Chapter 2 provides a word history of politique throughout the sixteenth-century, considering late-medieval and Italian influences, the context of vernacularisation and the status of language under François I, and the impact of the Reformation and of Calvin’s thought in particular. This is followed by in-depth analysis of Guillaume Budé’s Institution du prince, Rabelais’s Gargantua, Etienne Pasquier’s Pourparler du prince, and Louis Le Caron’s Courtesan dialogues. It also considers the political career of Michel de L’Hospital and his connection with understandings of politique. These case studies are also a pre-history for uses of politique that emerge during the civil war. The chapter concludes with an analysis of François de la Noue’s Essais politiques et militaires and Montaigne’s Essais.

Chapter 1 gives an account of the historiographical and methodological framework of the book. It defines the politique problem as a problem both in the sense of difficulty and of cognitive challenge, and the point that this book offers a literary take on the politique problem as well as an analysis of how literature helped create that problem. Then it addresses the specific context of the book within broader histories of political thought, the historiography of the term politique and the associated political party. Following this, I outline the keywords and word-historical methods used, and indicate the basis on which I selected the sources analysed. Finally I consider the politics of the study itself and its bearing on what the political is in a more transhistorical sense.