Amphion Orator. Michael Taormina

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СКАЧАТЬ 4.3), because it is both an ethosethos and a virtuevirtue, and because it was considered the wellspring of la grande éloquence [the grandstylegrand style]. Chapter 1 examines how the ethosethos of magnanimitymagnanimity, modeled on Henri IV, encompasses and defines the members of the body politicbody politic. Chapter 2 asks how the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity shapes the conceptions of monarchypolitymonarchy and the national communitynationnational community. Chapter 3, the longest of these three, investigates the rhetorical climate and the hybrid genus dicendi of the royal odes to contextualize their version of the grandstylegrand style. There was no way to define and to develop the notions of ethosethos, virtuevirtue, and eloquenceeloquence, to relate them to the historical context, and to show how they organize the composition—one might say, the enunciation—of the royal odes, while at the same time explicating in a clear and coherent way such highly complex poems. Such a division allows the concepts and arguments presented in Part I to be used without excessive comment in the close reading of the royal odes in Part II.

      Chapter 1. Literary Patronage

      Although, technically speaking, Malherbe was the client of Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de (1562-1646), Grand Écuyer de France [Master of the Horse], in whose service the poet received a cash stipend, table and board, horse and valet (Adam, Poésies 263), it was understood that Malherbe was the king’s “man.” In addition to “écuyer du roi” [equerry of the king], Malherbe was named “gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre” [official gentleman of the royal bedchamber] (Adam, Poésies 223). BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de, a great lord from a powerful military family, was himself a loyal client of Henri IV. When the mortally-wounded Henri III recognized Henri of Navarre as his successor in 1589, BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de without hesitation transferred his allegiances to the new king and valiantly fought by his side to help him secure control of the monarchy. After the death of Henri IV, the queen regent declared Malherbe the recipient of a royal pension in 1611, and Louis XIII reaffirmed this patron-client relationship in 1622 and again in 1624. The difficulty that Malherbe experienced in getting the royal treasury to honor these financial commitments may have led to the interruption of his work on the sequence in 1613, and it may explain the self-interested praise and solicitation of later odes.

      The personal ties between Henri IV and Malherbe, mediated by BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de, belong to the diffuse and particularistic network of personal relationships known as patronage. One of those unfamiliar but essential practices of early modern France, patronage needs some explanation if a twenty-first-century reader is to appreciate how its assumptions and conventions inform the composition of the royal odes. Fortunately, Peter W. Shoemaker’s important book, Powerful Connections: The Poetics of Patronage in the Age of Louis XIII, offers a compelling and nuanced analysis of this fundamental cultural practice which may be adapted, with small changes, to Malherbe’s royal odes, half of which were composed during the reign of Henri IV. The most important adaptation concerns the particularistic “audience of one,” which Shoemaker sees at work in all patronage texts. While this notion is certainly determinative for the royal odes (their patrons are Henri, Marie, and Louis, with one long ode addressed to BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de), one must recall that a monarch constitutes a special kind of patron, since he or she embodies an audience of more-than-one: this is because a monarch cannot in principle be limited to a single body but always includes the body politicbody politic of the nationnation.1 The royal odes written for the king, or the queen, frequently address him or her directly, but they are also addressed through the monarch to the nationnation and, often, are aimed at the great nobilitynobility in particular, a key constituency of the nationnation. The ode to BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de is an indirect appeal to the latter. Starting from the historical practice of patronage, this chapter shows how the monarch’s person (one of the three particulars of decorum: time, place, and persons) implies an imagined community of addressees.

      The broad outlines of patronage described by Shoemaker apply without reservation to the royal odes. “Representations were produced, and power was exerted,” he writes, “through networks of interpersonal relationships that bridged the public and the nonpublic. Writers, historians, artists, architects, and other cultural creators specialized in the business of publicizing—and illustrating—their protectors’ influence. In return, patrons provided publicity for artistic works and gave artists and writers access to social elites where the latter could promote their works” (Shoemaker 17). “This highly personalized and hierarchical system inevitably exerted an influence on literary practice, shaping the exchanges that defined the economic, social, and political value of literature and favoring certain genres and modes of expression. The promise of social advancement created a gradient of desire that generated representations and put them into circulation. In their attempts to win over patrons, writers were drawn into an elitist mode of cultural production and consumption that promoted a hierarchy of literary value based on aristocratic canons of taste” (Shoemaker 19). While the informal arrangements of patronage were governed by verbal contracts based on antiquated feudal ideals, and the relationships were often charged with powerful emotionemotions, it is nevertheless true that self-interest and political calculation inevitably dictated the terms of both sides of the agreement and led to the frequent re-negotiation of loyalties.

      The relationship of poet and monarch in the early seventeenth century fits comfortably within Shoemaker’s broad paradigm. “The royal family recruited literary talent both for official propaganda and to provide the scripts for ballets, tournaments, and other courtcourt (royal) festivities” (Shoemaker 30). In theory, a monarch was supposed to be the most distinguished member of the nobilitynobility. Because this was not always the case in fact, monarchs used belles-lettres for self-aggrandizement, reinforcing their social and political elevation over the nobles at courtcourt (royal), especially the great lords, but also shoring up their authority over clergy and magistrates, the other powerful members of the body politicbody politic. Furthermore, given the voluminous and wide diffusion of pamphlet literature, which “sought to reach not only the most reasonable part of the populace, but to interest the masses” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 44), there is no reason to assume that the impact of belles-lettres was limited to the first two orders of the kingdom. Various poetry anthologies, “the mirrors of their epoch,” edited and published by entrepreneurs with “sharply distinguished literary and esthetic conceptions” (Lafay, “Recueils collectifs” 15), disseminated Malherbe’s royal odes to different sectors of the reading public. Both literary venues, elite and popular, paid homage to the monarch’s preeminence and authority. As Shoemaker notes, this French literature, whether pamphlets or lyriclyric poetry poems, represented an elitist point of view in an elitist mode of expression. Public values were indistinguishable from the elitist values expressed at courtcourt (royal) or in aristocratic circles thanks to the hegemony over cultural production that the monarchy and the nobility exerted through patronage (Shoemaker 17).

      Although Shoemaker examines the flourishing of patronage primarily after the reign of Henri IV, he traces the practice’s “contingent rhetorical strategies” and its “personal or particularistic rhetoric” to a foundational text, Budé’s De l’institution du prince [On the Education of the Prince], published in 1547 (Shoemaker 19). “The treatise devotes an extended discussion to courtcourt (royal) oratory and lays particular emphasis on the man of letters’ potential role as counselor” (Shoemaker 20). In Shoemaker’s view, the significance of Budé’s treatise derives from its prescient anticipation of a “shift from oratory to counsel” (Shoemaker 20), of “a move away from the traditional public scope of rhetoric” (Shoemaker 20-21). However, this shift would have to wait more than half a century to come about. The contentious political environment that accompanied the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion not only fostered oratory of the sort practiced by Demosthenes and CiceroCicero, but also subsumed the traditional patronage ties of poets under the banner of one sectarian camp or the other. Polemic abounded, and this includes militant poems like Ronsard’s Les Discours (1560-1584) or Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques СКАЧАТЬ