'Mais devant tous est le Lyon marchant': construction littéraire d'un milieu éditorial et livres de poésie française à Lyon (1536–1551) by Élise Rajchenbach-Teller (review)

Lyon, in the 1530s and 1540s, was proud to portray itself as the publishing capital of France and the home of a renaissance in French poetry. In this clear and careful study, Élise Rajchenbach-Teller explores the conscious and collaborative effort made by poets and printers to promote both Lyonnais poetry and, thereby, Lyon itself. The first of the book's three sections concentrates on the promotion of vernacular poetry and thus of French as a literary language equal first to Latin and, later, to Italian. The section focuses on four key figures: Étienne Dolet, whose theoretical discussion and endorsement of translation from Latin help elevate the status of French; François Juste, whose publishing workshop becomes a centre for French poetry; Jean de Tournes, whose pioneering printing of vernacular poetry helps shift the focus of French poetic rivalry away from the neo-Latin poets and towards Italian models; and Guillaume Rouillé, whose familiarity with Italian printing qualifies him (more than Tournes) to publish translations of Italian works that introduce a new philosophical vocabulary and a new intellectual freedom into France. The second section focuses on the invention and promotion of Lyon as a centre for the writing and publishing of vernacular poetry. It examines the consciously portrayed image of a circle of humanist writers and printers, drawn into a friendly, poetic sodalitium (in the model of the neo-Latin poets), but argues that while this image successfully promotes poetry written and printed in Lyon, it does not lead to the development of properly Lyonnais poetry. The coherence of the sodalitium is threatened by the absence of a central poetic figure—a role that Maurice Scève refuses, preferring poetic independence to Tournes's desire to build on and profit from the success of Délie, but that, elsewhere, Ronsard will assume, assuring the future of the emerging Pléiade. Similarly, the shift towards Catherine de' Medici as a royal dedicatee—following the death of Marguerite de Navarre, whose neo-Platonist writings epitomize Lyon's fostering of Italianism and of literary women—coincides with a decline in the political significance of Lyon's literary self-representation. The final section questions the specificity of Lyonnais poetry, testing what distinguishes it from poetry printed in Paris—Lyon's principal publishing rival—and Toulouse, where collaboration with Lyonnais printers is often financially desirable. Lyon presents itself as an inventive and collaborative centre for high-quality publications, where poets work closely with printers and where the Italian influences that Paris is slow to adopt are readily embraced. Yet despite this attempt to claim a monopoly over the publishing of poetry, Paris will, in the 1550s, come to assume Lyon's poetic mantle, thanks chiefly to Ronsard. Overall, this is an engaging and scholarly study, valuably combining literary history with history of the book, and demonstrating with meticulously researched detail the equal influence, on the creation of a collective cultural and literary identity, of writers and the para-literary figures—the editors, translators, commissioners, booksellers, and printers—who contribute to the formation of a book.