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Amphion Orator. Michael Taormina
Читать онлайн.Название Amphion Orator
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isbn 9783823302490
Автор произведения Michael Taormina
Жанр Документальная литература
Серия Biblio 17
Издательство Bookwire
This chapter recalls the debate over noble identitynobilityidentity that occurred toward the end of the religious warsreligious wars and that culminated in Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s L’Honnêtehonnête homme Homme because it shows that the concept of virtuevirtue remained indispensable to noble identitynobilityidentity in the first three decades of the century and that the choice between the older warrior ethosethos and the new worldly ethosethos was the choice between two virtuevirtues, magnanimitymagnanimity and moderationvirtuemoderation, respectively. While it is true that, by convention, the function of encomiasticencomiumencomiastic poetry discourse is to praise virtuevirtue, Malherbe’s choice to put magnanimitymagnanimity at the center of the royal odes invites closer scrutiny when one considers that this virtuevirtue underpinned the class myth of the sword nobilitynobilityof the sword, in whose upper echelons Henri of Navarre moved before acceding to the throne. The sword nobilitynobilityof the sword was not only a key constituency that needed to be won over, but its class myth would be used by Malherbe to fashion a nationnational myth. The significance of the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity in the royal odes, I argue, resides in its aptitude for birthing the civic community of the new nationnation. It gives the sequence of odes a logical coherence and a political ground.
A few words should be said about the range of meanings of the term “vertu” [virtuevirtue] in the early seventeenth century. Today in French, as in English, it usually refers to “a disposition or a pattern in someone’s characterethoscharacter or personality that leads them to act morally” (van Hooft 1). This acceptation occurs as the second definition of the word in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie [Dictionary of the Academy] (1694): “Virtuevirtue, means also, A habit of the soul, which prompts it to do good, & to avoid evil.” But the first definition shows that the word used to have a much wider semantic field: “Efficacy, power, strength, property.” For instance, plants and stones had “virtuevirtues,” such as curative properties or magnetic force. The term also implied moral greatness or excellence, a meaning borrowed from the Greek aretē. As Paul Bénichou notes in Morales du grand siècle: “The writers of this period are defined less by their preference for beauty or truth, than the case they make, to a greater or lesser degree, for human virtuevirtue, defined in the general sense of couragevirtuecourage, power, or greatness” (Bénichou 12). Much like the early modern Italian “virtù,” this sense of the French word left its mark on French writers as diverse as Corneille, Racine, and Molière. The heroic novels of Gomberville, La Calprenède, and Madeleine de Scudèry, also use the word in this sense to designate the exceptional qualities or powers that make a monarch or a noble specially fit to protect and to command (Bannister, Privileged Mortals 7-8, 27-33, 47-48). When assimilated to “vertu héroïque,” it could reach superhuman proportions. Nor should we overlook the term’s stylistic implications. Moral excellence is esthetically pleasing. Virtuevirtue is beautiful because it is good. This coupling of the ethical and the esthetic is captured by the Greek term “to kalon,” translated as “the beautiful,” “the fine,” or “the noble”—and one should add the French term l’honnêtehonnête hommehonnêteté [honorable, noble, fine]. Aristotelian scholars signal yet another shade of meaning: “the admirable” (Donahue 69). All these connotations of the term are relevant in Malherbe’s royal odes.
What made the concept of virtuevirtue so attractive to nobles in the early seventeenth century was that it gave them a way to tie outward displays of distinction—feats of valor, good taste, politesse [etiquette]—to what they considered intrinsic merit. To be virtuous was to perform actions, to say words, to observe rules of civility, to possess objects, that were considered noble, fine, beautiful, or admirable. These were not just fitting to one’s social station, they were themselves the marks of virtuevirtue. Causality was turned on its head: to exhibit the mark of virtuevirtue was to be virtuous. By the 1660s, noble identitynobilityidentity had evolved to the point where virtuevirtue was no longer necessary to legitimize the social distinction conferred by the performance, the possession, the consumption, or the appreciation of all things fine. La Rochefoucauld found the notion of virtuevirtue suspect and deconstructed it in his Maximes (1664), while two decades later the Chevalier de Méré replaced it with taste and the graceful mastery of social etiquette.
In From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Ellery Schalk tracks the caste’s changing sense of identity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by examining polemical treatises on nobilitynobility. Nobles and commoners questioned the relevance of a caste held responsible for the devastation of France during the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion. Most of these treatises make it abundantly clear that military service was no longer a sufficient condition for membership in noble ranks. Ennobling titles, offices, and deeds of land ownership had long been for sale, swelling the caste with newcomers. Such treatises therefore aimed to determine what the proper criterion of nobilitynobility should be. The choice was between virtuevirtue and birth. In the early and mid-sixteenth century, the majority agreed that virtuevirtue was the sole criterion, defined as martial valor, physical prowessprowess, and success in fighting (Schalk 21). By the end of the sixteenth century, however, the consensus flipped, with most writers holding that the caste was “simply a group, defined, determined, or justified by birth rather than by virtuous deeds” (Schalk 115). But the two terms were fluid. Noble birth was often considered a variety of “natural virtuevirtue,” the seed of moral virtuevirtue, as it were, a view expressed by Pierre Charron in De la sagesse (1601), while the definition of the polysemic term vertu [virtuevirtue] was stretched to accommodate new social practices. In the late sixteenth century, its meaning came to include the cultural capital conferred by the study of literature. In the early seventeenth century, this extension encompassed the capacity for courtesy and civility. Seventeenth-century opinion would eventually converge on birth as the sole legitimate criterion of nobilitynobility, but Schalk demonstrates the persistence of virtuevirtue in treatises by La Béraudière, Flurance-Rivault, Antoine de Pluvinel, and Nicolas Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas. L’Honnêtehonnête homme Homme is the most famous of these, marking the evolution from warrior to courtiercourt (royal)courtier by detailing new functions and qualities for the nobleman at courtcourt (royal). Yet Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s treatise still sees virtuevirtue as the indispensable quality of the honnêtehonnête homme homme [honorable man], because virtuevirtue is able “to conquer hearts, and to win the goodwill of the better and healthier part of humanity” (Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas 23). In Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s view, birth is a necessary but insufficient condition for nobilitynobility. Schalk shows that the concept of virtuevirtue, extended to include such qualities as education and courtesy, still retained its importance as a legitimate source of prestige, especially when it was a question of arguing that the “well-born” deserved their status and privileges by right. The criterion of birth would assist Louis XIV and the old families in stemming the influx of newcomers into noble ranks,