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Lucan and the Antiquitez de Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Frank McMinn Chambers
Frank McMinn Chambers*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

In his excellent study of the Latin and Italian sources of Joachim du Bellay's Antiquitez de Rome, M. Joseph Vianey indicates a number of passages that derive in some way from Lucan's Pharsalia. To the best of my knowledge, no one has pointed out any further borrowings, or made any kind of detailed study of du Bellay's debt to Lucan, which is, however, considerably more extensive than M. Vianey's mentions would lead one to believe. In this paper, therefore, I propose to quote all those passages in the two works which are so similar in expression or in thought as to suggest that du Bellay had Lucan in mind, or actually before him, when he wrote the Antiquitez. After this comparison of details, it will perhaps be possible to show that du Bellay owed to Lucan something much more important than these imitations and translations.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 60 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 1945 , pp. 937 - 948
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945

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References

1 Joseph Vianey, “Les Antiquitez de Rome: leurs sources latines et italiennes,” Bulletin italien (Bordeaux), i, 187-199.

2 Lucan is not the only author upon whom du Bellay drew for the Antiquitez. M. Vianey (loc. cit.) reveals his indebtedness to Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Janus Vitalis, Buchanan, Ariosto, Castiglione, and Guidiccioni. “Avec un auteur comme Du Bellay, dont tout le discours est ainsi pavé de réminiscences antiques, de telle sorte qu'on ne peut faire un pas avec lui sans marcher sur une pensée d'un Ancien …” (Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, xiii, 285).

3 Lucan is quoted from A. E. Housman's edition (Oxford, 1927).

4 The sonnets of the Antiquitez are quoted from M. Henri Chamard's critical edition: Joachim du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques (Paris: Société des Textes français modernes, 1910), ii, 3-29.

5 Du Bellay's Latin poems are quoted from E. Courbet, Poésies françaises et latines de Joachim du Bellay (Paris, 1918), i, 431-535; the Tumulus Romae is on p. 505. (I have omitted all accents.)

6 “… la belle élégie de Du Bellay, Romae descriplio. Elle répond assez bien au livre des Antiquités de Rome qui a pu sortir de là.” (Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, xiii, 342). In Courbet's edition, pp. 432-436.

7 Courbet's edition, i, 436-440.

8 M. Vianey's contributions have been mentioned specifically; absence of such mention means that he did not refer to the borrowing in question.

9 M. Chamard publishes it separately in his edition, ii, 267-268.

10 The astrologer Figulus is speaking.

11 Henri Chamard, Joachim du Bellay (“Travaux et Mémoires de l'Université de Lille” viii; Lille, 1900), 59-60.

12 It gives me pleasure to thank Professor A. H. Schutz, of the University of Ohio, for certain valuable suggestions concerning this paper.