Topic: Echo and Allusion in Renaissance Lyric. This course will explore the
relationship between poetry and temporality in French Renaissance literature.
We will begin with the experimental opposition between the mathematical
conception of poetry espoused by the Rhétoriqueurs and the fundamentally
historical view of poetry advanced by the Pléiade as mediated by the
simultaneously numerical and historical approach of Thomas Sébillet.
Within this conceptual framework, we will examine the interplay of echo and
allusion as characteristic devices of Renaissance lyric.  Whereas echo seems
to suspend the course of time and to enclose itself in the present, allusion
inscribes a poetic text in an historical tradition through the evocation of
prior texts.  We will follow the evolution of these antagonistic terms in the
works of Jean Molinet, Marguerite de Navarre, Maurice Scève, Joachim
Du Bellay, and Pierre de Ronsard.  We will also consult prose texts by
Boethius, Molinet, Sébillet, Du Bellay, Marc-Antoine de Muret, and
Etienne Tabouret.  (Tabouret reminds us that echo and allusion are both forms
of play or lusus.)   Students will present a 15 minute exposé
in class and write a 15-20 page term paper in prose or blank verse.