Essais de soi: poésie spirituelle et rapport à soi, entre Montaigne et Descartes par Audrey Duru (review)

In this careful and thoughtful examination of some lesser-studied poets from the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Audrey Duru makes a good case for the literary and cultural interest of devotional poetry, particularly from a time when lay poets were gradually acquiring an authority to reflect upon spiritual matters that had previously been exclusive to the Church. In literary terms, the rather marginal printers’ category of devotional poetry is valued here for the light it sheds on two well-worn areas of critical study: the genre of lyrical poetry and the emergence of the early modern self, while in sociocultural terms the contribution of devotional poetry to theological and literary history is ably complemented by its capacity for political reflection. The specific features that distinguish devotional poetry from other lyrical forms make it a rewarding test case for the study of early modern self-expression. The very function of devotional poetry — to express and inspire love for God — confers authority upon the poetic speaker, made almost indistinguishable from the poet, by virtue of the absolute sincerity of selfexpression that it demands. Yet that self-expression is simultaneously intimate and impersonal: the interiority of the soul-searching poet vanishes into a reflection of divinity, just as the individualism of the poetic voice is eclipsed by the universality of the inspirational intention. The four chapters in the first part consider these aspects of self-expression in devotional poetry, informed by the theological and philosophical issues that typically dominated the sixteenth century. The devotional poet’s compulsion towards sincerity, complicated by Renaissance scepticism about the relationship between language and meaning, culminates in an idealistic nostalgia for a Platonic belief in the inherent authenticity of linguistic expression. While the form of devotional poetry, modelled largely on the penitential psalms, is shown to have been influenced by historical restrictions on biblical reading practices for the laity, the content reveals the greater influence of Erasmus and particularly Augustine. The devotional poet emerges as a true Renaissance artist, endowed with the interiority and self-reflexivity that the meditative practices of these models of religious thought entail. The literary case studies in the second part emphasize the political conceptualization that underlies devotional poetry on both sides of the confessional divide, reflecting the inextricable link between politics and religion in the immediate aftermath of the religious wars. Analysis of the poetry of André Mage de Fiefmelin, writing shortly after the Edict of Nantes, draws attention to its political dissidence, echoing its typically Calvinist sense of persecution even during a time of religious coexistence. Conversely, the contrasting examples of the mystical Pierre de Croix and the Neostoic Claude Hopil demonstrate a different form of religious coexistence, as Catholic poets assert a political subjectivity and a devotional independence that are necessarily tolerated by the State and the Church. Self-expression in devotional poetry is thus persuasively and refreshingly shown, in this detailed and well-informed volume, to reflect more the assertion of religious and political autonomy under an increasingly absolutist political regime than the establishment of a subjective, poetic self.