"Le Vif du sens": Corps et poésie selon Maurice Scève (review)

The last twenty-five years have been rich in scholarship devoted to the works of the Lyonnais poet, Maurice Scève. The goal to contribute something new to this corpus is therefore both laudable and daunting. Thomas Hunkeler attemptsto meet the challenge in this book by complementing the perception that aFicinian-based Neoplatonic spiritualism comes to dominate Scève's love poetry with a thesis that locates the start of all early modern notions of spiritus within prevailing medical notions of the "corps" — the body and its physiology — and that thereby requires us to recognize the centrality of the body within all his expressions of spiritualism. The critic outlines his theory in an introduction that acknowledges his debt to the New Historicism and lays out his position that "le corps sert de matrice" (23) throughout Scève's verses, but principally in his blazons of the 1530s and the 449 dizains of his 1544 Délie.

Consistent with Hunkeler's dedication to historical-based criticism, chapter 1 analyzes Scève's role in revitalizing Petrarch in Renaissance France. The central concern is the story about Scève's 1533 discovery of Laura's tomb. For this critic, the poet's ability to decipher the markings on that grave evidence his wish to become "un autre Pétrarque" (39) and to establish his reputation as an erudite humanist.

Chapters 2 and 3 consider Scève's contributions to Marot's blazon competition of the mid-1530s and their links to contemporary treatises on human anatomy. Four theses emerge from the discussion. First, in chapter 2 Hunkeler argues that the spiritual emphasis of the Lyonnais's five blazons (on the forehead, eyebrow, tear, throat, and breath) is designed to defy the physicality that distinguishes the other contest epigrams. He further establishes that Scève's poems underscore the sublime effects of the lady's attributes upon the mind, heart, and soul of the poet and thus stage the poet himself at their center. Third, in chapter 3 the critic shows that the spiritualized affection represented in the blazons nevertheless reflects contemporary medical knowledge like that published in Jean Fernel's 1554 Physiologia. These theories inscribed the ancient Galenic concept according to which the spiritus of love is equally corporeal and incorporeal. Hunkeler then proceeds to his concluding fourth point: "le corps ne peut pas être exclu" (135) from the love in Scève's blazons.

Chapters 4–7 focus on Délie in ways that expand the preceding findings. Chapter 4 reexamines the Ficinian brand of Neoplatonic spiritualism that dominates the collection. Whereas previous scholars have regarded that spiritualism as wholly metaphysical, Hunkeler reminds us that Ficino both understood and accepted the dual character of spiritus. He also traces the Florentine's debt to poets of the dolce stil nuovo (e.g., Dante and Cavalcanti), for whom the experience of love begins with the corporeal sense of sight before proceeding to the physiological synthesis of spirit and blood in the heart. After elaborating the preceding revelations, chapter 5 ends with an introduction to Scève's innovations to the Petrarchan tradition in Délie. Hunkeler centers on the psycho-physiological "éléments hétérodoxes" (182) injected into Ficinian Neoplatonism by contemporary French and Italian humanists. Questioning the dichotomy between spiritual and carnal love, these authors inspired Scève to modify Petrarch's division between "spirito" and "corpo" in the Rima Sparse.

Chapter 6 exposes still other Délie intertexts and subversions of Petrarch. The discussion moves from an examination of Scève's "scientific" depiction of falling in love to a review of the Aristotelian and Galenic character of the Lyonnais's concept of sight as the sensory gateway for the incursion of love into the body. These distinctions are apparent from the initial dizain, the touchstone for most of Hunkeler's subsequent...