In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Autour de L'Histoire Universelle d'Agrippa d'Aubigné: Mélanges à la mémoire d'André Thierry
  • Elaine M. Ancekewicz
Gilbert Schrenck , ed. Autour de L'Histoire Universelle d'Agrippa d'Aubigné: Mélanges à la mémoire d'André Thierry. Travaux d' Humanisme et Renaissance 411. Geneva: Librairie Droz S. A., 2006. 278 pp. index. illus. bibl. CHF 150. ISBN: 2–600–01005–X.

A posthumous tribute to the eminent d'Aubigné scholar André Thierry (1924–2000), to whom is due the rehabilitation of Agrippa d'Aubigné's Histoire Universelle and its magisterial (now standard) reedition (1981–2000), this volume contains a brief biography of Thierry, a bibliography of his scholarly works, seven of his most interesting (and not always easily accessible) essays, and nine new essays by well-regarded senior seizièmistes on historiographical issues raised by d'Aubigné's (1552–1630) works and time of religious and civil strife. The volume thus aims to establish a dialogue between André Thierry's work and current research on sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French historiography and is of interest to scholars in the fields of French literature and history and in the historiography of the period.

Thierry's essays highlight the range and depth of his research and illustrate his interest in problems of historiography as well as in the literary and thematic dimensions of the historical works, specifically those works in which the writer or historian figures as witness or actor, and his focus on questions of the influence of partisanship on those writings. The essays included here demonstrate Thierry's balanced and refined critical judgment and present a nuanced reading that carefully appraises the relationship of history to myth and to literature.

Thierry compares d'Aubigné's work to that of other historians of his time, most notably of Monluc, a Catholic capitain, and of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, a moderate Catholic and a key member of the group of political moderates known as the Politiques. Another essay reflects Thierry's interest in structural motifs in the Histoire Universelle, here the recurring motif of the vieillard, or old man. [End Page 1361] D'Aubigné's vieillards appear as conventional figures of grandeur with political, poetic, and ideological roles and function as doubles of the historian himself. The essays also explore the relationship between the Histoire Universelle and other works of d'Aubigné, thus studying the relationship of historical genres to one another and to other genres, specifically, history to memoires to autobiography, and of history to poetry — in this case, to d'Aubigné's epic poem Les Tragiques. While the first is supposedly factual and more nuanced and the latter an impassioned polemical plea, both subscribe to a similar ideology in the belief that history possesses a divinely determined meaning. Thierry examines how d'Aubigné as historian treats the works of some members of the opposing political and religious party, how a recurring motif may reflect ideological positions and diverge from historical accuracy. They demonstrate as well the interrelationship of various historical and literary genres and how the historian may figure in his works not only as an individual but as a symbol of his cause and as a model for his readers to emulate.

The nine contemporary essays that follow approach the question of historiography by some of the same means as Thierry. Several essays question some of the readings by Thierry by finding additional departures from the criterion of objectivity that d'Aubigné claimed for his Histoire. Gilles Banderier compares d'Aubigné's depiction of Henry IV in his writings with the depiction of Henry IV in those of the moderate Catholic Pierre Jeanin. Jean Brunel studies the elogium, its rhetoric and content, reconstructs the horizon of expectations of the contemporary reader, and explores its contributions to the political history and intellectual life of the sixteenth century. Jean-Marc Debard traces the role of the Huguenot hymnal in the development, not only of family and community worship, but also of literacy, in the region of Montbéliard. Jean-Raymond Fanlo focuses on the dispositio of the Histoire Universelle to demystify the notion of the work as a geste of Henry IV and finds that...

pdf

Share