The Formation of Meta-Language in French Literature in the 16th Century: from Poetical Treatises to “Libraries”

About the author:

Irina K. Staf, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

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ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3975-6617

Abstract:

The article deals with the changes which the concept of literature underwent in 16^th century France. The late medieval concept of poetry as fabula, allegorical fiction, is replaced in the middle of the century (by T. Sébillet, J. Peletier du Mans, Ronsard) by the Platonic idea of an innate divine gift. The idea of poetry-philosophy describing all possible phenomena of the universe henceforth serves as a prerequisite for the creation of works perfect from a formal point of view. The idea of the relation between poetry and rhetoric as well as the models to be imitated by the poet changes. Lists of canonical authors turn into a poetic topos as early as the late Middle Ages, but under the influence of Pleiades’ theories there is an increased interest in the figure of the “great author”, a symbol of national language and poetry, whose emergence means the achievement of the national culture of the Golden Age. Lists, however, are transformed at the end of the century into the first attempts to describe the totality of French literature (Lacroix du Maine and A. Duverdier’s “Libraries of France”) and its history (a work on ancient poets by C. Fauchet and Book VII of E. Pasquier’s “Inquiries into France”). In the Renaissance disputes and polemics becomes more visible the outlines of both the literary canon, which was embodied in the 17^th century, and the historical approach to literature.