Abstract
Jean Dorat (1508–88), the guide and mentor of several poets of the Pléiade, gave a series of lectures on books 10–12 of theOdyssey which were partially preserved in lecture notes taken by a student. These notes, now housed in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, provide a useful insight into his teaching methods. His discussion of the text is largely aimed at providing an allegorical interpretation of Homer, strongly grounded on principles of etymology which owe much to Cratylism. A very wide range of classical and medieval authors are adduced by Dorat in support of his interpretation of the Homeric text, and he includes all the traditional types of allegoresis: moral, physical, historical, metaphysical, and religious. A number of passages of the manuscript are discussed in some detail in the article, including sections on the rivers of the Underworld, Elpenor, Circe and Calypso, Scylla and Charybdis, and Odysseus' shipwrecks.
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References
See ‘Dorat, commentateur d'Homèré,Études seiziémistes offertes à M. le professeur V.-L. Saulnier, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance 177, Geneva 1980, pp. 223–34; ‘Qui peuvent être les Lestrygons?’,Vita Latina LXX (1978), pp. 36–42; andDorat en son temps: culture classique et présence au monde, Clermont-Ferrand 1983, especially pp. 181–5.
In referring to different types of allegorical explanation, I shall use the terms current in the Renaissance, where ‘moral’ allegory refers to interpretations in which the gods and heroes of mythology are viewed as representing moral or abstract forces; ‘historical’ allegory links mythical events to actual happenings, whether single events or general ones; ‘physical’ allegory sees the gods as symbols for the various elements and forces of nature; and ‘metaphysical’ allegory applies philosophical, often neo-Platonic, explanations.
Philip Ford, “Conrad Gesner et le fabuleux manteau’,Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance XLVII (1985), pp. 305–20.
For the text, see Héraclite,Allégories d'Homère, Texte établi et traduit par Félix Buffière, Paris 1989, pp. 80–1.
My emphasis, to highlight Dorat's reference to Augustine.
I discussed the date of publication of theMythologiae in a paper given at the ninth congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies in Bari, 29 August–3 September 1994, to be published by Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton, New York).
Heraclitus writes: καί Xάρϑβδιζ μέν ή δάπανoζ άσωτία (And Charybdis means ‘extravagant prodigality’), while Eustathius, probably following Heraclitus, explains: őτι δέέςί τινα πoλϑδάπανoν άσωτίαν καί ή Xάρϑβδίζ άλληγoρικώζ έκλαμβάνεται, δήλoν έστίν έκ τών παλαιών (It is clear from the Ancients that Charybdis is taken allegorically for some form of highly extravagant prodigality).
On the subject of this poem, see Dudley Wilson and Ann Moss, ‘Portents, Prophecy and Poetry in Dorat'sAndrogyn Poem of 1570’, in: Grahame Castor and Terence Cave (eds.),Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France, Oxford 1984, pp. 156–73. My quotation is taken from this article. If this reference to two-headed monsters is grounded in contemporary events, it would tend to indicate that the Milan manuscript dates from the 1560s, during the period of his time as Professor at the Collège royal (1556–67). Jean-Aimé de Chavigny's contemporary translation of this section, also contained in the article by Wilson and Moss, pp. 163–4, is as follows: ‘C'est donc un grand meschef …/… qu'en la court Royalle lon commence / A traiter une paix. Ainsi que ces deux nez / Sont entez l'un dans l'autre, & si ont mains & piez / L'un à l'autre opposez: ce certes signifie / Qu'au milieu de la paix l'une & l'autre partie / Tournera de rechef aux armes & combas / Avant que du Soleil les coursiers vistes pas / La carriere de l'an ayent franchi: ne scay quelles / Flammes du feu esteint retournans en querelles.’
See Joachim du Bellay,La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, édition critique par Henri Chamard, Paris 1904, pp. 276–7. Dorat's interest in Lycophron is, of course, well known, cf. Chamard's note, ed. cit., édition critique par Henri Chamard, Paris 1904, p. 158, where he cites Papire Masson: ‘Homerum, Pindarum, Lycophronem, et caetera Graeciae lumina interpretabatur magna industria et facilitate dicendi’. Alice P. Radin dealt with this in her excellent paper delivered at the Third Meeting of the International Society for the Classical Tradition (ISCT) (8–12 March 1995, Boston University), ‘Choses difficiles sont belles: Ronsard, Pindar, and Lycophron’.
See ‘Ronsard and Homeric Allegory’, in: Philip Ford and Gillian Jondorf (eds.),Ronsard in Cambridge: Proceedings of the Cambridge Ronsard Colloquium, 10–12 April 1985, Cambridge 1986, pp. 40–54, particularly with reference to Circe, Tityos, Tantalus, and Sisyphus.
See Ronsard,Œuvres complètes, edited by Paul Laumonier, vol. VIII, Paris 1935, pp. 219–20.
Ronsard, ed. cit.Œuvres complètes, edited by Paul Laumonier, vol. XVIII, p. 416.
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An earlier version of this paper was given at the Third Meeting of the Internatinal Society for the Classical Tradition (ISCT), held at Boston University, March 8–12, 1995.
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Ford, P. Jean Dorat and the reception of Homer in Renaissance France. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2, 265–274 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02678624
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02678624