“La plume en l’absence" : familiar verse epistles in early printed poetry collections (1527-1555)

This dissertation offers to uncover how, between 1527 and 1555, the establishment of the French verse epistle as a poetic genre paradoxically happened through a diminishing of its status, from the prestigious Ovidian heroide to the “low” familiar type criticized by Du Bellay in his Deffence et Illustration de la langue Francoise (1549). It argues that the marotique-type printed collections, which are built around the assertion of a strong auctorial figure, played a great part in this transformation, as they proved to be a designated supporting medium for the “personalization” of the epistle. The first part of this thesis analyzes from a diachronic perspective the interplay between the poetic establishment of the genre and its anthologization: this led to the singling out of a first period in which poets explored the genre through the debuting medium of the recueil d’auteur (1527-1532), a second period that consecrated the printed familiar epistle (1532-1549) and a third period during which epistles’ authors redefined the genre in order to challenge Du Bellay (1549-1555). The next part investigates the way printed epistolary collections reflect a specific image of the genre, which asserts itself by highlighting its own modest status, whether this means hiding its Horatian background, emphasizing the humble social status of the poet or elaborating a decorum that revolves around marginality. Finally, a third part analyzes the dispositio of several emblematic epistolary collections, arguing that the order through which the epistles were displayed was orientating the readers’ reception of the genre as well as expressing the singularity of the epistolary poetics elaborated by our authors.