Abstract
The role and the legitimacy of fiction during the sixteenth and seventeenth century sparked an intense debate. Numerous indications suggest that indifference about the mixing of exact history and imaginary facts becomes a more and more dated attitude at the end of sixteenth century. I will examine three different cases: an epic by Luis de Zapata, Carlo famoso (1566), The Agatonphile by Jean-Pierre Camus (1620) and Gilles Ménage’s annotations of Tasso’s Aminta. The question of distinguishing fact from fiction in these works appears as particularly urgent and interacts with interpretation on several levels. The question is if one identifies, in more or less explicit ways, the criteria of the fictitious in the texts; furthermore, all three authors would like to impose on their readers a proper interpretation of their work, or the work of Tasso in the case of Ménage. What are the motivations, the conceptual means and the results of these three authors’ attempts to highlight the status of their work, and consequently, the very nature of fiction?
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Notes
The research, on which this paper is based, has been generously supported by a grant from ANR (French Agency for Research : project “HERMES, History and Theories of Interpretation”) and was presented at the University of Chicago, 4/8-9/2011.
“Pues los Poetas antiguos y muchos historiadores han usado lo semejante” El Impressor al Lector, Carlo Famoso, Juan Mey, 1566 [without page numbers].
“Los ingenios tan delicados”, Ibid.
“Va puesta en cada fiction esta señal * en la margen donde comiença y acaba para que aun que de suyo se vian, los ciegos, o de ingenio, o de embibia, las toquen assi con la mano”.
Since 1592, at the age of 66, Zapata began to write his Miscelánea. He also translated Horace’s Ars Poetica and wrote several treatises about hunting.
As indicated by the following subtitles (Miscelánea de Zapata, 1859): « De cosas que parecen mentira y son verdad » p. 63; « De invenciones engañosas » p. 440, 478;
« De que hay tal engañar come con la verdad » ; p. 347; « De Disimulación y fingimento », p. 112.
See for example Lodovico Castelvetro, 1570: 104v. For an overview on this topic, see Lavocat (forthcoming).
On 1522, Alfonso I of Este stopped paying Ariosto his usual pension (perhaps because of a conflict concerning a heritage). He obliged him to accept the function of governor of Garfagnana, a remote and mountainous place. Ariosto complained a lot of what he considered as an exile, and renounced his position 3 years later.
Camus wrote approximately sixty-five works. Among them twenty-six novels can be found; several of them of more than a thousand pages (Iphigène, for instance).
“Or outre cela je me suis donné cette licence non seulement chrestienne, mais religieuse et dévote, de paraboliser de sorte que ce qui n’est pas historique est parabolique, si qu’il n’y a rien en tout le cours de cette œuvre qui ne soit vray, soit en faict, soit en allégorie ou moralité, & dont on ne puisse tirer de l’instruction.” “Eloge des histoires devotes”, Agathonphile, 1620: 852–853.
“Il seroit aussi malaisé de les trier, que de séparer dans une vigne confusément plantée les seps qui produisent les raisins blancs, d’avecque ceux qui les font noirs.” “Avertissement au lecteur,” Iphigène, 1625, without page numbers.
“Il y a des gens de si fascheuse humeur, qu’aussi tost qu’une Histoire a, pour la portée de leurs esprits, une face trop estrange, pour eux c’est une fable, sans considérer qu’il y a mille choses que nous voyons tous les jours dont nous ne pouvons rendre de raison.” Ibid.
“Cette fable de la papesse Jeanne dont le docte & élégant Florimond de Remond a si clairement descouvert l’imposture, a passé pour Histoire en la créance de plusieurs Historiens d’ailleurs assez graves & fideles. Et l’heresie qui se corrompt en ce qu’elle sçait […] et qui blaspheme en ce qu’elle ignore […] ne peut estre, quoy que vaincue par mille preuves, persuadée que cette fausse papesse qui n’est qu’un fantosme, n’ait esté assise en un Siege qui est le but de leurs haines.” Ibid.
See Samfiresco (1902).
There is no other allusion to this debate in Ménage’s work. There is no reason to believe that it is fictitious.
“Ed egli e figlio di Silvano, à cui/Pane fu Padre, il gran Dio de Pastori” Aminta, I, 1, 179–180.
In the sense of Genette (1972), as a transgression of the borders of fiction.
“…ma cio che’n questa pastorale si legge del sito di Ferrara, con un’ infinità d’altre cose simili, non lascia luogo di dubitare.” Aminta favola boscareccia di Torquato Tasso con le annotazioni d’Egidio Menagio, 1655: 142.
“Nè dubito punto, ch’el Tasso non habbia potuto fingere i Dei favolosi, ed i Satiri nell’Italia a’ suoi tempi, si come inanzi à lui nella sua Arcadia fece il Sannazaro, dove in piu luoghi parla, e della sua casa, e de’ suoi antenati, anzi di se stesso, chiamandosi col suo proprio nome.” Ibid.
“…benche si debba credere da Christiano, si dee scriver da poeta.” Ibid.
Published for the first time in 1504, this work in prose and verses was considered in early modern Europe as the more prestigious reference model of pastoral literature after antiquity.
On this text, an about its relationship to history and fiction, see Ginzburg (2006).
As Duprat has shown in her various works, in particular in 2009.
Euhemerism, from the name of the Greek mythographer Euhemerus, is an interpretation of ancient mythology, as allegory, exaggeration, alteration of historical events.
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Lavocat, F. Fiction and history: conflicts over an invisible border in early modern period. Neohelicon 43, 391–402 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-016-0352-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-016-0352-y