The year 2015 marked the five hundredth anniversary of the ascent of Valois monarch François I to the French throne, as well as his mythified military victory at Marignano later that same year. While this quincentenary celebration bore witness to several commemorations in the francophone and francophile world (Archives nationales, BnF, Loches, Tours, etc.), one conference in particular, held in Kingston, Ontario, drew together a number of international authorities on French literary traditions from the first half of the sixteenth century to reexamine the intellectual world of the “Father of French Letters.” This collected volume represents the fruits of that meeting.
Over the twenty-three individual essays (twenty-one in French, two in English) that constitute this edition, the collective breadth of the cultural realm fleshed out is most impressive. Of course, major canonical figures such as Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, Clément Marot, and Guillaume Budé are discussed across the various chapters. However, this work also contains valuable information on a number of second- and third-tier figures from this period as well: Nicholas Bourbon and the sodalitium lugdunense coterie of Neo-Latin poets in Lyon, François des Moulins, Jean Bouchet, Claude Chappuys, Florimond Robertet, etc. Together, these form an intricate web of literary relations, with François I himself, naturally, always at the pivot.
All the same, while François remains ever the political and cultural sovereign, issuing printing privileges and royal endowments, many of the articles demonstrate a countercurrent that disputes and nuances some of the more traditional interpretations of relationships between the king and his subjects. For example, Xavier Bonnier rereads Maurice Scève’s Délie dizains praising François alongside other political poems to offer a far more cunning and propagandistic agenda within the work. Scott Francis reads against Montaigne and others, as he revisits the representation of the king in his sister Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron in light of her personal theological views. (In fact, the four articles in the fourth section treating “François Ier, Marguerite de Navarre et la foi” are a particular highlight of the volume and represent a fertile field for future study in the relations and depictions of François in Marguerite’s work.) Yet another piece, by Catherine Langlois-Pézeret, suggests that the image of the king in the epistolary verse emerging from the hub of Renaissance humanism in Lyon is far more critical than might initially meet the eye, as is the case in François Cornilliat’s study of a complex, less than prudent king in Jean Bouchet’s chronicles.
Indeed, a number of the articles across this collection deal with the image of the king—be it among contemporary Italian authors (Valeria Caldarella-Allaire); in works by courtly figures like Budé (Stephen Murphy); in the accounts of royal entries into Paris and Lyon (Lyse Roy); in the more personal verse of a member of the same sodalitium lugdunense, Nicolas Bourbon (Sylvie Laigneau-Fontaine); or in the acutely socially aware François’s various attempts at self-fashioning as a warrior-king as well as a man of letters. As the articles enter into dialogue one with another, a significant element that emerges between authors is a humanizing effect, as the king’s insecurities, concerns, and eccentricities become increasingly visible to the reader—a poet (Cynthia Skenazi and François Rouget), as well as a collector of books (Paul J. Smith) and of curiosities (Myriam Marrache-Goudard), François’s larger-than-life persona takes on new, underexplored dimensions in this work.
Of course, most scholars who visit this volume will not do so to read it linearly, as is the critic’s prerogative; however, those who do embark on a cover-to-cover reading will certainly be impressed with Rouget’s organization of the contributions, which are woven together both thematically and, by and large, chronologically. The dates advertised in the volume’s title (which correspond with the king’s reign), 1515 to 1547, are covered with a semblance of order, allowing the multiauthored book to take on a subtle sense of cultural biography. Notwithstanding, most academics and advanced graduate students will, of course, be drawn to particular articles and sections of the text pertinent to their own research interests. These individuals will definitely remark and appreciate the rich and thorough erudition of these essays, each of which contain copious footnotes and establish the volume as a landmark text on the cultural image, occupations, and relations of François I.
