Agrippa d'Aubigne.

Madeleine Lazard. Paris: Fayard, 1998. 567 pp. ISBN: 2-213-60029-5.

In his last and most ambitious book, the late historian and literary scholar Gilbert Gadoffre makes a powerful case for viewing the 1520s as a radical turning point in French intellectual and social history - a true "revolution" that not only transformed the cultural landscape of France but had a profound and lasting effect on every level of French society. With massive erudition meticulously marsh fled, Gadoffre demonstrates how foreign and domestic perceptions of France changed virtually overnight with the accession of Francois I in 1515, and how the prestige of bonae litterae in Francois's court eroded old caste distinctions (noblesse d'epee, noblesse de robe, and bourgeoisie) and created a "new aristocracy" consisting of humanists of diverse origins, who were promoted to positions of power and influence as (for example) chancellors and ambassadors to Venice. Though he does not use the term, Gadoffre in effect shows how something like "civic humanism" transformed the university, the judiciary, the aristocracy, and the attitudes and habits of an entire nation, within a few years of Francois's coronation.

Gadoffre argues compellingly that this entire transformation was brought about by two extraordinary individuals: the charismatic, mnemonically gifted king himself, and the brilliant, melancholy Guillaume Bude. On the basis of contemporary documents which he interprets with unfailing tact, Gadoffre traces Bude's "grand projet" for a trilingual academy and Francois's personal enthusiasm for the new learning back to the first years of the new reign (1517), and shows how it took the sobering experiences of defeat at Pavia and captivity in Madrid (1525-1526) to move Francois to act at last on a modified version of Bude's plan. In the course of his demonstration Gadoffre reveals, among many other things, the extraordinary importance of the De Asse, in which Bude is shown to have invented modern historiography in a radical departure from the more traditional historiography practiced in Italy by both Petrarch and Machiavelli.

Although Gadoffre's arguments contain no trace of polemics, the entire book may be read as a powerful refutation of the revisionist views of much recent scholarship. It argues forcefully and convincingly that a "Renaissance" did indeed occur in what many now refer to as "early modern" France, that this Renaissance was qualitatively different from - and in some ways more consequential than - its Italian counterpart, that it created history as a modern discipline and transformed France from a backward feudal monarchy into the modern nation we know today, and that it resulted not from the coincidence of circumstances and anonymous forces but from the concerted energies of extraordinary individuals.

Signs of incompletion and of careless production detract somewhat from this magnum opus. Later chapters on book collecting and library formation, on allegorical representations of France, and on various myths of French national origins, while fascinating in their own right, are neither as tightly argued nor as relevant to the theme of the book as earlier chapters. Minor typographical errors are frequent in some places and the page numbers in all cross references are incorrect. Especially unfortunate is the absence of a bibliography and an index, indispensable in a book as rich and learned as this. Despite these technical shortcomings we owe a debt of gratitude to Jean Ceard and the Librairie Droz for the posthumous publication of such an important piece of scholarship by a distinguished scholar of the French Renaissance. Gadoffre's erudition is vast, his demonstrations generous and compelling, and his prose extremely elegant. This is an important book that is a pleasure to read.

Madeleine Lazard's biography of Agrippa d'Aubigne is an essay in high vulgarization intended to attract a general reading public (something that apparently still exists in France) to the works of a great but neglected writer. Lazard is well qualified to write such a book, since she is currently editing the journals of Pierre de L'Estoile and is the author of two similar biographies aimed at an audience of non-specialists (one on Montaigne and one on Brantome). As one would expect, her new biography is very well informed, not only about the complex political background of the period but about d'Aubigne's life and works as well. It contains useful, general accounts of all ofd'Aubigne's major works and of many of his minor works as well.

The book cannot be said to succeed in its purpose, however. No period of French history is more dramatic and compelling than that of the Wars of Religion, and few lives are more eventful than d'Aubigne's. Yet both remain curiously flat and lifeless in this book, and no clear sense of d'Aubigne's character emerges from the five hundred pages of text. One reason for this is a strictly chronological approach to the subject that leaves no room for a rounded, synthetic view of the times, the man, or the work. D'Aubigne's masterpiece, Les Tragiques, for example, is first discussed in the context of the events of 1577 (because the poem was first conceived in the aftermath of the battle of Casteljaloux), but is not analyzed in detail until two hundred pages later, where a narrative of the events of 1616 is interrupted in mid-course by a long chapter devoted exclusively to the work (because the work was first published at the time of France's, and d'Aubigne's, struggles with Henri de Bourbon, second prince of Conde). Such faithfulness to chronology at the expense of coherence, logic, and synthesis obscures both the shape of d'Aubigne's political career and the evolution and importance of his literary work.

Another reason for the disappointment of this book is that it follows d'Aubigne's own account of his life and times in Sa Vie a ses enfants and the Histoire Universelle, with very little critical distance. Such deference to the subject never makes for very good history but it is especially inappropriate in the case of a zealot who viewed his entire life as a one-man jihad personally sanctioned by God. Recent history has shown us how charismatic, but also how irrational and dangerous, people like d'Aubigne can be. I suspect that the character of this great poet would emerge with far greater clarity and force if d'Aubigne's ruthless intransigence were viewed from a perspective other than the tendentious one he himself provided to his own children and correligionists.

Finally, Lazard's narrative is so overburdened with microscopic details - including a superabundance of insufficiently identified people, places, and events - that the broad lines of both the history and the life are virtually impossible to discern. Even the most vivid and familiar episodes of the story- the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the "Journee des Barricades," d'Aubigne's brush with death at Talcy and his role in the escape of the future Henri IV - are obscured by a dense cloud of detail. As for the constantly shifting personal, domestic, and international alliances that undergird the religious and political struggles in which d'Aubigne played so intense a role throughout his life, it is hard to imagine that anyone but a specialist will be able to follow Lazard's tedious account, much less be inspired by it to read the works of d'Aubigne for himself.

Juxtaposition of the two books under review here makes one appreciate all the more the virtues of Gadoffre's craft. In a work of serious scholarship written for specialists, Gadoffre brings Francois I and his court vividly to life with a clear thesis and elegant, engaging, evocative prose. In a work whose sole purpose is to awaken the interest of laymen in one of the most colorful figures of the Renaissance, Lazard buries her subject in undigested detail and leaden prose.

Yale University