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  • Par élévation d'esprit: Antoine Héroët le poète, le prélat et son temps
  • Corinne Noirot-Maguire
André Gendre and Loris Petris, eds. Par élévation d'esprit: Antoine Héroët le poète, le prélat et son temps. Actes du colloque de Cercanceaux (26–27 septembre 2003). Colloques, congrès et conférences sur la Renaissance européenne 52. Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2007. 470 pp. index. tbls. chron. bibl. €42.50. ISBN: 978–2–7453–1368–3.

What a challenge to illuminate the life and works of Parisian poet Antoine Héroët, also known as Maisonneuve. Although La Parfaicte Amye and L'Androgyne survived him in the wake of Neoplatonic scholarship and his works were edited in 1909, dark patches hitherto covered much of his legacy. The proceedings recapture the multiple public personas this Renaissance man embodied: the prelate, the poet, the humanist, and the courtier. Documents complement the articles: a literature review; notes on the name and coat of arms; a chronology; a family tree; a eulogy of Ferdinand Gohin, Héroët's scholarly editor; and the man's will and the papal bull that named him Abbot of Cercanceaux.

The prelate's persona generated extensive archival research (actes notariés, minutiers). Raphaël Valéry provides a comprehensive biography and sketches out a historiography of the author. Marie-Madeleine Viré chases the Bishop of Dignes. Christine Garmy unveils the maneuvers of "a powerful clan" (153). Aristocratic ties of land and marriage explain most of Héroët's many bénéfices (incidentally, a [End Page 185] map would be welcome). When Héroët received Dignes in 1552, his protector Chancellor Olivier was brother to the previous bishop. His wealth and sensible management stand out. As Richard Cooper once did for Du Bellay in Rome, these investigations set forth worldly ambitions foreign to the rarefied atmosphere commonly associated with Héroët. Dedicating one third of the book to biographical matters, however, occasions a degree of factual redundancy. In part 2, Isabelle Pantin shows Héroët as the first French philosophical poet. Loris Petris connects Platonism, Francis I, and Evangelicism in a symbol of harmony and primeval unity, the androgyne. Reproducing little-accessible poems, Sylvie Delforge investigates the textual friendship between Héroët and Macrin.

Nine contributions then focus on La Parfaicte Amye. Vân Dung Le Flanchec examines stylistic repetition and rhyme quality in light of Ramist rhetoric in Fouquelin. Eve-Alice Roustang-Stoller shows how the interplay of the deliberative, judiciary, and epideictic genres cracks LPA's moralistic varnish but fashion a more human character. André Gendre delineates a dialectic progression: the heroine's trials ultimately grant her the authority of a master lover. In negating love's metaphysical stakes, Olivier Pot argues, Héroët mistranslated Ficino's De Amore but exploited its ambiguities, and depicted mundane love, in light of the heroid and the Philosophie de France, beyond any "theological cover" (281). Danielle Trudeau traces the iconic figures of the malmariée, the humanist, and the dame. Jean Lecointe examines the "anti-Stoic" turn taken by Evangelicists close to Marguerite de Navarre in the late 1530s, echoed in their communal idiom promoting the value of mourning and tears over impious impassibility. Claude La Charité explains the borrowing of verse from LPA in Marie de Romieu's "La Messagere d'Amour"; contrapuntal aesthetics parody Neoplatonic orthodoxy via crafty paratextual effects. Emmanuel Buron compares LPA and Jodelle's Cleopatra, both expressing, via Neoplatonic "separation," a paradoxically impassioned brand of constancy showing human limitation. For Ruxandra Vulcan, Corrozet's Tableau de Cébès and LPA illustrate a new figurative moral discourse. Olivier Millet examines arithmetic and moralizing links between the "Cupid and Psyche" stained-glass windows at the Château d'Écouen and the associated huitains by Chappuys, Saint-Gelais, and especially Héroët. Annie Coe urdevey reconsiders the corpus of polyphonic chansons adapted from Héroët, and emphasizes a decontextualized use of verse by composers.

Besides the expected Querelle des amies and Neoplatonic strands, two compelling themes emerge: the Philosophie de France, and the interweaving of socioeconomically powerful...

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