The Poetics of Literary Transfer in Early Modern France and England

290 Pages·2016·8.3 MB·English

by  Hassan Melehy

THE POETICS OF LITERARY
TRANSFER IN EARLY MODERN
FRANCE AND ENGLAND
Other Ashgate titles of interest:
Writing a New France, 1604–1632
Brian Brazeau
English Printing, Verse Translation, and the
Battle of the Sexes, 1476–1557
Anne E.B. Coldiron
Machiavelli in the British Isles
Alessandra Petrina
Urban Poetics in the French Renaissance
Elisabeth Hodges
Für Dorothea
The Poetics of Literary
Transfer in early Modern
france and england
hassan MeLehy
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, USA
R
O Routledge
U
T
LED Taylor & Francis
G
E
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © hassan Melehy 2010
hassan Melehy has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Melehy, hassan, 1960–
The poetics of literary transfer in early modern france and england.
1. du Bellay, Joachim, ca. 1522–1560 – Themes, motives. 2. spenser, edmund, 1552?–
1599 – Themes, motives. 3. Montaigne, Michel de, 1533–1592 – Themes, motives.
4. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 – Themes, motives. 5. Classicism in literature.
i. Title
821.3’09–dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Melehy, hassan, 1960–
The poetics of literary transfer in early modern france and england / by hassan Melehy.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6445-1 (alk. paper)
1. French literature—16th century—History and criticism. 2. French literature—17th
century—History and criticism. 3. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History
and criticism. 4. French literature—Roman influences. 5. French literature—English
influences. 6. English literature—Roman influences. 7. English literature—French influences.
8. Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) I. Title.
PQ245.M385 2010
840.9’355—dc22
2009052877
ISBN: 9780754664451 (hbk)
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Epigraph ix
Notes on Text xi
Introduction 1
Part 1 Du Bellay
1 Defending the Space of Early Modern Culture 17
2 Time in Rome 31
3 A Dream Language 51
Part 2 Spenser
4 Translation, Imitation, Ruin 75
5 Visions of Spenser 95
6 Antiquities of Britain 119
Part 3 Montaigne
7 Institutional Authority 139
8 The Words of Vanity 161
9 America, the End of Western Dreaming 179
Part 4 Shakespeare
10 The Sonnets and Time 205
11 Old and New Roman Times 221
12 The Representation of the Other 237
Works Cited 257
Index 273
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Acknowledgements
The most important transfers of this book are personal and hence largely hidden.
Many people who deserve to be named are responsible for all the best parts of
this book.
Among the great teachers whose marks on my thinking I am continually aware
of are Jonathan Beecher, Réda Bensmaïa, Harry Berger, Tom Conley, Jacques
Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Ronald Sousa, Georges Van Den Abbeele, and
Samuel Weber.
Among the colleagues whose steady interest in my work has led me to continue
it with improvements are Edward Benson, Jean-Claude Carron, Anne E.B.
Coldiron, Michael J. Giordano, Richard Peterson, Anne Lake Prescott, Timothy
J. Reiss, and Janet Whatley.
In addition to those I’ve named so far, among the friends who have put up with
my moods and reveries about all manner of things as I’ve worked on this book
are Martine Antle, Paul Assimacopoulos, Philippe Barr, Norma Bouchard, Marion
Callis, Anika Cazenave, Anne Dawson, Doris von Drathen, Dominique Fisher, Rose
Freymuth-Frazier, Catherine Gimelli Martin, Bruce Hayes, Kristin Kelly, Tomoko
Kuribayashi, John Lucas, Michael Markos, Monica McCormick, Nancy Nenno, Lisa
Rathert, Claudia Rhodes, Angela Rose, Todd Thorpe, and Cherie Ann Turpin.
In the years that I’ve worked on this book, I’ve presented parts of it at various
stages of completion in a number of forums, including the Barnard Medieval
and Renaissance Conference, the MLA Division on Sixteenth-Century French
Literature, the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, and the Lilian R. Furst
Forum in Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I thank all those connected with these forums whom I have not named already for
their attention to my work, especially Deborah Lesko Baker, Emily Cranford, Eric
Downing, Virginia Krause, Jasmine McKewen, John Ribó, and Richard Vernon.
A Research and Study Leave granted by the Department of Romance Languages
and Literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill allowed me to
make great progress on this book, and I am very grateful to the Department and
the College of Arts and Sciences for that time and support. I am very thankful to
the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University for
granting me the position of Visiting Scholar in the spring of 2002, during which
time I did much of the research for this book. The position of Visiting Scholar that
I held in the Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik at the Universität Regensburg
in the summer of 2008 allowed me to complete this book; for that opportunity I
thank the Institut, the university, and in particular Udo Hebel. I also thank the
University Research Council of the University of North Carolina for generously
covering some of the costs of publishing this book.
viii The Poetics of Literary Transfer in Early Modern France and England
I thank the tireless librarians at the Houghton Library at Harvard University
and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University for their
assistance in my searches for materials for this study.
Christine Cooper and Sarah Johnson very industriously assisted me in translating
a text from Latin that figures in Chapter 2, and I thank them for it.
I thank my editor at Ashgate, Erika Gaffney, for her impeccable professionalism,
efficiency, and generosity. For the immense amount of work they did on the
preparation of this book for publication, I thank Whitney Feininger and Kathy
Bond Borie, respectively Assistant Editor and Desk Editor at Ashgate.
And for her extremely insightful and incisive comments on my manuscript at
several stages, I thank Deanne Williams.
As the one who has given me more than all others combined, I reserve my
warmest, most heartfelt thanks for my wife, Dorothea Heitsch.
For this book’s defects, I claim sole responsibility.
O mondaine inconstance!
Ce qui est ferme, est par le temps destruit,
Et ce qui fuit, au temps fait resistence.
[O worldly inconstancy! Whatever stands firm is destroyed by time. And whatever
flees resists time.]
Du Bellay, Les Antiquitez de Rome
Why then dooth flesh, a bubble glas of breath,
Hunt after honour and advauncement vaine,
And reare a trophee for devouring death,
With so great labour and long lasting paine,
As if his daies for ever should remaine?
Sith all that in this world is great or gaie,
Doth as a vapour vanish, and decaie.
Spenser, The Ruines of Time
Qui ne voit que j’ai pris une route par laquelle, sans cesse et sans travail, j’iray
autant qu’il y aura d’ancre et de papier au monde?
[Who does not see that I have taken a road along which I shall go, without
stopping and without effort, as long as there is ink and paper in the world?]
Montaigne, “De la vanité”
How many Ages hence
Shall this our lofty Scene be acted over,
In State unborne, and Accents yet unknowne?
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Denn ich liebe dich, o Ewigkeit!
[For I love you, O Eternity!]
Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra