Lyon et l'illustration de la langue française à la Renaissance (review)

This collection of twenty-one essays originated in a conference celebrating the modern-day translatio studii of the École Normale Supérieure Fontenay-Saint-Cloud from the banlieue parisienne to Lyon in 2000. The papers tend to focus rather narrowly on recondite topics, many centering on publishing houses in Lyon, but not all of them fit comfortably within the double subject defined by the title. Nor does the whole collection add up to more than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, many of the parts are very good.

With his customary energy and erudition Gérard Defaux, the genius behind the conference and the volume, evokes the pitched battle for the vernacular against Latin in 1533–34, especially as it played out in Clément Marot's edition of his father Jean's two Recueils. François Cornillat offers a brilliant reading of Jean Lemaire's Concorde des deux langages, focusing on the tensions between linear allegory and formal symmetries, and on the ambivalent function of Lyon in the overall meaning of the work. And Richard Cooper presents the fruits of his always astonishing archival research — here concerning the life, collections, and writings of the Lyonese antiquarian Guillaume du Choul.

Also of interest to scholars of literature will be Perrine Galand-Hallyn's detailed analysis of the pseudo-Theocritan "Adonis" poems by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Pernette du Guillet, and Salmon Macrin; Marie-Luce Demonet's engaging introduction to the linguistic ideas contained in the anonymous Discours non plus mélancoliques que divers published in Poitiers (!) in 1556; and Jean Balsamo's remarks on the more-or-less autonomous Italian community in Lyon and the copious publication of Italian literature in that city. Mireille Huchon revisits Rabelais's role as a corrector in the print shops of Lyon, adding to her earlier study of Rabelais's work as a "grammarian" in editing his own books in French, new hints of his work as an editor of the Latin text of Macrobius published by Sebastian Gryphius in 1538. Richard Regosin considers the opposing conceptions of history and culture developed by Du Bellay and the "Quintil Horacien," offering interesting observations on the logic and internal inconsistencies of both positions.

A group of seven essays devoted to technical aspects of the language question will be of primary interest to historical linguists, Romance philologists, and historians of grammar. The standout in this group is Douglas Kibbee's article relating Louis Meigret's French grammar to the century-long drive toward a unified judicial system accessible and comprehensible to all citizens of the realm. Another interesting essay in this group is Antónia Szabari's article on the phonetic, mimetic alphabet invented by Honorat Rambaud (1578) as a means to easier reading for schoolboys and to universal knowledge for adults.

Also included in the volume are an examination of Meigret's contribution to the creation of a systematic French grammar (Simone Delesalle and Francine Mazière); an analysis of Jean Pillot's efforts to adapt the system of Latin grammar to the particularities of French (Bernard Colombat); an attempt to trace the origin of comparisons of the type: "il prenoit plus de plaisir à courir et chasser, que non pas regarder les belles dames" (William Kemp); reflections on the "polyglot" culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France and the ways linguistic hierarchies reinforced social hierarchies (Paul Cohen); a rich evocation of the complex linguistic situation of sixteenth-century Lyon and of the strange confluence of circumstances that made Lyon, a limitrophic city historically connected to the langue d'oc, a center for the creation of a literary French vernacular (Gabriel Pérouse); ruminations on the circumstances surrounding publication in Lyon of a French prose translation of the Orlando furioso in 1544 (Rosanna Gorris Camos); casual observations on the sources and afterlife of hand-drawn illustrations in the manuscript of du Choul's Discours de...