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Pléiade Censure of Classic Mendacity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
One of the most common standards by which the Pléiade poets judged a writer was that of his truth or sincerity. Although none could be more classically traditional or more psychologically obvious, the wide use of this criterion is surprising. For nowhere in the prose treatises of Du Bellay, Peletier, Sébilet, Ronsard, or the others, are mendacity and sincerity in literature discussed independently. It is true that Ronsard comments in brief fashion upon historical truth and verisimilitude in the Abbrégé de l'arl poétique and in the 1587 preface to the Franciade, but, as we shall explain below, it is truth as an ethical concept that is to be our concern here.
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References
1 Ronsard, vii, 52; vii, 80. Quotations from the poetry of Ronsard are from the Œuvres complètes, edited by Laumonier (Paris; Lemerre, 1914–19); for Du Bellay's poetry, we refer to the Chamard edition (Paris, 1908–19); passages from Baïf, Jodelle, Dorat, Pontus de Tyard, and Belleau are from the Marty-Laveaux series, La Pléiade françoise (Paris, 1866–98), and designated by “M.-L.”
2 Ronsard, Abbrégé de l'art poétique, vii, 44–45.
3 Ronsard, Hymne de l'automne, iv, 313.
4 Quoted in Marcel Raymond, L'influence de Ronsard sur la poésie française (Paris, 1927), i, 315.
5 Paul Laumonier, Ronsard poète lyrique (Paris, 1909), pp. 300–301. One might add that the idea exists in French as early as the Archiloge Sophie of Jacques Legrand, “Poétrie est science qui aprent à feindre et à fere ficcions”; quoted in W. F. Patterson, Three Centuries of French Poetic Theory (Ann Arbor, 1935), i, 10.
6 D. L. Clark, Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance (New York, 1922), p. 127.
7 Vida, De arte poetica, ii, 304–306; ii, 315–319; ii, 345.
8 With meaning of “represent, imitate,” see Du Bellay's Deffence (Chamard edition), p. 170. For representative uses with the meaning of “falsify.” see Baf (M.-L.), i, 9, 348; v, 75, 214; Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 13, 49, 148; Du Bellay, vi, 282, 331; Desportes (Michiels edition), pp. 64, 186, etc.
9 Ronsard, iii, 343; Du Bellay, vi, 165; Belleau, ii, 157–158; Héroët (Gohin edition), p. 94; Tahureau (Blanchemain edition), i, 92.
10 Ronsard, vii, 66–67.
11 Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, Art poétique (Paris, 1885), pp. 53, 124, 157–158.
12 J.-C. Scaliger, Poetices libri septem (Heidelberg, 1617), p. 403.
13 Hermogenes, Opera (Leipzig, 1913), pp. 352–363.
14 Julian the Apostate, Orationes, iv.
15 Essais, i, ix.
16 Eusebius, Constant, iv, 6; Augustine, De Mendacio (Patr. Lat.), xl, 505; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, i, 40.
17 Quintilian, Inst. Orat., v, 12; Pliny, Epist. ix, 33. References to Gallus and Ovid are from the De Abusu Mendacii of Gentile (see note 19).
18 Martin Cognet, Politique Discourses upon Truth and Lying (London, 1586), p. 159.
19 Alberico Gentile, Disputationes Duae (Hanoviae, 1599), p. 162.
20 Du Bellay, iv, 138.
21 Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 332.
22 Du Bellay, Deffence (Chamard edition), p. 187.
23 Pontus de Tyard (M.-L.), p. 102.
24 Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 194.
25 Du Bellay, Deffence, ed. cit., p. 339.
26 Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 195.
27 Obviously, the pejorative meaning of artifice (falsehood) is intended here.
28 Du Bellay, ii, 224.
29 Ronsard, ii, 441.
30 Ronsard, ii, 31.
31 Benedetto Croce, Estetica (Bari, 1928), p. 60
32 Du Bellay, iv, 173–174.
33 Du Bellay, ii, 63.
34 Desportes, Œuvres (Paris, 1858), p. 116.
35 Ronsard, ii, 269.
35 Grévin, Théâtre complet et poésies choisies (Paris, 1922), p. 293.
37 Ronsard, iv, 339.
38 Ibid., i, 39.
39 Ibid., iii, 279.
40 Ibid., i, 285.
41 Ibid., i, 295.
42 In the Gohin edition of Héroët (Paris, 1909), p. 154.
43 Baïf (M.-L.), i, 185.
44 Ronsard, vi, 119.
45 Magny, Œuvres (Paris, 1871–81), i, 120.
46 Du Bellay, ii, 215.
47 Jean Dorat (M.-L.), p. 18.
48 Ronsard, ii, 324.
49 Ibid., ii, 428.
50 Ibid., v, 112.
51 Ibid., vi, 389.
52 Ibid., vii, 84.
53 Belleau (M.-L.), ii, 453.
54 Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 331.
55 Du Bellay, ii, 201.
56 Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 262.
57 Grévin, Théâtre complet et poésies choisies (Paris, 1922), p. 243.
58 Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 55.
59 Baïf (M.-L.), i, 124.
60 Ronsard, vi, 229.
61 Jodelle (M.-L.), ii, 105.
62 See above, note 32.
63 Ronsard, vi, 219; vii, 71.
64 Ibid., iv, 59.
65 Du Bellay, v, 89.
66 Ibid., iv, 147.
67 Ronsard, vii, 83.
68 Ibid., vii, 82.
69 Deffence (Chamard edition), p. 142; for rayson as “truth,” see Du Bellay, iii, 121