Biography in Early Modern France, 1540-1630

Katherine MacDonald

...highly erudite, straightforwardly written and a pleasure to read... I recommend it heartily to all scholars interested in Renaissance France.' -- French Review 82.6 French Review 82.6 An interesting and thought-provoking study which is well worth reading, albeit with a grain of salt. -- Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly This useful monograph presents five case studies of Early Modern biographies (including one autobiography)... MacDonald's work frames these two well-known texts in such a way as to encourage continued investigation of Renaissance biography as a fully-fledged prose genre. -- Forum for Modern Language Studies Forum for Modern Language Studies The first perspective [in this book] situates biography as a genre belonging to antique epideictic rhetoric... The second is the narrative of what might be called the facts of biographical life... The third is what could be called a concetto, that is, the biographer's own life perspective, conscious or unconscious, in the biography he is writing. This is what really interests Katherine MacDonald, because of her own radical-individualist perspective on relations between the biographer and his subject. -- Renaissance Quarterly Renaissance Quarterly Elegantly written, clearly argued, and erudite, this is a rewarding and thought-provoking book and a valuable contribution to the study of early modern French humanism. -- Modern Language Review Modern Language Review Interesting and original interpretations of biographies in which reading between the lines was every bit as important as the lines themselves. -- French Studies French Studies

• Introduction 1. ‘Puis que peut faire un courtisan vagabond?’ Le Roy’s Gulielmi Budæi Vita (1540) 2. Diplomacy and Biography in the Wars of Religion: Charles Paschal's Life of Guy du Faur de Pibrac (1584) 3. The Traffic of Mercury Claude Binet and the Vie de Ronsard (1586) 4. Medicine and Method in Nicolas de Nancel's Petri Rami Vita (1599) 5. Staging Baroque Autobiography: Spectacle in Agrippa d’Aubigne’s Sa Vie a ses enfants (1629) 6. Conclusion