Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:49:27.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Money and Merit in French Renaissance Comedy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jotham Parsons
Jotham Parsons*
Affiliation:
Duquesne University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Pierre Corneille’s Mélite (1629) resonated in part due to a social critique with deep roots in the French Renaissance. Corneille’s characters live by the canons of a (notionally) natural system of merit, divorced from money, implicitly noble, but open to upwardly-mobile commoners. Reconciling the traditional social order with the purchase of status and power by venal office-holders had preoccupied French comedy since the 1550s. While early playwrights hesitated to comment on this phenomenon (in which they took part), by about 1580 Odet de Turnèbe had already dramatized an educated elite’s transcendence of the economic, which Corneille would then go on to perfect. The biographies of these playwrights show that their plays’ ideological functions suited their own social situations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , Fall 2007 , pp. 852 - 882
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The ideas in this paper were first developed in a 2003 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar directed by Karen Newman. Further research and writing were supported by a Wimmer Foundation Faculty Summer Research Grant from Duquesne University, and a version was presented to the Pittsburgh Area Early Modern Group on 3 December 2005. My particular thanks to Professor Newman, Barbara Bowen, Elaine Parsons, Orest Ranum, François Rigolot, and Matthew Vester for their comments on various drafts. This paper also owes a great deal to my study with the late Gérard Defaux, to whose memory it may serve as an inadequate but sincere tribute. All translations are my own.

References

Alter, Jean V. Les origines de la satire anti-bourgeoise en France. 2 vols. Geneva, 1966.Google Scholar
Antoine, Michel. Le Cœur de l’état: Surintendance contrôle général et intendances des finances 1552–1791. Paris, 2003.Google Scholar
Aulotte, Robert. La comédie française de la renaissance et son chef-d’œuvre “Les contens” d’Odet de Turnèbe. Paris, 1984.Google Scholar
Baldwin, John W. The Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists, and Theologians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Philadelphia, 1959.Google Scholar
Balmas, Enea. Un poeta del rinascimento francese: Etienne Jodelle, la sua vita —il suo tempo. Florence, 1962.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, Frederick. Henry II: King of France 1547–1559. Durham, 1988.Google Scholar
Bayle, Pierre. Dictionnaire historique et critique. 5th ed. 4 vols. Amsterdam, 1740.Google Scholar
Beecher, Donald A. Satisfaction All Around. Ottawa, 1979.Google Scholar
Bellenger, Yvonne. La Pléiade: La poésie en France autour de Ronsard. Paris, 1988.Google Scholar
Bénichou, Paul. Morales du grand siècle. Paris, 1948.Google Scholar
Billacois, François. Le duel dans la société française des XVIe–XVIIe siècles: Essai de psychologie historique. Paris, 1986.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA, 1984.Google Scholar
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille de. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Ludovic Lalanne. 11 vols. Paris, 1864–82.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy. Vol. 7 (1558–1580). London, 1864.Google Scholar
Hervé, Campangne. “Savoir, économie et société dans les Diverses leçons d’Antoine du Verdier.” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance 57 (1995) : 623–35 .Google Scholar
Stuart, Carroll. “The Peace in the Feud in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France.” Past and Present 178 (2003) : 74–115 .Google Scholar
Cave, Terence. Pré-histoires II: Langues étrangères et troubles économiques au XVIe siècle. Geneva, 2001.Google Scholar
Cloulas, Ivan. Henri II. Paris, 1985.Google Scholar
Colletet, Guillaume. Jacques Grévin di Guillaume Colletet. Ed. Franca Bevilacqua Caldari. Fasano, 1988.Google Scholar
Conesa, Gabriel. Pierre Corneille et la naissance du genre comique (1629–1636): Étude dramaturgique. Paris, 1989.Google Scholar
Corneille, Pierre. Oeuvres. “Nouvelle édition.” 12 vols. Paris, 1862–68.Google Scholar
Corneille, Pierre. Mélite: pièce comique: Texte de la première édition (1633). Ed. Mario Roques and Marion Lièvre. Geneva, 1950.Google Scholar
d’Amboise, François. Les neapolitaines, comédie. Ed. Hilde Spiegel. Heidelberg, 1977.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford, 1987.Google Scholar
Desan, Philippe. L’imaginaire conomique é de la renaissance. Mont-de-Marsan, 1993.Google Scholar
Dewald, Jonathan. The European Nobility 1400–1800. Cambridge, 1996.Google Scholar
Donatus, Aelius. Commentum Terenti. Ed. Paul Wessner. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1902.Google Scholar
Duindam, Jeroen. Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court. Trans. Lorri S. Granger and Gerard T. Moran. Amsterdam, 1994.Google Scholar
du Verdier, Antoine. Les diverses leçons d’Antoine du Verdier, sieur de Vau-privaz.. . Augmentées par l’auteur en ceste cinquiesme edition de trois discours trouvez apres le decez de ‘lautheur en ses papiers, du Duëil, de l’Honneur, & de la Noblesse. Tournon, 1616.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York, 1978.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York, 1983.Google Scholar
Espiner-Scott, Janet Girvan. Claude Fauchet: Sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1938.Google Scholar
Euanthius. De fabula. Ed. Giovanni Cupaiuolo. 2nd ed. Naples, 1992.Google Scholar
Force, Pierre. Molière ou le prix des choses: Morale, économie et comédie. Paris, 1994.Google Scholar
Georges, Forestier. “Situation du personnage de la jeune fille dans la comédie française du XVIe siècle.” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance 46 (1984) : 7–19 .Google Scholar
Forman, Valerie. “Counterfeit Investments: Economy and Sovereignty in Early Modern Texts.” PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2000.Google Scholar
Valerie, Forman. “Marked Angels: Counterfeits, Commodities, and The Roaring Girl.” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4.2 (2001) : 1531–60.Google Scholar
Fumaroli, Marc. L’age de l’éloquence: rhétorique et “res literaria” de la renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique. Geneva, 1980.Google Scholar
Fumaroli, Marc. Héros et orateurs: rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes. 2nd ed. Geneva, 1996.Google Scholar
Garapon, Robert. Le premier Corneille: De Mélite à L’Illusion Comique. Paris, 1982.Google Scholar
Ralph E, Giesey. “Rules of Inheritance and Strategies of Mobility in Prerevolutionary France.” American Historical Review 82 (1977) : 271–89 .Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles. New Haven, 1973.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago, 1980.Google Scholar
Grévin, Jacques. La trésorière, Les esbahis: comédies. Ed. Élisabeth Lapeyre. Paris, 1980.Google Scholar
Harrison, Helen L. Pistoles/Paroles: Money and Language in Seventeenth-Century French Comedy. Charlottesville, 1996.Google Scholar
Huppert, George. Les Bourgeois Gentilshommes: An Essay on the Definition of Elites in Renaissance France. Chicago, 1977.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, Brian. French Renaissance Comedy 1552–1630. Oxford, 1969.Google Scholar
Jodelle, Etienne. L’Eugène. Ed. M. J. Freeman. Exeter, 1987.Google Scholar
la Croix du Maine, François Grudé, Sieur de. Les bibliothquesè françoises de La Croix du Maine et de du Verdier sieur de Vauprivas. Ed. Rigoley de Juvigny. 4 vols. Paris, 1772–73.Google Scholar
Larivey, Pierre. Les six premieres comedies facecieuses. Paris, 1579.Google Scholar
Larivey, Pierre. Les Esprits. Ed. M. J. Freeman. Geneva, 1987.Google Scholar
Lazard, Madeleine. Le théâtre en France au XVIe siècle. Paris, 1980.Google Scholar
Lebègue, Raymond. Le théâtre comique en France de Pathelin à Mélite. Paris, 1972.Google Scholar
Lefranc, Abel. Histoire du Collège de France: Depuis ses origines jusqu’à la fin du Premier Empire. Paris, 1893.Google Scholar
le Goff, Jacques. La bourse et la vie: Économie et religion au moyen age. Paris, 1986.Google Scholar
le Loyer, Pierre. L’erotopegnie, ou le passe-temps d’amour: Ensemble une com édie du Meut ensensé. Paris, 1576.Google Scholar
le Loyer, Pierre. Discours des spectres, ou visions et apparitions d’esprits, comme anges, demons, et ames, se monstrans visibles aux hommes. 2nd ed. Paris, 1608.Google Scholar
Maza, Sarah. The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750–1850. Cambridge, MA, 2003.Google Scholar
Mazouer, Charles. Le théâtre français de la renaissance. Paris, 2002.Google Scholar
Mongrédien, Georges, ed. Receuil des textes et des documents du XVIIe siècle relatifs a Corneille. Paris, 1972.Google Scholar
Mousnier, Roland. La vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII. 2nd ed. Paris, 1971.Google Scholar
Neuschel, Kristen B. Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France. Ithaca, 1989.Google Scholar
Karen, Newman. “Corneille’s City Comedy: Courtship and Consumption in Early Modern Paris.” Renaissance Drama 27 (1988) : 105–22 .Google Scholar
Jotham, Parsons. “Money and Sovereignty in Early Modern France.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (2001) : 59–79 .Google Scholar
Peletier du Mans, Jacques. L’art poëtique (1555). Ed. André Boulanger. Paris, 1930.Google Scholar
Perret, Donald. Old Comedy in the French Renaissance 1576–1620. Geneva, 1992.Google Scholar
Perrin, François. Les escoliers: Comédie en cinq actes et en vers. Brussels, 1866.Google Scholar
Picot, Emile. Les français italianisants au XVI e siècle. 2 vols. Paris, 1906.Google Scholar
Pinvert, Lucien. Jacques Grévin (1538–1570): Étude biographique et littéraire. Paris, 1899.Google Scholar
Orest, Ranum. “Courtesy, Absolutism, and the Rise of the French State, 1630–1660.” Journal of Modern History 52 (1980) : 426–51 .Google Scholar
Ranum, Orest. Paris in the Age of Absolutism: An Essay. 2nd ed. University Park, PA, 2002.Google Scholar
Rebreviettes d’Escoeuvres, Guillaume de. L’image de la noblesse, figurée sur la vie de Saincte Gertrude et de ses parens, histoire ecclésiastique. Paris, 1612.Google Scholar
T. J, Reiss. “The Dialectic of Language in the Theater: Corneille from Mélite to Le Cid.” Yale French Studies 45 (1970) : 87–101 .Google Scholar
Schrenck, Gilbert. “Les Personnages féminins dans Les Contens d’Odet de Turnèbe: Comédie et philosophie de l’amour.” In Amour tragique, amour comique, de Bandello à Molière: Actes de la Journée d’études du 9 novembre 1987, ed. Madeleine Bertaud and André Labertit, 85–97. Paris, 1989.Google Scholar
Smith, Jay. The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600–1789. Ann Arbor, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan. Les genres du discours. Paris, 1978.Google Scholar
Troterel, Pierre de. Gillette, comedie face-tieuse. Par le sieur D. Rouen, 1620.Google Scholar
Turnèbe, Odet de. Les Contens. Ed. Norman B. Spector. Paris, 1984.Google Scholar
Ughetti, Dante. François d’Amboise (1550–1619). Rome, 1974.Google Scholar
Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. 1958. Reprint, University Park, PA, 2000.Google Scholar