About the Book
The study of literature still tends to be nation-based, even when direct evidence contradicts longstanding notions of an autonomous literary canon. In a time when current events make inevitable the acceptance of a global perspective, the essays in this volume suggest a corrective to such scholarly limitations: the contributors offer alternatives to received notions of 'influence' and the more or less linear transmission of translatio studii, demonstrating that they no longer provide adequate explanations for the interactions among the various literary canons of the Renaissance. Offering texts on a variety of aspects of the Anglo-French Renaissance instead of concentrating on one set of borrowings or phenomena, this collection points to new configurations of the relationships among national literatures. Contributors address specific borrowings, rewritings, and appropriations of French writing by English authors, in fields ranging from lyric poetry to epic poetry to drama to political treatise. The bibliography presents a comprehensive list of publications on French connections in the English Renaissance from 1902 to the present day.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, Catherine Gimelli Martin, Hassan Melehy; Part 1 Translating and Transferring Gender; Chapter 1 “La Femme Replique”: English Paratexts, Genre Cues, and Versification in a Translated French Gender Debate, A.E.B. Coldiron; Chapter 2 Isabelle de France, Child Bride 1 The author thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Huntington Library, the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto, Terry Goldie, David Goldstein, Hassan Melehy, and Stephen Orgel., Deanne Williams; Part 2 Textualizations of Politics and Empire; Chapter 3 Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos and Du Bellay’s Poetic Transformation, Hassan Melehy; Chapter 4 Utopia Versus State of Power, or Pretext of the Political Discourse of Modernity: Hobbes, Reader of La Boétie? 1 The earliest version of this Chapter dates from 1980, from a session of a research group at the University of Montreal, “Political Discourse and Models of Rationality,” sponsored by the Association France-Québec and the University of Montreal, whose principal members were Christiane Frémont, Françoise Gaillard, Pierre Gravel, Claude Lagadec, Michel Serres, and myself. In English, this version became an Eberhard L. Faber lecture at Princeton University at the invitation of Albert Sonnenfeld, and another at McGill University at the invitation of Marc Angenot and George Szanto. I thank everyone for the debates sparked by these events. Fifteen years later, I completely reconceived this study for the conference “Konfigurationen der Macht in der frühen Neuzeit” held at the Universität GS Essen in March 1996. I heartily thank Roland Galle for his invitation, his encouragement, and his generous indulgence. I also thank Alice Stroup for her later attentive and strict reading, and especially David Lee Rubin for the efficacious goodwill and careful generosity of his work as editor for the first publication of a much longer version of this essay: “Utopie versus état de pouvoir, ou prétexte du discours politique de la modernité: Hobbes, lecteur de La Boétie?” EMF: Studies in Early Modern France, IV: Utopia 1:16th and 17th Centuries, ed. David Lee Rubin, co-ed. Alice Stroup (Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 1998), 31–83. For the present version, abridgement towards the goals of the current collection, and translation I am entirely and most gratefully indebted to Hassan Melehy., J. Reiss Timothy, Hassan Melehy; Chapter 5 Milton and the Huguenot Revolution, Catherine Gimelli Martin; Part 3 Translation and the Transnational Context; Chapter 6 Cross-Cultural Adaptation and the Novella: Bandello’s Albanian Knight in France, England, and Spain, Dorothea Heitsch; Chapter 7 Life, Death, and the Daughter of Time: Philip and Mary Sidney’s Translations of Duplessis-Mornay, Roger Kuin; Chapter 8 From “Amours” to Amores: Francis Thorius Makes Ronsard a Neolatin Lover, Anne Lake Prescott, Lydia Kirsopp Lake;
About the Author :
Catherine Gimelli Martin teaches at the University of Memphis, USA, where she has been the recipient of a Dunavant Professorship and several distinguished research awards. The Milton Society of America and the John Donne Society have similarly honored her with essay and book awards. Hassan Melehy teaches in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He has published widely on early modern literature and philosophy, critical theory, and cinema studies. Catherine Gimelli Martin, Hassan Melehy, A.E.B. Coldiron, Deanne Williams, Timothy J. Reiss, Dorothea Heitsch, Roger Kuin, Anne Lake Prescott, Lydia Kirsopp Lake.
Review :
'Among the welcome lessons of this stimulating collection is the reminder that ’’connections’’ can be of various kinds. Those proposed in these eight essays by North American scholars range from close textual relations, through large history of ideas influences, to more subjective conjectures.' Renaissance Quarterly ’There is much to be praised in this collection of essays on Anglo-French connections during the Renaissance. ... Gimelli Martin and Melehy make very clear that they are involved in an attempt to overcome traditional disciplinary boundaries ... readers may find inspiration for their particular field, if they are interested in the texts, authors, and connections which are covered by the various contributions in this volume.’ H-France Review
