It is not because he was unacquainted with Italian humanism that Guillaume Cretin, one of the “grands Rhétoriqueurs,” a group of late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth century writers associated with the courts of France and Burgundy, chose to cultivate traditional genres and themes. His epistles reveal an excellent knowledge of the new rhetorical values, most of which he exploits himself, in rather a contrast with his usual style. Of course, Cretin is a courtier and, as such, he has a political role to play — defending his king, praising his people and cultural heritage — but this is not only a matter of propaganda, since a very coherent vision arises from his work, a vision to which he seems thoroughly committed.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Vaillancourt, L., (2025), "L'humanisme dissident des rhétoriqueurs: le cas de Guillaume Cretin", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Vaillancourt, Luc. "L'humanisme dissident des rhétoriqueurs: le cas de Guillaume Cretin." Renaissance and Reformation 39 (2): 2020. 77-86. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v39i2.8870. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.