JACQUES AMYOT AND THE GREEK NOVEL: THE INVENTION OF THE FRENCH NOVEL*

Laurence Plazenet

The Greek novel a prion comes as a surprise in any study of the Classical heritage. Not only was it a creation of late Antiquity (thus not included in the poetics which shaped Christian European liter• ature), but extant examples were rare and the titles known even more so between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In fact, only three were read during the period: the Aethiopica of Heliodorus, Leucippe and Clitophon of Achilles Tatius, and Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. To this short list, we must add Hysmine and Hysminias by the Byzantine Eustathios Macrembolites, which, because it closely imitated the other three, was not identified as belonging to the twelfth century.1 Still, this handful of novels considerably influenced European fiction from 1550 to 1700. They contributed plots, themes, and characters to a wide range of plays including those of Shakespeare,2 the tragi• comedies of the Baroque period,3 and the tragedies of Racine.4 Mainly, however, they played an essential role in the renewal of the novel. Even though it was translated after Jacopo Sannazaro pub• lished his seminal Arcadia (1504) and Jorge de Montemayor his Diana (1542), Longus's Daphnis and Chloe provided an early model of the genre for writers such as François de Belieferest (La Pyrênêe amoureuse, 1571), Honoré d'Urfé (LAstrée, 1607) or Miguel de Cervantes (Galatea, 1611). The Aethiopica and, to a lesser extent, ^cippe and Clitophon

* I am most grateful to Dr. April Shelford (American University, Washington, DC) who agreed to read and edit the English version of this paper. She displayed so much talent, alertness and friendship during this usually tiresome process that it became a fruitful and challenging dialogue for both of us. Obviously, remaining errors are mine alone. 1 See T. Hägg 1983, The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford, Blackwell): 75-80. 2 See G. Gesner 1970, Shakespeare and the Greek romance (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky) and T. Hägg 1983: 195. 3 See A. Gioranescu 1941, Vie de Jacques Amyot d'après des documents inédits (Paris: Droz): 183. 4 See R.C. Knight 1974 [first edition, 1951], Racine et la Grèce (Paris: Nizet) and Hägg 1983: 205-210. 238 LAURENCE PLAZENET

and Hysmine and Hysminias challenged the moral and aesthetic legit• imacy enjoyed until then by the novel of chivalry in the genre of love and adventure.5 From 1540 to 1548, the various versions of the chivalric Amadis series were best-sellers in France; widely acclaimed and printed as beautiful in-folios,6 they were only occasionally pub• lished with poems praising them and, after the publication of the first volume, never with explanatory prefaces or defences.7 But after Jacques Amyot published a translation of the Aethiopica in 1548, the translator of Amadis, Nicolas Herberay des Essarts, stopped promot• ing the diffusion of the Spanish novel; in addition, he invariably pro• vided new publications such as Pnmaleon (1549) or Dom Florès (1552) with apologetic prefaces in which he attempted to argue that, despite their being novels of chivalry, they employed the same devices as Heliodorus's novel.8 In 1548, Michel Servin prefaced the eighth book of Amadis with a "Discours sur les Livres d'Amadis," which already took into account the criticisms formulated in Amyot's preface to his translation of the Aethiopica? Ultimately, the success of the novel of chivalry faded among the social elites during the 1560s.10 Typically, Cervantes, while meditating in Don (Quixote (1605) on the future of fiction as embodied in the chivalric novel, saw a way out of this lit• erary dead end through imitating Heliodorus, a realisation he put into practice in his last work, Los trabajos de Persiles a Sigismunda (pub• lished posthumously in 1617). In France, Montaigne briefly enu• merated in the Essays "les livres simplement plaisans" that captured his attention: Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, François Rabelais' nov-

5 See L. Plazenet 1997, VÉbahusement et la délectation, Réception comparée et poétiques du roman grec en France et en Angleterre aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Champion): 142. 6 See Y. Girauld 1986, "Introduction" in L· premier livre d'Amadis de Gaule, éd. H. Vaganay (Paris: Nizet, STFM): 27-28 et M. Simonin 1984, "La disgrâce d'Amadis" Studi francesi, 82: 3. 7 Nicolas Herberay Des Essarts, added a prologue to the first volume, but he neglected to do so afterwards: it was no longer necessary to introduce or defend the book. See M. Simonin 1984: 8-11. 8 See M. Fumaroli 1985, "Jacques Amyot and the Clerical Polemic Against the Chivalric Novel," Renaissance (Quarterly 38: 26-35. 9 See S. Cappello 1996, "Il Discours sur les livres dAmadis di Michel Servin (1548)" in // romanzo nella Francia del Rinascimento: dalV crédita médiévale alV Astrea (Fasano: Schena): 214. UHùtoire œthiopique was issued 15 February 1548, the eighth tome of the Amadis 28 August 1548. 10 See M. Fumaroli 1985: 27-28. M. Simonin 1984: 13-14, quoting the Premier livre de la cronique du tres vaillant et redouté don Florès de Grèce (1551), which reminds the reader of the incidental role in the author's estrangement from the genre played by the death of Herberay des Essarts' wife in 1549.