.35 In terms of Virgil’s standing in the nationalist agenda of the Pléiade, the point is that the Roman poet had an avowedly patriotic aim in his writing, whereas Homer, however he might have been viewed by sixteenth-century readers, did not. While Virgil might be too closely associated with Italy for comfort, he nevertheless offered a model for all the expressions of national pride exploited by the Pléiade in support of their championing of the vernacular. Under the influence of their spiritual and literary guide, Jean Dorat, they Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Chamard, pp. 322–5. Ronsard, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Paul Laumonier, v. 1, pp. 24–35. 35 See Philip Ford, “Scottish Nationalism in the Poetry of George Buchanan,” Britannia Latina: Latin in the Culture of Great Britain from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, edd. Charles Burnett and Nicholas Mann (London: The Warburg Institute– Nino Aragno Editore, 2005), pp. 145–55, especially pp. 147–50. Hulubei refers to French writers who drew inspiration from this passage of the Georgics for nationalistic purposes in “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” p. 62. 33 34

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might well have preferred in many ways Greek literature, and felt a greater affinity for ancient Greek culture – there were even serious suggestions at the time by humanists such as Henri Estienne that the French language derived from Greek rather than Latin.36 Yet, for all practical purposes, Virgil provided the right sort of model. As a result, we often see the Pléiade struggling with this conflict. In political terms, too, Virgil’s Augustan empire offered a closer parallel with the French monarchy than did Homer’s somewhat anarchic collection of squabbling kings and princes at Troy, among whom Agamemnon is portrayed far from glowingly. We see this conflict in particular in Ronsard’s posthumous preface to the Franciade. While stating, as we have already seen, that he prefers as a model Homer’s naturalness of style to Virgil’s more careful way of writing, almost all the examples of good epic writing he gives are Virgilian, and certainly, amongst Roman poets, the poet of the Aeneid has no rivals: “Au reste, les autres Poetes Latins ne sont que naquets37 de ce brave Virgile, premier Capitaine des Muses” (Moreover, the other Latin poets are nothing but servantboys to this fine Virgil, the first Captain of the Muses).38 Ronsard explains to his reader: Il ne faut s’esmerveiller, si j’estime Virgile plus excellent & plus rond, plus serré & plus parfaict que tous les autres, soit que dés ma jeunesse mon Regent me le lisoit à l’escole, soit que depuis je me sois fait une Idee de ses conceptions en mon esprit (portant tousjours son livre en la main) ou soit que l’ayant appris par cœur dés mon enfance, je ne le puisse oublier.39 (You should not be astonished if I consider Virgil more excellent and more rounded, more concise and more perfect than all the others. Either because, since my youth, my preceptor would read him to me at school, or because 36 See, for example, Henri Estienne, Traicté de la conformité du language François auec le Grec (Geneva: H. Estienne, 1565). In his Preface, Estienne states that “les raisons que i’ay à deduire, ne seront difficiles à comprendre, d’autant qu’elles consistent en exemples, monstrans à l’œil combien le language François est voisin du Grec, non seulement en vn grand nombre de mots [ce que feu mon pere a ia monstré parcideuant en partie] mais aussi en plusieurs belles manieres de parler: afin-que par ceste comparaison chascun voye combien le Latin, l’Italien, l’Espagnol, sont esloignez du Grec, duquel le nostre est prochain voisin” (The reasons that I will put forward will not be difficult to understand, especially because they consist of examples, showing the eye how close the French language is to the Greek, not only in many of their words [a fact my father already demonstrated in part] but also in several fine expressions, so that through this comparison everyone may see how distant Latin, Italian and Spanish are from Greek, to which language ours is the closest neighbour). 37 Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, defines naquet as “the boy that serves, or stops the ball after the first bound, to make a better chace, at Tennis; a Court-keeper, or Tennis Court-keeper’s boy.” 38 Ronsard, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Paul Laumonier, v. 16, p. 338. 39 Ronsard, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Paul Laumonier, v. 16, p. 339.

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I have since then formed an idea of his conceptions in my mind [always carrying his book around in my hand], or because, having learnt his verse by heart as a child, I cannot forget it.)

The reference here to the Platonic notion of Virgil as representing the essence of poetry in Ronsard’s mind (the capital I of Idee is crucial here) says it all, as does the claim that he knows the whole text of the Aeneid by heart. Nevertheless, he feels he needs to excuse himself for his over-reliance on Virgil in this preface, explaining: Je m’asseure que les envieux caqueteront, dequoy j’allegue Virgile plus souvent qu’Homere qui estoit son maistre, & son patron: mais je l’ay fait tout expres, sçachant bien que nos François ont plus de cognoissance de Virgile, que d’Homere & d’autres Autheurs Grecs.40 (I am sure that the envious will prattle on about how I cite Virgil more often than Homer, who was his master and model, but I have done so on purpose, knowing full well that our French compatriots have a better knowledge of Virgil than of Homer and other Greek authors.)

While it is essential to read all the ancient as well as notable modern works, writing in the vernacular is a patriotic duty: Je te conseille d’apprendre diligemment la langue Grecque & Latine, voire Italienne & Espagnole, puis quand tu les sçauras parfaitement, te retirer en ton enseigne comme un bon Soldat, & composer en ta langue maternelle … Car c’est un crime de leze Majesté d’abandonner le langage de son pays.41 (I recommend that you diligently learn the Greek and Latin tongues, indeed Italian and Spanish too, and then once you know them perfectly, you should draw back into your quarters like a good soldier and compose in your native tongue … For it is indeed a crime of treason to abandon the language of one’s country.)

Ronsard is thus taking a very different attitude from Vida, whose acceptance of neo-Latin poetic composition was unquestioned. For the former, writing in Latin is characterized as “vouloir deterrer je ne sçay quelle cendre des anciens, & abbayer les verves des trespasses” (wanting to dig up some unknown remains of the ancients and give new bark to dead men’s talk), while for Vida there was nothing wrong in appropriating the diction and style of Virgil in modern Latin compositions.42 Equally, however, Virgil was Ronsard, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Paul Laumonier, v. 16, p. 342. Ronsard, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Paul Laumonier, v. 16, p. 351. 42 Laumonier glosses this expression as “répéter très haut [barking out] les imaginations des poètes morts” (repeating very loudly the imaginations of dead poets) (Ronsard, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Paul Laumonier, v. 16, p. 351, n. 2). 40 41

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Vida’s unrivalled model, while for Ronsard all successful poetry was grist to his mill. The very act of transferring borrowings into another language rendered them fresh. In general, then, writers associated with the Pléiade’s nationalist agenda for poetry are somewhat divided over the relative merits of Homer and Virgil. Their admiration for Greek poetry, and Homer in particular, was considerable, based to a large extent on its inventio, which was often seen as presenting privileged, divinely-inspired knowledge. On the other hand, Virgil’s highly successful use of Homer as a model provided an encouraging example of what could be done when imitation crosses languages rather than remaining within a language. As in Vida, there was the sense that, under these circumstances, a model could be improved upon in a different vernacular, especially in the realm of elocutio. In this sense, the Pléiade’s message remains remarkably consistent from the Deffence, et illustration of 1549 to Ronsard’s posthumous 1587 preface “Au lecteur apprentif” (To the Apprentice Reader).

J.C. Scaliger and the Canonization of Virgil While Pléiade writers may have agonized over the relative merits of Greek and Latin poets, the Agen-based Italian humanist, Julius Caesar Scaliger, had no such equivocations, and though the impact of his Poetices libri septem, published three years after his death in 1561, was far from immediate, its ultimate role in defining the French classical aesthetic was undeniable.43 In that connection, as was the case with Vida, Virgil represents for Scaliger the pinnacle of poetic talent. It is in Book 5 of his magnum opus, “Criticus,” that he sets out to demonstrate in general the superiority of Latin over Greek authors, and in particular of Virgil over Homer and his other sources. In many ways, his views are an exaggerated version of Vida’s. On the relative merits of Virgil and Hesiod, for example, he asserts at the start of Chapter 5 that “universa opera [Hesiodi] ne cum uno quidem versu Georgicon sunt comparanda” (the entire works of Hesiod do not stand comparison with a single line of the Georgics).44 Similarly, he concludes this chapter, after analysing various parallel passages taken from Theocritus’ Idylls and the Eclogues, by stating: Silenum vero et Tityrum et Pollionem et Moerim totas illius esse constat, ita ut nullis locis ad eum Theocritus aspirare posse videatur. Quare pauci

43 Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem: sieben Bücher über die Dichtkunst, edd. Luc Deitz and Gregor Vogt-Spira (Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998), v. 4, Book 5. 44 Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, edd. Deitz and Vogt-Spira, Book 5, p. 322.

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corruptique iudicii infelicissimae eruditionis grammatici exuant perditam illam temeritatem, qua professi sunt a Theocrito Maronem superatum.45 (Silenus, Tityrus, Pollion and Moeris [Eclogues 6, 1, 4 and 9] are entirely Virgil’s work, as is well known, so that nowhere does Theocritus appear able to come near to him. This is why the Grammarians, with their tiny corrupt judgment and their highly sterile learning, must abandon the shameful frivolity which has them claim that Virgil is surpassed by Theocritus.)

However, it is the paragone between Homer and Virgil to which Scaliger devotes a good part of this book, and in doing so he defines to a large extent what would become the French classical norm in poetry.46 This is already clear in the opening of Chapter 2, where the inventio/elocutio division is expressly tackled by Scaliger: Duo igitur cum sint quibus constat poesis, res et verba, de rebus primum videamus. Homeri ingenium maximum, ars eiusmodi, ut eam potius invenisse quam excoluisse videatur. Quare neque mirandum est, si in eo naturae idea quaedam, non ars exstare dicatur. Neque censura haec pro calumnia accipienda. Vergilius vero artem ab eo rudem acceptam lectionis naturae studiis atque iuducio ad summum extulit fastigium perfectionis. Quodque perpaucis datum est, multa detrahendo fecit auctiorem. Neque enim in mole frequentiave orationis, sed in castitate atque frugalitate magnitudo constituta est.… Equidem unum illum censeo scivisse, quid esset non ineptire.47 (Since poetry consists of two things, ideas and words, let us first look at ideas. Homer has considerable genius, but his art is such that he appears to have discovered rather than cultivated it. You should not be surprised then if it is said that you can find the Idea of Nature in him, but no art. This judgment should not be taken as blame. Virgil had received from him a coarse form of art, and he raised it to the pinnacle of perfection thanks to his study and the judgment of a more refined nature. Something which very few people have been granted, in cutting out many things, he made him greater. For greatness does not consist in the bulk and abundance of speech, but in its purity and sobriety.… Truly I believe that Virgil alone knew what it is not to write foolishly.)

In a nutshell, this defines the transition from the humanist ideal of copia, abundance, as championed by Erasmus and others, to the classical ideal of restraint, simplicity and good taste. In this chapter, as elsewhere, it is also Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, edd. Deitz and Vogt-Spira, Book 5, p. 350. For a recent article on the subject, see António Maria Martins Melo, “A glória do divino Virgílio: linhas de leitura para uma compreensão do Livro V, O Crítico,” Ágora: Estudos Clássicos em Debate, 9.1 (2007): 233–55. 47 Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, edd. Deitz and Vogt-Spira, Book 5, pp. 46–8. 45 46

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interesting to observe Scaliger’s total association with the Roman tradition. “We should not be blamed for taking from [Homer] what he himself had learned from old wives’ tales.”48 The “we” refers to the unbroken line of Latin writers of whom Scaliger feels himself to be a part, like Vida before him. To the large number of Renaissance humanists living, for whatever reason, outside their country of birth, the Latin language defined their culture and patriotic allegiances. In this sense, Virgil was more than a poetic model; he was, as Scaliger refers to him, “our divine hero,” divinus vir noster.

Conclusion Virgil’s position as a model of Latin poetic style and source of ideas in bucolic, didactic and epic poetry was never in doubt in sixteenth-century France, though the brief love affair with Homer opened up a new vision of what epic poetry might be. Virgil’s epic world was in general governed by a sense of morality and reason. While Dido’s more destabilizing passion certainly had an impact on Renaissance readers, inspiring plays as well as poetry, the raw emotions of the Homeric heroes had no counterpart in Virgil. This was their attraction and ultimately their downfall since, with the advent of a new, more classical aesthetic, they were felt to sin against good taste. Homer’s reputation also relied on his being seen as the source of all knowledge. Montaigne, echoing centuries of thinking on the subject, writes: Estant aveugle, indigent; estant avant que les sciences fussent redigées en regle, et observations certaines, il les a tant cognues, que tous ceux qui se sont meslez depuis d’establir des polices, de conduire guerres, et d’escrire ou de la religion, ou de la philosophie, en quelque secte que ce soit, ou des arts, se sont servis de luy, comme d’un maistre très-parfaict en la cognoissance de toutes choses.49 (Being blind, indigent, existing before the sciences were written down according to rules and solid observation, he knew them so well that those who have since become involved with establishing cities, conducting wars and writing about religion or philosophy, of whatever sect, or about the arts, have made use of him as a most perfect master for knowledge of all things.)

But in comparing the poetic qualities of Homer and Virgil, he states that 48 “Neque vero obtrectandum nobis, cum ab illo acceperimus, quod ille ab aniculis didicisset,” Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, edd. Deitz and Vogt-Spira, Book 5, p. 48. 49 Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais, edd. Jean Balsamo, Michel Magnien and ­Catherine Magnien-Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), pp. 789–90. See Essais 2:36, “Des plus excellens hommes.”

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“je ne croy pas que les Muses mesmes allassent au delà du Romain,” (I do not believe that the Muses themselves could surpass the Roman poet), even though Homer is Virgil’s “guide, et maistre d’escole; et qu’un seul traict de l’Iliade, a fourny de corps et de matiere, à cette grande et divine Eneide” (guide and school master and that one single line of the Iliad provided the subject and matter for this grand and divine Aeneid).50 The division between inventio and elocutio which we noted elsewhere in this chapter still lies at the heart of attitudes towards the two poets towards the end of the century. However, there can be no doubt that the world portrayed by Virgil is a better fit for Renaissance France than Homer’s world. Virgil’s celebration of the newly established Empire and its ruler, Augustus, offered a parallel to those poets who were similarly eulogizing the Valois dynasty in France, and in particular the dynamic François Ier. The importance in Rome of patronage in sustaining the arts, and the realization of the propaganda potential of poetry, offered precisely the model being sought by the Pléiade to raise the status of French poetry from a pleasant courtly pastime to a vital instrument of national identity and support for the ruling dynasty. Moreover, the coherence of the Roman Empire as a political entity with clearly defined principles offered a model of national identity which Homer’s squabbling princes never could, without destroying more local allegiances. Virgil could be both a Roman and a Mantuan, just as Ronsard could be a Frenchman and a Vendômois. Finally, for a generation of writers nurtured on the principle of imitation as the basis for poetic composition, Virgil was the supreme proof that improvement on an original model, especially in another language, is possible. He also offered a knowingness about what he was doing that must have appealed to his French Renaissance readers. He very clearly relates his bucolic world to contemporary Roman reality in the Eclogues, thus ensuring that future writers would similarly explore the allegorical possibilities of the genre. The much admired Georgics is not a practical agricultural manual, but it does have a great deal to say about morality, politics and national identity. And the Aeneid might well offer a plausible foundation myth of Rome, with the added virtue of celebrating the new ruling family, but it was not to be taken as history. This understanding of what Virgil was aiming at in his highly sophisticated poetry presented an achievable model for French poets. The divinely inspired Homer, on the other hand, with his arcane knowledge of the mysteries of nature, was surely beyond their grasp. In the end, then, Virgil’s “curieuse diligence” proved to be more readily attainable than Homer’s “naïve facilité.”

50

Montaigne, Essais, edd. Balsamo, Magnien and Magnien-Simonin, p. 789.

8

The Aeneid in the 1530s: Reading with the Limoges Enamels1 Phillip John Usher In the early 1530s an unknown artist in Limoges,2 working in a style similar to that of Jean Pénicaud, produced a series of at least eighty-two enamels illustrating episodes from the Aeneid, a beautiful set of images whose value is also the insight they provide into what the Aeneid meant to contemporary French readers.3 The enamels illustrate scenes drawn from all books except 1 I should like to offer warm thanks to Barnard College librarian Heidi Winston for drawing my attention to the Frick Reference Library’s file on the enamels discussed in this article. My thanks, too, to the staff of the Frick and of Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Thanks, also, to Susan P. Johnson for assistance with Servius’ syntax and to Penelope Meyers for valuable assistance in final editing. 2 For a history of possible but rejected attributions, see Jean-Joseph Marquet de Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux limousins à sujets tirés de l’Énéide,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire d’Art français (1912): 6–51, pp. 20–2. Museum collections (such as the Louvre in Paris or the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK) generally refer to the artist as the Master of the Aeneid (or Maître de l’Enéide). 3 There may be more enamels as yet undocumented. The number was set for many years at sixty-nine. Eighty-two is the latest count (see Sophie Baratte, “La Série de plaques du maître de l’Enéide,” Etudes d’histoire de l’art offertes à Jacques Thirion, Des premiers temps chrétiens au XXe siècle (Paris: Ecole des chartes, 2001), pp. 133–48, p. 133). Although unsigned and undated, the production can be dated approximately to 1530 because of a technical feature, namely the use of fondant (a colourless translucent enamel) in place of thicker purplish enamel used previously. (Bernard Rackham, “Limoges Enamels of the Aeneid Series at Alnwick Castle,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 38 (1921): 238–43). The enamels are unlikely to date from much after 1530 as it is at about this time that Italian woodcuts began to circulate in Limoges. It would be somewhat unexpected for an artist to select the ‘old style’ Brant illustrations over newer Italian style ones. Moreover, while Brant’s illustrations were taken up in editions of Virgil published in 1517 (Opera Virgiliana published by Jacobus Sacrobosco in Lyon) and 1529 (by Jean Crespin, again in Lyon), it is unlikely the illustrator used these as a basis: for one thing, the inscriptions on the woodblock had, by this time, become incomplete, but the enamels show no such imperfections (Breck, “The Aeneid Enamels,” The Metropolitan Musem of Art Bulletin, 20 [1925]: 95–8, p. 98). Other editions, not published in Lyon, also used the Brant woodcuts (see Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 14).

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the last three (10–12), suggesting that production was interrupted for a reason so far lost to history.4 The series is unique for the period in its extensive and methodical reproduction of episodes from a single work of literature. Approximately uniform in size (on average 22cm x 20cm), the enamel plaques are richly and deeply coloured, with intense blues, greens and brownish purples predominating, complemented here and there by occasional flourishes of gold, such as for depicting stars in the sky. Although parts of the series can be viewed relatively easily at the Louvre and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the rest of the enamels are spread out among various public and private collections around the world. Until a full catalogue with reproductions is available, any interpretation (including this one) is necessarily partial and imperfect. In what follows, I should nevertheless like to adopt a point made by Christopher Baswell in respect of Virgil manuscripts and to see the Limoges enamels as “potential sites of contest between conflicting readerly groups, preoccupations and demands.”5 In a wide sense, then, the goal here will be to ask what these enamels can tell us about contemporary readings of Virgil’s epic. In addition, it is thus worth noting two specific axes of influence and potential contest related directly to the pictorial arts. Firstly, the Limoges enamels, while unique, extend a tradition of Virgilian illustration begun in Italy. In the Quattrocento, Virgilian themes were popular in the decorative arts6 and were sometimes included in objects like marriage chests (cassoni) or embedded in wall panelling.7 Still, extensive Aeneid cycles “remained a comparative rarity in Renaissance mural art” even through the “same was not true of representations of individual episodes.”8 Marcello Fagiolo has detailed the main Aeneid cycles from the early sixteenth up to the eighteenth century9 and, more recently, Erika Langmuir has detailed three Aeneid cycles in wall paintings prior to the 1540s, one executed by Dosso Dossi c. 1520 for the studio of Alfonso d’Este in Ferrara, one by Perino del Vaga tentatively begun in 1527 but only completed c. 1539 and comprising Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 23. Christopher Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 7. 6 Paul Schubring, Cassoni; truhen und truhenbilder der italienischen frührenaissance. Ein beitrag zur profanmalerei im quattrocento (Leipzig: K.W. Hiersemann, 1915), pp. 193 et seq. Quoted by Erika Langmuir, “Arma Virumque … Nicolò dell’Abate’s Aeneid gabinetto for Scandiano,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 39 (1976): 151–70, p. 158, n. 32. 7 Roberto Longhi, Officina Ferrarese 1934 (Florence: Sansoni, 1956), p. 18, plates 38 and 39. See Philippe Verdier, Catalogue of the Painted Enamels of the Renaissance (Baltimore MD: The Trustees, Walters Art Gallery, 1967), pp. 75–89. (See also Langmuir, “Arma virumque,” p. 158, n. 34.) 8 Langmuir, “Arma virumque,” p. 158. 9 Marcello Fagiolo, Virgilio nell’arte e nella cultura europea: Roma-Biblioteca nazionale centrale, 24 settembre/24 novembre 1981 (Rome: De Luca, 1981), pp. 119–93, on the “cicli iconografici sull’Eneide” (iconographic cycles based on the Aeneid). 4 5

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five Dido and Aeneas frescoes for the Palazzo Massimo delle Colonne and finally Giulio Romano’s decoration of the Sala di Troia of the ducal palace in Mantua.10 These would be followed, of course, by Nicolò dell’Abate’s more famous Aeneid Scandiano gabinetto. While the Limoges enamels find their origin in this Italian vogue, their production remains peculiar to 1530s France. A second axis of influence and contest is provided by the fact that the designs of the Limoges enamels are based on a German edition of Virgil’s Opera published in Strasbourg in 1502 by Johannis Grüninger,11 with illustrations designed by Sebastian Brant.12 A large 450-leaf folio in the definite style of Northern humanism, it is indeed a remarkable tome. Brant had somewhat of a clean canvas upon which to work,13 for most medieval manuscripts of Virgil were not illustrated, although vernacular adaptations of Virgil (such as the Roman d’Enéas) often were.14 Still, Grüninger’s edition demonstrated a new approach and exerted great and long-lasting influence over almost all illustrated editions of Virgil,15 perhaps as late as Sebastiaen Vrancx’s 1615 illustrations, and at least – as we shall see later – until the mid sixteenth century.16 Various choices made by Brant demonstrate a clear appropriation of Virgil. Virgil’s characters, for example, are most often dressed in contemporary German clothes and are situated within landscapes that recall Northern Europe. Some wear turbans, no doubt to suggest their foreignness. As the text itself explains, the goal was to make Virgil accessible to uneducated readers: “Pictura agresti voluit Brant atque tabellis / Edere eum [=Virgilium] indoctis rusticolisque viris” (Brant wished to publish him [=Virgil] with bucolic 10 Langmuir, “Arma virumque,” pp. 158–60. On the cycles by Dossi and Perino del Vaga, see Fagiolo, Virgilio nell’arte, pp. 120–2 and 141–3. 11 On Grüninger, see Paul Kristeller, Die Strassburger Bücher-Illustration im XV. und im Anfange des XVI (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1888). 12 A useful introduction to this edition is provided by Theodore K. Rabb, “Sebastian Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, 21 (1960): 187–99, to which I owe various details in the present paragraph. 13 See inter alia Rabb, “Sebastian Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 195. 14 See Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, pp. 21–30. 15 Theodore K. Rabb notes that the edition “has a considerable influence on almost everyone who wished to illustrate the same subject during the following half century” (“Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 196). Rabb does underline the existence of a parallel tradition of illustration which began with the 1507 Venice edition (p. 197). For further reflection on the importance of the Strasbourg edition, see Lothar Freung’s entries on “Aeneas” and “Aeneis” in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, ed. Otto Schmitt (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1937), v. 1, p. 687; Kristeller, Die Strassburger Bücher-Illustration, pp. 32–4; and Vladimiro Zabughin, Vergilio nel Rinascimento italiano (Trento : Università degli studi di Trento, 2000), v. 2, p. 389–90, p. 436. 16 See Rabb, “Sebastian Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 196. On Sebastiaen Vrancx’s new approach to illustrating the Aeneid, see Louisa Wood Ruby, “Sebastiaen Vrancx as Illustrator of Virgil’s Aeneid,” Master Drawings, 28 (1990): 54–73.

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Figure 1: The Judgment of Paris: Paris, Venus, Juno, and Pallas

pictures and drawings for uneducated and rustic men).17 The volume clearly moves the characters closer to, or further away from, the place of production: on the one hand, it belongs to what has been called a tradition of “visual exoticism;”18 on the other, it clearly Germanizes the characters and landscapes. One modification that is immediately obvious between the German 17 From a poem included at the end of the edition. Quoted by Rabb in “Sebastian Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 189. 18 Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, p. 29.

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Figure 2: The Judgment of Paris: Paris, Venus, Juno, and Pallas

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woodcuts and the French enamels is that the latter, although still clearly dominated by Brant’s original style, demonstrate the classicizing influence of Renaissance Italy which was spreading throughout France at just this time. As one museum catalogue author neatly summarized, “the Gothicism of the whole” is interrupted by a “token of incipient classical taste.”19 This is most clearly obvious in the depictions of various naked female figures, beginning with Venus, Juno and Pallas on what was the title page of the 1502 Grüninger edition. Placing the two stylizations of the goddess side by side (Figures 1 and 2) is an eloquent demonstration of the change. The narrative is the same in both images: Paris offers the apple to Venus; at the latter’s feet are three doves. At Juno’s feet is a peacock and in her hand a sceptre; Pallas, clad in armour, has an owl at her left foot.20 Aesthetically, the three goddesses are quite different, however: compared with the woodcut, the Limoges Venus, Juno and Pallas possess a strikingly neoclassic style.21 The French reader has before him female figures much closer to those of Botticelli than to those in Brant’s original depiction. Similar classicization is visible in many other enamels, for example in B36 where Venus and Juno give their support to the love of Dido and Aeneas and in B66 where Alecto recounts her mission to Juno. It is obvious from such changes that the Limoges enamellers wanted to appropriate and reconfigure the Gothic illustrations in such a way as to make them more appealing to a French audience beginning to be aware of the more generous and soft female bodies appearing in Italian art.22 The Limoges enamels thus have genealogical ties with both Italian art (the specific tradition of Virgilian illustration and the more general classical nature of contemporary painting) and German book illustration. Of interest here is how these various influences are incorporated or questioned by the French enamellers and on what a close reading of the images can tell us about what the Aeneid meant in 1530s France.

A Reading Lesson at Apollo’s Temple The illustrations of Aeneas and his companions at the temple of Apollo at Cumae offer a visual support to the famous moment of ecphrasis wherein Verdier, Catalogue of the Painted Enamels, p. 76. Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 191. 21 Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” notes that: “L’émailleur a trouvé … que les trois déesses manquaient de charme et de grâce, et il les a remplacées par trois figures d’un style beaucoup plus élégant, imprégné de classicisme” (The enameller found … that the three goddesses lacked charm and grace. He replaced them with three figures of a much more elegant style, fed on classicism.) (p. 19). 22 Enamels will be referenced throughout by the letter B and the number given in Sophie Baratte, “La Série de plaques du maître de l’Enéide.” 19 20

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Aeneas, upon arriving in Italy, encounters a kind of mirror reflecting events from Trojan history (Aeneid 6:20–33). It will be recalled that Aeneas and his companions, as they contemplate the wall decorations, are interrupted by the Sibyl who announces that “non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit” (not sights like these does this hour demand) (Aeneid 6:37), pulling Aeneas away from meditation on the past towards his future destiny.23 This scene is a rich site for discussion of the Aeneid in the first half of the sixteenth century. Before focusing on important changes that occur between the German woodcut and the French enamel (Figures 4 and 5), it is first productive to compare both to a much older illustration of this scene (Figure 3), from the earliest known illustrated manuscript of the Aeneid (c. 400), the Vatican Virgil (MS Vat. lat. 3225).24 Bringing the Vatican Virgil into dialogue with the later renderings of the same scene yields a number of observations and confirms the fact that “[without] a continuous tradition of illustration to draw on, Renaissance artists had to reinvent appropriate iconographical programs for Virgil’s books.”25 The earlier illustration, executed in a very pagan Rome before the sackings of the fifth century, shows Aeneas and Achates dressed in tunics and togas – Virgil had, after all, referred to the Romans as the “gens togata” (Aeneid 1:282).26 The magnificent white temple no doubt echoed for contemporary viewers the intense architectural projects of the time (e.g. Constantine’s arch or Diocletian’s baths). Grüninger’s woodcut and the Limoges enamel, on the other hand, show the Roman heroes wearing turbans – one assumes, to denote their foreignness. Even more intriguing is the fact that the unadorned walls of Apollo’s temple in the Vatican Virgil are now decorated with the scenes described in Virgil’s text. Early sixteenth-century illustrators would 23 The Sibyl’s interruption of Aeneas’ contemplation of the temple (and of the reader’s experience of ecphrasis) has been productively identified as an allusion to Alexandrian and Neoteric models (i.e. Catullus 64 and Callimachus) wherein epic narrative is paralysed by “digression, excursus, and inset ecphrasis” (Alessandro Barchiesi, “Virgilian Narrative: Ecphrasis,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], pp. 271–81, p. 274). 24 This date is given by David Herndon Wright, The Vatican Vergil: A Masterpiece of Late Antique Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 1. For a brief summary of this manuscript, see The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years, edd. Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 433–4. 25 Michael Liversidge, “Virgil in Art,” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Martindale, p. 94. 26 Shelley Stone begins his informative and detailed study of the toga with this quote from Virgil. See Shelley Stone, “The Toga: From National to Ceremonial Costume,” The World of Roman Costume, edd. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), pp. 13–45. See also Caroline Vout, “The Myth of the Toga: Understanding the History of Roman Dress,” Greece & Rome, 43 (1996): 204–20.

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Figure 3: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple

seem more aware of the importance of the text’s ecphrasis, more than even just a few years earlier: the 1483 prose version, Le livre des Énéydes, makes no mention (visual or textual) of the temple’s outer decoration.27 Moreover, whereas the Vatican Virgil has the Sibyl gesturing towards the temple (and whereas in Virgil she actually interrupts Aeneas’ viewing), the Grüninger and Limoges images show Aeneas actively observing while the Sibyl talks with Achates in the bottom right-hand corner, seemingly waiting to interrupt him. Both woodcut and enamel (Figures 4 and 5) show a series of small scenes illustrated in neatly framed sections. The doubling of the interpretive act – a reader seeing Aeneas and companions reading these scenes – stands out compared with the Vatican Virgil and compared with the 1483 French translation. Moreover, this emphasis seems even clearer in the French enamel, as can be seen by comparing up-close the figures of Aeneas and his companions in Figures 4 and 5. In the woodcut (Figure 4), Aeneas has his back completely turned to the viewer and his left hand seemingly raised to accompany his speech without pointing to anything in particular. His two companions both 27 See Virgile, Le livre des Énéydes (Lyon: G. Le Roy, 1483), pp. 116–17. Regarding the temple, the text states merely this: “Qãt eneas & sa gẽt furẽt arriuez … eneas alla a la forest a vng riche tẽple que dedal’ auoit fonde. en ce tẽple prit repos eneas deuant ql allast en celle ville” (When Aeneas and his people had arrived … Aeneas went to the forest towards a rich temple that Daedalus had founded. In this temple he rested before heading into town) (p. 116).

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Figure 4: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple

look up, not focusing on one scene more than on any other. Aeneas seems to be presenting the temple’s façade in general, not any one moment of Trojan history. In the enamel version (Figure 5), however, Aeneas’ head is turned, his left eye is now visible and he looks in a specific direction. Moreover, his left hand now reaches just over the border and into the representation of Icarus. What was once a group of three men somewhat disconnected from the building before them has been recast as a mise en scène of the act of reading – perhaps even, of the act of reading a specific scene. The two panels showing the fate of Icarus offer no particularly eloquent changes to help us understand the change in Aeneas’ posture. Virgil’s text says very little about this section: “tu quoque magnam / partem opere in

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Figure 5: Aeneas at Apollo’s Temple

tanto, sineret dolor, Icare, haberes. / bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro, / bis patriae cecidere manus” (You, too, Icarus, would have large share in such a work, did grief permit: twice had he essayed to fashion your fall in gold; twice sank the father’s hands) (Aeneid 6:30–3). The sole change between woodcut and enamel is the emphasis placed on the reading of a particular scene – i.e. the presence of Aeneas’ left hand. It could be conceivably argued that the viewer is supposed to underscore the obvious parallel between Icarus’ flight from Crete and Aeneas’ own flight from the same place: Icarus and his father Daedalus were imprisoned by King Minos on the island of Crete and

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thus famously constructed wax wings in order to escape; Aeneas, too, had to negotiate the island of Crete – having initially hoped to find there “gentis cunabula nostrae” (the cradle of our race) (Aeneid 3:105), Aeneas and his troops instead discovered only “lues et letifer annus” (a plague and a season of death) (Aeneid 3:139), for Anchises had misinterpreted the oracle, something Aeneas will realize only later in a dream: “non haec tibi litora suasit / Delius aut Cretae iussit considere Apollo” (Not these the shores the Delian Apollo counseled, not in Crete did he bid you settle) (Aeneid 3:161–2). Crete in the Aeneid is a false cunabulum, a cradle of error, not the birthplace or home of the Trojans (and Romans). The Icarus story also relates, via echoes of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, as David Quint has shown, to Avernus and to the whole episode of Aeneas’ catabasis: just as Icarus fell from the sky, so too there fly no birds above Avernus.28 It might thus be extrapolated for these two reasons that the enamel’s emphasis on the Icarus story not only reinforces an understanding of Aeneas’ mission (to head from Troy, through various stop-off points, including Crete, to Latium), but also to the centrality of Book 6 within the epic’s overall structure – to which I shall return.29 The enamel thus forces the reader to focus on the Icarus episode which, in turn, suggests both a re-mythologizing of Aeneas’ own mission and the centrality of Book 6. Perhaps more important than the seeming emphasis on the Icarus episode is the way the enamel foregrounds the problem of interpretation. As I discuss later, contemporary editions of Virgil frequently included much commentary and the act of reading the Aeneid was very much directed by commentators such as Servius or Silvetris, whose texts often took up more space on the page than the Aeneid itself. It is thus tempting to see the emphasis on guided interpretation in the French enamel as a reference to this practice of reading allegorically. One final point is that Aeneas’ engaged posture and his gesticulation toward a specific image might also be read as an enameller’s attempt to suggest how individual images, devoid of the text which surrounds the woodcuts in Grüninger’s edition, can indeed suffice to transmit a narrative and a message. Although the original destination for the series of Limoges enamels as a whole is unknown (if indeed it was to have originally remained as one single collection), it is fascinating to consider the possibility that the temple of Apollo, as depicted with colourful scenes in the enamel, perhaps functioned as a kind of visual preface, given that one possible destination for the 28 David Quint, “Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius in Paradise Lost,” Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004): 847–81, pp. 848–51. 29 A final (and admittedly rather fanciful) comment is that, retrospectively, through Francus’ inability to depart from Crete in Ronsard’s Franciade, the emphasis on the Icarus story highlights the difficulty of France’s recuperation of the model of Aeneas’ mission. On Francus’ stay in Crete, see Phillip John Usher, “Non haec litora suasit Apollo: la Crète dans la Franciade de Ronsard,” La Revue des Amis de Ronsard, 22 (2009): 65–89.

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series might have been furniture, more specifically cassoni or coffres (i.e. chests, specifically marriage chests). Indeed, a number of the enamels were at one point attached to just such an object.30 The obvious precedent is the series of Aeneid illustrations executed by Apollonio di Giovanni (1414/17–65) on panels for a marriage chest,31 based on the illustrations that he also executed for the Virgil manuscript in Florence’s Biblioteca Riccardiana (codex 492).32 Homer and Virgil had sung of the ruin of Troy but, wrote the Italian humanist poet Ugolino Verino in the second book of his Flametta, “certe melius nobis nunc tuscus Apelles / Pergamon incensum pinxit Apollonius” (certainly the Tuscan Apelles Apollonius now painted burning Troy better for us).33 As well as perhaps echoing contemporary emphasis on Virgilian commentary and allegorical reading, the Limoges enamel of Apollo’s temple, with Aeneas’ engagement with the Icarus scene, might thus also be read as a pedagogical model of how to interact with the cassone when the text of the Grüninger edition is no longer there. From the present remarks, it is already clear that these enamels relate not to the restored classical text of the late sixteenth century: despite the classical influence on female figures which points to the growing influence of Italian art in France at this time, the ‘reading lesson’ at Cumae, as presented here, suggests emphasis on reading the epic with a guide, just as Aeneas explained moments from Trojan history.

Editions and Allegory To explore more fully the idea that the enamels relate to a specific way of reading the Aeneid, let us turn to the way they depict Aeneas’ descent into the underworld in Book 6. Let us remember first that, although it is established that the Limoges enamellers relied on the original 1502 edition of Virgil, not on the Lyons Opera (1517 and 1529) which reproduced Brant’s woodcuts, 30 This item is described in an 1892 auction catalogue as follows: “A large chasse or coffer, constructed of Limoges enamel plaques in a framework of gilt metal. 26” long, 9¼” wide, 20” high; each plaque 9” x 7¾” (p. 142, item #528). The catalogue author erroneously identifies the scenes as coming from the Odyssey. Also unfortunate is that the only edition of this catalogue I have been able to consult includes no illustrations, although illustrations are promised both by an introductory index page and by references in the text. (Magniac Hollingworth, Catalogue of the renowned collection of Works of Art chiefly formed by the late Hollingworth Magniac, Esq. Known as the Colworth Collection [Christie, Mason and Woods, 1892], consulted at the Frick Reference Library, September 2008.) 31 See Ellen Callman, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 40–2 and plates 43–8. 32 Callman, Apollonio di Giovanni, pp. 7–11 and 53–6; and Ernst Hans Gombrich, “Apollonio di Giovanni: A Florentine Cassone Workshop Seen through the Eyes of a Humanist Poet,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 18 (1955): 16–34. 33 Quoted Gombrich, “Apollonio di Giovanni,” p. 33 (translation p. 17).

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it is fair to say that these later editions and the enamels themselves entertain a parallel relationship with the Grüninger original. Within a short period (approximately six years), Grüninger’s Aeneid would spring up in two French cities: in Limoges in these enamels, and in the 1529 Lyons edition of the Virgilian text, which also contains a plethora of commentary, as the full title makes clear: Opera Virgiliana … cvm decem commentis, docte et familiariter exposita (The Works of Virgil … with ten commentaries, explained expertly and in familiar terms). The medieval tradition of allegory, after Servius and Fulgentius, culminates in the twelfth-century commentary of the Platonist philosopher Bernard Silvestris. His commentary on the Aeneid, eschewing issues relating to grammar or historical reference, focuses almost entirely on questions of allegory. Virgil, for Silvestris, must be treated “both as poet and as philosopher.”34 His Virgil is also Augustan – “he extols the deeds of Aeneas using poetic fictions so that he might earn the favour of Augustus” (p. 3) – but it is as a philosopher that Silvestris primarily reads Virgil. Nowhere, says Silvestris, does Virgil declare “philosophic truth more profoundly than in [the sixth] book” (p. 31). To characterize Aeneas’ descent into the underworld, Silvestris establishes that there are four kinds of descent and that while Aeneas’ is literally of the fourth kind known as the descent of artificium (artifice) – which “takes place when a necromancer, by the necromantic art, through an execrable sacrifice seeks conversation with demons and consults them about his future life”35 – on an allegorical level, Aeneas’ descent is rather of the second kind, i.e. the descent of virtus (virtue) which can be viewed through the device of integumentum.36 In other words, Aeneas’ catabasis, in medieval allegory, stood for the contemplation of virtues and vices necessary to obtain knowledge (scientia), echoing Servius’ earlier note on Book 6.37 Two questions seem appropriate. What traces are there (if any) of this moralizing reading of Book 6 in the woodcuts and enamels? And if

34 Bernard Silvestris, Commentary on the first six books of Virgil’s Aeneid, edd. and trans. Earl G. Schreiber and Thomas E. Maresca (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p. 3. 35 Julian W. Jones, Jr. “The Allegorical Traditions of the Aeneid,” Vergil at 2000: Commemorative Essays on the Poet and his Influence, ed. John D. Bernard (New York: AMS Press, 1986), p. 121. 36 For a discussion of the meaning of integumentum, see Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century; A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 49–58. See also Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). 37 “Nam singulis [libris] res singulas dedit, ut primo omina, secundo pathos, tertio errores, quarto ethos, quinto festivitatem, sexto scientiam” (For in individual [books] he dealt with individual matters, as in the first, omens; in the second, suffering; in the third, wanderings; in the fourth, character; in the fifth, celebration; in the sixth, knowledge) (The Virgilian Tradition, edd. Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 817).

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such traces exist, how do they relate to early sixteenth-century readings of the Aeneid? Aeneas enters into the underworld in the presence of the Sibyl. She tells him of the difficulty of twice crossing the Stygios lacus (Stygian lake) and of the need to seek an aureus ramus (golden bough). After Aeneas picks the appropriate bough, he offers funeral rites to Misenus and heads to Avernus; the Sibyl conducts the proper ceremonies by killing four dark-backed heifers and pouring water on their brows. Aeneas himself slays a lamb and a heifer and sets up a flaming altar. The Sibyl finally announces that the descent into the underworld can begin: “nunc animis opus, Aenea, nunc pectore firmo” (Now, Aeneas, is the hour for courage, now for a dauntless heart) (Aeneid 6:261). Although, from this point on, we occasionally read indications of spatial progress expressed in the plural – e.g. Ibant (They went) (Aeneid 6:268), Ergo iter peragunt (So they continue the journey) (Aeneid 6:384) – the reader can be forgiven for occasionally overlooking the continued presence of the Sibyl. Although assumedly at Aeneas’ side throughout, Virgil does not constantly remind us of that fact. When Aeneas asks her a question about the spirits on the banks of the Styx, she is said moreover to reply breviter (briefly) (Aeneid 6:321), as if to minimize her role. She does, for sure, play a pedagogical role: she explains who the unburied souls are, she will defend Aeneas against Charon’s abrupt rebuke, etc., but her presence is still only mentioned somewhat intermittently. It is thus a point of some importance that the illustrations under discussion here render visually the Sibyl’s presence in each of the scenes relating to the catabasis and that, thus depicted, the Sibyl’s presence can never be overlooked. Her role as interpreter and guide of the underworld is highlighted, inscribing the whole catabasis episode, in the tradition of Silvestris, under the rubric of a learning experience wherein contemplation of virtus and vitium can lead to scientia. The viewer is forced to remember just how close the Sibyl remains to Aeneas throughout his journey in the underworld, how she supposedly mediates (like Silvestris’ own commentary) what Aeneas sees. If the journey is indeed to be viewed through an allegorical and moralizing integumentum (Silvestris’ fourth type of descent), then it is the Sibyl’s necromancy (the artificial type of descent) that presides over the journey and directs the reader’s attention, even more strongly in the images than in Virgil’s text. Apart from a slightly Italianate (as opposed to Gothic) appearance, the Sibyl of the enamels does not differ significantly from that of the woodcuts. Throughout the series of enamels related to the underworld, the illustrations appear to deemphasize the narrative in order to foreground a moral view of the virtues and vices to be found there. The illustrations of the Palinurus episode are a case in point. Given the importance of the underworld meeting with Aeneas’ dead helmsman (Aeneid 6:337–83) – which rewrites in the first person a scene previously expressed in the third person (Aeneid 5:779–871) – one might expect Palinurus to occupy a central position in the illustration.

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As is obvious from Figures 6 and 7, Palinurus’ importance is seemingly minimized compared to the monstrous and medieval mouth of hell. The greater part of Figures 6 and 7 focuses not on the substantial exchange between Aeneas, Palinurus and the Sibyl (Aeneid 6:337–83), but on the description of Charon’s boat and the crowds wishing to be ferried by him (Aeneid 6:298–316), as well as on the Sibyl’s preceding description of the fate of the unburied (which is also, of course, Palinurus’ fate): “haec omnis, quam cernis, inops inhumataque turba est; / portitor ille Charon; hi, quos uehit unda, sepulti. / nec ripas datur horrendas et rauca fluenta / transportare prius quam sedibus ossa quierunt. / centum errant annos uolitantque haec litora circum; / tum demum admissi stagna exoptata reuisunt” (All this crowd that you see is helpless and graveless; yonder ferryman is Charon; those whom the flood carries are the buried. He may not carry them over the dreadful banks and hoarse-voiced waters until their bones have found a resting place. A hundred years they roam and flit about these shores; then only are they admitted and revisit the longed-for pools) (Aeneid 6:325–30). Rather than on the specificity of Palinurus’ lot, the illustrations emphasize the general fate of the insepulti. Whereas, in Virgil’s text, “the pathos of the insepulti as a whole is reinforced by the instance of Palinurus” and whereas Virgil is seemingly “not primarily concerned with the insepulti but with Palinurus himself – that is, with Aeneas’ own past,” it would seem that Brant and subsequently the Limoges enamellers offer a reversal of such a pattern, suggesting that the general allegorical scheme – the underworld as a place for contemplating vice, virtue and one’s future actions – takes precedence over individual elements of the narrative proper.38 To confirm this emphasis on the allegorical structure as opposed to the narrative particularities, it is a useful exercise to attempt reading the images (Figures 6 and 7) alongside Silvestris’ commentary. We thus notice that Charon’s prominent contus (long pole) used to push the boat along (Aeneid 6:302) is imbued by Silvestris with allegorical meaning: “properly the pole, namely the sustainer of the boat, signifies the nourishment of the body – its sustenance” (p. 75). The sails in the images are two in number, inflated by the wind, and somewhat round, corresponding to Silvestris’ insistence that they are “the two eyes which draw the body to different ends through delight of pleasures and the lechery of revellers,” turning the ferryman’s boat into a veritable roving-eye perspective on vice in the underworld, simultaneously a will to move from vice to virtue (p. 75). The rushing by of the turba (crowd) of unburied souls up to the shoreline (ad ripas), visible in the images where bodies gather along the edges, is explained by Silvestris as signifying that these are souls rushing “to the end of vice and the beginning of mourning, 38 Brooks Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), p. 292.

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Figure 6: The Mouth of Hell

sadness and the other emotions” (p. 75). The liminality of the riverbank’s edge is confirmed in the already quoted verses spoken by the Sibyl, where she states that the inhumata “volitant … haec litora circum” (roam and flit about these shores) (Aeneid 6:329); about the word litora (shores), Silvestris glosses simply “the quitting of the life of pleasure and the beginning of the life of labor” (p. 77). Such presentation of the Palinurus episode is echoed directly in the 1529 Lyon edition of the Opera. Visually speaking, Palinurus is dwarfed by the

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Figure 7: The Mouth of Hell

competing commentaries of Servius and Pierius Valerianus, as the text is surrounded by their commentary and itself occupies less than half the space of the page. As noted, Servius placed central importance on the sixth book – “Totus Vergilius plenus est scientia, in qua hic liber tenet principatum” (All of Virgil is full of knowledge, and above all in this [sixth] book).39 The 1529 Servius commentary beginning with Virgil’s line “multa maestum cognovit in umbra” (among the deep gloom he knew the sorrowful form) (Aeneid 6:340), reads as follows: 39

Virgil, Opera (Lyon: Jean Crespin, 1529), Book 6, p. CCLXXIX.

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prudentiores dicunt animas recentes a corporibus sordidiores esse donec purgentur: quae purgatae incipiunt esse clariores. Unde ait paulo post donec longa dies perfecto temporis orbe concretam exemit labem purumque reliquit aetherium sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem, id est non urentis, ut est solis. Inde est quod aliae animae lunarem circulum, aliae solstitialem retinere dicuntur pro modo purgantionis. bene ergo Palinurum obscura umbra circumdatum dicit et vix agnitum, qui ne ad loca quidem pervenerat purgationis: sic etiam de Didone dicturus est agnovitque per umbram obscuram.40 Those who are rather more versed [in such matters] say that souls fresh from their bodies are relatively polluted until they are purified: once purified, they begin to be clearer. Which is why he says a little afterwards, “until the long day, its circuit of time complete, took away the clotted stain and left behind the pure ethereal sense and the fire of the un-compounded air” [6:745–7], that is, not of a burning wind, as is characteristic of the sun. This is the reason some souls are said to retain a lunar circle, others a solar circle, according to the measure of purification. Therefore he well says that Palinurus is surrounded by a dark shadow, and is hardly recognizable, – he who had not arrived even at the place of purification. In this way, too, is he about to speak concerning Dido, “and he recognized her by her dark shadow.”

For Servius, the underworld through which Aeneas must pass is a fiction meant to represent earthly vices (human savagery and lust).41 This is exactly the underworld illustrated by Brant and the Limoges enamels. The central place given to the jaws of hell (rather than to the encounter with Palinurus) draws moreover on two interconnected traditions: that of the iconography of the Mouth of Hell and that of the Harrowing of Hell. A post-classical Christian phenomenon popular with both lay and clerical audiences in the Middle Ages, the Mouth of Hell emerged in Britain in the context of the tenthcentury monastic reform, but quickly spread throughout western Europe where it moved increasingly from the domain of private devotion to the public sphere.42 The Grüninger and Limoges bear a striking structural resemblance to images showing the Christian Mouth of Hell: souls are captured in the diabolic jaws while, nearby, a saviour figure and a boat stand for the hope of salvation. The Virgilian illustrations owe more to such a tradition than to the text itself: for sure, the initial description of Avernus includes a reference to the vapour that rises atris faucibus (from black jaws) (Aeneid 6:240–1), Virgil, Opera (1529), p. CCCIIII. On Servius’ allegorizing of Book 6, see Jones, “The Allegorical Traditions of the Aeneid,” Vergil at 2000, ed. Bernard, pp. 220–1. 42 Gary D. Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Fifteenth Century (Selinsgrove PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1995), pp. 13–14 and 84. 40 41

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but this is Avernus as the entrance to Hell, not as an element of the underworld’s landscape – something that belongs to the later Mouth of Hell tradition.43 Further on, Virgil mentions the fauces Orci (jaws of Orcus) (Aeneid 6:273), Orcus being of course a Roman god of the underworld who metonymically stands for all of Hades. The centrality of the Mouth of Hell in the images seems not to depend on Virgil, nor even on Silvestris who offers no comment about the initial “black jaws” and who glosses the expression “jaws of Orcus” with one simple word: “birth” (p. 67). This one word, while it does not explain the image per se, confirms the allegorical scheme explored so far (hell as rebirth). According to medieval allegory, Aeneas descends into the underworld to consult his father on the future of Rome (adapting Odysseus’ consultation of Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes), to break with Troy and be reborn in Latium, to learn from the vices and virtues of the dead and gain an opportunity for the spirit to transcend the body. The enamels, then, seem to belong to a tradition of reading the Aeneid also deployed in sixteenth-century France by contemporary commentary-heavy editions. Whereas writers like Du Bellay and Ronsard, as the chapters in this volume show, will appropriate the Aeneid in ways that both remove medieval allegory and associate the epic with the specifically French context, in the 1530s both editions and this iconographic sequence suggest nostalgia for an earlier Aeneid, an allegory for the good Christian life.

The History of Rome Before concluding, I should like to explore one final question. For obvious reasons, attention to Roman history in the Aeneid might be seen as problematic in early sixteenth-century France: the Italian wars (1494–1559), the increasing pre-eminence of Italian letters and the power of the papacy are all good reasons why extolling the history of Rome would be logically avoided. To explore this situation, let us turn to enamel B61 which depicts part of the episode (Aeneid 6:788–940) during which Anchises reveals to Aeneas the future history of Rome (Figures 8 and 9). Anchises begins with an imperative “huc geminas nunc flecte acies, hanc aspice gentem / Romanosque tuos” (Turn hither now your two-eyed gaze, and behold this nation, the Romans that are yours) (6:788–9). He then proceeds to evoke various future figures of Roman history, “symbols of the glories and struggles of the Republic.”44 In the Grüninger edition, there are two woodcuts given to the episode: the first includes a whole cast of characters, beginning with Procas (“Troianae gloria gentis” [pride of the Trojan nation] [Aeneid 6:767]), the second dealing Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell, p. 87. Frederick E. Brenk, “Auorum Spes Et Purpurei Flores: The Eulogy for Marcellus in Aeneid 6,” The American Journal of Philology, 107 (1986): 218–28, p. 218. 43 44

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Figure 8: Anchises Reveals the Future History of Rome

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Figure 9: Anchises Reveals the Future History of Rome

with the exemplum of Marcellus. An enamel is only known for the second of these. Before going any further, we must first revisit Virgil’s text: aspice, ut insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis ingreditur uictorque uiros supereminet omnis.  (6:855–7) (Behold how Marcellus advances, graced with the spoils of the chief he slew, and towers triumphant over all!)

Marcus Claudius Marcellus (268–208 BCE) won the spolia opima (rich spoils), the most prestigious of Roman trophies of victory, at the Battle of Clastidium in 222 BCE, defeating the Insubrians, a Gallic population settled in Insubria (modern-day Lombardy). However, the military glory of the Roman general is quickly overshadowed by the fact that, by his side, is an “egregium forma iuvenem et fulgentibus armis” (a youth of extraordinary beauty in resplendent arms), a youthful double of great Marcellus, “sed frons laeta parum et deiecto lumina vultu” (but with joyless mien and eyes downcast) (Aeneid 6:861–2). Aeneas looks on, observing how “nox atra caput tristi circumvolat umbra” (death’s dark shadow flickers mournfully on his head)

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(Aeneid 6:866). Before Anchises can offer any explanation, Aeneas starts to cry. In a lament that resembles a “sepulchral epigram,” Anchises then speaks of how Roman power implies necessary sacrifice, alluding in passing to the Mausoleum of Augustus, built in 27 BCE: “vel quae, Tiberine, videbis / funera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem!” (What a cortege will you behold, Father Tiber, as you glide past the newly built tomb!) (Aeneid 6:873– 4).45 Finally, Anchises names the “miserande puer” (pitiable youth) in an ambiguous fashion that has kept scholars busy: “tu Marcellus eris” (You are to be Marcellus) (Aeneid 6:883–4). Anchises thus identifies the youth as the younger Marcus Claudius Marcellus (42–23 BCE), a descendant of the older Marcellus and the son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Octavia, Augustus’ sister. He would marry (in 25 BCE) Augustus’ only daughter, Julia the Elder46 and was generally considered a possible successor for Augustus.47 However, he died at the age of 19 and was given a public burial by the emperor, being placed in the new Mausoleum. According to Aelius Donatus, when Virgil recited the passage for Augustus at a reading at which Octavia was also in attendance, Octavia fainted as Virgil pronounced “tu Marcellus eris.”48 For Brooks Otis, this passage is an exemplum showing that the “ordeal of empire is based on sacrifice, especially sacrifice of the young,” which would serve to prepare Aeneas “to face and accept the tragedy of his mission.”49 The passage is thus “so much more than a piece of Roman propaganda, [for there is also] mitigation of success by accepted tragedy.”50 To be sure, the episode is part of an iterative chain, for Marcellus’ death will be echoed in the deaths of Nisus and Euryalus, Pallas and Lausus, Camillla and Turnus.51 Yet, the exemplum, situated at the end of Book 6 and thus at the centre point of the entire epic, is rich and ambiguous. It has been suggested that the death of Marcellus might be read as “symboliz[ing] the death of the future” and that it might serve as “a strong note of reservation on the vision of Rome’s future greatness.”52 Marcellus is also, necessarily, “the future hope of [Aeneas’] race.”53 Brenk, “Auorum Spes Et Purpurei Flores,” p. 218. Cassius Dio, Roman History. Books 50–56, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (New York: Penguin, 1987), 53:27.5. 47 Dio, Roman History, trans. Scott-Kilvert, 53:30.1–2. 48 Aelius Donatus, Life of Virgil, 32. (The standard Latin text is made available by Vitae vergilianae antiquae. Scriptores graeci et latini, edd. Giorgio Brugnoli and Fabio Stok [Rome: Istituto Polygraphico, 1997].) 49 Otis, Virgil: A study in Civilized Poetry, p. 303. 50 Otis, Virgil: A study in Civilized Poetry, p. 304. 51 Stephen V. Tracy, “The Marcellus Passage (Aeneid 6:860–886) and Aeneid 9–12,” The Classical Journal, 70 (1975): 37–42, p. 38. 52 Tracy, “The Marcellus Passage,” p. 38. 53 Edgar Nicholas Genovese, “Deaths in the Aeneid,” Pacific Coast Philology, 10 (1975): 22–8, p. 22. 45

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Grüninger’s woodcut (Figure 8) depicts the elder and the younger Marcellus. Toward the bottom of the image, separated from the observing Aeneas by a curious fence, the elder Marcellus rides his horse and swings his sword as he chases after three lowly and scared individuals. The images take up Virgil’s text directly: “hic rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu / sistet eques, sternet Poenos Gallumque rebellem, / tertiaque arma patri suspendet capta Quirino” (When the Roman state is reeling under a brutal shock, he will steady it, will ride down Carthaginians and the insurgent Gaul and offer up to Father Quirnius a third set of spoils) (Aeneid 6:855–9). As Vasselot noted many years ago, the enamel (Figure 9) is one of those in the whole series that least resembles the corresponding Grüninger woodcuts.54 No further comment has been offered on the issue, however. Of the numerous differences, the most striking is surely the fact that the enamel clearly draws the viewer’s attention to the elder Marcellus, whose white horse clearly stands out from the rest of the scene, both because of the contrast in colours and because of the horse’s size, seemingly marginalizing the notion of the sacrifice that comes with victory. Although the enamel still has multiple focal points – in addition to the horse rider, the group of mourners around the young Marcellus, the group constituted of Aeneas and the Sibyll and finally Virgil himself – the main theme is now clearly the elder Marcellus. In the production context of Brant’s woodcut – the artist functioning as “priest-poet of the German nation” – it is likely that we can read the whole scene through the topos of translatio imperii, with Rome’s glory – embodied by Augustus and (here) the elder Marcellus – being passed to Germany.55 However, in the context of the French enamels, such a topos is potentially problematic, for the elder Marcellus is pursuing “Gallum rebellem” (rebel Gaul). It is tempting indeed to look for confirmation that the Limoges artists (or their learned project director) understood the implications. Such confirmation might be located in the change in attitude of the figures being chased in the bottom right-hand corner, the “Poenos Gallumque rebellem.” In the woodcut (Figure 8), the fleeing figures turn to look at Marcellus; in the enamel (Figure 9), it appears rather that the figures have stopped running and have turned to face Marcellus, perhaps to suggest that Gaul will fight. On the one hand, the French enamel thus emphasizes the elder Marcellus who won victory over the Gallic Insubrians rather than the death of younger Marcellus, necessary for a Roman future; on the other hand, it seemingly foregrounds French resistance to Roman invasion.

54 Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 45: “cette plaque est l’une de celles où l’émailleur a suivi le moins fidèlement son modèle” (this enamel is one of those where the enameller most faithfully followed his model). 55 E.L. Harrison, “Virgil, Sebastian Brant, and Maximilian I,” The Modern Language Review, 76 (1981): 99–115, p. 115.

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To explore further the enamels’ depiction of Franco-Italian relations, we can also turn to enamel B76 wherein are depicted various subjects drawn from the shield of Aeneas (Aeneid 8:626–731). Just as future Roman history had been vocalized by Anchises in Book 6, so were future Roman triumphs represented on Aeneas’ shield by Vulcan. As is often noted, while Aeneas’ shield has a precedent in that of Achilles (Iliad 18), the latter’s need for a new shield was fully justified within the narrative (he had lent his armour to Patroclus who lost it to Hector), thus making it more “directly relevant to the political purpose of the poem” compared with Aeneas’ shield.56 On another level, however, Aeneas’ shield, although presented by Venus to Aeneas at the Trojan camp in a somewhat less directly motivated manner, is surely just as central to the poem’s politics (he will use the armour against Turnus) and its status as ecphrastic commentary (on Roman history) is heightened. Otis summarizes the shield’s message as follows: “Everywhere violence is defeated, evil is punished, religio observed. All this is but the setting of the greatest of struggles between Roman pietas and barbaric violentia.”57 Another commentator underlines that “[Aeneas’] shield itself represents [the] last true passage of national pride in the poem.”58 For the woodcut, Brant selected several events in particular: Catiline quite literally “minaci / pendentem scopulo” (hanging on a frowning cliff) (Aeneid 8:668–9), Tarquin, Cloelia crossing the Tiber on horseback to escape the Etruscan King Porsenna, Horatius Cocles defending and destroying the Pons Sublicius, Manlius defending Rome against invading Gauls, etc. Neither woodcut nor enamel attempts to literally reproduce Virgil’s description of the shield, which features seven tableaux organized around a central section showing Augustus’ victory over Anthony at the Battle of Actium.59 The modern viewer of Brant’s woodcut is probably first struck by the absence of Actium. Vasselot noted that the battle of Actium was depicted in the upper right-hand corner, but (unless the present author is missing something) this is not the case.60 From both the woodcut and the enamel, then, the politically central event situated at the centre of the shield’s surface disappears, no doubt because of Actium’s political importance – after this victory, Octavian became Augustus and adopted 56 William Francis Jackson Knight, Cumaean Gates: A Reference of the Sixth Aeneid to the Initiation Pattern (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1936), p. 295. A discussion of Achilles’ shield is provided by Stephen Scully, “Reading the Shield of Achilles: Terror, Anger, Delight,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 101 (2003): 29–47. 57 Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry, p. 342. 58 Tracy, “The Marcellus Passage,” p. 40. 59 On the possible reasons for Virgil’s choice of these scenes, see Knight, Cumaean Gates, pp. 296–7. 60 Vasselot, “Une Suite d’émaux,” p. 48: “dans l’angle supérieur droit [on voit] la bataille d’Actium” (in the upper right-hand corner, one can see the Battle of Actium). Baratte summarizes the subjects depicted as “Catilina, Tarquin, Clélie, Horatius Coclès” (Baratte, “La Série de plaques,” p. 147).

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the title of princeps, a moment synonymous with the passage from republic to empire.61 Now, if the enamellers did indeed alter the figures pursued by the elder Marcellus because they were Gauls, as suggested above, then we might expect them also to alter the figures beaten back by Manlius at the Capitol in the top right-hand portion of their version of events from Aeneas’ shield – but this is not the case. Here, Gauls from Brennus (modern-day Seine-et-Marne) are beaten back with as much energy as in the original woodcut. While Brant may well have made a specific decision to suppress Actium, it would seem that the Limoges enamellers were not troubled by the beating back of the Gauls in this scene, suggesting that interpreting the emphasis on Marcellus and the fleeing Gauls in Figure 9 as a depiction of Franco-Italian relations should be considered hypothesis rather than fact, although a hypothesis that makes would seem justified given the contemporary political situation.

Conclusions It is tempting, when trying to read the Limoges enamels, to find meaning in every detail. It must, however, be accepted that any interpretation of them is partly based on informed guesses. More specifically, it must be kept in mind that the enamels, whoever their original sponsor and whatever their final destination, were a commodity. The commodification of the Aeneid and the need to ensure that illustrations reflected evolutions in aesthetics would seem aided by practical questions of available materials. It was once suggested that the illustrations in the 1502 Strasbourg edition, in the way they relate Aeneas’ sea voyage, echo the recent discovery of the New World. The claim is notably supported by the type of vessel in which we see Aeneas travel which (rather than a Trojan frigate or a Roman trireme) is a Spanish caravel, as depicted in the illustrated accounts of Columbus’ voyage.62 More recently however, David Scott Wilson-Okamura has provided the sobering reminder that while “someone in Brant’s workshop [may have wanted] to appropriate some of that Roman glamour for the modern explorer,” it is equally possible that “the designer just needed to draw some ships that day, and happened to find a model for them in a dog-eared copy of the Basel Columbus that was

61 As C.J. Putnam underlines, “the crucial scene is … in medio, at the center, with the rest of Roman history, of which the ekphrasis gives us a selection, distributed around it. … Aeneas’ shield is a visible icon of circularity” (Michael C.J. Putnam, Virgil’s Epic Designs [New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1998], p. 154). 62 The claim was first made in Anna Cox Brinton “The Ships of Columbus in Brant’s Virgil,” Art and Archaeology, 26 (1928), p. 94, and was re-asserted more recently by Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, Jonson, Shakespeare, and Early Modern Virgil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 22–5.

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kicking around the workshop” – a lesson also valid for the enamels.63 Certain differences between the woodcuts and the enamels are almost surely due to an artisan’s unintentional error. Thus, we note that in the enamel version of Brant’s image on fol. 176, Neptune’s trident (strangely) becomes a torch – most likely by visual contaminatio from the flames which, in the background, consume Troy.64 These cautionary tales related to the very practical conditions of enamel production should serve as a reminder of the slippery interpretive ground any viewer of the Limoges enamels is on. It can be stated with relative certainty, however, that the Limoges enamels would have looked somewhat dated to a late sixteenth-century public. Their original production coincides chronologically with editions of Virgil that emphasized medieval allegorical commentary. Robert Estienne’s pride in having “remis en leur entier” (fully restored) the commentaries of Servius for his 1532 edition of the Opera surely stands as one turning point in how the Aeneid was appropriated in France. Servius was still popular, implying a certain moralized reading of the text as discussed above. On the other hand, Estienne’s would be the last great folio production of Virgil complete with commentary swarming around the text. The newer, smaller format editions would generally continue to include Donatus’ Vita, but not huge amounts of allegorical commentary. By the 1550s, France would be reading a different Aeneid – indeed a different Virgil. In the Praelectiones that accompany Ramus’ Bucolics (1555), the latter criticizes the commentators who look everywhere for allegory, as had already Richard Gorée in his notes to the Bucoliques (1552).65 For the Aeneid, we might turn towards the publication of Louys des Masure’s translation of Les quatre premiers liures de l’Eneide (1552) by Lyonnais printer Jean de Tournes. The opening letter, dedicating the work to the “TRESHAULT, TRESILLUSTRE, & TRES-excellent Prince, Monseigneur Charles, Duc de Calabre, de Lorraine, de Bar, & de Gueldres, Marchis, Mergus du Pont, Conte de Prouence, de Voudemont, de Zutpher, &.c,” situates the work’s dedicatee as a descendant of Aeneas and, in view of this, the translator begs his prince’s patronage for completion of the work, echoing Ronsard’s own overtures, regarding his Franciade, to Henri II (beginning in 1549) and later Charles IX. Yet, while Des Masures’s translation appropriates the Aeneid into the French language in order to provide his 63 David Scott Wilson-Okamura, “Virgilian Models of Colonization in Shakespeare’s Tempest,” English Literary History, 70 (2003): 709–37, p. 711. 64 This difference is noted by Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 196. 65 On Ramus and the Bucolics, see Anthony James Boyle, “Meaning of the Eclogues,” Ancient Pastoral: Ramus Essays on Greek and Roman Pastoral Poetry, ed. Anthony James Boyle (Berwick, Victoria: Aureal Publications, 1975). A later re-edition of Ramus’ work is available at Columbia’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library: P. Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, P. Rami, professoris regii praelectionibus exposita: quibus poëtae vita praeposita est ([Paris]: Apud Andream Wechelum, 1572).

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sponsor with access to the story of one of his supposed ancestors, the same edition restores the Aeneid to its Roman context. An image from the beginning of Book 4 depicts a Roman Aeneas, dressed neither as a German, nor with Italianate ornament, but with a semblance of historical awareness for costume. The Limoges enamels belong to an earlier Aeneid. Their reproduction of Grüninger’s medievalizing woodcuts cannot be simplistically ascribed to a “lack of inventiveness.”66 Rather, it demonstrates the commodification and continued pertinence of the same Virgil equally promoted by contemporary editions, a Virgil heavily cloaked in medieval allegory. The enamels portraying the episodes of Book 6 lean on the pedagogical and allegorical function of the episodes within the epic, presenting a reading centred around virtue and vice. This allegorical emphasis is reflected in the enamels discussed earlier in the present chapter as well; Aeneas’ role as hermeneutic guide at the temple of Apollo echoes the hermeneutic gesture of the enamels themselves, and the de-emphasizing of historicity and denial of Roman glory in the enamels portraying the episode of revelation of Roman history, too, reinforce an allegorical posture. Over the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, editions of Virgil edited by Josse Bade grew to include not five, but ten commentaries, as well as the continuation of the Aeneid by Maffeo Vegio.67 Ramus, Etienne, Des Masures and others would change this. It has been stated that, with the 1552 translation, illustrations “become almost exclusively decorative.”68 The preceding pages would seem to argue rather that both the Limoges enamels and the 1552 illustrations in the Jean de Tournes edition relate to a specific set of trends in how the Virgilian text was appropriated within France and that the 1552 woodcuts, if anything, relate rather to a growing visual appreciation for Virgil’s Roman-ness that corresponds to a growing trend of scientific editing of Virgil. But before those illustrations, before a true Renaissance Virgil appeared, the viewers of these enamels in early sixteenth-century France, while offered female forms reminiscent of Botticelli, were still encouraged to look towards a medieval Virgil, even if certain details suggested an awareness for the contemporary political situation vis-à-vis France and Italy.

Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 196. A study of editions of Virgil in Renaissance Italy and France is provided in the introduction, Eugène Benoist, Œuvres de Virgile (Paris: Hachette, 1884). On Ascensius, see Philippe Renouard, Bibliographie des impressions et des œuvres de Josse Badius Ascensius, imprimeur et humaniste (New York: Burt Franklin, 1964). See also Maurice Lebel, Préfaces de Josse Bade, 1462–1535: humaniste, éditeur-imprimeur et préfacier (Louvain: Peeters, 1988). 68 See Rabb, “Sebastien Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil,” p. 198. 66 67

9

At the Helm, Second in Command: Du Bellay and La Mort de Palinure Corinne Noirot-Maguire To Andrew Becker, no fleeting figure on Virgil

A mere three years after he eschewed vernacular translation, situating the practice within the infancy of his project to establish the supremacy of French letters,1 Joachim Du Bellay published his verse translation of the story of Dido and Aeneas, complemented by two related pieces from Ovid and Ausonius.2 Soon thereafter, he inserted La Mort de Palinure into the second edition of his overtly Gallican Recueil de Poësie (1553) dedicated to Marguerite de France. This Virgilian episode recounts the epic and tragic loss of Aeneas’ helmsman Palinurus, deadened by Slumber and thrown overboard on behalf of Neptune, who had agreed to assist the son of Venus on the condition that he receive one maritime casualty. This episode bears structural meaning within Virgil’s Aeneid (5:779–871), as a stand-alone poem and within Du Bellay’s Recueil as a whole.3 Having translated Books 4 and 6 of Virgil’s epic, why did Du Bellay also select and isolate the end of Book 5 and the figure of Palinurus? Why separate the episode from its conclusive sequel in Book 6, published only posthumously? And why incorporate it within a sequence of original pieces?

1 Joachim Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. Francis Goyet (Paris: Champion, 2003), 2:5. 2 Du Bellay, Le Quatriesme livre de l’Eneide de Vergile, traduict en vers françoys: La Complainte de Didon à Énée, prince d’Ovide (1552), Œuvres poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1991), v. 6, pp. 243–333. Book 6 appeared posthumously in 1560 in Deux livres de l’Eneide de Virgile, reprinted as: Du Bellay, Le Sixieme livre de l’Eneide de Virgile, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, pp. 341–96. 3 La Mort de Palinure appeared as piece 19 in the second edition of Du Bellay’s Recueil de Poësie, Œuvres poétiques, edd. Daniel Aris and Françoise Joukovsky (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1993), v. 1, pp. 177–81.

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Such a baffling editorial decision is to be read against the backdrop of renewed enthusiasm for Virgilian translations surrounding the ascent of the Pléiade. Issues of erudite emulation and commercial competition, however, fail to fully explain the uncanny inclusion of this sacrificial figure near the end of a predominantly encomiastic and propagandistic collection. La Mort de Palinure, thus explicitly titled, is inserted into the poet’s second attempt to reach the king through the Recueil de Poësie dedicated to his sister Marguerite. Given the strong hold of historical and allegorical interpretations of Virgil’s triad of works, the appropriation of an epic episode befits the reaching out to a sovereign known to honour chivalric values highly and nurture the ambition of a French translatio imperii.4 Yet the story is more pathetic than heroic, and shows the ruler in a position of ignorance and misperception before a backdrop of death and catabasis in the underworld.5 The ideological framework appears more complex, and poetic factors must be accounted for. The political and poetic paths are irreducibly intertwined; for the poet was acutely aware of the stakes, debates and events of his time, including the precarious status of poets and poetry in the new monarchy. Crucial in all of Du Bellay’s works is figurative and allusive discourse and an emphasis on rhetorical ethos and dispositio, which structure the chosen translation. Du Bellay’s 1549 Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse called for a translatio studii (in)to France – a transition from the first part of the Aeneid to the second, as it were: from defeated wanderings to glorious conquest. But the author’s stance on the translatio imperii is far more leery or sceptical, as the resonance of Palinurus’ plight partly demonstrates. La Mort de Palinure, when closely examined in context, sketches a web of intra- and intertextual relations in which the figure of what is called in French the second (i.e. aide, follower, first mate, second-in-command, someone who is at once in a position of power and yet whose power derives from and supports another person) and the polysemy of translatio play a central and unstable role.6 The insistence on the second and the implicit play on trans4 On medieval allegorical commentaries (e.g., Servius, followed by Bade and Landino), see Alice Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” Revue du seizième siècle, 18 (1931): 1–77, especially pp. 1–14. On their survival in humanist thought, see George H. Tucker, “Allegorical Narratives,” Homo Viator: Itineraries of Exile, Displacement and Writing in Renaissance Europe (Geneva: Droz, 2003), pp. 64–71. Eric MacPhail, “Facilis descensus Averno: Retracing Aeneas’ Steps in Du Bellay’s Regrets,” Viator, 39 (2008): 227–43, underscores affinities with Neoplatonic Christian commentary of Aeneas’ catabasis and return, in Landino especially, in terms of Christian allegory. 5 Palinurus’ sombre allegorical associations stand out later in the century when he appears in tragedies (e.g., Jodelle, Hardy) and Cristofle de Beaujeu’s dark and arcane Amours (sonnet 46, 1582). 6 The term translatio(n), in Latin and in sixteenth-century French, can describe linguistico-poetic transfer (the appropriation of ancient fictions and brilliance, through translation in particular) and geo-political transfer (the shift of dominion or power).

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latio ultimately construct a curious bond between the figures of the French poet and his ambitious but distant prince.

Du Bellay’s Palinurus in its Editorial Context: Translations of the Aeneid and the Second Recueil de Poësie (March 1553) A preliminary glance at the context of Palinurus’ appearance in Du Bellay’s writings brings forth issues of book culture surrounding Virgilian translations in the wake of humanism, editorial trends and personal publicity. As delineated by Alice Hulubei and Katherine Maynard among others, Virgilian influence in Renaissance France refocused on the Aeneid as the crowning work of a bountiful career.7 The long-lasting influence of medieval moral expositions and Servius-inspired allegorical commentary resonates in Bade, Landino and other scholiasts well into the sixteenth century, as portable editions became more numerous in Paris and Lyon. Besides establishing the heroic poem as a poetic telos, humanist commentary engendered a flurry of vernacular translations, supported by increased readership and the Valois’ cultural politics, and tied to imperial ambitions keen on publicizing a mythical genealogy linking the French crown to Troy via Francus. The success of Louis Des Masures’ Énéide (Books 1–2) in 1547 – as well as shared ties to Gallican prelates Jean du Bellay and Charles de Lorraine8 – led Du Bellay to praise Des Masures’s meticulous rendering.9 Despite the Deffence et illustration’s recommendation to avoid the lowly (when literal) and hazardous task of translating (1:6), the dawn of the Pléiade ushered in a renewed, and largely politically motivated, interest in Virgil amidst a sustained production of classical translations. In this climate of collective appropriation and competition in which Virgilian translations occupy prestigious territory, Du Bellay’s contributions came both second (after Octovien de Saint-Gelais’ 1509 verse attempt), and first within his generation to promote the practice of imitation. Having 7 Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” pp. 1–14. See Katherine S. Maynard, “Epic Lessons: Pedagogy and National Narrative in the Epic Poetry of Early Modern France” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2003), passim. 8 Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” p. 45. The publication of Des Masures’s Aeneid continued in 1552 (Books 1–4) and 1557 (Books 5–8), and was completed in 1560. 9 Besides Hulubei, see Valerie Worth, “‘Cest estranger naturalizé’: Du Bellay traducteur de Virgile,” Du Bellay: Actes du colloque international d’Angers, ed. Georges Cesbron (Angers: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 1990), v. 2, pp. 485–95. Octovien de Saint-Gelais’s 1509 verse rendition dedicated to Louis XII was re-issued in 1540. Hélisenne de Crenne’s 1541 prose rendition (Books 1–4) went relatively unnoticed. Du Bellay praised Des Masures’s precise 1547 translation in his 1552 prefatory epistle to Jean de Morel, (Le Quatriesme livre, Œvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 250). The praise is more ambivalent in Regrets 148, where political and poetic notions of achievement finely collide.

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published his translation of the fourth book of the Aeneid in 1552 and likely working on the sixth, the young poet must have released the story of Palinurus in order to link and publicize those two translated books and to lure Marguerite and the king into funding and hearing the rest (although rather unsuccessfully, as the posthumous publication suggests).10 This made him the first translator of the death-of-Palinurus episode in the new generation, which recalls his numerous claims to be the first in France or in French to have appropriated selected classical forms.11 Where, more precisely, do Virgilian translations and La Mort de Palinure fit into Du Bellay’s œuvre? Facing criticism and relative indifference for his Olive (1549; 1550) and Vers lyriques (1549) while Ronsard’s Odes and Amours were widely praised and Italian and neo-Latin poetry were in demand, Du Bellay partly redirected his unrewarded ambition towards translation, labelled a product of labeur as opposed to (purportedly lost) ardeur.12 As in the Deffence, et illustration, translation is devalued as a secondary and second-rate poetic practice; the author’s first translations resulted partly from the failure of his ambitious lyric poetry. Likewise, his augmented Recueil de Poësie seems to have been issued in anticipation of his departure for Rome (as an assistant to his ‘uncle’ Jean du Bellay) in April 1553 – that is, as a sort of last-chance token of his intent to serve the Crown. At a time when Du Bellay entered a doubly subaltern condition, serving a king and an elderly ‘uncle’ and prelate, he turned to an activity where his role (translator) could similarly be construed as that of the servant or the subject of a prince (Virgil, the paragon of the author). Before the Recueil de Poësie, Du Bellay’s 1552 translations focused on Dido, the epitome of amorous passion, with the addition of pieces from Ovid and Ausonius explained in compassionate and quasi-forensic language.13 The translator’s persona, at the service of Queen Dido, called Virgil’s depiction of the heroine majestic but unjust (e.g., “inique,” “injure,” “reparer”).14 The 10 See the prefatory epistle to Jean de Morel opening Du Bellay, Quatriesme livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 250. 11 “Je sais que beaucoup me reprendront, qui ait osé le premier des Français introduire quasi comme une nouvelle poésie” (I know that many will criticize me who first dared to introduce in France what is almost a completely new form of poetry) (Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Goyet, 2:1, p. 48). 12 See for example the prefatory epistle to Jean de Morel in Du Bellay, Le Quatriesme Livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 253. 13 Du Bellay, Le Quatriesme Livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 249. 14 “J’ay encore ajouté une épigramme d’Ausone, 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 sans lui reparer son honneur par ce qu’autres ont escrit à sa louange” (I also added an epigram by Ausonius, which declares the truth of Dido’s story, because it seemed unjust to me to repeat the insult she received from Virgil without repairing her honour by adding what others wrote in order to praise her) (Du Bellay, Le Quatriesme Livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 253).

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palinode introducing her ‘rehabilitation’ tempered the self-castrating cult of the Ancients and the divine Virgil, one of the main reasons for eschewing (slavish) poetic translation in the Deffence, et illustration.15 Translating the popular Book 4, moreover, brought Virgil closer to romance and the roman de chevalerie, since the latter combines love and madness, decasyllabic verse, less majestic and solemn formulations and non-heroic pathos.16 An ambivalence towards or resistance to the Virgilian/Roman epic emerged. It intersected with a French pattern of translatio, in part through the advancement of the lore and language of romance.17 The situation of La Mort de Palinure within the love-themed 1553 addition to the Gallican Recueil de Poësie reinforces such a pattern of resistance and redirection. La Mort de Palinure is one of the four pieces (nos. 18 to 21) added in 1553 to the Recueil de Poësie – marotique forms in lieu of odes. All four refer to unlucky but hopeful lovers, and thwarted or illusory faith or ambition. The Dialogue d’un amoureux et d’Écho pleasantly slashes vain amorous hopes; À une Dame dismisses Petrarchan amatory artifice, save for pleasing the courted lady; La Mort de Palinure stages a pathetic fall due to a supernatural assault and (apparent) overconfidence; the Elegie affirms honneste amour and the marital bond, abandoning the courtly-love model; and the final Chanson exalts a faithful love beseeching to be tested. The confident amy (friend or lover) featured is a virtuous servant in all cases. The foolish lover (already there in 1549), the gallant lover, the unswerving companion (Palinurus), the aspiring husband and, finally, the faithful lover, are the personae staged in the 1553 Recueil de Poësie. Affection and faith, shown to be hopeful but problematic, bind together the supplemental pieces. They sketch a dynamic narrative of unrequited love in which, from poem to poem, the pride and blindness of the lover lessen, and his faith and lucidity increase. In more political or Gallican terms, La Mort de Palinure follows À une Dame, which eschews Petrarchan imitation (and Italian courtship) as factitious and corrupting of French franchise (freedom and boldness), and it precedes the marotique Elegie calling for the union of two virtuous (French) 15 Du Bellay situates himself between the “admirateurs” and “détracteurs” of Virgil (Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” p. 40); his translations strike a middle ground between “littéraux” and “paraphrastes” (Worth, “‘Cest estranger naturalisé,’” p. 488). 16 Such a way to ‘naturalize’ epic glory was mentioned in the Deffence, et illustration, where the poet suggested using “un de ces beaux vieulx romans Françoys” (one of these fine old French romans) (Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Goyet, 1:5) in order to craft the French epic to come. Among the ‘naturalized’ vocabulary of Du Bellay’s Aeneid, words such as nocher and tancer recall Chrétien de Troyes and other medieval romances. 17 See David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); the “loser’s epic” is closer to romance and the Odyssey, where contingency resists the triumphantly linear teleology of Roman epic (see introduction and pp. 39–41).

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hearts. A male bond (between Aeneas and Palinurus) is thus exemplified between the courtly and marital bonds. The single translation, the Virgilian episode, is the only instance of male bonding and service, albeit depicting a tragic separation, and precedes the formulation of a new, virtuous, more temperate love (Elegie and Chanson), as though the perils of alien seduction (À une Dame) had been exorcised and the vision of a trustful alliance was given a chance. Such progression invites political and meta-poetic readings related to the issue of translatio. The scenario of the frustrated but persistent lover/servant takes on a national resonance. Human (French-style) bonding and fidelity, the central interest of romances, thus resounds through this 1553 sequence of amys speaking to the princess and the king. Let us now briefly examine the figure of the friend and pilot, through which issues of manly love, service and valour unfold in La Mort de Palinure.

First-in-line and Pioneer: the Virtuous ‘Second’ What kind of friend or associate is Palinurus the pilot? Second only to his lord and captain in status, Palinurus leads and opens the way: “Au front estoit Palinur’ le pilote” (Out front stood Palinurus the pilot (88), translating princeps). This dual position of princeps and subordinate, follower and leader, echoes the paradoxical praise of the second in Du Bellay’s work.18 Long a metaphor for the human condition and political praxis, the sailing vessel has its gubernator, the pilot, resolutely leading the journey. Trustworthy and entrusted with the helm, and steering the ship/nation/state, the navigator or gubernator is similar to the pioneer persona that Du Bellay chose for himself in the Deffence, et illustration. The latter offers to steer future poets and his nation towards cultural hegemony via the lustre of a new literature based on imitation of glorious ancient authorities. The metaphor of navigation concludes the motivational manifesto through the image of the ship indefinitely in the process of heading back to its safe haven.19 From the 18 The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of second (adj. and subst.) confirms that, in English as well, the term runs a semantic spectrum, from clearly inferior to nextto-the-highest, bearing the most positive connotations when applied to officers and officeholders (e.g., officers en second, second captain, etc.). In a generic sense, a second is “one who or something which renders aid or support to another.” 19 “Mais ô bon Dieu, combien de Mer nous reste encore, avant que soyons parvenus au Port! combien le Terme de notre Course est encore loing!” (But good Lord! How much more seafaring remains before we arrive at port! The end of our journey is still so far off!) (Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Goyet, 2:12, p. 78). See Corinne NoirotMaguire, “Explication de texte: La Deffence, ‘Conclusion de tout l’œuvre,’” Du Bellay: une révolution poétique?, ed. Bruno Roger-Vasselin (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007), pp. 164–73.

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Deffence, et illustration to the Regrets, the poet dramatizes the valour of a paradoxical breed of pioneers (soldiers, imitators, travellers) distinct from primary leaders – whom they technically follow (seconds) – and safer from delusion or hubristic peril than the latter. The second rank is promoted as a sort of ‘niche’ valour in history for the French, who come after ‘original’ greatness but aspire to regain their own, that is, to re-seize the Gallic pride and power robbed by the Greeks and Romans (La Deffence, et illustration 2:12). In Du Bellay’s lyric collection addressed to the monarchy, La Mort de Palinure functions partly as a mirror of the French and Christian prince and leaders, between a caveat against fortune and a possible election of the ship of France on the path to universal Monarchy.20 The vessel carrying the future Roman state and its grandiose destiny is literally in the hands of Palinurus, albeit in an ephemeral and perhaps illusory sense. With France claiming its mythical Trojan roots louder than ever, determined to epically manoeuvre the ship of the nation-state, one can see how readily Du Bellay and attuned readers could transplant the context of this final Book 5 episode of the Aeneid, whose prophetic and political readings were widespread, as mentioned above, onto their own. The minimal changes to Virgil’s poem suggest that a structural interest prevailed in Du Bellay’s appropriation of the episode as well as a focus on the character as figure. Introduced after the conversation between Neptune and Venus and the subsequent lull at sea, Palinurus is portrayed as a practised and virtuous expert in the art of navigation. This subordinate’s responsibility toward the entire crew and even fleet is essential. He is called “pilote,” “guide” and “gouverneur,” placed high in a hierarchy of practical worth and agency. Successfully supervising rowers (“d’avirons un grand nombre … / tous … suivant la route qu’il tenoit” [a great number of oars … / all … following the route he chose]) (89–90), he painstakingly guides the ship. Answering to the prince, the de facto captain Palinurus is a figure of the second, which etymologically means ‘he who follows, and/or assists.’ The royal ship sails away in good hands, at least until capricious gods perturb its course, an image with which Du Bellay will frame his personal odyssey in the Regrets, in which the wandering servant winds up teaching seafaring and true heroism to the soaring Ronsard, as we shall see.21 The ‘second’ pushes ahead and forward (“au front”) rather than upward. In contrast, from above come the agents of 20 Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Goyet, 1:3, p. 24: May France one day rule (“tenir les resnes de la monarchie”) and the French rid themselves of those alien feathers (“plumes d’autrui”) which for now should be artfully appropriated, as the author does. 21 See George Hugo Tucker, The Poet’s Odyssey: Joachim Du Bellay and the Antiquitez de Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). The Regrets, sonnets 34 and 128, developed below, exploit the maritime metaphor: in Regrets 34, Morel is in a safe harbour while the poet is weathering a storm as a lone pilot “Assys au gouvernail dans une nef percée” (at the wheel in a sinking ship); in Regrets 128, he is an outcast, “égaré” (astray)

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doom (e.g., Slumber “assis au plus hault de la nef” [seated at the top of the vessel]) (100). These Virgilian elements are carefully conveyed. Was Palinurus overconfident or overwhelmed? Was his demise a heroic fall, a tragic sacrifice or a fluke? According to David Quint’s reading of the death of Palinurus, the lost pilot was a dispensable subordinate, merely a puppet at the stern of Aeneas’ and Rome’s destiny, ultimately piloted by the gods; what is dispensed with is the notion that the future founder has any effective agency.22 Yet La Mort de Palinure, especially as reshaped by Du Bellay, does not eliminate the pilot’s virtue nor his figurative function altogether. Due in part to the tension between Christian free will and Roman fatality, the rippedout helm and lost helmsman can hardly be without consequence. The expendable nature of Palinurus does not rule Du Bellay’s appropriation; the loss is shown as hard-felt and consequential. Its true outcome is kept separate, in Virgil as in Du Bellay, for the hero (and the reader) will later re-encounter the castaway: Virgil’s narrative art amplifies the ambivalence and deepens the significance of this seemingly minor episode by delaying the resolution and disseminating the perception and explanation thereof. Just like Aeneas – who mistakes the fatal seizure of Palinurus for unfortunate feebleness – the reader has to wait until the descent into the underworld (in the next book) to learn of his virtue. Indeed, in Book 6, guided by the Sibyl of Cumae, Aeneas hears his forlorn former pilot recount how he was murdered by Barbarians, not drowned by Neptune or for lack of vigilance. The oracle then explains how the leader can make amends and let his companion’s unburied remains rest in peace. In other words, Book 6 complicates the purportedly instrumental sacrifice by dramatizing the character’s unrest as a forlorn shadow. Someone will have to quiet his shade, says the Sybil; they will even immortalize him in a toponym, after granting him funeral rites and a ‘national’ burial.23 Du Bellay’s translation insists on this immortality of a name that should/could have slid into oblivion along with the seemingly futile function of the helmsman in the Roman ship’s destiny. The compensatory namesake settles the wandering soul and perpetuates his memory: “La terre maintenant / De Palinur’ va le nom retentant” (And now the name of Palinurus / resounds throughout the land) (651–2). in spite of himself far away from the Gallic shore (“rivage Gaulois”), subject to capricious winds and dangerous rocks. 22 “Palinurus is, in fact, a surrogate for Aeneas in the hero’s capacity as leader, as head of the ship of the state. … the helmsman becomes expendable” (Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 85, in a chapter entitled “Palinurus and the Sacrifice of the Hero”). 23 Du Bellay, Le Sixieme livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 361–4, lines 568–652. Cape Palinurus, a promontory on the Lucanian coast, is also alluded to in Horace’s Carmina (3:4, lines 25–28), as memorializing the site of a naval disaster that affected Octavian during the civil wars (36 or 38 BC), when Pompeius was in Sicily (Lee Fratantuono, Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil’s Aeneid [New York: Lexington Books, 2007], p. 158).

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Aeneas’ pious homage mirrors Du Bellay’s uncanny care for the pilot and his sensitivity to his ambivalent worth. Why is the compassionate pathos of the episode underscored by the translator?

Caring for Palinurus: Friendship, Sacrifice, and Moderate Pathos Notwithstanding the tyrannical will of the gods, Palinurus is infallibly the friend and second – at least to the best of his human ability – confronting the sea to assist his lord and fellows. He is the auxiliary and ancillary character whom Virgil’s verse and Du Bellay’s translation prevent from being forlorn and forgotten, even though he lacks a conqueror’s life. His powerless virtue and apparently purposeless death make him one of those men of valour whose virtue is eclipsed by the radiant glory of the elect, the great, those favoured by the Fates. Palinurus exemplifies that ‘underground’ virtue that Du Bellay consistently reveals and exalts, as it is often what fails to surface in history and befalls poetry. Part of Du Bellay’s agenda is to show what precious aides and friends such unsung heroes are to the king. Palinurus represents the royal friend (Du Bellay following Virgil does call him “amy”) (141). This faithful and skilled companion is taken away – sacrificed, unbeknownst to the prince – but his loss is deeply felt. Neither supercilious nor gullible, and both heroic and pathetic, he conveys a most human kind of exemplarity. At the root of Palinurus’ demise lies the seduction of a malevolent god, Somnus or Slumber, who takes hold of him and whom the pilot, despite all of his fortitude and constancy, is powerless to resist. All are at risk of going asunder if the gubernator fails for one second, so, to the bitter end, he firmly holds on to the rudder. Assailed by what appears to him as “Phorbe” (101) – a name that functions as a paronomasia in French, fo(u)rbe, meaning sly or wily – and in actuality is Slumber acting on behalf of Neptune, he hears a sort of siren voice targeting his weariness: “repose-toi [de tes] ennuiz,” “de ton long travail” (take rest from your worries / from your long labour) (105, 107).24 Although soon incapable of any physical resistance to sleep, the virtuous pilot first resists temptation, and eloquently affirms his dedication to protect the prince. The character’s ethos itself reinforces his praise; his stirring speech arouses pity and admiration. Du Bellay cares for

24 According to Michael Paschalis, Phorbas (5:842) – father of Ilioneus in Iliad 14:490 (my thanks to Andrew Becker for this reference) – is etymologically linked to giving pasture or feeding (Virgil’s Aeneid: Semantic Relations and Proper Names [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997], p. 203), as the Phorbas who saved young Œdipus. Here Slumber, disguised as a Trojan, is a falsely nurturing figure, carrying with him deathly waters.

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this courageous, albeit hapless, character,25 and following Virgil, accentuates the pathos of the episode, which also enables the poet-translator to enact his poetics of affections:26 Lors Palinur’ à peine ayant pouvoir D’entr’ouvrir l’œil: veulx-tu donq’ que j’ignore La mer paisible, et ses doulx flots encore? Que je me fie à ce fier monstre ici? Comment veulx-tu que j’abandonne ainsi Mon prince Enée à la fraude du vent, Du temps serain abusé si souvent? Ainsi parloit au gouvernail fiché, Et par les yeux aux astres attaché.  (208–14) (Then Palinurus having hardly managed To half-open his eye: “Do you thus expect me to ignore The peaceful sea and its sweet waves? To trust this proud monster? How can you want me to thus abandon My prince Aeneas to the deceitful wind While he so often was fooled by serene weather?” Thus he spoke while holding on to the wheel, His eyes fixed upon the stars.)

In Pagan mythos, the sacrificed mortal is denied any glorious conquest. But the poet shall prove his resolute steadfastness (“fiché,” “attaché”; same in Virgil). His fortitude drives him to tear off the helm and tear it away as he falls, suddenly becoming conscious again and crying in vain for help (124–6). The compassion triggered in the reader is mirrored by that of the poet and the prince. Earlier on, in a manner of exordium, the poet’s ethos had interrupted the narrative flow for the sake of a sympathetic apostrophe to the innocent victim of an undeserved calamity, for Slumber came from above: Pour t’abuser, et d’un somme trop dur Charmer tes yeux, ô pauvre Palinur’, Ne meritant un si triste mechef.  (97–9)

25 “Virgil’s broad human sympathy and melancholy appear to have held a highly personal appeal for Du Bellay,” (Robert Griffin, Coronation of the Poet [Berkeley CA: Berkeley University Press, 1969], p. 89). 26 See Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, ed. Goyet, 1:11, p. 73: “celuy sera veritablement le Poëte, que je cherche en nostre langue, … qui tiendra la bride de mes Affections, me tournant ça, & la à son plaisir” (Truly will he be the poet whom I seek out in our language, he who will hold the reins to my affections and cause me to be moved this way and that as he sees fit) (after Cicero and Quintilian).

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(To deceive you and with the deadliest slumber To charm your eyes, oh poor Palinurus, Who deserved not such misfortune.)

The expressive and axiological reinforcement applied by Du Bellay stands out when compared with the original: “Te, Palinure, petens, tibi somnia tristia portans / insonti” (seeking you, Palinurus, and bringing you baleful dreams, guiltless one!) (Aeneid 5:840–1). A sense of horrendous deception pervades the last two quotations, deception attributed to the elements and to the “faulx dormir” (treacherous slumber) inflicted by Somnus: “abuser” (to abuse), “fraude” (deception), “somme” (sleep), “charmer” (to charm) and “mechef” (misfortune) connote a malignant influence, and “trop dur” (too heavy), “si triste” (so sad), “ô pauvre” (oh poor [Palinurus]) and “ne meritant” (who deserved not), all connote an undeserved plight. The very end of the poem itself shows Aeneas mourning Palinurus. The virtue of the pilot is reinforced by the friendly ethos and the tender pathos shared by Aeneas and the poet’s voice, both uttering a heartfelt: “ô pauvre Palinure” (oh poor Palinurus) (98, 142), while the original features simpler vocatives: “Palinure, … / insonti” (oh Palinurus … / guiltness one) (Aeneid 5:840–1) and “o … Palinure” (oh Palinurus) (Aeneid 5:870–1). The repetition of “ô pauvre Palinure” builds up the pathos of the innocent victim later developed in Book 6. Aeneas cares, the scene tells us; he is no stoic ruler. The poet shares or seconds his humanity. Although unaware of the pilot’s nightly struggle (i.e., ethical soundness does not always shine through), Aeneas expresses in fine personal pathos, overt sympathy: De son amy plaint beaucoup l’aventure. Làs, il te fault, ô pauvre Palinure, Trompé du ciel et de la mer seréne, Coucher tout nu sur la deserte aréne.  (141–4) (He cries greatly over his friend’s fate. Alas, you must, oh poor Palinurus, Fooled by the sky and the calm sea, Lie down naked on the empty shore.)

The only poetic translation chosen for the Recueil de Poësie thus ends with the locus of compassion or pity for a fallen noble servant. The brief planctus, which resembles a modern epitaph, does not convey furious pathos; Aeneas, of course, is no Dido.27 But these majestic and sad lines are also translated into French in the subtle, dignified and attenuated manner germane to Du 27 It can be noted, however, that Dido’s cursing of Aeneas uses terms also employed by Aeneas vis-à-vis Palinurus. Compare the end of Book 5 with Aeneid 4:620: “Sed cadat

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Bellay. Four feminine rhymes containing Ns or nasals and the same lingering /r/ sound first unify the passage; short, simple words flow in a formulation devoid of superlatives or hyperboles, and a slow cadence cradles the closing quatrain. Last but not least, a gentle dissemination of the phonemes of the name Palinure unifies these lines, mimicking the unburied body’s horrid destiny: first prey to the sea and then to the people of the hostile shore, having no resting place.28 These parting lines also remind the reader of Man’s first and last states according to Scripture, that is, nudity and dust.29 Such poetic expansion, along with the tragic irony at play, results in a philosophical, more than psychological or emotional, form of pathos. Such is the pathos of the sacrificial victim, secret pharmakos and pioneer casualty of the war in Italy, whose remains, Book 6 belatedly tells us, will soil the land to be conquered before the elect people even touch it.30 A victim of “the winds of reversal, this true and tragic pilot becomes the favouring wind which brings his people home.”31 A second, again: it is he who without glory supports, aids and delivers. La Mort de Palinure thus lyrically celebrates and dramatizes the virtues of loyal constancy and friendly (in this case, princely) care, while exposing human vulnerability in the face of blinding forces and baleful deceit, as represented by the contingent and capricious support of deities – Neptune, in this instance, answering Venus’ plea. Palinurus falls, but Aeneas fails to see why; both are toys of the gods.32

ante diem, mediaque inhumatus harena” ([may he] but perish before his time and lie unburied on a lonely strand). 28 Or is it meant to evoke Orpheus? The poetry of the passage foreshadows the fate of Palinurus’ body, washed ashore, murdered, then thrown back into the water (6:359–62). It also anticipates the onomastic allusio of 6:360–2, the wind resonating in palin-ouros (see note 44). Let us remember that Orpheus was ripped to shreds by the furious Maenads; the sea carried his head and lyre to Lesbos, while other remains were scattered and buried on separate lands. 29 Cf. “dust to dust,” after Genesis 3:19 (“donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris” [thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return]) (Vulgate and Douay-Rheims translation). 30 Z. Philip Ambrose unearths this schema by recalling a breach in mythological ancestry: Iasian Palinurus must die in order to save the Dardanians (“The Etymology and Genealogy of Palinurus,” The American Journal of Philology, 101 [1980]: 449–57, p. 456.) 31 Ambrose, “The Etymology and Genealogy of Palinurus,” p. 454. The adjective secundus interestingly applies to favourable winds in Latin. 32 Let us not forget that baleful gods and deluded mortals, craft, foes and guile, appear every step of the way in the Aeneid (in the first half, at least).

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The Seductive Monstrum, the Wandering Soul, and the Transient Empire “Pour t’abuser” / “charmer tes yeux”: a fatal seduction is pointed out in the passage pitying Palinurus (96–9). The concentration of terms such as “doulx,” “coulant,” “allechez,” “oblivieux,” “faulx dormir” and “repos” – higher in Du Bellay’s rendition – creates an atmosphere of subjugation through fatal slumber (already tainted by the Styx and Lethe waters, moreover, in Virgil’s verse). The pilot was haplessly robbed of his very excellence, which relied on the practised awareness of darkly deceptive (or omen-bearing) appearances, that is, precisely what the Romans called the monstrum.33 The seduction of Slumber is foreshadowed by the seemingly calm sea, the monstrum also announcing the figure of the sirens: “Veulx-tu donq’ que j’ignore / La mer paisible, et ses doulx flots encore? / Que je me fie à ce fier monstre ici?” (110–11), says Palinurus. A rich web of deceptive appearances and flawed assumptions structures the Virgilian narrative; Du Bellay’s translation emphasizes this schema, along with the pathos and ambivalence of the situation. At the level of prophetic narrative, Palinurus appears to be the one sacrificial victim announced by Neptune, the last sufferer that will guarantee a safe voyage toward the promised land. But the narrative structure is more complex given what is reserved for the Underworld sequence in Book 6. In the Aeneid, the death of Palinurus is a narrative in two halves, one altering the interpretation of the other, especially the circumstances and meaning of the pilot’s death and the judgment attached to his actions and his lord’s reactions. (And Du Bellay did translate both parts of the story.) Due in part to a change in focus, Aeneid 5 (779–871) narrated in the third person (in which the empathizing poet speaks and echoes Aeneas’ sorrow) differs from Aeneid 6 (337–83) (568–652 in Du Bellay’s translation), narrated in the first person (in which Palinurus corrects and completes the story). The very understanding of the shipwrecked helmsman’s sacrifice is thus unstable, shifting and unresolved, to some degree. The perception and interpretation of the pilot’s destiny itself is tied to deceptive appearances, as though the narrative structure itself partly exemplified the monstrum. The mission of the pilot and the ethical role of the second are defined by the possession of an acutely vigilant mind. The moral theme of perilous slumber, blindness, or oblivion in the face of Fortune’s tricks pervades Du Bellay’s work, including the 1549 (Horatian) Vers lyriques, L’Olive and the original Recueil de Poësie.34 The challenge is to follow the adage, Somnus

33 The Latin noun monstrum, i (n.), generally meaning “a warning from the gods,” including prodigies, comes from moneo, ere: to remind, warn, predict. 34 Fortune is, in iconography, traditionally winged, as is Slumber in our poem – i.e., also bearing a deceptive resemblance to the soaring, virtuous Platonic soul.

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absit ab oculis (Be sleep far from your eyes) i.e. to avoid Palinurus’ plight.35 In the œuvre, such a motif unfolds at a moral level (the belief in personal supremacy or glory), a spiritual level (the flesh blindly enabling libidines) and a political level (the illusion of definite dominion). The poet even conflates Somnus and Sopor (distinct in the original): both are called “le Sommeil” and darkly connoted in his translations.36 This conflation of mind-numbing forces is justified in the Palinurus episode by the nearby home of the sirens (132) – vanquished by either Ulysses or Orpheus the poet, the legend varies – and their “haultx rochers jadis pleins de dangers / Et blanchissants d’ossements estrangers” (high rocks formerly full of dangers / And white with the bones of foreigners) (133–4). As elsewhere (La Deffence, et illustration; Antiquitez), the message to the francs/French descendants of Troy, although implicit, is clear: Never again be enslaved by any siren song, especially that of Antiquity, although sirens keep morphing and seducing us. Even once the sirens are vanquished and the monstrum is no longer trusted, Slumber or some other spellbinding force can still descend upon the best of pilots. Even a chosen ship might go adrift. In the context of a propagandistic, self-promoting, Gallican collection addressed to the sister of a monarch still holding on to the fantasy of a French empire, the heroic, touching, drifting and hieratic fate of the pilot complicates if not undermines the issue of translatio imperii with the ideas of seduction, uncertainty and ethical and memorial responsibility. Figurative language further actualizes and problematizes the image of the sacrificed second. In strict Christian etiology, the sacrifice of the son or the image, the substitute for the Lord of all things, was accomplished once and for all by Christ. In this famous episode, Neptune gives in to Venus and expresses his “bon vouloir” (good will) to “reprimer / Telles fureurs du ciel et de la mer” (impede / such fury of the sky and sea) (37–8); he will ward off storms. But he prophesies – which is distinct from demanding or claiming – an innocent sacrificial victim, one sole hostia enabling Aeneas’ fleet to safely reach the “port d’Averne” (58), the gateway to the Underworld: Un seul sans plus dans la mer perira Un seul sans plus pour le reste mourra.  (59–60) (One, and no more, will die at sea, One, and no more, will die to save the rest.) 35 “Somnus absit ab oculis”: Erasmus, Adagia II:viii:38 (uttered by the character of Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds). On Du Bellay’s exploitation of the Adages, see MarieDominique Legrand, “Les Adages d’Érasme au sein des Regrets de Joachim Du Bellay,” Du Bellay, autour des Antiquités de Rome et des Regrets (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris, 1994), pp. 65–77. 36 Line 95 in La Mort de Palinure, and in Du Bellay’s Book 6: “Le Sommeil, le germain de la Mort” (Slumber, the cousin of Death) (470, p. 358) (translating 6:278’s “Sopor”).

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The four-syllable anaphora turns the still-epic decasyllable into a mallet hammering out archaic fates. Yet the formulation cannot help but evoke the Christic sacrifice, all the more so since Neptune is called “le Pere” (the Father) in the next line (61) and the good news pleases Venus “cœur joyeux” (62). In a poetic stance most faithful to Virgil’s, figurative shimmers inhabit Du Bellay’s text, always under the auspices of subtle allusion rather than univocal allegory, of adaptation rather than literal rendition. In the first part of the pagan myth, no one is aware of the Olympusimposed sacrifice, and nothing singles it out to Aeneas, who has had to suffer the loss of others.37 The ideological or spiritual gap between pagan and Christian sacrifices and translationes can feed upon this narrative discrepancy. Aeneas is taken by surprise and forced to become his own pilot after seeing the ship “err[ing]” (137) due to the loss of its “gouverneur” (140).38 How can the Trojan steer a ship lacking its rudder? This lack of verisimilitude emphasizes the supernatural forces pushing the ship onward, Aeneas fully embracing his leadership but possessing only illusory agency.39 Unknowing, he mourns and eulogizes a tragically fallen friend, while the latter’s assumed debility is an illusion. Whereas the original text underscores Aeneas’ mildly reproachful misreading of the accident, saying his pilot gave in, too confident in the calm sea, Du Bellay chooses a more pathetic and redeeming wording, suggesting victimhood: “trompé du ciel et de la mer seréne” (143), keeping the uncanny homophony between “seréne” (calm) and “syrenes” (sirens). Besides, trompé is slightly ambiguous: was it error or deceit? Was it a more passive (Palinurus’ weakness) or active (Slumber’s undercover attack) form of deception that was the cause of the tragedy?40 The passing of the character itself is transient, gradated and scattered, diffused in time and space. Firmly holding the helm through countless nights and storms, with his feet on the deck and his head in the skies, brought from Troy to Sicily and from 37 Creuse, Anchises, Misenus and Caieta are among loved ones lost in the first part, Aeneid 1–6. 38 Gyas, in contrast, threw his prudent pilot Menoetes overboard out of his eagerness to win the ship race (5:160–82). Eve Adler, in Virgil’s Empire: Political Thought in the Aeneid (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), points out that the image of the cityship with its pilot overboard is developed in Plato’s Republic 6 (488a–489d), to illustrate the idea of a conspiracy to overthrow the pilots/philosophers. To Adler, Gyas’ Chimaera follows Plato’s model (the pilot’s role being seemingly subordinate yet primary), contrary to the “unorthodox outcome of the Palinurus episode” (p. 289), in which destiny dispels “the Siren song of science” (p. 291). Other sea-wrecked characters lacking a funeral are Palaemon (5:823), and Leucaspis and Orontes (6:333–6), Elpenor being the intertextual, Odyssean, model. 39 At one point, Aeneas is actually depicted sleeping by the stern, which Mercury tells him is hazardous behaviour, given Dido’s mad intent; this instantly wakes him up (4:554–73). 40 “O nimium caelo et pelago confise sereno” (Ah, too trustful in the calm of sky and sea) (Aeneid 5:870).

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the bleak banks of the Acheron to the blissful Elysian Fields – which Du Bellay hopes to reach in his Regrets – tossed from one shore to another via the journeying hero’s ship, drifting waves and an oracle, Palinurus is a strikingly and painfully transient figure. The poetic evocation of translatio that structures Virgil’s work becomes embodied in his guise, made corporeal and emotional. In the first five books of the Aeneid, he is both a discreet anchoring image and a passing omen of vulnerability, both reliable and all-too-human.41 Sacrificed for the community, hero or martyr, pawn or intercessor, Palinurus embodies a problematic form of translatio in many senses. The gods say he must die in order for Aeneas’ mission to succeed. What can a Christian humanist – and uneasy poet such as Du Bellay, mindful of the seductions of Antiquity – think of this ‘transactional’ version of sacrifice and translation? For those wary of simplistic allegory, isn’t this all a series of senseless tradeoffs, especially from the point of view of ethics? The tensions at work in the peculiar choice of this Virgilian episode – placed among episodes featuring unrewarded virtuous servants in the Recueil de Poësie – seem to expose a resistance to the Roman model of empire and glorious posterity.42 Palinurus’ very name is the locus of etymological contradictions in the Alexandrian tradition. It links seafaring, resistance, contrary winds and nautical casualties. The name’s uncertain etymology refers to palin for ‘return’ and ouros for ‘favourable wind,’ but can also mean ‘wandering vision.’43 According to Michael Paschalis, “the resistance of ‘Palinurus’ has its seat in Wakefulness (ouros) and Memory (palin),” which Sleep and Lethe are apt to counter.44 Philip Ambrose shows that the name was widely associated with contrary or shifting winds – fitting for a pilot and a victim of Fortune.45 One 41 Palinurus appears alternately alert and hapless, especially in Book 3, which is filled with monsters and wanderings. An explicitly blinding storm (3:202–4) prevents him from seeing the stars and keeping the ship’s course, foreshadowing his death. He is most efficient when the winds and stars are out (3:513–20); when faced with the emergency of nearby Charybdis, he swiftly swings the prow (3:562). Steadfast at the beginning of Book 5, he nonetheless fears Neptune (5:11–14) but believes in following Fortune (5:22) and heads towards Sicily, since the winds have shifted (5:17–18, a reference to the etymology of his name – see below). 42 See Quint’s (Epic and Empire, part 1) argument on the “loser’s epic” (romance and resistance to empire) displaying the cyclical order of fortune while promoting the individual heroism of Ulysses, rather than the communal piety of Aeneas. Yet Du Bellay’s translation constructs no self-sacrifice on the part of Aeneas. Fratantuono shows that Virgil’s narrative avoids “any indulgence in a triumphal celebration of Rome’s future,” see Fratantuono, Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil’s Aeneid, p. 158. 43 A favourable wind, as noted above, was called secundus in Latin. 44 Michael Paschalis, Virgil’s Aeneid: Semantic Relations and Proper Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 201. Ouros suggests a tension between ‘watcher’ and ‘fair wind,’ and palin between ‘memory’ and ‘return,’ the return voyage to Italy (Paschalis, Virgil’s Aeneid, p. 202). 45 This motif is daintily omnipresent in Book 5, and recalled in 6:362, beautifully translated by Du Bellay: “Ores mon corps sur les ondes sejourne, / Ores le vent au rivage

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of Octavian’s hard-won naval battles took place off of Cape Palinurus, also known for its capricious winds.46 The links between the literally dejected pilot and notions of fate/fortune, stewardship to the dead and maritime loss stand out. Although Henri II is no Augustus, his imperial aspirations liken him to the legendary ruler, and Du Bellay’s mediated voice subtly warns Henri the second (second in name, in time and in greatness to François Ier) against the foreseeable cost of empire, and its transient, arcane and potentially mournful nature when granted.47 The poet is there both to divulge and to dispel dysphoric visions of empire. In his Regrets, Du Bellay’s narrative persona first appears pathetically sacrificed (exile) and then in the end heroically self-rescued (return), which evokes Odysseus’ story, but not that alone. The perils of the Italian sea are endured and overcome, the homeland is found (back) and a perilous catabasis is replaced by a potential anabasis. In the personal journey of the Regrets, it is as though the lessons of the Palinurus episode are incorporated into an ethical – and decidedly French – personal epic, linking the individual and the political, if not the spiritual, and initiating a shift of the national epic toward a rewriting of the second Iliadic, or conquering part, of Virgil’s Aeneid, as recast in indigenous and ethical terms by a pioneer persona.

Better than Palinurus: the Poet and the Prince Among other instances in Du Bellay’s works, this Virgilian translation subverts the pedagogical tradition linking epic and empire, perhaps partly under the Homeric influence instilled by Muret and Dorat, Joachim’s early masters, as well as the allegorical Virgilian tradition protracted by Landino among others.48 According to Quint, Odysseus embodies individual heroism, me tourne” (Now my body lies amidst the waves / Now the wind pushes me toward the shore) (Le Sixieme Livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 363, lines 613–14). See Ambrose, “The Etymology and Genealogy of Palinurus,” pp. 453–4. 46 James O’Hara (in Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil’s Aeneid [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990]) remarks that Notus stirs the storm that kills Orontes; south winds and Aras, i.e. ‘altars,’ form an “etymological signpost” (pp. 20–1) that associates Palinurus with sacrifice – a destiny shared with Misenus, whose funeral precedes the descent into the Underworld (6:212–35). To O’Hara – in a reading proposed by Servius – sacrificial victims buried in the waves forestall the death of Aeneas himself, who died young, contrary to Odysseus, drowned in the Numicus (p. 110). 47 One should recall that Aeneid 5 is dominated by the image of the dead father, as well as ritual and sacrificial piety. 48 See Philip Ford, De Troie à Ithaque: Réception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2007) and Marc Bizer, An Epic Longing: Homer and the Politics of Authority in Renaissance France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). On the influence of Cristoforo Landino’s commentary of the Aeneid, see MacPhail, “Facilis descensus Averno,” pp. 230–3.

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a threat for the Augustinian construct of a selfless hero and nationhood.49 Du Bellay does not identify with one single heroic figure. Rather, he dramatizes the poet’s role through multiple and partial personae. Self-conscious and allusive, multi-layered, and at times facetious, his use of allegorical epic precludes univocal identification. Defined as a friend to the ruler-to-be before his unjust death, Palinurus partly epitomizes what the young poet could be to the young king. The monarch Henri II is himself a second as successor to a prime, solar sovereign – François Ier, regretted in Recueil de Poësie 15 and Regrets 190, which sceptically questions the possibility of a translatio without him, or without peace – and brother to a second, quasi-messianic, princess (Marguerite de Valois, second Marguerite after François Ier’s sister). On the surface, moreover, both Joachim and Henri boast a conquering mindset, and are publicly compared to another party who sets the standard (François Ier and Pierre de Ronsard, respectively). Offered while the poet was heading to Rome (1553) and echoing the young monarch’s ambition, the Recueil de Poësie strives to engage, at least in tone and address, the translatio imperii. Yet Du Bellay’s treatment of Palinurus’ plight and the corollary notion of a transient empire and unsure translatio undermine any univocal propaganda. A new form of Empire or Monarchy is envisaged, its actors knowingly subject to Flesh and Fortune’s injustices, downfalls and uncertainties. Christian scepticism, French valour and poetic thought converge in the unsettling but noble shift induced. Through the compassionate choral homage voiced by the narrator and the hero in La Mort de Palinure, Du Bellay conjoins the poet and the prince’s affective responses to the pilot’s misfortune. This meaningful rapprochement also resounds as a counterintuitive one, since the poet was addressing a bellicose monarch. Proxy personae, patterns of untold valour and a moderate pathos revealing the highest virtue recur, and reinforce the poet’s endeavour towards a new, higher form of translatio. Even though Palinurus’ name appears only in the poet’s translations of Virgil’s epic, several sonnets in the Regrets contain allusive references to the episode. Often transformative (and competitive towards Ronsard), they sketch out the virtuous role of the poet in the nascent French nation-state and national literature, and the political future of the somewhat wavering monarchy under Henri II. The Francs have long been wary of the perils of seafaring, and yet the Angevine rebuilds his personal myth, along with the French noble ethos, by casting ethical dramatizations of the dangerously alluring, arcane and unfamiliar monstrum, and ways to deal with it.

49 See Quint, Epic and Empire, “Palinurus and the Sacrifice of the Hero,” pp. 83–96. George Tucker argues in The Poet’s Odyssey that Du Bellay is closer to Odysseus.

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In the Regrets (1558), a sort of personal and figurative Odyssey or halfAeneid, Du Bellay re-enacts the rhetorico-moral topoi of constancy in the face of fortune and adversity as an adjuvant of wizened heroism or active wisdom. He is now experienced at sea. Empirical ethical schemas are dramatized, the ideas of praxis and trial taking on a reflexive dimension in a web of intra- and intertextual ironies. The third sonnet, the first narrative piece in the Regrets, introduces the ambiguous twist and change of course that initiated the personal tribulations about to be recounted: N’estant, comme je suis, encor’ exercité Par tant et tant de maulx au jeu de la Fortune, Je suivois d’Apollon la trace non commune, [Mais à présent … ] Une adresse j’ay pris beaucoup plus opportune A qui se sent forcé de la necessité.50 (Not having, as I am now, been shaped By so many ills as part of Fortune’s game, I followed Apollo’s unusual path [But now … ] I have taken a course of action better suited To those forced by necessity.)

Dragged away from the path of virtue seemingly followed by Ronsard, Du Bellay “exercité” has no choice but to adapt. “Fortune,” “soucy” and “necessité” now governing his life, he has to tread the beaten path, the seemingly easy path of “vice.” Divine furor and the arduous quest for virtue seem to remain the sole advantage of Ronsard, the poet in Apollo’s good graces but whose ascent also appears both passive and gruelling. At the outset of the Regrets as well as the 1552 Translations, lies the (deceptive) image of a depleted or deflected Sibylline voice (see Regrets 3 and 7) reminiscent of Aeneid 6. Full of ambivalent allusions to the Virgilian catabasis and echoes of Landino’s moral commentary thereof – as beautifully shown by Eric MacPhail – the collection stages an improbable return (palin, return) and a ponderous trial. The reader should in fine be able to judge how the poet dealt with it. How difficult indeed for those who cherish it to wander off the path of virtue, to knowingly confront the route of “vice”; such error befits the blind. How difficult, above all, to regain the hard way – that is, with greater merit in the end – prudence and fortitude over Fortune. Such is the truer path of virtue, to painfully confront contingency, and the elect few are granted

50 Du Bellay, Les Regrets, Œuvres poétiques, edd. Aris and Joukovsky, v. 1, s. 3, lines 1–3 and 7–8.

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rare returns from hell.51 This reasoning closely follows Aeneid  6:125–31, translated twice by Du Bellay, with a clear ethical slant.52 Ronsard on the other hand, catapulted directly into the fields of glory, might well be the one running astray, faring too easily. Du Bellay’s taste for paradox and irony hints at an inner heroism, stamped with experience as opposed to election, with hidden labour more than thunderous inspiration; habitus, as opposed to furor. Aristotelian prudence (phronesis) and a sense of judicious opportunity (kairos) are enacted before a figurative maritime backdrop in Regrets 56. Addressing Baïf, who had himself undergone a serious ordeal (1), the poet claims prudence and constancy. Sometimes, he asserts, “Il faut caler la voile” (it is necessary to strike sail) rather than “combatre l’orage” (fight the storm), in order precisely to “combat[tre] le malheur” (fight against misfortune). According to the allegory of navigation recast in this sonnet, such temporizing does not preclude the noble resistance befitting a virtuous pilot. The poet calls neither for reckless struggle nor cowardly surrender, but rather the virtuous golden mean: Baif, qui, comme moy, prouves l’adversité, Il n’est pas tousjours bon de combatre l’orage, Il fault caler la voile, et de peur du naufrage, Ceder à la fureur de Neptune irrité. Mais il ne fault aussi par crainte et vilité S’abandonner en proye: il fault prendre courage,  (lines 1–6) … Quant à moy, je proteste Que je veulx desormais Fortune despiter, Et que s’elle entreprend le me faire quitter, Je le tiendray (Baif) et fust-ce de ma reste.  (lines 11–14) (Baif, who, like me, experiences adversity, It is not always a good thing to fight the storm, It is necessary to strike sail, and, for fear of shipwreck, Give in to angry Neptune’s fury. But one must not, however, out of fear or cowardliness Give oneself up as prey. One must find courage, … As for me, I protest That I want henceforth to overcome Fortune, And that if she attempts forces me to let go, I will hold out [Baif], whatever it costs)

51 For Griffin, Les Regrets enact a reaction against the wheel of Fortune, a satirical, lowly and befallen condition occasioning the exercise of virtue (Coronation of the Poet, Chapter 5). 52 Des miseres et fortunes humaines, (Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, edd. Aris and Joukovsky, v. 1, pp. 88–9, lines 25–36); Du Bellay, Le Sixieme livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, lines 216–26.

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This self-affirmed inner heroism requires the resistance of external forces, to overcome (“despiter”) “Fortune” by not quitting. The final tercet could well have been uttered by Palinurus “au gouvernail fiché,” steadfastly refusing to trust the Neptunian monstrum or to let go, both in his speech (La Mort de Palinure 108–14) and his fall. “Je le tiendray (Baif) et fust-ce de ma reste” (Regrets 56:14) likens the poet’s tribulation to that of the epic helmsman Palinurus but, contrary to that of the pagan sacrificial victim abducted by Neptune, the poet’s sacrifice here is neither fatal nor externally imposed. Du Bellay’s ‘accidental’ virtue implies awareness, resistance and effort. Moderation trumps epic heroism and tragic immolation; a salutary inner struggle requires humble adjustment (“Et fault faire vertu de la necessité” [And necessity must give rise to virtue]) (Regrets 56:8).53 This scenario started unfolding in relation to the grand rival, Ronsard. In Regrets 17, where the underworld stands for courtly life, Ronsard resembles the unburied shades, long forlorn before finally being granted passage and a gulp of Lethe. While Du Bellay is still begging Charon for passage for lack of a sufficient bribe, Ronsard made it across and could drink Lethe “Après avoir longtemps erré sur le rivage” (After having wandered at length on the banks) (1), which likens him to the unburied as opposed to the impecunious, as explained by the Sibyl in Aeneid 6:325.54 He who resembles the wrecked Palinurus on the surface – Du Bellay’s persona, in this instance – is in fact the one who is spared the ambivalent gift of oblivion, and, being poor, incidentally recalls the doctrine of the reversibility of merits, the gateway to beatitude, the Christian Elysium. As this subtle memento shows, Du Bellay is on the side of the virtuous and the blessed. Likewise, Regrets 16 voices a discreet warning to Ronsard, who hardly ever ventured out of court. This crafty sonnet implies that Du Bellay, knocked about in the treacherous sea of his Roman tribulations, fared better than Palinurus, or for that matter, Ronsard’s Francus, who at that point looked like he would never leave port.55 This, read in allegorical terms, leaves Ronsard stuck in the realm of the flesh and its cyclical, blind and unchallenged desires and vices, and cuts him off from both the sea of active life

53 Aeneas does not represent such meritorious heroism since the gods decide to open or shut his eyes and ears, as in the parting scene with Dido at 4:440: “fata obstant, placidasque viri deux obstruit auris” (Fate withstands, and heaven seals his kindly, mortal ears). 54 Allusion pointed out by MacPhail, “Facilis descensus Averno,” pp. 237–8. Select verbal allusions reinforce the narrative allusion, e.g., “tend[re] les mains” (reach out one’s hands) (Du Bellay, Les Regrets, Œuvres poétiques, edd. Aris and Joukovsky, v. 1, p. 17, line 6; and Du Bellay, Le Sixieme livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 360, line 531). 55 MacPhail presents the Regrets as “a preemptive parody of Ronsard’s projected imitation of the Aeneid (“Facilis descensus Averno,” p. 1).

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and the (newfound, but not devoid of trials) land of contemplative life and virtue.56 Regrets 16 weaves a pragmatic epic strand, destined to demonstrate Joachim’s superior merit and the effective, albeit often inglorious, virtue of the second. You won’t survive the Roman sea, he tells his rival as a seasoned navigator, unless you know how to handle any wind (palin-ouros) like me: “Si tu ne sçais nager d’une voile à tout vent,” as the concetto puts it (14). And Du Bellay manages to escape the monstrum: Si celuy qui s’appreste à faire un long voyage, Doit croire cestuy là qui a ja voyagé, Et qui des flots marins longuement oultragé, Tout moite et degoutant s’est sauvé du naufrage, Tu me croiras (Ronsard) bien que tu sois plus sage, Et quelque peu encor (ce croy-je) plus aagé, Puis que j’ay devant toy en ceste mer nagé, Et que desja ma nef descouvre le rivage.  (lines 1–8) [Car … ] icy bien souvent … Trompé du chant pippeur des monstres de Sicile Pour Carybde eviter tu tomberas en Scylle, Si tu ne sçais nager d’une voile à tout vent.  (lines 11–14) (If he who sets out on a long journey Must believe the man who has already journeyed, And who, for a long time tried by the sea, All wet and dripping saved himself from shipwreck, You will believe me [Ronsard] even though you are wiser, And even, I believe, a little bit older, Because I sailed before you in this sea, And already my ship can see the shore. [For … ] here, very often … Fooled by the deceitful song of Sicily’s monsters To avoid Charybdis you will run into Scylla, If you do not know how to sail in all winds.)

The epistolary sonnet warns Ronsard (“je t’advertis,” “tu me croiras”), the elder (“plus aagé”), ironically turning him into a novice or a follower. Although “longuement outragé” by unrelenting adversity, Du Bellay saves himself from a shipwreck: “Tout moite et degoutant s’est sauvé du naufrage” (4; the word choice directly echoes Palinurus’ “tout degouteux,” almost safe, then “trebuch[é]” again, in Du Bellay’s translation of Aeneid 6).57 In

56 Landino, Disputationes Camaldulenses (1473), quoted by MacPhail, “Facilis descensus Averno,” pp. 232–3. 57 Du Bellay, Le Sixieme livre, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 363, lines 607 and 610. See note 54 for a similar lexical allusion.

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a balancing act typical of Du Bellay’s poetics, the image combines physical humiliation with a show of fortitude – admirable self-rescue.58 The poet can endure and overcome the gales of Fortune. Having pulled himself out of the waves, the Angevin not only surpasses Ronsard, who is passively safe and sound at court, but differentiates himself from Palinurus, who is unable to resist being taken by slumber and the waves and then being murdered ashore, with word choices such “degoutant” emphasizing the allusive parallel. Like him, Joachim exposed himself as a pioneer (“devant toy en ceste mer nagé,” “Ja,” “desja”), and he succeeded. In contrast, it is Ronsard who might end up mesmerized by the sirens, called deceiving monsters in this sonnet (“trompé du chant pippeur des monstres de Sicile,” Regrets 26:11), just as Palinurus was thought to have been fooled by the lull of the sea monstrum in the Recueil de Poësie (“trompé du ciel et de la mer seréne”), while the sirens were no longer harmful. Such dramatization of prudential superiority over the first-in-rank, the Prince of Poets, authorizes the benign yet triumphant irony of the second, proving to the poet’s circle and to the king that Du Bellay was in effect ahead of the game.59 Who better suited then to further and second a prudent, inherently French, form of translatio? * Through the poetic fictions and complex personae examined in “La Mort de Palinure” and the Regrets, Du Bellay thus promotes an ethos of the indispensable ‘second,’ both personal and applicable to the new national mindset and translatio studii advocated in the Deffence, et illustration. Second to the Prince of Poets, the poet beats Ronsard on his own turf precisely by straying from it and risking his life at sea, confronting the monstrum of deceptions and temptations; and hence proves fit for counselling kings. By letting them care, as does pious Aeneas, and causing them to respect and mourn their valiant aides, this ambitious poet attempts to steer rulers – beyond forceful conquest or uncertain and hazardous translatio imperii ill-adapted to their times – into appreciating moderate if not hidden feats, including those of poets and artists. The care for Palinurus and the staged ability to surpass him conjoin self-promotion with a more ethical, if not spiritual, charitable yet valiant form of supremacy fit for Du Bellay, the Gallic nation and a Christian empire. Echoing yet complicating the allegorical tradition attached to the Aeneid – with Guillaume Budé’s transitus largely superseding Virgil’s translatio – Du Bellay complicates patterns of service and sacrifice, in keeping

“Bref, lui au moins s’est mouillé” comes to mind, in French. And effectively deserved a safe and glorious return (In portu navigare, says the Erasmian adage). 58 59

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with ­Christian and philosophical eschatology, whereby fortune and providence differ from Roman fate and destiny. “Et qui sçait si les derniers / Se feront point les premiers,” (And who knows whether those who lag behind / Will not wind up being first?) said he who first chose to remain second.60

60 “Les deux Marguerites,” Du Bellay, Œuvres de l’invention de l’auteur, Œuvres poétiques, edd. Aris and Joukovsky, v. 1, p. 243, lines 83–4. “So the last shall be first, and the first last,” says Matthew 20:16.

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Du Bellay’s Dido and the Translation of Nation Todd W. Reeser In the preface to his 1552 collection of translations from Virgil, Ovid and Ausonius, Joachim Du Bellay describes his translation project in terms that cannot but evoke his Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse published just three years earlier: “je veux bien encor’ donner à nostre langue quelques miens ouvrages, qui seront … les derniers fruicts de nostre jardin” (I should still like to offer up to our language some of my works which will be … the latest fruits from our garden).1 In order to meet with “plus grande faveur” (greater favour) he will start “non par œuvres de mon invention, mais par la translation de quatriesme livre de l’Eneide” (not with works of my own invention, but with the translation of the fourth Book of the Aeneid) (p. 249). This statement to “encor’ donner à nostre langue quelques miens ouvrages” and the idea of helping cultivate France’s garden suggests that this translation continues his illustration of the French language.2 Indeed, if one did not know better, one might think that translation was an integral element of Du Bellay’s project of illustrating the French language. But he famously critiques translations, especially of ancient poetic texts, writing in Chapters 5 and 6 of the Deffence, et illustration, for instance: “Celuy donques 1 Joachim Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1991), v. 6, pp. 248–9. Further parenthetical references from this edition are to this text, unless otherwise indicated. I have also consulted the original edition: Le quatriesme livre de l’Eneide de Vergile, traduict en vers francoys: La complaincte de Didon à Enée, prinse d’Ovide. Autres œuvres de l’invention du translateur (Paris: Vincent Certenas, 1552). 2 In his preface, Du Bellay makes the contrast between the fertility of translation and the infertility of poetry: “le champ de poëzie est infertil, & peu fidele à son laboureur, auquel le plus souvent il ne rapporte que ronses & espines” (the field of poetry is infertile and rather unfaithful to the farmer, to whom it mostly offers up only brambles and thorns) (p. 247). On the national garden, see “Garden of Letters: Toward a Theory of Literary Nationhood,” Chapter 1 in Timothy Hampton, Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 1–34. See also Colette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France, trans. Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 292–7.

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qui voudra faire œuvre digne de prix en son vulgaire, laisse ce Labeur de traduyre, principalement les Poëtes, à ceux, qui de chose laborieuse, et peu profitable, j’ose dire encor’ inutile, voyre pernicieuse à l’Accroissement de leur Langue, emportent à bon droict plus de modestie, que de gloyre” (To the writer who wishes to produce a work worthy of laurels for his vernacular I say: leave this labour of translating, especially of translating Poets, for those who from a laborious undertaking, and lacking in profit, I would even say useless or even dangerous for the Growing of our Language, rightly take more modesty than glory).3 In the preface to his translations, the Pléiade poet himself admits this seeming contradiction: “Je n’ay pas oublié ce qu’autrefois j’ay dict des translations poëtiques: mais je ne suis si jalouzement amoureux de mes premieres apprehensions, que j’aye honte de les changer quelquefois” (I have not forgotten what I said previously about translating poetry. However, I am not so jealously in love with my previous opinions that I cannot sometimes change them) (p. 251). “[J]e ne suis pas Stoïque jusques là” (My stoicism does not reach so far), he adds (p. 251).4 Something has indeed changed, something that explains why Du Bellay carries out this major translation of Book 4 of the Aeneid, alongside renderings of Ovid’s Heroides 7 and Ausonius’ epigrams.5 Scholars have proposed various explanations as to why he does this volte-face. The negative comments on translation in the Deffence, et illustration could be taken with a grain of salt since his comments are, as Robert Griffin points out, “so coloured by invective against the school of Marot and its defenders that we cannot take them as unqualified and absolute literary principles.”6 Margaret Wells emphasizes that Du Bellay made a distinction between two types of translation. The first (negative) type, often termed traduction, is predicated on excessive wordfor-word correspondence. The second type, translation, implies a compensation approach, as explained in the preface to the collection of translations. Without corrupting the sense of the ancient author, what the translator could not “rendre d’assez bonne grace en ung endroict” (graciously render in one place), he could “s’efforce[r] de le recompenser en l’autre” (strive to render it elsewhere) (p. 250). This moderate approach, Wells suggests, is the one that 3 Joachim Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. JeanCharles Monferran (Geneva: Droz, 2007), p. 91. Further parenthetical references to this text will be to this edition. 4 This Stoic reference may be an auto-response to his statement in the first chapter of the Deffence, et illustration where he attacks French people who “deprisent et rejetent d’un sourcil plus que Stoïque, toutes choses ecrites en François” (despise and reject with a more than Stoic wink of the eye anything written in French) (p. 76). 5 This is not the only translation of his career: he published a translation of Book 6 of the Aeneid in 1560, for instance, and Louis Le Roy included a copious selection of his translations of Greek and Latin passages in his 1558 edition of Plato’s Symposium. 6 Robert Griffin, Coronation of the Poet: Joachim Du Bellay’s Debt to the Trivium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 84–5.

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Du Bellay tends to employ in his own translations, including his rendition of Aeneid 4 in which he oscillates between textual fidelity on the one hand and the reproduction of the sense of the text on the other.7 Valerie Worth studies the technical aspects of Du Bellay’s Virgil translation in relation to previous translations such as Octovien de Saint-Gelais’ literal translation, with a focus on what she calls his “esthétique paraphrastique” (aesthetics of paraphrasis).8 The use of paraphrasis allows Du Bellay to make translation into something akin to imitation, over and beyond the traductions that he bemoans in the Deffence, et illustration.9 While I entirely agree with these various approaches, I would like to consider Du Bellay’s change of heart vis-à-vis translation from a different perspective. What interests me is not so much how faithful or unfaithful Du Bellay’s translation is to the original, nor even the linguistic techniques that Du Bellay employs. Rather, I would like to consider how the matter or content of the translation can be taken as a rather sophisticated statement on the act and role of translation itself. This approach makes sense within the context of Du Bellay in general, since his poetry can often be taken as being about poetry. Moreover, since his Deffence, et illustration theorizes translation at some length, his poetry can then be situated in relation to Renaissance debates about the practice. I am particularly interested in how his Virgil translation, along with other elements of the 1552 edition (especially the preface and translations of Ovid and Ausonius), can be taken as a kind of genre all of its own, beyond simple traduction and thus not incompatible with his negative remarks about translation in the Deffence, et illustration. Ultimately, for me, the meaning of this edition resides in textual interactions among its various elements, the key aspects of which are formed by the semantic links between the translations themselves, between the preface and the translations and between the translations and the original Latin texts. As already suggested by the citation above about his works as the “derniers fruicts de nostre jardin,” I am especially interested in how translation func7 See Margaret B. Wells, “What did Du Bellay Understand by ‘Translation’?” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 16 (1980): 175–85. Wells writes: “In all the translations which Du Bellay undertook, he shunned la fidèle traduction as defined and, indeed, criticized in the Deffence, et illustration and elsewhere, and practiced translation by applying his theory of compensation” (p. 180). 8 Valerie Worth, “‘Cest estranger naturalisé’: Du Bellay Traducteur de Virgile,” La Naissance du monde et l’invention du poème, ed. Jean-Claude Ternaux (Paris: Champion, 1998), pp. 485–95, p. 487. 9 See also Chapter 4 in Dorothy Gabe Coleman, The Chaste Muse: A Study of Joachim Du Bellay’s Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 1980), p. 51, who sees this translation as an “exercice de style” that prefigures his later poetic work. She writes: “He wanted to write but his style still needed polishing; he was fed up with love poetry; he did not know what subject or theme to take; and so, to while away the time, so to speak, he translated Book 4 of the Aeneid.” 

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tions in dialogue with national questions, and the ways in which the text itself reflects on that relation. Through the medium of translation and across the three translations included in the 1552 edition, this series of textual relations affirms and then critiques the Renaissance version of the French nation, as well as its textual representation.

Virgil, Epic and Nation The preface to the collection of translations evokes a terminology of textual and national transmission similar to that of the Deffence, et illustration. Du Bellay has not, he says “contrefaict au naturel les vrays linëamens de Virgile” (created a perfect likeness of Virgil’s lineaments) (p. 250). Rather, he has given him a new nature: “je ne m’en suys du tout si eslongné, qu’au port & à l’accoustrement de cet estranger naturalizé, il ne soit facile de recognoistre le lieu de sa nativité” (I did not indeed stray so far from him that, judging by the demeanour and clothing of this naturalized foreigner, it is not easy to recognize his place of birth) (p. 250). The idea of having rendered Virgil an “estranger naturalizé” directly mirrors the rhetoric of the Deffence, et illustration. The Romans appropriated Greek culture and transplanted it (“en guise de bons Agriculteurs, … l’ont transmuée d’un lieu sauvaige en un domestique” [like good farmers … they transplanted it from a wild place to a domestic one]) to the point that such metaphorical plants appear not “adoptifz, mais naturelz” (adopted, but natural) (p. 81).10 Jean Morel evokes the same link between translating and transplanting in his liminary sonnet for Du Bellay’s translations: “Telle est aussi la Muse ingenieuse / Du doulx-utile Angevin translateur, / Qui ses thezors tirez de maint aucteur / Nous jecte icy d’une main planteureuse” (Such is the ingenious muse / Of the sweet and useful Angevine translator / Who draws treasures from many an author / And throws them to us with a generous hand) (p. 245). For Morel, Du Bellay’s act of translating-transplanting is coded as a process that makes the French happy: “O plus heureuse encor’ la France toute! / Et l’estranger, qui tout ravy l’escoute, / Esmerveillé de telle voix oüyr” (Oh how happy is all of France! / And the foreigner, who listens in ravishment listens / Marvelling to hear such a voice) (p. 245). While also happy, foreigners can only listen to Du Bellay’s Virgil from afar as he has already been adopted and taken root in France’s national garden. Du Bellay’s statement about making Virgil an “estranger naturalizé” can be taken less metaphorically, and more literally, within this context. The whole point of Aeneas’ epic journey is that “il ne soit facile de recongnoistre le lieu 10 For a discussion of the complicated relation between nature and culture in the Deffence, et illustration, see Marcus Keller, “Imitation, Language and Nation in Joachim Du Bellay’s Deffence,” French Studies, 63 (2009): 27–40.

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de sa nativité” (it is not easy to recognize his place of birth), that the Trojan become Roman. The “estranger naturalizé” is not just Virgil, but also Aeneas. In fact, the word “estranger” is repeatedly used in the translation in reference to Aeneas, even though the original Latin phrases vary. Early on in the book, Dido refers to him as “nouvel estranger” (new foreigner) (p. 258) (novus … hospes [new … stranger] [Aeneid 4:10]), and as events do not go well for her, he becomes “[c]e disloyal & moqueur estranger” (this disloyal and mocking stranger) (p. 298) (nostris inluserit advena regnis? [will the intruder mock our realm?] [Aeneid 4:591]) and he and his son become “famille estrangere” (foreign family) (p. 299) (natum … patremque [father and son] [Aeneid 4:605]). The word estranger is also employed in reference to the space that Aeneas seeks in Italy and to those he will meet there: “regnes estrangers” (foreign queens) (p. 283) (regna per undas [Aeneid 4:381]); “une terre & ung peuple estranger” (a foreign land and people) (p. 278) (arva aliena domosque / ignotas [alien lands and homes / unknown] [Aeneid 4:311–12]). In the confrontation scene, Aeneas excuses himself by telling Dido: “On ne doit pas donques nous reprocher, / Si nous voulon’ terre estrange chercher” (One must not, then, blame us / If we want to look for foreign land) (p. 281) (et nos fas extera quaerere regna [and we also have the right to seek out foreign lands] [Aeneid 4:350]). While Virgil’s text and Aeneas are both in a process of moving across, this semantic parallel between preface and translation also sets up a contrast between Du Bellay’s Virgil and Virgil’s Aeneas. The hero of the Aeneid is not – and will not be – an “estranger naturalizé” in Carthage, despite Dido’s best attempts, but in Ausonia. The translated Virgil would be a foreigner in Ausonia, but he is at home in France.11 On one level, the translator, metaphorically speaking, follows in the footsteps of Aeneas. Du Bellay’s coming to translation is articulated as a move away from a youthful past: “je me suis converty à retracer les pas des anciens” (I have given myself over to walking in the path of the Ancients) (p. 248). In this conversion, he has not strayed too much from the text (“je ne m’en suys du tout si eslongné”) (I did not indeed stray so far), but he has strayed some, as his new compensatory approach allows or requires. This moderate 11 This language also mirrors legal and political discourse of the period in which cultural habit and choice of nation were key factors in legal naturalization. For example, people from cultural spaces that had been under French control but lost (e.g. Savoy, Milan) could acquire a “déclaration de naturalité” (declaration of one’s natural rights to be French) which was retroactive and made such people always already French. See Charlotte C. Wells, Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 43. In Chapters 2 and 3, Wells studies at length the question of naturalization in sixteenth-century France. The concept of naturalizing Virgil through translation, then, parallels the contemporary concept that one could be naturalized if one’s habit – including the choice of where one lived – was French. It would not be difficult to imagine Virgilian habit as French and the process of Du Bellay’s translating him as akin to transforming him into a naturalized citizen and effacing a foreign origin.

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textual straying resembles Aeneas’ own narrative straying in Book 4. National construction, for Du Bellay, follows the course allegorized by Virgil, for the movement of epic is also the move toward illustration. That Du Bellay has not “contrefaict au naturel les vrays linëamens de Virgil” is both textual and spatial. Similarly, the move toward illustration in the Deffence, et illustration is described as a spatial and textual journey on the sea: “combien de Mer nous reste encores, avant que soyons parvenuz au Port! Combien le Terme de nostre course est encores loing!” (how much Sea still remains for us before we arrive at our harbour! Still how far off seems the end of our journey!) (p. 177). In his conclusion, Du Bellay writes: “Or sommes nous, la grace à Dieu, par beaucoup de perilz, et de flotz estrangers, renduz au Port, à seureté” (Thus we are, thanks to God, after many perils and foreign waves, offered up to the harbour, safe and sound) (p. 179). Louis Des Masures describes his own work of translation of the Aeneid as a sea voyage, akin to that of Aeneas in the dedicatory poem of his own 1560 translation, which Du Bellay mentions in his preface and for which he writes a liminary poem.12 Subtending much of the translation-transnation connection is the myth of France’s supposed Trojan origins, as in Jean Lemaire de Belges’ Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye (1510–14) and Jean Bouchet’s Les Anciennes et modernes généalogies des roys de France (1527).13 Despite such cultural links between France and Troy, Du Bellay suggests in the Deffence, et illustration, his France is one step beyond Aeneas’ Rome: “Nous avons echappé du millieu des Grecz, et par les Scadrons Romains penetré jusques au Seing de la tant desirée France” (We escaped from amidst the Greeks and through Roman squadrons penetrated right into the bosom of much desired France) (p. 179). For Du Bellay, translatio studii and translatio imperii mean that Aeneas’ journey from Troy can become France’s, at least for a while, but that the textual “pas des anciens” (path of the Ancients) must also be bypassed. With his translation of Aeneid 4, Du Bellay is feeding off the need for a national epic, the “long poëme Françoys” that he calls for in Chapter 5 of the Deffence, et illustration.14 While he wants a “laborieuse Eneide” (laborious 12 Virgil, L’Eneïde de Virgile, trans. Louis Des Masures (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), p. 6. Des Masures makes Charles, the Prince of Lorraine (1543–1608) into a descendant of Aeneas (“Prince sorti de la haulte lignee / De Iuppiter, ayeul du pere Enee” [A Prince born of high lineage / From Jupiter, the ancestor of Father Aeneas] [p. 6]). He also refers to himself as following “la trace de Virgile” (in Virgil’s footsteps) (p. 5). 13 On this topic, see, for instance, Bodo L.O. Richter, “Trojans or Merovingians? The Renaissance Debate over the Historical Origins of France,” Mélanges à la mémoire de Franco Simone (Geneva: Droz, 1983), pp. 111–34; Judy Kem, Jean Lemaire de Belges’s Les illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye: The Trojan Legend in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994); Fantasies of Troy. Classical Tales and the Social Imaginary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edd. Alan Shepard and Stephen D. Powell (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004). 14 On the epic question, see Françoise Charpentier, “Le Désir d’épopée,” Revue de

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Aeneid) (p. 139) to be written in French, his Virgil translation does move in the direction of epic, even as it is in no way an “œuvre de si laborieuse longueur, & quasi de la vie d’un Homme” (work of such labour and length, equal to a whole human life) (p. 140). This crawl toward epic through translation would also explain why he concludes his preface to the translation by evoking Ronsard’s non-existent epic: “nostre poëzie doit esperer je ne sçay quoy plus grand que l’Ilïade” (our poetry must hope for something much greater than the Iliad) (p. 255). With this brief and oblique reference, Du Bellay passes his Aeneid 4 on to Ronsard, whose longer and more epic Franciade will presumably replace it. Du Bellay’s neither-nor text (neither traduction nor long poëme) corresponds to his call for lesser epics in Chapter 5 of the Deffence, et illustration, in which he is as interested in lesser French epics and their worth, as in majestic ones. Not every epic has to be as great as Homer’s or Virgil’s, he writes: “c’est chose honneste, à celuy qui aspire au premier Ranc, demeurer au second, voire au troizieme” (it is quite respectable, if one aspires for first place, to end up second, or even third) (p. 140). Even in Greece and Rome, “on ne laissoit pourtant de louer les inferieures” (praise was not forgotten for those who were not first) (p. 141). If epic and translation are not fully disconnected in the guise of this lesser epic, it may be in part because Du Bellay has not directly rejected Thomas Sebillet’s collapsing of the two genres in his Art poétique françois (1548). In the chapter titled “De la Version,” Sebillet includes his thoughts on the “grand’œuvre” within the context of translation, calling on his reader to undertake such a work by forming himself “au miroir d’Homére et Vergile, comme je seroie bien d’avis, si tu m’en demandois conseil” (in the mirror of Homer and Virgil, as I would indeed think right, were you to ask my opinion).15 This view is possible because for Sebillet, unlike for Du Bellay, translating and imitating are not distinct tasks (“la version n’est rien qu’une imitation” [translation is nothing other than imitation], he writes).16 The translation of Book 4 of the Aeneid can be taken as epic in miniature because it is a tipping point in Aeneas’ physical and psychic movement toward Rome. At the same time, if the focus of the book is taken as Dido’s death, then the translation could be coded as more tragic than epic. Indeed, this is the approach to the episode that Du Bellay’s friend Etienne Jodelle takes in one of the foundational tragedies of the French Renaissance, Didon se sacrifiant (1555–62?). According to René Godenne, Jodelle had Littérature comparée, 4 (1996): 417–26; Michio Peter Hagiwara, French Epic Poetry in the Sixteenth Century: Theory and Practice (The Hague: Mouton, 1972); Timothy Hampton, Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 190–4. 15 Thomas Sebillet, Art poétique françois, edd. Félix Gaiffe and Francis Goyet (Paris: Nizet, 1988), p. 187. 16 Sebillet, Art poétique françois, edd. Gaiffe and Goyet, p. 190.

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Du Bellay’s Virgil translation under his eyes as he worked on the play, thus raising the question of a possible perceived relation between the translation and tragedy.17 As with epic, ancient tragedy was a “genre de Poëmes” (poetic genre) that Du Bellay called to reformulate to illustrate the French language in the Deffence, et illustration: “Quand aux Comedies, et Tragedies, si les Roys, et les Republiqes les vouloint restituer en leur ancienne dignité … je seroy’ bien d’opinion, que tu t’y employasses, et si tu le veux faire pour l’ornement de ta Langue, tu sçais où tu en doibs trouver les Archetypes” (As for comedies and tragedies, if kings and republics wanted to restore them to their formal dignity … I would certainly be of the opinion that you should dedicate yourself to that; and if you want to do this in order to decorate your Language, then you know where you must find the models) (pp. 137–8). But with French tragedy not yet a delineated genre, epic and tragedy exist sideby-side in Du Bellay’s translation, and it is instability that ultimately defines the translation’s relation to genre. Whatever the genre imagined around the Dido episode, the translation as translation is coded in nationalistic terms, as the carrier of a national consciousness. At one point in the text, Du Bellay makes himself into the carrier of the fate of the nation through the figure of Mercury. Aeneas defends his departure to Dido by explaining: “n’aguere’ encor’ le truchement des cieux / Transmis vers moy par le pere des Dieux / (Et l’ung & l’autre à tesmoing j’en appelle) / M’en a par l’air apporté la nouvelle / Jusques icy” (not long along the interpreter of the heavens / Sent to me by the father of the gods / [And as witnesses I call both of them] / Brought the news by air / To me down here) (p. 281) (nunc etiam interpres divum, Iove missus ab ipso / [testor utrumque divum], celeris mandata per auras / detulit [Now, also, the messenger to the gods sent from Jupiter himself / (I swear by both our lives) has brought down his command through the swift breezes] [Aeneid 4:356– 8]). Du Bellay refers to the messenger god (the interpres) as “le truchement” (the interpreter) and, as the intermediary between nation-to-be and text, the one who brings the “nouvelle” – the news but also the story we are reading – down from above through textual transmission. As textual intermediary between Latin and French, much like the truchements who translate between Amerindians and travellers to the Americas, Du Bellay serves the function of national intermediary, helping to bring about a divine destiny for French letters. The principle construction of nation in the translation, however, is composed of a series of contrasts established textually between Dido and 17 See René Godenne, “Étienne Jodelle, traducteur de Virgile,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et de Renaissance, 31 (1969): 195–204. See also Jean-Claude Ternaux, “De Virgile à Jodelle: Didon se sacrifiant,” L’Epopée et ses modèles de la Renaissance aux lumières, edd. Frank Greiner and Jean-Claude Ternaux (Paris: Champion, 2002), pp. 113–26.

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Aeneas, contrasts in the original that Du Bellay builds on with the semantic liberty accorded by his compensation approach to translation. Mercury calls Aeneas “Fol” (mad) (p. 296) (demens [mad] [Aeneid 4:562]), but it is only so that his departure can prove his sanity. Dido is repeatedly “fole” (mad), a trait that Du Bellay adds in some cases when not in the original (e.g., p. 259), where Du Bellay adds in “par amour fole” (out of mad love) not in the Latin [Aeneid 4:26–7]).18 While Dido loses her honour over and over, Aeneas creates his with his departure. In some cases, Du Bellay inserts lost “honneur” when it is not lost in the Latin, or he translates another concept loosely to give semantic coherence to his translated Dido. As she prepares to die, for instance, Dido “arracha l’honneur blond de sa teste” (ripped the blond honour from her head) (p.  298) (flamentis … abscissa comes [and tearing her golden hair] [Aeneid 4:590]).19 The performance of her lost honour presumably creates its opposite, the “honneur de la France” promised by the idea of a national epic in the Deffence, et illustration (p. 140). Virgil’s epic contrasts with Aeneas’ growing understanding of his teleology with Dido’s errancy, but Du Bellay renders her more consistently “errante” (errant/wandering) than does Virgil.20 18 Other examples include: “Fole qu’elle est” (Mad that she is) (p. 263) (demens [mad] [Aeneid 4:78]); “ô moy fole insensee!” (Oh my mad and insane one!) (p. 299), not in original Latin (Aeneid 4:595). 19 Other instances include the following: “O mon honneur, tes saincts droicts je viole” (Oh my honour, I violate your sacred rights) (p. 259) (Pudor, quam te violo aut tua iura resolvo [Shame, I violate you or break your laws] [Aeneid 4:27]); “Didon, de son honneur tumbée, / Ne songe plus une amour desrobée” (Dido, fallen from honour, / Dreams no more of stolen love) (p. 269) (neque enim specie famave movetur / nec iam furtivum Dido meditatur amorem [For no more is Dido swayed by fair show or fair fame, no more does she dream of a secret love] [Aeneid 4:170–1]). Dido tells Aeneas: “Pour toy aussi le Tyrien m’honnore / Moins que devant: & pour toy mesme’ encore’ / Est aboly cet honneur & ce nom / Qui egaloit aux astres mon renom” (p. 279) (For you, too, the Tyrian honours me / Less than before: and still for yourself / Is abolished this honour and this name / Which made by fame equal to that of the stars), based on “te propter Libycae gentes Nomadumque tyranny / odere, infensi Tyrii; te propter eundem / exstinctus pudor et, qua sola sidera adibam, / fama prior” ([Because of you the Libyan tribes and Numidian chiefs hate me, the Tyrians are my foes; because of you I have also lost my honour and that former fame by which I was winning a title to the stars] [Aeneid 4:320–3]); “Suy l’Italie, & par floz & dangers / Cherche l’honneur des regnes estrangers” (I follow Italy, and on wave and through danger / I search out the honour of foreign queens) (p. 283) (i, sequere Italiam ventis, pete regna per undas [Go, make for Italy with the winds; seek your kingdom over the waves] [Aeneid 4:381]). References to Aeneas’ honneur suggest that he will regain it by leaving Carthage. Mercury tells Aeneas, for instance: “ô nouveau marïé! / Qui as l’honneur de ton regne oublié” (Oh newly married one! / You have forgotten the honour of your kingdom) (p. 276), based on “uxorious … exstruis … heu! regni rerumque oblite tuarum” (Foreign … husband … alas! With never a thought or your own realm and fate!) (Aeneid 4:267). 20 On the use of the Latin verb erro in reference to Dido, see J.D. Reed, Virgil’s Gaze: Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 93–5. Reed points out that the verb is “connected to her by an etymological pun: the

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As Dido utters her final words before dying, she contrasts the solidity of Fortuna with her own errancy: “J’ay vescu jusq’ icy, / Et de mes ans le cours ay revolu / Tel que Fortune ordonner l’a voulu. / Ores de moy la grand’ idole errante / Sera bien tost sou’ la terre courante” (I have lived this far / And the course of my years has run on / Just as Fortune wished it to be. / Now, my great wandering idol / Will soon be running underground) (pp. 302–3). In these key lines, the word errante is Du Bellay’s addition from the Latin (vixi et, quem dederat cursum Fortuna, peregi, / et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago [My life is done and I have finished the course that Fortune gave; and now in majesty my shade shall pass beneath the earth] [Aeneid 4:653–4]).21 This reference to a “magna imago” can be taken to be Dido’s epitaph,22 in which case the monumental solidity of the epitaph stands in direct opposition to her instability. The demarcation between Aeneas’ national teleology and Dido’s errancy is also related to the casting out of erotic love from epic. One of the reasons that Du Bellay offers in the Deffence, et illustration as to why men have lost “tout desir de l’immortalité” (any desire for immortality) (p. 143) vis-à-vis epic is “Allechementz de Venus” (Venus’ charms) (p. 142). Gender is also a concern in this chapter of the Deffence, et illustration, as Du Bellay critiques those who rework romances which are “plus propre à bien entretenir Damoizelles, qu’à doctement ecrire” (more suitable for entertaining young ladies than as scholarly writing) (p. 139). With its central love story, then, Aeneid 4 performs the rejection of two errant hindrances to epic, love and women, and tries to stabilize the genre as it semantically stabilizes Dido as unstable.23

third-century Sicilian historian Timaeus had said that the name Dido was applied to her by Libyans because of her wanderings in exile” (p. 93). 21 In other cases, the word is either a loose translation or in the Latin itself: “La malheureuse ardente & furibonde / Court par la vile, errante & vagabonde” (The unlucky one, burning and mad, / Runs through the town, wandering and vagrant) (p. 262) (uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur / urbe furens [Unhappy Dido burns, and through the city wanders in frenzy] [Aeneid 4:68–9]). As she is dying, she “a cherché d’une errante paupiere / De nostre jour la tant doulce lumiere” (sought with wandering eyelid / Our soft light of day) (p. 305) (oculis … errantibus alto / quaesivit caelo lucem ingemuitque reperta” [with wandering eyes sought high heaven’s light, and when she found it, moaned] [Aeneid 4:691–2]). 22 See, for instance, H. Akbar Khan, “Dido and the Sword of Aeneas,” Classical Philology, 63 (1968): 283–5. 23 On Dido as Aeneas’ gender and ethnic other in Virgil, see Chapter 6 in Yasmin Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). Syed studies Roman perceptions of Punicness and their relation to the image of Dido. On Dido as an anti-Roman foil to Aeneas (with the complexities involved therein), see Chapter 3 in Reed, Virgil’s Gaze.

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Ovid, the Anti-Epic and the Self In this text, translation is related not only to the construction of the nation. It also enters into a larger textual dialogue about meaning and interpretation, predicated not simply on Aeneas as surrogate national hero and on Dido as expelled woman in love, for the 1552 edition also includes another ancient text related to Aeneid 4, a “Complainte de Didon à Enée” (Dido’s Lament to Aeneas) based on Ovid’s Heroides 7. While Du Bellay writes that it is “immitée sur Ovide” (an imitation of Ovid) (p. 250), it might better be considered a loose translation of the original Latin. Immediately following the Virgil translation, this text is meant, as Du Bellays writes in the preface, “pour la continuation du propos” (to continue the topic) (p. 252), suggesting a dialogue between the two translations, much as Ovid’s own text is very much in dialogue with Virgil’s.24 In his preface, Du Bellay opposes “la divine majesté de l’ung de ces auteurs à l’ingenieuse facilité de l’autre” (the divine majesty of the first of these authors and the ingenious ease of the other) (p. 252). This opposition between the two ancient writers opens up an agonistic textuality that questions the translation-transnation link, suggesting that translation can disrupt national construction. If Aeneas’ leaving Carthage is coded as a textual and national movement across, Ovid’s Dido opens a hole in that movement. Indeed, for Du Bellay to continue the propos (story, subject, intention) in the preface is to respond to Aeneas’ propos to leave Carthage in the Virgilian narrative. Dido tells Aeneas after he reveals his departure: “Va, je ne veux destourner ton propos” (Go! I do not want to distract from your words) (p. 283), a loose translation of “neque dicta refello” (I dispute not your words) (Aeneid 4:380). Ovid’s text furnishes Dido’s response to Aeneas’ propos to leave Carthage but also to the national and epic force of Aeneas’ narrative. By giving discursive subjectivity to a single human being, the elegiac genre already inherently questions Virgil’s majestic epic, but the text also plays on a more specific textual tradition in which Ovid’s Dido is opposed to Virgil’s. As Marilynn Desmond explains in her study of this tradition, “[Ovid] initiates a long tradition of reading Dido; that is, a tradition of detaching Dido and her story from the Aeneid as a whole, thereby displacing Aeneas as the thematic focus of the text and implicitly disrupting the imperial context within which Aeneas acts.”25 While Du Bellay is undoubtedly playing 24 On the Ovid-Virgil dialogue, see for example Peter E. Knox, introduction to Ovid, Heroides, ed. Peter E. Knox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 18–25; Marilynn Desmond, Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and the Medieval Aeneid (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 33–45. Du Bellay’s translation is probably responding to previous French translations of the text. On this topic, see Paul White, “Ovid’s Heroides in Early Modern French Translation: Saint-Gelais, Fontaine, Du Bellay,” Translation & Literature, 13 (2004): 165–80. 25 Desmond, Reading Dido, p. 34. See also Chapter 2 in John Watkins, The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1995).

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off this tradition in a large sense, it is the direct textual opposition through translation that makes his statement about the imperial context of Virgil’s Aeneid. Though a Renaissance genre of its own,26 the complainte of the title, directly refers to Dido’s Virgilian discourse, which is frequently described as a plainte or complainte. Dido’s first expression of anger to Aeneas, for example, is rendered as “[e]t par telz motz ses plaintes commença” (and with such words she began her lament) (p. 278), a loose translation of the Latin text (tandem his Aenean compellat vocibus ultro [at length she thus accosts Aeneas first] [Aeneid 4:304]).27 The genre of the complainte, then, serves to make Dido’s discourse its own recognized genre, and to dislodge it from its epic constraints. Dido’s lament signifies Roman infidelity instead of a step toward Roman hegemony.28 The Heroides are meant to be a series of letters written by scorned women, but Ovid’s Dido makes no direct reference to the epistolary nature of her text, only to her “verba” (line 6). Du Bellay’s Dido, however, communicates through written and oral media: “Mais ayant perdu l’honneur / Du bonheur, / Que la chasteté merite, / De perdre encor’ mes escriz / Et mes criz, / C’est une perte petite” (But having lost the honour / Of happiness, / Which chastity deserves, / To again lose my writings / And my cries, / That is a small loss) (p. 307) (sed merita et famam corpusque animumque pudicum / cum male perdiderim, perdere verba leve est [but after having given up my honour, my chaste body and soul, it is little to lose words]).29 Dido’s complainte is transformed into a combination of escriz and criz so that she can speak and write against Virgil, or so that Du Bellay’s own text can rewrite the wrong committed. The most important written text in the elegy, however, is the epitaph which Dido writes in the last five lines: “ENEE A DE CESTE MORT / A GRAND TORT / DONNÉ LA CAUSE ET L’ESPÉE: / LA MISERABLE DIDON / DE CE DON / A SA POITRINE FRAPÉE” (FOR THIS DEATH AENEAS / MOST WRONGLY / PROVIDED BOTH THE CAUSE AND THE SWORD: / PITIFUL DIDO / WITH THIS GIFT / BEAT HER CHEST) (p. 330). As we have seen in her final speech in Aeneid 4, Dido evokes something suggesting an epitaph (“Ores de moy la grand’ idole errante / Sera bien 26 Thomas Sebillet, for instance, includes a whole chapter “De la Deploration, et Complainte” in his Art poétique françois, categorizing it under elegy (Art poétique françois, edd. Gaiffe and Goyet, pp. 178–9). 27 For other examples of plainte or complainte, see pp. 283, 284, 284, 286, 289, 300 and 304. 28 In this way, Du Bellay prefigures Jodelle who, as Barbara Bono writes, “suggests very strongly that the values usually discerned in the fourth book of the Aeneid are harshly intolerant” (Literary Transvaluation: From Vergilian Epic to Shakespearean Tragicomedy [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984], p. 107). Jodelle, too, incorporates elements from Ovid’s Heroides 7 (see pp. 110 and 112), and thus reconstructs “the epic as romantic tragicomedy without altering the essentials of Vergil’s plot” (p. 138). 29 Ovid, Heroides, ed. Knox, p. 82.

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tost sou’ la terre courante” [Soon, my great wandering idol / Will be running underground] [p. 303]). If death is opposed to her errancy in Virgil and does not directly question her death, in Ovid the epitaph puts the “grand’ idole errante” in movement again by reopening the question of wrongful death, this time actually carved in stone. The rhyme mort/tort inscribes wrongful death on her tomb in a way that Virgil does not or cannot do, and suggests that the written epitaph is the critique of Virgil through Du Bellay’s translation of Ovid.30 Other textual dialogues establish a tension between Du Bellay’s two French translations. When Virgil’s Aeneas explains that he has been ordered to depart for Italy, he tells Dido: Mais Apollon Grinëan me commande De faire voile en l’Italie grande: C’est son oracle, & le sort Lycien Veut que j’aborde au port Ausonien: Voyla mon bien, voyla mon heritage Si tant te plaist la cite de Carthaige, Bien qu’elle soit en terre Libyenne, Et que tu soi’s de gent Phenicienne, Dea que te chault, si par nous est unie Au sang Troien la race d’Ausonie?  (p. 281) (But Grinean Apollo orders me To set sail for great Italy: His oracle and the Lycean destiny Bid that I arrive at the Ausonian harbour: There is what is mine, there is my inheritance. If the city of Carthage pleases you so, Even though it is in Libyan lands, And though you are of Phoenician race, Then truly what does it matter, if by us is joined The race of Ausonia to Trojan blood?)

Aeneas resists linking the rhyming keywords heritage and Carthaige, disassociating his past and imagined future from Dido’s city and not allowing his (ethnic) past to be connected to a new physical space that his ethnic group had not occupied. Aeneas’ “heritage” is defined by the textual act of disassociating from Carthage, of semantically un-rhyming the two terms and concepts. This opposition between Aeneas and Dido is also established by the semantic parallel in the following rime Libyenne / Phenicienne, words that are in fact connected in meaning and that establish Dido’s ethnic heritage 30 The importance of this rhyme had already been established in lines 220–1, p. 315: “C’est bien assez que le tort / De ma mort / En tes beaux titres se treuve” (It is more than sufficient that the wrongdoing / Of my death / Is found in your fine titles).

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as related to a physical space that had not been her ethnic homeland. The rhyme Carthage / heritage recurs in Du Bellay’s Ovid, but this time in the mouth of Dido: Quand auras tu, ô Troien! Le moyen De fonder une Carthage? Quand verras tu d’une tour Tout au tour L’honneur d’ung tel heritage?  (p. 309) (When will you have, oh Trojan, The means To found a new Carthage? When will you see from a tower All around The honour of such inheritance?)

Reversing the order of Aeneas’ rhyme, Dido turns his words back on him by linking Carthage and the heritage that Aeneas should have constructed for himself. This semantic link is made by Du Bellay – and not by Ovid – for heritage is a loose translation of “populos … tuos” in the original Latin.31 The idea of Carthage as another type of heritage – not one predetermined via the teleology of epic – frames a movement around (“d’une tour,” “[t]out au tour”). The circularity of Aeneas looking out on Carthage with Dido stands in direct contrast to Aeneas’ linear journey from Carthage to a new Ausonian heritage. Consequently, Virgil’s Aeneas will become an “estranger naturalizé” (naturlized foreigner) but in Ovid he will be a stranger in a foreign land, as Dido explains: “Quand parvenu tu seras, / Tu n’auras / Trouvé ton beau Simöente: / Mais le Tybre furieux, / Qui les yeux / Des estrangers epoüante” (Upon your arrival, / You will not have / Found your handsome River Simoeis: / But the furious Tiber, / Who scares the eyes / Of foreigners) (p. 324). Ovid’s Aeneas will not be naturalized, but nature itself will reject the “estrangers.”32 It is Aeneas who will not be naturalized, according to Dido, but it is also the text that will be resisted on foreign shores. Virgil can be brought across to a French context, made part of national epic, but elements of the errant text will keep it from being assimilated. If Virgil and Aeneas are signs of natural adoption, Dido herself is linked to foreign Ovid, Heroides, ed. Knox, p. 82. The original Latin passage is: “Non patrium Simoenta petis, sed Tybridis undas. / Nempe, ut pervenias quo cupis, hospes eris” (It is not your fathers’ Simois that you seek, but the Tiber’s waves / But you know that when you arrive at the place you desire, you will be only a foreigner) Ovid, Heroides, ed. Knox, p. 94. Du Bellay’s translation is a mistranslation of the original Latin. Chamard considers this section particularly “éloignée du texte” (far from the text) in his edition (Œuvres poétiques, p. 324). 31 32

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elements of the text that keep it from being naturalized. Virgil cannot fully become French, even in Du Bellay’s own translation, as rejected aspects of the epic text necessarily return through Ovid to question and problematize the translation-transnation link. This series of two texts, Virgil and the Ovidian “continuation,” makes a bipartite textual statement about the self that resembles Du Bellay’s notion of imitation in the Deffence, et illustration. The imitator should first enter into ancient writers, but then assert his selfhood over them. As Margaret Ferguson puts it in her classic reading of the tract, Du Bellay moves from “the imitator’s uncanny movement from a total denial of self (“se transformant en eux” [transforming themselves into them]) to a total assertion of self – an assertion in which the imitator gives birth to the author he had previously devoured.”33 In the case of the translator, this move from loss of self to assertion of self parallels the move from translation to paraphrase, or in this particular case from translation to imitation. In this approach, the Virgilian epic suggests Du Bellay’s own assimilation into the text where there is no demonstrable self for the translator to display or perform, as nationalistic concerns and “la divine magesté” (divine majesty) of Virgil (p. 248) occupy centre stage and as epic effaces the possibility of the construction of the self.34 The denial of Aeneas’ own self in favour of divine destiny, however, is transformed into an assertion of self via Ovid, making this move – and not Aeneas’ movement – the dominant movement across. Dido’s own textual voice as rewriter of Virgil is also Du Bellay’s as her rhetoric in the text cannot but evoke his rhetoric of the self. Indeed, his preface reads as his own complainte. In the first sentence, he writes: “la fortune m’a voulu preparer tant de calamitez / Je ne diray quelle diversité de malheurs s’est jouée de moy ceste cruelle arbitre des choses humaines” (Fortune chose to set so many calamities for me / I will tell what range of misfortunes that cruel judge of things human has dealt me) (p. 246). Like Ovid’s Dido, it is the writing cure (“le non moins honneste que plaisant exercice poëtique” [the poetic exercise, no less respectable than agre33 Margaret Ferguson, “The Exile’s Defense: Du Bellay’s La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse,” PMLA, 93 (1978): 275–89, p. 285. Ferguson’s comment is based on a key passage in 1:7. See also Ehsan Ahmed, “Du Bellay, Sébillet, and the Problematic Identity of the French Humanist,” Neophilologus, 75 (1991): 185–93. 34 Jean-Pierre Neraudau sees Du Bellay’s Ovid translation as more autonomous than the Virgil translation. He writes: “Traducteur du quatrième livre de l’Enéide, Du Bellay savait bien qu’en traduisant Ovide, il traduisait une paraphrase de Virgile qui faisait basculer le texte original de la grandeur épique dans l’intimisme élégiaque” (A translator of Aeneid 4, Du Bellay knew well that, by translating Ovid, he was translating a paraphrase of Virgil, which caused the original text to fall down from epic grandeur to the intimacy of elegy). See Jean-Pierre Neraudau, “Traduction et Création chez Du Bellay, l’exemple de la ‘Complainte de Didon a Enèe prinse d’Ovide’ (Heroïdes, VII),” La Naissance du monde et l’invention du poème, ed. Jean-Claude Ternaux (Paris: Champion, 1998), pp. 369–86, p. 380.

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able]) that affords him “tant de consolation” (such great consolation) (p. 246) vis-à-vis fortune and calamities.35 He also refers to his own “folie” (madness) (p. 247), a key word for Dido. In the 1552 edition of the trans­lations, Du Bellay publishes his own text, “La Complainte du desesperé” (The Desperate Man’s Lament) which immediately follows his translations.36 It is not only the title that references the Ovid translation, for Du Bellay’s word choice in the poem mirrors Dido’s (e.g., folie [madness], fureur [rage], furie [fury], furieux [furious], plainte [moan], complainte [lament]), and the text as a whole reads as Dido’s sentiments in the mouth of Du Bellay, or more particularly as Du Bellay’s own kind of Heroides. At the end of the complainte, Du Bellay suggests his own death: “Ma vie desesperée / A la mort deliberée / Ja-desja se sent courir” (My desperate life / For pre-ordained death / Already it feels itself running) (p. 110). The poet three times makes direct reference to passages from Book 4 of the Aeneid (pp. 96, 98 and 100), revealing that he has Dido in mind.37 The figure of Dido across the two Roman authors, then, allows Du Bellay to hide and then resurrect his textual self in a kind of compensatory translation, and to put those two selves in dialogue. As translator, Du Bellay is both Didos: the textually faithful one, the interpres whose self is denied; as well as the one who speaks the self through loose translation. My reading of the translations is similar to Ferguson’s reading of the self in the Deffence, et illustration: “the treatise is not only a dialogue with the reader and with the ancient texts Du Bellay himself is rereading but also, on Donne’s phrase, ‘a dialogue of one,’ a complex oscillation between different definitions of the poetic self.”38 Du Bellay’s overall interest in Dido is prompted by the vividness of the emotion that she signifies. In the chapters on translation in the Deffence, et illustration, Du Bellay expresses the crucial importance of translating “ceste Energie, et ne sçay quel Esprit, qui est en leurs Escriz, que les Latins appelleroient Genius” (this energy and I know not what spirit which is in their writings [and] which the Romans would call genius) (p. 90). He lists Energies in his list of “figures, et ornemens, sans les quelz tout oraison, et Poëme sont nudz, manques, et debiles” (figures and ornaments without which any speech or poem is naked, failed, or stupid) (p. 87). The translator should resemble a visual artist who represents in a life-like manner (“un Peintre peut representer l’Ame avecques le Cors de celuy, qu’il entreprent tyrer après le Naturel” [a painter can represent the soul via the body that he draws in a life35 On the calamities in Du Bellay’s life to which he is probably referring, see Henri Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay, 1522–1560 (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), pp. 246–8. 36 Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 4, pp. 87–110. 37 See also his Latin epigram “In Didonem dormientem” (1558), in which he expresses an artistic sympathy for her. Joachim Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Geneviève Demerson (Paris: Nizan, 1984), v. 7, p. 93 38 Ferguson, “The Exile’s Defense,” p. 276.

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like manner] [p. 90]).39 In the case of poetry, energie is the most important but also most difficult aspect of the text to translate, but as Du Bellay explains to the reader in the preface to his translations, Virgil’s Dido embodies this emotional and creative force: “Je diray seulement qu’œuvre ne se trouve en quelque langue que ce soit, ou les passions amoureuses soyent plus vivement depeinctes, qu’en la personne de Didon” (I will say only that no work in any language can be found in which the passion of love is more vividly depicted than in the character of Dido) (p. 249). As a sign of the textual element that must be brought out above all others, Dido threatens to undermine the national epic because her erring energie threatens to take over the translated text, to cast out the nation or the epic as central narrative, and to position the desiring self at the centre of the text. On one level, it may seem odd for Du Bellay to identify with a female self in this way. After all, gender fluidity is hardly a central element of his œuvre. It may also seem strange that he does not make an issue of the identification, or feel the need to explain away the cross-gender identification. But on another level, the identification may not be with Dido herself as a character, but with contemporary queen-like figures that she could not help but evoke in context. That role is played here by Marguerite de France (1523–74), daughter of François Ier and sister of Henri II, whom Du Bellay mentions in his preface. He writes that he feels glory “d’avoir quelquefois par la lecture de mes escriz donné plaisir aux yeux cler-voyans de celle tant rare perle & royale fleur des Princesses, l’unique MARGUERITE de nostre âge: au divin esprit de laquelle est par moy des long tems consacré tout ce qui pourra jamais sortir de mon industrie” (for having sometimes, by reading out my texts, given pleasure to the clear-seeing eyes of that most rare and royal flower of Princesses, the unique MARGUERITE of our own age, to whose divine spirit is dedicated by myself and for a long time all that my labour can produce) (pp. 247–8). By 1552, Du Bellay was already very devoted to her, having published his 1549 Recueil de Poesie and the 1550 edition of the Olive for her, and having included in his 1549 Vers lyriques an ode “A Tresillustre Princesse Madame Marguerite, Seur vnique du roy” (To the Most Illustrious Princess Madame Marguerite, the king’s only sister).40 This association between Dido and royalty of such stature and popularity with artists compli39 On the concept of energie in Du Bellay, see Glyn P. Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and their Humanist Antecedents (Geneva: Droz, 1984), pp. 292–8. 40 For this ode, see Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 3, p. 91–3. See also “Les Deux Marguerites” (1552) addressed to Marguerite de Navarre and Marguerite de France. Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 4, pp.156–63. On his relationship with Madame Marguerite, see Chamard, Joachim Du Bellay, 1522–1560, pp. 222–4; Charles Béné, “Marguerite de France et l’œuvre de Du Bellay,” Culture et Pouvoir au Temps de l’Humanisme et de la Renaissance: Actes du Congrès Marguerite de Savoie, ed. Louis Terreaux (Geneva: Slatkine, 1978), pp. 223–41.

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cates national and anti-national aspects of the two translations and makes it difficult to juxtapose Dido with the French nation. Indeed, Marguerite de France is closely linked to a French national literature in Du Bellay’s ode “A Madame Marguerite / D’escrire en sa langue” (To Madame Marguerite / On writing in her vernacular) (1549) which reads as a mini-Deffence, et illustration.41 The complainte of Dido could thus also be a French voice, with Aeneas a non-French estranger and not an embodiment of a transplanted hero who becomes French. Dido’s curse on Aeneas, her call for antagonism between her people’s descendants and his (Aeneid 4:300–1), could come to stand in for antagonism between French and Italian peoples. Contemporary cultural associations between Dido and Marguerite de France (or other French royal women) could mean that the reception of Dido’s curse evokes anti-Roman or anti-Italian sentiment, or possibly Valois militaristic campaigns against Italy (e.g., the Hapsburg-Valois War of the 1550s, in which Henri II tries to take Italy). With or without this association, Dido’s complainte serves to critique Roman rule and to argue for alternate hegemonies, rerouting France’s Trojan origins through Carthage.42 The use of the death of Dido to allegorize the loss of the self cannot be separated from another translated text, “La Mort de Palinure” (The Death of Palinurus) from Aeneid 5 which Du Bellay publishes in 1560 along with his translations of Books 4 and 6. Jupiter requires Palinurus as sacrifice in order for Aeneas to make it to Italian shores (“Un seul sans plus dans la mer perira, / Un seul sans plus pour le reste mourra” [One man alone and no more will perish at sea, / One man alone and no more will die to save the rest] [p. 336]). If Dido is taken as the ethnic other to be sacrificed for the foundation of Rome, Palinurus must be taken as the innocent member of the community that must be sacrificed to create the nation. The attentive Palinurus is put to sleep at the helm of the ship, and then falls out of the vessel, finally “[c] oucher tout nu sur la deserte aréne” (lying naked on the deserted shore) (p. 339). With the helmsman’s death, Aeneas himself “[s]e sent errer à brides vagabondes” (feels himself to be straying on wandering wave) (p. 339), and “[s]ervit de guide à son vaisseau flotant / Sans gouverneur, & d’un Coeur sanglotant / De son amy plaint beaucoup l’aventure” (served as a guide to the floating vessel / Without a commander and with crying heart / He greatly Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 3, pp. 97–100. Another explanation for identifying with Dido across gender lines could be the pedagogical role that the Heroides played in Renaissance education for boys. With their frequent use, the texts may have lost their gender coding in the mind of male readers. See Chapter 2 in Paul White, Renaissance Postscripts: Responding to Ovid’s Heroides in Sixteenth-century France (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009). Dido could also be seen to attract sympathy on her own in the text. As J.D. Reed argues: “a potential identification of the Aeneadae with the Carthaginians is built into their first encounter and waveringly persists, always predicated upon the more glaring opposition between the two” (Reed, Virgil’s Gaze, p. 84). 41 42

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laments his friend’s adventure) (p. 339). What explains why Du Bellay chose this passage to include as a stand-alone text is that the word choice emphasizes the ship of state that Aeneas takes over. The gubernac[u]lum (rudder) (Aeneid 5:852) and clavus (helm) (Aeneid 5:859) are both translated as “gouvernail” (pp. 338 and 339). Before he dies, Palinurus refers to Aeneas as “Mon prince Enée” (My prince Aeneas) (p. 338), a designation taken up again when the narrator describes “le bon prince Enée” (good prince Aeneas) who takes up the erring ship (p. 339), the entire phrase translated from the Latin pater (Aeneid 5:867). The language of Aeneas’ replacement of the helmsman after the sacrifice affirms Aeneas as leader, and it evokes textual details from Du Bellay’s Virgil translation. The end of the fragment which describes Palinurus’ resting place “sur la deserte aréne” – translated from the Latin ignora harena (literally “unknown beach” [Aeneid 5:871]) – recalls Dido’s agitated dream in which she is alone and “luy semble … chercher à grande peine / Ses Tyriens en la deserte plaine” (appears to him to be looking with great pains / For her Tyrians in the deserted plain) (p. 289) (deserta terra [Aeneid 4:468]). Palinurus’ death, which leaves him alone physically, resembles Dido’s loss of honour, which leaves her psychologically alone. Another similarity between this passage and Book 4 is that Aeneas’ taking over and stabilizing the erring ship parallels the stability resulting from his leaving the erring Dido. It makes sense, then, that Du Bellay would translate both Book 4 and this episode, for both parts of Virgil evoke someone or something lost to construct or stabilize the nation, in the first case someone foreign and in the second case someone internal. But on another level, Palinurus can be taken as the sacrifice not of a member of the community per se, but of the selfhood of Aeneas himself. For the epic hero to become head of the ship of state, a surrogate must be sacrificed as a stand-in for his own self-sacrifice.43 As Du Bellay identifies with the sacrifice of Dido as an element of the loss of the (elegiac) self in favour of epic, this nation-like passage allegorizes the loss of self entailed in the Virgilian ship of state that Du Bellay is translating. These series of tensions between nationalism and the self parallel Du Bellay’s well-known and larger ambivalent relation to the nation in the Deffence, et illustration and in his poetry.44 In this case, he is ambivalent about using translation to support nationalistic aims, and any translation implies a critique of its textual authority. There is no definite text here, only a series of textual relations. It is not, then, that the nation is glorified through 43 David Quint reads Virgil’s Palinurus episode in this way in Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 84–93. 44 See, for instance, Marc Bizer, “‘Qui a païs n’a que faire de patrie’: Joachim Du Bellay’s resistance to a French identity,” Romanic Review, 91 (2000): 375–95. For other approaches to the question, see Margaret W. Ferguson, “The Exile’s Defense” and Timothy Hampton, Literature and Nation, pp. 150–90.

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translation, nor is it the case that the nation is critiqued through translation. Rather, the situation is both and neither: it is the combination of these two texts, the movement between them that defines the relation between translation and the nation. To translate is to put the nation and its others in dialogue, to allow one to critique the other.

Ausonius, History and Representation If Virgil and Ovid’s texts, taken together, affirm and question the nation through translation, Du Bellay takes his textual commentary one step further with his third and final translation in the 1552 edition, an epigram mistakenly attributed to the Latin poet Ausonius “declarant la verité de l’hystoire de Didon” (declaring the truthfulness of Dido’s story) (p. 253).45 The epigram is recounted through the voice of a woman on a statue, who resembles Dido physically, but does not have her same esprit: “je suis de Didon la semblable, / … / Tel corps j’avoy, non l’impudique esprit / Qui feintement par Vergile est descrit” (I am similar to Dido, / … /, Such a body had I, not the unchaste spirit / Which Virgil fabricated) (p. 331). This text explicitly challenges Virgil’s representation of Dido as figure: “Qui t’avoit donq’, ô Vergile, incite / D’estre envieux sur ma pudicité?” (Who, oh Virgil, incited you / To be envious of my chasteness?) (p. 332). At the same time, it implicitly questions the textual reception of Dido as impudique since the supposed source text misrepresents her. Still, the real issue with this Dido is not simply that her voice has not been heard on its own terms, rather that narrative should be questioned in a larger sense. For she is the Dido not of texts, but of history, the one for whom the events in Virgil never took place: “Car onq’ Enée, onques les nefz Troyennes / Ne prindrent port aux rives Libyennes” (For never did Aeneas, never did the Trojan ships / Arrive on the shores of Libya) (p. 331). This historical Dido allows for the contrast between “les fables notoires / De ces menteurs, qui d’art laborieux / Chantent l’amour des impudiques Dieux” (the famous fables / Of those liars who with careful art / Sing of the loves of the unchaste gods) on the one hand, and “cela que les histoires / Ont dict de moy” (what the histories / Have said about me) (p. 332) on the other. The historical Dido, often referred to as Eliza or Elyssa, is contrasted with the fictional Dido in a number of other medieval and Renaissance texts such as Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la cité des dames and Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris.46 In his Dictionarium Historicum, Geographicum, Poeticum 45 On this text and its attribution to Ausonius, see The Virgilian Tradition, edd. Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C. Putnam (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 522–3. I will, nonetheless, refer to the text as composed by Ausonius. 46 Christine de Pizan, for example, has two separate chapters for the two Didos: “Où il est question du jugement et de la sagesse de la reine Didon” (In which is discussed

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(1553), Charles Estienne aims to disassociate the two Didos, proving that Eliza’s chronology does not match Rome’s, thus that Virgil’s story of her love affair with Aeneas is not historically possible. Ausonius employs the Latin “furta” (tricks, deceits) in reference to Virgil’s text (p. 332), while Estienne refers more directly to the fictional nature of Virgil’s text: “Virgilius lib. I. & 4. Aen. fabulatur Aeneas, capta Troja, à patria profugum, vi tempestatis Carthaginem fuisse delatum, Elizamq” (In Books 1 and 4 of the Aeneid, Virgil invents a story about Aeneas who, after Troy was taken over, fled his homeland, and with the strength of a storm was carried to Carthage and Dido).47 With the inclusion of Ausonius’ text, Du Bellay does not simply question Virgil’s depiction of Dido, as the Ovidian translation does, but puts into question the more essential issue of textual representation in the first place. No fictional representation of Dido, even Ovid’s, it would seem, can do justice to les histoires. This text questions the representational authority of Virgil, but it also questions the Ovid/Virgil debate itself as non-historical. Even Dido’s Ovidian response to Virgil is an insufficient critique or rewriting of the story. This questioning, however, implies more complicated issues of textual representation in the opening lines of the epigram. The statue addresses the person who sees it: “Passant, je suis de Didon la semblable, / Tirée au vif d’ung art emerveillable” (Passing by, I am similar to Dido, / Drawn in marvellous life-like art) (p. 331) based on the Latin: “Illa ego sum Dido vultu, quam conspicis, hospes,/Assimilata, modis pulchraque mirificis” (I, Dido, am the image which you see, stranger, / beautiful and finely represented). What looks like an imitation is in fact not one except cosmetically. In the original Latin, “[i]lla Dido” is “[a]ssimilata” (imitated, feigned), loosely translated as “tirée au vif.” Unlike with the two previous translations, the original Latin is included in the edition to call attention to the translation as translation, to the translation as copy of an original, and thus to an implicit commentary on translation via translation. Du Bellay’s own translation of Virgil is like the statue of Dido. The semblable of Virgil’s Dido, it has the same body and is “tirée au vif d’ung art emerveillable.” This statement on representation employs similar language to the discourse of translation elsewhere, the ability to “tirer au vif” (represent in a life-like manner) being the very same judgement regarding Queen Dido’s wisdom) and “Où il est question de Didon, reine de Carthage, et de la fidelité des femmes en amour” (In which is discussed Dido, queen of Carthage, and the question of the faithfulness of women in matters of love). The former treats the historical Dido, the latter the fictional one. (Christine de Pizan, Le Livre de la Cité des dames, trans. Eric Hicks and Thérèse Moreau [Paris: Stock, 1996], pp. 119–23 and 212–3). On the historical Dido, see Desmond, Reading Dido, p. 24–33, who points out that the earliest mention of the historical Dido is found in the fragments of Timaeus of Tauromenium (c. 356–260 BCE). 47 Charles Estienne, Dictionarium Historicum, Geographicum, Poeticum (Oxford, 1670), p. 340. My translation.

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phrase used to talk about the similarity between art and translation. In his liminary poem for Des Masures’ translation of Virgil (1560), for example, Du Bellay describes translation via artistic metaphor: Autant comme lon peult en un autre langage Une langue exprimer, autant que la nature Par l’art se peult monstrer, & que par la peinture On peult tirer au vif un naturel visage: Autant exprimes-tu, & encor’ d’avantage Avecques le pinceau de ta docte escriture La grace, la façon, le port, & la stature De celuy qui d’Enee ha descrit le voyage.48 (As much as one can express one language In a foreign one, just that much can nature Be shown via art and can one in painting Represent in a life-like manner a natural face: Just so much do you express (or even more) With the paintbrush of your learned writing The grace, fashion, demeanour and stature Of the one who described Aeneas’ journey.)

The ability to “tirer au vif un naturel visage” is the artistic equivalent of translating the energie of an ancient text. Immediately after discussing this key quality of good translation in the Deffence, et illustration, Du Bellay makes the comparison to painting in a similar way: “Toutes les quelles choses se peuvent autant exprimer en traduisant, comme un Peintre peut representer l’Ame avecques le cors de celuy, qu’il entreprent apres le naturel” (All things can be expressed in translation, just as a painter can represent the soul via the body that he draws in a life-like manner) (p. 90). For the statue of Dido to be la semblable of the real woman, then, is to comment that the energie of the original remains unchanged in the copy, or that Du Bellay’s translation is a natural-seeming evocation of the Virgilian original. Although the translation may look like its original, the resemblance is only on the outside, as the corps of the original is brought across, but its esprit is not. The words look like their Latin counterparts, but they do not – and indeed cannot – evoke proper signifieds. Virgil cannot be naturalisé (naturalized) in French because even Virgil’s Latin text is not “un naturel visage” (a natural face). The act of translation is always hindered because it cannot provide direct access to histoire, or because it cannot convey reality mimetically. The problem lies not with translation, or the specific translation or translator, but with the original. The copy of the ancient text, even if au vif, reflects a copy which is itself already a copy. As a mediated art two steps removed 48

Virgil, L’Enéide de Virgile, trans. Des Masures, p. 4. My emphasis.

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from histoire, translation, then, is a copy of a copy. Even the good translator necessarily does what Du Bellay says “mauvais traducteurs” (bad translators) do in the Deffence, et illustration: they “trahissent ceux, qu’ilz entreprennent exposer” (betray those they undertake to exhibit) and “seduysent les Lecteurs ignorans, leur montrant le blanc pour le noyr” (seduce the ignorant readers, making them see white where there is black) (p. 89). The distinction between good and bad translation necessarily collapses, as translation as concept appears insufficient for representation. Consequently, the tension between epic and elegy, between nation and self, is turned into a dead issue when the need for a more foundational history is articulated. But if the meaning of these three translations is composed of the dialogue between them and if the Ausonius translation is not the ultimate answer or commentary on textuality, then Du Bellay is calling for history to exist alongside poetic translation in the realm of representation. This call resembles one he will later make in his “Discours au roy sur la poésie” (Discourse for the king about poetry) (1560) written for Henri II to put poetry and history together for the nation, or for the glory of the king. As he writes in that poem: “le poëte il fault joindre à l’histoire” (the poet must connect to history).49 As a subcategory of poetry, then, poetic translation must sometimes be questioned by history so that the ‘copy of a copy’ issue can be put in dialogue with an assumption of mimesis. This statement on representation assumes that history is mimetic and avoids the larger question of how (or whether) history can represent faithfully. But that stable notion of history may be necessary for Du Bellay to comment on the instabilities of fiction by contrast. The role of history in the epic is not entirely clear for Du Bellay either, so the precise relation between the two – and the question of whether history can be incorporated into epic – remains an open topic. Instead, Du Bellay may be raising the larger question through translation of whether history can or should be incorporated into epic, and ultimately, how epic, elegy and history can be put in dialogue so that nothing is lost in translation.

49 Du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, v. 6, p. 166. Du Bellay considers poetry superior to history in this discours, of course. The work of the poet “n’est moins que l’histoire durable” (is no less durable than history) and thus can potentially outlast the historian’s work (p. 166). I see the “histoire durable” here as the textual dialogue among these translations and the values they embody.

11

“Avec la terre on possède la guerre”: The Problem of Place in Ronsard’s Franciade Katherine Maynard Early in Pierre de Ronsard’s epic poem, the Franciade, Mercury is sent on behalf of Jupiter to deliver a message to Helenin, the uncle of the poem’s protagonist, Francus. Francus, who is the son of Hector and Andromache, has been loitering in Buthrotum instead of pursuing the great destiny in store for him. According to Mercury, the achievements of Hector’s descendants culminate with Ronsard’s patron King Charles IX who holds the world in his hand: L’enfant d’Hector, à qui les cieux amis Ont tant d’honneur et de sceptres promis: Qui doit hausser la race Priamide, Doit abaisser la grandeur Aezonide, Doit veincre tout, et qui doit une fois Estre l’estoc de tant de Rois François, Et par sus tous d’un CHARLES, qui du monde Doit en la main porter la pomme ronde.1 (1:243–50) (Hector’s offspring, to whom the friendly heavens Promised so many honours and sceptres. He must raise up Priam’s race And knock down the greatness of Jason’s descendants, He must defeat all, and he must be the Root and source of so many future kings And above all of a certain CHARLES, who is to carry In his hand that round apple, our globe.)

Although the passage closely imitates Virgil’s Aeneid, in the sixteenth century, a monarch with the world in his hand could not help but recall 1 Here and throughout the article, all references to the Franciade are from Pierre de Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, edd. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager and Michel Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 1993). Translations are adapted from Ronsard, The Franciad, trans. Phillip John Usher (New York: AMS Press, 2010).

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a relatively new object: the globe.2 Globes and other maps were novelties that reflected recent developments in cartography, including the re-discovery of the Ptolemaic grid.3 It was quite common for sovereigns of the time to own maps and globes. Indeed, the interest that Catherine de’ Medici and her children expressed for maps and map-making has been well documented.4 In the hands of the young Charles, the world-globe of the Franciade is, to borrow the words of Jerry Brotton, a “confident imperial symbol of power and authority.”5 While Ronsard does not tell us about the details of the object in Charles’ hand, the world is his apple – to hold, but also to control and to shape. Denis Cosgrove has described empire itself as a “cartographic enterprise” to which the globe corresponds: “To imagine the earth as a globe is essentially a visual act … Such a gaze is implicitly imperial, encompassing a geometric surface to be explored and mapped, inscribed with content, knowledge, and authority.”6 The inscription of geographical places on the globe is, in a sense, a narrative about empire, a narrative that will offer a flattering vision of the patron’s role in the configuration of the globe.7 Ronsard’s image of Charles IX as master of the world within the Franciade highlights an interconnectedness that exists between epic, empire and geography. David Quint has suggested that the narrative of an epic poem is also a narrative of empire. Taking Virgil’s Aeneid as the archetype of the epic of history’s victors, he argues that epic is used by those with imperial ambitions to “depict themselves as ever victorious and, by a kind of tautology, impose a unified meaning upon history.”8 Virgil and his imitators remind their readership that “[the victors] always will be protagonists in a continuing story of imperial and national destiny because they always have been.”9 As a case in point, the passage which culminates in Charles holding the globe makes 2 Europe’s first known globe was constructed by the German geographer Martin Behaim in 1492. See Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 3 Greek manuscripts of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography appeared in Italy at the end of the fourteenth century and it was translated into Latin in 1409. See Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography Throughout History, trans. Tom Conley (Chicago: Univerisity of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 61. The Geography was first printed in France in 1535, see The History of Cartography, edd. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), v. 3, p. 1463. 4 See Monarchs, Ministers and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Buisseret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 104–7. 5 Brotton, Trading Territories, p. 25. 6 Denis Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 15–16. 7 Brotton, Trading Territories, p. 33. 8 David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 32. 9 Quint, Epic and Empire, p. 45.

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reference to the (embellished) past of the Valois dynasty whose ancestors come from “la race Hectoride” (Hector’s race). The narrative of the Franciade uses the glorious past as a justification for Charles’ rule and implies that such greatness will continue, and even increase, with Charles’ descendants.10 If epic poetry makes an argument for the existence of empire, however, it also makes an argument for imperial mastery of space.11 In the Aeneid and in the unfinished Franciade, the framework is of empire without end; the mastery of every place necessitates the construction of an empire through the conquest and possession of individual places. Both poems record the movement from a place of trauma – the ruins of Troy – toward a place that promises empire without limits. Just as Charles holds the world in his hand in Mercury’s vision of Francus’ future, in Book 1 of the archetypal Aeneid, the descendants of Aeneas are destined to possess empire without end: “his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono; imperium sine fine dedi” (For these I set no bounds in space or time; but have given empire without end) (1:278–9). At the end point of the journey for Aeneas (Francus never reaches his final destination in the unfinished Franciade), the exile goes to Italy and sets up a base from which his descendants will build the empire, piece by piece, place by place. Aeneas’ descendants will become “rerum domini” (lords of all things) through slow and steady conquest (1:282). Francus is projected to do the same in Book 4 of the Franciade, in which the priestess Hyante tells him of the conquests of his descendants: Par mainte guerre en maints lieux donteront Huns, Gots, Alains, et au chef porteront Mille lauriers en signe de victoire, Que leurs voisins feront place à leur gloire.  (4:675–8)

10 David Quint describes this as a common phenomenon in epics written in accordance with the powers-that-be: “the victors can claim that they will always be protagonists of a continuing story of imperial and national destiny because they always have been” (Epic and Empire, p. 45). 11 Like Bernhard Klein, I consider “space as the imaginative product of social (and political) action,” that is to say, space is produced (Bernhard Klein, Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland [New York: Palgrave, 2001], p. 10). By his own admission, Klein’s approach (and thus my own) is beholden to Henri Lefebvre’s cardinal work, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden MA: Blackwell, 1991). Since the production of space can occur within geographical maps and literary discourse, Lefebvre’s thesis allows for the two to be compared without a consideration of the “real” space that exists outside of these texts. My interpretation of place is inspired by Louisa Mackenzie who approaches place as “a meaningful location, space interpreted by the socio-cultural,” see Louisa Mackenzie, “Transplanting the Laurel: Mapping France in Du Bellay’s Landscapes,” E-France, 1 (2007): 69–107, p. 73. Space is more abstract than place; it can be measured in terms of volume and area. Space is what exists in between places. See Timothy Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2004), p. 8.

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(In many a war and many a place they will defeat Huns, Goths, Alani, and on their heads they Will wear a thousand laurels to herald their victory Over their neighbours who will make a place for their glory.)

The conquered neighbours will make “place” for the glory of Francus’ descendants by giving up their own place to make way for the narrative of empire. We can see, then, that Charles’ globe sits at the intersection of a narrative of epic, empire and geography. Yet Ronsard is not Virgil; he is Virgil’s imitator, in both obvious and less obvious ways. Alice Hulebei tells us that in the Franciade, “Virgile est partout et nulle part” (is everywhere and nowhere).12 Another way to approach Hulubei’s assertion might be to note that, in the Franciade, Ronsard is everywhere and nowhere in a Virgilian universe. By visiting many of the same sites visited by Aeneas, Francus inhabits the realm of the epic imaginary. He is inscribed in a landscape made of Virgilian common places/commonplaces: the forests, caves and rivers that are the sites of epic activity. Nevertheless, the Franciade does not mimic the Aeneid; instead, it serves as a translation of the Aeneid. For Ronsard, composing the Franciade is about movement, about transporting and transferring Virgil’s 12 Alice Hulubei, “Virgile en France au XVIe siècle,” Revue du seizième siècle, 18 (1931–2): 1–77, p. 70. François Rigolot has discussed Ronsard’s claims as an imitator of both Homer and Virgil in the paratextual writings that accompany the Franciade. See his seminal article, “Ronsard’s Pretext for Paratexts: The Case of the Franciade,” SubStance, 17 (1988): 29–41. Ronsard’s views about his imitation of Virgil seem to have changed over time. In the 1572 “Épitre au lecteur” (Epistle to the reader) that accompanied the first edition of the poem, Ronsard claims to have followed Homer more than Virgil, but nevertheless explains that both poets played a role in the creation of the Franciade: “J’ai patronné mon œuvre … plustost sur la naïve facilité d’Homere, que sur la curieuse diligence de Virgile, imitant toutesfois à mon possible de l’un & de l’autre l’artifice et l’argument plus basty sur la vraysemblance que sur la vérité” (I fashioned my work … more upon Homer’s naïve ease than on Virgil’s laborious diligence. Still, I imitated, as much as possible, both authors’ inventions and their argument, built more on verisimilitude than on truth) (Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 1, p. 1183). Years later, in a 1587 preface to the Franciade, a primer on epic poetry dedicated to the “lecteur apprentif,” Ronsard treats the two poets with equal respect: “Or imitant ces deux lumieres de Poësie … j’ay basti ma Franciade” (So, imitating these two guiding lights of Poetry … I have built my Franciade ) (Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 1, p. 1167), but eventually admits a closer relationship to the Roman poet, despite himself: “Je m’asseure que les envieux caqueteront, dequoy j’allegue Virgile plus souvent qu’Homere qui estoit son maistre, & son patron: mais je l’ay fait tout expres, sçachant bien que nos François ont plus de cognoissance de Virgile, que d’Homere & d’autres Autheurs Grecs” (I am sure that envious voices will start to cackle regarding how I more often take on Virgil than Homer who was my master and his guide, but I did this on purpose, knowing full well that we French know Virgil better than Homer and than other Greek authors) (Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 1, pp. 1169–70).

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poem into a different realm.13 To write a Virgilian epic poem is to write a nation. It is therefore about claiming Virgilian territory – aesthetic, cultural and political – for France. In his Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, Ronsard’s comrade Joachim Du Bellay encourages French poets to write a “long poème” because of its benefit to the poet, to France and to the French language: “Tel œuvre certainement serait à [sa] gloire, honneur de la France, et grande illustration de notre langue” (Such a work would certainly give glory to the poet, an honour to France and a great illustration of our French language).14 Du Bellay’s conception of epic and Ronsard’s execution of it was a cultural enterprise aimed at raising the profile of France and contributing to French honour. A new context for epic offers new challenges. Reclaiming and relocating Virgilian territory requires Ronsard to colonize of all of epic space – both the terrain of the epic imaginary and the places with known coordinates on the Ptolemaic grid. However, Ronsard is acutely aware of the distance between himself and the Roman poet. One moment of recognized difference offers a window into the complexities of Ronsard’s relationship with Virgil. In the fourth book of the Franciade, Francus stands at the entrance of the underworld and sees visions of his descendants. The passage, inspired by Book 6 of the Aeneid, is a source of grief if we are to believe the poet’s preface to the poem: Et si je parle de nos Monarques plus longuement que l’art Virgilien ne le permet: Tu dois sçavoir lecteur que Virgile (comme en toutes autres choses) en cette-cy, est plus heureux que moy, qui vivoit sous Auguste second Empereur, tellement que n’estant chargé que de peu de Rois & de Cesars, ne devoit beaucoup allonger le papier, où j’ay le faix de soixante & trois rois sur les bras.15 (And if I speak of our monarchs at greater length than the Virgilian art allows, you should know, dear Reader, that Virgil [as in all other matters] is luckier than I, for he lived under Augustus, the second emperor, so he carried the weight of only a few kings and Caesars, and thus did not have

13 I am thinking, for instance, of the description of translation offered by Hassan Melehy: “in the modernity of the Renaissance, the translation or transference that takes place in imitation involves a multilingual dialogue with the past that at once affirms the impossibility of resurrecting it and allows it to persist in the different creations to which its elements will contribute in the present. Again, the logic of transference involves a paradox, that of the simultaneous rejection and use of translation: the two together constitute a process of intertextuality, where texts, or parts of them, are borrowed, transferred, translated and integrated according to the demands of the present, and hence contribute to the formation of the present,” see Hassan Melehy, “Du Bellay and the Space of Early Modern Culture,” Neophilologus, 84 (2000): 501–15, p. 512. 14 Joachim Du Bellay, Les Regrets, ed. S. de Sacy (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), p. 241. 15 Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 1, p. 1182.

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to use great reams of paper, whereas I carry on my shoulders the weight of sixty-three kings.)

In describing the entrance to the underworld, Ronsard both embraces Virgilian convention and is forced to reject it; he must become both more and less than his predecessor. And, as Ronsard indicates, these changes are often dictated by circumstances that are beyond his control. Through an analysis of Ronsard’s version of this famous epic commonplace/common place, I will argue that Ronsard’s approach to place in the Franciade is a negotiation between text and context. In the Aeneid, Virgil composes with respect to what Edward S. Casey has called “place-memory”: the ability of place to bring the past to life in the present and thus play a role in producing and reproducing social memory.16 In contrast, the entrance to the underworld in the Franciade demonstrates how the French poet amplifies Virgil’s descriptions of place, all the while creating places of amnesia, where location is irrelevant and forgettable. It is just this kind of forgetting, however, that the poet seeks both within the text and in the extra-textual manifestations of the Franciade that appear during the 1571 royal entry of Charles IX into Paris. In the context of the late 1560s, the poem is used as a tool to forgive and forget.17 * In spite of an ambitious itinerary offered to Francus in Book 1, in the four books that Ronsard actually composed, the only destination that Francus reaches is Crete, a place that is both an epic destination and an epic landscape. Indeed, the majority of the Franciade takes place in Crete, where Francus convinces the priestess (and his love interest) Hyante to reveal to him the names and feats of his descendants. In this passage and those that precede it, landscape from Virgil’s Italy is placed over Ronsard’s Crete. Virgil describes the entry to the underworld as: Spelunca alta fuit vastoque immanis hiatu, scrupea, tuta lacu nigro nemorumque tenebris, quam haud ullae poterant impune volantes tendere iter pinnis; talis sese halitus atris faucibus effundens supera ad convexa ferebat unde locum Grai dixerunt nomine Aornum.  (6:237–42) (A deep cave … yawning wide and vast, of jagged rock, and sheltered by dark lake and woodland gloom, over which no flying creature could safely wing their way; such a vapour from those

16 Edward S. Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 146–80. 17 Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 1, p. 1164.

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black jaws was wafted to the vaulted sky whence the Greeks spoke of Avernus, the Birdless place.)

The Franciade adopts the same literary landscape for Francus’ vision: Pres ce bocage une fosse cavée Estoit profonde en abysme crevée Béante au ciel, ouverte d’un grand tour Qui corrompoit la lumiere du jour D’une vapeur noire, grasse et puante Que nul oiseau de son aile volante N’eust sceu passer, tant le ciel ombrageux S’espoississoit de cendres et de feux, Et de vapeurs pesle-mesle allumées A gros bouillons ondoyans de fumées. De là maints cris, maints traitements de fer Et maint feu sort, le souspirail d’Enfer.  (4:569–80) (Near the grove, a hollowed-out trench, A big mouth cleaved open like an abyss, Yawned wide to the sky in its roundness, Corrupting the light of day With a black, fat and stinking vapour Through which no bird on flying wing Was able to pass. The sky, thus shady, Grew thick with flames and fire And a black flaming vapour That boils up and billows with smoke. From there rose many shouts, much clanking Of iron, much fire – truly a mouth of hell.)

The key elements of Ronsard’s cave, those elements that distinguish this cave from other deep, dark caves – the black vapour and the lack of birds – make this cave a recognizably Virgilian place. Ronsard’s passage is both more and less than its counterpart in the Aeneid. From an aesthetic standpoint, Ronsard’s description showcases the poet’s ability for copia by expanding his source. What Virgil conveys in six lines, Ronsard conveys in eleven. The increased length from Latin to French is in some ways a linguistic inevitability: Ronsard himself once lamented that “trente lignes de Latin en vallent plus de soixante de nostre François” (thirty lines of Latin need more than sixty of our French).18 However, other elements are added to the description as well. If Avernus is dark and forbidding in the Aeneid, it is intended to be all the more frightening in the Franciade. Ronsard’s cave appeals to a range of senses: one is encouraged to see, smell 18

Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 1, p. 1184.

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and hear this cave.19 In the Aeneid, the cave produces a vapour which is referred to as a “halitus atris” (dark breath); in the Franciade, the vapour is “noire, grasse et puante” (black, fat and stinking). Ronsard’s cave spews forth fire, ash and vapours; Virgil’s produces only vapours. And then there are the horrifying “cris” that add an auditory component to Francus’ experience. In addition, the cave that Francus visits actually resembles two of Virgil’s caves: the Sybil’s cave and the cave to Avernus. Aeneas visits both; Francus visits only the entryway to hell (in the Aeneid, this is Avernus), but in Ronsard’s description the two sites overlap with some subtlety. In the Aeneid, the Sybil’s cave is a “Excisum Euboicae latus ingens rupis in antrum / quo lati ducunt aditus centum, ostia centum, / unde ruunt totidem voces, responsa Sibyllae” (a cavern, into which lead a hundred wide mouths, a hundred gateways, from which rush as many voices) (6:42–4). In the Franciade, these voices are recreated in the “maint cris” (many shouts) that emanate from the cave. The voices recall the Sybil’s cave and presence, though she is absent from Ronsard’s work. In addition, Ronsard’s naming of the cave the “souspirail d’Enfer” (mouth of hell) with its root word, “souspir,” evokes the breathiness of those other caves – with their mouths and voices – that gives direction to the wandering Aeneas and shows him the way to the underworld. Ronsard’s treatment of the entry to the underworld demonstrates how French poets can surpass Latin ones with new words and richer descriptions. Ronsard writes over Virgil’s literary landscape, making it his own, while his protagonist joins the ranks of those privileged recipients of visions from the underworld. Yet, for all the poetic embellishments in Ronsard’s re-writing of this Virgilian epic commonplace, this passage in the Franciade also offers the reader less than the Aeneid does in terms of its connections to the narrative of empire. In the Aeneid, the area around the Sybil’s cave can be located on a continuum of past and present that relates to Aeneas’ adventures. When he and his comrades first arrive on Hesperian shores, Aeneas seeks the higher ground, literally, by climbing up to the temple of Apollo which was built by Daedalus after his aerial escape from Crete. This is the spot where the Sibyl will find him and from which she will lead him to her cave. This temple represents both a monument-memento of Daedalus’ time in Cumae and a reminder of Daedalus’ recent past, from the origins of the Minotaur to the construction of the labyrinth to the loss of Icarus. It also recalls Aeneas’ own recent past. Like Daedalus, Aeneas was forced to flee Crete and to abandon a woman who loved him.20 19 Denis Bjaï has also noted the “jeux de sonorités” (sound play) that take place in this passage which plays on “le triple registre visuel, olfactif et auditif” (the visual, olfactory and auditory registers). See Denis Bjaï, La Franciade sur le métier: Ronsard et la pratique du poème héroïque (Geneva: Droz, 2001), p. 283. 20 An in-depth discussion of other similarities between Daedalus and Aeneas can be found in Jasmin Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary

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Daedalus’ temple plays a role in Aeneas’ immediate future. Yasmin Syed has argued that Aeneas’ visit to the temple prepares him for the revelation of the Sibyl: “Marking the entry both into this prophetic book and into the underworld, the ecphrasis at Cumae provides us with a bridge into the prophetic realm we are about to enter.”21 And, of course, access to this prophetic realm also grants Aeneas access to information about a more distant future for both himself and his descendants. For the poem’s protagonist, the temple exists as a crossroads in his journey: a place where past, present and future join together and where the vagaries of his travels begin to make sense as a coherent narrative. This episode of the Aeneid also connects Virgil’s contemporary readership to the poem’s narrative. As Aeneas prepares to descend into the underworld, Virgil’s text provides details about the location of the Sibyl’s cave: it is hidden in a rock on “the shores of the Euboean Cumae” (6:2), near the temple that Daedalus dedicated to Apollo on top of the “Chalcidian hill” (6:17–18). For Virgil’s reader, even as they become part of imperial mythology, the hill where Aeneas stood and the cave at Cumae are real places that can be located and visited. They offer a concrete link to Rome’s past and Aeneas’ adventures that surpasses their own textual manifestations. As the first Greek colony on the Italian mainland, founded in the eighth century BC, Cumae was known by contemporaries and its topography had given birth to the legends that Virgil merely repeats in the Aeneid.22 The connection between the text and its contemporary reader is stressed once again a few lines later, when Aeneas approaches the oracles to ask about his own future. He evokes the present of Rome and promises an act of piety that recalls Daedalus’ own: if he reaches his destination, he too will build a temple to Apollo: “tum Phoebo and Triviae solido de marmore templum / instituam festosque dies de nomine Phoebi. Te quoque magne manent regnis penetralia nostris” (Then to Phoebus and Trivia will I set up a temple of solid marble, and festal days in Phoebus’ name. You also a stately shrine awaits in our realm) (6:69–71). The festal days, the shrine and the temple all belong to Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 81. Michael Putnam argues that Daedalus’ designs establish a typology mirrored in Aeneas’ own journey in Virgil’s Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 75–96. 21 Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self, p. 83. 22 Even today, Cumae carries the interest of those hoping to retrace Aeneas’ steps; the ruins of the city are still the object of tours, like a recent one called “in the Land of the Sybil” sponsored by the Virgilian society in 2002. In his article “In the Steps of Aeneas,” Smiley describes a trip to the Campi Flegrei (the Phlegraean fields) a few miles from Naples. While he takes issue with those who insist that Book 6 is an exact reproduction of the area’s topography, he nevertheless describes his visit to the “shores of the Euboean Cumae,” the temple of Apollo and the entrance to the Sybil’s cave. See P. O’R. Smiley, “In the Steps of Aeneas,” Greece & Rome, 17 (1948): 97–103.

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Rome’s present as well as its past.23 By offering to build a temple to Apollo, Aeneas plans to display his own piety. This future place for Aeneas, however, is a present place for Virgil’s contemporaries; it is the temple of Apollo Palatinus in Rome dedicated in 28 BCE by Augustus himself and built on the site of Augustus’ home. It is not Aeneas, however, but his proxy Augustus who had the temple constructed.24 For Virgil’s readers, the presence of the temple, combined with this passage, reinforces Augustus’ power and piety by reminding readers of his legitimacy as a descendant of Rome’s founder, one who carries on the legacy of his ancestor by building temples, for instance.25 This phenomenon is not uncommon in the Aeneid. Mary Jaegar has commented on the power of the Aeneid to evoke the Rome of Virgil’s contemporaries and appeal to the perspective “of the poem’s audience, which sees a landscape rich in the memories of Rome’s past.”26 The places of the Aeneid, Jaegar argues, allow Virgil not only to preserve memory but also to shape memory by highlighting certain aspects of a place and neglecting other, more troubling aspects.27 Even the evocation of a place, such as Aeneas’ promise to build a temple to Apollo, can have a similar effect on the reader: it situates the poem and its message within its larger context by appealing to the power of association. The episode at Cumae in Book 6 of the Aeneid represents what Catharine Edwards describes as a kind of “palimpsestic landscape” where “past time was conflated and places became vehicles for a kind of non-sequential history (we can have access to Romans’ sense of place only through their narratives, but such narratives are often distinctive for their emphasis on the immediacy of the past as experienced through place).”28 23 Virgil’s translator Fairclough reminds us that the festal days refer to the ludi Apollinares, a yearly event held in Rome since 212 BCE, and that the shrine is the location of the Sibylline books. 24 Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), pp. 65–71. 25 One should not assume, however, that the Aeneid is merely a vehicle for the Augustan agenda. Craig Kallendorf presents the two major schools of thought in postVietnam era Virgilian scholarship: the “optimistic” school, which views the Aeneid as a work that celebrates the regime of Augustus, and the “pessimistic” school which finds that the poem promotes a more ambivalent, negative image of imperial power. See Craig Kallendorf, “Enea nel ‘Nuove Mondo’: Il Columbeis di Stella e il pessimismo virgiliano,” Studi Umanisitici Piceni, 23 (2003): 1–10, pp. 2–3. Richard Thomas deconstructs this debate entirely by challenging the view that Virgil is an Augustan poet “in any sense that has to do with his speaking for the régime, or even with systematically supporting the careful creation of image that Augustus so successfully carried out.” See Richard Thomas, Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 26. 26 Mary Jaeger, “Vergil and the Monuments,” Approaches to Teaching Vergil’s Aeneid, edd. William S. Anderson and Lorina N. Quartarone (New York: Modern Language Association, 2002), p. 134. In this case, Jaegar is discussing Aeneas’ tour of Pallanteum with Evander in Aeneid 8. 27 Jaegar, “Vergil and the Monuments,” edd. Anderson and Quartarone, p. 136. 28 Catharine Edwards, Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City (Cambridge:

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In contrast, in Book 4 of the Franciade, Hyante’s cave sets the scene for the revelation of future truths, but it remains scenery. Francus finds himself in an “atmosphère fantastique et terrifiante” (a fantastic and terrifying setting), a place that is appropriately mysterious, appropriately sacred and appropriately Virgilian for him to see his own ancestors.29 Ronsard has followed the tenets of elevated style of which the Aeneid was the inspiration.30 Yet, in Crete, Francus is nowhere except the Virgilian imagination. His location would be impossible to locate in Crete. Francus approaches Hyante, but one does not know where (4:66). Hyante asks Francus to meet her the next morning at the “bocage sacré” (sacred grove) where there is a temple to Hecate. Hyante and Francus both head to the temple separately beginning from unknown locations. In Francus’ case, the only detail of the journey comes from the prophecy of Francus’ companion Amblois: “Pres le chemin sur le bord d’une plaine / Un orme fut, dont la cyme estoit pleine / De mainte branche où les corbeaux au soir / Prenoient leur perche” (Near the path on the edge of a field / Stood an elm tree whose crown was full / With many branches where, in the evening, birds / Were in the habit of perching) (4:221–4). Similarly, the description of the temple contains no features that would distinguish it from the rest of the Cretan landscape: “Le temple estoit d’un bocage entourné, / De tous costez d’un beau pré couronné” (The temple was surrounded by a grove / Circled on all sides by a beautiful meadow) (4:179–80). Francus appears to Hyante “d’une colline basse” (from a low hill) (4:258). In all of these instances, the use of the indefinite article when describing places (un bocage, une plaine, un beau pré, etc.) makes the landscape generic and unidentifiable. Francus, like Aeneas, makes a promise to build a temple, but this promise is emblematic of how Ronsard’s Crete remains disconnected from places outside of the text when compared with Virgil’s Cumae. As we have seen, Aeneas’ promise has its extra-textual manifestation in the temple of Apollo Palatinus in Rome. As Francus tries to convince Hyante to tell him information about his famous ancestors, he makes a pledge: Je bastiray pour telle recompense Maint temple fait de royal despense En ton honneur; et si je puis jamais Aborder la Seine, icy je te promets Par ton Hecate et ses triples testes Que tous les ans en solennelles festes A jours certains je te feray des jeux.  (4:325–31) Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 42–3. I borrow the term “palimpsestic landscape” both from Mary Jaegar (“Vergil and the Monuments,” edd. Anderson and Quartarone, p. 135) and from Louisa Mackenzie (“Transplanting the Laurel,” p. 2). 29 Bjaï, La Franciade sur le métier, p. 283. 30 See this volume’s introduction.

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(As fitting reward, I will build Many a temple at royal expense In your honour and if I am ever able To reach the Seine, I promise you now, In the name of your Hecate and her three heads, That each year in solemn festivity, on assigned days, I will organize games in your honour.)

Instead of evoking past, present or future, this passage separates itself from them. Ronsard’s readers would not know of a temple dedicated to Hyante, nor would they observe festal days in honour of Hecate. Furthermore, this promise is set in the context of an elaborate lie that Francus spins in order to earn Hyante’s good graces. In addition to the temple and the feast days, he also promises to marry Hyante: “je te donne la foy / De n’espouser autre femme que toy” (I give you my word / that I will wed no other woman but you) (4:336–7). Francus contradicts himself. Earlier, in Book 3, he rejects Hyante’s father’s offer of one of his daughter’s hands in marriage, claiming that his destiny is to reach Gaul: “Qui seulement marier me permet / En Germanie, et non en autre place” (But I am only allowed to marry / In Germany – and in no other place) (3:396–7). If Aeneas’ promise to the Sybil is a solemn one which is ultimately observed by his descendants in Rome, then Francus’ promise is an act of treachery to manipulate Hyante. The promised temple exists neither in thought nor in deed and thus carries little meaning for Ronsard’s readership. Ronsard’s choice to remove epic landscape from the past, present and future of French history in Book 4 is thus a departure from his role as epic poet. Danièle Duport has noted that it is quite rare for Ronsard to describe real landscapes. Instead, Ronsardian landscapes reflect the poet’s appreciation of nature mediated through other authors: “Ronsard, poète de la nature, sensible à ses souffrances, animé d’un amour sincère pour elle, en sympathie avec les mouvements qui l’agitent, recompose un paysage idéal à partir d’une diversité héritée” (Ronsard, poet of nature, sensitive to its sufferings, driven by a sincere love for it, in tune with its movements, recomposes an ideal landscape based on an inherited diversity).31 Yet, the demands of epic poetry are particular with respect to place. In the Aeneid, the non-sequential history told by the landscapes inhabited by Aeneas is also the history of empire. In conjunction with these larger goals of conquest, the episode at Cumae shows us conquest on a smaller scale; it is one place within a network of meaningful places that compose the Roman Empire. If the geography of empire is constructed of the chorography of places in the form of landscapes, then the cave of the Sybil and the promised temple are two locations plotted on the 31 Danièle Duport, Les jardins qui sentent le sauvage: Ronsard et la poétique du paysage (Geneva: Droz, 2000), p. 107.

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grid of the Roman Empire, as well as on the territory of collective memory. Ronsard’s places do not contribute to building an empire. Rather, they seem to do the opposite; instead of referring to geographic reality or contributing to collective memory, they remain epic fantasy. Where Virgil constructs places of memory, Ronsard offers places of amnesia. * The question remains, however, as to why Ronsard would stray from his model with respect to his approach to landscapes. An extra-textual manifestation of the Franciade, the March 1571 royal entry of Charles IX into Paris, hints at a possible answer. Somewhat ironically, while Virgil wrote of places that existed in modern Rome in his Aeneid, Ronsard instead had a hand in re-creating some of the places that he was writing in his poem when he participated in the planning of the entry. The event celebrated both the peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye which was concluded in August 1570 and Charles’ wedding to Elizabeth of Austria, the daughter of Emperor Maximilian II of Austria. Ronsard and Dorat played a role in the organization of the entry, and much has been made of Ronsard’s timely use of the Franciade on this occasion.32 Simon Bouquet’s Bref et sommaire recueil, which describes the entry, tells us that as the king entered the city through the Porte Saint-Denis, he passed under an arch where the figures of Francus and Pharamond – “les tiges des Rois de France” (the stem of French kings) – appeared.33 Francus’ statue was accompanied by the inscription “Quo primum nata est tempore magna fuit” (The moment she was born she was great).34 Pharamond stood near an image of Victory, whose inscription reminds us that she is without wings, for Victory will never abandon the kings of France. At the top centre of the arch, 32 Frances Yates has claimed that “La Franciade est comme le reflet de l’entrée” (The Franciade is like the reflection of the entry). See “Poètes et artistes dans les entrées de Charles IX et de sa reine à Paris en 1571,” Les fêtes de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1955), v. 1, pp. 61–83, p. 83. Denis Bjaï points out that the timing of the entry would indicate the opposite: the entry reflected the Franciade since it was conceived after the majority of the poem had been written (La Franciade sur le métier, p. 53). But perhaps the focus on chronology belies the real interest of the two texts: as contemporaries, the poem and the entry reflect each other, like images in a mirror, and Ronsard had a hand in the creation of both. 33 Victor E. Graham and W. McAllister Johnson reproduce the entirety in The Paris Entries of Charles IX and Elisabeth of Austria (1571) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974). 34 The meaning of the arch is, of course, open to interpretation. Bouquet offers his intended meaning for the symbols in the royal entry; interestingly, though, in another poem written for the occasion, “La Renommé,” Charles de Navières often contradicts Bouquet’s interpretations. See Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, pp. 267–91. For this reason, I tried to focus on the more manageable parts of the arch: the main statues and the inscriptions.

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two cornucopias filled with fruit evoke the fertility of France and the bounty of its land. Charles is present on the arch in the form of his device (Pietate et Justicia appears as well).35 Those present at the entry would have noted that the arch bore three inscriptions, all linked thematically to empire. The central one stated: De ce grand Francion vray tige des François Vint jadis Pharamond le premier de noz Rois Lequel print des Troyens, et Germains sa naissance Dont la race aujourd’hui se renouvelle en France.36 (From this great Francion, true stem of the French, Once descended Pharamond, the first of our kings, To whom the Trojans and the Germans gave birth. Today, his race is renewed in France.)

Another inscription stressed Francus’ connection with the Germans: Francio ab Iliacis veniens (ut fama) ruinis Et Xanthum et Simoënta in Rhenum mutat et Istrum, Qui primus Francos Germains duxit in oris.37 (Francion, as the story tells, coming from Ilion’s fall, exchanged Xanthus and Simoeis for Rhine and Danube; he was the first to lead the Franks in German regions.)

A third inscription evoked the joining of Franks and Gauls under Pharamond: Rex Francis leges Pharamundus tradidt auctis Gallicum in imperium : quas gentes Carolus ambas Ut primus iunxit, sic tu nunc Carole iungis.38 (When the Franks grew great, King Pharamond endowed them with laws to make an empire in Gaul; and these two nations, which a Charles did first unite, thou too, O Charles, are even now uniting.)

These three inscriptions with their focus on the tie between the Germans and the French emphasize unity of peoples and a shared heritage between Charles and his new bride. The overall message of the arch is at once peaceful and dynastic. Marriage, law and shared heritage – but not war or conquest – are the bases for empire. 35 Graham and Johnson discuss the possible origins of this device in The Paris Entries, pp. 65–75. The king began using the device in 1563. 36 Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, p. 110. 37 Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, p. 111. 38 Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, p. 111.

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Positioned in front of the arch, Charles was, in a sense, required to change places with Francus in a re-creation of the revelatory scene discussed earlier. In the Franciade, Francus stands in front of the sacred space of the cave looking in, eagerly awaiting information about his descendants. In the entry, Charles approaches the arch and sees images of two of his most famous ancestors. What’s more, the arch bears elements of some of the stylized caves of the period.39 The arch is described as “rustique” and contains many fauxnatural elements: “Le tout faict de Pierre de rustique bien fort resemblant le naturel, à cause des herbes, limax, et lizards entremeslez parmi” (All was made in rustic stone very closely resembling nature, because of the grasses, snails and cracks all mixed together).40 Like Hyante’s cave, the arch has a sacred component to it. As the king walks through the arch, passing through the “berceau de menuiserie couvert de lierre” (wooden arch covered in ivy), his own stature as king is enhanced by the images reinforcing his power and his divine nature. The arch will lead a transformed Charles into a transformed Paris. In effect, Charles’ passing through the arch was a moment of epic fantasy. The arch allowed for a dream of empire without violence, of perfect unity between political rivals, of unchallenged power, of unbroken heritage.41 39 I am thinking for instance of the grottos of Meudon or Fontainebleau designed by Primaticcio. A woodcut of such a cave can be found in The French Renaissance in Prints (Los Angeles: University of California Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, 1994), p. 259. 40 Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, p. 107. Danièle Duport defines “rustique” with any number of meanings: “La rusticité, selon la définition de Serlio plus connue en France par la traduction de 1547, est un rendu architectural. ‘Rustiquee’ désigne une pierre taillée, bosselée ou bien vermiculée, avec des aspérités. La rusticité explore tous les degrés, depuis le chaos minéral jusqu’à l’ébauche de la forme plus géométrique. Aussi voit-on l’appareil des portes et des arcs essayer le bossage ou la stalactite … Est aussi ‘rustique’ ce qui feint une nature sauvage qui aurait repris son ascendant sur les constructions humaines” (Rusticity, according to Serlio’s definition, better known in France by the 1547 translation, is an architectural rendering. ‘Rustic’ refers to sculpted stone, embossed or decorated with worms, with rough parts. Rusticity explores all degrees, from the chaos of minerals up to the sketching of a geometric form. One thus sees doors and arches with rustication or stalactites … Also referred to as ‘rustic’ is that which feigns wild nature and which has influenced human constructions) (Le jardin et la Nature, p. 245). 41 This peaceful fantasy seems all the more intentional when one considers the content of one of Ronsard’s poems that was excluded from the arch. Bouquet claims that the poem was not included on the arch because there was simply no space for Ronsard’s verses: “pour le peu de place qui restoit vuide audict arc n’y auroient peu estre mis” (because of the small amount of space that remained empty on the arch, they could not be placed there) (Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, p. 111). Graham and Johnson suggest another reason for the absence of Ronsard’s poem; they believe that the poem was excluded in part “since the war-like verses written by Ronsard would seem to be quite inappropriate under the circumstances” (The Paris Entries, p. 16). The poem depicts the armed Francus making war in Germany and his descendant Pharamond aggressively invading Gaul. Francus, a “Prince armé” (armed Prince), gives birth to a race of warriors, “une race au faict des armes craincte” (a race feared for its warrior feats) (20) who are

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Charles was depicted as the heir of great conquerors, but was able to pass into Paris triumphantly without rivals. Like many of the temporary installations prepared for the entry, the message of the arch at the Porte Saint–Denis demonstrates that peace was essential to the existence of empire. The entry covered places in the city with a new landscape, making the familiar unfamiliar and covering up the realities of its past and present conflicts with idealized scenes: Catherine de’ Medici as a goddess holding up a map of France, Mars putting down his arms, figures of the marshals of France assuring the successful application of the peace edict, the king and his brother depicted as statues of Castor and Pollux. These messages were arranged in a narrative dictated by the king’s route through the city, a point reinforced by the fact that Bouquet describes Paris according to the king’s perspective, not the perspective of those viewing the entry.42 As part of this transformation, these messages of peace and unity, however, wrote over the sites of recent conflicts. Indeed, the Rue Saint-Denis, the street that passed under the arch, was the scene of a particularly violent outbreak of religious unrest in the summer of 1570.43 The covering of conflict in the entry seemed to correspond to a primary clause of the Peace of Saint Germain, one of the raisons d’être of the entry. The treaty ordered a kind of active forgetting of the wars that preceded it and forbade royal subjects from preserving their memory in word or in deed:

destined to conquer the whole world (“conquerir … le monde entier”). In the forty-two verse poem, words like “armé” (armed), “conqueste” (conquest), “guerre” (war) and “conqueror” figure prominently. Graham and Johnson note that Ronsard’s other poetry for the entry is both lapidary and less bellicose – which would indicate that the poet was aware that this longer, more belligerent poem would be unsuitable. 42 Luisa Capodieci has pointed out the need to look at royal entries as a whole: “En effet, l’entrée royale raconte une histoire tout comme les mystères médiévaux dont elle calque le modèle. Elle se déroule selon une progression dans l’espace dont les étapes ne doivent pas être considérées comme des épisodes syncopés, mais comme les phases d’un continuum ‘filmique.’ Par exigences de ‘scénario,’ cette continuité se construit petit à petit par le biais de jonctions paratactiques architecturales qui tissent un réseau symbolique cohérent” (Indeed, the royal entry tells a story just like a medieval mystery whose model it copies. It takes place along a progression through space in which the stages need not be considered as syncopated episodes, but rather as the phases of a ‘filmic’ continuum. Following the script’s design, this continuity is constructed bit by bit by the means of architectural paratactic connections which weave a coherent symbolic network). Luisa Capodieci, “Sic Itur Ad Astra: Narration, figures célestes et platonismes dans les entrées d’Henri II (Reims 1547, Lyon 1548, Paris 1549, Rouen 1550),” French Ceremonial Entries in the Sixteenth Century: Event, Image, Text, edd. Nicholas Russell and Hélène Visentin (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007): 73–109, pp. 73–4. 43 Barbara Diefendorf describes Parisian opposition to the Peace of Saint-Germain in Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 84–8.

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Que la mémoire de toutes choses passées d’une part et d’autre, et dès et depuis les troubles advenus en notre dit Royaume, et à l’occasion d’iceux, demeure éteinte et assoupie comme de chose non advenue … Défendant à tous nos sujets de quelque état et qualité qu’ils soient, qu’ils n’aient à en renouveler la mémoire … de fait ou de parole, mais se contenter de vivre paisiblement ensemble comme frères, amis et concitoyens.44 (May the memory of all events which have happened here and there and since the troubles began in our Kingdom, and on the occasion of these troubles, remain extinguished and asleep as if nothing had happened … Not allowing any of our subjects of whatever state and status they be that they should renew memory … in deed or word, but rather be content with living peacefully together like brothers, friends and countrymen.)

Ronsard’s Virgilian mind was still at work, however, and he and the other organizers of the entry did not abandon the wish for imperial conquest even as they promoted domestic peace. At the Porte aux Peintres, an elaborate arch featured among its many inscriptions two key passages from the Aeneid, both related to empire: Omnia sub pedibus, qua sol utrumque recurrens Aspicit Oceanum, vertique regique videbit.45 (7:100–1) ([they] shall behold, where the circling sun looks on either ocean, the whole world roll obediently beneath their feet.)

The arch also bears one of the most famous passages of the Aeneid: “Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris” (who shall extend his empire to the Ocean, his glory to the stars) (1:287).46 These two inscriptions, set within the 1571 entry, seem to transcend conflict by setting no earthly limits on empire at all – a decidedly ideal way to avoid squabbles over specific places. Of course, the dream of peace and empire promoted in the entry and preserved by the use of place in the Franciade quickly foundered. I would not be the first critic to mention that one of the ironies of history was that the Franciade was published for the first time only weeks after the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre, when the building tensions between Catholics and Protestants erupted with horrific violence in the city of Paris. The massacre 44 André Stegmann, Édits des guerres de Religion (Paris: J. Vrin, 1979), p. 69. Andrea Frisch discusses this aspect of the peace agreements during the Wars of Religion in her article “French Tragedy and the Civil Wars,” Modern Language Quarterly, 67 (2006): 287–312. 45 Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, p. 142. This quotation is not exact: the inscription places “videbit” (he will see) where Virgil writes “videbunt” (they will see). The quotation, taken from Jupiter’s prediction about Aeneas’ descendants, describes Julius Caesar and promotes the idea of the divinity of the emperor. 46 Graham and Johnson, The Paris Entries, p. 142.

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also marked the end of the Peace of Saint-Germain, celebrated in the 1571 entry. The epic fantasy created by hiding conflict with fictional landscapes came abruptly to an end. For a time, though, in the entry and in the Franciade, Ronsard made the most of his Virgilian mind to the benefit of Charles IX and his programme of reconciliation and empire. * We have seen that the places where Francus travels and the landscape that he inhabits remain largely anonymous and un-mappable in terms of past and present and in terms of politics and history. But, if the poet writes over sites of conflict with fictional landscapes in the royal entry and avoids sites of conflict in the Franciade, his treatment of place in these works also hints at another issue: land is not just a site of conflict, but also a source of conflict, as Ronsard knew from personal experience. In July 1568, about the time he would have been writing the Franciade in earnest, Ronsard found himself embroiled in a dispute with the clothing dyer Fortin over a piece of land where Fortin had set up business.47 The poet wrote a letter to the mayor and aldermen of Tours complaining that the land was part of the convent of SaintCosme of which he was the prior. Fortin, he argued, “se fust venu planter en mon fond et en ma terre” (came along and moved onto my land).48 Ronsard asked for an audience with the mayor to present a series of documents to prove that the river Choisille and the land where Fortin had placed his house and his business had been “du propre patrimoine de Sainct Cosme” (the property of Saint Cosme) for hundreds of years. Ronsard’s claim to the land was codified by a series of documents, but the actual lines of his property were nevertheless subject to question and were thus under threat. The lawsuit was settled in 1571 when Ronsard agreed to allow Fortin and his descendants to use the land if they paid rent; in the meantime, though, Ronsard wrote about the dispute in a contemporary poem entitled “Discours de l’alteration et change des choses humaines” (Discourse on the alteration and change of human things).49 Ronsard begins the poem by reflecting on the situation at Saint-Cosme to his friend Julien Chauveau: Il est certain qu’en possedant la terre, Avec la terre on possede la guerre. Puis je ne plaide encontre un Sarrazin, 47 Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 1, p. 1605 (Editor’s notes). The consensus is that Ronsard did not write any significant part of the Franciade before 1568. There exists a manuscript of Book 2 from that year and another manuscript of the first two books that is dated 1570. In December 1571, Amadis Jamyn read Book 4 to Charles IX at his château in Blois. 48 Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 2, p. 1208. 49 Ronsard, Œuvres Complètes, edd. Céard, Ménager and Simonin, v. 2, p. 744.

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Juif, Mamelu, mais contre mon voisin, De qui la borne est prochaine à la mienne.  (9–13) (It is certain that possession of land Means that with the land one gets war. I am not in dispute with a Saracen, A Jew, a Muslim, but with my neighbour, Whose land is next to mine.)

The war between the neighbours Ronsard and Fortin, although it had seemingly little to do with the contemporary conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, quickly becomes emblematic of the conflicts among those who belonged to Ronsard’s faith, as he puts it, “nostre foy Chrestienne” (our Christian faith) (14). The poet tells his reader that royal power can break down from the outside or the inside: Par le dehors, quand un Prince estranger Vient à main forte en armes outrager: Par le dedans, quand les guerres civilles De factions brulent le cœur des villes; Quand la Noblesse et le peuple sans foy Tout desbridé fait la guerre à son Roy: Et vaudroit mieux faire bien loin la guerre Aux Sarrasins, qu’en nostre propre terre, Qu’en nos fouyers, dont jamais le veinqueur N’a rapporté qu’une enflure de cœur.  (195–200) (From the outside, when a foreign prince Comes waging war with arms and heavy hand; From the inside, when civil war In factions burn down the hearts of towns; When the nobles and the faith-lacking people Without restraint make war on their king; It would be better to wage war far away Against the Saracens, rather than in our own land, In our homes, for there the winner Only ever wins a bruised heart.)

The small dispute between neighbours over the use of a parcel of land (referred to in the letter as “ma terre” [my land] and “le propre patrimoine de Saint Cosme” [the property of Saint Cosme]) is only a part of large-scale conflict that takes place on “nostre propre terre” (our own land). During the civil wars, all of “nostre propre terre” had the potential to be contested: the war between those of “nostre foy” (our faith) had put the land itself into play. The use of “nostre” in both cases reminds the reader of a shared ownership and a shared responsibility and the extent to which the civil wars had shut down the idea of sharing and co-existing peacefully.

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The connections that Ronsard makes between his lawsuit over a piece of land and the civil wars taking place in France serve as a reminder that land allocation was key to both war and peace during the civil wars. Frances Dolan has observed that “The Reformation, at least in England, was, among other things, a contest over space.”50 This statement is no less true in France. Cities were being claimed and re-claimed, conquered and destroyed by warring factions. The repossession of the land of Protestant nobles was a key strategy used by the king to punish insurgency. And, just as land was contested in war, its demarcation was central to the peace treaties that allowed for temporary reprieve in the conflicts. The Peace of Saint-Germain, for instance, stipulated that four cities – Cognac, La Charité, La Rochelle and Montauban – would be official Protestant strongholds, and carefully noted the areas where one could exercise Protestantism.51 The emphasis on place in the treaty indicates that part of the royal strategy for peace depended on a clear demarcation of space and a respect for boundaries. Ronsard’s treatment of place in the Franciade demonstrates a preference for an epic imaginary over historical reality, a preference necessary to the creation of epic fantasy in the reign of Charles IX. If, as Ronsard states in the preface to the Franciade, Virgil was luckier than he was in all things (“Virgile [comme en toutes autres choses] … est plus heureux que moy”), perhaps the Roman poet was most lucky in that he wrote in a time of relative peace. In Altération, Ronsard equates land ownership with war (“Il est certain qu’en possedant la terre, / Avec la terre on possede la guerre” [It is certain that the possession of land / Means that with the land, one gets war]), and particularly with war among neighbours. In France, at the end of the sixteenth century, possession of land is not the cause of war based on imperial conquest, the kind of war necessary for expansion, but rather the cause of civil war, the kind of war that strikes at the heart of imperial dreams.

50 Frances E Dolan, “Gender and the ‘Lost’ Spaces of Catholicism,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (2002): 641–65, p. 665. 51 Stegmann, Édits des Guerres de Religion, p. 71.

INDEX active life: 9, 75–80 82, 84, 95, 207, 209 Aeneid: see Virgil, Aeneid Aeneas: x, 6–7, 11–14, 22, 74–85, 86, 88–89, 91, 95, 124, 127–28, 130, 133, 152, 163, 166–75, 178–79, 181–88, 189–90, 194, 196–205, 209, 211, 216–27, 230–34, 239–40, 244–48, 253 allegory: 4, 5, 8–9, 11–12, 33, 36, 46, 61, 67, 70, 72, 75–77, 81, 85, 87, 91, 96, 120, 160, 171–75, 178–79, 186–87, 190–91, 203–06, 208–09, 211, 218, 230–31 Alpers, Paul: 3, 5, 94, 97 Ariosto: 150–51 anachrony: 138 Augustus: 14, 23–25, 73–74, 100, 128–33, 135–38, 151, 153, 160, 173, 182–84, 205, 241, 246 Ausonius: 15, 189, 192, 213–15, 232–35 Avernus: 171, 174, 178–79, 243–44 Bade, Josse: 8–9, 143, 148, 187, 190–91 Bandello, Matteo: 42 Belleau, Rémy: 4 Bembo, Pietro: 52 Boccaccio, Giovanni: 39, 42, 67, 78, 141, 232 Botticelli, Sandro: 166, 187 Brant, Sebastian: 166–72, 175, 178, 161, 163–64, 183–85 Bucolics: see Virgil, Eclogues Calvinism: 6, 39–40, 50, 56, 94–96, 128, 253, 255–56 Carthage: 7, 9, 78–79, 82, 84, 217, 221, 223, 225–26, 230, 233 Castiglione, Baldassare: 5, 47 chanson de geste: 9 Charles IX: 40, 53, 136, 186, 237–38, 242, 249, 254, 256 Chastellain, Georges: 61, 67

christianization: 8, 12, 22, 86 contemplative life: 6, 9, 75–80, 83–84, 86, 88, 91, 95, 173–75, 210 copia: 98, 106, 158, 248–49 Crenne, Hélisenne de: 10, 118–20, 124–25, 127, 191 Des Masures, Louis: 10–11, 66, 119–23, 125, 128–29, 133–36, 186–87, 191, 218, 234 Dido: x, 7, 13–14, 22, 79–81, 87, 98, 117, 119, 127, 152, 159, 163, 166, 178, 189, 192, 199, 203, 209, 213–35 Dolet, Etienne: 11, 28, 33 Dorat, Jean: 154, 205, 249 Du Bellay, Joachim: 2, 5–6, 10, 12–15, 22–23, 32–33, 45, 54, 63–65, 67–68, 71, 89, 93–114, 118–21, 127–29, 150–54, 179, 189–212, 213–35, 239, 241 Aeneid 4 (version of): see Du Bellay, Quatriesme livre de l’Eneide (Le) Aeneid 5 (version of): see Du Bellay, Recueil de Poësie Aeneid 6 (version of): see Du Bellay, Deux livres de l’Eneide de Virgile Ample Discours au Roy sur le faict des quatre estats du Royaume de France: 111 Chant triumphal sur le voyage de Boulongne: 59, 63 Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (La): 2, 12–14, 23, 32, 45, 96–101, 105, 110, 113–14, 128, 150–52, 154, 157, 189–95, 178, 202, 211, 213–16, 218, 219–22, 227–28, 231, 234–35, 241 Deux livres de l’Eneide de Virgile: 182, 196, 205, 208–10 Discours au roy sur la poésie: 235 Divers jeux rustiques: 5, 93–114

258 INDEX Moretum (Le): see Divers jeux rustiques Mort de Palinure (La): see Du Bellay, Recueil de Poësie Olive (L’): 98, 100–01, 103, 106, 111, 171, 192, 201, 229 Quatriesme livre de l’Eneide (Le): 4, 98, 119, 189, 191–92, 213–22, 227 Recueil de Poësie: 189–93, 199, 201, 204, 206, 214, 229 Regrets (Les): 14, 21, 93, 112, 191, 195, 204–09, 211, 241 Vers lyriques: 192, 201, 229 Eliot, T.S.: 8, 117 Erasmus, Desiderius: 32, 86, 98, 106, 158, 202 Estienne, Charles: 96, 233 Estienne, Henri: 9, 155 Estienne, Robert: 12, 186 eudaimonia: 73, 84, 86 Ficino, Marsilio: 78, 82–83, 88, 90–91 François Ier: 11, 22–26, 35, 127, 146, 160, 205–6, 229 François II: 111 Fulgentius: 75–77, 173 Gallic Hercules: 108 Georgics: see Virgil, Georgics Gide, André: x Giovanni, Apollonio di: 172 golden age: 5, 33, 35–36, 46, 68, 130, 132–33, 135 gothic: 121, 125, 166, 174 Grüninger, Johannes: 11, 163–64, 166–69, 171–73, 178–79, 183, 187 Habert, François: 6, 74, 85–86, 88–89, 91 Henri II: 93, 186, 205–06, 229–30, 235, 252 Henri III: 86, 128 Hessus, Eobanus: 142 Homer: 14, 23–24, 89, 98, 100, 108, 141–60, 172, 205, 219, 240 Iliad: 9, 12, 141–42, 145, 148, 150, 160, 184, 197, 205, 219 Odyssey: 9, 141–42, 146, 147, 172, 193, 207 homophony: 20–21, 23, 25, 27–28, 31–34, 36, 203

Horace: 20, 21, 31, 57, 102, 108, 110–11, 149–51, 196, 201 Hulubei, Alice: 1, 9, 19, 43, 60–61, 118, 148, 154, 190–91, 193, 240 humility topos: 23, 25, 28, 35, 112 hyperbole: 48, 200 Icarus: 169–72, 244 Jamyn, Amadis: 12, 254 Juvenal: 31 Lactantius: 9 Landino, Cristoforo: 9, 77–80, 82–84, 91, 190–91, 205, 207, 210 landscape: 4–5, 42, 94, 163–64, 179, 239–40, 242–44, 246–49, 252, 254 Le Chevalier d’Agneaux, Robert and Antoine: 10, 66, 119–25, 128–29, 136–39 Lemaire de Belges, Jean Concorde des deux langages (La): 61, 74, 80–81, 86–87 Couronne margaritique (La): 71 Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye: 61, 148, 218 Temple d’honneur et de vertus: 4, 6, 59–72, 73–74 Traité des schismes et des conciles de l’Eglise: 70 Le Roy, Guillaume: 3, 123, 168 L’Hospital, Michel de: 111 Lucretius: 171 Macrobius: 75–79, 83, 89 Maecenas: 23, 34, 36, 64, 100, 103–4 Magny, Olivier de: 101–6, 110–11 Marcellus: 74, 179–85 Marot, Clément Adolescence clémentine (L’): 4, 19–33, 148–49 Enfer (L’): 19–20, 25, 33–37 Martial: 21, 36, 101, 152 Molinet, Jean: 61, 67 Montaigne, Michel de: 16, 57, 159–60 nationhood: 139, 141, 146–47, 149–51, 153–54, 156–57, 160, 167, 179, 183–84, 194–96, 205–6, 211, 213–35, 238, 241 naturalization: 22, 24, 32, 36, 217

INDEX 259

Navarre, Marguerite de: 27, 39, 50, 54–55, 189–90, 192, 229 neo-Latin: 3, 11, 19–21, 27, 43, 63, 93, 96, 104, 149, 156, 192 neoplatonism: 6, 9, 75–76, 80–82, 84–85, 91, 190 nostalgia: 46, 179

Meslanges: 93 Odes: 12 Salade (La): 5 Temple de Messeigneurs le connestable, et des chastillons (Le): 59, 64–67 rota Virgilii: 1–2, 94, 148–49

originality: 21, 33, 79, 84, 88, 101 otium: 3, 95 Ovid: x, 13–14, 19, 21, 36, 98, 104–6, 119–20, 124, 141, 149–50, 154, 189, 192, 213, 215, 223–28, 230, 232–33

Sagon, François: 20, 22, 25, 27–34, 37 Saint-Gelais, Octovien de: 3, 10, 118–20, 127, 132, 191, 215, 223 Salutati, Coluccio: 76–77 Scaliger, Julius Caesar: 99, 157–59 Scarron, Paul: x, 117 Sebillet, Thomas: 22–23, 97–98, 149–50, 219, 224, 227 Servius: 9, 40, 75, 145, 148, 161, 171, 173, 177, 178, 186, 190–91, 205 Serres, Olivier de: 96, 100 sibyl: 12, 110, 167–68, 174–76, 183, 196, 207, 209, 244–46 Silvestris, Bernard: 11, 49, 76–77, 173–76, 179

Palinurus: 12–14, 174–76, 178, 189–212, 230–31 Palissy, Bernard: 6, 96 Peletier du Mans, Jean: 12, 101, 152–53 Pénicaud, Jean: 161 Petrarch, Francesco: 78, 95, 141 petrarchism: 101–2, 105, 193 Pindar: 68, 108 Pizan, Christine de: 232–33 Plotinus: 78–80, 83 poet-vates: 110–11 Poliziano, Angelo: 143–46, 151 Ponge, Francis: x Quint, David: 21, 171, 193, 196, 204–6, 231, 238, 239 Rabelais, François Gargantua: 47 Tiers Livre (Le): ix Quart Livre (Le): 6, 74, 89–91 Ramus, Peter: 9, 186–87 Rhodiginus, Coelius: 80, 83 Roman de la Rose: x, 46 Ronsard, Pierre de: 3, 6, 12, 16, 21, 23, 33, 52, 59, 63–65, 67–68, 71, 74, 86–91, 93–98, 102–3, 107–14, 128, 136, 150–51, 154–57, 160, 171, 179–80, 192, 195, 206–11, 219, 237–56 Amours (Les): 108–10, 190, 192 Bocage Royal (Le): 6, 74, 86 Discours de l’alteration et change des choses humaines: 254 Franciade (La): 3, 12–15, 88, 96, 110, 136, 150–51, 155, 171, 186, 219, 237–55 Livret de Folastries: 52

temple of virtue: 4, 6–7, 71, 73–91 Theocritus: 3, 43, 101, 152, 157–58 Tityrus: 4, 44, 46, 60, 74, 81, 101, 104, 157–58 translatio imperii: 183, 190, 202, 206, 211, 218 translatio studii: 24, 35–36, 84, 190, 211, 218 Trédéhan, Pierre: 10, 119–20, 122, 127 Troy: 7, 11, 63, 68, 78–79, 81, 84, 89, 95, 126–29, 148, 151, 155, 160, 171–72, 179, 184, 186, 191, 193, 202–03, 218, 232–33, 239, 250, 256 Turnus: 7, 124, 182, 184 underworld: 172–75, 178–79, 190, 196, 201–2, 205, 209, 241–42, 244–45 utile-doux: 20, 102–3 utile dulci: see utile-doux Varanne, Valerand de la: 3 Vegio, Maffeo: 9, 187 Verville, Béroalde de: 96 Virgil Aeneid: ix, 1–3, 7–15, 42, 69, 73–81, 83–84, 86, 89–91, 94, 98, 117–39, 144, 151–52, 155–56, 160, 161–87, 189–212, 213–35, 237–49, 253

260 INDEX Bucolics: ix, x, 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9, 15, 22, 39–58, 59–64, 81, 94–95, 101, 141, 143, 145, 157–58, 160, 185 Georgics: ix, 1, 3–7, 9, 42, 61–62, 65, 66, 68–69, 73–74, 82, 91, 94–95, 102, 114, 123, 144, 153–54, 157, 160 Moretum: 5, 93–101, 106, 109, 114

wheel of Virgil: see rota Virgilii woodcuts: 120, 124–25, 161, 166–68, 170–74, 179, 183–87, 251 Xenophon: 73 Yver, Jacques: 4, 7, 39–58

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VIrgIlIan IdentItIes In the French renaIssance Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach

Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach

PhIllIP John Usher is assistant Professor of French and comparative literature, Barnard college, columbia University. IsaBelle FernBach is assistant Professor of French at Montana state University, Bozeman.

VIrgIlIan IdentItIes In the French renaIssance

Virgil’s works, principally the Bucolics, the Georgics, and above all the Aeneid, were frequently read, translated and rewritten by authors of the French renaissance. the contributors to this volume show how readers and writers entered into a dialogue with the texts, using them to grapple with such difficult questions as authorial, political and communitarian identities. It is demonstrated how Virgil’s works are more than ancient models to be imitated. they reveal themselves, instead, to be part of a vibrant moment of exchange central to the definition of literature at the time. In addition to discussing how Virgil influenced questions of identity for such authors as Jean lemaire de Belges, Joachim du Bellay, clément Marot, Pierre de ronsard and Jacques Yver, the volume also offers perspectives on Virgil’s French translators, on how French writers made quite different appropriations of homer and Virgil, and on Virgil’s reception in the arts. It provides a fresh understanding and assessment of how, in sixteenthcentury France, Virgil and his texts moved beyond earlier allegorical interpreations to enter into the ideas espoused by a new and national literature.

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