Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance ed. by Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach (review)

One of the defining characteristics of the early modern period was a striving to fashion thought, language, and action after classical exemplars. As antiquity itself taught, not all models were created equal. Virgil, along with Homer, was one of the most revered authors from the ancient Pantheon and wielded enormous influence during the period, not least in France, as previous studies have shown (by Alice Hulubei, David Quint, Craig Kallendorf, and Philip Ford, among others). The present volume traces the political as well as the poetic influence of Virgil in sixteenth-century France, with many examples drawn from the verse of the French Pléiade poets. Bernd Renner demonstrates how the poet Clément Marot plays with Virgil’s Latin name ‘Maro’ in order to appropriate his predecessor’s literary authority. Margaret Harp’s contribution on Jacques Yver’s Le Printemps explores Virgilian motifs but ultimately left this reader with the impression that the main intertext was not Virgil but Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. Michael Randall emphasizes how the early French Renaissance poet Jean Lemaire de Belges applied the Virgilian expression spirantia signa (‘statues that breathe’) literally, having the statues in his temple actually proclaim the political glory of Pierre de Bourbon instead of relying on typically Virgilian ekphrasis, as the later Pléiade poets Du Bellay and Ronsard would have done. Isabelle Fernbach reads georgic traits in Du Bellay’s ‘Moretum’ as a ‘critique of court culture’ and a ‘plea for Du Bellay’s own position at court’ (p. 93). Phillip Usher offers an analysis of a novel medium — enamels from Limoges depicting various scenes from the Aeneid — that ultimately reflect a pre-Renaissance reading of the epic. Corinne Noirot-Maguire analyses the content and place of Du Bellay’s translation of the ‘Moretum’ to suggest, provocatively, how the notion of being ‘second’ (second Pléiade poet, King Henri II, the Aeneid’s place after Homer, France a cultural second after Italy, etc.) might meaningfully inform Du Bellay’s work. Todd Reeser offers an insightful reading of Du Bellay’s translation of Book IV of the Aeneid, seeing it as ‘a rather sophisticated statement on the act and role of translation itself’ (p. 215). The late Philip Ford fruitfully highlights some of the stakes involved in imitating Virgil versus Homer, yet concludes, perplexingly, that ‘there can be no doubt that the world portrayed by Virgil is a better fit for Renaissance France than Homer’s world’ (p. 160), which seemingly contradicts his own work and the historical record. Indeed, except for Katherine Maynard’s article on Ronsard’s unfinished epic La Franciade, both the choice of works analysed and the conclusions reached leave the impression that Virgilian influence was not as pervasive or significant as one would expect, and that the political implications of the choice of a model strongly connected with Italy, the main cultural rival of France, deserves further investigation, especially since several essays make passing reference to a resistance, to a difficulty of making Virgil French. Thus Virgilian Identities raises important questions about Virgilian influence in Renaissance France while opening potential avenues for future exploration.