The French Renaissance poet and painter Nicolas Denisot offers the peculiar case of a writer best known for works he didn’t write. Having insinuated himself into the good graces of the Pléiade, Denisot’s name, or rather his pseudonym, le Conte d’Alsinois, appears regularly in the major vernacular lyric collections of the 1550s, from Ronsard’s Amours to Du Bellay’s Regrets. Moreover, he usually appears in these collections as a sort of fictional painter, whose portrait of the poet’s beloved consoles him in her absence. In modern times, and especially since Margaret Harris’s monograph of 1966, Denisot has been identified as the author of the ghastly humanist romance L’Amant resuscité de la mort d’amour, of which he is most likely innocent and whose real author had the good sense to use his own pseudonym, Théodose Valentinian. Consequently, and in the absence of any modern edition of Denisot’s own sparse poetic output, Daniele Speziari’s new monograph on this elusive figure spends a lot more time on literary history than literary criticism.

The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, a conclusion, a bibliography, and an index. Fifteen illustrations, many of portraits that Denisot never painted, round off this handsomely produced volume. Because of the adventurous life of its subject and the meticulous research on which it is based, this new volume should be of mild interest to a wide reading public. The author has unearthed some new archival material, notably Denisot’s last will and testament, and has diligently assembled and consulted all previously available information on Denisot’s diverse occupations as poet, painter, cartographer, and spy. Speziari nominates Denisot’s collection of Christian poetry, the Cantiques du premier advenement de Jesu-Christ of 1552, as his most successful and significant publication (there aren’t many contenders for that title) and suggests that the poet’s decisive career move was to organize and contribute to the Latin and vernacular tombeaux for Marguerite de Navarre in the years immediately preceding the Cantiques. On the basis of these achievements, Speziari somewhat generously ranks Denisot as a “second order star” (244), but he comes off instead, in this portrayal, as the champion of anachronism. Why, in the aftermath of the debate on lyric genres between Thomas Sébillet and Joachim Du Bellay, did Denisot choose the cantique over the ode? Why did he opt for Christian lyricism, in line with Du Bellay’s momentary lapse of 1552, instead of following the classicizing impulse of vernacular humanism? Why did he cultivate the misguided experiment of vers mesurés and neglect the triumphant sonnet? Was anyone more hopelessly out of sync with the currents of his time?

Speziari makes the most he can with the material at his disposal. The chapter on the commemorative works in honor of Marguerite de Navarre, of which Denisot was rather editor and translator than author, includes a very useful summary of the genre of the poetic tomb, drawing liberally on Amaury Flégès’s unpublished doctoral thesis. The chapter on the Cantiques offers some interesting reflections on the relation of the sacred and the profane in midcentury lyric, and the preliminary biographical sketch, which supersedes previous efforts, draws up an invaluable tabulation of the poetic tributes that Denisot exchanged with his contemporaries. We even learn about the relation of maps and espionage in Renaissance diplomacy. But there is only so much you can do with context in the absence of text. We cannot appreciate a poet without reading his poems. Perhaps this new study will prepare the way for an edition of Denisot’s verse, but in the meantime, we are left with the least interesting legacy of a writer, l’homme sans l’oeuvre.