11 - “Avec la terre on possède la guerre”: The Problem of Place in Ronsard's Franciade

Summary

Early in Pierre de Ronsard's epic poem, the Franciade, Mercury is sent on behalf of Jupiter to deliver a message to Helenin, the uncle of the poem's protagonist, Francus. Francus, who is the son of Hector and Andromache, has been loitering in Buthrotum instead of pursuing the great destiny in store for him. According to Mercury, the achievements of Hector's descendants culminate with Ronsard's patron King Charles IX who holds the world in his hand:

L'enfant d'Hector, à qui les cieux amis

Ont tant d'honneur et de sceptres promis:

Qui doit hausser la race Priamide,

Doit abaisser la grandeur Aezonide,

Doit veincre tout, et qui doit une fois

Estre l'estoc de tant de Rois François,

Et par sus tous d'un CHARLES, qui du monde

Doit en la main porter la pomme ronde.

(1:243–50)

(Hector's offspring, to whom the friendly heavens

Promised so many honours and sceptres.

He must raise up Priam's race

And knock down the greatness of Jason's descendants,

He must defeat all, and he must be the

Root and source of so many future kings

And above all of a certain CHARLES, who is to carry

In his hand that round apple, our globe.)

Although the passage closely imitates Virgil's Aeneid, in the sixteenth century, a monarch with the world in his hand could not help but recall a relatively new object: the globe. Globes and other maps were novelties that reflected recent developments in cartography, including the re-discovery of the Ptolemaic grid.