Vertu du discours, discours de la vertu: Litterature et philosophie morale au XVIe siecle en France.

Ullrich Langer. Vertu du discours, discours de la vertu: Litterature et philosophie morale au XVIe siecle en France.

(Cahiers d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 55; Les scuils de la modernite, 2.) Geneva: Droz, 1999. 208 pp. n.p. ISBN: 2-600-00320-7.

The chiasmus in the title indicates the structure of the treatment. Three related chapters form the first section, "Vertu du discours." They treat the ethics of praise and flattery; and the poet and orator as ethical subject. In the second section, "Discours de la vertu," four chapters address the literary presence of the cardinal virtues: fortitude, justice, prudence, and temperance.

The theoretical orientation is mainly Aristotelian and Ciceronian. However, the texts used include not only the relevant works of Aristotle and Cicero, but also commentaries, translations, and florilegia, those popular and useful forms in which the "great books" and "great ideas" were largely known.

There is a considerable variety in the literary texts studied. So, chapter 1 concentrates on a ballad by Marot, chapter 2 on court panegyrics by Claude Chappuys, Pierre Matthieu, and Pierre d'Avity, chapter 3 on Ronsard's "Responce aux injures" and a dialogue by Louis Le Caron. In studying the cardinal virtues, an explicit preference is given to the nouvelle and to Montaigne. The texts relevant for fortitude are the Heptameron (nouvelle 2), an episode in the Quart livre, and Essais 1.12. With respect to justice: Decameron 8.7, 8.8, and 2.5; Heptameron 22 and 15; nouvelle 6 of Comptes du monde adventureux; and several histoires tragiques by Bdnigne Poissenot, Pierre Boaistuau, and Jean-Pierre Camus (not to mention the adventures of Till Eulenspiegel). Prudence is illuminated by Heptameron 5, Gargantua and the Tiers livre, and Essais 3.1; Temperance by Pantagruel, N. Horry's Rabelais ressuscite, and Pierre Matthieu's Guisiade.

But how, after all, is Aristotelian ethics, filtered through rhetorical and scholastic tradition, at work in such Renaissance fictions, essays, and poems? The author rejects the model of literature as a schoolmistress dispensing moral lessons with sugar coating. He conceives of ethics not as rules but as an open, dynamic ensemble; as such, it naturally finds a place in the field of contingency that is literature. The rhetorical element most present is epideictic, understandably enough, since discourse about virtue or its lack has so often taken the form of praise or blame. In the period studied here, that usually means the literature of praise written at court. Hence the fundamental ethico-literary situation underlying chapters 1-3: the poet faced with the implications of his praise of the (usually royal) patron. Flattery, instruction, sincerity, hypocrisy mix in what begins to look like an aporia. The ambiguity of the title is instructive: vertu du discours signifies both the power (virtus) of the literary work and the question of just how virtuous it can be.

The ethical status of the literary works, which often turns out to be its political status, is of course not static. Several chapters trace a larger evolution in the course of the sixteenth century. For example, the differences between Claude Chappuys praising Francis I and Pierre Matthieu praising Henry IV illustrate the shift towards raison d'Etat and absolutism. In the examples of prudence one can observe a shrinking of its value, from its exemplarity for Marguerite de Navarre to the modesty and resignation of Montaigne's "prudent" retreat. The final chapter, in some ways the most intriguing, explores the kinship between intemperance and tyranny. It shows a reversal from the "euphoric" intemperance of Rabelais' giants to the condemnation of Henry III's excesses in Ligueur polemics.

Of course, in such cases where a few examples are used to suggest a more general development, one might object that the proofs are insufficient. One might also complain about a brief and hasty conclusion. But such reservations are slight next to the considerable virtues of this book: an impressive knowledge of the sources, a truly comparative approach, and a philosophical perspective that insistently makes old questions new.