Itineraries in French Renaissance Literature brings together a full score of essays by established and rising American-based scholars of the early modern. Arranged according to five themes or genres: Tales and their Tellers, Poets and Poetry, Religious Controversy, Montaigne, and Knowledge Networks, they offer both fresh perspectives on canonical authors such as Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, Montaigne, Marot, Labé, and Hélisenne de Crenne, as well as original interpretations of less familiar works of sixteenth-century moment: confessional polemics, emblems, cartography, geomancy, epigraphy, bibliophilism and even ichthyology. Inspired by and gathered together here to honor the eclectic career of Mary B. McKinley, this anthology integrates many of the most pertinent topics and contemporary approaches of early modern French scholarly inquiry.
Contributors are: Pascale Barthe, Leah L. Chang, Edwin M. Duval, Gary Ferguson, George Hoffmann, Robert J. Hudson, Karen Simroth James, Scott D. Juall, Virginia Krause, Kathleen Long, Stephen Murphy, Corinne Noirot, Jeff Persels, Bernd Renner, Nicolas Russell, Nicholas Shangler, Cynthia Skenazi, Kendall Tarte, Cara Welch, and Cathy Yandell.
Jeff Persels, Ph.D. (1991), University of Virginia, is Associate Professor of French at the University of South Carolina. He has edited, co-edited and contributed to volumes on early modern scatology, theatre and eco-criticism and authored a number of related articles.
Kendall Tarte, Ph.D. (1997), University of Virginia, is Associate Professor of French at Wake Forest University (North Carolina). She has published a monograph on Madeleine and Catherine Des Roches (2007) and articles on sixteenth-century French literature.
George Hoffmann, Ph.D. (1990) University of Virginia, is Professor of French at the University of Michigan. He has published in the history of the book (
Montaigne’s Career, 1998) before turning to social and religious history in
The Reformation of French Culture: Satire, Spiritual Alienation, and Connection to Strangers (forthcoming from Oxford).
List of IllustrationsList of ContributorsIntroduction. Itineraries in French Renaissance LiteratureKendall Tarte, George Hoffmann, and Jeff PerselsOn Mary B. McKinley
Part 1: On Telling Tales
1
Puns, Exemplarity, and Women’s Sexual Agency: Nomerfide and Oisille, Heptaméron 5 and 6Gary Ferguson 2
A Palimpsest of the Heptaméron: Eugène Scribe’s Les Contes de la Reine de Navarre ou la Revanche de PavieCynthia Skenazi 3
Readers Writing in the Gordon Collection HeptaméronKendall Tarte 4
Itineraries of Satire: Polysemy and Morality in Marguerite de Navarre’s HeptaméronBernd Renner 5
Language Lessons: Homophones and Gender Confusion in Des Périers’s Nouvelles Récréations et joyeux devisNicholas Shangler 6
The Dido Effect and the Rise of the French NovelVirginia Krause
Part 2: On Poets and Poetry
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Maurice Scève and the Feminized Voice of Courtly LyricEdwin M. Duval 8
In Search of “La Belle Cordière”: The Rise and Fall of Louise LabéLeah L. Chang 9
Clément Marot and the Frames of Cultural MemoryNicolas Russell 10
Naïve douceur: Earthy Grist and Gallic Verve in the Marotic RondeauRobert J. Hudson
Part 3: On Religious Controversy
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Rhetorics of Peace: Pierre de Ronsard and Michel de L’Hospital on the Eve of the French Wars of ReligionCathy Yandell 12
Bearding the Pope, circa 1562Jeff Persels 13
Reconversion Tales: How to Make Sense of Lapses in FaithGeorge Hoffmann 14
Aubigné, Josephus, and Useful BetrayalStephen Murphy 15
“The Difficulty is to Judge Well”: Jean de la taille, Deceptive Astrologer (Le Blason des pierres precieuses and La geomance abregee, 1574)Corinne Noirot
Part 4: On Montaigne
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Montaigne, Monsters, and ModernityKathleen Long 17
Montaigne’s Response to the Alcibiades QuestionCara Welch
Part 5: On the Sciences and Knowledge Networks
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France’s Mid-Sixteenth-Century Imperial Gaze on Canada: The Dieppe School of Hydrography, the Kingdom of Saguenay, and the Mise en scène of PossessionScott D. Juall 19
Guillaume Rondelet’s Monkfish, or Natural History as Social NetworkPascale Barthe 20
Making the Stones Speak: The Curious Observations of Gabriele SimeoniKaren Simroth JamesIndex
All interested in the literature, culture and history of early modern France, travel literature, the French Reformation, poetry and poetics, women authors, bibliographic studies, cartography, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, Rabelais.