Epic Arts in Renaissance France
"Phillip Usher, Epic Arts in Renaissance France , OUP, 272 pp., is an exceptional book about the role of epic literature and the fine arts during the French Renaissance. Whereas themes from classical antiquity are widely studied in the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the period, contemporary texts like Dolet’s Fata, Ronsard’s Franciade, or d’Aubigné’s Tragiques are all examples of neglected epic poetry of equal significance to the indebtedness of the early moderns to the ancient world."
--Alice Brown (University of Chicago) in: The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 75 (2015 [survey year 2013]), pp.20-41
Study of the relationship between epic literature and other art forms such as painting, sculpture, and architecture. Why, the book asks, are epic heroes and themes so ubiquitous in French Renaissance art? Whereas the same period's literary epics, frequently maligned, now go unread? To explore this paradox, the book investigates a number of epic building sites, i.e. specific situations in which literary epics either become the basis for realisations in other art forms or somehow contest or compete with them. Beginning with a detour on the appearance of epic heroes (Odysseus and Aeneas) on marriage chests in fifteenth-century Florence, the study traces how French communities of readers, writers, translators, and artists reinvent epic forms in their own-or their patron's-image. Following extended discussion of three galleries in different regions of France, which all depicted key scenes from the classical epics of Homer, Virgil, and Lucan, the book turns to epics written in the period. Chapters of Epic Arts focus on Etienne Dolet's Fata, which praise the victories (but also failures) of Francois Ier in ways that make it both a continuum of Fontainebleau and a response to the celebration of French defeat in foreign paintings; on Ronsard's Franciade, whose muse was depicted on the facade of the Louvre and whose story was eventually taken up in a long series of paintings by Toussaint Dubreuil; and on Agrippa d'Aubigne's Protestant Tragiques, which allude to, and frequently function as graffiti over, Catholic works of art in Paris and Rome. Situated at the frontier of literary criticism and art history, Epic Arts in Renaissance France is a compelling call for a revaluation of French epic literature and indeed of how we read.
"Phillip Usher, Epic Arts in Renaissance France , OUP, 272 pp., is an exceptional book about the role of epic literature and the fine arts during the French Renaissance. Whereas themes from classical antiquity are widely studied in the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the period, contemporary texts like Dolet’s Fata, Ronsard’s Franciade, or d’Aubigné’s Tragiques are all examples of neglected epic poetry of equal significance to the indebtedness of the early moderns to the ancient world."
--Alice Brown (University of Chicago) in: The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 75 (2015 [survey year 2013]), pp.20-41
Study of the relationship between epic literature and other art forms such as painting, sculpture, and architecture. Why, the book asks, are epic heroes and themes so ubiquitous in French Renaissance art? Whereas the same period's literary epics, frequently maligned, now go unread? To explore this paradox, the book investigates a number of epic building sites, i.e. specific situations in which literary epics either become the basis for realisations in other art forms or somehow contest or compete with them. Beginning with a detour on the appearance of epic heroes (Odysseus and Aeneas) on marriage chests in fifteenth-century Florence, the study traces how French communities of readers, writers, translators, and artists reinvent epic forms in their own-or their patron's-image. Following extended discussion of three galleries in different regions of France, which all depicted key scenes from the classical epics of Homer, Virgil, and Lucan, the book turns to epics written in the period. Chapters of Epic Arts focus on Etienne Dolet's Fata, which praise the victories (but also failures) of Francois Ier in ways that make it both a continuum of Fontainebleau and a response to the celebration of French defeat in foreign paintings; on Ronsard's Franciade, whose muse was depicted on the facade of the Louvre and whose story was eventually taken up in a long series of paintings by Toussaint Dubreuil; and on Agrippa d'Aubigne's Protestant Tragiques, which allude to, and frequently function as graffiti over, Catholic works of art in Paris and Rome. Situated at the frontier of literary criticism and art history, Epic Arts in Renaissance France is a compelling call for a revaluation of French epic literature and indeed of how we read.