Lyric in the Renaissance From Petrarch to Montaigne

Moving from a definition of the lyric to the innovations introduced by Petrarch's poetic language, this study goes on to propose a new reading of several French poets (Charles d'Orléans, Ronsard, and Du Bellay), and a re-evaluation of Montaigne's understanding of the most striking poetry and its relation to his own prose. Instead of relying on conventional notions of Renaissance subjectivity, it locates recurring features of this poetic language that express a turn to the singular and that herald lyric poetry's modern emphasis on the utterly particular. By combining close textual analysis with more modern ethical concerns this study establishes clear distinctions between what poets do and what rhetoric and poetics say they do. It shows how the tradition of rhetorical commentary is insufficient in accounting for this startling effectiveness of lyric poetry, manifest in Petrarch's Rime Sparse and the collections of the best poets writing after him.

1. Introduction; 2. Petrarch and the existential singular; 3. Minimal lost worlds: the rondeaux of Charles d'Orléans; 4. Ronsard's singular erotic reciprocity (Les Amours de Cassandre); 5. Singularity as emptiness: Du Bellay's Regrets; 6. Montaigne and his 'sublime' lyric; 7. Conclusion; Bibliography.

Ullrich Langer is Alfred Glauser Professor of French and Director of the Center for Early Modern Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published widely in the fields of French and Italian literature, and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Montaigne (Cambridge, 2005) and the author of Penser les formes du plaisir littéraire à la Renaissance (2009).