Editorial

Contributor(s): Richard Hillman

Avant-propos

Contributor(s): Hélène Cazes

Anachronisme et légitimité de la notion d’intellectuel pré-moderne

Contributor(s): Danièle Letocha

The term intellectuals(s) has been in use for scarcely more than one century. What is its definition? What conditions of possibility govern the emergence of the Modern intellectual? How many of these conditions can be traced to the past? The typological approach used here sets the origin of the...

Portrait de Budé en «intellectuel»: la G. Budæi viri clarissimi Vita de Loys Le Roy (1540)

Contributor(s): Michel Magnien

Hellenist, philologist, historian, friend and counsellor to the King, mythical founding member of the Collège de France, as well as family man, Guillaume Budé appears to us as a hero of humanism and compels our collective admiration because he could lead simultaneously a contemplative and an...

Érasme, les intellectuels et l’affaire Reuchlin

Contributor(s): Daniel Ménager

Intellectuals have been more than once accused of not caring about world affairs. Now, Erasmus appears to announce a modern reflection on power and knowledge. An archetype of our contemporary intellectual, he looked at and criticized the society he lived in. As a theologian and a priest, he...

Un homme politique désœoeuvré: Machiavel, historien et penseur politique

Contributor(s): Gérald Allard

A philosopher who deeply influenced Western history, Machiavelli was, as well, involved in the affairs of his time. This paper aims to analyze the pragmatic context of Machiavelli’s production, for instance, his political exile from Florence. In order to draw the lines of this “praxis,”...

Le «vrai» médecin à la Renaissance

Contributor(s): Colette Quesnel

According to Erasmus, the true Renaissance physician is also a philosopher. What does that statement really mean? The answer lies in the medical theories that are influenced by the theological, social and philosophical contexts.

L’intellectuel en procès: le cas Robert Estienne

Contributor(s): Hélène Cazes

The name of Robert Estienne (1501–59), the great French humanist, printer and editor, as well as leading scholar in Latin and Greek studies, is associated with his exile from Catholic France to Calvinist Geneva around 1547. Ever since his departure, the question has been raised whether it was...

Les intellectuelles et l’amour: Marie de Gournay et Marguerite de Valois

Contributor(s): Richard Hillman

When a woman defined herself as an intellectual in the Renaissance, she could not, even if she wished, detach that role from the cultural expectations conventionally attached to her gender, and most notably from issues of love and sexuality. This point may be illustrated with reference to the...

La noblesse hors d’elle-même

Contributor(s): Pierre-Louis Vaillancourt

In sixteenth-century France, the nobility held an unchallenged and unanimous view concerning its own superior status and quality. A more critical assessment had been expressed in Italy by several Quattrocento and Cinquecento humanists, namely Poggio, Machiavelli, Nenna, Guazzo and Tasso. The...

Foxe’s Female Martyrs and the Sanctity of Transgression

Contributor(s): Susannah Brietz Monta

Les Actes and Monuments de Foxe contiennent de nombreuses représentations de femmes martyrisées, représentations qui entrent en rapport demanière significative et complexe avec les idées contemporaines de la femme. La transgression par ces femmes des attentes et convenances culturelles devient,...

“I am as I have Spoken”: The Act of Naming in Macbeth

Contributor(s): Carmine G. Di Biase

Beaucoup de l’action de Macbeth se caractérise par ce que la théorie des actes de parole appellerait des actes performatifs, des actes de nomination qui non seulement identifient la personne ou la chose nommée mais aussi effectuent un changement dans le monde de la pièce. Tels actes de parole,...

Gerson et Pétrarque: humanisme et l’idée nationale

Contributor(s): Yelena Mazour-Matusevich

Gerson never met Petrarch in person. However, a comparative study of these authors allows us to evaluate the crucial role of national pride in revealing the initial difference between early French and Italian forms of humanism. While the Italians, oppressed by Parisian intellectual prestige, were...

Joan la Pucelle and the Inverted Saints Play in 1 Henry VI

Contributor(s): Albert H. Tricomi

Henri VI, Première Partie, est une pièce de théâtre profondément impliquée dans le projet réformateur de différencier l’idolâtrie de la dévotion religieuse authentique. Au moyen de sa représentation de Joan la Pucelle, supposée faiseuse de miracles et virtuelle sainte révélée comme sorcière, la...

“Must I be . . . made a common sink?”: Witchcraft and the Theatre in The Witch of Edmonton

Contributor(s): David Stymeist

Les auteurs de The Witch of Edmonton (1621) se servent d’une stratégie d’ambivalence en représentant sur scène Elizabeth Sawyer, qui avait été dernièrement exécutée pour sorcellerie. L’intertissage complexe d’un scepticisme rationnel avec un traitement sensationnaliste et superstitieux à l’égard...

De la famille marchande à la cour princière: I Libri della Famiglia de Leon Battista Alberti

Contributor(s): Maria Teresa Ricci

This article concerns a major work by Alberti in the tradition of treatises on household management. The first three books construct the ideal bourgeois domestic economy around the family; the fourth and last book shows that this ideal is being supplanted by the courtly model, whose centre of...

Selling Lives: The Publisher Bernardo di Giunta (fl. 1518-50), Imitation and the Utility of Intellectual Biography

Contributor(s): Katherine M. MacDonald

Cet article analyse la préface écrite par Bernardo di Giunta pour son édition des œuvres de Christophe de Longueil, Orationes pro defensione sua, ainsi que de sa biographie anonyme (1524).Cette préface constitue un document important dans la querelle humaniste portant sur l’imitatio. La position...

The Myth of Antonio Foscarini’s Exoneration

Contributor(s): Murray Brown

Pendant les premières décennies du XVIIe siècle, Antonio Foscarini servit Venise dans des fonctions distinguées, en tant que sénateur et qu’ambassadeur aux cours des rois Henri IV et James I. En 1622, le Conseil des Dix le trouva coupable de trahison, alléguant qu’il avait divulgué des secrets...

All’s Well That Ends Well and Shakespeare’s Marriage

Contributor(s): R. Brian Parker

Cette note revient sur le peu de faits connus du mariage de Shakespeare, faits qui semblent indiquer une union plus ou moins imposée par la famille d’une femme enceinte, pour proposer une dimension biographique de cette comédie tardive. Justement, l’un des principaux facteurs qui font qualifier...

Introduction

Contributor(s): Jennifer L. Andersen, Elizabeth Sauer