Early Modern French Literature

Au même titre que le discours des comices agricoles dans Madame Bovary, le Télémaque s'est d'emblée imposé comme un des passages obligés -on n'ose pas dire un des plus sûrs poncifsde la réflexion critique sur le cliché. Déplorant dès 1899 la force corruptrice de la répétition, prompte à dégrader toute « image nouvelle » en « cliché », Remy de Gourmont convoque aussitôt l'exemple du roman de Fénelon, devenu à ses yeux « définitivement illisible » en raison de son succès même, et en effet trop imité pour ne pas sembler banal et défraichi : « comment goûter encore », s'interroge-t-il, « "les gazons fleuris -ces beaux lieux -qu'elle arrosait de ces larmes" » 1 . Or la même année, en inflexible arbitre des élégances -« Il y a […] un style cliché dont les expressions neutres et usées servent à chacun […]. C'est avec ce style-là qu'il ne faut pas écrire » -, Antoine Albalat s'empresse de faire valoir le même contre-modèle, le Télémaque, mais en inversant les perspectives et en durcissant le ton. C'est que, selon l'illustre auteur du Travail du style enseigné par les corrections manuscrites des grands écrivains, les clichés de Fénelon ne sont pas l'effet d'une construction rétrospective : la prose du roman n'est pas devenue banale à force d'être imitée, elle l'était dès le moment de sa conception, l'alternative en tant que telle engageant déjà les deux manières d'appréhender la relativité constitutive de tout cliché 2 . Les Aventures de Télémaque ? « Style correct et inexpressif, incarnant les qualités artificielles de l'art d'écrire », tranche Albalat ; « élégance sans éclat, netteté sans relief, style irréprochable et sans vie, phrases clichées, expressions toutes faites, épithètes prévues et banales, sans pittoresque et sans surprises... » 3 Charge sans profondeur.

En inscrivant Pascal dans la tradition de l'éloquence gallicane, initialement liée à « la pratique de l'institution parlementaire » 1 , Marc Fumaroli a clairement défini le cadre à l'intérieur duquel doit se poser, dans une large mesure, le problème de l'esthétique démonstrative des Pensées : celui d'une « éloquence philosophique », aux inflexions platoniciennes, « opposée aux artifices des rhéteurs » 2 ; celui encore d'un art sévère et ascétique, suspendu à l'exercice du jugement plutôt que de l'imagination.

The myth of Amphion not only helps us read, interpret and "place" vast quantities of early modern lyrics from Spain, France and England; it also offers a way to read some powerful twenty-first century poetry that might be understood to emerge from the legacies of the deep imbrication of lyrics and imperial projects in the early modern period.

Les relations unissant les Pensées aux Essais ne cessent d'occuper les études pascaliennes. La plupart des éditions disponibles des Pensées renvoient désormais en notes aux passages plagiés, visés ou commentés des Essais, et de nombreux travaux, anciens comme récents, ont permis d'éclairer les principales facettes de l'influence intellectuelle de Montaigne sur Pascal 1 ou de préciser le rôle qui lui était assigné dans l'apologie en devenir 2 . Aussi est-il curieux d'observer que la question de l'emprise formelle et stylistique des Essais sur les Pensées n'ait suscité, pour sa part, que peu d'études approfondies 3 . Dès le XVII e siècle, les Recueils de choses diverses édités par J. Mesnard le précisaient cependant : « M. Pascal estimait Montaigne pour son style et son sens. Il disait qu'il lui avait appris à écrire » 4 . Peu se sont donc donné la peine d'interroger une évidence aussi bien installée.

The first major scholarly investigation into the rich history of the marked body in the early modern period, this interdisciplinary study examines multiple forms, uses, and meanings of corporeal inscription and impression in France and the French Atlantic from the late sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries.

Placing into dialogue a broad range of textual and visual sources drawn from areas as diverse as demonology, jurisprudence, mysticism, medicine, pilgrimage, commerce, travel, and colonial conquest that have formerly been examined largely in isolation, Katherine Dauge-Roth demonstrates that emerging theories and practices of signing the body must be understood in relationship to each other and to the development of other material marking practices that rose to prominence in the early modern period.

While each chapter brings to light the particular histories and meanings of a distinct set of cutaneous marks—devil’s marks on witches, demon’s marks upon the possessed, devotional wounds, Amerindian and Holy Land pilgrim tattoos, and criminal brands—each also reveals connections between these various types of stigmata, links that were obvious to the early modern thinkers who theorized and deployed them. Moreover, the five chapters bring to the fore ways in which corporeal marking of all kinds interacted dynamically with practices of writing on, imprinting, and engraving paper, parchment, fabric, and metal that flourished in the period, together signaling important changes taking place in early modern society.

Examining the marked body as a material object replete with varied meanings and uses, Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France shows how the skin itself became the register of the profound cultural and social transformations that characterized this era.

Available at Routledge: https://bit.ly/37NqUT9


Contents

Introduction: The Impressionable Body

1 Seals of Satan: Demonologists and the Devil’s Mark

2 Demonic Marks, Divine Stigmata: The Female Body Inscribed

3 The Amerindian Tattoo: Signs of Identity in New France

4 Jerusalem Arms: The European Pilgrim Tattoo

5 Stigma and State Control: Branding the Deviant Body

Conclusion: Lasting Impressions


Reviews

This brilliant and gracefully written study weaves an eclectic and original corpus of primary sources into a compelling argument about the cultural implications of body marking in France and its colonies during the early modern period. In addition to being understood as magical signs, devotional gestures or material by-products of the power of the imagination, body marks also served as a powerful means of self-fashioning, and as signs of identification and authoritative control. The book is a must read for anyone interested in how the ancient practice of body marking became transformed into a product of the modern state.
—Allison Stedman, Professor of French, University of North Carolina—Charlotte

Whole worlds of meaning were legible in the marks written by God and man, nature and the cosmos, on the delicate surface that clothed, however porously, the bodies of renaissance men and women. Wounds of many different provenances; tattoos on pilgrims from the holy land, on prisoners and on the native peoples across the globe; birthmarks of various colors and shapes spoke to matters of deep cultural exigency. In this book Katherine Dauge-Roth constitutes, explores and interprets beautifully a whole lost archive of writing on the body.
—Thomas W. Laqueur, Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, University of California—Berkeley

Signing the Body reveals how cutaneous marks were deeply embedded in early modern European culture. In this abundantly researched work, Dauge-Roth examines demonic marks and sacred stigmata, the branding of criminals, Amerindian tattooing, and the Jerusalem tattoos traditionally received by Christian pilgrims. These diverse dermal practices are united, Dauge-Roth argues, by the desire to make the human body a stable site of signification in an age of cultural upheaval and physical mobility. Signing the Body reveals the ubiquity of body marking in early modern Europe, confirming the relatively familiar status of European tattooing practices once thought extraordinary.
—Craig Koslofsky, Professor of History and Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

In exploring two different kinds of early modern institutional religious discourses, i.e. catechisms and exposition of discussed matters, this article highlights two modes of enunciative fading off. On the one hand, catechisms look like dialogues, but they are actually full of apparently “autonomous” utterances. On the other hand, exposition, a supposedly neutral presentation, proves to be pervaded by a subdued but clearly partial subjectivity, a chiaroscuro presence very much in tune with the mediate and transitive Christian regime of authority.

L’étude de deux types de discours religieux institutionnels, les catéchismes et l’exposition de matières controversées, permet de mettre au jour deux modes d’effacement énonciatif : les catéchismes miment le dialogue, mais multiplient les énoncés « autonomisés » ; l’exposition, qui se veut présentation neutre, s’avère constellée de marqueurs d’une subjectivité certes pacifiée mais partiale – présence en demi-teinte conforme au caractère médiat et transitif de l’autorité en régime chrétien.

In exploring two different kinds of early modern institutional religious discourses, i.e. catechisms and exposition of discussed matters, this article highlights two modes of enunciative fading off. On the one hand, catechisms look like dialogues, but they are actually full of apparently “autonomous” utterances. On the other hand, exposition, a supposedly neutral presentation, proves to be pervaded by a subdued but clearly partial subjectivity, a chiaroscuro presence very much in tune with the mediate and transitive Christian regime of authority.

El estudio de dos tipos de discusos religiosos institucionales, los catecismos y la exposición de temas sometidos a controversia, premite presentar dos modalidades de borramiento enunciativo : los catecismos miman al diálogo, pero multiplican los enunciados “autonomizados” ; la exposición, que se pretende presentación neutra, se presenta constelada por marcadores de una subjetividad, a su vez pacificada pero parcial – presencia esbozada conforme al caráter mediato y transitivo de la autoridad bajo un regimen cristiano.

We welcome essay proposals for an edited collection addressing the cultural, spiritual, and political legacy of Renée de France (1510-1575), second daughter of King Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne. Orphaned at the age of four, the young princess was raised at the court of King Francis I, under the maternal influence of her sister, Queen Claude de France, and the king's sister, Marguerite de Navarre, both of whom favored internal reform of the Catholic Church and supported like-minded intellectuals and priests. Renée left France in 1528 soon after her politically-motivated marriage to Ercole d'Este, future Duke of Ferrara. In Italy, Renée continued her associations with heterodox intellectuals until the end of her life, particularly after the death of her husband in 1559 and her subsequent return to France, where she spent her dowager years at her château of Montargis.

In the fall of 1725, at a time when the French monarchy wanted to regain control of its American territories and restore the colony’s image in the eyes of the French public, five Louisiana Indians were brought to Paris at the request of Louis XV. This delegation’s visit was promoted as a major event. Their strange appearance and curious customs drew a large public avid for novelties and exotic spectacles. This particular diplomatic mission raised many questions and challenged the familiar representations of Native Americans. French officials had to treat a group of people commonly depicted as uncivilized and barbaric with all the honors bestowed upon distinguished guests. The guests themselves, despite their label as “strange savages,” demonstrated a very educated and cultured behavior throughout their stay: their chiefs spoke in the name of all their people, their religious beliefs in the Sun echoed the symbolism of French monarchy, and their manners attested to a deep understanding of French etiquette.
Through a close reading of contemporaneous accounts, this paper will demonstrate how this “strange” visit challenged the familiar representations of Native Americans in early 18th century France. I argue that the difficulty in providing an unequivocal representation of these Louisiana Indians was symptomatic of the complex (and overlooked) image of Native Americans conveyed by cultural productions during the French Enlightenment.  I believe that such images complicated the binary opposition on which colonial imperialism relied and therefore contributed to the failure of French colonization in Louisiana.

Contents:
Introduction: Seeing Through Texts; Stephen Harrison,
"Serial Similes in the Battle-Narrative of Virgil’s Aeneid"; Sergios Paschalis, "The Constant Helmsman: Acoetes, Palinurus, and the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus"; Jesús Hernández Lobato, "Fisher of Men: A New Reading of Ausonius’ Catalogue of Fish"; Ioannis Doukas, "The Works of the Sea: Mapping the Itineraries of Imitation in Late Antique Epic"; Martin Stöckinger, "Transgressing Pastoral: Mediated Responses to Aeneid 6 in Calpurnius, Nemesianus, and the Carmina Einsiedlensia"; Justin Stover, "Window Reference in Latin Bucolic: The Case of Martius Valerius"; Michael Paschalis, "The Chain of Imitations in Petrarch’s Africa"; Philip Hardie, "Multiple Allusivity in Girolamo Vida’s De Arte Poetica"; Sheldon Brammall, "Virgo laetissima: The Art of Allusion in Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis"; David McOmish, "Windows on the World: The Literary Revolutions of Adam King’s Genethliacon Iesu Christi"; Marta Celati, "Imitation and Allusion in Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine: Between Contemporary Sources and Classical Models"; Luke O’Sullivan, "‘Un traict à la comparaison de ces couples’: Seneca’s Poets and Epicurean Senecanisms in Montaigne’s Essais"; João R. Figueiredo, "Reading through the Sound of Trumpets: Camões’s Political Opinions and the Pattern of Allusion in Os Lusíadas"; William T. Rossiter, "Allusion and Horror: The Afterlives of Polydorus"; Emily Mayne, "‘An huge great stone’: Two Types of Allusion in The Faerie Queene"; Lindsay Ann Reid, "What’s in a Blush? Constellating Aeneid 12.64–9 and Amores 2.5.33–40 in Spenser’s Legend of Chastity"; Editors’ Afterword on Window Reference; Richard F. Thomas, "Window on the Eighties".

Cet article examine les expériences de solitude de Michel de Montaigne aux bains de La Villa dépeintes dans le Journal de voyage en Italie (1580-1581), ouvrage autobiographique portant en grande partie sur les épreuves de l'écrivain devenu voyageur en essayant de se guérir d'un cas sérieux et chronique de calculs rénaux. Les remèdes futiles que Montaigne cherche sans cesse pendant ses séjours à La Villa et les eff ets sur son esprit qui en résultent jouent un rôle d'une importance capitale dans le développement de sa conception du scepticisme à l'égard de la médecine, préalablement décrit dans les essais "Apologie de Raimond Sebond" (II, 12) et surtout "De la ressemblance des enfants aux peres" (II,. Cett e analyse, qui procède donc d'un point de vue philosophique ainsi que litt éraire, considère en particulier le rôle du rapport entre la solitude, le scepticisme à l'égard de la médecine-ancienne aussi bien que contemporaine-, l'empirisme, et l'ontologie de Montaigne dans l'établissement de la subjectivité proto-, voire méta-cartésienne, au seuil de la modernité.

Français
Cet article envisage L’École des femmes et les pièces de la querelle comme un ensemble de débats sur la question du plaisir pris au théâtre. Il s’agit de comprendre comment un discours en faveur des plaisirs du théâtre s’élabora alors dans le monde, en réponse aux théâtrophobes. Les pièces sont examinées comme des traces documentaires donnant accès à l’envers mondain de la haine du théâtre, c’est-à-dire à une défense du théâtre qui pointe la théâtrophobie comme une haine des plaisirs au sens large.

English
Hatred of pleasure or the contrary opinion: Molière and the L’École des femmes querelle
This paper examines L’École des femmes and the plays of the quarrel that followed as debates on the pleasures to be experienced at the theatre. The aim is to understand how a discourse on the pleasures of the theatre began to circulate in good society, in response to theatrophobic accusations. The plays are studied as documentary traces offering access to the flip side of the hatred of the stage: a defense of the stage that suggests that theatrophobia is tied to a general hatred of all pleasures.

This essay reconsiders whether the standard of a totalizing synthesis can take the appropriate measure of the epistemological orientation implicit in André Thevet's cosmographic writings. By focusing attention on and contextualizing Thevet's frequently repeated remark that he is describing something "in passing," I argue that the hallmark of Thevet's cosmographic discourse is its explicit provisionality: for all its authority and authenticity, such discourse is predicated on a belief in the inherent flux and impermanence of its object. I conclude that if we can construe Thevet's non-totalizing, provisional cosmography as a legitimate form of cosmographic knowledge of the globe in the period, rather than as the last, tortured gasp of a self-destructing genre, we can perhaps reconsider both the value and the function of "passing knowledge" in the history of cosmographic discourse.

Complete panel submitted to conference organisers. Confirmed speakers: Dr Irina Metzler, Dr Starra Priestaf, Dr Anne-Laure Méril-Bellini delle Stelle, Mme Ninon Dubourg.

In the last decade or so, pre-modern disability studies has emerged as a productive and important field of enquiry for scholars from a host of disciplines, including literary studies, history and sociology. The fallacy of any monolithic form of disability has been incisively critiqued by academics unpacking the specific historical context(s) of pre-modern narratives which feature disabled bodies. This represents a welcome dismantling of a paradigm of disability which continues to influence discussions of modern disability, whether these discussions take place in the academy or in the mass media and public consciousness.
The meaning accorded to being disabled by dominant society, and by the individuals living with disabilities themselves, is not fixed. Rather, what a given impairment “says about” a subject shifts according to multiple factors: gender, ethnicity, socio-cultural situation, historical moment and so on. Narratives showing disabled bodies, the attitudes of others to such marked bodies, and the disabled subject’s own intellectual and affective stance to his/her body, are not inert or solely reflective of “real life”. Rather, such narratives work to shape identities of those to which they speak, giving the disabled and non-disabled alike ways in which they might formulate a response to impairment in their lives.
Impairment demands a response, as disability demonstrates the precariousness of “whole” or “normal(ised)” bodies. The non-disabled must thus take a stance in relation to the destabilising potentiality that the impaired body represents to abled society and culture. Often times, though certainly not always, responses fall between othering of the disabled body, enacting distance, or a fetishisation of the disabled body, a closeness which titillates because it is transgressive.  Reactions to disability are ambiguous just as much as disability itself represents an ambiguous state, defined by a host of socio-cultural, ideological, and historical factors.
This panel brings methodological and theoretical approaches from pre-modern disability scholarship into the French context. “French”, in this case, refers to both geographical area (i.e. France as a region) and linguistic identity (i.e. francophone texts produced outside of France). How do French pre-modern texts deal with disability? Can we discern a specific approach to disability used by French authors, or in francophone texts? What kinds of meanings are given to disabled bodies? What kind of language is used to describe disabled bodies, and how does this language mould reader responses? What kind of narratives are offered to the disabled, and why?
Relevant topics for this session include:
• Differences between pre-modern and contemporary understanding of disabilities
• Linguistic choices for denoting disabilities, and the ways in which such choices shape readers’ attitudes, in both modern and pre-modern periods
• Reactions of readers to disabled characters in narratives, and reactions of those around a disabled character in the text
• Social constructions of disability and their contexts, including permutations relating to specific locales, politics, ideologies
• Differences between interpretations of disabilities in religious (e.g. saints) and more secular (e.g. wounded knights) frameworks
• Differences in depictions of invisible and visible impairments
• The ways in which French pre-modern texts can contribute to developing the field of pre-modern disability studies

The article deals with French views on tragic emotions and their involvement as a means of katharsis as described by Aristotle in the chapter 6 of his Poetics. Although the 17th-century French theorists and dramatists attempt to adopt Aristotle 's principles, at the same time they progressively move aside from the fearful events which are essential in Aristotle 's definition of tragic experience. Pierre Corneille openly admits that he finds it hard to acquiesce to the very speculative nature of Aristotle 's reasoning and hence he pleads for the cathartic value of "admiration". His arguments serve not only the defence of his personal conception of tragic art but, more importantly perhaps, they enable him to confound the rigorous detractors of theatrical fiction.

Fénelon et Port-Royal, éd. par Touboul (Patricia), Devillairs (Laurence), Frigo (Alberto), Paris, Classiques Garnier, Coll. Univers Port-Royal, n° 28, 2017, In-8, 220 p.
ISBN : 978-2-406-05826-7

Fénelon’s battle against Jansenism resulted in a profusion of writings. Many aspects of this polemic, which enabled the Archbishop of Cambrai to set out his theology, his ecclesiology and his philosophy, remain to be elucidated. But would Fénelon also be an enemy to Port-Royal, as he was to the Jansenists?

Le combat de Fénelon contre le jansénisme s’est traduit par un foisonnement d’écrits. Bien des aspects de cette polémique, qui a permis à l’archevêque de Cambrai de préciser sa théologie, son ecclésiologie et sa philosophie, sont à élucider. Cependant, ennemi des jansénistes, Fénelon le serait-il aussi de Port-Royal ?

L’article met en évidence le lien qui s’établit entre les détournements railleurs (ludiques, grivois, satiriques, libertins) dont fait l’objet l’oraison funèbre du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, et la littérarisation de ce genre, qui viendra par excellence représenter le vaste massif de l’éloquence de la chaire dans le panthéon littéraire naissant. Si les oraisons funèbres parodiques de Louis XIV ou de la « monarchie universelle » donnent à lire une « mythistoire à l’envers », d’autres pastiches peuvent produire, au travers du détournement ludique, un véritable éloge du sujet : c’est le cas de l’oraison funèbre de Molière publiée dans Le Mercure galant. Un dernier exemple, celui d’une oraison funèbre manuscrite consacrée au Cardinal Fleury et parodiant le véritable discours dont il fit l’objet, accomplit en quelque sorte au carré la vocation épidictique du genre : le discours s’y montre en train de « se montrer montrant », portant ainsi à incandescence, dans le geste subversif lui-même, le malaise métadiscursif que trahit constamment l’oraison funèbre « sérieuse », tout en l’associant à une vive conscience de sa proche péremption.

RÉSUMÉ – Si le babillard est celui “qui parle continuellement, et qui ne dit que des choses de néant” (Furetière), dans quelle mesure l’écriture babillarde peut-elle être une écriture du superflu, voire, du rien ? Écrire sur rien renverse les catégories axiologiques par lesquelles sont jugées les oeuvres littéraires au xviii e siècle, et met en évidence une des modalités du
babil : celle de revendiquer la vanité et la superfluité de toute parole.
MOTS-CLÉS – Babil, brochures, éloge paradoxal, riens

In early modern France, the notion of 'commerce' referred to social interactions between individuals and groups. While the notion included our contemporary economic understanding of the term, as in the exchange of merchandise and goods for profit, its definition extended to broader social relations, whether these were formal or informal conversations, political ties, epistolary correspondence, or amorous encounters. The seventeenth-century Dictionnaire de l'Académie française outlines the ways in which 'commerce' applied to a range of interactions from business dealings to polite socializing to letter-writing: Commerce, signifie aussi, Communication & correspondance ordinaire avec quelqu'un, soit pour la société seulement, soit aussi pour quelques affaires. Dans le commerce de la vie. dans le commerce du monde. commerce de galanterie. il n'y a entre luy & cette Dame qu'un commerce d'esprit. il a commerce, il entretient commerce avec cet homme-là. un tel a grand commerce, ou n'a point de commerce, ou a peu de commerce avec un tel. je suis bien son serviteur, mais point de commerce. J'ay rompu tout commerce avec ces gens-là. je ne sçay quel est leur commerce. quel commerce ont-ils ensemble? ils entretiennent commerce de lettres, ou par lettres. ils ont commerce de nouvelles. On dit, qu'Un homme est d'un agreable commerce, d'un bon commerce, pour dire, qu'Il est d'agreable societé. Et, d'un commerce seur, pour dire, qu'On se peut fier à luy. 1

This seminar will explore the social and moral conditions of villainy (vilenie) and of villains (vilains) in sixteenth-century French literature. The villain is traditionally stereotyped in fiction as being lowborn with low morals, working against ‘the good characters’. Scholars such as Eugene Waith have nonetheless demonstrated how these traditional villain-noble and villain-hero oppositions are subtly undermined in English Renaissance tragedy. What happens, then, when we turn to French comic fiction? My paper takes as its principal object chapters 45-7 of François Rabelais’s Quart Livre (1552). These three chapters of Rabelais’s Odyssean fourth book humorously dismantle any straightforward correlation of low moral conduct with low social status. Rabelais recounts how two vilains, a humble farm labourer and his wife, cheat a demonic tempter ‘of noble and ancient stock’ in a crop-growing contest. Within this apparently simple, formulaic fable we find humorous, satirical digressions, in which an array of Lucifer’s choicest villains – theologians, lawyers, and usurers – start to repent of their usual sins. Is villainy thus tantamount to base behaviour which may be remedied by religious reform? To what extent are socially lowly vilains capable of moral excellence? Is coarse behaviour still viewed as an indelible mark the lower social orders? Rabelais’s Quart Livre provides no stable answer; but, like John Marston’s later Scourge of Villainy (1599), it animates satire with gleeful references to indecency across an array of social types. This paper will, I hope, stimulate lively discussion on how villainy of the French Renaissance compares with that seen across various other disciplines.


Jonathan Patterson works on early modern French literature, thought and history. From 2008 to 2011 he was Gledhill Scholar at Sidney Sussex College. His PhD research, supervised by Neil Kenny, examines representations of avarice in early modern France (c.1540-1615). His published research considers Marie de Gournay, gender and poetry (2010); and avarice in the agronomical writings of Olivier de Serres (October 2012). His postdoctoral project will be an interdisciplinary study of villainy in the Renaissance.

Self-commentaries have yet to become the subject of a general comparative analysis. To this effect, the publication of the miscellany by Francesco Venturi in 2019 has been a first important step in this direction. 1 The book analyzes the self-commentary phenomenon throughout Italy, England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland between the 1400s and the 1700s. Nevertheless, in this book self-commentary is intended in a broad fashion. Following Genette's definition of paratext, forewords, rubrics and marginal glosses are also seen as being commentaries. As a consequence, the array of works that were analyzed is extremely heterogeneous, ranging from Leon Battista Alberti's comedies, through lyrical poetry, up to humanistic translations of the classics. Our paper is based on a much clearer-cut focus: its subject will be the religiously motivated self-commentaries by Gabriele Fiamma and Jean de la Ceppède. Both these authors published collections of spiritual lyrical poetry, and both provided these works with a commentary stemming from similar motivations. After considering what functions scholars have attributed to early modern lyrical self-commentary up to now, we first want to focus on the motivations of these huge literary tasks, in order to show just how tightly interdependent lyrical text and commentary are to each other. Then we will try to answer the questions of which ideal readers these authors had in mind, and how exactly they tried to steer and manage the process of reception.

"This well written monograph is an original and much needed contribution to the scholarship on this neglected author and socialite. Montpensier mirrors the zeitgeist of Louis XIV’s reign but at the same time transcended her period in her view of women’s relationship to marriage, art, architecture, and sociability. The reader will find a wealth of information here on every aspect of the classical period, as it relates to a unique personality and , if not a feminist of the modern mold avant la lettre, someone who at least promoted the dignity of women as she could, using the resources she had at her disposal."

– Michael Mulryan, Christopher Newport University, Dalhousie French Studies, 112 (2018), 155-156.

La tératologie – l’étude des monstres en tant qu’anomalie anatomique – est un thème qui a passionné nos ancêtres depuis l’Antiquité. La multiplication des imprimés à leur sujet qu’ils soient savants ou littéraires prouve le renouvellement de cet engouement à partir du milieu du XVIe siècle . Ainsi, apparurent des monstres devenant « célèbres » dans des espaces géographiques qui dépassaient largement celui d’un seul royaume . S’en est ainsi, notamment, du « monstre de Ravenne », bien connu, un être hybride possédant, entre autres, des cornes, des ailes et un œil situé au niveau du genou . Ne nous attardons pas toutefois sur un cas déjà notoire, l’existence de celui qui nous occupera dans les pages qui suivent étant tout aussi « invraisemblable ». Ce, en tout cas, selon nos concepts contemporains.
Sept bras, sept têtes, dont une avec un seul œil, et des jambes ressemblant à celles d’un bœuf : telles sont les caractéristiques de l’individu monstrueux que nous mettons au centre de nos propos. Pour restituer son histoire, qui, elle aussi, a connu un certain succès, le choix a été fait de renverser l’approche chronologique habituelle.
Il s’agira de voyager entre les différents genres d’imprimés, du traité à la feuille volante, pour tenter d’appréhender un produit de l’imaginaire, un être apparu initialement au sein de ce dernier type de texte particulier. Le but étant de reconstruire l’histoire éditoriale qu’a connue ce monstre en revenant aux premières mentions, et en repérant, ensuite, les ajouts successifs.

L'allégorie est une figure à l'histoire trop riche, aux enjeux trop divers et au fonctionnement trop complexe, pour ne pas nous inviter ici à limiter nos ambitions : d'abord en nous en tenant au seul cascertes, délicat entre tous -de l'allégorie in absentia, type d'allégorie ne développant que l'élément imageant (le phore) en l'absence de l'élément imagé (le thème) ; ensuite, en n'étudiant cette même allégorie que sous les deux angles conjoints de son hétérogénéité énonciative et de son rendement pragmatique, non sans poser d'emblée le caractère fort incertain de ce dernier. Car si l'hétérogénéité énonciative de l'allégorie in absentia semble naturellement impliquée en droit par la définition de la figure, le travail d'opacification dont elle participe au premier chef risque, quant à lui, de menacer dans les faits la simple perception de ce feuilletage énonciatif, et partant, celle de la figure comme telle. Au coeur de tout usage de l'allégorie in absentia résident une prise de risque passablement intrigante et la menace réelle d'un « ratage » dont il conviendra d'interroger la fonction rhétorique.