Un Professeur-poète humaniste: Joannes Vaccaeus, "La Sylve Parisienne" (1522) by PerrineGaland-Hallyn; Georges André BergèresReview by: Bernd RennerThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), pp. 222-223Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20477294 .

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222 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVI/1 (2005)

Denizot's book provides an interesting overview of the works of Ronsard, one that will be useful for seiziemistes and aspiring specialists of Ronsard.The specificity of the theme and the time frame will hold less appeal for a more general audience, with perhaps the exception of the initial survey of admiratio.

Un Professeur-poete humaniste: Joannes Vaccaeus, La Sylve Parisienne (1522). E d. Perrine Galand-Hallyn and Georges Andre Bergeres. Geneva: Droz, 2002. lxxxviii+ 122 pp. SF 88.00. ISBN 2-600-00802-0.

REVIEWED BY: Bernd Renner, Brooklyn College, City University of NewYork

Perrine Galand Hallyn's richly annotated critical edition ofJoannesVaccaeus Castella nus's 1522 Sylva Parrhisia attempts to accomplish a wide array of objectives. Not only does it make available a modern bilingual edition (Latin-French in a facing-page format) of the Spanish humanist's main work, the relatively short Sylve Parisienne (911 verses); it also pro vides all of Vaccaeus's other texts in the same bilingual format in the appendix. Moreover, the long introduction and the ample annotations contribute to a concise yet profound por trait of the first phase of French humanism in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, a period that tends to be somewhat neglected in most scholarly accounts, with the exception of a few major names such as Guillaume Bude, Jean Lemaire de Belges, or Jacques Lef7evre d'Etaples. As Galand-Hallyn shows convincingly in her introductory study, however, the above humanists, along with lesser known names such as Pierre Danes,Jacques Toussain,Jean Vatel, Nicolas Berauld, Louis de Berquin, Nicolas du Puys, Beatus Rhenanus, or Fran,ois Dubois (who wasVaccaeus's mentor and whose Poetica [1516] was a major influence on the Spaniard's own work), formed an active circle of intellectuals, centered around the printer Josse Bade, whose work was one of the foundation stones for the creation of the future Col lege des lecteurs royaux, the present-day College de France.

This group of humanists, whose work then prepared the ground for the accomplish ments of the famous figures of the following decades, from Rabelais and Marot to the Ecole lyonnaise and Pleiade poets as well as Montaigne, to name but the most obvious examples, was in stark opposition to the Sorbonne's "old guard" (xxvii). Their intellectual position was one in between conservative scholasticism and modern humanism, influenced by nominal ism, Neoplatonism, and Quintilianism and thus illustrating the gradual epistemological shift-as opposed to long-standing conjectures of a radical rupture-that took place in the transition from medieval to premodern thought, combining both traditions in a syncretism so typical for the period.

The Sylve Parisienne is an excellent illustration of this nascent premodern humanism, as it is inspired by classical and Italian humanist thinkers such as Quintilian, Horace, Cicero, Lucrectius, Spagnoli, and above all Angelus Politianus. It was actually the last who had resus citated the sylva, a genre characterized by an "apparently improvised, passionate, and disor ganized" style (xliii), thereby announcing the creative exuberance that marks most Renaissance writing.Vaccaeus intended to use this expression of pedagogical poetry to com pose an artful praise of eloquence ("louer poetiquement l'art oratoire" [xlviii]) as well as a manual for his students at the College de Lisieux. The text thus hints at both the close rela tionship between rhetoric and poetry and their impending split. After all, poetry had merely been considered a subcategory of rhetoric, a "second rhetoric" ("art de seconde rhetorique") up to then. The hkes of Thomas Sebillet or Joachim Du Bellay would institutionalize this

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Book Reviews 223

split by writing the first actual French vernacular treatises of poetry at the end of the 1540s. Vaccaeus's poem could be considered an illustration of the first steps taken in that direction, which strongly underlines the significance of this "first" Renaissance.

The idea of the sylve was given toVaccaeus by a course on Quintilian that he taught at Lisieux. The poem's model was Angelus Politianus's Silva Nutricia, whose influence is reflected in its title, structure, and style (xlixx), even though this inspiration is never men tioned in the poem. The silence seems mostly due to Guillaume Bude's scorn for Politian,

which caused a conflict of interest for Vaccaeus, as the sylve is dedicated to the eminent French humanist. On a subconcious level, it might also suggest a premodern concept of imi tation and digestion that Joachim Du Bellay will praise in his 1549 Defense et Illustration de la languefranfaise; however, an imitation that transforms the model in the imitator's soul ends up appropriating it and therefore eliminates any direct mention of the model from the "imi tation." As a consequence, this process would also complete the translatio studii et imperii by replacing Italy with France at the helm of the European Renaissance. Vaccaeus clearly expresses that finality toward the end of his poem, declaring it to be a direct consequence of Bude's influence (vv. 817-22).

The allegorical poem itself proceeds in a very organized fashion and makes heavy use of common topoi and mnemonic devices, thereby clearly stressing its didactic aspirations; the editor actually refers to a "rhetorique racontee aux enfants" (bdx). "Dame Rhetorique" appears toVaccaeus and takes him to her palace. She then introduces him to all the parts and functions of rhetoric in the form of the members of a household, whose mastery is praised as the fundamental condition for the elevation of French letters. The main part of the text then consists of a systematic presentation of Greek and Latin rhetors, followed by Greek ora tors, at which pointVaccaeus himself seems transported outside himself and converses with his hostess. Then we witness a presentation of Roman orators and finally, onVaccaeus's ini tiative, a list of contemporary orators, closing with the author's own mentor Fran,ois Dubois, and the author himself, thus completing the aforementioned transfers of wisdom and power from Italy to France. One of the purposes of the text then seems to be to justify its author's inclusion of himself in the list of famous orators.

This fine edition provides its very own defense and illustration of the impact of the early Renaissance by puttingVaccaeus's rather unknown text, which deserves to find a larger pub lic, in the broader humanist context of the time.This undertaking further contributes to fill ing the imaginary gap that has so frequently been created between medieval and premodern thought.

Webs of Allusion: French Protestant Emblem Books of the Sixteenth Century. Alison Adams. Geneva: Droz, 2003.324 pp. SF 90.00. ISBN 2-600-00874-8.

REVIEWED BY: Alan D. Savage, Wheaton College

For those unfamiliar with the genre of the emblem, the best definition I have found comes from the University of Illinois'Web site on emblems: "Emblem books can possibly be looked upon as the multi-medial publications of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are books that link together three constitutive elements-a motto, a woodcut or engraving and an explanatory poem" (http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/emblems/ about.html; last accessed 15 January 2005). Of course, as Alison Adams's book demonstrates so well, emblems were alive and well in the sixteenth century, especialiy in France. Although

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