1 The simplest form of this verbal pleasure consists in neologisms, linguistic innovation, and verbal wit. Claude Postelâs recent historical overview of polemical works in sixteenth-century France provides a glossary of useful terms from abominable (âabominableâ) to vulpin (âfoxlikeâ). See Claude Postel, TraitĂ© des invectives au temps de la RĂ©forme (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2004). The first reader to draw attention to verbal wit in polemical literature was Lazare SainĂ©an, the Romanian Romance philologist with a special interest in linguistic creativity in French (his adopted culture). SainĂ©an âdiscoveredâ the influence of Rabelaisian vocabulary in works by Henri Estienne, Calvin, Guillaume Postel, and in works such as the Satyres chrestiennes de la cuisine papale, LâIsle des hermaphrodites, and the journals of Pierre de lâEstoile. See Lâinfluence et la rĂ©putation de Rabelais (Paris: J. Gamber, 1930), 186â212.
2 Charles Lenient, La satire en France. La littérature militante au XVIe siÚcle (Paris: Hachette, 1877).
3 This expression has been chosen by students of GĂ©rard Defaux to designate authors who, to a smaller or greater extent, risked their social status and life for their unorthodox convictions, used the printing press to put forth their convictions, and, in a sociopolitical engagement, solicited the support of rich and powerful patrons for their causes. This model holds best for those in favor of the Reformation in the early decades of the sixteenth century, who experienced the change in royal policy from support and encouragement of the Reformation to the persecution of âheresy.â These authors are Marot, Rabelais, and the victims of persecution like Ătienne Dolet and Louis de Berquin. The present study does not aim at describing the personal engagement of individual authors against the âestablishment.â See Samuel Junod, Florian Preisig, and FrĂ©dĂ©ric Tinguely, âLe problĂšme de lâengagement au seuil de la modernitĂ©,â in âLa littĂ©rature engagĂ©e aux XVIe et XVIIe siĂšcles. Ătudes en lâhonneur de GĂ©rard Defaux (1937â2004),â special issue, MLN 120: 1 (January 2005): S8âS14.
4 Mark U. Edwardsâs monograph about the German Reformation is an exemplary study of Reformation âpropagandaâ and of the use of print to propagate ideas. Edwards remarks that by translating and printing the scriptures with prefaces that guide the reader, Luther enlists the Bible in the service of his particular theology. See Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
5 Among the contributions to the analysis of polemical literature, satire, and invectives that have been invaluable for this study, especially noteworthy are works by Frank Lestringant (on the images of cannibalism and theophagy in Huguenot polemics, on the Histoire de la mappe-monde papistique, on the accompanying satirical map, the Mappe-monde nouvelle papistique, and on the Satyre Menippee); Claude-Gilbert Dubois (on Pierre Viret, on Pierre de LâEstoile, and on LâIsle des hermaphrodites); Daniel MĂ©nager (on Ronsardâs Discours and on the Satyre Menippee ); as well as the editors of critical editions: Nicole Cazauran (Discours merveilleux de la vie . . . de Catherine de MĂ©dicis), Charles-Antoine Chamay (Satyres chrestiennes de la cuisine papale), Claude Longeon (Farce des Theologastres), and Martial Martin (Satyre Menippee).
6 On the favorable situation of Catholic polemicists in France, where two of the three institutions (the Sorbonne and the Parliament) were predominantly âorthodoxâ Catholic, see Luc Racaut, Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity During the French Wars of Religion (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002).
7 Famously, Calvin compares scripture to spectacles whose function is to correct failing eye-sight: âas the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any book, however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written, are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in their minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.â Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , trans. Henry Beveridge (1845; repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 1: 64. According to this metaphor, the Bible allows the entire created world to be seen sub specie aeternitatis.
8 âThis far, indeed, we all differ from each other, in that everyone appropriates to himself some peculiar error; but we are all alike in this that we substitute some monstrous fictions for the one living and true Godâa disease not confined to obtuse and vulgar minds, but affecting the noblest, and those who, in other aspects, are singularly acute.â Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1: 59.
9 Calvinâs ârhetorical theology,â which originates in the Erasmian view that scripture possesses its own rhetoric by means of which it âaccommodatesâ its message stemming from divine reason to âweakerâ human reason, has been much studied. Two noteworthy accounts of Calvinâs indebtedness to humanist rhetoric are Olivier Millet, Calvin et la dynamique de la parole: Ătude de la rhĂ©torique rĂ©formĂ©e (Geneva: Slatkine, 1992); and Serene Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
10 Literary critics often think differently. For example, Jacques Pineaux, the editor of the polemical poems launched by Huguenot pastors Antoine de la Roche-Chandieu, Bernard de MontmĂ©ja, and others, against Ronsardâs Discours, admits his embarrassment about the âblindnessâ of these authors to âbeauty.â Even the most âsucculentâ myths and stories âdry outâ under their pens, he complains. In the same vein, he criticizes the careless accumulation of comparisons, the âlyricism of filth,â the âexplosion of satire,â and the âverbal deliriumâ that characterize these poems. See introduction to La polĂ©mique protestante contre Ronsard, ed. Jacques Pineaux (Paris: Marce...