APPREHENSION in 16Th CENTURY FRENCH LITERATURE A

THE FEAR WITHIN: APPREHENSION IN 16th CENTURY FRENCH LITERATURE

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH & ITALIAN AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Cécile Tresfels

May 2019

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/fj321zh4991

ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Cecile Alduy, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Roland Greene, Co-Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Timothy Hampton,

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost for Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives.

iii ABSTRACT

The 16th century was filled with exciting but fearful innovations, which challenged the very definition of Man. In the wake of these changes, first-hand experience was increasingly acknowledged as a valid mode of cognition. Paradoxically, this increase in experiential knowledge, certainly paving the way to empirical science and secularism, also raised cognitive uncertainties that led to profound anxieties. In my project, I argue that anxiety was central to the profound cognitive upheaval of the Renaissance that redefined the way individuals experienced the world. I focus my demonstration on the symptomatic case of the word appréhension. Designating perception, the first step of the cognitive process, it came to be used throughout the century to expand the vocabulary of fear, referring to an anticipatory anxiety towards the future. I explore this semantic evolution, from cognition to emotion, in three literary texts across genres and gender, from François Rabelais, Jean de Léry and Marguerite de Valois, that illustrate different aspects of the complex relationship between fear and knowledge. By showing how these world-defining changes challenged pre-established concepts and created deep uncertainties towards the futures, I contend that fear was the key ingredient of the modern conception of the mind.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I would like to thank my advisors Cécile Alduy and Roland Greene for their academic support and encouragement in the past six years. I would also like to thank Tim Hampton for his input at the different stages of this project. Others whose valuable commentary has helped guide this dissertation include David Lummus, Tim Reiss, Andrea Frisch, Patricia Parker, Laura Stokes, Kathleen Long, Nancy Frelick, Marian Rothstein, Cathy Yandell, Carla Freccero, Vanessa Glauser, Gregory Haake, Caroline Egan, Luis Rodríguez-Rincón, Dorine Rouiller, Pauline Goul, Alice Roullière, as well as the members of the Renaissances Focal Group.

In the Stanford Division of Literatures, Cultures & Languages, I would like to thank Christine Onorato, Denise Winters, Jordan Chin, Charo Robinson, Allen Sciutto, Todd Kuebler, Newsha Firoozye Davis, Julie Heinrich and Isabelle Colignon from the France- Stanford Center for helping me navigate the everyday life of a Ph.D. student. In the Stanford Language Center, I would like to thank Elizabeth Bernhardt, Joan Molitoris, and Heather Howard whose pedagogical insight helped me become a better researcher. At the Stanford Libraries, I would like to thank Sarah Sussman and Kathleen Smith for assisting me so kindly and generously in the exploration of the Special Collections material.

Thank you to Biliana Kassabova and Monica VanBladel for their invaluable feedback and for being such generous readers. Thank you to Natalie Deam, Patricia Valderrama, Axelle Boyer and Mélodie Michel for the stimulating discussions that helped me challenge my pre-existing knowledge of so many topics and disciplines.

Thank you to my family: Bernadette, Norbert, François and Amélie, for always following and supporting my 16th and 21st century peregrinations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

1. “Peur Sans Cause:” Panurge’s Apprehensive Behavior in the Tiers Livre and the Quart Livre 45 The Expression of Panurge’s Apprehension 51 Evaluation of Panurge’s Apprehension 61 Cognitive Anxieties: Imagination, Curiosity, Will 68 The Problem with Flexibility: Apprehension as Disruption 80

2. Fear as a Cognitive Tool: Apprehending the self and others in Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil 93 The omnipresence of fear 95 Removing the Negative Values associated with Fear 99 Fear as a Cognitive Tool 112 From the fear of the Tupis to the Tupis’ own fear: Apprehending the Other 121 Remembering Fear: Apprehension and Memory 141

3. Visible Emotions, Invisible Future: Apprehension in Marguerite de Valois’ Memoirs 150 In-betweennness 154 Exteriority and Interiority :The Visibility of Emotions 168 The Circulation of Apprehension 174 Apprehension and Prudence: An Epistemology of Temporal Discontinuity 179 Roman de formation or Roman d’information? Knowing that you Cannot Know 190

Conclusion 200

Bibliography 211

vi INTRODUCTION

“Writing apprehension is defined as “negative, anxious feelings (about oneself as a writer, one’s writing situation, or one’s writing task) that disrupt some part of the writing process” (McLeod 427). Apprehensive writers lack confidence and avoid writing.” Dissertation Bootcamp Packet, Summer 2017, Stanford University

The interplay of cognition and emotion has come to the fore in fields such as neuroscience, psychology and philosophy.1 The question of how the two interact is still being explored. Literary works have been recognized as privileged sites of study to understand such interactions with the rise of cognitive poetics and affect theory.2 In order to investigate the conceptual origins of these mechanisms, early modern literary scholars have developed an increased interest for the study of emotion (fear, love, anger) and cognition (memory, imagination, perception) in the Renaissance, a time period that witnessed the development of anatomy, experimental science and psychology.

To date, however, little work has examined the interplay of cognition and emotion in this period. As a result, without an adequate analysis of this interaction in the pre- cartesian era, we undervalue the closeness of 16th century concerns with our contemporary ones regarding emotional intelligence and embodied knowledge. This dissertation addresses this gap by studying the semantic and conceptual evolution of a Renaissance keyword, appréhension, that moved from the realm of cognition to the one of emotion

1 See Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York : Penguin Books, 2005). Martha Craven Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought : The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge, U.K. ; Cambridge University Press, 2001).; Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2004). Michael D. Robinson, Ed Watkins, and Eddie Harmon-Jones, eds., Handbook of Cognition and Emotion (New York: Guilford Press, 2013). 2 See Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2005).; Terence Cave, Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016).

during the 16th century, ultimately showing that fear was the key ingredient of the modern conception of the mind.

This dissertation explore how the 16th century gave rise to a new form of fear, imagination-produced, future-oriented, and empirically-based: apprehension. Deriving from the Latin apprehendere, to grasp, appréhension meant primarily perception, understanding, or grasp, up until 1550. But throughout the 16th century, the meaning of the word moved from the realm of cognition to that of emotion to refer to a feeling of prospective fear. In 17th-century dictionaries, the meaning of perception has been supplanted by that of anticipatory anxiety, as is the case in French and English today. Early modern fears have mostly been studied through a cultural history lens, with a concentration on their collective dimension.3 Apprehension, however, is an individual fear. It is a prospective worry caused by the uncertainty of how the future will unfold. It differs from anxiety which is a permanent state of disquiet, and from fear itself which is the reaction to an immediate object that threatens survival. It has an antonymic relationship to certainty, trust and hope.4 Its shift from the realm of cognition to the one of fear is symptomatic of a knowledge crisis in the Renaissance, that goes hand in hand with a revaluation of the different faculties of the soul: perception, imagination, memory and reason.

To give a chronological survey of this evolution across time, genre and gender, I analyse three narratives from 1546 to 1628 by François Rabelais, Jean de Léry and

3 Jean Delumeau, La Peur En Occident, XIVe-XVIIIe Siècles : Une Cité Assiégée (Paris : Fayard, 1978.).; William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, eds., Fear in Early Modern Society, Studies in Early Modern European History (Manchester, England ; New York : New York: Manchester University Press ; Distributed exclusively in the USA by Martin’s Press, 1997).; Joanna Bourke, Fear : A Cultural History (London : Virago, 2005). 4 Mathilde Bernard, Écrire La Peur Au Temps Des Guerres Civiles : Une Étude Des Historiens et Mémorialistes Contemporains Des Guerres de Religion En France (1562-1598) (Villeneuve d’Ascq : ANRT. Atelier national de reproduction des thèses, 2010).

2 Marguerite de Valois, characteristic of the three main periods of the Renaissance:

Humanism, the travels to the Americas, and the Wars of Religion. The first chapter focuses on a Humanist novel following the peregrinations of a fearful trickster, the second on the travel narrative of a Huguenot living among the indigenous Tupinamba tribe in Brazil, and the third on the memoirs of a Catholic Queen married to a Protestant King during the

French Wars of Religion. The apprehensive selves displayed in these works all illustrate an epistemological shift in an individual’s experience of the future: the traditional discourses on the fear of death were transfigured into a fear of uncertainty. To study this cognitive and emotional upheaval within the fabric of literary works, I pair a critical semantics approach which focuses on keywords to map cultural changes of a specific time period,5 with the history of early modern cognition and emotions.6 This project ultimately demonstrates the cognitive aspect of fear and the emotional dimension of knowledge acquisition.

1-Brain Trouble

In her article “Le lieu où l’on pense ou le désordre des facultés” Marie-Luce

Demonet describes how the order of cerebral functions was highly unstable during the 16th

5 Raymond Williams, Keywords : A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2015).; Roland Greene, Five Words : Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Chicago; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2013).; Ita Mac Carthy, Renaissance Keywords (London: Taylor and Francis, 2017). 6 Maurice Daumas, Au Bonheur Des Mâles : Adultère et Cocuage à La Renaissance, 1400-1650 / (Paris : Armand Colin, 2007.).; Rebecca May Wilkin, Women, Imagination and the Search for Truth in Early Modern France. (Aldershot, Hampshire, England ; Ashgate, 2008.).; Charis Charalampous, Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy and Medicine : The Renaissance of the Body (New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016).; Ita Mac Carthy, Kirsti Sellevold, and Olivia Smith, eds., Cognitive Confusions: Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern European Culture (Cambridge: Legenda, 2016).

3 century and kept being modified due to different factors, such as a back and forth between

Aristotelian and Galenic thought, as well as the progress of anatomy.7 The four main faculties of the soul, common sense, imagination, reason and memory, kept being rearranged, associated, separated, or saw their agency change throughout the century, as we can see in the evolution between the visual depictions of the brain cells in Magnus

Hundt’s Anthropologium (1501) and Gregor Reisch’s Margarita Philosophica (1503). The medieval cell doctrine still prevailed in these two depictions. Four cells are visible in

Hundt’s drawing: imagination and common sense at the forefront, and cogitation and memory towards the back. Reisch’s drawing depicts the common sense at the front, followed by a double cell made of imaginatio and fantasia, followed by another double cell containing the cogitativa and estimativa faculties, and the memory cell located at the back of the head.8 These questions of order and agency of the different faculties were key issues at the time since they were related to the metaphysical problems of the nature of the soul and of the distinction between soul and spirit, and to the question of the repartition of the functions between the brain and the heart, or the analysis of speculative activity. The dynamic model is the one that prevailed: the animal spirits were thought to progress from the front of the head to the back, being collected by the senses in the sensus communis, transformed into mental images in the imaginatio and sorted out by the cogitatio, before being stored as intentiones in the memory cell.

7 Marie-Luce Demonet, “Le lieu où l’on pense, ou le désordre des facultés,” in Ordre et désordre dans la civilisation de la Renaissance, ed. Gabriel- André Pérouse and Francis Goyet (Saint- Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1996), 25‒47. 8 For an in-depth analysis of these different faculties see E. Ruth Harvey, The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, (London,: Warburg Institute, 1975).

4 One of the most interesting evolving features throughout the century is the one that imagination undergoes. In Hundt’s description, imagination is linked to the common sense.

This is going to be one of the contentious points of the 16th century. In Reisch’s we can see the apparition of a second imagination: phantasia. This distinction, establishing a hierarchy between an imagination that apprehends (phantasia) and another that creates intelligible images transmitted to memory (imaginatio), comes from the difficulty of combining the medieval cell doctrine with Aristotelian thought. Aristotle, indeed, does not include cells in his description of the mind. And imagination, for him, is indeed this liminal function between sensing and the intellect: “L’imagination à son tour, se distingue de la sensation comme de la pensée; mais elle n’est pas donnée sans la sensation et sans imagination il n’y a pas de croyance […] Mais l’imagination ne pourra pas non plus s’identifier à aucune des opérations qui sont toujours vraies comme la science ou l’intellection.”9

During the 16th century, numerous debates surround these two imaginations: the apprehensive one and the intellectual one. This dichotomy overlaps the question of the relationship between the body and the soul. The famous surgeon Ambroise Paré’s presentation of the faculties of the soul is symptomatic of this concern for the preservation of dualism. In the quote below, he defines imagination as purely apprehensive:

L’imagination est une apprehension et recognoissance des choses et objects

qui nous sont représentés par les cinq actions sensitives, cy devant

déclarées. La cogitation ou ratiocination, est le jugement ou estimation qui

9 . Aristotle, De Anima, III, 3, in Aristotle, Edmond Barbotin, and Antonio Jannone, Aristote De l’âme (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1966)., 76. For the medieval reception of Aristotelianism see Simo Knuuttila, “Aristotle’s Theory of Perception and Medieval Aristotelianism” in Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. ed. Simo Knuuttila and Pekka Kärkkäinen (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008)., 1-22.

5 est fait des choses conceues et appréhendées, en les comparant et asemblant

les unes avec les autres, ou les separant l’une d’avec l’autre. Telle action est

communément appellee raison, et est la plus excellent des trois. La memoire

est la garde et conservation des choses appréhendées et imagines, et de là

jugées et examinées, comme le thresor, qui est quelquesfois desployé et

ouvert quand les autres actions cessent.10

Here, the accumulation of synonymic pairs shows the difficulty of clearly defining the actions of each faculty: apprehension and recognition, things and objects, cogitation or ratiocination, judgment or estimation, conceived and apprehended, etc. In this passage however, Paré uses a key word that is used to describe the actions of several of the faculties in the 16th century: apprehension. This term is present in Latin in Aquinas’ Summa

Theologiae (1265-1274), in which he provides a commentary of Aristotle’s De Anima that he is himself reading in a Latin translation.11 The word appears specifically in the First

Part, in the “Treatise of Man” (questions 75-83), in question 77: “The powers of the soul taken generally,” question 78: “The powers of the soul taken specifically,” question 79:

“The intellectual powers,” and in question 80 “Appetitive Powers as a class.” It refers to both the process of apprehending and to things apprehended, and appears as an adjective, a verb and a noun: “Res enim appetitur prout est in sua natura, non est autem secundum suam naturam in virtute apprehensiva, sed secundum suam similitudinem” (First Part

Question 78, Article 1);12 “Ad apprehendendum autem intentiones quae per sensum non

10 Ambroise Paré, Animaux, Monstres Et Prodiges (Paris: Le Club français du livre, 1954): “Introduction ou entrée pour parvenir a la vray cognoissance de la chirurgie, chapitre IX: Des actions,” 28. 11 On the Latin translation of Aristotle used by Aquinas see Harvey, Inward Wits, note 138, 71. 12 Thomas, Summa Theologiae. Latin Text and English Translation, Introductions, Notes, Appendices, and Glossaries. ([Cambridge? Eng.]: Blackfriars;, 1964). Volume 11, 122.

6 accipiuntur, ordinatur vis aestimativa” (First Part, Question 78, Article 4); “Unde oportet ad sensum communem pertinere discretionis iudicium, ad quem referantur, sicut ad communem terminum, omnes apprehensiones sensuum; a quo etiam percipiantur intentiones sensuum, sicut cum aliquis videt se videre” (First Part, Question 78, Article 4)13 or “Intelligere enim est simpliciter veritatem intelligibilem apprehendere” (First Part,

Question 79, Article 8).14 Aquinas was a key influence to 16th century theories of the mind, in his attempt to harmonize the views of the church fathers with Aristotle’s, using some of

Avicenna’s work: “The crucial point of difference between Aquinas and Avicenna is the role of man’s body. Whereas to Avicenna the body was the soul’s garment, and the soul was the man himself, to Aquinas man is being made up of body and soul.”15 The word appréhension and its derivations in French and during the 16th century, is also exemplary of this instability or “désordre des facultés” that Demonet describes and will be at the center of the debates surrounding the relationship between the body and the soul, between the external world and the outside of the mind. The word is highly polysemic and is used to refer to: the process of some faculties of the soul, the faculty of understanding in general, and to the first impressions that enter the mind It is defined by the Estienne dictionary

(1549) as: “Apprehension, Comprehensiò. Apprehension est la conception de nostre entendement, Sensus.” In Rabelais’s Tiers Livre (1546) it is paired with imagination within the description of the faculties of the soul by the poet Raminagrobis to Panurge (chapter

31):

13 Ibid., 140. 14 Ibid., 174. 15 Harvey, Inward Wits, 54.

7 Qu'ainsi soit, contemplez la forme d'un homme attentif à quelque

estude; vous voirez en luy toutes les arteres du cerveau bendées comme la

chorde d'une arbaleste pour luy fournir dextrement espritz suffisans à

emplir les ventricules du sens commun, de l'imagination et apprehension,

de la ratiocination et resolution, de la memoire et recordation, et agilement

courir de l'un à l'aultre par les conduictz manifestes en anatomie sus la fin

du retz admirable on quel se terminent les arteres.16

Pontus de Tyard in his Second Curieux (1557-1578) presents it as one of the essential parts of the “entendement” and seems to equate is with the first faculty or “common sense” previously mentioned in the description of the different faculties of the mind: “Mais le plus excellent et fructueux accomplissement de ce petit Monde, est (comme au grand la puissance intellectuelle) l'entendement, accompagné de l'apprehension, l'imagination, la memoire, les affections, le discours des Arts et la certitude des sciences, puis la consideration des vertus qui ne sont sujettes à l'oubli.”17 In his explanatory Indice accompanying the religious and philosophical poem La Sepmaine ou Creation du monde by Du Bartas, Simon Goulart uses the word to explain Aristotle’s conception of the soul.

It locates apprehension within the sensitive faculty and the internal senses and pairs it with memory:

Quant à Aristote et à plusieurs philosophes qui l'ont suivy, ils ont assigné

trois facultez principales à l'ame. La premiere est la vegetative, qui a pour

16 François Rabelais et al., Les cinq livres (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 1994), 745. 17 Pontus de Tyard, Œuvres complètes., ed. Eva Kushner, François Roudaut (Paris: Classiques Garnier, Coll. Textes de la Renaissance, n° 184, 2013), Tome IV, 2 - Le Second Curieux, ou Second Discours de la nature du monde et de ses parties, 132.

8 especes et dependances la vertu generative, nutritive, et augmentative. La

seconde est la sensitive qui comprend les sens exterieurs, asavoir la veue,

l'ouie, le flair, le goust, l'attouchement, et les interieurs qui sont

l'imagination, le discours, le jugement, l'apprehension et la memoire. La

troisieme est la rationelle, qui embrasse l'intelligence, la volonté, la

resolution.18

He confirms this definition of apprehension as a process of memory in another passage:

“La memoire est logee au derriere de la teste, et a deux facultez : l'une, d'apprehender ou comprendre : l'autre, de retenir. Ceux qui ont le cerveau humide apprehendent fort aisément.”19 Another variant is that apprehension is not always presented as one of the steps of the cognitive process but also used as a synonym of the general concept of understanding. In his Homélies, Tyard presents it as man’s highest power that allows him to grasp everything that surrounds him: “Ceste Ame, est ce qui enrichit l’homme, du discours, et ratiocination des choses comprinses dedans l’enclos de la nature universelle: tellement que les claires lampes et luisns flambeaux du Ciel, et les divers et presques inombrables corps elementaires, tombent soubs son apprehension et cognoissance.”20

Apprehension can thus be attributed negative or positive values when equated with the faculty of understanding, and we can see examples of both in Montaigne’s Essays. In “Du

Pédantisme,” he criticizes the “savants” who have accumulated knowledge but completely

18 Guillaume Du Barts, La Sepmaine ou Creation du monde. Tome II - L'Indice de Simon Goulart. ed. Yvonne Bellenger, Sophie Arnaud-Seigle, Denis Bjaï, Jean Céard, Véronique Ferrer, Sabine Lardon, Jean-Claude Ternaux (Paris: Classiques Garnier, Coll. Textes de la Renaissance, n° 174, 2012), 39. 19 Ibid., 273. 20 Pontus de Tyard, Œuvres complètes, Tome VI. Homélies. Œuvres de circonstance, ed. Marie- Madeleine Fragonard, Eva Kushner, François Roudaut, François Rouget (Paris: Classiques Garnier, Coll. Textes de la Renaissance, n° 123, 2007), 443-444.

9 lack judgment or “sens commun.” One of them is, according to him, exempt of these flaws: the scholar Adrianus Turnebus, whose mind he describes in glowing terms: “Car au dedans c'estoit l'ame la plus polie du monde. Je l'ay souvent à mon esciant jetté en propos eslongnez de son usage; il y voyoit si cler, d'une apprehension si prompte, d'un jugement si sain, qu'il sembloit qu'il n'eut jamais faict autre mestier que la guerre et affaires d'Estat.”21

In “De L’Institution des Enfants” he assesses his own learning abilities as a child in the following terms: “Ce que je voyois, je le voyois bien, et soubs cette complexion lourde, nourrissois des imaginations hardies et des opinions au-dessus de mon aage. L'esprit, je l'avois lent, et qui n'alloit qu'autant qu'on le menoit; l'apprehension, tardive; l'invention, lasche; et apres tout un incroiable defaut de memoire.”22 But the word is also used to refer to the first impressions that enter the mind. In that case it is used in its plural form, like in the following excerpt from Etienne Tabourot’s Bigarrures:

Je treuverois aussi tresbon, que dès le commendement on donnast à l’enfant

des exemples d’un bon ecrivain à imiter, afin qu’il s’accoustumast à imiter

des beaux objects et bien formez: car ces premières apprehensions entrent

vivement dans l’ame, et impriment aisément une idée, qui s’efface après

difficilement. Et sont les tendres ames des enfans comme un pot neuf de

terre, qui reticent tousjours l’odeur de ce que l’on aura mis premierement

dedans.23

21 Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais ([Paris] : Gallimard, 2007)., I, 24, 145. 22 Montaigne, Essais, I, 25,181. 23 Étienne Tabourot, Les Bigarrures du Seigneur des Accords. Quatrième Livre avec "Les Apophtegmes" du Sr Gaulard, ed. Gabriel-André Pérouse (Paris: Classiques Garnier, Coll. Textes de la Renaissance, n° 84, 2004), 34.

10 What we can notice is that its use in the cognitive realm is consistent throughout the century but that the term is polysemic and symptomatic of this “désordre des facultés” described by Demonet. Apprehension refers to a process of some faculties of the soul, but also to the faculty of understanding in general, as well as to the first impressions that enter the mind.

In general, it refers to the process of knowledge-making, describing how the external world enters the inside of the mind in order to be represented and then intellectualized.

Today, however, the word apprehension is used to refer to a form of prospective fear: “Appréhension de qqc. Fait d'appréhender, d'envisager avec inquiétude une chose imminente” (Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé). This meaning is institutionalized in French in the 17th century, as shown by the Furetière dictionary of 1690:

“APPREHENSION. subst. fem. Crainte, peur violente. Il a grande apprehension du tonnerre. il a apprehension qu'on ne descouvre son crime.”24 However, if we look at the following excerpts from 16th century literary works, we can see that the word had already taken on the meaning of prospective fear that we use today. The first symptomatic feature of this semantic evolution is the addition of modal qualifiers to the noun or the verb, for example: “il n’est pas convenable d’avoir une personne, qui au lieu de vous resjouyr et appaiser vos ennuis, vous donne des frayeurs et apprehensions vaines” (Madeleine de l’Aubespine)25 or “L’esprit qui s’emploioit jadis à commander/ S’emploie, dégénère, à tout apprehender” (D’Aubigné denouncing the fearful attitude of the Valois princes in his

Tragiques).26 The word was also paired with other terms that belong to the vocabulary of

24 Antoine Furetière, Dictionaire Universel, La Haye et Rotterdam, Arnout et Reinier Leers, 3 tomes, 1690. 25 Madeleine de L'Aubespine, Cabinet des saines affections (1595), ed. Colette H. Winn (Paris: Classiques Garnier, Coll. Textes de la Renaissance, n° 39, [Série 'L'Éducation des femmes à la Renaissance et à l'âge classique', n° 4], 2001), 60. 26 Agrippa D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, ed. Frank Lestringant (Paris : Gallimard, 1995), 124.

11 fear, especially “crainte” of which it will become a synonym: “Au surplus nous dirons que c’est grand cas de la crainte et apprehension de la mort” (Madeleine de l’Aubespine)27 or

“Ce sont volontiers des impressions de l’apprehension et de la crainte” (Montaigne, “De la force de l’imagination”).28 Certain authors also express the consequences of apprehension as fear. Montaigne wishes that the apprehension of his death, experienced by Marie de

Gournay, would be less painful to her: “en somme qu'il n'y a rien à souhaiter, sinon que l'apprehension qu'elle a de ma fin, par les cinquante et cinq ans ausquels elle m'a rencontré, la travaillast moins cruellement” (Montaigne. “De la présomption”).29 Honoré d’Urfé underlines how apprehension actually increases the evil that we fear: “car on fait tousjours le mal plus grand qu'il n'est pas, et l'apprehension augmente de beaucoup l'accident que l'on redoute”30 (d’Urfé). Last but not least, the objects of apprehension undergo a diversification. Initially associated with a single noun in expressions such as

“l’appréhension de la mort,” it is followed by more complex complements towards the end of the century such as in this excerpt from Marguerite de Valois’ Memoirs: “ce qui me donna encore plus d'appréhension que nous fussions découverts” (Marguerite de Valois).31

We can thus see that the meaning of apprehension as prospective fear is already in the making within literary works throughout the 16th century.

This dissertation argues that the aforementioned questions about the functioning of the brain and the agency of the different faculties of the soul, especially imagination and its relationship to the apprehensive function of the common sense, were symptomatic of

27 L’Aubespine, Cabinet des saines affections (1595), 103. 28 Montaigne, Essais, I, 21, 101. 29 Montaigne, Essais, II, 17, 701. 30 Honoré d'Urfé, L'Astrée. T. 1, 1607 (Genève, Slatkine, 1966) 313. 31 Marguerite de Valois, Mémoires et discours, ed. Élianne Viennot (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université, 2004), 175.

12 deep cognitive anxieties. So much so that a word used in the realm of cognition: apprehension, was progressively used to refer to an emotion: the fear of not knowing how the future will unfold. I will study the expression of these cognitive anxieties in literary works that display the cognitive and emotional worry of a character whose direct experience of her environment and relationship to the future appear as highly problematic.

2- Summary/ Overview of the semantic and conceptual change in literary works

The chart below summarizes the semantic changes that the word underwent in terms of object, medium, site of authority and temporality. 32 This dissertation will explore the transfer of agency from the object to the subject, the modification of the medium of apprehension, and the reversals in its object and temporality.

Apprehension as Perception / Understanding/ Grasp Prospective Fear

Object Immediate surrounding reality Future, non-yet-existing reality

-Five senses -Memory Medium -Imagination (grasp of the outside -Imagination (fabrication of world) images) Site of Authority From the object to the subject From the subject to the object

Temporality Present-oriented Future-oriented

Below is a non-exhaustive compilation of the word’s usage in 16th century literary works. It has been established with the ARTFL Project, University of Chicago and the

Classiques Garnier databases. The level of yellow indicates the quantitative presence of the

32 I borrow the structure of this chart from Roland Greene’s chapter on Invention in Five Words, 20.

13 word (the darker the yellow, the higher the number occurrences), the gradation from blue, to purple, to red, indicates the main meaning of the word in the text (whether perception, or fear, or both). It gives us an overview of the general tendencies, both quantitative

(number of occurrences) and qualitative (meaning of these occurrences) across time and across genre throughout the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century.

DATE AUTHOR OCCURENCES MEANING GENRE 1532 Crenne 9 PERCEPTION Sentimental Novel 1546 Rabelais 5 PERCEPTION Novel Theater: Comedy and 1553 Jodelle 3 PERCEPTION Tragedy 1557 Tyard 10 PERCEPTION Philosophical poem 1559 Navarre 1 PERCEPTION Nouvelles 1560 E. Pasquier 15 PERCEPTION Historiography 1564 Paré 1 PERCEPTION Medical treatise 1565 Belleau 2 PERCEPTION Lyric poetry Memoirs + 1569 Valois 16 FEAR Correspondance 1572 Tabourot 4 PERCEPTION Hybrid genre 1578 Léry 6 BOTH Travel Narrative Religious and 1578 Du Bartas 4 PERCEPTION Philosophical Poem 1578 Estienne 3 PERCEPTION Language treatise 1584 Chappuys 6 PERCEPTION Tales 1586 Tyard 10 PERCEPTION Homilies Duplessis- 1586 Mornay 9 PERCEPTION Meditations on psalms 1588 Sponde 8 PERCEPTION Meditations on psalms 1594 Montaigne 21 BOTH Essays Political writings+Letters+Epic 1600 d'Aubigné 21 BOTH Tragedy 1611 Pasquier 7 BOTH Miroir des Princes 1619 d'Urfé 20 FEAR Roman précieux 1621 Camus 18 FEAR Religious Novel 1623 Coeffeteau 15 BOTH Historiography 1626 Gombauld 13 FEAR Baroque Novel 1627 Balthasar 16 FEAR Roman précieux

The first thing we can notice is that apprehension is definitely a rare word in the 16th century. The highest number of occurrences in a single work is 21 in Montaigne’s Essays.

However, the word is used across genres (with the exception of lyric poetry, where it is rarely found). “Apprehension” and its derivations are present in a very diverse corpus of literary texts: first person narratives in prose such as the sentimental novel of Helisenne de

Crenne, Jean de Léry’s travel narrative, Montaigne’s essays and Marguerite de Valois’ memoirs and letters; historiography treatises in prose with Etienne Pasquier and Nicolas

Coeffeteau; philosophical and religious poetry with the extensive works of Pontus de Tyard and Raymond Du Bartas; religious reflections such as Tyard’s homilies, Philippe

Duplessis-Mornay and Jean de Sponde’s meditations on the Psalms, or Jean-Pierre Camus’ pious novels; the theater of Etienne Jodelle, including one comedy and one tragedy;

Nicolas Pasquier’s miroir des Princes; d’Aubigné’s epic poem; and the genre in which it culminates: the roman précieux or roman baroque, at the beginning of the 17th century.

This shows that this word, even if rare, is pertinent for authors with very different purposes and styles. Its omnipresence across genres points out to its relevance for the different discourses of knowledge of the time, whether religious, philosophical, political, or medical.

This study will demonstrate how this small semantic change is actually an index to much bigger epistemological changes going on in the period.

The second noticeable feature of this survey is that the word is much more frequently used towards the second part and the end of the century, with a significant increase in the first thirty years of the 17th century. With the exception of its striking presence in Crenne’s work, and the 5 iterations in Rabelais, there are almost no occurrences

15 of the word in literary works before 1550. The number of occurrences then doubles around

1570, reaching a peak at the turn of the century. This increase in usage goes hand in hand with the diversification of meaning that the word undergoes. We will thus wonder in this study if its new semantic flexibility makes it more usable or if it is used more often because this new meaning fills a conceptual and an emotional need.

If we now turn to the heart of the issue, the semantic change from perception to fear, we first need to underline that, once the meaning of fear has emerged, both meanings keep coexisting, and apprehension is used in its different acceptations onwards to the 17th century. What we notice, though, is that some authors use it only in the cognitive sense of perception: this is the case for Tyard, Duplessis-Mornay and Sponde. On the other hand, some authors such as Montaigne, d’Aubigné, Pasquier or Coeffetau take full advantage of its polysemy and use its variety of meanings. Some writers, however, only use it in the sense of prospective fear: it is the rare case of Valois at the end of the 16th century, which will be succeeded by d’Urfé or Camus. It will not be the object of this study to interrogate why the word kept its initial meaning in works of the late 16th century. Instead, we will focus on works where the meaning of fear is emerging and then institutionalized.

3-Knowledge-making in the 16th century: a fearful process?

The “désordre des facultés” previously mentioned goes hand in hand with a redefinition of the epistemological relationship of the 16th century individual to its environment. Throughout the century first-hand experience was increasingly acknowledged as a valid mode of cognition in the wake of a series of groundbreaking innovations: the modification of reading practices via the development of the printing

16 press, the rise of anatomy as an experimental discipline through the practice of dissection, the redefinition of Christian faith by the Reformation, or the missionary encounters of

Europeans with the Americas; all bringing key transformations to the way individuals apprehended their surrounding reality. This gave way to the rise of the notion of experience, defined by Andrea Frisch in The Invention of the Eye-Witness: Witnessing and

Testimony in Early Modern France.33 The discourse of experience, in what we understand today as being “a record of experience that makes no explicit, self-conscious claims for the epistemic potential of experience,”34 was indeed a notion produced by the tension between

“two distinct discourses – […] one empirical and “experience”-based, the other rhetorical and text-based.” This tension is especially noticeable in first-hand travel narratives (such as those of Léry, Cartier, Staden, and Diaz del Castillo) in which the narrator and protagonist observes a discrepancy between an authoritative pre-existing knowledge

(whether historical, geographical or theological) and a new knowledge produced by his experience in the Americas. And it is only towards the end of the 16th century that the

“epistemic reliability of experience over other forms of gaining knowledge”35 could be established, thus giving to the experiencing subject a new legitimacy and authority.

Paradoxically, this increase in experiential knowledge, paving the way to empirical science and secularism on the one hand, also raised cognitive uncertainties that led to new forms of anxiety on the other hand, notably with regards to the difference between perception and illusion. In the introduction to Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern

European Culture Stuart Clark unfolds the different contexts in which these uncertainties

33 Andrea Frisch. The Invention of the Eyewitness: Witnessing and Testimony in Early Modern France (Chapel Hill: U.N.C. Department of Romance Languages, 2004). 34 Ibid., 80. 35 ibidem.

17 arose in relation to the sense of vision: “For between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries

European visual culture suffered some major and unprecedented shocks to its self- confidence. These brought qualitative changes to its discussions of veridicality and reduced many visual experiences, at the level of theory at least, to visual paradoxes—where distinguishing between the true and the false became impossible on visual grounds alone.”36 The debates in the field of demonology, the adoption of perspectival techniques by Italian artists, the discussion of idolatry in the Protestant Reformation (critic of physical images in churches and of Catholic miracles) and of the visibility of spirit manifestations, as well as a the revival of ancient Greek skepticism; all these factors contributed to question vision’s certainty and reliability, hence the individual’s direct and immediate apprehension of the world. So, as the epistemological value given to experience grew, questions regarding the responsibility of the knowing subject, the porosity of the frontier between the outside world and the inside of the mind, and the reliability of the senses created intense cognitive anxieties. This led to the apparition of a new field of study: psychology, defined by Noël Taillepied as the science of distinguishing perception from illusion (1588).37

These cognitive anxieties were also accompanied by a profound redefinition of terms related to knowledge-making and knowledge-seeking, such as curiosity and imagination. These two words underwent a semantic change that saw their focus evolve

36 Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 2. 37 Rebecca M. Wilkin, Women, Imagination and the Search for Truth in Early Modern France (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008): “Less anachronistic, certainly, would be to call De praestigiis daemonum a foundational text for early modern “psychology,” a term first employed in the 1580s by Catholic demonologists like Noël Taillepied, the Canon of Pontoise and author of Psichologie, ou Traité de l’apparition des esprits (1588). “Psychology” for Taillepied is the science of distinguishing perception from illusion with the aim of affirming the existence of demons, souls separated from bodies, ghosts, prodigies and other “spirits,” 9.

18 from the object to the subject. The terms were first used to refer to a curious object and to an object perceived by the senses and processed by the imaginative faculty in order to be stored in memory (une curiosité, une imagination). It is through the 16th century that the focus was displaced to the subject and that the agency of the curious and imaginative subject was increased. Curiosity started referring to the drive of the subject desiring to know, and imagination to a creative medium. These two terms were adapted into their modern semantic configuration at that time, which indicates that the early modern subject navigated its epistemological relationship to the world in drastically new ways. First, curiosity, as a characteristic, a quality or an attitude, not only underwent a moral change, from bad, to good, but also a metonymic displacement, from the curious subject, to the exotic object, raising epistemological and moral tensions, constitutive of the period. As

Neil Kenny underlines in The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany

“To talk or write about curiosity was usually to enter an arena within which some of the period’s basic anxieties and aspirations about knowledge and behaviour were thrashed out.”38 The discourse on curiosity was thus usually related to the regulation of knowledge and the assessment of its value, as well as an assessment of the knowledge-seeking subject’s intentions.

As for imagination, it was only during the 19th century that it truly became the preeminent creative faculty that we refer to today. As we have seen at the beginning of this introduction, early modern imagination is an “image processing factory.” It receives the species impressae from real objects in the physical world and generates corresponding

38 Neil Kenny, The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), Introduction, 2.

19 species expressae or phantasma for storage in the memory.39 John Lyons traces this evolution from image processor to creative agent in Before Imagination: Embodied

Thought from Montaigne to Rousseau. He explains how, throughout the 16th century,

“alongside other perennial views of imagination (the prophetic, visionary view, and the view of imagination as a disorderly faculty), the notion of imagination as a faculty useful for a self-directed mental life began to take hold with new vigor.”40 This transition to the word’s contemporary meaning was especially made possible by the development of the notion of for intérieur, a private inner-space developed along with the new hermeneutic approach of the sacred texts, advocated for by the different religious movements of the

Reform. And also by the genre of the essay as developed by Montaigne, constituting the literary creation of an inner retreat or arrière-boutique (back room), or the publication in

1608 of François de Sales’ Introduction à la vie devote (Introduction to the Devout Life), encouraging self-cultivation and religious meditation. But in the 16th century imagination is still very much related to the senses, connecting reason to perception, as we have seen in the depictions of the brain from Hundt and Reisch. And this relationship of imagination with the senses, created deep anxieties as to the relationship between the body and the soul, as previously mentioned with the distinction of two different imaginations. Progressively, the imaginative faculty saw its importance grow and became one of the key powers of the soul. However, this prominence was accompanied by growing uncertainties in regards to its capacities, at the intersection of the outside and inner worlds:

39 See Yasmin Haskell, Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period (Turnhout : Brepols ; Abingdon : [Distributed by] Marston, 2011) 40 John D. Lyons, Before Imagination: Embodied Thought from Montaigne to Rousseau (Stanford, Cal: Stanford University Press, 2005), 206.

20 The imagination’s new prominence in sixteenth-century cultural debate

brought with it a dramatic increase in its epistemological notoriety. It was

an old but persistent idea that, whatever its indispensable contribution to

human mental processes and social life, the imagination was also an

unreliable faculty and prone to error, and not just when affected by illness.

[…] As it assumed more and more importance in the psychological

reflections of the period, so its reputation as an unreliable and undisciplined

faculty, as well as a sustaining and creative one, was greatly augmented.

The mental power most intimately involved in human visual experiences

was designated as disruptive and error-ridden, threatening not just the visual

judgements of individuals but the institutions that depended on these

judgements and, in turn, sought to guarantee them—institutions as

important as states and religions.41

The tensions and changes that are at stake in these key concepts of experience, curiosity and imagination during the 16th century, are, I argue, all embodied and problematized in the usage of the word “apprehension” and reflected in its own tensions and evolution. The desire to know the future is indeed deeply rooted in the new emphasis put on the curiosity of the subject. The action of projecting oneself that is at play in the feeling of apprehension is allowed by the imagination, this reservoir of images that are themselves collected through the sensorial experience of the world that gains a new epistemological validity at the time. As these conceptual changes show, knowledge-making is being redefined during the 16th century and this redefinition gives rise to many anxieties: the moral value of

41 Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 45-50.

21 curiosity, the conflict of experience with pre-existing forms of knowledge, and the agency of the imaginative faculty, questioning the porosity between the inside of the mind and the external world.

4-Fear in the early modern period:

In order to study this particular form of anxiety that is apprehension we need to consider the general concept of fear in the early modern period, and situate the latter among the different emotions. Jean Delumeau establishes a crucial distinction in the first volume of his study La Peur En Occident, Xive-Xviiie Siècles: Une Cité Assiégée 42 between collective fears and individual ones. In his introduction, he nuances this distinction by adding the difference between “peurs spontanées, ressenties par de larges fractions de la population” and “peurs réfléchies, c’est-à-dire découlant d’une interrogation sur le malheur conduit par les directeurs de conscience de la collectivité.”43 This distinction will be at the heart of my study since apprehension will turn out to be a very individual feeling. The second part of his book is devoted to the relationship of fear with the institutions in power, whether legitimizing or fueling this feeling among the French population. It will indeed be necessary for our study to consider the religious and political aspects of apprehension and how the individual navigates these different spheres at the turn of the century, when the

Reformation gives way to new forms of spirituality and when the authority of the state is deeply weakened by the Civil Wars. Delumeau’s work gives us practical information to enter the early modern fears and to learn: “Qui avait peur de quoi?” To briefly summarize

42 Jean Delumeau, La Peur En Occident, Xive-Xviiie Siècles: Une Cité Assiégée (Paris: Fayard, 1978). 43 Ibid., 22.

22 this enormous study: fear is omnipresent in the early modern period and the sea, revenants, the dark, the Turks, the plague, famine, insecurity and sedition are the most common objects of fear. This feeling of insecurity is maintained throughout the century:

Mais les thèmes de l’agression, de l’insécurité et de l’abandon ont pour

inévitable corrollaire celui de la mort. Or, l’obsession de celle-ci a été

omniprésente dans les images et les aproles des Européens au début des

Temps modernes: dans les danses macabres comme dans le Triomphe de la

mort de Brueghel, dans les Essais de Montaigne comme dans le théâtre de

Shakespeare, dans les poèmes de Ronsard comme dans les procès de

sorcellerie: autant d’éclairages sur une agoisse collective et sur une

civilisation qui s’est sentie fragile alors qu’une tradition trop simpliste n’a

longtemps retenu que le succès de la Renaissance.44

This is mostly caused by the omnipresence of the Plague, accompanied by a degradation of the climate that lead to a succession of bad harvests, as well as a growing anxiety towards the Turks’ progress towards France, culminating in the Lepante battle of 1571. Mathilde

Bernard in Ecrire la peur au temps des guerres civiles sheds light on the interpersonal dimension of fear in the context of the Wars of Religion: “L’insécurité est bien réelle, et elle est largement accrue par les guerres civiles, où les routes sont moins sûres que jamais, et où les massacres sont fréquents. Les hommes ont toujours peur des innondations, des tremblements de terre, des loups et de la nuit, amis surtout, ils craignent les autres hommes.”45 She describes the years 1562-1598 as a peak of fear in France, during the reign

44 Ibid., 21. 45 Bernard, Ecrire la peur au temps des guerres civiles, 21. See also: Gilbert Schrenk, “L’Evangile de la peur: Paris pendant les troubles civils. Le témoignage des mémorialistes (Brûlart, Fayet, L’Estoile, La Fosse” in Les Grandes Peurs, Madeleine Bertaud ed., 387-397, Travaux de

23 of the Valois, during which an atmosphere of general suspicion influences every interpersonal relationship. In those times of fear, where the religious certainties are shaken, people rely on predictions and prophecies to explain the unexplainable, through the reading of comets, eclipses, or astrologic prophecies in almanachs: this attitude is at the heart of

Rabelais’ Tiers Livre, devoted to Panurge’s quest of whether he should marry or not, and displaying a wide array of techniques to predict the future.

This general climate of violence and epistemological uncertainty is the background against which apprehension in the sense of prospective fear emerges. Because it is rooted in a person’s subjective experience of her environment, it is a very individual fear. There are three approaches to individual emotions in the 16th century: the medical one, the philosophical one and the theological one. And this tripartition is applied to the study of fear, as underlined by Mathilde Bernard.46 The medical approach studies how emotions, due to an imbalance in the humors that constitute the body, lead to a disruption of the person’s character. Fear is seen as a humoral imbalance, related to melancholia, which is caused by the body and which affects the body at the same time. This approach is developed in the works of the famous surgeon Ambroise Paré follow the Galenic humoral tradition.

Fear is seen as a disease if it is not counterbalanced and cured, and can lead to pathological behaviors. The second approach finds its roots in the stoic tradition that finds new vigor in the Renaissance. For the Stoics, emotions are referred to as passions. They are not all damaging to the soul but some of them are and need to be controlled by reason. Fear can thus be a positive passion if it prevents the person to act wrongly, but it can also be a negative one if it has no object or at least no direct object. Last but not least, a discourse

littérature, ADIREL (Genève: Droz, Tome II, 2004). 46 Bernard, Ecrire la peur au temps des guerres civiles, 49-77.

24 on emotions is developed by the Church fathers, namely Augustine and Aquinas. They distinguish a positive fear of God from a negative one, that only acts virtuously out of fear of being punished. Even if this fear is considered to be an acceptable first step, the true believer should fear God out of respect, not out of cowardice. In philosophical and theological traditions, emotions were related to cognition in the sense that, governed by will, faith or reason, they could lead to a virtuous life. However, emotions were always seem as potentially dangerous for or interfering with cognition. Throughout the 16th century, we witness a democratization of the discourse of emotion, and an increase in the epistemological value attributed to individual emotions, namely through the development of pre-autobiographical first person narratives, in different genres that are, among others, travel narratives, essays and memoirs.

Three individual fears in particular find themselves at the heart of literary and philosophical works of the period: the fear of adultery, the fear of death, and the fear of living the right life. These three fears will be, as we will see, intimately related to the emergence of apprehension as a fear directed towards the future, that focuses on the possibilities of what could happen. The fear of adultery is best embodied by the infamous

Panurge in the Rabelaisian novels who sets out on a quest in order to know if he should get married or not. In Au Bonheur Des Mâles : Adultère et Cocuage à La Renaissance, 1400-

165047 Maurice Daumas underlines the prominence of this fear in early modern society and its use as a narrative trope in literary works of the time, addressing whether the fear encountered by the adulterous lovers or the one experienced by the potentially betrayed person. This fear of being discovered or betrayed is especially represented in collection of

47 Maurice Daumas, Au Bonheur Des Mâles : Adultère et Cocuage à La Renaissance, 1400-1650 (Paris : Armand Colin, 2007).

25 tales such as the Heptameron or the Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis who also exploit its humorous potential, in addition to pointing to symptomatic anxieties about the body and notions of honor and reputation.48 For women, adultery could be accompanied by the fear of death, considering the legislation that was in place at the time. Daumas indeed underlines the difference of treatment between men and women for whom the consequences of extra-marital intercourse is radically different: “Les deux comportements sont tout simplement de nature différente: si un homme marié couche avec une autre femme que la sienna, il commet une faute qui relève de l’abus; si sa femme le trompe il s’agit d’une transgression.”49 However, being cuckolded for a man will damage his honor as well as social status. A culture of prevention is thus developed before and after a woman is married: “La jeune épouse, surtout, est l’objet d’une surveillance inquiète de la part du mari et d ela belle-famille, jusquà ce que le premier enfant apporte le gage d’allégeance et d’intégration qu’ils attendent.”50 Thus, adultery is considered as being always possible, it is a potentiality whose different scenarios are amply fueled by literature. Montaigne actually underlines the negative effects of this state of permanent fear about something that has not happened yet in these (misogynist) terms: “Serions-nous pas moins coqus si nous craignions moins de l’estre, suyvant la complexion des femmes, car la deffence les incite et convie?”51

In addition to the fear of cuckoldry, omnipresent in men’s lives, the fear of dying is extremely present in the everyday life of every individual in the early modern period and

48 See also Sara F. Matthews Grieco, ed., Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th-17th Century), Visual Culture in Early Modernity (Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VA: Ashgate, 2014). 49 Daumas, Au Bonheur Des Mâles, 22. 50 Ibid., 54. 51 Montaigne, Essais, III, V, 914.

26 this concern is also reflected in literary works. Dying at sea remains one of the biggest fears of the sixteenth century, and is often mentioned in first-person travel narratives such as

Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil. It has also been made memorable by

Panurge’s fear of dying during the sea storm that Pantagruel and his companions encounter on their sea journey in quest of the Dive Bouteille. But traveling on land remained extremely dangerous too, as we mentioned previously. The Wars of Religion brought additional sources of worry with the possibility of being robbed, tortured, murdered, on one’s way from a location to the next. Montaigne has vividly depicted such an occurrence of insecurity in his essay “Of Physiognomy” in which he describes how he was robbed and had to negotiate for several hours with the robbers in order to be released. The fear of death permeates his entire work at different levels. “Of Exercitation” (II, 6) depicts a near death experience after falling from a horse, while the essays “That to study philosophy is to learn to die” (I, 19) and “Of Physiognomy” (III, 12) analyze the prospective fear of death, as one ages. “Of Physiognomy” is an essential chapter, the penultimate one in the latest version, before “Of Experience.” Socrates is its central figure, used as an example to theorize the best way to approach death. Montaigne relates this ontological questioning to the question of knowledge and the deceptive figure of books and philosophers, claiming that ignorance and Nature as a guide are the best way to prepare oneself to death. He thus takes, towards the end of his life, a slightly different stance than in I, 19: “That to study philosophy is to learn to die” where he praises the meditatio mortis as a tool to live well. This reflection on the apprehension of death, as perception and fear, of the way to deal with the biggest change that one human being has to encounter, is framed by Seneca’s reflexion in his Letters to

Lucilius. Montaigne, paraphrasing Seneca, actually gives us a definition of apprehension

27 in its modern sense: “que te sert il d’aller recueillant et prevent ta male fortune: et de perdre le présent, par la crainte du futur: et être dès cette heure miserable, parce que tu le dois attire avec le temps?”52 The prospective fear of death appears as intrinsically related to how the subject situates himself through time and deals with change.

In addition to reflections on death and how to prepare for it, an increasing attention is devoted to the question of how to live a right life, but also to the fear of not living the right one. Simona Cohen, in her article “The Early Renaissance Personification of Time and Changing Concepts of Temporality” 53 argues that this shift comes from crucial evolutions in the way time is perceived and experienced at that time, the ars moriendi replacing the memento mori. She explains how, during the 16th century, the conception of time undergoes profound modifications, going from an abstract concept to a dimension of existence. Time was gradually approached in an increasingly secular way which led the sense of one;s self-determination to become rooted in the practical use and control of time, which came to be perceived as a threat to human existence and achievements. This differs from an earlier vision of time as set in the context of a transcendent eternity, with God controlling it and giving it its meaning and purpose. This is explicit in the evolution that the representations of time underwent: from being depicted as a declining old man, with a mechanical clock and an hourglass as attributes, time became to be illustrated as a powerful destroyer, with the image of Saturn devouring his children. One of the key factors to this evolution is the Protestant treatment of the Christian doctrine of Providence. Rejecting the fact that causality is imputed to the Creatures, Calvin, with the doctrine of special

52 Montaigne, Essais, III, 12, 1097. 53 Simona Cohen, “The Early Renaissance Personification of Time and Changing Concepts of Temporality.” Renaissance Studies, 14, no. 3 (2000): 301–328.

28 Providence, states that every event is caused directly by God. Thus, time becomes a series of almost arbitrary revelations, each moment of time being radically separated from

Eternity and from any other moment of time. In this new perspective, time becomes experienced as a psychological discontinuity and the awareness of man’s transience is gradually secularized. This leads to an ongoing discussion among writers and philosophers on how to spend time in the world and how to spend it well. The traditional cosmology is rejected for the notion of prudence: men now have to anticipate and judge the opportunities presented by the passing of events. It is in with this conceptual shift in mind that we will study the emergence of apprehension, the birth of an individual and future-oriented fear.

6-Apprehension vs other fears:

Bernard devotes the second chapter of her study54 to a very helpful clarification of the nuances between the terms that refer to different types of fear in 16th century France.

Ordering the different fears by intensity, object and nature, she presents the reader with a very useful chart that differentiates the general terms: peur, crainte, from the moderate fears: redoubter, se defier, se mefier, inquiétude, alarme, apprehension; and the unbearable ones: panique, angoisse, effroi, terreur. She underlines that “crainte” belongs to the psychological realm, while “peur” refers to a concrete and immediate environment. She also highlights the interpersonal dimension of certain fears. “Crainte” is indeed specifically used to describe interpersonal relationships: to the King or to God most of the time. It implies the idea of respect, whereas “redouter” implies distrust. The type of fear experienced is thus a good indicator the quality of the relations between two different

54 Mathilde Bernard, Ecrire la Peur au Temps des Guerres Civiles, 81-119.

29 instances. She groups Inquiétude, Alarme, Appréhension together as fears that are, according to her, more related to events than people. Among this group she underlines the importance of the memory of the past for presently felt fears directed towards the future for the word “inquietude” (which is actually the word used to define “appréhension” in the

TLFI): “Toutes ces peurs sont liées à un objet imaginé, futur, à l’exception de l’inquiétude qui est tendue entre le passé et l’avenir, qui n’existerait souvent pas sans le remords auquel elle est liée, mais qui établit un lien entre ce remords-même et la punition du péché.”55 She then turns to the term “alarme” explaining its shift from the object to the feeling by a metonymic sliding. A semantic process that she claims was the same one for “appréhender” which: “signifie avant tout l’ “action de saisir une chose”, par les mains ou par l’esprit. Il indique le moment premier de la comprehension quand une pensée naît en l’esprit de quelqu’un. Dans ce sens il traduit, tout comme le mot “alarme”, l’instant qui precede l’action. C’est de la même façon qu’il a pu en venir à signifier tout simplement la peur.”56

I would like to argue that this shift of meaning, from perception to fear, and from cognition to emotion, is actually far from being this simple. I am extremely indebted to the classification she establishes but would like to develop, and complicate, her analysis of apprehension, whose semantic evolution is, I argue, symptomatic of an epistemological change in the early modern period. We will see how the feeling of apprehension, future- oriented, also has to do with the memory of past events, and how it can be caused as much by interpersonal encounters as by events.

Used mostly in its adjectival form in English (“I am apprehensive”) and in its verbal form in French (“j’appréhende”) apprehension refers to the “anxiety or fear that something

55 ibid., 104. 56 ibid., 103.

30 bad or unpleasant will happen” (OED), or the “fait d'appréhender, d'envisager avec inquiétude une chose imminente” (TLFI). “Appréhender” differs from “craindre” and

“redouter,” the two other words used to express the fear of a future event in French. Even if traditional dictionaries present them as synonyms, there are nuances that allow us to distinguish the three terms. For Laveaux, in his 1826 dictionary of synonyms:

appréhender marque toujours de l’incertitude; il ne se dit que des choses

qui peuvent arriver ou ne pas arriver. On appréhende de perdre son procès;

on peut le perdre ou ne pas le perdre. Si l’on dit qu’on craint de perdre son

procès, on marque par là une inquietude fondée sur des raisons plus

plausibles, des données plus probables […] Craindre suppose la vue d’un

mal dans l’avenir. Appréhender marque la vue de la possibilité d’un mal

dans l’avenir. […] Appréhender, c’est craindre un mal qui peut arriver,

abstraction faite des moyens de le détourner, de le surmonter, de le

repousser. Redouter, c’est craindre un mal qu’on ne se sent pas la force ou

les moyens de détourner, de surmonter, de repousser. Appréhender est

susceptible de degrés; redouter marque toujours une crainte très forte.57

Appréhender is indeed about possibility, which will be at the heart of our study. The degree of probability of the upcoming event, as well as the perspective that the subject has on her agency regarding the fearful event, differentiates “appréhender” from “craindre” and

“redouter.” “Appréhension” also differs from “alarme” which “naît de l’approche inattendue d’un danger apparent ou reel qu’on croyait d’abord éloigné.”58 It is also different

57 Laveaux, Dictionnaire synonymique de la langue française, Paris: A. Thoisnier- Desplaces,1826), “apprehender,” 116. 58 ibid. “Alarme,” 72.

31 from “avoir peur” that refers is caused by: “ la presence d’un mal vif et subit, reel ou cru tel, qui menace, ou qu’on croit menacer la conservation. Dans l’appréhension on a le temps de la réflexion, on peut chercher les moyens d’empêcher le mal. Lap eur saisit les sens, elle

ôte toute réflexion et trouble la raison.”59 So apprehension in its modern meaning is: future- oriented, its object is potential and not actualized, the subject has more agency than with

“crainte” and has the possibility of making decisions that will impact the apprehended future, which, in turn, makes the subject even more apprehensive.

8-Methodology: word, emotion, cognition

The study of the emergence of this modern meaning in 16th century French literature requires an interdisciplinary approach. My methodological challenge is thus to bring together different critical traditions in order to explore the semantic evolution of a word, that belongs to the realm of cognition and then of emotion, and more particularly to the vocabulary of fear, in literary texts throughout different historical moments of the 16th century.

Since this study is about a single word, it does inscribe itself in the tradition of critical semantics, recently redefined by Roland Greene with in Five Words: Critical

Semantics in the age of Shakespeare and Cervantes.60 Inspired by his precursors in word methodologies: the personal criticism developed by William Empson, the empirical and philological readings developed by C.S. Lewis and Leo Spitzer, and the historicist readings

59 ibid. “Appréhender,” 116. 60 Greene, Five Words.

32 of Raymond Williams, Martin Jay, and Reinhart Koselleck;61 Greene’s approach differs from his predecessors through his focus on “working words” (blood, invention, language, resistance, world); the use of “a representative anecdote that offers the broad outline of a word's changes” and “the provision of a conceit to explain how the senses of a word relate to one another” (envelope, palimpsest, pendent, cartone, engine).62 Like Greene, I believe that literary works are a particularly fruitful site to understand semantic and conceptual changes embedded in words:

Not simply one discourse among others, literature is the kind of writing in

which semantic complexities, which are finally inseparable from the

unresolved issues of the age, are rendered into figure, person, and story. The

questions about which historians, cultural theorists, and other speculate are

reified in literature and made more equivocal and provocative, more

powerful as an instigation to thinking, than in any other history or treatise.

While other discourses may be compromised by ambiguity, literature is

drawn to it- and can fashion it in something new, granting the premium of

fresh perspective to old problems. […] We ought to recognize these and

other literary works as interventions in intellectual and cultural history, with

a special franchise to compose what is disordered and trouble what is

61 William Empson, The Structure of Complex Words. (London : Chatto & Windus, 1951).; C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words. (Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press, 1961).; Leo Spitzer, Essays in Historical Semantics. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1968).; Raymond Williams, Keywords : A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York : Oxford University Press, 1976).; Martin Jay, Cultural Semantics : Keywords of Our Time (Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, c1998.).; Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History : Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2002). 62 Roland Greene, “What is Semantic Criticism? A Taxonomy Past and Present” https://arcade.stanford.edu/content/what-semantic-criticism-taxonomy-past-and-present

33 settled.63

Greene’s approach is comparative, transnational and multilingual, similarly to the essays compiled by Ita MacCarthy in Renaissance Keywords, published the same year.64 Covering topics from rhetorics to theology, natural philosophy and literature, the essays focus on seven words: sense, disegno, allegory, grace, scandal, discretion, and modern. The essay on sense by Guido Giglioni is a model for my study of apprehension, considering that it focuses on the revaluation of the role of the senses and on the embodied nature of sense perception.65 However, the word that I study is neither a common word, nor a “working” word as defined by Greene: “Working words are the ones that people live and think with, as opposed to those that self-consciously represent the age; working words are so multivalent that we don't necessarily see the shape in their semantics, nor do they always seem to tell a common story.”66 It is actually a rare word, as we have seen from the summary table above. The aim of this study is to show how the semantic evolution of this rare word was actually symptomatic of an epistemological transition in the Renaissance: the increasing epistemological value attributed to experience, and thus to the knowing faculties of a single individual and, by extension to his or her body. At the beginning of the

17th century, once that its meaning as an emotion has been established, its usage increases drastically. The study then shows how a rare word belonging to the realm of cognition became a much more used lexeme once it had gained a plurality of meanings.

63 Greene, Five Words, Introduction, 7. 64 Mac Carthy, Renaissance Keywords. 65 Guido Giglioni, “Sense: Renaissance Views of Sense Perception” in MacCarthy, Renaissance Keywords, 13-30. 66 Greene, “What is Semantic Criticism?”

34 Another aspect that makes this study different from the other existing studies in critical semantics is the fact that this word refers to an emotion. None of the words studied by Williams, Greene, or the authors from Mac Carthy’s collection, even if they can be related to emotional reactions, refer to a specific emotion per se. With this project I hope to open the possibility of emotional semantics, where the study of a specific word would lead to the understanding of the associated feeling. Often, in the field of the history of emotions, it is the emotion that first drives the study where the author then explores the vocabulary, contexts and agents associated with that particular emotion.67

This is why the discipline refered to as history of emotions is crucial to my study.

First and foremost in order to prevent anachronistic views of apprehension and to resituate it in a context where humoral theory was still the main framework to read emotions, that were actually referred to as passions or affections. Apprehension is located at the juncture of a transition from passions to emotions, and becomes much more frequent in usage once it has entered the emotional realm in addition to the cognitive one. The work of Damien

Boquet 68 and of Barbara Rosenwein69 have been key to understand medieval passions and emotional communities and situate apprehension with regards to this medieval tradition.

For the 16th century the studies devoted to the passions and their relationship to the notion of subjectivity provided the framework to locate the specificity of apprehension in relationship with the construction of character identity and self representation in the works

67 One good example would be Katherine Ibbet, Compassions’s Edge: Fellow-feeling and its limits in early modern France (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 68 Damien Boquet, Sensible Moyen Âge : Une Histoire Des Émotions Dans l’Occident Médiéval (Paris: Seuil, 2015). 69 Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2006).

35 that constitute my corpus.70 The work of Susan Broomhall has been particularly influential to my research as it highlighted the way the display of certain emotions conditioned the history of the reception of the emotional subjects and their works, especially for women writers.71

Because apprehension belongs to the realm of cognition both in the 16th century and today, studies of early modern cognition, specifically imagination, perception, memory and experience were central to this study in order to understand how knowledge was perceived, stored and produced in the early modern period and how these conceptions underwent tremendous crises that led to a series of cognitive anxieties.72 The latter show

70 See particularly: Bernard Yon and Institut Claude Longeon, eds., La Peinture Des Passions: De La Renaissance à l’Age Classique: Actes Du Colloque International, Saint-Etienne, 10, 11, 12 Avril 1991 (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1995).; William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling a Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, U.K. ; Cambridge University Press, 2001).; Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson, eds., Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).; Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions : The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category / (Cambridge, UK ; Cambridge University Press, 2003).; Brian Cummings and Freya Sierhuis, eds., Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture (Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013).; Susan Broomhall, Early Modern Emotions an Introduction (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017). 71 Susan Broomhall, “Emotions of the Past in Catherine de Medici’s Correspondence” in Andreaa Marculescu and Charles-Louis Morand Métivier, eds., Affective and Emotional Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) pp. 87-104.; Susan Broomhall, ed., Authority, Gender and Emotions in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, Genders and Sexualities in History (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).; Susan Broomhall and Sarah Finn, eds., Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe (London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016). and Susan Broomhall, Gender and Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2016). 72 A whole body of critical work is now addressing the question of cognition in the medieval and early modern period: Donald. Beecher Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds: Cognitive Science and the Literature of the Renaissance (Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016). ; Stefanie Buchenau, Human and Animal Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine (Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017); Donald Beecher, and Grant Williams, eds., Ars Reminiscendi: Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009); David LaGuardia and Cathy M. Yandell, eds. Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France (Farnham, Surrey : Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015)

36 that it is necessary to consider the intersection of cognition and emotion in order to understand knowledge-making in the 16th century. The emerging scholarship that links the two and reflects on embodied knowledge and emotional intelligence in the medieval and early modern period is thus key to my study of apprehension, that inscribes itself at the heart of the body-soul dualism, characteristic of the period.73

The specificity of apprehension as belonging to the vocabulary of fear requires to situate it in the broader field of the history of fear. This topic has mostly been the domain of cultural historians such as the study of Jean Delumeau or William Naphy and Penny

Roberts, previously mentioned, or more recently the work of Joanna Bourke.74 In France the study of fear in literary studies often overlaps with the study of the Wars of Religion such as the collection edited by Madeleine Bertaud, Les Grandes Peurs,75 or the work of

Bernard, already mentioned. Even if I am indebted to these works to situate apprehension in relationship with other characteristic fears of the 16th century, both collective and individual, to understand the relationship of fear and power, and to compare the literary expression of apprehension with the expression of other fears during the 16th century, my goal is to give a vivid image of fear embodied and experienced by a literary protagonist, who happens to be in two of my three case studies, also the narrator and author of the text studied. I do rely on biographical and historical elements for these case-studies but what interests me is the display of experience that the protagonist both undergoes and describes.

73 See Charis Charalampous, Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy and Medicine: The Renaissance of the Body (New York: Routledge, 2016); Mac Carthy, Sellevold, and Smith, Cognitive Confusions. 74 Delumeau, La Peur En Occident, XIVe-XVIIIe Siècles.; Naphy and Roberts, Fear in Early Modern Society.; Bourke, Fear. 75 Madeleine Bertaud, ed., Les grandes peurs (Genève: Droz, 2003).

37 Because apprehension is a prospective emotion and is related to the way a particular individual envisions his or her future, studies of futurity in the 16th century are also key to my analysis. The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe helped me reflect on how

“the incursions against their spatial frontiers also allowed Europeans to believe they were expanding their temporal horizons”76 and on how apprehension situates itself in a century where prophecy and millenarian throught were still defining the unfolding of time. More specifically, the evolution of apprehension is tied to two modes of envisioning the future that underwent key changes in the 16th century: prudence and predestination. I argue indeed that the rise of this apprehensive feeling will redefine prudence, the key political and moral virtue of the 16th century.77 And that the semantic and conceptual evolution of the word apprehension is one of the consequences of the Reformation and of its redefinition of the concepts of Providence and Predestination, that modified the relationship of faithful subjects to time an individual’s situation in time, as we previously mentioned referring to the work of Cohen. Studies devoted to the history of the Reformation were thus also key to understand the anxieties that it raised.78

76 Andrea Brady and Emily Butterworth, eds., The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe, Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 12 (New York: Routledge, 2010)., 10. 77 Francis Goyet, Les Audaces de La Prudence : Littérature et Politique Aux XVIe et XVIIe Siècles (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2009.). 78 See Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman eds., The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974); Quentin Skinner The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980); Donald R. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Lucien Febvre, Le Problème De L'incroyance Au 16e Siècle: La Religion De Rabelais (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988) and Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation. 2nd ed. (Malden: Blackwell, 2004).

38 This study thus also aims to offer a glimpse of the cognitive and emotional effects of the Reformation. Each chapter of this project will indeed explores the cognitive and emotional implications of the redefinition of faith brought by the Reformation, surrounding the questions of predestination, free will and conversion. The Rabelais chapter explores a character’s struggle with the concept of predestination, both driven and burdened by his insatiable curiosity. The chapter devoted to Léry explores the cognitive anxieties that the

Calvinist traveler faces when confronted to the religious practices of the Tupinamba which he seeks to understand and combine with his own beliefs. Lastly, the chapter on Valois’

Memoirs allows to study the emotional struggles of an individual trapped between the obligations to her Catholic faith and the loyalty to her Protestant husband during the French

Wars of Religion.

7- Corpus

These different disciplines constitute the framework of the three case-studies that form this project. Close-readings of key passages containing either the word or the concept of apprehension are at the heart of this study. Because I use literary texts as my corpus, there will be key distinctions to make between narrated apprehension, apprehension experienced by the protagonist and apprehension experienced by the reader (creating both suspense and compassion). The apprehension experienced by the author will be also brought into the conversation through the consideration of key biographical elements and indications on how each writer envisioned the future of their written work.

The selected corpus provides a chronological survey of this semantic change during three key periods of the 16th century: Humanism, the European travels to the Americas and the

39 Wars of Religion. I have decided to focus on what I call “narratives of the self.” I apply this term to narratives that focus on the evolution of a specific protagonist over time, and on the ordeals that this protagonist encounters. Thus I have chosen three narratives, in prose, that focus on the tormented experience of a single individual with its surrounding, and where the boundaries between author, narrator and character are being challenged:

Francois Rabelais’s Tiers Livre (1546) and Quart Livre (1552), Jean de Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (1578) and Marguerite de Valois’ Memoirs (1628).

Moreover, the three works that I have chosen are all participating to the elaboration of new genres, that give birth to new expressions of the self, and consist in autobiographical and epistemological experiments, where the subject and their experience is at the heart of the narration: the Rabelaisian novels staging the adventures of the “human, all too human”

Panurge, Jean de Léry’s first-person travel narrative to Brazil, and Marguerite de Valois’ memoirs. Here, it is important to mention however that it will not be the purpose of this dissertation to elucidate the question of personhood and subjectivity in the early modern period. In Mirages of the Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern

Europe Timothy Reiss argues that the term “self” has been used erroneously by critics in order to map past notions of subjectivity onto our modern configurations of the self.79 For

79 See Timothy J. Reiss, Mirages of the Selfe : Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2003.). On the notion of self and personhood in the early modern period see also Nathalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984); Thomas M. Greene, “The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature.” In The Disciplines of Criticism, ed. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 241–64; Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Roland Greene, Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Aron Iakovlevich Gurevich, The Origins of European Individualism. Translated by Katharine Judelson. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); Christopher Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).

40 example, when introducing terms like “will,” “choice” and “intention,” all central to the concept of apprehension and its evolution, Reiss underlines that:

Will did not name a capacity of an agent subject responsible for actions it

alone chose. Choice did not name a solitary act of deliberation founded on

personal rights preceding collective intention. Intention did not name a

purposive individual claim on rational enunciation or instrumental ac tion.

Intelligence of the terms translated as will, choice and intention—as if

essential to western experiences of the subject—depended on a communally

embedded sense of being human.80

So even if the fear that I study is an “individual” one, and even of the notion of “interiority” is something that is in the making in some works of the late 16th century, including Valois’

Memoirs that are part of this corpus, the protagonist at the center of the narratives studied is very much embedded in religious conceptions of free will, conceptions of the body from

Antiquity, and a complex relationship between the public and the private, the personal and the political. And even if I label these works studies “narratives of the self,” I will thus try to avoid projecting our modern notion of self by establishing explicitly the links of the protagonists with their cultural, political and religious contexts, and by defining cognition and emotion in 16th century terms. I use the term “within” in the title because, overlapping with the evolution that “imagination” undergoes, apprehension undergoes a change of directionality (see summary table on p. 13): it starts to be less about a person’s grasp of the external world (from the outside of the mind to the inside of the mind) but rather about a

80 Mirages of the Selfe, 2-3.

41 person’s doubts and anxiety regarding their future experience of the world (from the inside of the mind to the outside of the mind).

Last but not least, these three works all stage the deeply problematic relationship between the body and the mind before it is crystalised in the reception of Descartes’s work, and which is at the heart of the study of apprehension: Panurge defecates out of fear, Léry takes the risk of having his own body eaten, and Marguerite describes how she reacted psychosomatically to the harassment of her entourage. This relationship between the body and the mind is studied and conceptualized in medical works of the time, developing the discipline of physiology, thanks to the development of anatomy, in works from Vesalius,

Servet or Paré. This focus on the human body, its inner mechanisms and its outer expressions will be key to our analysis of apprehension, transitioning from the realm of cognition to the realm of emotion.

As for Montaigne’s Essays, they will be referenced throughout the different chapters as the backdrop of this semantic evolution. The Essays contain indeed the highest number of occurrences of apprehension and its derivations in a single work from this time period. The polysemy of the term in Montaigne’s work is fascinating and actually shows how complex it is to even define apprehension in its first cognitive meaning. Montaigne’s reflections on fear, experience, imagination, and perception will also be the backdrop against which these concepts are addressed in each chapter. However, Montaigne does not use the word apprehension in its novel meaning of prospective fear at the end of the 16th century, something that Marguerite de Valois actually does in her Memoirs. Because she is the one who institutionalizes this meaning in the sense of prospective fear, it was more suited for this study to devote the last case study to her work. A thorough study of the

42 polysemy of apprehension in Montaigne’s works in relationship with philosophical questions of stoicism and skepticism will be the subject of another research project.

In order to elucidate the historical evolution of apprehension, I am proposing to use a set of terms that I will use as interpretative tools for each case study: flexibility for

Rabelais, experience for Léry and in-betweenness for Valois. All case studies unfold the interdependency of cognition and emotion according to different modalities. They all allow us to dive into the cognitive anxieties of the Renaissance, revolving around the redefinition and revaluation of the faculties of the mind.

In Rabelais’s Tiers Livre and Quart Livre, apprehension does not mean prospective fear yet, but Panurge’s apprehensive behavior is the catalyst of the plot. The expression of his apprehension through a linguistic copia challenges the other characters and is symptomatic of contemporary anxieties around the notion of curiosity or libido sciendi. It is Panurge’s cognitive flexibility, his ability to transport himself through space and time, that allows him to contemplate a multiplicity of potential outcomes and fuels his apprehensive behavior. Underlining that not fearing when a danger is actually present is symptomatic of a “lack of apprehension,” Rabelais presents prospective fear as a valid mode of experiencing the world, even if it appears as a disturbing one. In his work, fear becomes epistemologically valid.

In Léry’s History of the Voyage to the Land of Brazil, it is the experience of a different land and its population that gives birth to multiple potentialities, in this travel narrative where the meaning of apprehension as prospective fear emerges. Léry’s encounter with the Tupinamba complexifies his present beliefs at the time of experience, and gives birth to several possibilities that will remain unverifiable: will the Tupi be

43 converted or not? What is their relationship to Europeans? What will be the fate of France in Brazil? In his physical apprehension of the Tupi and their customs, fear becomes a cognitive tool, allowing the Calvinist narrator/ character to present himself as a suffering, thus learning, and thus trustworthy subject to his European audience. The Voyage depicts the cognitive challenges that the Calvinist traveler had to face, putting his theological beliefs regarding conversion to the test of the Tupi’s existence and resistance. In his work, experience becomes epistemologically valid.

Marguerite de Valois’ Memoirs serve as testimony of the stressfull lived experience of a royal family member. In this retrospective and autobiographical narrative apprehension always refers to prospective anxiety. It is the renewed experience of fear that creates the multiplicity of potential outcomes that fuels the narrator/ protagonist’s apprehension. Uncertainty indeed characterizes this narrative and the political times in which it is set and written, during which a national massacre immediately follows a royal wedding. Being in a constant state of in-betweenness (political, interpersonal, spatial, religious) makes Valois extremely aware of both the duplicity and the impermanence of things. She expresses the emotions associated with this awareness and also presents emotions as cognitive tools. In response to the political and social violence of the Wars of

Religion, Valois develops an acute sense that prudence as a key political and moral value has become obsolete, and that the past, the present and the future are disjointed entities. In her work, emotions become epistemologically valid.

44 “Peur Sans Cause:”

Panurge’s Apprehensive Behavior in the Tiers Livre and the Quart Livre

This first chapter is devoted to a famous moment of 16th century literature:

Panurge’s fear during a horrific tempest in Rabelais’ Quart Livre, a well-studied episode whose narration spreads over 8 chapters in the edition of 1552. The Quart Livre tells the story of a crew, led by the giant Pantagruel, who sets out to sea in search of the oracle of the “Dive Bouteille” in order to find out if Panurge, the trickster of the group, should get married or not. This passage is mostly made memorable not only by the impetuosity of the elements but by Panurge’s fear. Unlike the other companions who strive (“s’évertuent”) in order to save the boat and themselves, Panurge runs around, screams, prays, asks questions, terrified by the idea of dying at sea, and thus unable to help the rest of the crew. This behavior is not to the taste of Epistémon who bids him to help and of Frère Jean who scolds and insults him. Panurge’s fear is later assessed and judged by all the companions, including Pantagruel, once the danger is over. Frère Jean declares that Panurge had “peur sans cause” because he prophesizes that he will die by anything but water. During the tempest, not only is Panurge experiencing fear, considering the immediate danger of the storm, but he is also experiencing apprehension: the fear of not knowing if he will die or survive. This feeling is actually the one that sets in motion the plot of the Tiers Livre, and by extension the one of the Quart Livre: Panurge wondering if he should get married or not, unable to decide, and apprehensive of not knowing how the future will unfold.

The Tempest episode is often presented as following a binary: Panurge’s fear is opposed to Pantagruel’s courage, Panurge’s empty prayers are opposed to Epistémon’s,

Frère Jean’s and Pantagruel’s active faith. Whether in moral or religious terms, Panurge is

45 on the negative end of the spectrum. In this chapter I would like to consider Panurge’s fear in cognitive terms, in order to show what he has and what the others lack. Instead of wondering if Panurge’s fear is good or bad, valid or not, I’d like to closely analyze how it is expressed and to study the cognitive elements at play in Pantagruel’s judgment of

Panurge’s fear. The main characteristic of Panurge’s apprehensive mind is, I argue, its flexibility: its ability to project itself through space and time and to contemplate a multiplicity of outcomes. I thus suggest that cognitive flexibility, rather than a lack of courage or faith, is at the source of his apprehensive behavior towards marriage and death.

I contend that Rabelais thus proposes a revision of the binary between fear and courage, presenting an apprehensive behavior as an integral part of the knowledge process. My analysis focuses on the fact that the word “apprehension” appears in this episode which is the most fearful of the giant’s adventures, but does not yet refer to prospective fear, although the entire plot is centered around the apprehensive behavior of one of the main characters. Ultimately by analyzing this tension I would like to show how cognition and emotion are deeply intertwined in Rabelais’ work through the character of Panurge.

“Mais si (dist Panurge) ma femme me faisait coqu, comme vous savez qu’il est en grande année, ce serait assez pour me faire trespasser hors les gonds de patience.”81 It is with this dramatic statement that Panurge starts to share his anxiety about marriage to

Pantagruel in chapter 9 of the Tiers Livre.82 He then develops a series of hypotheses, imagining what could happen if he did, or did not get married. This fast and repetitive

81 For this chapter I will consider the version of 1552 in François Rabelais et al., Les cinq livres (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 1994). 82 Rabelais, 603.

46 enumeration of possible future outcomes makes it hard for his companion, the giant and benevolent king Pantagruel, to give valuable advice and his answers keep switching between “well, get married then” or “well, then don’t,” until he finally says in the following chapter that, once a decision has been made, one has to embark on the adventure blindfolded and to recommend oneself to God. We would describe Panurge’s feeling today with the French word appréhension: the fear of not knowing how things will unfold in the future. Here, reflecting on making the leap that separates the bachelor life from the married life, of going from one social status to another, Panurge foresees the worst, apprehensive of what could happen. Unable to know what the future will hold, his anxiety is created by the multiplicity of outcomes that he imagines could occur. What Panurge fears is the risk of novelty, the risk of change: “Mais (dist Panurge) si vous cognoissiez que mon meilleur feust tel que je suys demeurer, sans entreprendre cas de nouvelleté, j’aymerois mieulx ne me marier poinct.”83 Panurge’s doubt triggers the narrative of the Tiers Livre, where the characters will explore a series of prediction practices to assuage his anxiety about the future, but in vain. It is this quest for certainty that also sets in motion the journey of the

Quart Livre, where the companions go to sea in search for the Dive Bouteille. In the central episode of this adventure, Panurge’s apprehensive behavior strikes again: the crew encounters a horrendous tempest and, while everyone is trying to save the boat, Panurge’s prospective fear is set loose. Too busy contemplating the possibilities of death and of salvation, he is unable to help the crew, which makes him the target of Frère Jean and

Epistémon’s reproaches.

The Tempest episode of the Quart Livre has been the object of particular attention

83 Rabelais, 603.

47 on the part of Rabelaisian critics such as Michael Screech,84 Florence Weinberg,85 and

Frank Lestringant,86 among others. The consensus is that the comic and the religious elements complete each other, in this passage that celebrates the combination of faith and action in a situation of danger, where Pantagruel is the model and Panurge the antithetic alter-ego, and that mixes the evangelical tradition inspired by Erasmus’ Shipwreck and the heroicomical one inspired by Folengo. The tempest episode indeed inscribes itself in a larger moral tradition, as Frank Lestringant summarizes:

Parmi les traits communs à toutes ces “tempêtes”, […] l’on remarque une

aptitude particulière à la moralisation. En tant qu’épreuve cruciale, le

naufrage ou son risque imminent - et c’est la variante narrative qui va

l’emporter après Erasme- permet de qualifier une attitude morale privilégiée,

que celle-ci soit expliquée en termes strictement psychologiques ou rapportée

au contraire au plan supérieur de la théologie, et de définir par contraste, son

84 M. A. Screech, L’evangelisme de Rabelais; Aspects de La Satire Religieuse Au XVIe Siecle. (Geneve,: E. Droz, 1959). 85 Florence Weinberg “Comic and Religious Elements in Rabelais’ “Tempête en mer,” Etudes rabelaisiennes 15. (Genève: E. Droz, 1980).: 129-140: “The central concern of most scholars who, in the last thirty years, have examined Rabelais’ “Tempête en mer” (Quart Livre, 18-23), has been to evaluate the religious message and/or the comic value of the incident […] I do intend to add a few touches that will bolster the idea that Rabelais was consciously striving both to create a comic effect and to convey a religious message to those of his readers equipped to receive it: in short, the rendering of the Storm at Sea is quite consistent with Rabelais’ entire approach” 86 Franck Lestringant, “La famille des “tempêtes en mer”: essai de généalogie (Rabelais, Thevet et quelques autres),” Études de lettres 201-2 (1937): 45-62: “Les tenants et aboutissants de l’épisode de la tempête en mer du Quart Livre (chapitres 18 à 24) sont suffisamment connus depuis les travaux fondamentaux de M.A. Screech, récemment résumés et mis à jour par Florence WeinbergLe but de cet essai n’est donc pas d’apporter une lumière totalement nouvelle sur la genèse d’un texte justement célèbre pour la complexité de la position religieuse- entre orthodoxie et Réforme- qui s’y dessine dans l’intervalle des rédactions de 1548 et de 1552. Au lieu de parcourir après bien d’autres la ligne d’ascendance directe d’un épisode qui procède, comme l’on sait, de l’entrecroisment de deux traditions (celle, évangéliste que fonde le Naufragium d’Erasme, et celle héroïco-comique, illustrée par tel livre des Macaronées de Folengo, où l’attitude veule couarde et superstitieuse de Cingar contraste avec la conduite active et résolue du chevalier Balde) nous emprunterons la voie détournée d’une série d’écrits “collatéraux.”

48 envers satirique.87

The contrast is produced by Panurge’s behavior, erratic and fearful, multiplying the prayers to the saints and the Virgin Mary, opposed to the proactive behaviors of Frère Jean,

Epistémon, and Pantagruel, collaborating to their salvation through action, and putting their hope in God. In “Panurge Perplexus: Ambiguity and Relativity in the Tiers

Livre,” Donaldson-Evans underlines the binary tendency of the Rabelaisian critic to see

Panurge either as a fool, or as the complete spokesman and hero of Rabelais. Instead of questioning Panurge, he wants to show how Pantagruel can be questioned too, that he is as flawed as Panurge and that consequently, they are both comical characters.88 This binary opposition between a miscreant immoral Panurge and a morally superior and faithful

Pantagruel throughout the adventures of the giant and his companions has also been questioned in the works of Myriam Marrache-Gourraud in “Hors toute intimidation:

”Panurge ou la parole singulière and Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou in Panurge Comme

Lard En Pois: Paradoxe, Scandale Et Propriété Dans Le Tiers Livre," that I will refer to in my analysis of this emblematic passage.89 In this chapter I will myself advocate for a redefinition of the hierarchical relationship between Panurge and Pantagruel, changing the criteria of evaluation and moving from the moral to the cognitive realm. I would indeed like to show how Rabelais, by making one of the main character’s apprehensive behavior towards marriage the very catalyst of the plot of the Tiers Livre and by devoting the central

87 Lestringant, “La famille des “tempêtes en mer,” 46. 88 Lance K Donaldson-Evans, “Panurge Perplexus: Ambiguity and Relativity in the Tiers Livre,” Etudes rabelaisiennes 15.: 77-96. 89 Myriam Marrache-Gouraud, “Hors toute intimidation:” Panurge ou la parole singulière. Etudes rabelaisiennes 41, (Genève: Librairie Droz, 2003). and Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou, Panurge Comme Lard En Pois: Paradoxe, Scandale Et Propriété Dans Le "Tiers Livre" (Genève: Droz, 2013).

49 episode of the Quart Livre to his apprehensive behavior towards death, introduces prospective fear, as a valid behavior, at the heart of human psychology. This behavior might not be the best one, but it is a legitimate one, and Rabelais presents the reader with its expression, its modalities and the responses of the other characters to it, in order to offer it as one of the possible reactions to the uncertainty of how the future will unfold. Through this focus on the character’s anticipatory anxiety, the reader gets to see the inner mechanism of the apprehensive mind. Its main characteristic, I argue, is its flexibility, its ability to project itself through space and time. This chapter will thus present Panurge’s apprehensive behavior as an excess of flexibility rather than a lack of courage. His ability to contemplate a multiplicity of possibilities is, I think, one of the causes of these recurring moments of apprehension that he is overcome with. By focusing on the expression of

Panurge’s prospective fear I will show how Rabelais proposes a revision of the simple binary opposing fear to courage, during a fearful time of the 16th century where free will was being debated and the rise of the Reformation was creating strong divides between thinkers whose life and safety was often put on the line. By removing the focus from the moral connotations of the passage and, instead of establishing a hierarchy of characters according to moral or religious values, by considering the characters’ cognitive abilities I will argue that Panurge is the one who fears the most because he has a particular way to situate himself spatially and temporally that differs from the other characters. Considering his behavior in cognitive instead of moral terms will allow us to show how this flexibility is in direct conflict with the other character’s attempt to produce a stable meaning, and to redefine the traditional interpretation of this passage by giving a new meaning to Panurge’s fear: one that will relate prospective fear to imagination, curiosity and will, three terms that

50 undergo drastic redefinitions and revaluations during the 16th century, and that are at the heart of cognitive anxieties characteristic of this time period.

1. Expression of Panurge’s apprehension

Let us see first how this prospective fear is expressed in the two passages where it is the most poignant: his fear of getting married in the Tiers Livre and his fear of dying at sea in the Quart Livre. In the Tiers Livre episode we notice that Panurge’s apprehension is never referred to with adjectives or verbs belonging to the vocabulary of fear but rather is expressed linguistically by a series of hypothetical statements: “Mais si (dist Panurge) ma femme me faisait coqu […] ce serait assez pour me faire trespasser hors les gonds de patience”90 and rhetorical questions “Voyre mais puis que de femme ne me peuz passer en plus qu’un aveugle de baston […] n’est ce le mieux que je me associe quelque honeste et preude femme?”91 These questions bring to life the multiple possible outcomes that could occur in the future and this back and forth makes it very hard for Pantagruel to give advice.

Two nouns, uttered by Panurge and then Pantagruel, express the opposite of apprehension that Pantagruel is unfortunately unable to convey to Panurge: “espoir” and “assurance”

(hope and certainty). They appear in the two following quotes, uttered by Panurge and

Pantagruel: “Voire mais (dist Panurge) je n’aurois jamais aultrement filz ne filles legitimes, es quelz j’eusse espoir mon nom et armes perpetuer”92 and “Il se y convient mettre à l’adventure, les oeilz bandez, baissant la teste, baisant la terre, et se recommandant

à Dieu au demourant, puys qu’une foys l’on se y vault mettre. Aultre asceurance ne vous

90 Rabelais, 603. 91 Rabelais, 603. 92 Rabelais, 605.

51 en sçauroys je donner.”93 Panurge’s apprehension is also expressed through a process of enumeration, through which he voices a series of potential negative and positive outcomes, a parody of the scholastic disputatio. Pantagruel’s repetitive answers, “well get married then” or “well don’t,” provide each time a catalyst for a new hypothesis on Panurge’s end, thus creating a dialogue that could potentially be endless. Stylistically, Panurge’s apprehension is thus expressed by: hypotheses, questions, enumeration, alternation between positive and negative outcomes.

In terms of content: he expresses successively a fear of novelty, of solitude, of being a cuckold, of unplanned risk (he is scared of being beaten by a violent sexual partner or to catch a sexually transmitted disease if he has new sexual partners all the time), a fear of being beaten by his wife and of being violent himself in return, which would lead to exhaustion, a fear of not being taken care of if sick because no one would be obligated towards him, a fear of being a cuckold and mocked and robbed by his wife while he is sick, a fear of not having children and thus not being able to transmit anything or not knowing the joys of being a father. This long list shows how Panurge brings to life a series of potential scenarios before they can even occur.

In the Quart Livre episode Panurge expresses both fear, facing the direct danger of the storm, and apprehension, considering potential future outcomes and the possible modalities of being saved and of dying, instead of helping his friends stir the boat. The lexical field of fear is extremely present in this episode, as you can see in the lexical summary below:

93 Rabelais, 607.

52 -During the storm: “effroy” (995: narrator describing Panurge), “dangier” (995: Panurge); “j’ai belle paour” (995 Panurge); “dangier” (999: Frere Jean); “dangier” (999: Panurge); “jamais n’avoient paour” (1001: Panurge talking about Gods); “soyons hors de ce dangier” (1003: Panurge); “j’ay grand paour que soit Helene la paillarde” (1011: Panurge)

-Once they are safe: “il tremble de peur quand il est saoul” (1011: frère jean about Panurge), “Si […] paour il a eu” (1011: Pantagruel); “craindre en tout heurt” (1011: Pantagruel); “ne craindre quand le cas est evidentement redoutable” (1013: Pantagruel); “à craindre” (1011 x 2: Pantagruel); “J’ay du courage prou, voyre. De paour bien peu […] pas maille de crainte” (1013: Panurge); “j’ay eu de paour et de frayeur non moins que Panurge” (1015: Epistemon); “n’ayez paour” (1015: the pilot about the thickness of the boat); “vous faictez bien, mesurant le peril à l’aulne de paour. Je n’en ay point quant est de moy: je m’appelle Guillaume sans paour […] et ne crains rien que les dangiers” (1017: Panurge); “frere Jean qui boyt et meurt de paour” (1017: Panurge); “ceulx qui sur mer navigent tant pres sont du continuel dangier de mort qu’ilz vivent mourans, et mourent vivens.” (1019: Pantagruel); “durant la tempeste tu as eu paour sans cause et sans raison” (1019: Frère Jean about Panurge who cannot die by water); “n’aye jamais paour de l’eau” (1019: Frère Jean).

Here it is important to underline that the publication of the Tiers Livre and then the Quart

Livre were met with intense controversy, both on the Catholic and on the Reformed side.

On March 28, 1546, Rabelais was expelled from France and the interdiction of the Tiers

Livre is pronounced by the Faculty of Theology, the censorship of Pantagruel and

Gargantua had been renewed in 1544. On August 3, 1546 Etienned Dolet is executed: strangled and burnt with his books because of accusations of materialism, atheism and

Lutherianism. In July 1549, following the publication of the short version of the Quart

Livre, Gabriel du Puy-Herbaut attacks Rabelais in his Theotimus accusing him of irreligiosity and of a corrupted lifestyle. In 1550, Calvin attacks Rabelais in De Scandalis adding him to a list of heretic writers, as we can see in the French translation below:

Chacun scait qu’Agrippa, Villeneuve, Dolet et leurs semblables ont

53 toujours orgueilleusement condamné l’Evangile; en la fin, ils sont tombez

en telle rage, que non seulement ils ont desgorgé leurs

blasphemes exécrables contre Jesus Christ et sa doctrine, amis ont estimé,

quant à leurs âmes qu’ils ne differoyent en rien des chiens et des pourceaux.

Les autres, comme Rabelais, Degovea, Deperius et beaucoup d’autres, que

je ne nomme pas pour le présent, après avoir gousté l’Evangile, ont esté

frappés du mesme aveuglement. 94

In August of the same year, Rabelais obtains a royal privilege for the Quart Livre thanks to the protection of the cardinal Odet de Chastillon. However, the longer version of the

Quart Livre is condemned immediately after its publication in 1552 by the Parliament, after a request of the Faculty of Theology, and Rabelais dies the following year. I do not mean to equate Panurge’s fear with Rabelais’, but this passage, devoted to the appropriate behavior for a believer to have in a case of extreme danger, is in direct dialogue with the growing theological conflicts on the question of predestination and salvation, and the rising tension between the Catholics and the Protestants preceding the wars of Religion.95 And this context of growing insecurity is not unrelated to the expansion that the Tempest episode undergoes between the version of 1548 and the one of 1552. In the second version, considerably more attention is devoted to Panurge’s fear: four new chapters are added

(Comment les Nauchiers abandonnèrent les navires au fort de la tempête; Fin de la tempête; Comment la tempête finie, Panurge fait le bon compagnon; Comment par Frère

94 Jean Calvin, Des Scandales / (Genève : Droz, 1984). 95 On this topic see Screech, L’Évangélisme de Rabelais and Lucien Febvre, Le Problème De L'incroyance Au 16e Siècle: La Religion De Rabelais (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988).

54 Jean est déclaré avoir eu peur sans cause durant l’orage) and one title is edited with a new precision: Continuation de la tempête et bref discours sur testaments faits sur mer. The

“testaments” constitute, as we shall see, a key-element to conceptualize death in a prospective manner, and to show how Panurge projects himself through time. The comparative table below allows to visualize the additional chapters between the editions of

1548 and 1552:

Quart Livre de 1548 Quart Livre de 1552

-Comment Pantagruel passa les îles de -Comment Pantagruel passa les îles de Tohu et Bohu: et de l’étrange mort de Tohu et Bohu: et de l’étrange mort de Bringuenarilles, avaleur de moulins à vent Bringuenarilles, avaleur de moulins à vent

-Comment Pantagruel évada une forte -Comment Pantagruel évada une forte tempête en mer tempête en mer

-Quelles contenances eurent Panurge et -Quelles contenances eurent Panurge et Frère Jean durant la tempête Frère Jean durant la tempête

-Continuation de la tempête et des propos -Comment les Nauchiers abandonnèrent de Frère Jean et Panurge les navires au fort de la tempête

-Comment après la tempête, Pantagruel -Continuation de la tempête et bref descendit en l’île des Macreons discours dur testaments faits sur mer

-Fin de la tempête

-Comment la tempête finie, Panurge fait le bon compagnon

-Comment par Frère Jean est déclaré avoir eu peur sans cause durant l’orage

-Comment après la tempête, Pantagruel descendit en l’île des Macreons

To go back to Panurge’s expression of apprehension in this episode, we notice that it is mostly expressed through a form of cognitive flexibility regarding space and time.

55 First of all, the verb tenses he uses demonstrate a flexibility of mind, that really bothers

Frère Jean who sees it as a sign of panic, and that I would like to present as a particular ability to extrapolate and conceive different outcomes. At this liminary moment between life and death, Panurge uses the present and dies before dying: “je naye, je meurs,”96 and then immediately uses the passé composé, projecting himself in the afterworld:

“Consumatum est. C’est faict de moy”97 He then projects himself and the whole crew in the future by imagining how they will die: “Nous ne boirons tantoust que trop” […] Ceste vague nous emportera […] je diz ceste vague de Dieu efondrera nostre nauf.”98 But this does not prevent him from enumerating possible ways of saving themselves, using the conditional: “si presentement nous mangeons quelque espece de Cabirotades, serions nous en surete de cestuy oraige?”99 In addition to this, he remains very attentive to what is happening around him: he utters a series of observations, using the present tense: “Zalas, les vettes sont rompues, le Prodenou est en pieces, les Cosses esclattent, l’arbre du haut de la guatte plonge en mer, la carine est au Soleil, nos Gumenes sont Presque tous rouptz.”100

He even gets a taste of sea water: “Qu’elle est amere et sallée!” 101; which shows how alert and amplified his senses and perception are in this moment of crisis, and which demonstrates an acute apprehension, in the sense of perception, of his surroundings.

Additionally, in this extremely tense moment, where the entire crew needs to focus on the present, Panurge focuses on future hypothetical outcomes transporting himself through space and time through his mention of testaments and his use of promises and

96 Rabelais, 999. 97 Ibidem. 98 Rabelais, 995-997. 99 Rabelais, 1001. 100 Rabelais, 995. 101 Rabelais, 999.

56 prayers. Panurge asks early on in the episode for “un petit mot de testament” and is rebuffed by Frère Jean who underlines the inappropriate nature of his request: “Vertus Dieu, parles tu de testament à ceste heure que nous sommes en dangier, et qu’il nous convient evertuer ou jamais plus?” 102 However Panurge reiterates his wish at the end of chapter 20, using a numeric gradation: “deux motz de testament.”103 Epistemon answers pragmatically: a testament would be useless because if they do not die, there is no need for a testament, and if they do, there will be no one to carry it to land. Weirdly, Epistemon does not bring up the fact that a testament would be useless for Panurge since he lacks what is at the basis of such a notary act: the existence of descendants or relatives. This apparent paradox does not stop Panurge at all, and he himself creates a series of descendants for himself, by summoning literary references and taking an example from the Odyssey. With the help of an imaginary Nausicaa fulfilling the role of testamentary executor, he exhumes from the past a list of heroic figures that he transposes in his own future, thus making them, via a temporal pun, his heirs and successors: “Quelque bonne vague (respondit Panurge) le jectera à bout comme fict Ulyxes: et quelque fille de Roy, allant à l’esbat sus le serain, la rencontrera, puis le fera tresbien executer: et pres le rivaige me fera eriger quelque magnificque cenotaphe: comme fesit Dido à son mary Syché: Aeneas à Deiphobus […]

Andromache à Hector […] Germain de Brie à Hervé Breton.”104 By bringing up sixteen examples of the kind, Panurge fills in this relational lack with his own words. He creates the intermediary he needs (Nausicaa) to make himself part of the lineage of these filial or friendly relationships, whose memory is perpetuated by the physical remanence of these

102 Ibidem. 103 Rabelais, 1005. 104 Rabelais, 1007.

57 numerous cenotaphs. As he envisions his own death, Panurge brings back to life a series of dead characters, and builds a monument for himself, and a series of syntactic descendants who are at the same time his predecessors. But Frère Jean cuts him short with his question: “Resvez tu?;”105 placing this cognitive flexibility once and for all on the fanciful and irrational side. Indeed, the word is often used negatively in this time period, defined by Cotgrave as “Resveur: m. A dotard, or dreaming fop, a rauing, trifling, fond, or idle cokes.”106

But this question does not stop Panurge who also displays an architectural imagination when making promises to saints. Praying Saint Michael and Saint Nicholas, he transposes himself into the future, and promises, if they save him, to build them one

“belle grande petite chapelle” or even two. This antithetic use of the adjectives is made even more ambiguous by the following rhyming couplet: “Entre Quande et Monsoreau, Et n’y paistra vache ne veau.”107 These two villages are indeed adjacent, making it impossible to build anything between the two. But Panurge turns his nose up at these impossibilia, and creates a space where there is none, the versified insertion building this material space within the text itself. He thus linguistically builds castles in the sky, both for himself and for others, when he mentions the testaments or when he makes promises. This flexibility even allows him to reverse the two locations of the French saying aller de Charybde en

Scylla, inspired from the two Homeric sea monsters, spatially located on the opposite sides

105 Ibidem. 106 Rabelais, Tiers Livre, chapter 37, 779: “Pantagruel, soy retirant, aperceut par la guallerie Panurge en maintien de un resveur, ravassant et dodelinant de la teste, et luy dist: "vous me semblez à une souriz empegée; tant plus elle s'efforce soy depestrer de la poix, tant plus elle s'en embreneVous, semblablement efforsant issir hors les lacs de perplexité, plus que davant y demourez empestré, et n'y sçay remede fors un.” 107 Rabelais, 999.

58 of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland: “Nous allons de Scylle en

Carybde.”108

This spatial flexibility is also to be found in the way he himself travels through prayers. Panurge wants to be somewhere else, and through his call for help to God, he leaves the sinking boat through words: “Pleust à Dieu […] que maintenant […] je feusse en terre ferme;” “Pleust à Dieu que praesentement je feusse dedans la Orque des bons et beatz peres concilipetes;” “Pleust à la digne vertus de Dieu que à heure praesente je feusse dedans le clos de Seuillé, ou chés Innocent le pastissier, davant la cave paincte à Chinon, sus poine de me mettre en pourpoinct pour cuyre les petitz pastez.”109 Using the hypothetical mode of the subjunctive Panurge, in this last sentence, transports us in a cozy, reassuring scene of daily life. And even at the very climax of the episode, when the

“nauchiers abandonnent les navires”, and immediately following Pantagruel’s cry for help to God, Panurge uses a prayer again as a locus translatio: “Dieu, envoye moy quelque daulphin pour me saulver en terre comme un beau petit Arion”110 identifying himself in this last quote with the Dionysiac poet carried ashore by dolphins after having been captured by pirates. So what we can conclude from this first analysis is that Panurge’s fear allows him to be spatially and temporally ubiquitous.

And if we consider the general narratological framework of the Tempest episode and the two other sets of chapters framing it, we notice a narrative continuity focusing on the temporality of death. Chapter 17 is devoted to the giant Bringuenarilles, sick to his stomach after having eaten pots and pans as a substitute of the windmills that he usually

108 Rabelais, 1005. 109 Rabelais, 997, 999, 1003. 110 Rabelais, 1007.

59 eats, who ends up dying of the very own remedy prescribed by the doctors: a piece of fresh butter. This anecdote about a character outside the group of companions gathered around

Pantagurel, prepares the reader to the forthcoming stormy episode, since it deals with the fear of death, and demonstrates how, no matter how prepared one is, death can come in the most unexpected way. It is illustrated by a list of incongruous deaths, the most famous one being the story of Aeschylus killed by a turtle falling from the mouth of an eagle. The surprising death of Bringuenarilles proleptically announces Panurge’s speech on the permanent possibility of the unexpected, where he reacts against the certainty contained in

Frère Jean’s prognostic of his own death by water. This chapter on the fear of death contains multiple occurrences of the vocabulary of fear as prospective: “redoubte”,

“redoubtoient”, “craignoient”, craignoit”, or “craindre.” This lexicon will be, as we will see, present in the Tempest episode, when Pantagruel evaluates Panurge’s behavior.

Bringuenarille’s ars moriendi, introduces the question of the impossibility of anticipating death, first through the figure of a giant, swallower of wind mills, and then through a series of historical exempla. This matter will then take on a much more realistic dimension with

Panurge’s fear, a human being embarked on a gigantic adventure. On the other end of the

Tempest episode, the following chapters are devoted to the death of heroes and address the other side of the phenomenon. By not only mentioning the way heroic deaths are announced but also considering the aftermath of these disappearances, these chapters cross the irreversible temporal border that the Bringuenarilles and the Tempest episode were only contemplating and conceptualize the time after death. This reflection ends with the only tears that Pantagruel sheds in the narrative, as big as an ostrich’s eggs, the death of the mythical god and hero Pan being put in relation with the death of Guillaume du Bellay,

60 Seigneur de Langey and protector of Rabelais.111 Here, even if it is more discrete than

Panurge’s, Pantagruel also expresses an emotional and physical reaction to death. The chapters that frame the Tempest episode thus give a temporal dimension to this punctual event that is death and fully inscribe it within the human experience, conceptualizing its anticipation by and its consequences on the living ones. In his article “L'île des Macraeons, ou les ambiguïtés du transitus rabelaisien (Quart Livre, Ch XXV à XXVIII)” Nicolas Le

Cadet underlines the importance of temporality in this passage by analyzing the way these chapters engage in a reflexion on the concept of transitus: the articulation of the pagan

Antiquity with the christianism of the Renaissance, theorized by Guillaume Budé in De transitu hellenismi ad christianismum (1535): “Nouvel épisode de la geste pantagruélique, l'épisode des Macraeons joint la fiction la plus fabuleuse à une réflexion on ne peut plus sérieuse sur l'une des questions fondamentales posées à tout chrétien du XVIe siècle. Avec

Rabelais, le « transitus » cesse d'être une simple notion abstraite, monopole de l'histoire des idées, pour devenir un objet de pratique littéraire.”112 The Tempest episode, in which

Panurge exemplifies a particular relationship to space and time through projections and hypotheses, is thus framed by a reflection on time, and on the transition on what state to another, at the micro level of the individual or at the macro level of civilizations.

2-Evaluation of Panurge’s apprehension:

Once the danger is past, Panurge fear is being evaluated by the other characters. This is why the vocabulary of fear is much more present when the danger is past, than during the

111 See Screech, L’Évangélisme de Rabelais, 467-469. 112 Nicolas Le Cadet, “L'île des Macraeons, ou les ambiguïtés du transitus rabelaisien (Quart Livre, Ch XXV à XXVIII),” RHR Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 61 (2005): 51-72.

61 Tempest, as we can notice from the lexical summary previously presented. The ultimate judgment is supposed to be the one of Pantagruel considering that he is the leader of the crew and that his behavior has been exemplary: he contributed to their salvation by firmly holding the mast during the Tempest and encouraging the crew. However, I would like to underline the fact that Pantagruel’s judgment is actually not clear at all. And that what is usually presented as this episode’s closure actually does not solve anything, and, rather, complicates the situation. The giant, as we have seen throughout the narrative, does not show a lot of curiosity and cannot be accused of hybris on that matter. But once the danger is over, he finally pays attention to what has been at the heart of the narrative in the previous chapters : Panurge’s fear. “ Mais qui est cestuy Ucalegon là bas qui ainsi crie et se desconforte ? Ne tenoys-je l’arbre assurement des mains, et plus droict que ne feroient deux cens gumens ? ”113 The use of the adverbial phrase of place “ là bas” suddenly changes the perspective of the whole episode : Panurge, who was at the center of it, now seems distant and remote. This could of course point to the giant’s physical and moral superiority but it also shows how estranged Pantagruel was from what happened on his very own boat, among his very own crew. This seems to be confirmed by Epistemon’s intervention a few lines later when he rephrases what happened for Pantagruel, thus providing the reader at the same time an interpretation of the different behaviors exemplified during the tempest :

“ Croyez, seigneur, que j’ay eu de paour et de frayeur non moins que Panurge. Mais quoy ?

Je ne me suys espargné au secours.”114 It seems that Epistemon’s commentary is here to clarify Pantagruel’s comment on Panurge’s fear, and to make up for the ambiguity of his comment. Here are the words that Pantagruel then pronounces to evaluate Panurge’s fear

113 Rabelais, 1011. 114 Rabelais, 1015.

62 during the storm:

Si (dist Pantagruel) paour il a eu durant ce Colle horrible et perilleux

Fortunal, pourveu que au reste il se feust evertué, je ne l’en estime un pellet

moins. Car, comme craindre115 en tout heurt est indice de gros et lasche

Coeur, ainsi comme faisoit Agamemnon: et pour ceste cause le disoit

Achilles en ses reproches ignominieusement avoir oeilz de chien et Coeur

de cerf: aussi ne craindre quand le cas est evidemment redoubtable, est signe

de peu ou faulte d’apprehension. Or si chose est en cette vie à craindre, apres

l’offense de Dieu, je ne veulx dire que ce soit la mort. Je ne veulx entrer en

la dispute de Socrate et des Academicques: mort n’estre de soy maulvaise,

mort n’estre de soy à craindre. Je dis ceste espece de mort par naufraige

estre, ou rien n’estre à craindre. Car comme est la sentence de Homere,

chose grieve, abhorrente et dénaturée est périr en mer.116

There, Pantagruel addresses Panurge’s behavior in moral terms but also in cognitive ones, which complicates the interpretation of this passage. To understand what the expression

“faulte d’apprehension” means here, it is important to look at the three other occurrences of the word in the Rabelaisian text: in chapter 31 of the Tiers Livre and in the dedication to Odet de Chastillon at the beginning of the Quart Livre. In chapter 31

“Comment Rondibilis, medicin, conseille Panurge,” the doctor gives Panurge five ways to

115 Crainte is actually the word that will be used to define appréhension in the Richelet dictionary: Dictionnaire Richelet, 1680: APRÉHENDER, v.a. Craindre[On ne peut envisager fixement la mort sans l'apréhender.] Apréhensif, apréhensive, adjQui craint[Enfant apréhensifPetite fille fort apréhensive.] Apréhension, s.f Crainte[Etre en une perpétuëlle apréhensionAblLuc.] 116 Rabelais, 1011-1013.

63 neutralize his sexual impetus. The fourth one is to devote oneself to intensive study. In this passage he describes in great detail the mechanics of the studying mind and its influence on the faculties:

Qu'ainsi soit, contemplez la forme d'un homme attentif à quelque estude; vous

voirez en luy toutes les arteres du cerveau bendées comme la chorde d'une

arbaleste pour luy fournir dextrement espritz suffisans à emplir les ventricules

du sens commun, de l'imagination et apprehension, de la ratiocination et

resolution, de la memoire et recordation, et agilement courir de l'un à

l'aultre par les conduictz manifestes en anatomie sus la fin du retz admirable

on quel se terminent les arteres.117

In the Dédicace à Odet de Chastillon, a revised version of the 1548 Prologue,118 Rabelais references the scholastic and neo-platonic belief that the animal spirits could be projected through the eyes and literally transmit the states of the soul:

Plus y a. Sus un passaige du père Hippocrates on livre cy dessus allegué

nous suons disputans & recherchans non si le minois du medicin chagrin,

tetrique, reubarbatif, Catonian, mal plaisant, mal content, sevère, rechigné

contriste le malade: & du medicin la face ioyeuse, seraine, gratieuse,

ouverte, plaisante resiouist le malade. Cela est tout esprouvé & trescertain.

Mais si telles contristations & esiouissemens proviennent

117 Rabelais, 745. 118 Prologue de 1548, dit ancien prologue: “Plus y a sur un passaige du sixiesme des Epidemies dudict père Hyppocrates, nous suons disputans, à sçavoir non, si la face du medecin chagrin, tretricque, reubarbatif, mal plaisant, mal content, contriste le malade & du medecin la face ioyeuse, sereine, plaisante, riante, ouverte, esiouyst le malade? (Cela est tout esprouvé & certain) mais que telles contristations & esiouyssemens proviennent par apprehension du malade contemplant ces qualitez, ou par transfusion des espritz sereins ou tenebreux, ioyeux ou tristes du medecin, ou malade: comme est l'advis des Platonicques, & Averroistes.”

64 par apprehension du malade contemplant ces qualitez en son medicin, & par

icelles coniecturant l'issue & catastrophe de son mal ensuivir: sçavoir est

par les ioyeuses ioyeuse et desirée, par les fascheuses fascheuse &

abhorrente. Ou par transfusion des esperitz serains ou tenebreux: aerez ou

terrestres, ioyeulx ou melancholiques du medicin en la persone du malade.

Comme est l'opinion de Platon, & Averroïs.” 119

Apprehension is the faculty through which this transfusion of spirits occurs. It is thus the faculty that makes an individual porous to their environment. A lack of apprehension thus means being impermeable to one’s surroundings, which will then prevent to process the interaction or the situation through reason. In the three passages, apprehension is presented as one of the faculties of the mind, alongside memory, imagination and common sense, following the medieval cell doctrine model that is going to evolve during the

Renaissance.120 If we go back to the passage where Pantagruel assesses Panurge’s behavior, we can see how his use of this expression complicates the interpretation of the

Tempest episode. The first thing we can notice is that, apparently, Pantagruel does not condemn Panurge’s behavior or at least does not address, what is, according to Frère Jean and Epistémon, the main problem here, and what is often presented as being at the heart of this chapter devoted to the question of free will and to the relationship between man and

God: the fact that Panurge did not help and remained passive. The giant does not question it, since apparently he did not witness it, and only mentions the necessity of action at the beginning of the passage, as if Panurge had followed it: “pourveu que au reste il se feust evertué.” Epistemon thus has to denounce Panurge’s lack of action and to provide the

119 Rabelais, 875. 120 See Marie-Luce Demonet, “Le lieu où l’on pense, ou le désordre des facultés.”

65 reader with the whole theological lesson of the passage : “de nostre part, convient pareillement nous evertuer, et comme dict le sainct Envoyé, ester cooperateurs avecques luy.”121 Pantagruel, however, transposes the debate to the question of a constant apprehensive behavior that he defines as “craindre en tout heurt.” He attributes this state of permanent fear to Agamemnon, referring to his famous quarrel with Achilles. So it seems that Panurge should be associated with this counter-exemplum and thus condemned, since we have seen that he is always apprehensive. But Pantagruel does not directly relate

Panurge to Agamemnon.122 But then why bring such a crucial example from Antiquity if the critic is not explicit? The displacement of the issue at stake continues when Pantagruel then turns more specifically to the fear of death saying that death should not be feared. So we can assume that Panurge’s behavior was wrong then. But he immediately continues by saying that the fear of dying at sea is the only valid fear. So then it seems that Panurge’s fear was justified? He concludes with this observation: “Il n’est ceans mort persone.”123

This assessing affirmation is enounced principally to show how powerful the mercy of God was, and how grateful to Him the whole crew should be (“Dieu servateur en soit eternellement reconnaissant”). But it also kind of contradicts the legitimacy of Panurge’s fear of death by stating that the result is the opposite of what was feared: everyobody is

121 Rabelais, 1041. On the signification of this crucial word, “cooperateurs,” see: Screech, L’Évangélisme de Rabelais.,chapter III, 42-56. 122 “O grand yvrogne en maintien ressemblant / Ung chien mutint : mais de cœur plus tremblant / Que n'est ung Cerf, estant mis aux abboys : / Lasche couard, meschant, entre les Roys / Qui onc n'osa t'acoustrer de tes armes, / Hanter assaulx, escarmouches, alarmes : / Encores moins adresser quelque embusche : / Craignant tousjours qu'on y meure, ou tresbuche / Cruel Tyran qui le peuple devores, / Et prens plaisir quand quelcun deshonores, / Grand oppresseur, & rongeur des petitz / Contrarians à tes faulx appetitz, / Si j'eus le creu n'aguetes mon courage : / Tu n'eusses faict jamais à nul dommage, / Car tout soudain, sans nul espoir de grace, / Je t'eusse mort estendu sur la place.” (Les dix premiers livres de l'Iliade d'Homère, Prince des Poëtes : Traduictz en vers Francois par M. Hugues Salel, 1545, Livre I, vers 225- 240). 123 Rabelais, 1013.

66 alive and well. In the end, he sweeps away the entire debate “Mais vrayement voicy un mesnage assez mal en ordre. Bien. Il nous fauldra reparer ce bris. Guardez que ne donnons par terre:”124 no harm’s done, let’s clean the deck. And this is how Pantagruel concludes what the readers had expected as a judgement of Panurge’s fear. Hence, the clear distinction between a fearful Panurge and a brave Pantagruel is complicated by this ambiguous judgement, since the brave character does not condemn explicitly the behavior of the fearful one. Following Myriam Marrache-Gourraud, I believe that Rabelais offers a revision of the traditional interpretations associated with fear:

Ne pas avoir peur quand le moment est réellement terrifiant et exige une

réponse appropriée, est signe d’une mauvaise compréhension de la situation

et témoigne de l’imprudence du sujet. La peur n’est donc pas toujours à

blâmer. Le sujet n’appartient pas seulement au monde burlesque et manichéen

de Franc Archier de Baignolet: suivant cette tradition comique, Rabelais en

restitue les éléments bouffons, tels les bredouillis, la fuite précipitée, les

gestes empêtrés ou paralysés, la diarrhée. Cependant la peur entre aussi dans

la discussion questionnante, dans les échanges réfléchis. Les exemples

fameux sont convoqués, dans l’esprit d’une révision des interprétations

associées à la peur. De fait, son antithèse, le courage, n’est plus

nécessairement un exemple à suivre. Pendant la tempête, la conscience

d’être “à deux doigts de la mort”, parce que l’épaisseur de la coque du navire

est de deux doigts, empêche Panurge d’imiter le modèle courageux de

Pantagruel. Le seul comportement louable et digne d’intérêt en pareil

124 Ibidem.

67 circonstance est pour lui la fuite- il le répète suffisamment- ou la prière et

l’immobilité gémissante.125

The word “conscience” that Marrache-Gouraud uses here, is to be directly related to

“apprehension.” Panurge is indeed hyper-conscious of the possibility of death, which drastically increases his anxiety. Montaigne in the essay “Of Physionomy” (III, 12) devoted to the fear of death uses the same expression as Pantagruel in his evaluation of Panurge’s fear, and explains his peasant neighbors’ lack of fear towards death by their lack of apprehension (here the meaning is complex and synonymous with intelligence, jugement, entendement): “Le commun, n'a besoing ny de remede ny de consolation, qu’au hurt, et au coup. Et n'en considere qu'autant justement qu'il en souffre. Est-ce pas ce que nous disons, que la stupidité, et faute d'apprehension, du vulgaire, luy donne cette patience aux maux presens, et cette profonde nonchalance des sinistres accidens futurs?” 126 So what we can conclude from Pantagruel’s judgment and Montaigne’s quote is that a lack of apprehension leads to a lack of fear. If we reverse this statement it would mean that an excess of apprehension causes an excess of fear. What is certain is that both quotes establish a relationship between apprehension and prospective fear.

3. Cognitive anxieties: Imagination, Curiosity, Will

Panurge’s mind, as we have seen, goes in every spatial and temporal direction, and leads to what has been described as a lack of courage. I would like to emphasize that this excess, in Panurge’s character, might also point to a lack in the others. His radically different behavior is indeed disturbing, since it resonates with key concerns of the middle

125 Marrache-Gouraud, Etudes rabelaisiennes. 41., 260. 126 Montaigne, Essais, III, 12, 1099.

68 of the 16th century, such as the question of free will, the ambiguity of curiosity, and evolving agency of imagination. I thus argue that Panurge’s behavior embodies here the historical emergence of apprehension as a new category of fear that was previously referred to by the word “crainte.”

To understand this relationship between apprehension and prospective fear we have to look at two other key terms for Renaissance cognition: curiosity and imagination. If we go back to the quote from Rondibilis and the one from Paré mentioned in the introduction, we notice that apprehension and imagination are often coupled. The evolving relationship between the two is, as we have argued, at the heart of 16th century debates about the agency of the different faculties of the mind. Imagination, whose function was primarily to store the images from the outside world grasped by apprehension, will see its agency evolve as a producer of images that seem as real as reality itself. And it is important to remember that it only starts to gain its modern meaning as a fanciful producer of images towards the end of the sixteenth century, as we have mentioned in the introduction. The relationship between apprehension and imagination leads to anxieties, because it questions the relationship between the outside world and the inside of the mind. Here I have avoided qualifying Panurge’s “fantasie” by the term imagination and preferred cognitive flexibility since the term did not yet have the meaning that we give it today.127 The term “flexibility” has positive connotations in the 16th century:

Cotgrave, 1611 - Flexible: com. Pliant, flexible; tractable; soone bent, quickly bowed, easily won or changed; good to be dealt with, sit to be wrought on.

Richelet, 1680 FLÉXIBLE, adj. *Ce mot se dit au propre dans les matieres de Physique, et il veut dire qui a de la fléxibilité. [Corps fléxible.] Et dans le sens figuré il signifie, qui se peut fléchir. Souple. [Esprit fléxible. Il n'est pas fléxible là dessus. Moliere.]

127 See Clark, Vanities of the Eye and Lyons, Before Imagination.

69 Furetière, 1690 - FLEXIBLE. adj. masc. et fem. Qui fleschit, qui plie, qui obeït. Il se dit au propre et au figuré. Les bois qui croissent prés des eaux, comme le saule, le peuplier, sont plus flexibles que les autres. une voix flexible reüssit bien en Musique. un esprit flexible et soûmis fait mieux ses affaires, qu'un dur et un arrogant.

Thomas Greene has used the term and concept in his study of the flexibility of the self in terms of vertical progress towards transcendance or lateral change over time, through humanist pedagogy or mysticism,128 and Stephen Greenblatt has resorted to a synonymous concept in his analysis of social mobility and self-fashioning.129 More recently, Terence

Cave has explored the concept of cognitive flexibility from the reader’s perspective in order to explore the cognitive mechanisms at play when reading fiction.130 I apply the concept of cognitive flexibility not to Rabelais’s readers but to the literary character of Panurge and define it as his ability to transport himself temporally and spatially through the mind at a specific moment in time. Referred to today as “imaginer,” this process could be more accurately described by the term “fantasier” that Cotgrave defines in 1611 as: “To imagine, deuise, conceiue, inuent; cast about, thinke of, reuolue in mind; represent by imagination; also, to fancie, or affect.” In the Tiers Livre in chapter 24 “Comment Panurge prend conseil de Epistémon,” Panurge indeed shares his desire to get married with these words: “Je suys

(dist Panurge), Epistemon mon compere, en phantasie de me marier. Mais je crains estre coqu et infortuné en mon mariage.”131 The adultery that Panurge is fearing is still at an hypothetical stage. The fear of cuckoldry for married husbands is a classical trope of

128 Thomas Greene, “The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature,” in The Disciplines of Criticism; Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation, and History. (New Haven,: Yale University Press, 1968)., 241-264 129 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 130 Cave, Thinking with Literature. 131 Rabelais, 693.

70 medieval and Renaissance literature. In Au Bonheur Des Mâles: Adultère Et Cocuage À

La Renaissance, 1400-1650 Maurice Daumas, establishing the difference between cocuage (fictional, literary, entertaining) and adultery (factual), shows how this future- oriented fear is an integral part of the married condition, or even of the pre-married one:

Le cocuage appartient à l’imaginaire et se présente comme le volet ludique

de l’adultère […] Revenons à l’essence narrative du cocuage, qui requiert

de fouiller son terreau naturel: la littérature de divertissement, dont la

nouvelle constitue le plus beau fleuron. C’est cette essence qui permet

d’avancer l’hypothèse d’un mythe du cocuage. Pour faire un mythe -au sens

le plus fluide du terme-, il faut deux ingrédients: un récit et un

travestissement. Le premier doit être prégnant voire obsessionnel, et axé sur

un personnage dont la destinée éclaire un aspect particulier de la condition

humaine: le mythe du cocuage a pour thème le devenir-cocu de l’homme-

car telle est la destinée de tout aspirant au mariage132

Rabelais, like many writers of his time, often exploits the comical aspect that the theme offers. But in this passage of the Tiers Livre, instead of exploiting the potential comical elements of an actual situation of cuckoldry, Rabelais chooses to focus on the prospective fear that pre-exists the act of betrayal itself, the devenir-cocu that Daumas underlines in the quote above. Rabelais goes even further in the hypothetical realm by staging the doubts of someone who is not even married yet. The adultery situation is completely abstract here, as well as its object: the hypothetical wife. She becomes an abstraction that allows Rabelais to question the limits of knowledge and to demonstrate the power of Panurge’s cognitive

132 Daumas, Au Bonheur Des Mâles, 2-3.

71 flexibility or phantasia.133 Panurge’s fear of not knowing makes him resort to the creation of alternate realities, using all the images and references (whether directly experienced or literarily gathered) that his imagination has stored in his memory. And one of the characteristics of apprehension as prospective fear as we use it today, is to be fueled by imagination. Indeed, the more you are able to envision potential outcomes, the more uncertainty it causes and the more anxiety it creates. This cognitive flexibility is Panurge’s attempt to answer his own curiosity that nobody is able to satisfy since he wants to know the unknowable.

Curiosity is indeed another term that underwent a drastic revaluation during the 16th century. What stands out in both the Tiers and Quart Livre is Panurge’s strong desire of knowing, expressed by multiple questions and a vocabulary of desire. His anxiety comes, in the first case, from not knowing if his wife will cheat on him or not, and, in the second, from not knowing if they will die or not. In both cases, he wants to know what is impossible to know. In both cases he is answered that the only solution is to resign yourself (to one’s own decision in the first case, to God in the other). This resignation implies a decision

(getting married or not; putting your life in God’s hands) that Panurge is not able to perform. For him, only knowledge could lead to decision, but what he wishes to know, because subjected to time, is impossible to know. Which does not prevent him from trying.

In chapter 9 of the Tiers Livre, his conversation with Pantagruel, starts with a refusal from

133 The hypothetical wife embodies the epistemological uncertainty that will be at the heart of the Tiers Livre and pushed further in the Quart Livre where the multiplication of signs without fixed referents, from the “paroles gelées” to the lists of anatomical parts, or food items, prevents any stable interpretation. Michel Jeanneret has qualified this epistemological uncertainty as a “malaise interprétatif” characteristic of the Renaissance in Le Défi Des Signes: Rabelais Et La Crise De L'interprétation À La Renaissance (Orléans: Paradigme, 1994).

72 the latter: “une foyes en avez jecté le dez et ainsi l’avez decreté et prins en ferme deliberation, plus parler n’en fault, reste seulement la mettre a execution.”134 But Panurge, going as always “au rebours,” continues the dialogue in spite of his interlocutor’s reluctance: “si vous congnoissiez que mon meilleur feust tel que je suys demeurer, sans entreprendre cas de nouvelleté, j’aymerois mieulx ne me marier poinct.”135 By doing so, he appeals to someone else’s knowledge. Unfortunately for him, Pantagruel founds his definition of knowledge on very humanistic grounds: existing knowledge can be found in books and in experience, thus exemplifying the behavior recommended by his father in his letter: “Et quant à la connaissance des faits de nature, je veux que tu t’y adonnes curieusement […] Puis soigneusement revisite les livres des médecins Grecs, Arabes et latins […] et par fréquentes anatomies acquiers-toi prafraite connaissance de l’autre monde, qui est l’homme […] Somme que je voie un abîme de science.”136 But regarding the knowledge of future events, they are not available to the human mind, and are dependent on God’s will. The letter actually puts a strong emphasis on the permanence of identity through the temporal continuity allowed by marriage and reproduction: “Entre les dons, graces et prerogatives, desquelles le souverain plasmateur Dieu tout puissant a endouairé et orné l’humaine nature à son commencement, celle me semble singulière et excellente par laquelle elle peut en état mortel acquérir espèce de immortalité, et en décours de vie transitoire perpétuer son nom et sa semence. Ce que est fait par lignée issue de nous en marriage légitime.”137 Pantagruel is thus poorly equipped to answer Panurge’s pressing questions and answers as follows:

134 Rabelais, 601. 135 Rabelais, 603. 136 Rabelais, 347-349. 137 Rabelais, 343.

73 Aussi (respondit Pantagruel), en vos propositions tant y a de de Si et de

Mais que je n’y sçaurois rien fonder ne rien resoudre. N’estez vous asceuré

de vostre vouloir? Le poinct principal y gist: tout le reste est fortuit et

dependent des fatales dispositions du Ciel. […] Il se y convient mettre à

l’adventure, les oeilz bandez, baissant la teste, baisant la terre, et se

recommandant à Dieu au demourant, puys qu’une foys l’on se y vault

mettre. Aultre asceurance ne vous en sauroys je donner.138

In his answer, Pantagruel reminds Panurge that the causes and effects of things depend on

God, following Augustine’s words in his City of God:

Quant à ceux qui appellent destin, non la disposition des astres au moment

de la conception ou de la naissance, mais la suite et l’enchaînement des

causes qui produisent tout ce qui arrive dans l’univers, je ne m’arrêterai pas

à les chicaner sur un mot, puisqu’au fond ils attribuent cet enchaînement de

causes à la volonté et à la puissance souveraine d’un principe souverain qui

est Dieu même, dont il est bon et vrai de croire qu’il sait d’avance et ordonne

tout, étant le principe de toutes les puissances sans l’être de toutes les

volontés. C’est donc cette volonté de Dieu, dont la puissance irrésistible

éclate partout, qu’ils appellent destin.139

And we can see that Panurge’s rhetoric, pervaded by hypotheses, metonymically represented by the capitalized connectors “Si” and “Mais” in Pantagruel’s answer,

138 Rabelais, 607. 139 Augustine, La Cité de Dieu. ([Paris]: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959).V, viii.

74 embarrasses and confuse the giant. And what our anxious bachelor seems to exemplify here, is what Augustine had condemned in his Confessions under the name of libido sciendi, the desire for knowledge, also known as curiositas, one of the three elements of concupiscence (libido sciendi, libido sentiendi, libido dominandi):

Ajoutez une autre tentation qui nous environne de périls multipliés. Outre

la concupiscence de la chair, mêlée à toutes les impressions sensibles, à

toutes les voluptés dont le fol amour consume ceux qui se retirent de vous,

il se glisse encore dans l’âme, par les sens, un nouveau désir, ne demandant

plus du plaisir à la chair, mais des expériences; vaine curiosité qui se couvre

du nom de connaissance et de savoir. Or, comme elle consiste dans l’appétit

de connaître, et que la vue est le premier organe de nos connaissances,

l’Esprit-Saint l’a nommée concupiscence des yeux (I Jean, II, 16)140

In the Tempest episode, Panurge also wants to know if they are going to make it or not.

And his desire for knowledge will increase gradually, as his anxiety grows. He starts with a rhetorical question: “Estoit ce icy que de perir nous estoit praedestiné?”141 that no one actually answers, Frère Jean immediately rebuffing him. He then calls for someone else’s

140 Augustine, Confessions ... Texte Établi et Traduit, 5th ed. (Paris,: Société d’édition “Les Belles lettres,” 1954). X, xxxv, 54. 141 Rabelais 999. On the different implications of the use of this theological term, see Febvre, Le problème de l’incroyance; Screech, L’Évangélisme de Rabelais and The Rabelaisian Marriage: Aspects of Rabelais's Religion, Ethics & Comic Philosophy (London: E. Arnold, 1958); Mireille Huchon, “Rabelais, Bouchet et la Nef des Folz” in Marie-Luce Demonet and Stéphan Geonget, eds., Les grands jours de Rabelais en Poitou: actes du colloque international de Poitiers (30 août- 1er septembre 2001) (Genève: Droz, 2006).: “La prédestination chez Rabelais est toujours présente dans un contexte ironique. Qu’il s’agisse de Panurge prédestiné à aimer une haute dame de Paris dans Pantagruel (XXI), prédestiné à être cocu dans le chapitre XXVIII du Tiers Livre ou qui se dit prédestiné à la réussite en femmes et chevaux; dans le prologue du Quart Livre du renard et du chien que Jupiter est obligé de transformer en pierre pour respecter les destins, de “ceux qui par divine prescience et eterne predestination, adonnez se sont à l’estude des sainctes Décrétales” (QL, LIII, p. 663),” 83-103.

75 knowledge, just like he did with Pantagruel in the Tiers Livre. Except that, this time, the knowledge he is asking for is a practical one, since he is addressing Epistemon, the one who knows, the one who is learned, the one who has experience, who Panurge had resurrected in chapter 26 of Pantagruel: “Nostre home, sçauriez vous me jecter en terre?

Vous sçavez tant de bien, comme l’on m’a dict.”142 His call for knowledge, again, remains unanswered, and reaches it peak in the same tirade, with three imperatives translating his despair: “Nostre amé, plongez le scandal et les bolides, de grace. Sçaichons la haulteur du profound. Sondez, nostre amé, mon amy, de par Nostre Seigneur. Sçaichons si l’on boyroit icy aisement debout, sans soy besser. J’en croy quelque chose.”143 The anaphora of the imperative of “savoir” in the first person plural includes the whole crew in this last attempt on Panurge’s part to have a clear answer on the outcome of the storm. Having exhausted the realm of his imagination, he is now turning to his immediate environment that he wants to sound for an answer. This practical impulse is unfortunately not achievable in this kind of weather and on the high seas but interestingly coincides with the climax of the tempest, preceding the final manoeuver of the pilot and Pantagruel’s call to God: “En sommes nous là? dist Pantagruel. Le bon Dieu servateur nous soyt en aiyde!”144 Panurge’s words and call for knowledge radically differ from the pilot’s call for action, expressed in a series of imperatives, and Pantagruel’s prayer, interestingly expressed in the more nuance form of the subjunctive and more beseeching than peremptory. Pressed by anxiety, Panurge wants to know, and his desire to know generates anxiety. Whether he contemplates wedding or death, Panurge embodies the libido sciendi, a form of desire that could be seen as a form

142 Rabelais, 999. 143 Rabelais, 1003. 144 Ibidem.

76 of hybris, depending on the context and on the subject.

But an additional aspect of Panurge’s problematic behavior is that, not only does he want to know, but he also does not know what he wants, which brings us to the question of will and its relationship with apprehension. In the Tiers Livre, Pantagruel indeed advocates for decision-making: “Puis (respondit Pantagruel) qu’une foys en avez jecté le dez et ainsi l’avez decreté et prins en ferme deliberation, plus parler n’en fault, reste seulement la mettre à execution.”145 He underlines what Panurge seems to be lacking: will.

And the absence of will is, according to Augustine, exactly what makes curiosity bad, of there is nothing to control it. He addresses this matter in a passage of the City of God that relates the question of will to the notion of prospective fear (metus) that is translated here as “crainte:”

Ce qui importe, c’est de savoir quelle est la volonté de l’homme. Si elle est

déréglée, ces mouvements seront déréglés, et si elle est droite, ils seront

innocents et même louables. […] De même, quand nous nous détournons

de l’objet qui nous déplaît avant qu’il nous arrive, cette volonté s’appelle

crainte, et après qu’il est arrivé, tristesse. En un mot, la volonté de l’homme,

selon les différents objets qui l’attirent ou qui la blessent, qu’elle désire ou

qu’elle fuit, se change et se transforme en ces différentes affections.146

Augustine defines the apprehensive feeling in this section, making it the result of our will.

The problem is that Panurge does not decide not to fear. Quite the contrary : he fully embraces the fear of something that has not happened yet, physically and verbally. By doing so, he embodies one of the major ambiguities of the Renaissance regarding the

145 Rabelais, 601. 146 Augustine, La Cité de Dieu. XIV, vi.

77 concept of curiosity. Following the theological Augustinian source, curiosity is seen by the

Christian doctrine as a form of vice, a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. But at the same time, throughout the 16th century, the notion becomes more neutral or even positive, in line with the thirst for encyclopedic knowledge, characteristic of humanism.

This apparent paradox is constitutive of the epistemological and moral tensions at the heart of the period, as Neil Kenny underlines in his study The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern

France and Germany: “ Deciding between these became immensely controversial : as relative consensus about the badness of curiosity disappeared, it became even more of a battle-ground to distinguish good knowledge or behavior from bad. ”147 Apprehension is the fear of not knowing and Panurge embodies the desire to know, also known as libido sciendi, condemned by Augustine as one of the three elements of concupiscence, but at the heart of the humanist movement characterized by its thirst for encyclopedic knowledge.

This apparent paradox is constitutive of the epistemological and moral tensions at the heart of the period. This tension is at stake in the Tiers Livre and the Quart Livre, embodied by the character of Panurge, and it is closely related to the evolution of the concept of apprehension. Montaigne actually concludes the essay “ Of Physionomy ” previously mentioned with these words : “L’aigreur de cette imagination naît de notre curiosité,”148 explicitly linking prospective fear to our desire to know and to the imaginative faculty.

Pantagruel, supposedly moved by a desire to learn, advocates a reasonable and prudent form of curiosity, and condemns Panurge’s desire to know the unknowable. His call for knowledge thus remains unanswered. And his curiosity fueling his apprehension leads to

147 Neil Kenny, The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany / (Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2004). 148 Montaigne, Essais, III, 12, 1099.

78 an absence of fruitful communication: Pantagruel advises him to make a decision which is what he cannot do, Epistémon asks him to act, which he cannot do, and Frère Jean insults him. Panurge’s apprehension thus puts him at odds with the other characters and crystallizes several cognitive anxieties that humanist thinkers had to face towards the second half of the 16th century. This behavior is fueled by his desire of knowing coupled with a cognitive temporal and spatial flexibility, later referred to as imagination. I thus suggest that Panurge suffers from an excess of apprehension (in the sense that the way he processes the outside world is more complex than the other characters) rather than a lack of courage. Stéphane Geonget has explored this dramatic aspect of Panurge’s struggle in

La Notion de Perplexité à la Renaissance. Depicting the suffering that such a state causes, he highlights the fact that the perplexed person is extremely conscious of all the potentialities and the stakes that each decision would entail:

S’il y a perplexité, c’est que l’individu sent, profondément, que la difficile

situation dans laquelle il se trouve est une crise et que cette crise est le

préalable à une decision radicale qui engage sa vie dans une voie qui exclut

toutes les autres […] C’est qu’à la difference du téméraire, le perplexe est

bien conscient des enjeux et c’est, d’une certaine façon, sa lucidité même

qui l’empêche d’avancer. Si la perplexité est donc une épreuve si rude c’est

parce qu’elle déchire l’individu entre le present et le futur, entre le savoir

du moment et l’incertitude radicale de l’avenir. Elle est le résultat en même

temps que le signe de la confrontation de chacun avec sa propre liberté

79 d’action. Elle est même encore sans doute bien plus que cela, une prise de

conscience de sa propre mortalité. 149

Hyper perceptive of all the potential outcomes and of the junctions between present, past and future, Panurge’s flexible mind makes him apprehensive and thus unable to choose.

4-The Problem with flexibility: Apprehension as Disruption

Once the danger is past, Panurge still wants to know a few things : “ Nostre amé, ho, deux motz, mais que je ne vous fasche. De quante espesseur sont les ais de ceste nauf ?

–Elles sont (respondit le pilot) de deux bons doigtz espesses, n’ayez paour. ”150 For a change, Panurge’s question is answered, which leads him to an ironic conclusion on the precarity of our existence, that he relates to the precarity of marriage : “ Vertus Dieu (dist

Panurge) nous sommes doncques continuellement à deux doigtz pres de la mort. Est ce cy une des neuf joyes de mariage ? ”151 This numerical knowledge, the thickness of the hull of the boat, far from being reassuring, actually validates the anticipatory anxiety that he just experienced. But the problem is that, finally receiving an answer to his question,

Panurge completely denies his previous apprehension in this post-danger moment : “ Ha nostre amé, vous faictez bien, mesurant le peril à l’aulne de paour. Je n’en ay poinct, quant est de moy […] Et ne crains rien que les dangers. ”152 Now that the danger is behind,

Panurge is simply going to lie and rewrite the entire episode. Not only is Panurge’s fear, which stems from his desire for knowledge, morally and religiously controversial

149 Stéphan Geonget, La Notion de Perplexité à La Renaissance (Genève : Droz, 2006).12. 150 Rabelais, 1016. 151 Rabelais, 1017. 152 Ibidem. Some critics have noticed here an intertextuality with the 15th century Monologue du Franc Archer de Bagnolet, which narrates the adventures of a boastful soldier and is sometimes attributed to François Villon.

80 according to 16th century norms, but his flexibility regarding space and time, can be seen as radical and dangerous when stretched to an extreme, and when a resourceful fantasy becomes a pure lie.

In the first part of the tempest Panurge was trying to escape the present moment by projecting himself in a different time and in different places. Once the danger is over, he entirely rewrites the passage and the characters’ roles in the present, using a series of inversions : he systematically replaces “peur” by “courage” when referring to himself and he describes Frere Jean as passive while presenting himself as extremely active, using successively the present, the passé compose, the future and the imperative in this new fearless mindset : “Ha, ha (s’escria Panurge) tout va bien. L’oraige est passé. […] Vous ayderay je encores là? Baillez que je vrillonne ceste chorde. J’ay du courage prou, voyre.

De paour bien peu. Baillez ça mon amy. Non, non, pas maille de craincte. […] C’est bien dict. Comment vous ne faictez rien, frere Jean? Est il bien temps de boire à ceste heure?”153

Thanks to his linguistic flexibility, Panurge is not embarrassed to rewrite the story and to reverse the roles that were characteristic of the first half of the episode. He applies the same flexibility he had about the future to the past. By doing so he also points out to the arbitrariness of a narrative, showing that a flexible mind can say one thing and then its opposite. He re-characterizes himself and frère Jean later on in the passage, mimicking

Frère Jean’s previous behavior and his insult-rhetoric: “Vogue la gualere (dist Panurge), tout va bien. Frere Jean ne faict rien là. Il se appelle fere Jan faictneant, et me regarde ici suant et travaillant pour ayder à cestuy home de bien Matelot premier de ce nom.”154 By calling Frère Jean “faictneant”, literally “does-nothing,” he displaces the name “Ucalegon”

153 Rabelais, 1013. 154 Rabelais, 1015.

81 that Pantagruel had given to him a moment earlier (Ucalegon refers to one of the elders of

Troy who was too old to fight and whose house was set on fire by the Achaeans as described by Homer in the Iliad) and applies it to the monk. Once again Panurge makes words and things travel thanks to his linguistic inventiveness. But this flexibility reaches an extreme form here, in the form of lying. The question of lying is center to humanists’ concerns about language and referentiality, issues that are also at the heart of the Quart Livre.155

Montaigne, in his essay “Of Liars,” condemns them unequivocally: “En vérité le mentir est un maudit vice. Nous ne sommes hommes, et ne nous tenons les uns aux autres que par la parole. Si nous en connoissions l’horreur et le poids, nous le poursuivrions, à feu, plus justement que d’autres crimes.” 156 Lying is a crime because it distorts the relationship between someone’s interiority and exteriority. This relationship between the inner self and its external appearance, is absolutely central to humanism since Erasmus’ reflexions on the

Silenus in The Sileni of Alcibiades, a figure that reappears in the prologue of Gargantua accompanied with a description of the discrepancy between Socrates’ ugly exterior appearance and the richness of his soul.157 Apprehension is the cognitive process that allows the exterior world to enter the inside of the mind. The apprehensive person, contemplates a series of potential outcomes that might or might not happen in the future.

Apprehension as fear thus has to do with the question of potentiality. Panurge goes one step further by applying potentiality to the past, and narrating something that could have

155 See Terence Cave, Cornucopia: figures de l’abondance au XVIe siècle (Paris: Macula, 1997).; Marie-Luce Demonet, Les voix du signe: nature et origine du langage à la Renaissance (1480- 1580) (Genève: Slatkine, 1992).; Ullrich Langer, Vertu du discours, discours de la vertu: littérature et philosophie morale au XVIe siècle en France (Genève: Droz, 1999). and Jeanneret, Le défi des signes. 156 Montaigne, Essais, I, 9, 58. 157 Rabelais, 5-7.

82 happened. Thus, it seems that Panurge’s linguistic and imaginative flexibility, expression of his apprehensive behavior, crystallizes several anxieties that humanist thinkers had to face towards the second half of the sixteenth century: the evolving agency of the imaginative faculty, the moral ambiguity around curiosity, the question of free-will, as well as the arbitrary nature of sign and the complex relationship between exteriority and interiority.

Panurge’s excess of flexibility thus appears challenging: it disturbs and disrupts traditional modes of thinking or traditional meanings. This is what Myriam Marrache-

Gourraud argues in her analysis of this protean character “Hors toute intimidation,”

Panurge ou la parole singulière:

C’est notamment par l’organisation insolite de signes qui d'ordinaire ne vont

pas ensemble que Panurge attire l’attention sur certains éclairages

sémantiques nouveaux qui obligent à reconstruire de toutes pièces les liens

sémiotiques. C’est l’originalité de l’usage qui remodèle le sens. Souvenons-

nous que les mots les plus courants, par un emploi contraire, ou simplement

divergent par rapport aux conventions, se voyaient investis de sens nouveaux:

ces innovations sémantiques étaient rendus possibles, déjà, par des

associations singulières dans le discours de Panurge. Des adjectifs n’ayant

jamais eu de sens grivois prenaient une connotation leste par “contagion”

sémantique, par exemple lorsqu’ils côtoyaient le substantif “couillon.” Il en

va de même pour les signes non linguistiques. Leurs associations inédites

et surprenantes, incongrues, inventives ou insolentes, peuvent avoir pour effet

83 le remodelage, parfois même l’inversion, des connotations qui leur sont

attachées.158

Here Panurge’s extreme and unique behavior challenges the narrative and the meaning of the episode. When this apprehensive attitude and the verbal copia that goes with it is usually presented as the morally wrong attitude, opposed to Pantagruel’s devout behavior and uncluttered invectives to God, I would like to show how it creates difficulties for the other characters as well as for the interpretation of the entire passage. If we take a look at the others’ reactions, and especially Frère Jean’s, to Panurge prospective and linguistically creative fear, we notice a kind of defense mechanism: faced with this Protean character, it seems that they are trying to narrow down, to reduce, the vast horizon of possibilities that he constantly evokes. Frère Jean, and later Pantagruel in the Physetere episode (Quart

Livre, chapitres 33-34)159 predicts Panurge’s future, thus attempting to stabilize and contain this swaying character. Not only is he convinced that he will be cuckolded, but, in the chapter entitled “Comment par frere Jan, Panurge est declairé avoir eu paour sans cause durant l’oraige,” he predicts that he will be killed by anything but water: “Car tes destinées fatales ne sont à perir en eau. Tu seras hault en l’air certainement pendu, ou bruslé guaillard comme un pere. […] Panurge, mon amy, dist frere Jan, n’aye jamais paour de l’eau, je t’en prie. Par element contraire sera ta vie terminée.”160 In response to these predictive futures,

Panurge, once again, destroys this clear assertion and evokes different possible outcomes through the use of connectors surch as “quelques fois,” “souvent” and “toutefois” in his metaphoric answer about men’s fate where he depicts the clumsiness and distraction of the

158 Myriam Marrache-Gouraud, “Hors toute intimidation”Panurge ou la parole singulière, Études Rabelaisiennes 41 (Genève: Droz, 2003): 259. 159 Rabelais, 1055-1061. 160 Rabelais, 1019.

84 devils’ cooks: “Mais les cuisiniers des Diables resvent quelque foys, et errant en leur office: et mettent souvent bouillir ce qu’on destinoit pour roustir, […] Advient toute foys que les

Perdis aux choux, les Ramiers aux pourreualx, et les bizets ilz mettent bouillir aux naveaulx.”161 It is interesting to note here that Panurge uses the same verb (“resvent”) that

Frère Jean had used to shout at him (“Resvez tu?”), thus linking the devils’ cooks wandering mind to his own vagrancy. Panurge’s reluctance to be reduced to one single outcome is at the source of his apprehensive behavior, but also challenges the other characters’ set ways of thinking.

We thus need to reframe exactly what is reproached to Panurge. It seems that it is his lack of action, that comes from a lack of resolution. This inability to make a choice seems to come from Panurge’s inconstancy, that seems to be equated with inconsistency and then devalued by the other characters. What is reproached to Panurge by Pantagruel in the Tiers Livre is indeed his inability to make a decision and to stick to it: “en vos propositions tant y a de Si et de Mais que je n’y scaurois rien fonder ne rien resoudre […]

N’estez vous asceuré de votre vouloir?”162 Panurge’s lack of will makes it impossible for

Pantagruel to solve this issue since he has nothing to base himself on. There are no specific adjectives used here to describe Panurge, the characterization happens through direct speech, in this impossible dialogue, in a chapter whose title underlines the attempt but not the solution: “Comment Panurge se conseille à Pantagruel pour scavoir s’il se doibt marier.” But Panurge does qualify Pantagruel’s advice and in a rather negative way:

“Vostre conseil (dist Panurge, soubs correction, semble à la chanson de Ricochet. Ce ne sont que sarcasmes, mocqueries et redictes contradictoires. Les unes destruisent les aultres.

161 Rabelais, 1019. 162 Rabelais, 607.

85 Je ne scay es quelles me tenir.”163 Panurge describes his own behavior here, reproaching to Pantagruel what he is himself guilty of. Each interlocutor is unable to give to the other one what he wishes to hear: Pantagruel wants assurance, Panurge wants reassurance.164

Anne Pouey-Mounou explores this excessive demand from Panurge of a guarantee from others’ through the concept of fides:

Panurge demande donc l’impossible lorsqu’il pretend s’engager en échange

de garanties, et exige des garanties dans ce qui dépend d’autrui […]

Intimement liée à la problématique des dettes du fait de cette mise en cause

de la fides qui préside aux engagements, la question du mariqge ne serait

donc que la répétition scénique, sous forme de farce, des traits saillants d’un

« caractère » campé non pas tant dans sa « philautie » que dans

l’impossibilité de se fier à soi-même […] Etant posé que Panurge ne peut

acquiescer simplement à l’absolution de Pantagruel et demeure privé de la

« contenance » que lui conféraient jadis les dettes, les déconvenues

auxquelles son enquête l’expose lui inspireront, sinon le spuci d’une

redéfinition radicale, du moins la recherche progressive et tâtonnante d’une

adéquation à soi.165

This need for reassurance returns in the Tempest episode, in which Frère Jean and

163 Rabelais, 607. 164 Donaldson-Evans, “Panurge Perplexus:” “Pantagruel’s description of the frame of mind in which one should approach marriage is scarcely reassuring, particularly to one as timorous as Panurge, and would appear more appropriate as an attitude for confronting death or extreme physical danger than the conjugal state,” 81. The only “reassurance” that Panurge finds is expressed by Frère Jean in chapter 28: “Comment Frere Jean reconforte Panurge sus le doubte de Coquage”: “Il n’est (respondit Frere Jan) coqu qui vault. Si tu es coqu, ergo ta femme sera belle; ergo tu seras bien traicté d’elle; ergo tu auras des amis beaucoup; ergo tu seras saulvé,” Rabelais, 719. 165 Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou, Panurge comme lard en pois: paradoxe, scandale et propriété dans le “Tiers livre” (Genève: Droz, 2013)., 488-489.

86 Epistémon, oppose a strong resistance to Panurge’s cry for help. They both advocate for action while condemning his inaction, passivity and false prayers to saints. Panurge, unlike them, shits himself, laments, talks continuously, imagines the worse, envisions potential outcomes and solutions and calls out to the Virgin Mary and a variety of saints for help.

What is reproached to Panurge is his lack of action, more specifically the fact that he is not helping the crew maintaining the ship at sea during the storm. He is described by the narrator at the beginning of the passage as prostrate on the deck: “acropy sus le tillac, tout affligé, tout meshaigné, et à demy mort”166 until he starts screaming “en grand effroy” which will be his ongoing reaction throughout the episode: “Panurge restoit de cul sus le tillac, pleurant et lamentant.”167 Most of the reproaches come from Frère Jean who insults him constantly and keeps asking him to move and help: “Panurge le veau, Panurge le pleurart, Panurge le criart, tu ferais beaucoup mieulx nous aydant icy, que là pleurant comme une vache, assis sus tes couillons comme un magot”, “Vien pendu au Diable […] icy nous ayder, de par trente legions de Diables, vien. Viendra il?”, “Mille diables […] sautent au corps de ce coqu,” “Viendras tu, ho Diable?”, “qu’il est laid le pleurart de merde,” “Aide nous ici, hau, Tigre! Viendra il?”, “veau marin,” “couillu au diable,” “Ayde icy, de part cinq cens mille et millions de charretées de Diable, ayde,” “Vien icy nous ayder grand veau pleurart […] Viendras tu ô veau marin?” He even goes as far as making him responsible for the storm: “Ce diable de fol marin est cause de la tempeste, et il seul ne ayde à la chorme.”168 (1001) Epistemon is more nuanced in his reproach and tries to reason with Panurge, demonstrating how useless it would be to be writing their will. In doing so

166 Rabelais, 995. 167 Rabelais, 997. 168 Rabelais, 1001.

87 he does not criticize Panurge directly but the actions that he suggests, underlining what they should be doing instead: “Faire testament (dist Epistemon) à ceste heure qu’il nous convient evertuer et secourir nostre chorme sus poine de faire naufraige, me semble acte autant importun et mal à propous.”169 He tries to pragmatically demonstrate that it would be a useless enterprise since, if they survive, there would be no need for a will, and if they do not, that there would be no one to bring it to land. Pantagruel is mostly absent from this passage, holding the mast, and uttering two prayers to God. Once the storm is over, the episode turns into a deliberative discussion in chapters 22: “Fin de la tempeste,” 23:

“Comment, la tempeste finie, Panurge faict le bon compagnon” and 24: “Comment, par frere Jan, Panurge est declairé avoir eu paour sans cause durant l’oraige,” centered around the evaluation of Panurge’s behavior, the different characters arguing if his fear was justified or not. In chapter 22, Pantagruel finally notices Panurge and utters an ambiguous judgement claiming that fear can be justified when danger is perceived, as we have previously analyzed. In chapter 23, Epistemon, wounded in the hand, criticizes Panurge’s behavior by contrasting it with his own active behavior, that he maintained in spite of his fear. He is the one who conveys what has been labeled as the moral of this passage, combining faith and action: “En veiglant, soy evertuant, toutes choses succedent à soubhayt et bon port.”170 In chapter 24 Frere Jan claims that Panurge was afraid without reason because he is doomed to die by fire and not by water. Eusthene closes this evaluation of

Panurge’s behavior with a proverb: once the danger is past, the saint is mocked. Again, during this episode, similarly to the Tiers Livre’s interaction between Pantagruel and

Panurge, the dialogue is not productive: Panurge, terrified of dying, seeks reassurance, and

169 Rabelais, 1005. 170 Rabelais, 1015.

88 all what he gets is insults, invectives and pragmatic reasoning.

What is reproached to Panurge, by Pantagruel at the beginning of the Tiers Livre and by Frere Jean and Epistemon during the Tempest episode, and what is at the source of his fear and his cowardice, is thus his lack of action due to his lack of will. This lack of will leads Panurge to be described by the other characters as incapable of constancy, as we have seen throughout the reproaches from the other characters. The usual adjectives to describe someone with a changing behavior and a lack of consistent values at the time

Rabelais writes, often used in reference to Fortune, the external agent that decides of people’s fate, are “inconstant,” “muable,” “changeant.” All these adjectives have moral undertones, resonating with the constantia of Antiquity, proof of someone’s coherence in their values and behavior.171 In the Tiers Livre they are used all together by Rondibilis to describe women (chapter 32): “Quand je diz femme, je diz un sexe tant fragil, tant variable, tant muable, tant inconstant et imperfaict que nature me semble (parlant en tout honneur et reverence) s'estre esguarée de ce bon sens par lequel elle avoit creé et formé toutes choses, quand elle a basty la femme.”172 It is thus not surpising that Epistémon, in turn, qualifies the behavior of Panurge as effeminate during the Tempest: “Pareillement, en Saluste, l’ayde (dist M. Portius Cato) des Dieux n’est impetré par veuz ocieux, par lamentations muliebres. […] Si en necessité et dangier est l’homme negligent, eviré et paresseux, sans propous il implore les Dieux: ilz sont irritez et indignez.”173 Panurge, the most mysognist of all, as well as the most sexually active, is here described as deprived of

171 See Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, V, XII, 31: “Non igitur ex singulis vocibus philosophi spectandi sunt, sed ex perpetuitate atque constantia.” For a review of inconstancy and its reception in the 16th century see Sébastien Prat, Constance et inconstance chez Montaigne (Paris: Classique Garnier, 2012). 172 Rabelais, 751. 173 Rabelais, 1015.

89 virility and of courage. What he has in common with women as described by Rondibilis is his inconstancy and mutability. This temporal inconstancy in the character of Panurge is echoed by a present multiplicity. It is linguistically personified in the chapter where

Pantagruel meets him for the first time and where he speaks fourteen different languages, and metonymically referred to in the chapter where Panurge’s outfit is described as having a multiplicity of pockets from which he can draw a multiplicity of tools to achieve his tricks. This multiplicity, or copia, is a sign of infinite potentiality, but also threatens the production of a stable meaning, as Cave explains in The Cornucopian Text:

The major French Renaissance texts are characteristically reflexive,

dialogic, open-ended. Written in the shadow of an impossible ideal, they

proliferate in order to question themselves and to lay bare their own

mechanisms. They thus inevitably represent copia, or the cornucopia, as a

centrifugal movement, a constantly renewed erasure of their origins […] the

very celebration of fertility, of plenitude, presence, reveals an inverse

movement towards emptiness or absence.174

Panurge is multiple in the present and inconstant over time. He is fertile in actions, words and meaning, a character trait that both fascinates and terrifies. His present multiplicity echoes his temporal inconstancy, which makes him being labeled as inconsistent by the other characters who prone firm resolution and steady action.175 I argue that this inconstancy can be reframed in terms of flexibility rather than in terms of inconsistency.

The flexibility of Panurge’s mind, his ability to to perceive in the present a series of

174 Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford England: Clarendon Press, 1979), 182-187. 175 In an attempt of reversing this general evaluation, Donaldson-Evans tries to demonstrate how Pantagruel himself is pessimistic and inconsistent in the Tiers Livre.

90 potential outcomes, seems to be at the source of his inconstancy over time and of his apprehensive state of mind. I thus contend that we should redefine as an excess what has been presented as a lack. Instead of focusing on his lack of pragmatic action during the

Tempest, I have highlighted the excessive production of his mind and underlined his particular ability to envision himself in different times and places. It thus appears that it is

Panurge’s excessive apprehension, a heightened perception of uncertainty coupled with a vivid fantasy, that makes him apprehensive. Through Panurge’s apprehensive behavior,

Rabelais highlights the connection between perception, imagination and fear, as well as the interdependency of cognition and emotion. Panurge, I argue, is an archetype of the apprehensive self in 16th century French literature, embodying this behavior before the crystalization and insititutionalization of this meaning in the word “appréhension.”

The Tempest episode ends with an Italian proverb given by Eusthenes and referring to Panurge’s changing behavior once the storm is over: “Passato el pericolo, gabato el santo”176 (once the danger is over, the saint is mocked). This saying is also used at the beginning of Erasmus’ Shipwreck, in a dialogue between Antony and Adolph, one of them recounting a fearful storm at sea: “Antoine: Comme l’infortune rend religieux! Quand tout va bien on ne pense ni à Dieu ni aux Saints.”177 The dialogue starts with a reflexion on the relationship between imagination and fear:

Antoine. Quel horrible récit! C’est cela naviguer? Dieu me garde d’avoir

jamais une telle idée!

Adolphe. Pourtant ce que je t’ai raconté jusqu’ici n’était que plaisanterie en

comparaison de ce que tu vas ouïr maintenant.

176 Rabelais, 1019. 177 Desiderius Erasmus, Colloques ([Paris] : Imprimerie nationale, 1992.). 270.

91 Antoine. J’ai déjà entendu trop de malheurs: je tremble en t’écoutant comme

si j’étais moi-même en danger.

Adolphe. Pour moi au contraire il est agréable d’évoquer des souffrances passées.178

Antony here underlines the power of the flexible mind, that allows someone to feel the danger, as if they had experienced it, when they hear about it in a narrative. Twenty-six years after the second edition of the Quart Livre, in his History of a Voyage to the Land of

Brazil, Jean de Léry uses the exact same proverb in a passage where he describes the mechanism of prospective fear that seizes the Tupinamba Indians when they think of the devil spirit Aygnan, which will be the focus of the next chapter. These three authors,

Erasmus, Rabelais and Léry, had to face the violent tensions opposing the Protestants and the Catholics that were to lead to the Wars of Religion. They all emphasize the relationship between fear, experience and imagination, at a time when the relationship of an individual to death is redefined by the Reformation and its aftermath. With the character of Panurge,

Rabelais offers a revision of fear by presenting it as a legitimate behavior towards the uncertainty of the future, whether related to the contingency of a wife’s faithfulness or the possibility of dying at sea. The process of prospective fear appears to be deeply connected to Panurge’s cognitive abilities: his highly flexible mind as well as his heightened perception of the uncertainty of how the future will unfold put him in a state of constant anticipatory anxiety. Léry will go even further by presenting fear as an essential cognitive tool, contributing to the lexicalization of the meaning of apprehension as anticipatory anxiety.

178 Ibid., 268.

92 Fear as a Cognitive Tool:

Apprehending the self and others in Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil

This chapter operates a shift from the previous one, in genre as well as in the historical time period and ideology that it addresses. We leave Rabelais’s humanist fiction and the world associated with it: a world that has not yet been impacted by the Wars or

Religion. Léry’s travel narrative recounts the epistemological shift emblematic of the second half of the 16th century: how systems of knowledge were put to the test and challenged both by the encounter with the inhabitants of the Americas, their traditions and beliefs, and by the divides and violence caused by the Wars of Religion in France. In the

History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil179 published in 1578 the Calvinist Jean de Léry recounts the ten months that he spent in the Guanabara bay from 1557 to 1558, in the

French Huguenot colony led by Nicolas de Villegagnon and among the Tupinambas, an indigenous tribe, allied to the French, who he describes as practicing cannibalism as a war ritual. In this chapter, we will see that fear is omnipresent in this travel narrative written for a European audience. However, Léry presents fear as one of the steps in the cognitive process, thus removing any kind of moral judgment from this feeling. In the works of

Rabelais, it seems that fear was deemed right or wrong by the characters, according to its object. In Léry’s narrative, fear experienced always appears as a tool for knowledge, and the writer-traveler sheds light on the mechanisms of such a cognitive process, describing

179 For this chapter I will use Frank Lestringant’s edition: Jean de Léry, Frank Lestringant, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (1578): 2e edition 1580 (Paris : Librairie générale française, 1994) and Janet Whatley’s translation: Jean de Léry and Janet Whatley, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America (Berkeley, Calif: Univ. of California Press, 2006).

93 its causes and its results. His experience of this foreign culture even allows him to observe the fear that the Tupinambas themselves experience, and thus expands his observational and percpetive abilities. This juxtaposition, in the narrative, of the fear of the other and the other’s fear reveals contemporary theological and epistemological anxieties that Léry struggles with, both at the time of the events and and at the time of publication. By presenting the fear mechanism as both past and future, in relationship with both memory and imagination, Léry’s narrative inscribes it in a temporal dimension, establishing the meaning of “apprehension” as prospective fear in the second half of the 16th century.

In comparison with its meaning in Rabelais’ work, the word has now become polysemic and Léry uses it both in the sense of perception, in the sense of prospective fear and even in its legal sense of “seized” by justice. This polysemy makes its meaning ambiguous and difficult to establish in a few passages, revealing the cognitive anxieties at stake within its use. Léry’s work thus gives us the opportunity to study the word and its concept at a transitional stage, a liminal moment of transformation. Unlike Panurge who was very much focused on his own apprehension, Léry analyzes his own but also the one of others, and more specifically of those who represent otherness: the native Tupinambas.

We thus notice both a semantic change and a change of scale between the case study of

Panurge and the one that follows. Experience will be the interpretative tool that I will use in this chapter to understand the cognitive anxieties revealed by the polysemic use of apprehension.

First, I will show how fear is omnipresent in this travel narrative, but not in the way we expect. Léry presents fear as a step in the cognitive process and removes the negative moral values associated with it: cowardice, lack of courage, weakness. Rather, the writer-

94 missionary presents fear, not only as a proof of his suddering in the name of God, but also as formative, allowing him to gain additional knowledge: self-knowledge but also knowledge about the ones he encounters and lives with for several months. Léry, indeed, presents his apprehension in relationship with the Tupis’. This conflation of experiences sheds light on cognitive and theological anxieties, at a time where demonologists were trying to assess the power of the imaginative faculty. Last but not least, echoing Panurge’s temporal flexibility, Léry underlines the relationship between fear and memory, another faculty of the mind, in this retrospective narrative published 20 years after the trip itself.

1-The omnipresence of fear in the narrative

Fear is omnipresent in Léry’sretrospective narrative of his stay in the Land of Brazil, from

March 7th 1557 to January 4th 1558. The Protestant cobbler then pastor from Lamargelle, later disciple of Calvin in Geneva, was sent to the New World in order to join the French

Huguenot colony led by Nicolas de Villegagnon, and set by Gaspard de Coligny, located on an island of the Rio de Janeiro bay, previously called Guanabara bay.The utopian project quickly turned into disarray when the Huguenots realized that their opinions diverged strongly from Villegagnon’s regarding key elements of the Christian dogma, such as transubstantiation, but also on social topics such as the well-being of the members of the colony or their relationship with the local indigenous tribes. This growing opposition led

Léry and a few companions to be expelled from the island in October 1557. They joined the continent and cohabitated with the cannibal Tupinamba tribe, allied with the French against the Portuguese, until their return to France in January 1558. The disarray then turned into a grim tragedy when Villegagnon drowned for treason three of the protestants

95 who decided to go back to the island instead of returning to France. After having, as he says, lost the manuscript twice, Léry finally publishes the narration of his voyage in 1578, responding to André Thévet’s accusations that the Huguenots were responsible for the failure of France’s colonial project. The latter was a Catholic and the King’s cosmographer.

He published the Singularités de la France Antarctique in 1558,180 describing the customs of the Tupinambas and their cannibalistic rituals, although he only spent a few weeks there, and, according to Léry, never witnessed such rituals. Between his travel and the publication of the book, Léry experienced the horrors of the Sancerre siege in 1573 during the fourth war of religion, where he witnessed a scene of anthropophagy during a long famine that he describes in detail in the Histoire memorable du siege de Sancerre.181

Let us take a closer look at the vocabulary of fear and how it is distributed in the narration to understand better who fears what and when in Léry’s retrospective narrative:

180 André Thevet and Frank Lestringant, Le Brésil d’André Thevet: Les singularités de la France Antarctique, 1557 (Paris: Chandeigne, 2011). 181 Jean de Léry and Géralde Nakam, L’histoire mémorable du siège et de la famine de Sancerre (1573): au lendemain de la Saint-Barthélemy (Genève: Slatkine, 2000).

On the way to Brazil: There: On the way back:

-Fear at sea part one: -Fear of animals: lizard, -Fear at sea part two: ignorance, discovery, scorpions compared to the way there: fear of never arriving -Two key moments of fear holes in the boat, heat, Object -Fear of animals: with the Tupis: the singing famine of Fear sharks, whales ceremony / the fear of being -Fear of going back to eaten the first time he goes to France the village and is left at night by his interpreter Fear is overcome in both these moments and constitute turning points in Léry’s formative and assimilation process. -The Tupis’ fear: imagined by Léry: drowning/ real: Toupan

espouvanté; dangereux; craignans; Perils; craignent; danger; espouvantables; le monstrueux et epouvantable; danger; merveilleux peril; herisser de peur peur; danger; peur (10); étonnement; navigation (2); monstrueux; destresse (11); en danger; dangereuse; danger; Words dangereux; craignent; craignons; danger qu’ils continuelles tourmentes; of Fear donner garde; appréhendassent (12); ce que peine; grande crainte; dangereux (3); peur; j’en ai dit est assez pour faire peines et travaux; extrêmes horrible; craignais; avoir horreur et dresser à dangers; nous l’avions belle horreur; monstres (4); chacun les cheveux en la tête échappée; péril; nouveau il nous estoit advis que (15); appréhender; crain (16); danger; péril évident; nous n’en deussions extraordinaire, esbahis, craignant; horribles jamais sortir (5); frayeur ; craignant; ne épouvantements; dangers; s’effarouchoyent point de danger présent; en effroi; nous (16); peur; frayeur; peur; danger; craignions; en soupçonnay; m’attendois danger d’être tous brûlés; devoir estre bien tost mangé; (21); Apprehensions (21); blesme et fort defait de appréhendaient (21); visage; presque en la fievre; appréhendai (22); crainte crainte, peur (18) de la famine; la crainte de Dieu; la crainte que j’eus qu’on me le dérobât la nuit; grands dangers; nous n’étions pas encore échappés; nous délivra du danger; tant de sortes de dangers, voire de tant de gouffres de morts (22)

97 As the list above shows, the way to Brazil is characterized by the fear of the perils of the sea and the “monsters” that it contains, such as sharks and whales. As Léry underlines several times, fear arises sometimes out of the lack of sailing experience or, on the contrary out of the knowledge that such animals are dangerous. The biggest fear of the crew is to never reach land and thus to die at sea, “in exile.” If we remember Panurge’s fear, this is one of the biggest fear during the Renaissance.182 On the way there it is thus the fear of not arriving that predominates. On the way back, this fear of the sea is definitely present since the members of the crew fear that they will not make it through the tempests and the famine, but it is complicated, for Léry, by the fear of arriving. On top of the natural dangers of the sea and the human danger of starvation accompanied by the fear of being eaten by his companions, Léry shares his apprehension of going back to France where the turmoil of the religious wars has already started as they returned, conflicts of which Villegagnon’s island was a miniature replica, cristallyzing the theological disputes between Protestants and Catholics. In between these two fearful sea travels, Léry and his companions fear a human-sized lizard that they encounter in the forest. The author also shares how he was bit by a scorpio and feared to die of this incident. He fears the Tupis twice in episodes that are told in reverse chronological order. The first one tells how he managed to witness a sacred singing ceremony, progressively overcoming his fear of upsetting the Tupis and of ignoring what he would find. The second one recounts the first night he spent in a Tupinamba village where a cannibal ritual was held, which led him to thinking, abandoned by his interpreter who was in a different part of the village, that he would be eaten too, until the laughing

182 See Delumeau, La peur en Occident and Alain Cabantous, “Le Corps Introuvable. Mort et culture maritime (XVIe-XIXe siècles),” histeconsoci Histoire, Économie et Société 9, no. 3 (1990): 321–36.

98 Tupis reassured him in that regard in the morning. Fear is overcome in both these moments that constitute turning points in Léry’s formative and assimilation process. In addition to these two moments, Léry also considers the Tupinambas’s fears, in an unusual reversal that complicates the traditional relationship between the fearful European and the feared indigenous inhabitant. The first anecdote actually reveals how Léry and his companions thought the Tupis were afraid of drowning, when they actually were not, and the second one addresses the Tupis’ unconditional fear of the devil that they call Toupan. Lexically, we can notice from the chart above that the chapters devoted to the way back to France contain more occurrences of the word “danger” than the two other parts, and that the word

“apprehension”, in its substantive and verbal form, and in the sense of prospective fear, appears three times in these two final chapters.

If fear is as present at the beginning as at the end, it is because Léry gives it a value in and of itself, instead of having its value being determined by its object. In Léry’s narrative, fear is indeed a tool of knowledge, and its expression bears witness for the emergence of a new form of fear, anticipatory and psychophysiological, of which apprehension, as the fear of future evil, stems.

2-Removing the Negative Values associated with Fear

An anecdote about Columbus appears at a key moment in the narration of Léry’s perilous trip back to France. After surviving two potential sinkings because of holes in the boat’s hull and enduring an unbearable heat near the Equator, Léry and his companions encounter yet one more obstacle and are stuck in a “mer herbue,” a sea of grass. They deduce from the sight of these plants that they have to be close to some land, which is the occasion for

99 Léry to quote Francisco Lopez de Gomara, in his Histoire Generale des Indes: “Christophe

Colomb, dit-il [Gomara], au premier voyage qu’il fit au découvrement des Indes, qui fut l’an 1492, ayant pris rafraîchissement en une des Iles des Canaries, après avoir cinglé plusieurs journées, rencontre tant d’herbes qu’il semblait que ce fût un pré, ce qui lui donna une peur, encore qu’il n’y ait eût aucun danger.”183 The 1584 French translation of Gomara by Martin Fumée from which Léry quotes the passage underlines the discrepancy between the experienced feeling and the reality of the situation with the subordinate conjunction

“encore que” (synonym of “bien que”): Columbus should not have been afraid since there was actually no danger. The whole passage, written by Gomora and translated in French by Fumée, focuses on Columbus’ mind process and subjectivity: “de là suivit la routte qu’il s’estoit imaginée”184 in order to insist on the randomness of the discovery and to diminish

Columbus’ agency, in order to increase the prestige of his own achievements in the Spanish invasion of America. However, Columbus does distinguish some landforms in that passage which prevent him from turning back, and, the day after, they have land in full sight, which confirms that one of his impressions (not the fact that the plants were dangerous but the fact that he spotted some land in the distance) was right. Gomara then continues his narration with the description of the joy of the sailors and the first encounter with the indigenous population. In Gomara’s text, the tone is rather hostile and contributes to the author’s general calumny of Columbus by underlining his fear and lack of courage. Inserted in Léry’s narrative, the anecdote, I will argue, takes on a whole new meaning. The common element between Léry’s experience and Columbus’ with regards to that anecdote is the

183 Léry, 211. 184 Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Histoire generalle des Indes Occidentales et Terres neuves, qui jusques à present ont esté decouvertes. Traduite en François par M. Fumée, Sieur de Marly le Chastel.-Paris: Michell Sonnius, 1568 et 1569, Livre I, chapitre 16, 22.

100 seagrass that they encounter and that causes them to fear. Léry actually comments on the fact that, if the crew had not cut a lot of them with axes to make a way for the boat, they would probably have been stuck there: “que si pour faire au navire, qui avoit peine à les rompre, nous ne les eussions coupées avec des coignées, je croy que nous fussions demeurez tout court.”185 But Léry and his companions, unlike Columbus, do not find any land, although they thought they would. Their first impression is corrected by the sounding line, an instrument that extends man’s senses, allowing the sailors to feel the seabed and measure the depth of water: “Et parce que ces herbages rendaient la mer aucunement trouble, nous estant advis que nous fussions dans des marecages fangeux, nous conjecturasmes que nous devions estre pres de quelques Isles: mais encore qu’on jetta la sonde avec plus de cinquante brasses de corde, si ne trouva-on ny fond ny rive, moins decouvrismes nous aucune terre.”186 The part of the passage that Léry quotes from Gomara does not mention the land discovery and only focuses on the unjustified fear. But in Léry’s text, fear seems to be justified since he says that they would have been immobilized there permanently otherwise. Let us unfold the different attitudes towards fear in the narrative to see how this specific passage and this quote from Gomara about Columbus relate to them.

Léry is usually unapologetic about his fears and those of the crew. Quite the opposite, he considers that they are fully justified and advocates for the recognition by the readers of the true dangers of the sea, a few paragraphs before the Columbus quote:

Tellement que nous voyant déjà, ce nous semblait, délaissés à la merci de

la mer, nous ressouvenant du premier naufrage d’où Dieu nous avait

délivrés, autant résolus à la mort qu’à la vie, et néanmoins pour soutenir et

185 Léry, 522. 186 Léry, 522.

101 empêcher le navire d’aller en fond, nous employant de toutes nos forces

d’en tirer l’eau, nous fîtes tant qu’elle ne nous surmonta pas. Non toutesfois

que tous fussent si courageux, car la plus part des mariniers s’attendans

boire plus que leur saoul, tous eperdus apprehendoyent tellement la mort

qu’ils ne tenoyent conte de rien. Et de fait comme je m’asseure que si les

Rabelistes, mocqueurs et contempteurs de Dieu, qui jasent et se mocquent

ordinairement sur terre les pieds sous la table, des naufrages et perils où se

trouvent si souvent ceux qui vont sur mer y eussent esté, leur gaudisserie

fut changée en horribles espouvantemens: aussi ne doutay-je point que

plusieurs de ceux qui liront ceci (et les autres dangers dont j’ai jà fait et

feray encore mention, que nous experimentasmes en ce voyage) selon le

proverbe ne disent: Ha! qu’il fait bon planter des choux, et beaucoup

meilleur ouyr de la mer et des sauvages que d’y aller voir. O combien

Diogenes estoit sage de priser ceux qui ayant deliberé de naviguer, ne

navigoyent point pourtant.187

As Frank Lestringant specifies in the footnote of his edition “Rabeliste” is here quasi- synonymous of “atheist,” and the edition by Theodore de Bry later translates this term in

Latin by “impios illos atheos.” This Rabelais is the one condemned by Calvin in Des

Scandales (1550) and that Léry mentions in another passage in which he denounces the lies of the cartographers who represent the cannibals’ “boucan” the European way:

“Tellement que ces choses n’estans pas non plus vrayes que le conte de Rabelais touchant

Panurge, qui eschappa de la broche tout lardé et à demi cuit.”188 We have indeed underlined

187 Léry, 520-521. 188 Léry, 364-365.

102 in the previous chapter how Panurge’s extreme cognitive flexibility eventually led him to lie and entirely rewrite the Tempest story. But Léry seems to have had more affinities with

Rabelais that he wanted to believe. In this passage, the expression “qu’il fait bon planter des choux” creates an intertextual dialogue with the Rabelaisian narrator’s travel into

Pantagruel’s mouth and his encounter with a “planteur de choux”. In this episode

(Pantagruel, chapitre 32)189 Rabelais was already theorizing the differences between two different worlds: the one of those who travel and the one of those who do not. And so did

Erasmus at the beginning of the Shipwreck in the dialogue between Antony and Adolph mentioned at the end of the previous chapter. These literary comments on fear experienced versus fear imagined show how crucial the rising notion of experience was throughout the

16th century, through, among other factors, the development of anatomy or the multiplication of first-hand accounts of travels to the Americas. Here, the fact that the sailors were not all “si courageux” still makes them braver than those who do not travel at sea. The value of direct experience comes first, and is prevalent over the courage demonstrated during that experience that comes second. The discourse at play in that part of Léry’s narrative is what Andrea Frisch refers to as the “rhetoric of experience,” the explicit appeal to the epistemic superiority of experience.190 In her book The Invention of the Eyewitness, Witnessing and Testimnoy in Early Modern France, Frisch shows how a legislative paradigmatic shift about the status of the witness in trials, due to the progressive de-centralization of the courts of justice, contributed to give value to someone’s testimony,

189 Rabelais, 521. On this chapter of Pantagruel see Andrea Frisch, “Quod Vidimus Testamur: Testimony, Narrative Agency and the World in Pantagruel's Mouth.” French Forum 24, no. 3 (1999): 261–283. 190 Andrea Frisch, The Invention of the Eyewitness, 80.

103 without relying first on their rank or status in society. Léry’s Voyage is at the heart of this epistemological change: his mode of testifying, relying on the written manuscript rather than on the producer of that testimony, and influenced by Calvin’s semiotics, allows him to not only describe the content of the experience but to comment on the experience process itself, and also to present the Tupi and European cultures on the same moral plane. In the passage previously quoted, he uses the verb “experimentasmes” and opposes “ouyr” (in the sense of hearing stories) to “voir,” thus emphasizing the importance of direct eye- witnessing. Immersed in this fearful experience, like Panurge whose fear prevented him from helping his companions during the tempest, the majority of the sailors are paralyzed by their apprehension of death, while the ship is slowly sinking. However, Léry does not condemn them but addresses his readership with a violent diatribe, insisting on the primacy of fear experienced first-hand over fear experienced vicariously, and condemning those who pretend to not fear, when they have not experienced the actual danger.

The expression of fear thus does not fall for Léry into the category of an undesirable passion that would need to be controlled by reason. It thus seems that the parallel he establishes with Columbus with the seagrass anecdote is serving a different purpose than in Gomara’s narrative. Here, rather than condemning the irrational fantasy that led

Columbus to fear something he should not have feared, Léry seems to insist on the cognitive process at stake when fear occurs. For his companions and him, the feeling of fear disappears, but only after the fact that the herbs have been removed with axes, and have been found to be harmless, after further examination through the senses, notably touch. It thus does not seem that Columbus was wrong to fear for Léry. The implication that “he should not have feared,” implied by the concession “encore que” and the past

104 subjunctive “encore qu’il n’y eust aucun danger” is only verifiable once the succession of events (him seeing land, the boat not being stuck) has happened. It is only a retrospective certainty. Having not experienced this phenomenon before, Columbus was not cognitively wrong to be apprehensive about it. And what was he afraid of in the first place? The text does not specify it but Léry actually unfolds the fear that he and the crew experienced in two successive parts. First the fear of being stuck, that was justified because they would have been stuck if they had not cut the seagrass with axes. And then the fear of the seagrass being harmful, not unjustified, but neutralized by experience. This corrective value of immediate experience allows Léry to remove the retrospective judgement that often accompanies a fear that happened when there was actually no real danger. Gomara implies that Columbus’ fear was unjustified. Léry removes the retrospective causal effect between fear and the discovery of the absence of danger. Instead of saying: we should not have feared because there was no danger, Léry says: we did fear and then there was no danger.

The explorer never writes in his Voyage that he should have not feared what he feared. His retrospective perspective only allows him to unfold the different cognitive stages in the process of fearing and then of discovering that the danger was actually not that dangerous.

This is of course one of the tools of the writer’s self-representation. Léry’s agenda is indeed to present himself as a Protestant martyr and to describe himself as having bravely experienced the “New World” under the protection of God. Underlining the fact that some of these fears were unnecessary would be undermining this image, as well as the reliability of his testimony. This is what Frédéric Tinguely notes indeed: “les obstacles surmontés par

Ie voyageur-écrivain contribuent directement à consolider son capital de confiance.”191

191 Frédéric Tinguely, Le voyageur aux mille tours les ruses de l’écriture du monde à la Renaissance (Paris: Champion, 2014)., 153.

105 However Léry presents himself both in a heroic and vulnerable way throughout the narrative, displaying what contemporary psychologists would refer to today as “self- compassion:” privileging self-kindness over self-judgment, common humanity over isolation, mindfulness over over-identification, as we will see later in the two episodes where he feared the most.

Léry has indeed a compassionate attitude towards those who fear, in addition to himself. Etymologically cum-patior means to suffer with, and Léry experiences this fear first-hand, which has consequences on his interpretation of it. In his dictionary from 1680,

Richelet actually uses the verb “apprehender” in his definition of the term compassion:

“Afliction qu'on a pour un mal qui semble menacer quelqu'un de sa perte, ou du moins de le faire beaucoup soufrir, quoi qu'il ne mérite nulement qu'un tel malheur lui arrive, à condition toutefois que celui qui a de la compassion se trouve en un tel état que lui-même apréhende qu'il ne lui en arrive autant, ou à quelqu'un des siens comme n'en etant pas trop

éxent, ni bien éloigné .” We have already mentioned the passage where he defends the ones who “apprehendoyent tellement la mort qu’ils ne tenoyent conte de rien” on the way back to France. A similar defense is to be found in the first part of the narration that depicts the trip to Brazil, where Léry underlines the complex relationship between knowledge and fear.

In this passage the waves are so high and the sea so tumultuous that even those who are used to it are afraid, whereas those who have never been at sea are scared to death:

et dés lors fusmes prins d’un flot de mer qui continua douze jours : durant

lesquels outre que nous fusmes tous fort malades de la maladie accoustumée

à ceux qui vont sur mer, encores n’y avoit-il celuy qui ne fust bien

espouvanté de tel branslement. Et de fait, ceux principalement qui

106 n’avoyent jamais senti l’air marin, ny dancé telle dance, voyans la mer ainsi

haute et esmeuë, pensoyent à tous coups et à toutes minutes que les vagues

nous deussent faire couler en fond.192

Here again, Léry relates the amount of fear to the amount of knowledge that one has. This passage reminds us of the expression used by Panurge once the storm has passed: “mesurer le péril à l’aulne de la paour.”193 Léry insists on the visual cause of fear, related to the fact that this spectacle had never been experienced by some members of the crew. The less experience, the more fear. But when the exterior senses are being stimulated by the immediate surroundings, fear arises and Léry, one more time, describes this phenomenon without judging those who had less experience, but rather by explaining why there were different degrees of fear among the crew, even though everybody was scared. Similarly to

Panurge in the Tempest episode, Léry then comments on the thickness of the boat’s hull, which leads to a praise of the technicity of boats and navigation: “Comme certainement c’est chose admirable de voir qu’un vaisseau de bois, quelque fort et grand qu’il soit, puisse ainsi resister à la fureur et force de ce tant terrible element.”194 He makes detailed technical references to the size of their boat, and to the ways boats are built in general, before referring to the invention of a key tool for navigation: “l’Eguille marine, avec laquelle on se conduit.” By doing so Léry insists on two different tools that allow man to experience the world, and more particularly the ocean: the boat and the compass. A few paragraphs later, Léry rewrites this passage with a slight variation: moving to the discourse of

192 Léry, 42. 193 Rabelais, Quart Livre, chapter 23: “Vertus Dieu (dist Panurge) nous sommes doncques continuellement à deux doigtz pres de la mort. Est ce cy une des neuf joyes de mariage? Ha, nostre amé, vous faictez bien, mesurant le peril à l’aulne de paour,” 1017. 194 Léry, 115.

107 experience to the religious discourse to address fear. This rewriting of the same motif from a different angle in two different paragraphs is characteristic of Léry’s narrative technique and indicates, as I will argue later in this chapter, the confluence of different epistemological discourses to try to make sense of his surrounding reality. In the following excerpt, Léry describes again the sailors’ fears of the waves, insisting this time on their physical reactions: “ayans les sens defaillis et chancelans comme yvrongnes.” He underlines the fact that however experienced some sailors were, everyone was suffering from this terrible swell: “le vaisseau estoit tellement esbranlé qu’il n’y avoit matelot, tant habile fust-il, qui se peust tenir debout.” This observation is then followed by an intertextual dialogue with Pslam 107 in Marot’s translation of the Psaultier Huguenot, and by the rewriting of Juvenal’s topos of the precarity of man’s life separated from death by the thickness of the boat’s hull. By doing so Léry moves from a technical reflexion on the boat’s hull underlining the inventiveness of man, to a metaphorical, religious and ontological reflexion on the precarity of life. He uses the same motif in order to depict fear in an even more spectacular way, by replacing Juvenal’s poem with a creation of his own:

Partant, puisque par telles agitations des furieuses vagues le peril approche

bien souvent plus pres de ceux qui sont dans les vaisseaux navigables que

l’espesseur des ais de quoy ils sont faicts, m’estant advis que le Poete, qui

a dit que ceux qui vont sur mer ne sont qu’à quatre doigts de la mort, les en

eslongne encores trop: j’ay, pour plus exprès advertissement aux navigans,

non seulement tourné mais aussi amplifié ces vers en ceste façon.195

195 Léry, 43

108 Here Léry names the rewriting process of the Juvenal’s poem by two actions: adaptation

(“tourné”) and amplification. And what he will really amplify in this poetic piece is the notion of fear. And how reasonable fear is, considering how unreasonable it is to go at sea.

Just as the sailors were “à la praticque de ce qui est dit au Pseaume 107” Léry wants to put into practice Juvenal’s poem and to modify it in the light of his experience:

Quoy que la mer par son onde bruyante, / Face herisser de peur cil qui la

hante, / Ce nonobstant l’homme se fie au bois, / Qui d’espesseur n’a que

quatre ou cinq doigts, / De quoy est faict le vaisseau qui le porte : / Ne

voyant pas qu’il vit en telle sorte / Qu’il a la mort à quatre doigts de luy. /

Reputer fol on peut donc bien celuy / Qui va sur mer, si en Dieu ne se fie, /

Car c’est Dieu seul qui peut sauver sa vie.196

This moment of narrating fear is thus also a moment of creation for Léry. This poetical piece dramatizes fear and legitimates it by inscribing it in a universal framework and making it exemplary, with its didactic purpose of “advertissement aux navigans.” Put into

God’s hands and under the reader’s eyes, the sailors’ fear becomes spectacular. In these two excerpts, at the very beginning of the narration, fear is not judged but explained, justified and dramatized. Léry relates fear to experience and knowledge in these boat-hull- motif variations, which allows him to praise both the inventiveness of man and the omnipotence of God, and is not seen as morally reprehensible or as a sign of lack of courage. Calvin, in his commentary of Psalm 27, also presents fear as a necessary part of the experience of faith: “But when he declares, “My heart shall not fear,” this does not imply that he would be entirely devoid of fear, — for that would have been more worthy

196 Léry, 43.

109 of the name of insensibility than of virtue; but lest his heart should faint under the terrors which he had to encounter, he opposed to them the shield of faith.”197

Let us now come back to the Columbus anecdote. As we have seen, it seems unlikely that Léry uses it in order to condemn the explorer’s unjustified fear. And actually the anecdote is followed by an example that proves that it is normal to fear since fear can be justified by a previous negative experience in the past. After having described the sea plants, Léry adds: “mais au reste, ainsi que nous apperceumes, aucunement dangereuses à manier.”198 This contrasts with a previous experience the crew had had with some dangerous red plants looking like a rooster’s crest, that would make the sailors’ hands red and swollen. Until verified or corrected by experience, fear does not seem to appear like right or wrong but to just be part of the temporal cognitive process that allows the sailors to interact with, and then understand, their immediate environment. The seagrass anecdote is immediately followed by the description of another object that epands the travelers’ experience of their surroundings: the sounding line. Again, Léry’s approach is corrective; the purpose of this paragraph is to correct the tales told about this navigating instrument in light of what he has seen and experienced:

Semblablement ayant n’agueres parlé de la sonde, de laquelle j’ay souvent

ouy faire des contes qui semblent estre prins du livre des quenouilles:

assavoir que ceux qui vont sur mer la jettant en fond, rapportent au bout

d’icelle de la terre, par le moyen de laquelle ils cognoissent la contrée où

197 Jean Calvin, John King, and Calvin Translation Society, Commentaries (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1979). Volume 8, Part 1. 198 Léry, 523

110 ils sont: cela estant faux quant à la mer du Ponent, je diray ce que j’en ai

veu et à quoi elle sert.199

Follows a technical explanation of how the “sonde” actually works in order to prove that it is impossible to reach the bottom of the ocean when you’re so far at sea, like they are at that moment. It is tempting here, since this explanation directly follows the description of the hands of the sailors touching and thus testing the sea plants, to see the sounding line as emblematic of Léry’s conception of first-hand experience. Indeed, the throwing of the sounding line is preceded by an estimation, a first judgment, followed by a verification. If there is gravel stuck in the sounding line grease: the estimation has been verified, and the sailors can drop anchor. If there isn’t any gravel, the estimation has been corrected and

“faut aller sonder ailleurs.” This passage echoes Léry’s continuous critique of those who do not base their knowledge on experience, the cartographers who represent the cannibal

Boucan the European way, or Thévet who misrepresents the customs of the Tupinambas in his Singularités de la France Antarctique. Here Léry asserts the primacy of first-hand experience in the knowledge process. Inserted between an episode of justified fear and a technical development on the sounding line as a privileged tool for experience whether confirmatory or corrective, the Columbus anecdote takes on a whole different meaning than in Gomara’s text: in this passage Léry unfolds the relationship between danger and fear in a cognitive way which removes any negative moral judgment from this reaction to the surrounding environment. Fear thus becomes one of the modes of experience of the

“New World,” this experience being at the very heart of Léry’s narrative: “For Léry, witnessing is no longer bearing witness, but having experiences; thus the “stuff” of

199 Léry, 523.

111 testimony is not the act it performs in the here and now, but the experiences it recounts in the then and there.”200

2-Fear as a Cognitive Tool:

Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. If fear is cognitive, it implies that it is accompanied by a thought mechanism through which the fearing subject learns something, ending up with more knowledge than they had in the first place. Let us look at two central episodes of Léry’s narrative that are both imbued with fear and extremely formative, the singing ceremony and the first night at a Tupi village, and focus on the mechanics of fear, and particularly its relationship with the different faculties of the mind, as defined by physiologists in the 16th century: perception, imagination, reason and memory. These two moments have been extensively studied, and they are very compelling because of the way

Léry, through an internal focalization, immerses the reader in this gradual discovery of a new culture. The singing ceremony experience is key to Michel de Certeau’s analysis of

Léry’s “érotisme ethnologique” 201 when the second episode we will study is what Frank

Lestringant refers to as Léry’s “Brazilian baptism”.202

200 Frisch, The Invention of the Eyewitness, 139. 201 Michel de Certeau, L'écriture De L'histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 2002): “Le récit raconte le plaisir de voir par le “petit perthuis” comme par un trou de serrure, avant d’être dans un coin à jouir tout son soul de ce “sabbat” et de ces “Bacchanales”; plus encore, il dit le plaisir d’entendre de près les bruits effrayants et séducteurs qui rendent irrésistibles la témérité de s’approcher: ces scènes d’érotisme “ethnologique” vont se répéter dans les récits de voyage,” 272. 202 Frank Lestringant, Jean De Léry, Ou, L'invention Du Sauvage: Essai Sur L'histoire D'un Voyage Faict En La Terre Du Brésil (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005): “Comme les Indiens se montrent incapables de prononcer le prénom du narrateur et encore moins de le retenir […] le truchement ou interprète lui soufflé l’idée d’employer plutôt son surnom, c’est-à-dire son nom de familleLéry, nous est-il redit, “signifie une huître en leur langage”La trouvaille est bien accueillieLes Indiens s’en tiennent satisfaits et s’étonnent même de découvrir dans cet étranger presque un des leurs [Léry est donc né une deuxième fois, “rené”C’est comme une nouvelle naissance à la mode brésiliemme

112 The singing ceremony passage is situated in a very complex chapter entitled: “De ce qu’on peut appeler religion entre les sauvages Ameriquains: des erreurs où certains abuseurs qu’ils ont entr’eux, nommez Caraibes, les detiennent: et de la grande ignorance de Dieu où ils sont plongés.”203 The excerpt I will focus on describes the Tupi prophets or

Caraibes, who can communicate with the spirits.204 The description of this custom is rendered through an anecdote: a religious ceremony that Léry insists on witnessing, on his way to a different village. The Tupi men and women are divided into two groups in two different houses and a lot of Caraibes are present. Léry and his friends slowly manage to make their way from the women’s house to the men’s, out of curiosity and moved by a strong desire to witness the ceremony. Indeed, the passage is pervaded by the lexical field of both fear and curiosity, but also by the vocabulary of pleasure and of the senses

(especially sight and hearing). The ones who fear in this passage are Léry, his companions, and the “truchement,” the European intermediary, who fears for the too intrepid Léry. The latter is clearly at the center of this gripping anecdote, explicitly expressing his fear in this moment of discovery of something he hasn’t experienced yet, although he has lived among the Tupis for more than six months at that time: “combien, di-je, qu’il y eust jà plus de demi an que je frequentois les sauvages, et que je fusse desjà autrement accoustumé parmi eux, tant y a pour n’en rien desguiser, qu’ayant eu lors quelque frayeur, ne sçachant mesme quelle seroit l’issue du jeu, j’eusse bien voulu estre en nostre fort.”205 Léry explicitely links

[…] Le rite d’adoption est complété quelques heures plus tard par une épreuve alimentaire […] Cette scène à demi-rêvée qui se conclut par la mise à distance du tabou alimentaire, deliver l’une des clés possibles de l’histoireLéry cesse d’avoir peur d’être mangé, ou, ce qui revient au même, de manger l’autre,” 29-30. 203 Léry, Chapter 16, 377. 204 Léry, 395-403. 205 Léry, 399.

113 the uncertainty of the outcome to fear. Its objects in this passage are the mysteriosity of the actions, the fact that this custom seems related to the devil (corroborated by the monstrous appearance of the women singing in trance) and most probably the fact that the Tupi might get angry at them for witnessing this secret ceremony. We could thus say that all these fears fall into the category of the fear of the unknown.

Fear is indeed caused by Léry’s ignorance of the details of this ceremony. It is accentuated by the warnings of the truchement whose fear contaminates the others. It is also a direct reaction to what is experienced through the senses that are sight and hearing.

But interestingly, as we mentioned when analyzing the sea grass anecdote, it is also the senses that will allow fear to be overcome. The narrator’s fear is inseparable from his curiosity, which reminds us of Panurge’s desire for knowledge, at the source of his apprehensive behavior. It is this curiosity for the other culture that has been praised in the later reception of Léry and that contributed to the fact that Lévi Strauss calls the Voyage

“le bréviaire de l’ethnologue.”206 Léry tells the singing ceremony story retrospectively, revealing the elements little by little to mimic his own discovery process for the reader. It is a moment of high suspense, at the heart of the foreign culture that he’s been describing for 15 chapters already. It ends with an amazing reversal, showing how formative this experience has been and exemplifying Léry’s relativist attitude: when the European observer has overcome his fear, he displaces the fear on the “sauvages” worried that they will be afraid of him and of his companions (“effaroucher” is translated by “disturb” in

English). It is only once he realizes that the “sauvages” did not fear them as well that he can contemplate the spectacle of the singing ceremony. This notion of wonder or spectacle

206 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (Paris: Plon, 1955), 84.

114 is present from the beginning of the anecdote with words such as “extraordinaire,” or

“mystère.” It is an interesting moment when the traveler chooses to fear. Experience is both the cause of fear: they fear what they hear and see (as shown by the present participles used in a causal way: “nous les regardans;” “nous oyans”) and the mean to gradually erase this fear: as they stay longer and see more, they become accustomed to the practice.207 The truchement has a key role in this passage: he is Léry’sdoppelgänger. He’s been here longer but fears these ceremonies and has never dared to approach them. Léry’s nitiali fear in this passage is thus increased and conditioned by this other person’s experience. He confesses his dread without negative connotations or judgment: “combien, di-je, qu’il y eust jà plus de demi an que je frequentois les sauvages, et que je fusse desjà autrement accoustumé parmi eux, tant y a pour n’en rien desguiser, qu’ayant eu lors quelque frayeur, ne sçachant mesme quelle seroit l’issue du jeu, j’eusse bien voulu estre en nostre fort.” This quote constitutes the turning point of the anecdote and of the experience, since it is immediately followed by the adverb “toutefois.” Having reached this climax of fear, and confessing it to the reader, giving him an impression of total isochrony, Léry is now able to go to the other side: thus presenting this episode as an initiatic moment. The adjectives used to describe the singing change: from “confus” they become “merveilleux,” “doux,”

“gracieux:” “Toutesfois, apres que ces bruicts et hurlemens confus furent finis, les hommes

207 See Rolena Adorno, “The Negotiation of Fear in Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios,” Representations 33, Special Issue: The New World (Winter, 1991), 163-199.

115 faisans une petite pose (les femmes et les enfans se taisans lors tous cois) nous les entendismes derechef chantans et faisans resonner leurs voix d’un accord si merveilleux, que m’estant un peu rasseuré, oyant ces doux et plus gracieux sons.” And Léry, from passive listener, from witness, becomes an active observer, driven by his curiosity. He uses his own “bon sens,” questions the truchement’s warnings, and decides to rely on the good relationships he built with some of the older Tupi villagers to conclude that it is safe to go out. He presents himself as going out of the house half-willingly and half-unwillingly:

“moitié de force et moitié de gré.” However, no one forced him to leave the women’s house: it’s actually quite the opposite since the truchement wanted to prevent him from leaving. The shift of pronouns after this turning point, from “nous” to “je,” reveals this shift of perspective, from the group to the individual. The gaze has shifted, Léry has detached himself from the rest of the group who now watches him. He has become a spectacle as well. Later in the passage, once the border between ignorance and knowledge has been crossed, the group can be reunited, and the pronoun shifts back to “nous.” Order and harmony succeed to chaos, and from spies they become full spectators. This passage clearly shows the transformative power of fear, and its intricate relationship with experience. So formative that this is one of the passages that Léry mentions as a vivid and affective memory, at the time of the writing: “Et de fait, au lieu que du commencement de ce sabbat [...] j’avais eu quelque crainte, j’eus lors en récompense une telle joie [...] mais aussi toutes les fois qu’il m’en resouvient, le coeur m’en tressaillant, il me semble que je les aie encore aux oreilles.”208 Fear was definitely worth it since something additional was gained in the process: an aesthetic delight, still present in the writer’s ears and heart (and

208 Léry, 403.

116 to be related with the singing of the Psalms so dear to the disciple of the Reformed religion) that seems to almost prevail on the evangelization mission. Of course one should not forget that this passage, as we mentioned in the beginning of this analysis, is part of Léry’s argumentation regarding the Tupis’ ability to be converted to christianism or not. Whether

Léry has managed to prove the Tupis’ spiritual ground is unclear, and we will get back to this question later on. But this anecdote definitely speaks in favor of the cognitive process allowed by an experienced fear. It illustrates what Tinguely notices: “l'expérience du danger tend a cautionner l'expérience cognitive et finit presque par se confondre avec elle, le verbe “experimenter” pouvant des lors s'appliquer indifféremment a un processus d'observation ou à l'affrontement d'un péril.” 209

Let us now move to the episode that precedes the singing ceremony chronologically but comes after it narratively. It narrates the first night that Léry spent in a Tupi village in chapter 18 entitled “Ce qu’on peut appeler loix et police civile entre les sauvages: comment ils traittent et reçoivent humaine ment leurs amis qui les vont visiter: et des pleurs et discours joyeux que les femmes font à leur arrivée et bien-venue.”210 This title is illustrative of the knowledge gained through the experience of fear. It can appear as pretty ironic if we consider that it is in this chapter devoted to hospitality that Léry will experience the biggest fear of his journey. But the chapter titles actually often describe the result of the experience, the conclusion that Léry draws after having experienced the content of the chapter. Léry’s observations allow him to conclude that the Tupis welcome visitors very humanely. This fearful passage differs from the other in two aspects: this fear is not a chosen one, Léry is physically passive and does not decide to leave the tent and go witness

209 Tinguely, Le voyageur aux mille tours les ruses de l’écriture du monde à la Renaissance. 154 210 Léry, 439.

117 the cannibalistic ritual. His amount of temerity thus appears as proportional to his amount of knowledge regarding the Tupi culture. The second difference it that this time the truchement is fearless and Léry is fearful. In the singing episode, the student has surpassed his teacher and Léry thinks that his gained knowledge gives him enough legitimacy and authority to push the boundaries of knowledge even further. The object of fear is also different in degree: even if both these events refer to the fear of the unknown, in this one

Léry is apprehensive of being eaten, whereas in the second one, although it is not explicitely said, he seems apprehensive that they will be punished in some way for his curiosity and also afraid of what he will find at the end of this voyeuristic enterprise.

The thought process that leads him to fear is unfolded by Léry in a very precise manner. It is expressed through the meta-comments that Léry does to explain his fear and that inscribe this phenomenon in a larger reflection on the mechanics of fear. In the most fearful episode of the narrative describing the first night he spends in a Tupi village, Léry is convinced that he will eventually be eaten, hearing and seeing the Tupi cannibal ritual and having been abandoned by his interpreter.211 In the morning he discovers that the

Tupinambas had actually not intended to eat him at all, and they actually laugh, at him or with him, because of this unjustified fear. Léry then provides the reader with a detailed analysis of the fear mechanism by underlining the triggering elements that caused it: “à cause du bruit”; “par ceste contenance me fit une telle frayeur”; “pensant veritablement par tel signal et monstre de ceste chair humaine [...] joint que comme une doute en engendre une autre”; “me voyant de toutes parts environné [...] je croyais fermement et m’attendois devoir estre bien tost mangé”. The explorer shows how he deduced fearful signals from his

211 Léry 451-453.

118 immediate surroundings, through hearing, sight and also, similarly to Panurge, through the power of his imaginative faculty: “comme une doute en engendre une autre.” Although anxiety had already installed itself because of ignorance, now fear really takes over because of signs that are misinterpreted, and from then on, the imagination takes over, causing a chain of fearful thoughts. This description of the causes of fear is accompanied by several informative parentheses to the attention of the reader. However, even if these do underline the temporal discrepancy between the amount of knowledge that he had then versus the amount of knowledge that he has now, they do not produce a retrospective judgment in terms of how justified the fear was: “me demandant (comme je sceu depuis, car je ne l’entendois pas lors) si j’en voulois manger;” “Mais me voyant de toutes parts environné de ceux desquels ignorant l’intention (car comme vous orrez ils ne pensoyent rien moins qu’à me mal faire) je croyois fermement et m’attendois devoir estre bien tost mangé”.

Moreover, Léry calls for the reader’s sympathy, asking them for compassion by imaginatively projecting themselves in his situation, an invitation to compassion that Léry applies both to himself and to other fearful subjects as I already mentioned at the beginning of this analysis: “Je laisse à penser à ceux qui comprendront bien ce que je di, et qui se mettront en ma place, si elle me sembla longue.” In this sentence, Léry links the capacity of understanding to the capacity of experiencing and feeling vicariously. This relates to the

“Rabelistes” diatribe in which Léry called for the readers’ compassion rather than mocking.

There is no judgment either in the retranscription of his interpreter’s reaction towards

Léry’s fear: “luy là dessus m’ayant dit que je n’eusse point de crainte, et que ce n’estoit pas à nous à qui on en vouloit.” The only reaction to this discrepancy is left to the

Tupinambas who end up laughing when they realize the misunderstanding: “eux ayans dit

119 qu’ils s’estoyent aussi aucunement apperceus que j’avois eu peur d’eux, dont ils estoyent bien marris, ma consolation fut (selon qu’ils sont grands gausseurs) une risée qu’ils firent, de ce que sans y penser, ils me l’avoyent baillée si belle.” This laughter occurs because the

Tupi themselves, according to the narrator, had supposedly not understood the reason of

Léry’s fear. There was also a discrepancy between what they saw and what they thought.

Once the misunderstandings are solved the discrepancy is more celebrated than condemned and the “victim” of this misunderstanding does not seem to hold a grudge against the ones who had more knowledge than him- except maybe against his interpreter, who he accuses of debauchery in another parenthesis: “(lequel en d’autres maisons du village, avec les fripponniers de sauvages avoit riblé toute la nuict).”

In this formative moment, demonstrating that fear comes from a misunderstanding,

Léry reverses the traditional fearful encounter with cannibals since all this excerpt consists in saying that it was normal for him to be fearful at the time (by describing the mechanisms of fear and calling for the reader’s sympathy) but that experience operated this change from fearful to not fearful, which allowed him to appreciate the Tupis’ hospitality. By a shift of perspective towards the end of the passage, he exposes the Tupis’ reaction (who were upset since they could sense that he was afraid, felt sorry about it and then laugh when they fully realize what happened in a moment of frank camaraderie, and humanizes them, thus demonstrating a sense of relativism that Montaigne will later make famous in the essay “Of

Cannibals.”212 In these two passages, separated by several months of experience in Tupi territory, Léry is very attentive to the subjective mechanism of fear that structures these two formative moments for the protagonist. Fear experienced is what allows the narrator

212 Montaigne, Essais, I, 30, 208.

120 to gain additional knowledge about the the Tupi culture, a knowledge that will actually contribute to the new identity he develops, bringing back with him in Europe the memories of the Tupis and their practices.213

3-From the fear of the Tupis to the Tupis’ own fear: apprehending the Other

I will focus this part of the chapter on two occurrences where Léry uses the the verb

“apprehender,” not to describe the European travelers’ feelings, but to refer to the

Tupinambas’ emotions. Similarly to the passages previously studied, these two episodes complicate the traditional dynamic between a fearful traveler and a fearsome foreign object, here the cannibal Tupinamba. This contributes, as we will see, to conveying Léry’s sense of relativism, and to connecting the notion of fear to the notion of experience. In doing so, Léry theorizes the feeling of fear by analyzing its mechanism, in terms that present it as a process of the mind. Additionally, we will see how the description of the other’s fear points to the doubts and anxiety of the Protestant missionary, confronting his first-hand experience to the theological debates of the time about demonology and diabolic illusion.

The first occurrence of the verb “appréhender” that I would like to look at, is located in chapter 12 devoted to the presentation of the different fish one can find in Brazil.This descriptive list is accompanied by the explanation of the Tupinambas’ fishing techniques.

An anecdote illustrates how good swimmers the Tupis are. Léry tells us how, with a few

213 On these audible, visual and olfactive memories see Timothy Reiss, “ Topographes et voyageurs : savoirs, histoires, violence et altérité de Léry à Cyrano, ” in Dissidents, excentriques et marginaux de l’âge Classique. Autour de Cyrano de Bergerac, (Paris, Honoré Champion, 2006), 17-30.

121 other French men, seeing from their fort some Tupis falling from a raft, they feared that they would drown and came to rescue them hastily:

les pensans secourir, nous fusmes aussi tost vers eux : les ayans tous trouvez

nageans et rians sur l’eau, il y en eut un qui nous dit, Et où allez-vous ainsi

si hastivement, vous autres Mairs (ainsi appellent-ils les François) ? Nous

venons, dismes-nous, pour vous sauver et retirer de l’eau. Vrayement, dit-

il, nous vous en sçavons bon gré : mais au reste, avez-vous opinion que pour

estre tombez dans la mer, nous soyons pour cela en danger de nous noyer?214

The object of fear is very interesting here. The European travelers fear that the other, the

“savage” (this is the word that Léry uses throughout the narrative), is in danger and will die. This apprehension is caused by what they see and by the projection of their own fear of drowning, but also by their ignorance, since, at that time, they were ignorant of the fact that the Tupi were excellent swimmers. This episode turns out to be a reflection on the relativity of fear itself: Léry and his friends fear that the Tupi fear water, but they do not.

The story is told from the traveler’s perspective and, like he often does in the narrative,

Léry underlines the difference between the learning traveler that he was and the learned writer that he is, and highlights his ignorance and his companions’. Furthermore, an inserted dialogue between Léry and one of the swimming Tupis dramatizes this error in judgment. The Tupi himself explains, in direct speech, their customs and fear mechanisms to Léry, in a moment where Léry is explaining the Tupi customs to the reader. The Tupi swimmer first asks a question that describes exactly the deductive process that Léry and his companions used: “mais au reste, avez-vous opinion que pour estre tombez dans la mer,

214 Léry, 299-300.

122 nous soyons pour cela en danger de nous noyer ?”, thus highlighting the relationship between fear and experience, especially the sense of sight here, since Léry saw them fall in the sea. He then uses a didactic comparison in his explanation “De maniere, dit-il, que nous avons beaucoup plus de peur, que quelques grans poissons ne nous traisnent en fond, que nous ne craignons d’enfondrer de nous-mesmes,” a pedagogical device that Léry constantly uses to describe the differences between the land of Brazil and France, the “par- dela” and the “par-deca”. Here the object of investigation, the Tupi swimmer, mimics the behavior of the observer in an interesting mise en abyme that exemplifies the relativity of fear, and, by extension, the relativity of customs, that Léry constantly advocates for in the narrative. Léry himself then processes this new knowledge by establishing the difference between what he thought and what the situation actually was, thus showing that the

European traveler has now fully incorporated this discrepancy to his system of thought:

“Et de fait, combien que nous fussions encore à plus d’un quart de lieue de notre fort, si n’y en eut-il que quatre ou cinq, plus encore pour causer avec nous que de danger qu’ils appréhendassent, qui se voulussent mettre dans notre bateau.” This didactic comparison seems now directed to the reader. Léry takes on his pedagogical role again, and the subjunctive he uses to conjugate the verb “appréhender” shows that fear has now been relegated to a hypothetical and imaginary realm, the realm which it actually stemmed from in the beginning. This verb actually describes exactly what Léry and his companions had felt: they were apprehensive of the Tupis’ drowning. This mirroring effect, between the alternate reality created by the use of the hypothetical verb mode and the actual feeling the travelers experienced, contributes to place the two traditionally polarized groups, the Tupis and the Europeans, on equal footing here, laying out the path to relativism and, by

123 extension, to the critique of contemporary French society. The end of the anecdote constitutes the outcome of this cognitive process, that goes from experience, to comparison, to relativism215 and eventually to implicit critique. Léry, observing the swimmers, sees that they do not care about their belongings left in the bark. He concludes the passage with another didactic comparison, bringing the reader into the conversation by using the second person singular in a universal way: “Et quant à leur barque d’escorce, quelques licts de cotton, vivres et autres objets qui estoyent dedans, qu’ils nous apportoyent, le tout estant submergé, ils ne s’en soucioyent certes non plus que vous feriez d’avoir perdu une pomme.

Car, disoyent-ils, n’en y a-il pas d’autres au pays.?” The final rhetorical question turns this specific event into a larger, more universal reflection. The anecdote, initially supposed to illustrate the Tupis’ swimming skills in relationship to their fishing skills, gradually takes on a whole new meaning. The initial feeling of fear leads to a dialogue that demonstrates the relativity of fear. And this leads to the observation of the Tupis’ lack of interest for material possessions, that produces an implicit comment on the European vanity regarding possession and property. The initial fear made the traveler more observant and brought his attention to something that he might not have noticed if it was not for this “accident” he witnessed. By unfolding the fear mechanism, Léry notices, not only a crucial difference between the Tupis’ swimming skills and the Europeans’, but also a more fundamental one that has moral implications: their detachment from material possessions. The final philosophical question leaves the reader pensive and contributes to the utopian description of this new found Land, that mirrors satirically the traveler’s originating country. In this

215 Frisch presents Léry’s comparative practice as deeply influenced by Calvin’s Eucharist semiotics: “I have been arguing that the concept of analogy that grounds Calvin’s Eucharist semiotics constitute the basis for Léry’s relativistic view of Tupi and European customs by providing a theory of cultural practices as contingent (but not arbitrary) signs,” 168.

124 passage, the fear for the other, and not of the other, is allowed by the empathy that Léry has built out of experience. This reflexion about the foreign other’s feelings actually reveals the travelers’ own anxieties, here the fear of drowning, that the Tupis’ behavior mirrored.

This allows Léry to achieve an ultimate mirroring by comparing the disinterest of the Tupis for material posessions with the greediness of Europeans. Fearing for the other, even to realize that they were not fearful in the end, allows for a comparison to happen, that eventually produces new knowledge.

The second occurrence of the verb “appréhender” addresses a fear that the Tupis actually have this time, and not the least: their fear of the devil that they see in front of their eyes and that make them suffer physically. In the whole passage, the roles are reversed compared to the swimming episode: here the Tupis do fear indeed, and the travelers are the ones who do not fear. At least not at first glance. In chapter 16, that contains the singing anecdote previously mentioned, Léry describes how the Tupis are tormented by the devil spirit Kaagerre, also called Aygnan, who, they say, beats them and appears to them under different guises. When they lament to the travellers who do not see Aygnan, the Europeans tell them to put their faith in the true God, just like them. Driven by fear, the Tupis agree, but change their minds as soon as the danger is over, which, Léry laments, makes them impossible to convert.

Léry’s argumentation in this chapter regarding the religiosity of the Tupis is hesitant and its content ambiguous: it aims to show that the Tupis have a fertile spiritual ground but that they are ignorant of God, which makes them impossible to excuse and thus to convert.

Throughout the chapter, Léry has to recognize that the Tupis are too removed from the knowledge of God while paradoxically having to admit that they possess a undeniable

125 sense of religiosity.216 Within this hesitant argumentation Léry addresses many of the theological anxieties of the time with regards to the inhabitants of the Americas: is the affirmation of a universal human spirituality (prisca theologia) stated by Cicero verifiable?

Did the Apostles travel to the Americas to spread the Revelation?217 Are the inhabitants of the Americas descendants of the sons of Noah, and if so of which one? The Tupis, who

Léry spent several months with, allow him to put these questions to the test. The passage that we will focus on within this chapter constitutes for Léry the third proof, in addition to their belief in the immortality of the soul and in the existence of a heaven and hell in the afterlife, that the Tupis have the seed of religiosity in them: the fact that they are tormented by the devil. In this excerpt he gives a detailed description of their fear of devilish apparitions that they see in front of their eyes and that makes them suffer physically. He also describes their memory of such sufferings, and then their fearful anticipation of the recurrence of such pain. Their European interlocutors see their apprehension of the devil as an opportunity for a conversion attempt and try to convince them to put their faith in

God, which they promise to do, and then immediately forget, once the danger is past.218

216 Two of these examples used to illustrate this sense of religiosity actually constitute the two most sensory passages of the Voyage that fill Léry with aesthetic joy: the singing ceremony previously analyzed and a sing along of Psalm 104 in the forest with the members of different indigenous tribes (Léry, 417-419). 217 On this controversy see Giuliano Gliozzi, ‘Les Apôtres au Nouveau Monde’ in L'impensable Polythéisme: Études D'historiographie Religieuse (Paris: Editions des Archives contemporaines, 1988), 177-213. 218 This conversion attempt has been illustrated by an engraving in the first edition of the Voyage, and an upgraded version of it is present in the anthology of travel narratives established by Théodore De Bry in 1592. These images add another layer of complexity to the questions we are raising in this chapter and we will not address them here. For an analysis of these illustrations see: Frank Lestringant, Le Huguenot Et Le Sauvage: L'amérique Et La Controverse Coloniale, En France, Au Temps Des Guerres De Religion (1555-1589) (Genève: Droz, 2004), 7-19; Jean-Claude Laborie, “Les diables brésiliens à l’épreuve de la colonization,” in Voyager Avec Le Diable: Voyages Réels, Voyages Imaginaires Et Discours Démonologiques, Xve-Xviie Siècles, Grégoire Holtz and Thibaut Maus de Rolley, eds. (Paris: PUPS, 2008); Grégory Wallerick, “La représentation du Brésil et de ses habitants dans l’Europe de la fin du XVIe siècle,” Confins [En

126 This passage has given rise to several lines of questioning. Frank Lestringant has explored the theological and political implications of this conversion attempt for the history of Huguenots’ unsuccessful missionary enterprises. 219 Several other critics have explored the intertextuality of this passage with demonology treatises of the time, which study the devil apparitions across the world and the different forms they take. The relationship between both genres had already been underlined by Certeau220 and was recently developed in the collection of articles Voyager avec le Diable edited by Grégoire Holtz and Thibault

Maus de Rolley.221 The latter, in his recent article: “A World Within: The Devil, Delusions and Early Modern Cognition,”222 underlines the crucial relationship between demonology and early modern cognition: in order to understand the devil’s wrongdoings, the demonologists had to explore and sometimes redefine the agency of the different faculties of the mind. If this relationship between demonology and cognition has been established, much less attention has been paid to the link between travel narratives and cognition.223

And yet it enables to shed an entire new light on this passage where the polysemy of the word “apprehension” raises key questions about early modern cognition, and more

ligne], 8 | 2010, mis en ligne le 20 mars 2010, consulté le 22 mai 2018URL : http://journals.openedition.org/confins/6279 ; DOI : 10.4000/confins.6279 219 Lestringant, Le Huguenot Et Le Sauvage, 25: in the prologue Lestringant analyzes this passage and underlines Léry’s faith in the pedagogical exemplary method of conversion, while emphasizing the failure of such a method, which will have consequences on the Huguenots’ absence of missionary success in Brazil and Florida: “Le dialogue entre le huguenot et le sauvage se conclut donc par un échec.” According to him, the presence of the devil reinforces the otherness of the Tupis and their refusal to believe in God renders impossible all hope of redemption. 220 “La littérature de voyage n’a malheureusement pas encore été étudiée comme un immense complément et déplacement de la démonologieLes mêmes structures s’y retrouvent pourtant.” Certeau, L’Écriture de l’Histoire, 243-244. 221Grégoire Holtz and Thibaut Maus de Rolley, Voyager Avec Le Diable. 222 Thibaut Maus de Rolley, “A World Within: The Devil, Delusions and Early Modern Cognition,” in Cognitive Confusions, 21. 223 See Cathy Yandell, “Cannibalism and cognition in Jean de Léry's Histoire d'un voyage” in Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France, David LaGuardia and Cathy M. Yandell eds. (Farnham, Surrey : Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015), 187-204.

127 specifically on the relationship between the outside world and the faculties of the mind, between perception and imagination. The use of the word in this passage devoted to faith, reality and illusion, points to an uneasiness in Léry’s argumentation, navigating between two epistemological realms: theology and first-hand experience. Léry first establishes a strict opposition between the unconverted Tupis and the faithful Europeans, opposing the fear of the devil to the faith in God. The epistemological value of his testimony thus relies on two experiences: in order to establish the validity of his argument Léry not only has to describe what he sees but also what the Tupis see, dissecting their fear mechanism in a very precise way. He does so by relating fear to memory and imagination. The polysemy of the verb appréhender in the description of this psychological process echoes cognitive anxieties of the time raised by the field of demonology around the power of imagination.

The Tupis’ fear thus becomes a piece of evidence in an ongoing argument between the

Calvinist and contemporary demonologists that he refers to as “atheists,” who claim that the devil can sometimes be the product of someone’s imagination. This passage thus appears to be also about the preacher’s anxiety, who has to renounce the possibility of conversion, but refuses to renounce the presence of the devil.

Léry’s description of the devilish apparitions experienced by the Tupinambas is split into two paragraphs that give us a variation on the same theme. In both paragraphs Léry describes the Tupis’ fear of the devil spirits, their lament to the Europeans, the conversion attempt and the failure of this attempt. Léry’s argumentation relies on the opposition between the fear of the Tupis and the faith of the Europeans. We can immediately notice the variety of the lexical field used by Léry to address these apparitions: “ce malin esprit,”

“Kaagerre,” “Aygnan,” “en guise de beste,” “oyseau,” ‘”orme estrange,” “cette furie

128 infernale,” “le diable ou l’esprit malin;” “luy,” whereas God is only referred to as “Dieu” and then by a comparative periphrasis: “celui qui est plus fort et plus puissant que lui.” The multiplicity of lexemes used for the devil show how difficult it is for the European

Huguenot to exactly pinpoint what it is that the Tupis see, while opposing the unicity and clarity of God to the protean & moving form of these devilish apparitions.224 The second part rewrites the first one, making it more precise and vivid, with a physical depiction of the Tupis’ sufferings. It develops the dialogue in direct speech between the two groups.

This dialogue reinforces the opposition between the unafraid European believers and the fearful Tupi unbelievers, and establishes a direct correlation between fear and faith, through antithetically symmetrical constructions: ‘je crains le diable […] je ne le crain point moy’ and the use of comparisons where the Europeans are the model to emulate: the

Tupis say ‘si nous estions preservez comme vous autres!’; and the Europeans answer ‘Il faudroit croire et vous asseurer, comme nous faisons, en celuy qui est plus fort et plus puissant que luy.’ The end of this dialogue establishes with this periphrasis the superiority of God over the Devil. The belief in God thus appears a remedy to the fear of the devil. 225

224 Nicole Jacques-Lefèvre underlines how movement and mutability are seen as characteristic of the devil in her article ‘Pierre de Lancre: Du traité démonologique comme récit de voyage en terre sorcière’ in Holtz and Maus de Rolley, Voyager avec le Diable, 193-205. 225It is important to note however that the Tupis, if they feared these diabolic apparitions, did not fear death. This was a key problem for the missionaries who often tried to convert the Tupis before they die. Léry tried indeed to save the soul of a woman who was about to be eaten and she infamously laughs at him (Léry, Voyage, 358-360). For a description of the Tupis’ religion and customs, as well as a critic of the European early modern accounts of Brazil see: Alfred Métraux, La religion des Tupinamba et ses rapports avec celle des autres tribus tupi-guarani (Paris: PUF, 2014); Hélène Clastres, The Land-without-evil: Tupí-guaraní Prophetism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995); and Eduardo BVCastro, The Inconstancy of the Indian Soul: The Encounter of Catholics and Cannibals in 16th-Century Brazil (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2011) in which he exposes the numerous early modern accounts that mention this vivid fear of the devil and underline the inconstancy of the Tupis’ soul.

129 Léry’s argument is (or so it seems at first) that the Protestant missionaries do not see the devils because they have faith in God. Conversely, the Tupinambas see the devils because they do not want to put their faith in God. But the fact that they see the devils proves that they have a sense of religiosity. However, their refusal to put their trust into

God and their changing behavior makes them inexcusable and thus ‘un-convertible.’ In order to justify the premise of this argument Léry promises the reader that the Tupis saw these devilish apparitions, because he saw them seeing them, and he promises, at the same time, that he himself did not see these apparitions that they saw. This cognitive complexity has not been fully explicated and I would like to unfold its main aspects in the following anlysis. It is indeed crucial for Léry to insist on the reality of these diabolic apparitions for the Tupis first because he sees in their beliefs, even imperfect, a proof of the concept of prisca theologia or universal human spirituality, but also because by establishing the reality of the devil, he can refute the arguments of contemporary atheist doctrines claiming that the devil isn’t real.226 He can thus establish the superiority of God by underlining, by contrast, the fact that the European missionaries were protected from such torments.

The epistemological value of his testimony thus comes both from the fact that he is a reliable witness and from the authority of the Tupis’ experience. Consequently, he has to establish the authority of both experiences for the reader. He uses the sense of sight as a way to legitimize his own authority as a witness with the expression: “comme j’ay veu

226 “En fait tout ce chapitre oscille entre deux these difficilement compatibles: celle, tout d’abord, de l’athéisme des peuples primitifs, qui contient les germes d’une future revolution anthropologique; et celle, plus classique, de la prisca theologia, qui s’emploie à déceler dans les mythes et croyances de l’autre les vestiges à demi-effacés d’une révélationcienne, an brouillée par une transmission hasardeuse au fil des siècles et par les tromperies de SatanEn définitive le pessimissme de Léry l’incline à voir dans ces peuplessans écriture l’image d’une humanité déchue et condamnée de toute éternité” Léry, note 2, 377-378.

130 plusieurs fois.” He also emphasizes the reality of the Tupis’ visual perception with an adverb that doubles the meaning of the preceding verb: “disoyent qu’ils le voyoyent visiblement.” The meaning of this adverb is slightly ambiguous: it means both “actually” and “through the eyes”227 and by using it, Léry establishes the authority of his experience

(‘it was obvious that they were seeing’) and of the Tupis’ (‘they saw in front of their eyes’).

To make their afflictions more vivid, he uses direct speech, transcribes most of their words in Tupi228 followed by a translation introduced by ‘c’est à dire,’ and also describes their physical reactions to fear. The authority of the witness is thus dependent on the authority of his object’s experience.

In order to establish the accuracy of his own experience, Léry not only focuses on the external signs of fear, but also unfolds the fear mechanism itself. He does so by breaking down the temporality of the Tupis’ fear into its different stages, thus unfolding a temporal sequence that he will then equate with moral inconstancy. At the end of each paragraph, he focuses indeed on the aftermath of fear. Once the danger is past, their fear disappears, and so does their faith. To describe this inconstancy in the first paragraph, Léry uses a variation of the proverb that appears at the end of the Tempest episode in Rabelais’s Quart Livre and in Erasmus’s Shipwreck, a commentary on fear experienced first-hand or vicariously that I analysed in the previous chapter: “mais suyvant le proverbe qui dit, que le danger passé on se moque du sainct, si tost qu’ils estoyent delivrez, ils ne se souvenoyent plus de leurs

227 Dictionnaire Corneille, 1ère ed. 1694: VISIBLEMENT adv. D'une maniere visible. Nostre Seigneur se monstra visiblement à ses Apostres aprés sa resurrectionune croix parut visiblement en l'air. Il signifie aussi, Manifestement, evidemmentCela est visiblement fauxil vous trompe visiblement. 228 For a study of the Tupi language and its transcription by Léry see: Jean de Léry, Viagem À Terro Do Brasil, edby Plínio Ayrosa and Paul Gaffarel (Rio de Janeiro: Biblitoteca do Exército, 1961) and Plínio Ayrosa, Apontamentos Para a Bibliografia Da Língua Tupí-Guaraní (Universidade de São Paulo: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras, 1954).

131 promesses.” With this proverb, Léry equates this temporal change with moral inconstancy and contributes to the elaboration of the trope of the “inconstancy of the Indian soul” studied by Eduardo Viveires de Castro: “This proverbial inconstancy was not observed only in matters of faith. In fact it became a defining feature of the Amerindian character, consolidating itself as one of the stereotypes in the national imagery: the half-converted

Indian who, at the first opportunity, sends God, the hoe, and clothing, happily returning to the jungle, prisoner of an incurable atavism.” 229

But, by doing so, he also inscribes the fearing process in a temporal dimension, an aspect that he develops in the second paragraph with the final sentence: ‘Tout cela apres s’evanouissait de leur cerveau.’ In order to underline the strength of faith in the missionaries’ mind, Léry emphasizes,a contrario the weakness of the faculties of the mind located in what he refers to as the Tupis’ ‘cerveau,’ lamenting the fact that the seed of faith does not remain fixed there. Used copiously by Marot, Rabelais, d’Aubigné, Beroalde de

Verville and Montaigne,230 the word ‘cerveau,’ even if it is considered as the site of reason, is often used at the time in a negative context to describe the malleability of its substance making it a receptacle ready to receive false impressions and thus to proceed to false

229 Castro, The Inconstancy of the Indian Soul, 5. 230 Clément Marot, Les Epigrammes, 1526 in Œuvres de Clément Marot les plus nouvelles et récentesedby Gérard Defaux (Paris : Bordas, 1992): “Voyant çà bas maint cerveau foible, et tendre,” 25; François Rabelais, Pantagruel, Abel Lefranc ed. (Paris: Champion, 1931): “et sens bien que les registres de mon cerveau sont quelque peu brouillez de ceste purée de septembre,” 344; Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Pierre Villey and Verdun L. Saulnier eds. (Paris : Presses universitaires de France, 1978): “dict qu'il se troubla du cerveau, comme font tous hommes qui perscrutent immodereemant les cognoissances qui ne sont de leur appurtenance,” 535; Beroalde de Verville, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1879): “Je croy qu'il estoit fou: le saffran de sa boutique luy avoit alteré le cerveau,” 301; Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, Armand Garnier and Jean Plattard eds. (Paris: Droz, 1932): “des jambes et des bras les os sont sans moelle,/ il ne va plus en haut pour nourrir la cervelle / qu'un chime venimeux dont le cerveau nourri/ prend matiere et liqueur d'un champignon pourri,” 52.

132 judgments.231 Here, it is thus not surprising that Léry uses it to describe the Tupinambas’ brain and not his, in order to underline how fast their belief in God comes and goes. By doing so, he makes assumptions about what is happening inside their mind, going beyond what he can actually see.

In addition to mentioning the aftermath of fear, Léry focuses on what causes fear, and even on the anticipation of a fear yet to come with two expressions in the second paragraph. The first one is “je leur ai souvent vu tellement apprehender cette furie infernale, que quand ils se resouviennent de ce qu’ils avaient souffert le passé […].” The verb

“apprehender” is ambiguous here. As we saw, it is important for Léry to underline how vividly the Tupis perceive the devils, hence “tellement apprehender” could mean “perceive so vividly.” But the rest of the sentence focuses on the anticipation of fear, and introduces another faculty of the mind: memory. There seems to be a contradiction here: although the

Tupis, according to Léry, do not remember their promise, they remember however extremely vividly their past fears and the physical torments that accompanied them. The remembrance of their past sufferings, makes them apprehensive that such sufferings would occur again, and the anticipation of the reproduction of this past event, leads to bodily reactions: they hit their thighs, sweat and lament. In the direct speech line that immediately follows, Léry makes the Tupis use the verb “craindre” to refer to this phenomenon, which suggests that the verb “apprehender” could refer to an attitude of prospective fear. The last sentence of this passage confirms this semantic possibility since it contains an expression

231 Cotgrave, 1611 - Cerveau: m. The braine Cerveaux à bourlet Ignorant Lawyers, dunsicall pleaders, pettifoggers Cerveaux enfroquez Monkes, or Fryers Cerveau mal cuict A light, giddie, rash, humorous, fant asticall, or ill-digested disposition Petit cerveau as Cervelet Avoir le cerveau vn peu gaillard To be humorous, toyish, fantasticall, new-fangled Estre en cerveau To be in his right wits; to be stayed, well-aduised, and out of aduise, resolute, or secure; to be prouided against all chances, armed for all esayes, readie for whatsoeuer shall befall.

133 referring to the anticipation of danger: “voyans le mal prochain.” The verb “voyans” introduces some confusion here, reminding us of the ambiguity of the adverb “visiblement” previously mentioned: do they see the devil outside or inside their mind?232 And it actually reflects the ambiguity of the word appréhender, at the crossroads of present perception and anticipatory imagination. Does Léry mean that the Tupis see the devil physically approaching them from afar? Or that they anticipate the evil to come by remembering the past sufferings and imagining the ones that could happen next? By focusing on the other’s experience of the devil, even if his primary goal is to lament the Tupis’ inconstancy and thus the impossibility of conversion, Léry’s testimony echoes cognitive questions that were at the heart of 16th-century discourses on demonology, where the agency of apprehension, in the sense of perception, and imagination were being assessed and redefined. This is made clear later in the chapter when Léry makes an implicit reference to Jean Wier and an explicit one to Jean Bodin, the two opponents in the debate surrounding the question of diabolic illusion.

This excerpt of the Voyage is indeed in direct dialogue with this burning question as theorized by Jean Wier in Cinq livres de l’imposture et tromperie des diables, des enchantements et sorcelleries translated in French in 1567 and sharply criticized by Jean

Bodin in his Demonomanie published in 1580. And there is an intricate relationship between the discourse of demonology and early modern cognition.233 To the question

232 Clarke, Vanities of the Eye, chapter 2: “Fantasies: Seeing Without What was Within,” 39. 233On the relationship between demonology and early modern cognition see: Thibaut Maus de Rolley, “La part du diable : Jean Wier et la fabrique de l’illusion diabolique,” in Fictions du diable: Démonologie et littérature de saint Augustin à Léo Taxil, Françoise Lavocat, Pierre Kapitaniak and Marianne Closson eds. (Geneva: Droz, 2007): 109‒30 and “A World Within;” Marianne Closson, L'imaginaire Démoniaque En France (1550-1650): Genèse De La Littérature Fantastique (Genève: Droz, 2000); Stuart Clark, “The scientific status of demonology,” in Occult and Scientific

134 whether witches actually travel to the Sabbat, a crucial debate among 16th-century demonologists, Wier answers that they do not, and only do so in imagination. He contends that such phenomena are actually illusions produced by the body. Wier approaches this question in medical terms and describes how the humours can be stirred by the passions and then literally “smoke out the brain” which then produces illusions via the imaginative faculty: “es sorcieres […] sont beaucoup plus subjectes aux tromperies du Diable, lequel s’insinuant & meslant en leur faculté imaginative, soit en veillant, ou soit en dormant, leur phantastique toutes formes & apparitions, esmouvant les humeurs & les esprits du corps pour accomplir ses finesses.”234 The reception of his work created a great amount of anxiety in regards to truth and illusion, and started to convey the idea that the senses were unreliable, and the imagination very powerful, at a time where, paradoxically, the epistemological value of first-hand experience was increasingly recognized.235 Wier was thus deemed an ‘atheist’ by many, although he insisted on the devil’s responsibility in most of these illusions, that he classified between real demonic effects, illusory demonic effects, real non-demonic effects or illusory non-demonic effects, he was deemed an atheist by many.236 Léry, a defender of the realist side like Bodin, is no exception and refers to Wier

Mentalities in the Renaissance, Brian Vickers eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 351-374. 234Maus de Rolley, “La fabrique de l’illusion diabolique,” 30. 235See Montaigne, Essais, I, 21, 101: “De la force de l’imagination,’ where he links imagination to fear: ‘Il est vray semblable que le principal credit des miracles, des visions, des enchantemens et de tels effects extraordinaires, vienne de la puissance de l'imagination agissant principalement contre les ames du vulgaire, plus molles. On leur a si fort saisi la creance, qu'ils pensent voir ce qu'ils ne voyent pas. Je suis encore de cette opinion, que ces plaisantes liaisons, dequoy nostre monde se voit si entravé, qu'il ne se parle d'autre chose, ce sont volontiers des impressions de l'apprehension et de la crainte.” 236 Maus de Rolley, “World Within:” “The authors of these texts – ‘demonologists’ – did not merely compile dramatic reports of these phenomenaThey also tried to determine if such wonders were due to demonic agency or to non- demonic causes (God, nature, or human artifice), and, simultaneously, they sought to ascertain whether each of them had to be deemed real or illusory,” 1.

135 and his partisans as “plus qu’endiablez atheists” right after our passage, categorically rejecting the possibility of an illusion created by the “affections humaines:”

Ce que j’ay bien voulu espressément narrer en cest endroit, à fin que chacun

entende, que si les plus qu’endiablez Atheistes, dont la terre est maintenant

couverte par-deçà, ont cela de commun avec les Toüoupinambaoults, de se

vouloir faire accroire, voire d’une façon encore plus estrange et bestiale

qu’eux, qu’il n’y a point de Dieu, que pour le moins en premier lieu ils leur

apprennent qu’il y a des diables pour tourmenter, mesme en ce monde, ceux

qui nient Dieu et sa puissance. Que s’ils [les plus qu’endiablez Atheistes]

répliquent là-dessus ce qu’aucun d’eux ont voulu maintenir, que n’y ayant

autres diables que les mauvaises affections des hommes, c’est une folle

opinion que ces sauvages ont des choses qui ne sont point, je réponds que

si on considère ce que j’ai dit, et qui est très vrai, à savoir que les Américains

sont extrêmement visiblement et actuellement tourmentés des malins

esprits, qu’il sera aisé à juger combien mal à propos cela est attribué aux

affections humaines, car quelques violentes qu’elles pussent être, comment

affligeraient-elles les hommes de cette facon?237

The Tupis’ fear thus becomes a piece of evidence in an ongoing argument between the

Calvinist and those who he refers to as ‘atheists,’ who claim that, in some cases, the devil only exists in the fearful person’s imagination. In this passage, Léry resorts to the analogy principle,238 that he uses throughout the Voyage, comparing the Tupis to the European

237 Léry, 390-391. 238On the analogy principle and on its variant, differential analogy, see: Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les chosesUne archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris, Gallimard, 1966), 32-40,

136 atheists. However, the analogy contains a subcategory that actually establishes a difference between the two and states the moral superiority of the Tupis over the European non- believers. The analogy thus relies both on similarity and difference. And what is striking here is actually less the fact that Léry puts the Tupis above the ones who represent for him the worst kind of Europeans ,239 but the fact that he revokes so virulently something that he seemed to have actually described himself: that the devil could have been produced by the

Tupis’ imagination.

In his description of the Tupis’ fear, Léry explains that memory makes past images and “affections” present again in the mind and body. It seems that Léry also noticed the psychophysiological mechanisms of illusion described by Wier. However, he refutes this theory immediately after the passage quoted above. The argumentative strategy thus seems to be slightly at odds with the actual content of the description. Later on, in the editions of

1585 he makes up for this discrepancy by adding an explicit reference to Bodin, actually comparing the Tupinamba women to witches when he describes the singing ceremony of the Caraibes. In his edition of the Voyage, Frank Lestringant notes that “D’emblée, Léry se montre pleinement d’accord avec lui [Bodin], en insistant sur la réalité ‘visible’ et actuelle des persecutions démoniaques dont seraient victimes les malheureux Indiens.”240

I agree that this is what Léry is trying to say, and Lestringant himself notes than Léry’s

Certeau, L'Ecriture de l'histoire, 215-248; Michel Jeanneret, “Léry et Thevet: comment parler d'un monde nouveau?” in Mélanges à la mémoire de Franco Simone (Genève, Slatkine, 1983), 59-72 and Frederic Tinguely “Jean de Léry et les vestiges de la pensée analogique” in Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, Tome LVII, n°1 (1995): 25-44. 239This is a trope that Léry has already used in the chapter on cannibalism and that Montaigne rewrites in “Des Cannibales,” portraying the crimes committed during the wars of religion as much worse than the ones committed by the Tupis. See Léry, 375-377 and Montaigne, Essais, I, 31, “Des Cannibales:” “Nous les pouvons donq bien appeller barbares, eu esgard aux regles de la raison, mais non pas eu esgard à nous, qui les surpassons en toute sorte de barbarie,” 216. 240 Léry, 391.

137 judgment is softened in the edition of 1611 after his discovery of the narrative of Thomas

Hariot on the inhabitants of Virginia.241 But although Léry seems to fully agree with Bodin, his description does not entirely match the conclusions he draws from it: there is a discrepancy, or more specifically a cognitive dissonance, between his first-hand observation and his interpretation of it.242 He probably truly believes that the apparitions are real, but his acute observation of the fear mechanism draws his discourse closer to a psychophysiological interpretation than he would like to think. The theological conclusions following the description of the cognitive processes are indeed at odds with the description itself.

Interestingly, what Léry describes could be interpreted both ways: it could prove both the existence of the devil or the power of the imagination, depending on the purpose of the argument. It seems that Léry can sense this ambiguity and tries to solve it by anticipating a fictional prospective dialogue with the European atheists. This analogy contains a hypothetical dialogue with his opponents, who would themselves establish an analogy with the Tupis: these only see the devil in imagination, thus the devil does not exist. Léry gives an imaginary answer to this imaginary question: “Que s’ils [les plus endiablés Athéistes] répliquent […] je réponds que si on considère ce que j’ai dit, et qui est

241Thomas Hariot, Merveilleux et estrange rapport, toutefois fidele, des commoditez qui se trouvent en Virginia […](Francfort: JWechel, pour Théodore de Bry, 1590). 242 Frank Lestringant, “Le ‘Drake Manuscript’ de la P. Morgan Library : un document exceptionnel en marge des ‘nouveaux horizons’ français,”L'Homme , 34.130 (1994), 93-104: “Les appréciations défavorables sur la religiosité des Indiens ‘sans foi, sans loi, sans roi’ sont monnaie courante à la Renaissance. On les rencontre immanquablement dans les récits de la Conquête aussi bien que sous la plume des plus diligents missionnaires. Mais Léry et l'anonyme se distinguent de la foule de leurs devanciers par le caractère radical du constat et par la conclusion brutale qu'ils apportent à la brève tentative de conversion de l'Indien Léry, à son insu, est au point de départ de l'hypothèse révolutionnaire de l'existence de peuples athées, qui nourrira plus tard le combat anti-chrétien et permettra aux Philosophes de battre en brèche le dogme de l'universalité prétendue de la Révélation.” I fully agree that something is happening “à l’insu de Léry” but I would argue that his conclusion is way less radical or brutal than stated here.

138 très vrai, à savoir que les Américains sont extêmement visiblement et actuellement tourmentés des malins esprits, qu’il sera aisé à juger combien mal à propos cela est attribué aux affections humaines, car quelques violentes qu’elles pussent être, comment affligeraient-elles les hommes de cette facon?”243 The Calvinist stages and anticipates this dialogue with his detractors as if he had foreseen the potential controversy contained in his detailed description of the Tupis’ fear. The analogy principle, whether traditional or differential as defined by Tinguely, does not seem to operate properly here: the Tupis are not the exact equivalent of the European atheists, but this difference remains potential, is only validated through Léry’s testimony and exists only through him. Grégoire Holtz underlines indeed the limitations of the analogy for travellers and demonologists:

Au XVIe siècle, l’analogie fonctionne souvent comme un principe

comparatif suffisamment malléable pour témoigner de la variété des

incarnations et des manifestations de Satan. À cet égard, pour les voyageurs

et les démonologie, l’analogie est un procédé profondément ambivalent, qui

fonctionne à la fois comme un outil cognitif, permettant de mieux connaître

les rituels inconnus, mais aussi comme un écran, sur lequel la projection de

valeurs supposés universelles (c’est le sens du mot‘ catholique’) freine toute

compréhension. Enfin, derrière le recours à l’analogie, on retrouve la figure

du diable qui permet de réduire l’altérité, l’analogie devenant alors un

prétexte pour rejeter une réalité nouvelle et souvent inquiétante.244

Léry’s rhetorical question at the end of this paragraph implicitly expresses the worry that a man’s body and the faculties of the mind could actually be the source of such sufferings:

243 Léry, 391-392. 244 Holtz, “Démonologie et Voyageurs: Le démon de l’analogie,” 108.

139 “quelques violentes qu’elles [les affections humaines] pussent être, comment affligeraient- elles les hommes de cette facon?” This contained despair in front of an insurmountable difference echoes the words of Anthony Pagden in his introduction to The Fall of Natural

Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology : “When, finally, it became impossible to avoid the recognition of difference, the observer was tempted to abandon his task in despair.” 245

There is a lot at stake in this encounter in Brazil: this chapter reveals the tensions contained in the missionary project. It illustrates key theological debates of the time, but also addresses the possibility to convert the indigenous tribes, which is at the basis of the

French colonial project and its legitimacy, and has a specific meaning for the Huguenots, who see in the inhabitants of the Americas potential allies in suffering.246 As we can notice with the long title of the chapter, Léry struggles with the description of the Tupis’ spirituality and with the conclusions of his observations. He seems to conclude, even if the back-and-forth never really ends, that this conversion is impossible for the Tupis, even if they have the seed of religiosity in them. What seems to be tragic for the Calvinist pastor here is the observation of a potentiality, but the recognition of an impossibility. Cognition and religion are thus intimately related in this passage, where the physical reality of an apparition is at stake. The co-existence of two epistemological realms: theology and first- hand experience creates anxieties in this encounter away from France where a distinction has to be made: I thus argue that this whole passage is thus also about the preacher’s own

245 Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 246 “Les protestants français ont besoin, pour compenser leur échec historique sur le front extérieur des indes nouvelles, aussi bien que sur le plan intérieur, de la transparence illusoire de cette relation à l’autreEn l’Indien persécuté ils peuvent reconnaître un frère de souffrance et un allié virtuel,” Lestringant, Le Huguenot et le Sauvage, 32.

140 anxiety. Apprehending the apprehensive other, Léry has to reassess his beliefs and principles. His first-hand experience seems to both support and question his theological certainties. Like the demonologists of the time, Léry struggles with the coexistence of a theological reading of the human psyche and the emergence of psychology and experimental science, two disciplines he himself contributes to with his first-hand experience and observations. The polysemy of “apprehension,” as the present perception of the outside world and an anticipatory anxiety about the future, is at the heart of this gradual and complex epistemological change, where the theological and experimental discourses, as well as the discourse of analogy and the one of dissimilarity, collide in order to elucidate the agency of the faculties of the mind. Léry’s argumentative hesitation is in direct dialogue with these contemporary debates on the validity of experience, the power of imagination and the reliability of the human senses, all crystallized in this problematic encounter between a worried Huguenot, fearful Tupis and the Devil.

4-Remembering Fear: Apprehension and Memory

The anxieties regarding the conversion of the Cannibal other are complicated in the Voyage by the theological debates happening at the heart of the Christian religion and leading to increasingly violent oppositions between the Catholics and the Protestants, in Brazil and in

France. At the end of the chapter devoted to the description of the cannibalistic ritual of the Tupis, Léry addresses the reader with these words: “Je pourrais encore amener quelques autres semblables exemples touchant la cruauté des sauvages envers leurs ennemis, n’était qu’il me semble que ce que j’en ai dit est assez pour faire avoir horreur et dresser à chacun

141 les cheveux en la tête.”247 However, we soon notice that this conclusion was actually an introduction, sinces it precedes the passage that Montaigne will re-use in “Of cannibals” to establish the relativism of cruelty and barbarism and denounce the exactions and tortures happening in France during the Wars of Religion. Léry will indeed give more examples of cruelty but not the ones that the reader could expect. The adress to the reader becomes more precise with the switch from “à chacun” to “ceux qui liront”, accompanied by the mention of the explicit purpose of this additional comment: “afin que ceux qui liront ces choses tant horribles exercées journellement entre ces nations barbares de la terre du Bresil, pensent aussi un peu de près à ce qui se fait par-deca parmi nous.”248 Follows a gradual critic of

European atrocities, which culminate in the graphic mention of the wars of religion, with the repetitive mention of dismemberement prefiguring d’Aubigné’s vivid descriptions in the Tragiques (1615). At the end of this passage, the reader can now, at the time of the publication, concretely fear something since it is happening in its own country. The potential fear has been displaced to become an actual one. Through this comparison and this lesson of relativism, Léry actualizes a fear that seemed purely exotic and confronts the reader with their own experience. It thus seems that the “planteurs de choux” previously criticized, who are safe on land and not at sea, do have something to fear in the end: the concrete violence happening in their own country. In this address to the reader Léry continues the reflection on fear experienced at first-hand vs fear vicariously experienced and complicates this binary by changing the location of fear, transferring it from the par dela (Brazil) to the par deça (France). Fear and experience are extremely interlocked in this passage where Léry bitterly and violently comments on contemporary France. This

247 Léry, 374. 248 Léry, 375.

142 reversal made between an “exotic” fear and a local one is made possible by the temporal discrepancy that exists between the experience of the events, the writing of these events, and the moment of publication. By describing fear as a process of the mind, related to memory and imagination and intimately linked to experience, both for the European explorer and for the Tupinamba other, Léry’s narrative underlines the temporal density of fear, which includes both the fearful memory of the past and the fearful anticipation of the future, that links the moment of the events experienced to the moment of the events remembered.

The temporality of fear is indeed intriguing if we look at the general structure of the narrative. In this story of a memorable encounter with a cannibalistic tribe, fear not only precedes the arrival to Brazil but follows it as well, on the way back to France. If it is common to be afraid of dying at sea, whether on the way there or on the way back, it is less common in a firsthand account of a trip to the “New World,” to express the apprehension of one’s return to their home country. Léry publishes the narration of his voyage in 1578, responding to André Thévet’s accusations that the Huguenots were responsible for the failure of France’s colonial project. In the meantime, he experienced the horrors of the

Sancerre siege in 1573 where he witnessed a scene of anthropophagy during a long famine that he describes in detail in the History of the Sancerre siege. This temporal discrepancy between the actual trip and the publication of its written account has its importance for the general atmosphere of fear, since the memory of his stay in Brazil is tainted with the more recent memories of the siege, one of the cruelest episodes of the wars of religion after the

Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The veil of the violence to come covers this retrospective narrative that hence becomes proleptic and forewarning. Conversely, the stay

143 among the Tupinambas seems idyllic when compared to the European turmoil in which

Léry has found himself since he got back. Carla Freccero underlines the haunting effect of these different temporal layers in the Voyage when commenting on the fearful journey back to France at the end of the narration: “Here, then, at the purported end of his voyage, the intervening years have relativized the difference between “heathen” and Christian to the shame […] of the nation [...] and the honor […] of America.” 249 There is indeed more room to be haunted in Léry’s narrative, considering the length of time passed between the different events that are the experience, the writing and the publication.

These different temporal layers are superimposed in the History of a Voyage, which makes this narrative quite different from other contemporary travel narratives. Thévet, the

King’s cosmographer and Léry’s némésis, returns from his short stay on the island of

Villegagnon in 1556 and his Singularités de la France Antarctique are published a year later in 1557. The German explorer Hans Staden manages to escape Brazil, where the

Tupinambas held him captive, and to reach Honfleur in 1555. His True Story and

Description of a Country of Wild, Naked, Grim, Man-eating People in the New World,

America is published two years later in 1557. Jacques Cartier ends his third trip to Canada in 1542 and his Bref récit de la navigation faite aux îles de Canada is published three years after his return in 1545. Léry’s Voyage has the density of a souvenir, which which makes this retrospective depiction of fear always proleptical at the same time. The recounting of the events takes on a complex temporality: the narrative consists in a succession of flashbacks and proplepses. As Michel Jeanneret states, the dispositio is key in Léry’s narrative as the author constantly comments on it:

249 Carla Freccero, Queer/Early/Modern / (Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 2006)., 96.

144 Or Léry, précisément, problématise la recherche de la dispositio, au point

d'en parler constamment [...] Le résultat, c'est bien sûr un plan d'une parfaite

limpidité, très soigné, très conscient de lui-même [...] Léry suit d'abord

l'avance chronologique de ses découvertes, puis, engagé dans la description,

situe les phénomènes selon leur contiguïté dans l'espace, tel que le regard,

progressivement, s'en empare [...] En quoi, jusque dans la disposition de son

livre, Léry prend parti pour des catégories claires et distinctes, des rapports

pragmatiques et contingents.250

I do disagree however, with the fact that this arrangement is that self-evident and I argue that the complexity of the narrative’s chronology has to do with the way the wars of

Religion are haunting Léry’s narrative. The word “apprehension” indeed returns towards the very end of the narration: to name Léry and his companions’ anticipatory anxiety:

Ainsi reprenant mon propos, parce que ce n’était qu’un moyen navire

marchand où nous repassâmes, le maître d’celui, dont j’ai jà parlé, nommé

Martin Baudouin du Havre de Grâce, n’ayant qu’environ vingt-cinq

matelots, et quinze que nous étions de notre compagnie, faisant en tout

nombre de quarante-cinq personnes, dès le même jour quatrième de Janvier,

ayant levé l’ancre, nous mettant en la protection de Dieu, nous nous mîmes

derechef à naviguer sur cette grande et impétueuse mer Océane du Ponant.

Non pas toutefois sans grandes craintes et appréhensions; car à cause des

travaux que nous avions endurés en allant, n’eût été le mauvais tour que nous

joua Villegagnon, plusieurs d’entres nous, ayant là non seulement moyen de

250 Jeanneret, “Léry et Thévet: comment parler d'un monde nouveau?” 237-238.

145 servir à Dieu, comme nous désirions, mais aussi goûté la bonté et fertilité du

pays, n’avaient pas délibéré de retourner en France, où les difficultés étaient

lors et sont encore à présent sans comparaison beaucoup plus grandes, tant

pour le fait de la Religion que pour les choses concernant cette vie.251

This anxiety has been largely commented by critics such as Frank Lestringant252 in regard to Léry’s later involvement in the Wars of Religion. What interests me here is the fact that

Léry uses the word “apprehension” as a synonym of “crainte” to describe this prospective fear. In 1578, at the time of publication this meaning was already in usage but Léry gives it a particularly vivid dimension, first by using the verbal form, as we have seen previously in this chapter, and second by having the plural noun stand by itself here: “Non pas toutefois sans grandes craintes et apprehensions,” without being followed by an object as it used to be the case in more traditional expressions such as “l’appréhension de la mort,” and pairing it with the word that it will become a synonymous of: “crainte.” However, he never uses the term in the sense of fear in the first half of the narrative to describe the prospect of his interactions with the cannibal Tupinambas. Even if he experienced it, there is no trace of a prospective fear of meeting the “sauvages.” It is true that the Tupi tribe was an ally of the French, when their enemies, the Marjagas, had an alliance with the

Portuguese. And Léry does fear them twice, in key episodes of the narratives, during two different interactions, but only once he has met them, not before meeting them. But he used the word in the sense of fear to describe the Tupis’ anticipatory anxiety towards the Devil.

This shows first that Léry uses this word in its not-so-common meaning at the time to

251 Léry, 507. 252 Lestringant, Le Huguenot et le Sauvage, and Une sainte horreur ou le voyage en Eucharistie, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996).

146 describe the feelings of both groups of individual subjects: the Tupis and the Europeans, linguistically putting them on equal footing. And secondly, it shows that the Christian believer, as much as the Tupi miscreant, can also experience fear, not the fear of an evil spirit but of a human evil, embodied by the person of Nicolas de Villegagnon, the

Commander of the Knights of Malta, sent to Brazil to found a protestant colony, and who ends up persecuting the very members of this colony, supposedly safe from the Catholic persecutions happening in Europe. This passage at the beginning of the penultimate chapter, constitutes a turning point and is revealing of how the whole travel experience affected and changed the traveling subject. As they are about to sail back to France, Léry expresses the “appréhensions” that the whole crew feels, thinking of what awaits them on the other side of the Equator. This passage totally complicates the traditional relationship between the familiar and the foreign, as they appear in other travel narratives of the time such as the one of Hans Staden.253 Here Léry expresses his sadness to leave, anticipating with fear what they will encounter upon their return in their homeland already torn by the wars of religion, when the land of the Tupi seemed so peaceful to them. This reversal takes place around the pivotal figure of Villegagnon. Lery presented his misdeeds from the very beginning in chapter 6, where he told proleptically the story of their own revolt and how they were expelled from the colony. But he indicated that he would save some of his abuses for the end and now is the time, in the penultimate chapter of the book, to fully denounce

Villegagnon’s perfidy. Léry does so a few pages later, explaining how the leader of the

253 Hans Staden, Henri Ternaux-Compans, Marc Bouyer, and Jean-Paul Duviols, Nus, Féroces Et Anthropophages (Paris: Métailié, 2005): “L’an 1554, le dernier jour d’octobre, nous mimes à la voile du port de Rio-de-Janeiro pour retourner en France; et nous eûmes si bon vent, que les marins prétendaient que le ciel protégeait visiblement notre voyageMais Dieu fit encore un autre miracle en notre faveur[…] C’est ainsi que Dieu après mille perils me ramena dans mon pays. Amen,” 158- 161.

147 colony executed three of the five companions who decided to go back to Brazil instead of returning to France. Thus, the object of their “apprehensions” appears to be the mirror, in

France, of Villeganon’s mischiefs in Brazil. Spatially, but also temporally, since

Villegagnon’s behavior in the story foreshadows the increasing horrors of the wars of religion that Léry has witnessed by the time he finally publishes the Voyage. The symmetry is ultimately reversed, the “par-deça” (France) has now become the mirror of the “par- dela” (Brazil), which shows how much the traveling subject has changed because of what he experienced. The end of their stay (the assassination of the three Protestant members of the colony by Villegagnon) was told proleptically at the beginning of the Voyage.

Reversely, this flaschback at the end of the narration complements it. “Appréhensions” thus contains both the past and the future at this moment of the narration, the experience of past events and the anticipatory anxiety towards future ones, already experienced by the narrator since then.

In his Voyage, Léry devotes a constant attention to fear as a psychological mechanism, always linking it to the notion of experience. The past fears of different subjects towards different objects are expressed, explained and assessed in this retrospective narration published almost twenty years after the actual travel. Fear is presented by Léry as a cognitive process, triggering knowledge out of contact, contrast and comparison, a process that he uses to analyze the Tupi self and the European self, in light of each other. However, this comparison raises theological and cognitive anxieties that remain unanswered and that shed light, I argued, on the shift that apprehension and imagination undergo at the time, being both the vehicle but also the cause of fear. I think that it is the complexity of those superimposed temporal layers and the primacy attributed

148 to experience as epistemologically valid, that allow Léry to “joke” about being eaten by his companions on the way back. He says that he actually did not prospectively fear to be eaten, considering how skinny he was after the famine he experienced. This remark comes at the very end of the narrative, after the fact that Léry has actually feared to be eaten during his first visit of a Tupinamba village, and after he has witnessed, years later, a young child being eaten by her parents during the siege of Sancerre. This humoristic trait appears here as the result of this complex amalgam of fear and experience over time, synthetized in this travel narrative exploring man’s means of knowledge, his knowledge of the other and, by extension his knowledge of God:

Par quoi pour la conclusion de tout ce que j’ai dit ci-dessus touchant nos

afflictions, afin de mieux faire entendre l’extrême extrémité où nous étions

tombés, et qu’au besoin, n’ayant plus nul répit, Dieu eut pitié de nous et

nous assista, après que nous lui eûmes rendu grâces de notre délivrance

prochaine, le maître du navire dit tout haut, que pour certain, si nous

fussions encore demeurés un jour en cet état, il avait délibéré et résolu, non

pas de jeter un sort, comme quelques-uns ont fait en telle détresse, mais sans

dire mot, d’en tuer un d’entres nous pour servir de nourriture aux autres; ce

que j’appréhendai tant moins pour mon regard, qu’encore qu’il n’y eût pas

grand graisse en pas un de nous, si est-ce toutefois, sinon qu’on eût

seulement voulu manger de la peau et des os, que ce n’eût pas été moi.254

254 Léry, 538. See Lestringant: “L’impératif de la séparation absolue des corps s’effondre brusquement. C’est sans nulle apprehension désormais que lors de la navigation de retour vers la France, comme le famine règne à bord, Léry envisage le sacrifice d’un de ses camarades-ou de lui- même, le cas échéant-à l’appétit de la collectivité. Le crime alimentaire n’aura pas lieu mais son éventualité est posée avec un sang-froid hallucinant,” Une sainte horreur ou le voyage en Eucharistie, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, 110.

149 Visible Emotions, Invisible Future:

Apprehension in Marguerite de Valois’ Memoirs

“Le besoin d’anxiété, tel était le caractère de la belle Marguerite de Valois ma tante qui bientôt épousa le roi de Navarre, que nous voyons de présent régner en France, sous le nom de Henry IV. Le besoin de jouer formait tout le secret du caractère de cette princesse aimable, de là ses brouilles et ses raccommodements avec ses frères dès l’âge de seize ans.

Or que peut jouer une jeune fille? Ce qu’elle a de plus précieux: sa réputation, la considération de toute sa vie.” This is how Charles of Valois Duke of Angoulême, illegitimate son of Charles IX, describes Marguerite de Valois in his memoirs, in a passage that is quoted by Stendhal as an epigraph of one of the chapters in The Red and the Black.255

Acknowledging the omnipresence of anxiety in Marguerite’s life, he actually qualifies it as a need for play, and makes it the main character trait of the Queen. Her Memoirs are indeed profusely pervaded by an affective vocabulary, and especially the vocabulary of fear: there are no less than 40 occurrences of “crainte” and its derivations, more than 20 occurrences of “danger”, 9 iterations of “apprehension” and multiple occurrences of

“doutes”, “effroi”, “peur”, and “alarme.” But the expression of this feeling seems to have impaired the Memoirs’ reception through time, Valois’ fear having been labeled as either strategic or as hindering her historical or political judgment. With this gendered

255 Mémoires de M. d' Angoulême, pour servir à l'histoire d'Henri III, roi de France et de Pologne, et d'Henri IV, roi de France et de Navarre, Paris: M. Brunet, 1706. This passage is the epigraph of one of the chapters of The Red and the Black in which Julien learns that Mathilde de la Mole admires Marguerite de Valois greatly for carrying and burying the head of her decapitated lover: see Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), Livre Second, Chapitre XII: “Serait-ce un Danton?”

150 description, the Duke of Angoulême describes her anxiety as a need for play. Others have followed this path. The Memoirs have been discredited from the French canon, partly, because deemed “too subjective,” to reuse the expression that Sarah Ahmed conceptualized in “Walls of Whiteness. ” In her 2014 essay Ahmed unfolds the implication of the expression “too subjective,” the words that an editor had used to describe her book, demonstrating how universality and objectivity are only granted to people in specific positions of power:

What does it mean for this material then to have been described as “too

subjective”? Speaking about whiteness as someone who is not white often

means being heard as speaking about yourself. I think “subjectivity”

becomes a problem because some of us are reduced to subjectivity, as

having an experience that is particular to ourselves. Some subjects can

disappear or speak for the universal: to have a view from nowhere means

you can speak of everywhere.256

Even if Valois was in a situation of extreme power, the fact that she was a woman, a highly precarious status in the 16th century, led her work to be he expression of her subjectivity in the Memoirs has also been deemed not objective enough by male critics and commentators for centuries. And her sexuality became the basis for the construction of a mythical figure that eventually overshadowed her written works. Her subjectivity, through the expression of emotions in her Memoirs, seems to have been perceived as too much. This expression of personal emotions is indeed highly exceptional in the history of the genre, and even

256 Sarah Ahmed, Walls of Whiteness, Media Diversified, April 22 2014, https://mediadiversified.org/2014/04/22/walls-of-whiteness/

151 more so for a woman.257 And to this day, it led her work to be dismissed, and a focus on her sexuality as well as on the display of a heightened subjectivity (highly praised in

Montaigne’s Essays) became the basis for the construction of a mythical figure that eventually overshadowed her written works. The development of the legend of the libidinal and mischievous Reine Margot,258 started with the publication of the anonymous Divorce

Satyrique in 1660, a satirical pamphlet that listed her numerous lovers, accused her of incest and described her burying the head of her decapitated lover. It was then amply fueled by Alexandre Dumas’ novel La Reine Margot in 1845. As a consequence of this portrayal of their author, the epistemological value of the Memoirs has been dismissed because of the emotions they display, supposedly making this historical testimony “biased” or even

“fake.” Indeed Valois’ authorship has been denied by Jean-Louis Bourgeon in 1989,259 seconded by Marc Vénard260 who, following Charles of Angoulême, underlines the lack of objectivity of an author submitted to her “passions”: “Ils ne méritent aucun crédit: tardifs, ils ont été évidemment reconstruits selon les passions et les intérêts de leur auteur; ils ne peuvent server qu’aux auteurs dramatiques et aux biographes à succès.” Eliane Viennot

257 This restriction was even more imposed on Protestant woman, as Susan Broomhall and Colette Win specify in their analysis of the memoirs of Charlotte Arbaleste and Renée Burlamacchi: “Burlamacchi et Arbaleste […] ne parlent presque jamais de leurs émotions personnelles, évitant d’attirer l’attention sur leur moi. En effet, qu’une femme protestante évoque son chagrin ou tout autre sentiment « privé » aurait été considéré comme une faute grave, voire comme un péché.” See Susan Broomhall et Colette H. Winn “La représentation de soi dans les mémoires féminins du début de l’époque moderne.” Tangence 77 (2005): 11–35. 258 See Eliane Viennot, “La légende de la Reine Marguerite” in M. Lazard & J. Cubelier de Beynac (dir.), Marguerite de France, reine de Navarre et son temps (Agen: Centre Matteo Bandello, 1994) and Marguerite De Valois: Histoire D'une Femme, Histoire D'un Mythe (Paris: Payot, 1993). 259 “A l’heure actuelle, sans pouvoir être formel (il y faudrait toute une étude, non seulement sur le contenu, mais aussi sur le vocabulaire de Marguerite de Valois [...]), nous nous interrogeons pour savoir s’il ne s’agirait pas tout simplement d’un faux.” in Jean‐Louis Bourgeon, “Pour une histoire, enfin, de la Saint‐Barthélemy,” Revue historique 282 (1989), 105. 260 Marc Vénard, “Arrêtez le massacre,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (oct.‐ déc.1992), 647.

152 has meticulously taken this hypothesis apart since.261 It is one thing to study the adequacy or inadequacy of Valois’ discourse with the historical and political events of the time, which is the work of every researcher for any kind of historical work, it is quite another to discredit her work as epistemologically flawed:

On ne voit pas pourquoi les Mémoires, quand ils sont authentiques, seraient

a priori écartés des pièces permettant de se faire un jugement sur un

événement historique; aucun texte, qu’il soit « tardif » ou non, n’est exempt

des « passions » et des «intérêts» de son auteur — toutes les sources doivent

être décryptées en fonction de ce paramètre262

It is also important to add that, in the context of the Wars of Religion, History as a category was being redefined and written more and more from a present perspective, each side of the conflict redefining what qualified as memorable.263 However, the expression of emotions in the memoirs seem to have impaired its reception and have contributed to the construction of an “emotional” historical character, with all the bad connotations that this adjective contains, as shown in the quote from Charles IX’s memoirs previously mentioned.

In the following analysis I argue that the expression of complex emotions actually constitutes the very epistemological value of this crucial work, and that one of them, apprehension, allows the writer to express the perception of a temporal discontinuity,

261 Eliane Viennot “A Propos De La Saint-Barthélemy Et Des Mémoires De Marguerite De Valois: Authenticité Du Texte Et Réception Au Xviie Siècle.” Revue D'histoire Litteraire De La France 96.5 (1996): 894-917. 262 Ibid., 895. 263 For the redefinition of historiography and the memorable see Andrea Frisch, Forgetting Differences: Tragedy, Historiography, and the French Wars of Religion, (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2015).

153 revealing a renewed relationship to time, and to question the key moral and political notion of the Renaissance: Prudence. At the turn of the century, and at the height of the wars of

Religion, Marguerite de Valois, author, narrator and protagonist, makes her apprehension visible in order to reveal how invisible the future is. The visibility that Valois gives to a feeling of constant anticipatory anxiety throughout this retrospective narrative sheds light on the difficulty of projecting oneself in the future. I will show how Valois’ sharp consciousness of a situation of in-betweenness: between political parties and family members, between the political and the personal, and between the past and the future, sheds light on the characteristics of the modern self in the making at the end of the 16th century, and that she expresses a form of anxiety that we can relate to today: the uncertainty of how things will unfold in the future, also referred to as apprehension.

1-In-betweenness

The Memoirs stage a state of permanent anxiety that stems from a situation of personal and political in-betweenness. Valois presents herself as a liminal figure throughout the narrative, the development of her identity both as a person and as a political figure being constantly put to the test by its interactions with others. This in-betweenness is even to be found in the complexity of her authorial status: her Memoirs initially constitute a corrective response to the Discours sur la reine written by the chronicler Brantôme, tasked by Valois with writing her biography.264 Aiming at rectifying several errors that he made, having not

264 For an analysis of the personal and literary relationship between the two see Éliane Viennot, “Entre dissidence politique et dissidence littéraire : le dialogue Marguerite de Valois-Brantôme ,” Les Dossiers du Grihl, published march 2013, accessed November 2016, http://dossiersgrihl.revues.org/5890 ; DOI : 10.4000/dossiersgrihl.5890; Eliane Viennot “ Les métamorphoses de Marguerite de Valois, ou les cadeaux de Brantôme, ” Dans les miroirs de l’écriture. La réflexivité chez les femmes écrivains d’Ancien Régime, ed. Jean-Pierre Beaulieu and

154 experienced the events himself, she presents herself as a mere corrector at first, claiming that it will then be up to him to perfectionate the material that she will have added: “Cette oeuvre donc, d’une après-dînée, ira vers vous comme les petits ours en masse lourde et difforme, pour y recevoir sa formation. C’est un chaos duquel vous avez déjà tiré la lumière; il reste l’oeuvre de cinq autres journées.”265 Initially, her Memoirs were just supposed to be additional raw material from a privileged witness, that Brantôme could then bring to their final form. She composed this response during her exile in Usson that lasted from 1587 to 1605. The composition of the memoirs seems to have happened between

1593 and 1603, at a time when Marguerite remains “seule demeurée de sa race” as the eighth war of Religion is about to end.266 She thus learns about the major political events of the time from afar, including the death of her mother and the assassination of her brother in 1589. Her husband becomes king of France in 1589 and converts to Catholicism in 1593.

Their marriage, childless, is canceled in 1599 and she then becomes the Queen Marguerite while he marries Marie de Médicis in 1600. Marguerite comes back to Paris in 1605 where she cohabitates peacefully with the Queen and the Dauphin, future Louis XIII. She dies in

Diane Desrosiers-Bonin (Montréal: Paragraphes, 1998); Claude La Charité, “ La construction du public lecteur dans le Recueil des dames de Brantôme et les dédicataires, Marguerite de Valois et François d’Alençon ,” Études françaises 47-3, 2011, 109-126; Gilbert Schrenk, “Brantôme et Marguerite de Valois: d’un genre l’autre ou les Mémoires incertains,” in Université des sciences humaines de Strasbourg and Noémi Hepp, eds., La Cour Au Miroir Des Mémorialistes: 1530-1682: Actes Du Colloque Du Centre de Philologie et de Littérature Romanes de Strasbourg, 16-18 Novembre 1989, Actes et Colloques 31 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991)., 183-192. 265 Marguerite de Valois, Mémoires et discours, Éliane Viennot ed., (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université, 2004), 47. This is the edition that will be used as a reference for this chapter and will be henceforth referred to by Mémoires. 266 See Mémoires, Introduction, 19-21: “Marguerite est comme le royaume: elle émerge de cette période pleine d eblessures, amis survivante […] Hormis son mari tous ses proches sont morts […] ceux qu’elle aimait le plus, ceux qui avaient compté et qu’on retrouve dans les Mémoires ont disparu aussi: Charles IX, son “bon frère” en 1574; sa soeur la duchesse Claude de Lorraine, à peine un an plus tard; son jeune frère François, dont elle avait servi la cause pendant dix ans, est mort loin d’elle, miné par la tuberculose en 1584; sa mère s’est éteinte aux premiers jours de 1589 [..] ; Henri III, enfin est mort asssasiné par un moine fanatique six mois plus tard.”

155 1615, surviving her previous husband who was assassinated in 1610. The Memoirs are published posthumously, 13 years after her death and approximatively 15 years after their redaction and 46 years after the events depicted in the narration, by Auger de Mauléon sieur de Granier (associated with the printer-bookseller Charles Chapepellain) in 1628, author of an “Avis au Lecteur” in which he states that Marguerite competes with Cesar:

“Que Rome vante tant qu’il lui plaira les Commentaires de son premier Empereur, la

France a maintenant les Mémoires d’une grande reine qui ne leur cèdent en rien.”267 The original manuscript was not saved and there is no trace of the text between its redaction and its first publication, although it seems to have circulated before 1628 since Marie de

Gournay, who had worked at Marguerite’s court, evokes in her Ombre (1626) the

“memoires de la […] reyne […], courans par ceste ville.”268 Valois thus ends up becoming posthumously the one and only author of this work, that she initially presented as collaborative. However, this initial authorial in-betweenness frames the narrative: writing to an intimate friend about her public self, from a private space of exile and for a future potential official biography is a complex enunciative structure that Valois skillfully navigates, wavering between confession and self-representation.

The precariousness of this situation frames her anxiety throughout the narrative:

Catholic princess married to the Protestant Henry of Navarre, later King Henry the 4th of

France, she often underlines the uneasiness caused by this status of in-between, also often used as a go-between for political purposes. This tension is summarized by the following chiasmic sentence, written to depict her situation on the Eve of the Saint Bartholomew’s

267 Jean Garapon, “Une autobiographie dans les limbes, Les Mémoires de la reine Marguerite” in Marguerite de France, Reine de Navarre en son temps, 205-216. 268 Marguerite de Valois, Mémoires et autres écrits, 1574-1614, Éliane Viennot ed. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999), Introduction, 51.

156 Day Massacre: “Les Huguenots me tenaient suspecte parce que j’étais catholique, et les catholiques parce que j’avais épousé le roi de Navarre, qui était Huguenot.”269 This hybrid status, accompanied by either partial knowledge or an excess of knowledge regarding others’ actions, is the backdrop against which every moment of anxiety occurs. Her entrance in the political life starts in 1569 on the day that her brother Henri asks her to become his ally and to take his side when interacting with her mother. This rite of passage explicitly makes her a go-between, sealing this status for her life to come. Henry has just defeated the Huguenots in a victorious battle, and sends a messenger to the Court. Afraid that he would die, he asks his family to visit, which they do. He officially gives the account of the victory in front of his brother Charles, the King. His youth and eloquence are admired by everyone according to Marguerite. They decide to stay a few days to debate the war strategy to come. One day as they are walking in a park, Henry takes his sister aside and asks her for help. At this very moment Marguerite feels like she is becoming a person, embracing this status of intermediary that will unfortunately define her entire life. But this political entrance is already imbued with a climate of suspicion and fear, as shown in

Henry’s words transcribed in direct speech below, and the apprehension of her brother sets the beginning of a pattern that proleptically announces the apprehension that Marguerite will constantly feel throughout her life:

Cependant, le roi mon frère est toujours auprès d’elle, la flatte et lui

complaît en tout: je crains qu’à la longue cela me porte préjudice, et que le

roi mon frère devenant grand, étant courageux comme il est, ne s’amuse

[pas] toujours à la chasse, mais devenant ambitieux, veuille changer celle

269 Mémoires, 73.

157 des bêtes à celle des homes, m’ôtant la charge de lieutenant de roi qu’il m’a

donnée pour aller lui-même aux armées. Ce qui me serait une ruine et un

déplaisir si grand, qu’avant que recevoir une telle chute, j’élirais plutôt une

cruelle mort. En cette appréhension, songeant les moyens d’y remédier, je

trouve qu’il m’est nécessaire d’avoir quelque personne très fidèle qui tienne

mon parti auprès de la reine ma mère.270

Intrafamilial apprehension and suspicion thus marks this very symbolic moment, Henry acting out of fear of his brother and his mother and trying to secure his future with the help of his sister. Marguerite herself confesses at that moment to the reader that she was at that time extremely scared of her mother, not even daring to speak to her : “et avoir été nourrie avec telle crainte auprès de la reine ma mère que, non seulement je ne lui osais parler, mais quand elle me regardait je transissais de peur d’avoir fait chose qui lui déplût.”271 If it is normal at the time that the daughter of a queen would not have personal relationship with their mother as a child, it is interesting to note that this climate of fear is omnipresent since the very beginning of her life. This fear disappears as Marguerite starts to interact with her mother who invited her to leave childhood and speak to her freely. This harmony is

270 Mémoires, 56. It is probable that Marguerite also strategically underlines this conversation that she transcribes in direct speech in order to render Henry’s betrayal stronger and more shocking to the reader towards the second half of the narrative. See Mémoires, Introduction, 45-50: “Bien plus importante, historiquement comme textuellement, est la stratégie narrative mensongère mise en place autour du duc d’Anjou dès le début des Mémoires pour effacer la trahsion dont Marguerite se rendit coupable à son encontre en 1574, en adhérant au parti du duc d’Alençon. Touchant au Coeur de la personnalité de la reine, cet aveu impossible entraîne une réécriture de l’histoire de leur relation, et parfois une singulière perte de lucidité […] Dès la seconde des anecdotes qui servent d’entrée en matière symbolique au récit autobiographique, se met en effet en place une stratégie narrative diabolisant Henri, destinée à rendre logique, des dizaines de pages plus loin et treize ans plus tard, le ralliement de Marguerite à François.” 271 Mémoires, 57.

158 unfortunately fast disrupted : Henri quickly turns against her and acts himself the betrayal that he was hypothetically fearing in the past. The trust is forever broken and they remain enemies until the end, Marguerite starting a few years later an alliance with her husband

Henri of Navarre and her brother d’Alençon. Her mother also uses her status of princess- to-be-married several times as an inyermediary to weigh in diplomatic crisis: Marguerite was almost married to the King of Portugal and ends up marrying the protestant King of

Navarre for political reasons. The scale of this intermediary situation is national, and can lead to devastating consequences: for example, during her trip to Flandres where she negotiates for her brother d’Alençon, Don Juan of Austria decides to re-conquer Namur.

Marguerite thus finds herself caught between three parties: the Catholics of Flandres, the

Protestants of the Prince of Orange, and Spain. She underlines several times the uneasiness caused by this situation, adding that even people from her own company are divided between the different parties: “Me voyant tellement embarquée qu’il fallait que je passasse entre les mains des uns et des autres […] voyant que non pas seulement il fallait que je passasse ou entre les uns ou entre les autres, mais que même les principaux de ma compagnie étaient affectionés ou aux Espagnols ou aux Huguenots”272 (145).

This situation of in-betweennness often prevents her from making decisions, and she expresses this sorrow in the form of unsolvable dilemmas, enunciating two alternatives that would both have negative consequences. For example in 1577, at the beginning of the sixth war of Religion shortly following the Paix de Sens, Marguerite is held captive at the

Court by her mother and her brother, who prevent her from getting back to her husband.

Here is how she frames the plaidoyer that she addresses to her mother, begging her to give

272 Mémoires, 145.

159 her the permission to leave the Court to go to the waters of Spa: “que […] il ne m’était honorable ni bienséant de demeurer à la Cour, que si j’y demeurais je ne pourrais éviter de ces deux malheurs l’un : ou que le roi mon mari penserait que j’y fusse pour mon plaisir et que je lui servirais pas comme je devais, ou que le roi prendrait soupçon de moi et croirait que j’avertirais toujours le roi mon mari ; que l’un et l’autre me produiraient beaucoup de mal.”273 Soon after this experience of familial captivity, she picks her husband’s and brother’s side against her brother the King and in 1578 she helps the two to escape the

Court. The dilemma has now taken a new form : lying to her mother or betraying her brother. The problem is thus often about which side to choose, and, by extension, whether to tell the truth or not to her interlocutors, considering the fact that her life is often at stake in these situations. These dilemmas can put her in a state of “perplexity,” as we can see in the following passage, where she uses this theological notion274 that indicates an individual crisis that creates intense distress in the subject’s body and soul: “Lors me trouvant entre ces deux extrémités, ou de manquer à la fidélité que je devais à mon frère, et mettre sa vie en danger, ou de jurer contre la vérité, chose que je n’eusse voulue pour éviter mille morts, je me trouvai en si grande perplexité que, si Dieu ne m’eût assistée, ma façon eût assez témoigné, sans parler, ce que je craignais qui fût découvert.”275 Valois’ expression of her distress echoes the troubles of the wars of Religion that, in their essence, split the nation as well as family members. Hence her testimony gives us an extremely vivid sense of these divides, at the scale of the royal family, where the stakes affect the entire nation. Valois often expresses the interdependency of national political events and personal experience

273 Mémoires, 121. 274 See Geonget, La notion de perplexité à la Renaissance. 275 Mémoires, 175.

160 through the use of parallelisms. Talking about the death of her father, she says: “qui priva la France de repos et notre maison de Bonheur”276 and about the death of her brother:

“Après ce désastre, malheur pour la France et pour moi.”277 Personal life milestones are always accompanied by tragic political events for her. Marguerite’s involvement in the political conflicts was important and the other members of the royal family were fully aware of the value that her intermediary situation offered. She is thus often presented as a go-between. She underlines this perception of others towards her through two metaphors: the link and the balm. She uses the first one to describe Henri’s perception of her, influenced by Le Guast, (which will turn out to be actually true) as the link between

Navarre and d’Alençon in 1574 after the death of her brother Charles IX, leading him to design a stratagem to turn them against each other : “Et croyant aux avis de ce pernicieux esprit qu’il avait laissé en France pour maintenir son parti, conçut extrême jalousie contre mon frère d’Alençon, ayant pour suspecte et portant impatiemment l’union de lui et du roi mon mari, estimant que j’en fusse le lien et seul moyen qui maintenait leur amitié.”278 This plan having failed, Le Guast adopts a new strategy to remove from Marguerite’s company her favorite follower Thorigny. Marguerite explains the cause of Le Guast’s cruelty towards her in these terms: “Et que depuis, l’amitié de lui [Navarre] et de mon frère

[d’Alençon] commençait à se renouer, estimant toujours que j’en étais la cause et que je leur étais, comme l’on voit en toutes choses naturelles mais plus apparemment [encore] aux serpents coupés, un certain baume naturel qui réunit et rejoint les parties séparées.”279

A link, a balm: these metaphors used to describe the source of Le Guast’ predatory behavior

276 Mémoires, 48. 277 Mémoires, 81. 278 Ibidem. 279 Mémoires, 98.

161 towards her show that intermediary status is thus a double-edged sword that sometimes allow her to act in her best interest but most of the time puts her in a conflictual if not unbearable or dangerous situation.280 Marguerite is the author of the Declaration of the

King of Navarre, later called Mémoire Justificatif, during the trial that shortly precedes

Charles’ death and the two quotes above. Summoned before the Court and especially

Catherine to explain himself after having been caught trying to escape, Henry King of

Navarre reads the declaration that has been carefully written by his wife, a plaidoyer that turns into an indictement, focusing exclusively on the autobiographical in order to show the insult that this trial constitutes, considering the links that have existed between the two families since the day Henry was brought to the Valois court at the age of seven.281 For

Valois the personal is political but the reverse is also true: the political is personal.

This mutual imbrication of the public and the private, the collective and the individual, is translated by an ambiguity of genre, oscillating between “memoire” and

“histoire,” present from the very beginning of the writing project, when she addresses

Brantôme in the preface, in order to correct and complete the portrait he had made of her:

“je tracerai mes mémoires, à qui je ne donnerai plus glorieux nom, bien qu’ils méritassent celui d’histoire, pour la vérité qui y est contenue nûment et sans ornement aucun.”282 The conflation, still paradoxical at the time, of the height of her rank and the intimate aspect of her expression as well as of the public and the private, especially as a woman, is

280 Mémoires, Introduction, 41: “Mise hors-jeu elle est abandonee à elle-même, réduite, puisque chacun lui tourne le dos, à prier Dieu et à agir seule, mais aussi à déchiffrer les signes inscrits dans les gestes et comportements des uns et des autres, dans les bribes de conversations qu’elle surprend; mise hors champ, elle regarde tout, et elle voit ce que personne ne voit” 281 For a thorough analysis of this Mémoire Justificatif and its reception, see Eliane Viennot’s introduction to the piece in Marguerite de Valois, Mémoires et autres écrits, 1574-1614. 282 Mémoires, 47.

162 groundbreaking and paves the way for a new sense of subjectivity in literary forms. The concessive clause introduced by “bien que” clearly states a hesitation between historical and biographical narration at the heart of the Memoirs, leading to the production of one of the first autobiographical works in French.283 In addition to the fact that these two genres, memoirs and history, were distinct categories in the 16th century and were being redefined at the time where Marguerite writes, 284 the hesitation comes from the fact that the two are inseparable in Marguerite’s experience, and she is extremely aware of it. Eliane Viennot underlines the specificity of Marguerite’s Memoirs in those terms:

Terminons cette réflexion par un retour sur l’œuvre elle‐même, considérée

dans sa logique interne : sur l’aspect délibérément autobiographique, et

profondément novateur, du texte. Comme l’a en effet souligné André

Bertière, les Mémoires de Marguerite “font exception” dans l’histoire d’un

genre qui ne trouva pas ses marques propres avant la seconde partie du

XVIIe siècle. Jusque là, les auteurs de textes intitulés “mémoires” (avec ou

sans majuscule) hésitent très fortement entre les souvenirs d’une vie et la

283 On the generic characteristics of the Memoirs see Jean Garapon, “Une Autobiographie Dans Les Limbes: Les Mémoires De La Reine Marguerite.” in Marguerite de France, Reine de Navarre et son temps, 205-216; Eliane Viennot, “Les ambiguïtés identitaires du Je dans les Mémoires de Marguerite de Valois,” Le Genre des Mémoires, essai de définition, ed. Madeleine Bertaud & François-Xavier Cuche (Paris: Klincksieck, 1995), 69-79; Frédérique Villemur, “De La 'Philautie' Chez Marguerite De Valois: Amour De Soi Et Pacte Autobiographique,” in Dans les miroirs de l'écriture: La Réflexivité chez les femmes écrivains d'Ancien Régime (Montreal, QC: Département d'Etudes Françaises, Université de Montréal, 1998), 95-108. 284 On the relationship between Mémoire and Histoire before Valois see Éliane Viennot, “Marguerite de Valois et l’écriture de histoire, 1574-1614,” Études Épistémè 17 “Comment les femmes écrivent l’histoire” (2010): “Les auteurs de Mémoires écrivent d’expérience, ils ont vécu les faits ; ils écrivent peut-être à la diable, mais ils écrivent vraiLes auteurs d’Histoires ont davantage de connaissances et ils sont capables d’orner leur prose de comparaisons, de discours, de portraits, de maximes.”

163 relation historique ; par ailleurs, le personnage qui y prend la parole ose

rarement se dire à la première personne et s’abrite le plus souvent derrière

un il ou un vous chargé de créer l’illusion d’une distance. Marguerite,

soixante ans avant ses illustres continuateurs et continuatrices, rompt

doublement avec ce flou. Parfaitement au clair des distinctions (de contenu

et de style) qui sont en train de se creuser entre les deux types d’écrits

autrefois jumeaux, elle situe d’emblée son projet […] Et parce qu’elle n’a

pas le moi honteux, elle s’installe magistralement au centre de son récit.285

Even if she participates in an already established tradition, she inaugurates a new genre, her work being unlike any kind of memoirs previously written during the 16th century, that mostly focus on political and historical events and that are written as an apology of the writer himself, inscribing him both in the past and in the future, the memoirs being often intended for the following generation. Marguerite’s Memoirs, filled with personal details and the depiction of inner emotions announce the genre of personal memoirs that will blossom in the 17th century. The only other women memorialists of this time period known to this day are Charlotte Arbaleste and Renée Burlamacchi writing the memoirs of their husband and father286 and Jeanne d’Albret, Marguerite’s step-mother who wrote the Ample

Déclaration a journal and a pamphlet against the Guise in her last attempt to save the

Protestant faith before her death. In Se Dire À La Renaissance: Les Mémoires Au Xvie

Siècle, Nadine Kuperty-Tsur defines the genre in these terms:

285 Mémoires, Introduction, 15. 286 Susan Broomhall et Colette HWinn "La représentation de soi dans les mémoires féminins du début de l’époque moderne." Tangence 77 (2005): 11–35; Broomhall, Susan and Winn, Colette HLes femmes et l'histoire familiale (XVIe -XVIIe siècle)..., Paris, Classiques Garnier, CollTextes de la Renaissance, n° 130, [Série 'L'Éducation des femmes à la Renaissance et à l'âge classique', n° 13], 2008, In-8, 208 p.

164 Les Mémoires réalisent un délicat compromis entre récit historique et récit

personnel […] Alors que les hagiographies prônent le détachement du monde

pour permettre la purification et l’enrichissement spirituel de la personne

[…] les Mémoires impliquent une philosophie opposée, tout entière illustrée

par un engagement dans le monde, dans la vie publique et politique dont le

récit marque les principales réalisations. La nouveauté des Mémoires réside

dans le fait qu’un individu, le plus souvent en marge du pouvoir, s’arroge le

droit et éprouve le besoin d’écrire sa vie en soulignant son insertion dans

l’histoire de son pays”287

For Marguerite, as we will see, this immersion in the political and in the public sphere reach an extreme, being completely intertwined with her personal life. The definitions from

16th and 17th dictionaries below also insist on the direct interaction of the authors of the memoirs with History. And in the Corneille dictionary of 1694 Marguerite de Valois’s work is used as the paradigmatic example of the genre:

Estienne 1549 Faire des memoires, Conficere commentarios.

Cotgrave 1611 Memoires. Notes of, writings for, remembrance; and a charge, or instructions giuen in writing; also, Histories, Chronicles, Commentaries, Records.

Furetière 1690 MEMOIRES, au pluriel, se dit des Livres d'Historiens, escrits par ceux qui ont eu part aux affaires ou qui en ont esté tesmoins oculaires, ou qui contiennent leur vie ou leurs principales actions: Ce qui répond à ce que les Latins

287 Nadine Kuperty-Tsur Se Dire À La Renaissance: Les Mémoires Au Xvie Siècle, (Paris: J. Vrin, 1997), 44. See also See Jacques Berchtold, and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard. La Mémoire Des Guerres De Religion: La Concurrence Des Genres Historiques, Xvie-Xviiie Siècles: Actes Du Colloque International De Paris (15-16 Novembre 2002), (Genève: Droz, 2007); Nadine Kuperty- Tsur “ Le moi, sujet de l’histoire” in Nouvelle Revue du seizième siècle, Genève, vol. 10, no 1 (2001): 63-81.

165 appelloient commentaires. Ainsi on dit les Memoires de Sulli, de Villeroy, du Cardinal de Richelieu, des Mareschaux de Themines, et de Bassompierre, de Brantosme, de Montrefor, de la Roche-Foucaut, de Pontis, etc. On les a appellées en Latin memoranda, adversaria.

Corneille 1694 Memoires, au pluriel sign. Relations de faits, ou d'evenements particuliers pour servir à l'Histoire. Memoires de la Reine Marguerite.

For Marguerite de Valois, the personal is historical. Her troubles echo the political troubles of the times. In the Memoirs, for example, collective and individual discontent are both referred to by the word “mécontentement” and are intrinsically related. Marguerite uses the word to describe her personal discontent at the very end of the narration, when, after her husband Henri de Navarre’s mistress gave birth to a stillborn baby, she is herself summoned by her brother and her mother to come back to Court, in order to attract her husband there. This personal discontent temporally and semantically echoes the political troubles of the times, since the political faction formed against Henri III in 1573 and composed by moderate Catholics and Huguenots, that Marguerite will join, supporting her husband and her brother d’Alençon, is actually called les Malcontents. The word is also used in the text to describe the discontent of the ultra-Catholic Ligue. The violent political troubles of the wars of Religion are intertwined with Marguerite’s own personal discontent of being used as a go-between by the Protestants and the Catholics, between her mother

Catherine de Médicis and her brothers. Her interpersonal discontent, causing constant anxiety, is accompanied by a sharp consciousness of being at the heart of a unique historical era, where alliances can shift swiftly and where the future is highly uncertain. In

Marguerite’s narrative, Catherine of Medici underlines on several occasions the organic relationship between her daughter and the misfortunes of the times: “Ma fille est

166 malheureuse d’être venue en un tel siècle” or “Vous êtes née d’un miserable temps.”288 As we have mentioned, personal life milestones are often followed by tragic political events for Marguerite. The most notable because it is the most violent is the immediate aftermath of her wedding – the Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre, that Marguerite experiences at the forefront from the inside of the Louvre and that I will return to at the end of this chapter.

Another example that illustrates the interdependency between the political and the personal is the strong psychosomatic reaction she undergoes during the siege of Saint Jean d’Angély: where the political and personal discontent is translated into a physical malaise.

Visiting her brother during this military siege in 1569, she realizes that he has turned his back against her and is now conspiring with Le Guast to spread the word of a possible union between his sister and De Guise, which would make her untrustworthy. He shares these rumors with Catherine who orders Marguerite, in front of her brother, to not speak to her anymore since she cannot be trusted. Deeply affected by this profound change of heart,

Marguerite catches a fever and the purpura that causes the eruption of red patches on the skin. She explains this psychosomatic reaction in these terms: “Cet ennui me pressant le

Coeur et possédant toutes les facultés de mon âme, rendant mon corps plus propre à recevoir la contagion du mauvais air qui était lors en l’armée, je tombai à quelques jours de là extrêmement malade d’une grande fièvre continue et du pourpre.”289 Leaving for

Angers after two weeks, she is faced with her brother and De Guise himself while confined in her room, which only increases the anxiety that her state will be aggravated: “En cet état, je vins de Saint-Jean-d’Angely à Angers, malade du corps, mais beaucoup plus malade de l’âme, où pour mon malheur je trouvais Monsieur de Guise et ses oncles arrivés; ce qui

288 Mémoires, 93. 289 Mémoires, 62.

167 réjouit autant mon frère, […] que [cela] me donna appréhension de croître ma peine.”290 In this passage Marguerite underlines the deep connection between her individual body and the political tensions surrounding her.

2-Exteriority and Interiority: The Visibility of Emotions

Fear is indeed always interpersonal in the Memoirs. It is the experience of other people’s emotions, decisions, acts or words that affect the protagonist in her body and mind. Family members and members of the Court fear each other’s actions and reactions.

Marguerite fears the reactions of her mother the Queen, the changing moods of her brother

Henry, and the constant danger in which her other brother Francois d’Alençon, often finds himself. These reciprocal anxieties are often translated into physical signs. If Aristotle insists on the relationship between body and emotions, it is to underline that specific dispositions of the body make people more prone to experience one emotion or the other.

Marguerite, avid reader of Aristotle,291 analyzes the causes of emotions but also focuses on their effects.

This is a recurring theme in the Memoirs in which Marguerite depicts several times the physical consequences of an emotional state, for example after the departure of her brother the King: “Moi, le lendemain du partement de mon frère, les pleurs qui m’avaient accompagnée toute la nuit m’émurent un si grand rhume sur la moitié du visage, que j’en

290 Mémoires, 63. It is interesting to notice that Charlotte Arbaleste uses the same word to talk about the fear of losing her sight: “non sans une continuelle appréhension d’estre privée de ma seulle consolation que je prenoy en la lecture des saintes Ecritures” quoted by Broomhall, “La représentation de soi dans les mémoires féminins du début de l’époque moderne,” 17. 291 See Marie-Noëlle Baudouin-Matuszek, “La bibliothèque de Marguerite de Valois,” in Henri III mécène des arts, des sciences et des lettres, Isabelle de Conihout, Jean-François Maillard et Guy Poirier dir. (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2006), 273-283.

168 fus, avec une grosse fièvre, arrêtée dans le lit pour quelques jours, fort malade et avec beaucoup de douleurs.”292 Marguerite is again, actually sick, but also uses the metaphor of sickness to describe her mental state, thus underlining the deep connection between the body and the soul: “bien que je fusse encore mal de mon rhume – mais plus malade en l’âme qu’au corps de l’ennui qui me possédait.”293 This bodily reaction usually happens in spite of the individual’s will, the physical appearance revealing the tormenting affects to the surrounding witnesses. It is for example the case when Marguerite narrates the dramatic conflict between her two brothers in 1574 and 1575, leading Francois to escape the Court, soon followed by Navarre. Advised by his counselors, enemy of François, Henri gives orders to arrest Francois, and Marguerite has to cross the Court unable to hide the signs of her torments after hearing the news of the fraternal discord: “Il me fallait traverser toute la Cour, toute pleine de gens qui avaient accoutumé de courir pour me voir et honorer ; lors, chacun voyant (comme courtisans) comme la Fortune me tournait au visage, eux aussi ne firent pas semblant de m’apercevoir.”294 The discontent and humiliation of Marguerite and her brother Francois is increased during the dinner that follows François’ humiliation by Henry after his release, where faces reveal again the inner affects of the royal family members: “Elle [Catherine] y fut obéie pour les choses qui se pouvaient dévêtir ou remettre ; mais pour le visage, qui est la vive image de l’âme, la passion du juste mécontentement que nous avions s’y lisait aussi apparente qu’elle y avait été imprimée, avec la force et violence du dépit et juste dédain que nous ressentions par l’effet de tous les actes de cette tragi-comédie.”295 The impression metaphor really underlines how deep the

292 Mémoires, 103. 293 Mémoires, 106. 294 Mémoires, 165. 295 Mémoires, 172-173.

169 connection between the passions and the body are and how the events of the outside world impact the individual’s inner world.296 The face thus becomes a vehicle of knowledge in crucial interactions between the members of the royal family. In this passage anterior to the one we just quoted, Henry is trying to spread rumors of adultery about Marguerite. The scheme that he designed with some courtiers is successful since Catherine hears the rumors and believes them. After suffering a public affront from her mother, Marguerite manages to have allies rectifying the rumor and her nother tries to cover the fact that she heard it from the king. Marguerite’s face clearly shows that she does not believe her : “Et connaissant à ma mine que je ne recevais pas cette couverture, elle s’efforca par tous moyens de m’ôter l’opinion que ce fût le roi qui m’eût prêté cette charité.”297 The inner passions expressed through the body thus become participants in the personal and inherently political interactions of the royal family member.

Even more so as this relationship between the inner affects and the exterior appearance can sometimes be dissimulated with good practice in order to serve one’s best interest, and Marguerite sometimes succeeds at it for example when she hides François’ escape plan to her mother on the very same day: “Mais comme Dieu assiste les bonnes intentions (et sa divine bonté opérait en cette œuvre pour sauver mon frère), je composai tellement mon visage et mes paroles qu’elle ne pût rien connaître que ce que je voulais, et que je n’offensai mon âme ni ma conscience par aucun faux serment.”298 The verb

“composai” points to a conscious skill, coming from an assiduous courtly practice. In the

296 See Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1975): “Let fear be defined as a painful or troubled feeling caused by the impression of an imminent evil that causes destruction or pain,” 1382a 21-25, 201. 297 Mémoires, 89. 298 Mémoires, 175-176.

170 Memoirs, Marguerite constantly underlines and analyzes the coincidence or non- coincidence between the subject’s interior emotions and his external appearance. Emotions thus become signs to decipher, and are part of the epistemological tools of the Court in

Marguerite’s narrative: a mean of knowledge, a clue to the individuals’ inner thoughts.

Marguerite establishes indeed several times this link between cognition, knowledge and passions, expressed by the body, and more specifically by the face, as we have seen.

Passions and cognition are intimately linked in Marguerite’s writing, one’s affects having consequences on one’s perception and beliefs. For example, loving or, on the contrary, hating, someone can equally impair one’s perception: “Nous croyons aisément ce qui nous est dit par personnes que nous aimons”299 or: “Mais quoi ! l’envie et la haine fascinent les yeux, et font qu’ils ne voient jamais les choses telles qu’elles sont.”300 The eyes are a crucial element of sixteenth-century cognition. Not only do they allow the external world to penetrate the inner world of the subject, but they are also, as the proverb goes, “the mirror of the soul.”301

Moreover, Marguerite sometimes describes affects as the motivation for actions: like in this episode where, filled with anger, Henri leaves the room where Charles has publicly humiliated him, thus creating even more suspicion in his brother’s mind: “Mon frère, connaissant que cela se faisait exprès pour le faire répondre et le brouiller par ce moyen avec le roi, s’ôte de là, si plein de dépit et de colère qu’il n’en pouvait plus.”302 Emotions not only drive Marguerite’s life but also the plot of the Memoirs. Marguerite indeed often

299 Mémoires, 90. 300 Mémoires, 195. 301 See Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture and Nancy Frelick, The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Specular Reflections (Belgium: Brepols, 2016). 302 Mémoires, 161.

171 highlights the effects of the passions as much as their causes and their consequences on the individual’s immediate surroundings. A telling example is the influence of his mistress

Rebours on Henry of Navarre, whose presence deeply modifies his behavior towards

Marguerite. Well aware of the importance of the physical presence of Henry’s mistresses in determining his predisposition towards her as well as his political mood, Marguerite notes: “Rebours y demeura malade, laquelle le roi mon mari perdant des yeux, perdit aussi d’affection, et commença à s’embarquer avec Fosseuse.”303 Out of sight, out of mind,

Marguerite is conscious of both the power and vulnerability of the body, and its potential influence by and on other people.304

She constantly underlines the importance of sight as an instrument of knowledge, and gives epistemological value to first-hand experience several times in the Memoirs. In the introduction, addressing Brantôme, she actually makes it the very motivation of her answer and thus of her writing:

Si vous l’aviez fait pour représenter le contraste de la Nature et de la

Fortune, plus beau sujet ne pouviez-vous choisir, les deux y ayant à l’envi

fait essai de l’effort de leur puissance. En celui de la Nature, en ayant été

témoin oculaire, vous n’y avez besoin d’instruction. Mais en celui de la

Fortune, ne le pouvant décrire que par rapport (qui est sujet d’être fait par

des personnes mal informées ou mal affectées, qui peuvent ne [pas]

303 Mémoires, 185. 304 And so was Catherine of Medici, as Susan Broomhall argues in her article “Histories of Emotion and Power: Catherine de Medici’s Advice to Her Sons”: “Catherine’s document was not an emotional mirror for princes in the sense that it focused primarily on her sons’ moral development. Rather, it identified emotions as vital to political rule, noting feelings that could threaten the power of the crown, and offering tactics of courtly emotional management that could socialize crucial political participants into alignment with the interests of the king,” 91.

172 représenter le vrai, ou par ignorance, ou par malice), j’estime que recevrez

plaisir d’en avoir les mémoires de qui le peut mieux savoir, et de qui a plus

d’intérêt à la véritable description de ce sujet.305

Jean Garapon comments this passage in these terms : “Ici point une idée essentielle pour l’histoire de l’autobiographie, selon laquelle il n’est de vérité ultime que personnelle ou que la personne, en définitive, est le critère de sa vérité.”306 The expression “faire essai,” reminding us of Montaigne’s praxis, returns in an address to the reader when she tells the eventful story of her brother’s escape : “Estimant que mon frère fût pris, j’entrai en un désespoir qui ne se peut représenter que par l’essai de choses semblables.”307 Marguerite insists on the necessity and the individuality of experience. Emotions, or affections as she refers to them, are inherently part of this cognitive process. In this passage describing her captivity at the Court that she devoted to readings and prayers, she underlines the effect that the emotion of sadness can have on the mind and on the self : “Et la tristesse, contraire

à la joie qui emporte hors de nous les pensées de nos actions, reveille notre âme en soi- même, qui, rassemblant toutes ses forces pour rejeter le Mal et chercher le Bien, pense et repense sans cesse pour choisir ce souverain bien, auquel pour assurance elle puisse trouver quelque tranquilité.” (112) The feeling of anticipatory anxiety, referred to as “crainte” or

“apprehension” puts Marguerite in a state of constant vigilance and alertness and I would like to focus now on what this experience is conveying about the relationship of a specific individual to time at the end of the 16th century.

305 Mémoires, 46. 306 Jean Garapon, “Une autobiographie dans les limbes, Les Mémoires de la reine Marguerite,” 208. 307 Mémoires, 177.

173 3-The circulation of apprehension:

The words to describe this anxiety are often future oriented as I have pointed out with the use of the lexical field of fear in the introduction. Appréhension is one of them. At the time of composition of the Memoirs it is still mostly used in the sense of perception.

Léry, as we have seen, uses it both in the sense of perception and fear, but Valois is the only writer of the 16th century to use it exclusively in its emerging sense of prospective fear, a meaning that will be institutionalized in the 17th century.

Valois uses the word to describe a state of constant interpersonal or even intrafamilial apprehension. The word is used to qualify her own feelings, but also her brothers’.

It first appears at a very symbolic and formative moment: her entrance in the realm of politics. In 1569, Henri asks her to be his political ally, acting out of fear that his brother will replace him as their mother’s favorite, and trying to secure his future with the help of his sister. Valois uses the word appréhension to describe Henry’s feelings, transcribed in direct speech: “En cette appréhension, songeant les moyens d’y remédier, je trouve qu’il m’est nécessaire d’avoir quelque personne très fidèle qui tienne mon parti auprès de la reine ma mère.”308 The apprehension of her brother sets the beginning of a pattern that proleptically announces the apprehension that Marguerite will constantly feel throughout her life.

The word is used 5 times in one of the longest narrations of the Memoirs. This passage is devoted to the year 1578, and to the rising tensions between her brother Henry

III on one hand, and her other brother Francois of Alencon and her husband Henry of

Navarre on the other, with whom Valois has decided to side. It is emblematic of this

308 Mémoires, 56.

174 atmosphere of permanent anticipatory anxiety. In these pages, Valois narrates the sequence of events that led to the escape of her brother Francois, to which she participated. What is interesting in the narration of these tumultuous events is the circulation of apprehension among the different siblings. Valois thus shows how fear is central to the family’s doings and how each person is trying to anticipate a future evil by executing a present action. The first quote below shows an apprehensive King, whose fear and suspicion is fueled by his counselors. By doing so, Marguerite shows her brother as vulnerable and permeable to the influence of his surroundings:

Mais demeuré seul en son cabinet avec le conseil de Jéroboam de cinq à six

jeunes hommes, ils lui rendent ce partement fort suspect, et le mettent en

telle appréhension qu’ils lui font faire une des plus grandes folies qui se soit

faite en notre temps, qui fut de prendre mon frère et tous ses serviteurs

prisonniers.309

It is thus fear that motivates Henri’s actions, and it is the same word that Marguerite used at the very beginning of the Memoirs to describe the state he was in when he came to find her and made her his political ally, which made her transition from childhood to adulthood.

The strategy of the counselors, that Marguerite compares to the young counselors of King

309 Mémoires, 162.

175 Jeroboam,310 is to make suspicion arise in the King’s mind, and thus to suggest potential outcomes. It is the same sentiment that animates Francois, mirroring the feelings of his brother as he asks Marguerite for help : “La seule appréhension que j’ai est que, ne me pouvant faire justement mourir, l’on me veuille faire languir en la solitude d’une longue prison, où encore, je mépriserai leur tyrannie- pourvu que vous me vouliez tant obliger de m’assister de votre presence.”311 This feeling of prospective fear towards a future action of his brother is what causes him to start planning an escape. Marguerite reuses the word to describe the state of her brother after three days of waiting, three days of being apprehensive, showing how it is the memory of a past offense that fuels the anticipation of a bigger one :

Mon frère se voyant de cette façon être à la miséricorde de ces jeunes

cervelles, qui sans respect ni jugement, faisaient disposer de lui au roi

comme il leur venait en fantaisie, craignant qu’il ne lui advint pis (ayant

l’exemple trop récent de ce qui, sans occasion ni raison, lui avait été fait),

ayant supporté trois jours l’appréhension de ce danger, il se résolut de s’ôter

310 “Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, ‘How do you advise me to answer this people?’ They answered him, ‘If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.’ But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him, and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and now attended himHe said to them, ‘What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, “Lighten the yoke that your father put on us”?’ The young men who had grown up with him said to him, ‘Thus you should say to this people who spoke to you, “Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us”; thus you should say to them, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loinsNow, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yokeMy father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” 1 Kings 12:1-14:20 – Jeroboam I of Israel (924–903 B.C.E.) 311 Mémoires, 165.

176 de là pour se retirer chez lui et ne revenir plus à la Cour, mais avancer ses

affaires le plus promptement qu’il pourrait pour s’en aller en Flandre.312

This is when Marguerite agrees to help him escape through her bedroom window. The plan is made and the tools required for the escape are gathered. However, they all have to attend dinner first and François’ behavior arises suspicion in Monsieur de Matignon who shares his doubts with Catherine of Medici. It is then Marguerite’s turn to be apprehensive, noticing the physical reaction of her mother when hearing Matignon’s warning : “Je vis qu’elle se troubla à cette nouvelle, ce qui me donna encore plus d’appréhension que nous fussions découverts.”313 In all these events, it is the direct observation of a present situation that creates a feeling of apprehension in the individual : it is by apprehending, deciphering and interpreting their surroundings that the three siblings become apprehensive. The next occurrence actually shows a discrepancy between the analysis of the situation and the person’s feelings, that Marguerite notices, surprised. Being carried down with a rope from his sister’s window, François is laughing, absolutely not apprehensive of falling or being discovered :

Et me relevant, nous accomodâmes la corde avec un bâton ; et ayant regardé

dans le fossé s’il n’y avait personne, étant seulement aidée de trois de mes

femmes qui couchaient en ma chambre et du garçon de la chambre qui

m’avait apporté la corde, nous descendons premièrement mon frère, qui riait

et se gaussait sans avoir aucune appréhension, bien qu’il y eût une très

312 Mémoires, 174. 313 Mémoires, 175.

177 grande hauteur, puis Simier, qui, pâle et tremblant, ne se pouvait presque

tenir de peur, puis Cangé son valet de chambre.314

Marguerite underlines this discrepancy with the concessive “bien que” and by showing the contrast with Simier’s reaction. Here it is interesting to note that the noun is introduced by the verb “avoir:” apprehension is now something that you have, just like fear (“avoir peur”),315 not something that you do, a crucial step in the semantic and conceptual evolution of the word, that we will come back to in the last part of this analysis. François appears both as brave and reckless in this passage that introduces a temporary relief in the narration of an extremely tense situation.

The last occurrence of the word appréhension and its derivatives in this eventful and dreadful episode of the Memoirs includes a comment by the narrator, noticing the protagonist’s focus on the other’s safety instead of her own, and depicts a state of extreme fear, Marguerite being convinced that her brother has been caught :

Moi, qui en tout ce hasard n’avais jamais appréhendé ce qui était de mon

particulier, mais seulement la sûreté ou le danger de mon frère, demeure

demi pâmée de peur, croyant que ce fût quelqu’un qui, suivant l’avis de

Monsieur de Matignon, eût été mis là pour nous guetter. Estimant que mon

frère fût pris, j’entrai en un désespoir qui ne se peut représenter que par

l’essai de choses semblables.316

314 Mémoires, 176. 315 Estienne, 1549 - Peur, ou Paour Auoir peur, In metu esse, Expauescere, Metu teneri, Metum accipere, Metuere, Formidare. Richelet, 1680 PEUR, s.f. Crainte Aprehension Fraïeur [Avoir peur. Donner de la peur à quelqu'un. La peur le saisit et il se troubla si fort qu'on ne le put jamais remettre. Trembler de peur. Ablancourt Avoir peur de son ombre; C'est à dire, avoir peur de rien.] 316 Mémoires, 177.

178 This succession of ordeals, expressed very symptomatically in the previous passage with the repetitive use of the word appréhension, makes Valois very aware of the uncertainty of how the future will unfold, and leads her to adopt an attitude of constant anticipatory anxiety. What we notice reading the Memoirs is that the future is highly uncertain and that past experiences can only give you limited insight for how the future will unfold.

4-Apprehension and Prudence: an Epistemology of Temporal Discontinuity

This familial and political in-betweenness and fear is accompanied by the expression of a temporal discontinuity, that constitutes, I would like to argue, a new epistemological framework, presenting the past, the present and the future as three separate entities whose connections are becoming more and more problematic.317 Valois is indeed acutely aware of the possibility of change through time. But what appears as a source of distress for her is actually a quality praised in the figure of her mother through the notion of prudence, presented as “la plus prudente et avisée princesse qui ait jamais été.”318 Valois underlines several times her mother’s ability to take the potentiality of future consequences into account when considering a present situation: “Pendant qu’il faisait son rapport au roi, la reine ma mère étant en sa chambre avec l’affliction que l’on peut penser (qui comme princesse très prudente, prévoyait bien que cet excès fait sans sujet ni raison pourrait, si mon frère n’avait le naturel bon, apporter beaucoup de malheur en ce royaume), envoya quérir tous les vieux du conseil.”319 Catherine of Medici foresees the future in a very pragmatic way, fully conscious of the changing nature of people, relationships and

317 On the division of time in the Renaissance see Neil Kenny, Death and Tenses: Posthumous Presence in Early Modern France ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 318 Mémoires, 97. 319 Mémoires, 169.

179 alliances. Valois describes the philosophy of her mother in the following terms: “elle ordonnait d’user de ses ennemis comme pouvant être un jour amis […] que toutes les choses du monde avaient deux faces, que cette première, qui était triste et affreuse, étant tournée, quand nous viendrons à voir la seconde, plus agréable et plus tranquille, à nouveaux évènements on prendrait nouveau conseil.”320 But, this philosophy, stating the constant possibility of reversibility, takes a whole new meaning when used by Le Guast,

Valois’ worst enemy, when he tries to convince her brother the King of a potential betrayal from her. She transcribes his advice to her brother in the following terms: “que la prudence ne permettait pas que l’on put se servir des mêmes expedients en tout temps, que qui était necessaire à une certaine heure pouvait être nuisible à une autre.”321 The “qui” refers to

Marguerite, Le Guast suggesting that they should get rid of her now before she becomes a threat. Here Valois uses the same vocabulary she had used to praise her mother’s prudence to describe the discourse of her worst enemy. This practice of the use of antonymic antanaclases has also been noted by Caroline Trotot,322 and by putting the discourse of prudence in both the discourse of her mother and her worst enemy, Marguerite creates ambiguity around that term and reveals the duplicity of the Court, that she describes elsewhere in the narration as a “Protée qui change de forme à toute heure.”323 In the context of the wars of Religion and within the Court, it seems that being prudent actually equates being strategically ready to act for your own interest at all costs, creating an atmosphere of

320 Mémoires, 104. 321 Mémoires, 60. 322 Caroline Trotot, “The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Experience of Knowledge, Knowledge of Experience” in Women’s portraits of the self: Representing knowledge and making identity in early modernity, Arts et Savoirs [Online], 6 | 2016. 323 See Mémoires, 145: “La Cour est un Protée qui change de forme à toute heure, y arrivant toujours des nouvelletés.”

180 interpersonal unreliability. Prudence in the 16th century is the political virtue of the individual making decisions in time. The prudent person takes the vicissitudes of history into account when making decisions.324 Prudence is thus the political virtue of the individual making decisions in time. It is the translation of the Greek phronēsis that

Aristotle defined in Nicomachean Ethics book vi, and of the Latin prudentia defined by

Cicero as “the choice between good and evil” (Cicero, De Ínventione, ii.160). Developing this skill requires an attention to the past, the present and the future. The prudent person assesses the present moment through the knowledge they gained through experience, stored in their memory, and by anticipating the future, a capacity referred to as providentia.

During the 16th century, Prudence is the key concept to think about action, especially political action, and choice. Francis Goyet defines it in these terms: “la prudence est la vision d’ensemble propre à celui qui est en position de decider souverainement.”325 The different steps that the prudent person follows are the consilium (consultation), the judicium

(decision) and the imperium (execution). And we have seen how these different steps are oftem imbued with fear in Marguerite’s narrative. The prudence she describes when talking about her family members or about her worst enemy Le Guast, seems less a moral virtue than a pragmatic awareness of the constant possibility of reversal and change at a time where alliances could shift overnight.

The term is definitely being redefined in the violent context of the wars and so are the two mythical and religious temporal agents that are Fortune and Providence. In the

324 This complex notion that spans from Aristotle and Cicero to Machiavelli, and to their reception during the Renaissance and the Valois’ reign, was most recently addressed by Caroline Trotot in the aforementioned article and by Francis Goyet, Les audaces de la prudence: littérature et politique aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris : Classiques Garnier, 2009). 325 Goyet, Les Audaces de la prudence, 12.

181 Memoirs, it seems indeed that although still mentioned numerous times by Valois, they have been interiorized & secularized by the characters, who become agents of fortune or misfortune themselves. Providence is the auxiliary or “adjuvant” while Fortune is the adversary.326 Providence helps Marguerite to foresee the future, Fortune, however, is an agent of change, a personified rival that gets in the way and creates hurtful events, out of jealousy.327 This opposition is exemplified in the following commentary on her captivity in her own home, the Louvre, following the orders of her brother and her mother, and preventing her from joining her husband whose relationship with the royal family was getting worse. Marguerite explains how this captivity allowed her to actually find a form or peace in the practice of reading, thus strengthening her knowledge of God and his

Creation, and preparing her to face the events to come: “ayant passé le temps de ma captivité au plaisir de la lecture, où je commençai lors à me plaire, n’ayant cette obligation

à la Fortune mais plutôt à la Providence divine, qui dès lors commença à me produire un si bon remède pour le soulagement des ennuis qui m’étaient preparés à l’avenir.”328

Providence and Fortune mostly function as prolepses in the Memoirs, allowing the narrator to reflect on the relationship between past and future and on her agency in this process.

326 See Eliane Viennot, “Parler de soi : parler à l’autre. Marguerite de Valois face à ses interlocuteurs,” Tangence 77, Masques et figures du sujet féminin (2005): 37-59: “Marguerite partage volontiers cette vision des choses, comme le montre le retour du motif de “l’envieuse Fortune”dans ses Mémoires – par exemple lorsqu’elle évoque son mariage, “cet heureux état de triomphe et de noces” changé par cette méchante “en un tout contraire”(92,67), puisqu’il préluda à la Saint‐Barthélemy. Toutefois, la main de la Fortune est souvent retenue, dans l’imaginaire de la reine, par d’autres puissances qui la protègent, notamment celles de Dieu et de la Providence, d’autant que “quelques‐uns tiennent que Dieu a en particulière protection les grands” (107,81).” 327 Furetière, 1690 FORTUNEs.f.: C'estoit autrefois une Divinité Payenne qu'on croyoit estre la cause de tous les évenements extraordinaires: au lieu que c'est en effet la Providence divine qui agit par des voyes inconnuës et au dessus de la prudence des hommes. 328 Mémoires, 111.

182 They paradoxically neutralize the suspense in a narrative that focuses on how the future unfolds, but allow the narrator to gain agency over this series of discontinuous twists and turns over which she had limited agency as a protagonist: “La Fortune envieuse et traître ne pouvant supporter la gloire d’une si heureuse fortune qui m’avait accompagnée jusques là en ce voyage, me donne [alors] deux sinistres augures des traverses que, pour contenter son envie, elle me préparait à mon retour.”329 Whereas divine Providence provides

Marguerite with the tools to save herself from a potentially nefarious future: “La compagnie de Mademoiselle de Montigny […] fut, que je crois une providence de Dieu pour me garantir de la calomnie que l’on me voulait imputer,”330 Fortune seems to both announce and create the unpleasant events. The use of this antique trope allows Marguerite to highlight the adversities that she went through, while underlining the correlation between a succession of misfortunes, hers and others (the augure that follows is the death of

Mademoiselle of Sauve), thus painting a dark picture of these times of war and uncertainty.

One mention of divine Providence is worth analyzing in more detail. In a key passage of the Memoirs, when Marguerite is about to describe the return of her brother

Henry King of Poland to France, the narration abruptly stops and the narrator engages on a long digression on the power of omens in dreams that announce forthcoming events to noble people chosen by God. She starts with a description of how that foreseeing power has been granted to her mother and gives a vivid example of the dream Catherine had of the battle of Jarnac, where she proleptically witnessed the death of Condé and the victory of her son. Marguerite goes on by admitting that she herself, has been the recipient of such powers several times, but more importantly during the event that follows and that is the

329 Mémoires, 137. 330 Mémoires, 85.

183 continuation of the interrupted narration: her reunion with the brother who used to be her ally and will then become her lifelong enemy.

Quelques uns tiennent que Dieu a en particulière protection les grands, et

qu’aux esprits où il reluit quelque excellence non commune, il leur donne

par des bons genies quelques secrets avertissements des accidens qui leur

sont prepares, ou en bien ou en mal, comme à la reine ma mère […] il s’en

est vu plusieurs exemples […] De ces divins avertissements je ne me veux

estimer digne. Toutefois, pour ne me taire comme ingrate des graces que

j’ai eues de Dieu […] j’avouerai n’avoir jamais été proche de quelques

signalés accidents, ou sinistres ou heureux, que je n’en aie eu quelque

avertissement, ou en songe ou autrement. Et puis bien dire ce vers: De mon

bien ou mon mal mon esprit m’est oracle. Ce que j’éprouvai lors de l’arrivée

du roi de Pologne: la reine ma mère étant allée au devant de lui, cependant

qu’ils s’embrassaient et faisaient les réciproques bienvenues, bien que ce

fût en un temps si chaud qu’en la presse où nous étions on s’étouffait, il me

prit un frisson si grand, avec un tremblement si universel, que celui qui

m’aidait s’en aperçut. J’eus beaucoup de peine à le cacher, quand, après

avoir laissé la reine ma mère, le roi vint me saluer. Cet augure me toucha au

coeur.331

Interestingly this digression, the longest one in the Memoirs, happens at a moment of the narration where the narrator experiences writing apprehension. The moment of her life she’s about to describe is what Viennot has qualified as the “mensonge des Mémoires:”332

331 Mémoires, 81-84. 332 Mémoires, Introduction, 46‐49.

184 Marguerite’s insistence on Henry’s betrayal, a lie whose purpose is to hide the fact that she is the one who actually betrayed him and allied herself to her other brother François. And it seems important to mention one more time that the presence of a lie in the narration, that

Valois constantly negotiates as a writer, does not disqualify the epistemological validity of the work. This is how Viennot describes Marguerite’s attitude as a writer in this passage:

“Marguerite sent que sa digression est longue et qu’elle est entraînée dans les méandres de l’ornementation; elle ne veut plus différer le récit qu’elle appréhende.”333 As we have mentioned before, Marguerite insists several times on the evilness of her brother Henry, in order to justify her betrayal and her alliance to her other brother François. This moment of writing apprehension, when the author is about to address a key moment in a tormented relationship, takes on the form of a digression about ways to anticipate the future. By describing this somatic reaction to her brother’s return, she fuels the legend saying that

Henry had actually been dead and returned from Poland as a ghost,334 and also prepares the readers for her upcoming betrayal, providing them with a supporting framework. In doing so, she herself gives an omen to the chosen readers, preparing them for the event to come.

Divine Providence is here used as a rhetorical tool in a moment of authorial apprehension.

At a time contemporary of Valois’s writing different scientific explanations were arising

333 Mémoires, Introduction, 83. 334 See Florimond de Raymond, Erreur populaire de la papesse Jeanne, (Bordeaux : S. Millanges, 1594): “En mesme boutique fut forgé ce qui coureust par toute la Chrétienté de nostre Roy Henry dernier décédé. Lorsqu’il laissa la Pologne, pour venir recevoir la belle couronne de France, un bruit fut espandu partout, mais c’était avec une telle certitude que plusieurs se sont opiniâtrés en cette badine opinion et en ont fait des gageures que ce n’était pas le victorieux duc d’Anjou, que ce n’était pas le frère de Charles, mais un fantôme et un esprit malin, qui avait emprunté sa semblanceQue celui qui avoit engressé les campagnes de Moncontour estoit mort, qu’il ne le falloit plus craindre, que ce n’était qu’un esprit qui remuait son corps sans force ni vigueurQu’il falloit avec les armes lui faire tête et empêcher l’entréeVoyez jusques où và la hardie et effrontée audace de tels esprits,” 247-48.

185 in order to explain the dreaming process in physiological terms, linking the content of dreams to the events experienced by the dreamer and their memory. 335 In terms of temporality, it is thus interesting that Marguerite devotes the longest digression of her

Memoirs, which tells the story of her constant anticipatory anxiety towards the future, to the topic of prophetic dreams, using it as what we could call a cognitive defense mechanism. The function of this digression seems to be apologetic first, placing her mother and her in a lineage of elected noble women. It is also a way to validate her choice to remain faithful to the Catholic faith, by showing that God is rewarding her with this support. But it is also a rhetorical tool allowing her to make sense of an intimate relationship that is difficult to explain. The mention of Providence both diminishes as well as strengthens her agency: even if she passively receives the omen, it is produced by her own spirit and only happens because she deserved it. Her use of the quote “De mon bien ou mon mal mon esprit m’est oracle” complicates this passivity by making Marguerite’s mind the agent that both receives and produces this omen. This passage definitely shows how complex Marguerite’s relationship to the future and her agency in this process are, both cognitively and emotionally.

The use of Prudence, Fortune and Providence by the narrator to depict a complex relationship to the future, and the constant situation of personal, political and temporal in- betweenness that the protagonist experiences actually point to the generic paradox of the

335 In Les Fleurs des Secrets moraux sur les passions du coeur humain, divisez en six livres, dédié à la Royne Marguerite duchesse de Valois, whose second edition in 1614 is dedicated to Valois and contains her response to his Question “Pourquoi l’homme rend tant d’honneur à la femme?” the Jesuit François Loryot devotes a section to this topic: “Les songes venant souvent au rebours de la complexion du corps, font penser qu’ils sont Prognostiques des choses futures.” He explains how dreams contrast with the mood of the person depending on the season, and how the most contrasting ones will give the impression to be prophetic.

186 Memoirs. There is a constant uncertainty in this work belonging to a genre that is supposed to describe retrospectively an already known future. This might be due to the fact that

Valois’ future was still very uncertain at the time of writing in exile in Usson, where she was learning about the major political events from afar, including the death of her mother and the assassination of her brother in 1589, and awaiting her divorce with Henry of

Navarre, partly due to her “infertility.” This is related to the other specificity of the

Memoirs: unlike other memoirs from the period, Valois’ present a unique trait: hers are memoirs without descendants, and are not inscribed in a genealogical continuity. In his article “S'inscrire dans une lignée? La question des généalogies dans les Mémoires du

e second XVI siècle”336 Bruno Tolaïni analyzes the relationship of the memorialists to their familial past and future, explaining how the literary performance is supposed to glorify the past and provide an example for the future. This aspect is especially reinforced in Protestant memoirs, that inscribe themselves in a framework of predestination:

Cette impression de prééminence du mémorialiste dans les évocations

généalogiques est renforcée chez les auteurs protestants. En effet, ces

derniers structurent leur récit à partir de la notion de prédestination, le récit

de vie étant tributaire des conceptions religieuses, seules à définir, à la

Renaissance, le sens de l’existence […] Les mémorialistes ne se présentent

plus alors uniquement comme les garants d’un héritage et d’une histoire, ils

s’instituent en meilleurs fruits d’une généalogie déjà prestigieuse. Charge

336 Bruno Tolaïni, “S'inscrire dans une lignée ? La question des généalogies dans les Mémoires du e second XVI siècle,” Les Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts [en ligne], 07- 2015, URL : http://figures-historiques.revue.univ-lille3.fr/n-4-2015-issn-2261- 0871/

187 était alors confiée à la graine d’améliorer encore le prestige de l’arbre. […]

Les héritiers apparaissent très clairement dans les récits généalogiques que

nous étudions. Chaque portrait doit les guider sur le chemin de l’honneur,

vertu qui constitue alors un modèle idéal de comportement et de conduite.

Outre la possibilité de recomposer son identité sociale à partir des

descriptions plus ou moins détaillées de ses ancêtres, le descendant peut

ainsi savoir ce qui est attendu de lui et tâcher de s’y conformer.337

This characteristic is also underlined by Broomhall in her analysis of the memoirs of Renée

Burlamacchi: “Chaque nouvelle épreuve raffermit et renforce la foi des Burlamacchi et on finit par sentir que leurs tribulations servent un but précis dans l’ordre général des choses.

L’idée de prédestination, qui suppose que tout est prédéterminé, sous-tend tout le récit et lui confère une dimension fermée et programmée, caractéristique des récits protestants.”338

Anomaly within this generic context, Valois’ Memoirs are not addressed to future heirs.

Moreover, the sense of futurity, of a continued future stemming from the present, is actually mostly absent from the narrative. This could be due to the fact that we are missing the end of the manuscript, but I would argue that this impaired sense of futurity is actually exemplary of Valois’ constant apprehension and of a new relationship to time that emerges at the heart of the wars of religion and at the turn of the century, challenging the moral and political notion of Prudence, the mythical notion of Fortune and the religious concept of

Providence. The horizon of the Memoirs is very short-sighted and the possibilities of projection extremely limited. In this retrospective narrative, each episode follows the other

337 Ibid., 23-27. 338 Broomhall and Winn, “La représentation de soi dans les mémoires féminins du début de l’époque moderne,” 22.

188 in a linear sequence, and the only prolepses are negative ones. It does not convey a sense of fatality but a sense of constant survival, of day-to-day preoccupations, focusing on a constant present that brings new obstacles and fears. However, everything is future oriented in this narration that displays a constant anticipatory anxiety produced by a fearful present and the memory of past dangers. Caroline Trotot argues that Marguerite learns how to become prudent through her acquired experience and that this learning experience is conveyed through an acute sense of self: “Prudence comes from experience. And

Marguerite proceeds in her Memoirs from ignorance born of inexperience to knowledge born of experience […] The Memoirs tell how Marguerite became prudent, how she learned to apply a virtue that requires her to take time into account.” 339 I second the idea that she accumulates experience throughout the narrative and learns how to decipher the duplicity and uncertainty of her surroundings. She uses expressions such as “en ayant eu par le passé trop d’expériences” (203) or “qui ne se peut représenter que par l’essai de choses semblables” (177), showing that she definitely gives an epistemological value to experience, and the Memoirs can indeed be seen as a roman de formation. However I would like to add that even if Marguerite becomes prudent, she also shows that prudence is becoming an obsolete virtue at the turn of the century and at the peak of the wars of religion.

In the dilemmas exposed before, Marguerite expresses the pro and the contra of her actions and thus exemplifies the reasoning of a prudent person, aware of the potential consequences of her future actions. But in an era when every treason seems possible and the lessons from the past do not seem to be valuable enough tools to act towards the future, is prudence enough?

339 Trotot, “The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois: Experience of Knowledge, Knowledge of Experience,” 3.

189 5-Roman de Formation or Roman d’Information? Knowing that you Cannot Know

The lack of information regarding what the future holds is constantly underlined by

Marguerite along with the feeling of prospective fear that it creates. In this atmosphere of doubt and fear, information is key and everything relies on the modalities of its circulation.

The Memoirs are pervaded by the transaction of knowledge, making them as much, I would argue, a roman d’information as a roman de formation: confidence between family members, letters, spies, intermediaries, voluntary misinformation, rumors, structure the narration, where the narrator inserts some parenthetical asides showing what she knew then versus what she knows now. Marguerite’s apprehension can thus be defined as a lack of knowledge, or, more precisely as the knowledge of a constant lack of knowledge. This is shown semantically by her very unique use of the word apprehension, that I have analyzed throughout this presentation. As I have said Marguerite is, to my knowledge, the only author of the sixteenth century to use it only in the sense of prospective fear, but also the only one to make this noun followed by an undetermined object, thus expressing a prospective fear without object – something that she does in the crucial narration of the night of the Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre, an occurrence on which I would like to focus this last part of my analysis, because it shows how traumatic a lack of information can be.

First of all, it is important to note that her testimony is the only one from the royal family340 and the only one from inside the Louvre that we have of that night, in addition

340 Viennot, “A Propos De La Saint-Barthélemy Et Des Mémoires De Marguerite De Valois: Authenticité Du Texte Et Réception Au Xviie Siècle:” “Elle est d’autre part le seul membre de la famille royale à en avoir fait un récit personnel, un récit hors situation, non officiel, rédigé plus de vingt ans après le drame, et destiné à la seule postérité (la Couronne, elle, s’expliqua plusieurs fois dans les jours et les mois suivants — de manière d’ailleurs contradictoire — et Henri IV n’en dit jamais rien,” 3.

190 to the one of Jean de Mergey341 a protestant at the service of the count of La Rochefoucauld, part of Henri of Navarre’s cricle, who was lodged in the palace that night. The event covers

1/ 8th of the narration in his Memoirs. The difference between his narrative and

Marguerite’s lies in the attribution of the responsibility of the massacre : Jean de Mergey attributes it to Charles IX when Marguerite diminishes Charles’ agency, underlining that he needed to be convinced by the Marechal of Retz and Catherine, pressured by Henri d’Anjou and de Guise. Historians have explored these power dynamics and debated the origins of the massacre for decades342 and it will not be my purpose here. There are three distinctive moments in Valois’ narration of this traumatic massacre: a short summary of the events, a development of the summary and then a personal depiction of her lived experience. I will focus on this last moment, which expresses the feeling of apprehension in a unique way, if we consider the semantic and conceptual evolution of the term throughout the century. The year is 1572, Marguerite has just married Henri IV and on

August 22nd Coligny is wounded by Maurevert, belonging to the Guise. The protestants want reparation. Charles IX was ready to imprison De Guise for this purpose but, according to Marguerite, her mother and his advisors are afraid of the consequences in the capital among the Lorrains. The assassination of the Huguenot leaders was decided for the night of August 24th. The Queen asks the Maréchal of Retz to convince Charles of not

341 Jean de Mergey, Mémoires, Michaud et Poujoulat eds. (Paris, Guyot Frères, 1838): série 1, vol. 9, 555-580. Charlotte Arbaleste and Renée Burlamacchi also narrate the events and how they experienced them: see Broomhall and Winn, “La représentation de soi dans les mémoires féminins du début de l’époque moderne,” 27. 342 See Jean-Louis Bourgeon, L’assassinat de Coligny (Genève : Librairie Droz, 1992).; Thierry Wanegffelen, Catherine de Médicis : Le Pouvoir Au Féminin (Paris : Payot, 2005).; Arlette Jouanna, La Saint-Barthélemy : Les Mystères d’un Crime d’état, 24 Août 1572 (Paris: Gallimard, 2007).; Denis Crouzet, La Nuit de La Saint-Barthélemy : Un Rêve Perdu de La Renaissance (Paris : Fayard, 1994).

191 imprisoning de Guise since apparently her and Henri Anjou played their part in Coligny’s attempted assassination because of his murder of Charry in 1564 who was key in helping the young Charkes keep his crown in the 1560’s. The Queen fears that the protestants will want to take revenge on her and Anjou and even on Charles. But if he imprisons De Guise, the Catholics might rebel too (danger of civil war). Charles is convinced and the suppression of the protestant leaders, including Théligny, La Noue and La Rochefoucauld is decided. Marguerite apparently does not know any of this at the time and just witnesses some tumult, whispering and agitation. In the evening, while in her mother’s bedroom, she is asked to go to bed but her sister panicks and is afraid that the protestants will take revenge on Marguerite. Her mother commands that she leaves. In her room her bed is surrounded by 40 huguenots that she does not know and can hear their conversations. She cannot sleep and in the morning they leave. She finally falls asleep when Monsieur de Léran irrupts into her room, followed by four archers who want him dead. She saves him and then Miossens and Armagnac. The excerpt below describes her state when she has been ordered to go to her room without any explanation:

Ma sœur fondant en larmes me dit bonsoir, sans m’oser dire autre chose ; et

moi je m’en vais, toute transie et perdue, sans me pouvoir imaginer ce que

j’avais à craindre. Soudain que je fus en mon cabinet, je me mets à prier

Dieu qu’il lui plût me prendre en sa protection, et qu’il me gardât, sans

savoir de quoi ni de qui. Sur cela le roi mon mari, qui s’était mis au lit, me

mande que je m’allasse coucher, ce que je fis; et trouvai son lit entouré de

trente ou quarante Huguenots que je ne connaissais point encore, car il y

avait fort peu de temps que j’étais mariée. Toute la nuit ils ne firent que

192 parler de l’accident qui était advenu à Monsieur l’amiral […]. Moi, j’avais

toujours dans le cœur les larmes de ma sœur, et ne pouvais dormir pour

l’appréhension en laquelle elle m’avait mise, sans savoir de quoi. La nuit se

passa de cette façon sans fermer l’œil.343

What is striking here, first, is the absence of object following “apprehension.” This absence of referent, pretty unique in the history of the word usually followed by a prepositional phrase such as in “l’appréhension de la mort,” has been criticized many times as strategically apologetic, exonerating Marguerite from any responsibility in the massacre. I would like to argue that whether it is strategic or not, does not change the fact that this visible expression of an invisible future is pretty unique and thus worth studying. What is also noticeable here is the fact that “appréhension” is not described as a limited action, but as a state, something I had previously underlined when Marguerite refers to her brother

Francois jumping from her bedroom to escape the Louvre. As shown by the use of the imperfect, and the expression “in which she had put me,” apprehension appears as the lasting result of an interpersonal action, similar to the passage previously mentioned where

Henry’s fear is preceded by the preposition “in” and followed by a present participle, which confirms the state aspect of this new meaning: “En cette appréhension, songeant les moyens d’y remédier .” The verbs preceding apprehension as a direct object in the Memoirs are also telling of this semantic evolution: to give apprehension; to have apprehension; and to put up with the apprehension of. Instead of being a process of the faculty of the mind, the punctual perception of an outside object as defined by Paré, it is now an emotional and physical state in which the subject is put. This emotional state is consistent throughout the

343 Mémoires, 74.

193 Memoirs and is the back bone of an epistemology of prospective anxiety, future opacity and temporal discontinuity. It shows how the early modern subject went from apprehending to apprehensive throughout the 16th century.

It can be argued, and it has been, that the older Marguerite is staging in her narrative the fear of her younger self, in order to protect herself of potential accusations. However,

Marguerite does address the whole course of events first, underlining what she has learned since then.344 If there is an attempt to protect her family it is rather in this first informative part where she insists on the fact that her brother Charles was very hard to convince. It is only after giving the reader the narrative of the entire night that she operates a flashback to share her past apprehension starting with : “Pour moi, l’on ne me disait rien de tout ceci.”

When it is not my intention to prove the degree of exactitude of this apprehension, neither to solve the question of responsibility in this tragic event or to equate Marguerite’s individual fear with the sufferings of thousands of people, expressed in the Tragiques a few years later in 1615, I think that, first, this subjectivity does not put into question the historical or literary relevance of the Memoirs and that this expression of a fear without object is unique in the history of 16th century French literature. This narrated moment certainly echoes the writer’s apprehension in exile in Usson from 1585 to 1605, learning about the major political events from afar, including the death of her mother and the assassination of her brother in 1589. The night of the Saint-Bartholomew is a formative

344 See Caroline Trotot, “Marguerite de Valois et la Saint-Barthélemy : Question de l’homme, question de genre et subjectivité,” Le sens des lettres et des humanités, du lycée à l’université, Nov 2015, Saint-Denis, France: “Les deux moments peuvent ainsi être lus en diptyque; d’abord un temps de l’événement historique, où on la tient dans l’ignorance, puis ce dont elle a été témoin dont elle a une connaissance directe,” 5.

194 moment where a political decision taken by her closest family members both exclude her from the political realm and puts her life at risk.

Throughout the entire narrative it seems that Marguerite is trying to make up for this traumatic lack of information and I think that it is symptomatic of a unique perception of time by an individual trapped in interpersonal and temporal uncertainty. The narration of this violent historical event is a way for the writer to share her experience, make up for the traumatic aspect of it by reclaiming a sense of agency through the writing process and at the same time, to constitute one’s ethos. This is what Broomhall and Winn note in the

Memoirs of Arbaleste and Burlamacchi that both depict how they experienced the event, giving it a prominent place in the narration:

Ceci est particulièrement évident dans les descriptions faites par Arbaleste

et Burlamacchi du massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy (1572). Chaque femme

trouve un intérêt particulier à relier à la communauté protestante son

expérience du massacre en ce que, selon elle, cet épisode témoigne de la

miséricorde de Dieu à l’égard de sa famille. Que les deux femmes estiment

opportun de faire une longue digression dans leurs mémoires pour narrer

cet épisode tragique est en soi un signe de l’importance que revêt cet

événement dans leur vie et dans la construction de leur identité en tant que

rescapées du massacre.345

Throughout her Memoirs, Marguerite always stresses the fact that she remained faithful to the Catholic faith, but also to her husband. This tumultuous night paradoxically exemplifies thie double loyalty that will be emblematic of her life: excluded from the decision process

345 Broomhall and Winn, “La représentation de soi dans les mémoires féminins du début de l’époque moderne,” 25.

195 but rescuing several Protestants during the massacre. An ambiguous position, symptomatic of the complex alliances of the time, that Trotot underlines: “Cependant quand les protestants sont massacrés, Marguerite joue de l’ambivalence de sa position de dominée appartenant à la classe dominante pour intercéder pour les victimes. Au-delà de la dimension d’apologie du texte, on peut être sensible à la manière dont il montre la complexité des positions en fonction du sexe, de la classe et de la religion.” (Trotot 8) It is actually the bias of this testimony that constitutes its historical and literary relevance, showing how a character in an ambiguous position narrates her experience of a violent event. During this formative and traumatic moment, Marguerite experiences with full force what will be a tragic component of her life: the uncertainty of how the future will unfold.

The intimacy of the enclosed room problematizes proleptically this duplicity of the Court that we have analyzed previously. Marguerite’s originality is that she shows the reader both the inside and the outside, the private and the public. The way they are intertwined in this passage is so heightened that it conveys a sense of extreme violence. Newlywed,

Marguerite is surrounded by a group of men that she does not know, in the intimacy of her room, expected to fall asleep. In the morning the room is penetrated by the violence of the initiated massacre, and she finds herself literally in bed with the wounded Monsieur de

Léran, who does not let go of her until the captain of guards, in a moment of relief, enters the room and laughs at the sight of this tragi-comedy (a theatrical word that Marguerite uses later in the Memoirs to describe the aftermath of her brother’s fight): “Enfin Dieu voulut que Monsieur de Nançay, capitaine des gardes y vint, qui me trouvant en cet état- là, encore qu’il y eût de la compassion, il ne se put tenir de rire.”346A line that Bourgeon,

346 Mémoires, 75.

196 previously mentioned, also uses to dismiss the authenticity of the Memoirs.347 In response,

Viennot reminds us how aristocratic memoirs are actually filled with similar tragi-comic details348 and Trotot underlines the craft of Valois in the elaboration of a personal irony that echoes the causal irony of the succession of her wedding by the most violent massacre:

“Marguerite inclut un point de vue qui n’est pas le sien, qui regarde la scène de manière ambivalente. Grâce à ce procédé, elle souligne une sorte d’ironie de la situation qui entre en résonance avec l’ironie du sort présidant à la conversion des noces en massacre.”349 I will argue along these lines that this re-transcribed moment of confusion allows Marguerite to make sense of her experience and to reclaim a form of agency in doing so. The strength of this passage is that it remains ambiguous and emblematically shows the in-betweenness that will be characteristic of Valois’ life. As Trotot states:

Au-delà de la dimension d’apologie du texte, on peut être sensible à la

manière dont il montre la complexité des positions en fonction du sexe, de

la classe et de la religion […] La construction du récit met en valeur des

polarités ignorance/savoir, passif/actif, huguenot/catholique,

homme/femme, politique/intime, qui ne sont pas figées mais travaillent

ensemble et appellent l’interprétation du lecteur.350

347 See Bourgeon, “Pour une histoire, enfin, de la Saint‐Barthélemy:” “On a aussi quelque peine à croire que la vraie Marguerite se soit complue à narrer la scène ridicule du 24 août 1572 où, soi‐ disant, elle roule dans la ruelle de son lit, agrippée à un huguenot blessé qui fuit ses assassins,” 106. 348 Viennot, “A Propos De La Saint-Barthélemy Et Des Mémoires De Marguerite De Valois: Authenticité Du Texte Et Réception Au Xviie Siècle:” “Remarquons simplement que Jean‐Louis Bourgeon n’est décidément pas familier des Mémoires aristocratiques, qui « fourmillent » de détails tragi‐comiques de ce genre (ceux de Retz ou de la Grande Mademoiselle le démontrent assez),” 7. 349 Trotot, “Marguerite de Valois et la Saint-Barthélemy : Question de l’homme, question de genre et subjectivité,” 7. 350 Trotot, “Marguerite de Valois et la Saint-Barthélemy : Question de l’homme, question de genre et subjectivité,” 5.

197 The feeling of apprehension connects and problematizes these different polarities that remain the obstacles that Marguerite has to navigate most of her life, at least until her return to the Court in 1605. The in-betweenness of Marguerite’s political and familial situation enhances her consciousness of temporal uncertainty, which generates feeling of constant apprehension. Similarly to Panurge, Marguerite is apprehensive not only because she does not know what will happen in the future but also because she is aware of the many possible outcomes that could happen in the future.

There is indeed a paradox in this narrative devoted to knowledge-acquisition:

Marguerite justifies her response to Brantôme by making an epistemological claim for experience, planning on adding the information that he was lacking. However, in this retrospective narrative, where the knowledge accumulated by the narrator is different from the one that the character had, the anticipatory anxiety towards the future never disappears and the Memoirs end on that note, when Marguerite expresses her apprehension of going back to the Court, fully knowing that it is a stratagem from her brother and her mother, but still willing to take her husband’s mistress away from him, after she has given birth to a still-born baby: “le malheur qui m’y tirait, l’emporta sur le peu d’envie que j’avais lors d’y aller.”351 (203) Marguerite expresses again two bad alternatives where one is slightly better than the other since it contains a small amount of hope, the hope that the love of her husband for Fosseuse will slightly fade.

Usually, the more you know, the more you are able to make a choice, it is the definition of prudence: separating the evil from the good at a specific moment in time. But at the end of the Memoirs (or at least at the end of the manuscript that we have), what

351 Mémoires, 203.

198 Marguerite knows, and the reader with her, is that you cannot know what the future holds.

If Marguerite writes history, she specifically writes the uncertainties of an individual struggling with how history is being made, at a time when the temporal agents that are

Fortune and Providence, as well as the moral and political value of Prudence, are being redefined. This apprehension, characterized by a situation interpersonal, political and temporal in-betweenness, is I argue, exemplary of the nascent modern self, whose relationship to knowledge is imbued with fear. With all due respect to the Duke of

Angoulême, Valois’ anxiety is not a “need” but the expression of a lived experience, and the epistemological value of the Memoirs resides, in good part, in the visible expression of this complex emotion.

199

CONCLUSION

Le seul souvenir de nos maux, Qui ja vers nous ont fait leur tour, Ou de ceux qui viendront un jour, L'apprehension incertaine Empoisonne la vie humaine : Et d'autant qu'ils la font plus grieve, Ils la font aussi bien plus brieve.

Etienne Jodelle, L’Eugène, 1553352

For the apprehensive selves displayed in the literary works studied, perception, knowledge and fear are deeply intertwined. We think of the 16th century as a period of incredible technological and epistemological progress, but this dissertation aimed at nuancing this optimism by exploring the anxiety that such changes raised and its centrality to the modern conception of the mind. Through these three case studies I hope to have shed light on a paradox emblematic on the period: the increase of the value placed on experience, expanding the responsibility and agency of the knowing subject, as well as the realm of possible interpretations of his or her environment, actually gave way to self-doubt regarding choice, will, interpersonal relationships and temporality. All the protagonists of the works studies are indeed at odds with their surroundings while being, at the same time, hyper perceptive of them.

This epistemological uneasiness, embedded in the polysemy of the word

“appréhension” is, I argue, essential to consider when studying literary productions from

352 Étienne Jodelle, Théâtre complet. Tome I - L'Eugène, eds. Christine de Buzon, Jean Claude Ternaux, Luigia Zilli (Paris: Classiques Garnier, Coll. Textes de la Renaissance, n° 154, 2009), 36.

200 the different historical and ideological moments of what we call the “Renaissance:”

Humanism, the travels to the Americas and the Wars of Religion. Each of these “moments” challenged pre-conceived epistemological frameworks, and opened new possibilities while raising anxieties whose violence varies according to the context in which the historical protagonists are set. The three literary characters that this study followed: Panurge, Jean de

Léry and Marguerite de Valois find their life threatened at least once in the course of their existence depicted in the works studied. But in addition to this common fear of death, they also redefine their relationship to knowledge, and find themselves wondering, with apprehension, what their future will look like.

In the course of this study, I have shown the importance of considering cognition and emotion together and of putting embodied knowledge at the forefront when studying works which display the evolving experience of a single individual across time and space.

In order to do so, I have attempted to contextualize and historicize the key-terms used to interpret these 16th century narratives: flexibility, experience and in-betweenness. This survey also reveals the cognitive and emotional effects of the Reformation: the anxiety caused by the redefinition of theological concepts such as predestination with Rabelais, the worrisome question of the possibility of converting non-Christians and potentially non- religious people in a pre-colonial context with Léry, and the everyday struggles associated with the violence of the Wars of Religion with Valois; these all constitute embodied responses to the Reformation and its aftermath.

In addition, I hope, on the one hand, to have renewed the interpretation of canonical works such as Rabelais’s Quart Livre and Léry’s History of the Voyage to the Land of

Brazil by studying them through the lens of early modern cognition. On the other hand,

201 one of the goals of this study was to signal and shed light on a work that has been left out of the official canon by critics and historians but that can be as emblematic as Montaigne’s

Essays in exploring subjectivity in the early modern period: Valois’s Memoirs. With the choice of such a corpus I also wanted to underline how gender and race were key categories to understand this epistemological shift, two aspects that I wish to develop substantially in the near-future.

The survey that constitutes this dissertation raises indeed numerous questions that

I will expand on going forward and that I wish to summarize in this conclusion. First of all, it seems imperative as a next step to conduct a transnational study of the word, its usage and semantic evolution in other European countries, to see if they present similarities or differences with the French evolution, and if there is a French specificity regarding apprehension as fear. Apprehension, in the sense of understanding, grasp, is present in one of the most famous passages of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable,

In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so” (Act 2, Scene 2).

However, in English, the verb to apprehend only refers to comprehension and the equivalent of appréhender in the sense of fear is to be found in the adjectival form to be apprehensive. It seems to be similar in Italian in which apprensione, in the sense of fear, does not have a verbal equivalent but only an adjectival one: apprensivo. In Spanish, the verb associated with aprensión, in the sense of fear, is temer, when aprehender means to seize and aprender means to learn. Studying these linguistic exchanges in the 16th century

202 would also imply considering the reception of the Latin word apprehendere in 16th dictionaries and translations. It seems indeed that, in Helisenne de Crenne’s Angoysses douloureuses, the frequent usage of the term and its derivations, mentioned in the introduction, could be a Latinism from a writer who also produced the second translation of Virgil’s Aeneid in French. As for Marguerite de Valois, one can wonder if her usage of the word in the sense of fear is influenced by the Italian language, that she masters, and that is also the language of her mother Catherine de’ Medici.

Another aspect of this future research is the necessity to expand its generic scope in order to understand why the word kept being used in its meaning of perception, and only in this meaning, in specific genres and discourses in the late 16th century, such as Philippe

Duplessis-Mornay and Jean de Sponde’s meditations on the psalms (1586 and 1588).

Simultaneously, it seems important to expand its temporal scope in order to investigate why the usage of apprehension in the sense of fear increased drastically in the genre of the roman précieux such as Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée (1607) which contains more than 20 occurences of the word, and in which it is used to describe the emotional states of the different characters towards each other such as in the following excerpt from Part I, Book

VIII: “Elle qui le croyoit beaucoup plus blessé qu’elle ne le trouva [car on fait tousjours le mal plus grand qu’il n’est pas, et l’apprehension augemente de beaucoup l’accident que l’on redoute] changea toute de visage, et de façon, quand elle le trouva levé et qu’il se promenoit par la chambre.”

Moreover, it will be essential, going forward, to explore in-depth what this semantic and conceptual evolution implies for Renaissance notions of self and subjectivity, of the public and the private, of interiority and exteriority. It is not a coincidence if the word, in

203 its emergent meaning of prospective fear, appears predominantly in “narratives of the self” that contribute to the development of pre-autobiographical genres. How much does apprehension have to do with the development of notions such as subjectivity and interiority and with the development of autobiography as a genre?

The central chapter of this dissertation is devoted to the encounter of the Calvinist protagonist Jean de Léry with people from a different race and culture: the Tupinambá, indigenous inhabitants of Brazil. We have seen that a crucial aspect of Léry’s narrative is that the validity of his testimony relies both on his experience and the experience of the

Tupinambá. There is thus much more to say about the relationship between apprehension and race in the 16th century and I hope to develop this research by including critical race and postcolonial studies in my interdisciplinary approach of this transatlantic material.353

Similarly, I wish to develop the gender dimension of this research project. As previously mentioned, Helisenne de Crenne’s Angoysses Douloureuses, published in 1532, contain no less than 9 occurrences of the word apprehension and its derivations, and constitutes a key work to think about emotions and the body in the first half of the 16th century. Additionally my research on Valois’s Memoirs has revealed the importance of considering the constant negotiations that women in situation of power had to operate, always at the intersection of the political and the personal. It will be thus important, moving forward, to consider

Catherine de’ Medici’s correspondance,354 as well as Elizabeth I’s writings, whose famous

353 Nora E. Jaffary, ed., Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World (Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). and Shankar Raman, Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2011). 354 See Susan Broomhall, “Emotions of the Past in Catherine de Medici's Correspondence,” in Affective and Emotional Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 87-104.

204 poem, written between 1568 and 1571, is emblematic of an apprehensive feeling: “The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy, / And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy; / For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb, / Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web. / But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds, / Which turn to rain of late repent by changed course of winds.”

The notion of doubt will also be essential to consider moving forward. The continuation of this project will include a study of apprehension in Montaigne’s Essays in order to explore how it relates to and differs from doubt, skepticism amd stoicism. As previously mentioned, apprehension appears in Montaigne’s essays devoted to the fear of death, and most prominently in “Of Physiognomy.” This reflection on the apprehension of death is framed by Seneca’s reflexion in his Letters to Lucilius. How is Montaigne’s usage of apprehension influenced by his understanding of ancient philosophy? Considering that he uses the term in a polysemic way, from understanding, to judgement, to perception, to fear, how does he contribute to the conceptual evolution of the term? Does apprehension as prospective fear precede doubt in Montaigne’s thought? Accompany it? Or is it a consequence of it? Studying apprehension in Montaigne’s Essays will allow the exploration of its possible role in 16th century ethics.355

355 This is a non exhaustive list of some of the works that will be central to this investigation: Marie- Luce Demonet and Alain Legros, eds., L’écriture Du Scepticisme Chez Montaigne: Actes Des Journées d’étude (15-16 Novembre 2001), Travaux d’humanisme et Renaissance, no 385 (Genève: Droz, 2004).; Zahi Anbra Zalloua, Montaigne and the Ethics of Skepticism (Charlottesville, Va. : Rookwood Press, 2005).; Geonget, La Notion de Perplexité à La Renaissance /.; Sébastien Prat, Constance et Inconstance Chez Montaigne / (Paris : Classiques Garnier, 2011).; Elizabeth Guild, Unsettling Montaigne Poetics, Ethics and Affect in the Essais and Other Writings (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2014). and Manuel Ignacio Bermúdez Vázquez, The Skepticism of Michel de Montaigne (Cham: Springer, 2015).

205 The most challenging aspect of this research project going forward, but also what I expect to be the most productive, will be to assess the relationship of apprehension with affect and to situate this project within the field of affect studies.356 The polysemy of the definition of affect, sometimes equated with feeling and emotion and sometimes sharply distinguished from them, requires caution when using the term, especially for early modernists who need to assess its relevance in a historical moment imbued with the Stoic theory of emotions and the psychological and physiological processes described in the theology of the Church Fathers.357 Because apprehension is referred to explicitly and linguistically in the last two works studied, and because it can be described as the emotional side of a cognitive process, it seems difficult, at first, to associate it with the Massumian definition of affect, that is to say: a precognitive sensory experience. However, the word is used by narrators of retrospective experiences and it would be thus worth exploring if apprehension is used to label, retroactively, an indicible affect from the past, in which the protagonist was in-between temporalities, projecting herself into the future. For example the “tremblement si universel”358 that Valois describes as seizing her before seeing the brother who, as a narrator, she knows she will betray in the future, could very much be the bodily and linguistic sign that points to an indicible mix of guilt and resentment towards this closest ally turned enemy over the years.359 Moreover, apprehension, as we have seen,

356 I would like to particularly thank Kara Stone for her beautiful essay “Time and Reparative Game Design: Queerness, Disability and Affect,” in Game Studies 18, no 3 (December 2018) http://gamestudies.org/1803/articles/stone, which allowed me to see the connections between this study of apprehension and affect studies. 357 On how to recontextualize affect on the medieval and early modern periods see the introduction to Andreea Marculescu and Charles-Louis Morand Métivier, Affective and Emotional Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2018. 358 Mémoires, 84. 359 I would like to thank Katarzyna Pieprzak for bringing this expression to my attention during a presentation of this chapter at Williams College in February 2019.

206 can be defined as the fear of possibility. The apprehensive self envisions a multiplicity of outcome, and, unable to predict what will happen, becomes worried of this uncertainty, which impacts his or her ability to think or act. Thus, apprehension seems to be related to the notion of the virtual that Massumi associates with affect: “The virtual is a lived paradox where what are normally opposites coexist, coalesce, and connect; where what cannot be exoerienced cannot but be felt – albeit reduced and contained.”360 This could be a fruitful way to explore Panurge’s perplexity, Léry’s argumentative back-and-forth and Valois’s ontological in-betweenness.

Queer time and futurity thus also seems to be another entry to understand the complex temporality of apprehension. As we have seen, Panurge and Marguerite de Valois challenge what Lee Edelman has called “reproductive futurism.”361 They both try to conceive what a childless future consists in, Panurge through constant hypothesizing,

Valois through the act of writing memoirs that are not addressed to descendants. Both their discourses, however, contain what is actually the other side of apprehension: hope. As we have mentioned, appréhension, the fear of not knowing what will happen, is different than crainte, which is the fear that something bad will happen. Panurge’s compulsive prayers are filled with hope. So are Léry’s attempts to decipher signs of religiosity in the

Tupinambá people whose life he shared for several months. Even Valois’s last words in her Memoirs, imbued with bitterness because of the experience of successive betrayals, contain the hope for the possibility of a lesser evil. It thus seems interesting going forward to study the relationship of apprehension with Jose Esteban Muñoz’s definition of utopia

360 Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2007)., 30. 361 Lee Edelman, No Future : Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham : Duke University Press, 2004).

207 as queer futurity: “Utopia is not prescriptive; it renders potential blueprints of a world not quite here, a horizon of possibility, not a fixed schema. It is productive to think about utopia as a flux, a temporal disorganization, as a moment when the here and the now is transcended by a then and a there that could be and indeed should be.”362

Additionally the memoirs and the travel narrative studied in this project and in which apprehension occurs seem, as we have seen, particularly prone to break the body/mind dualism and to depict everyday experiences, two aspects that are central to affect studies. In Depression: A Public Feeling Ann Cvetkovich defines affect, that she encompasses within the larger category of feeling, in the following terms:

I tend to use affect in a generic sense […] as a category that encompasses

affect, emotion and feeling […] I favor feeling in part because it is

intentionally imprecise, retaining the ambiguity between feeling as

embodied sensations and feelings as psychic or cognitive experiences. It

also has a vernacular quality that lends itself to exploring feelings as

something we come to know through experience and popular usage and that

indicates, perhaps only intuitively but nonetheless significantly, a

conception of mind and body as integrated.363

This mention of the vernacular is particularly interesting if we consider that the three works studied in this dissertation are written in French at a time where the French language is still in the process of being institutionalized and Latin remains the language of predilection for

362 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia : The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York : New York University Press, 2009)., 97. 363 Ann Cvetkovich, Depression : A Public Feeling (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2012)., 4.

208 discourses that bear historical or poetic legitimacy.364 The apprehension described in these works written in vernacular French has to do with the protagonists’ everyday life:

Panurge’s possible marriage, Léry’s faith, Valois’s day to day navigation of complex interpersonal relationships. And Valois’s Memoirs seem particularily productive to study the interaction between the public and the political with the private and the affective, which are at the heart of the queer and feminist Public Feelings project.365

Last but not least, apprehension, rooted in perception, comes from the bodily contact of a subject with the world and individuals that surround him or her. The paradox of the epistemological uneasiness that I have described in this dissertation comes from the bi-directionality, or rather the circulation, of apprehension, from the outside to the inside and from the inside to the outside, a constant negotiation in which the protagonist processes data in order to assess what will come next. The affective dimension of these repeated contacts is summarized by Sara Ahmed in The Cultural politics of Emotion with the anecdote of the child and the bear:

We have an image of the bear as an animal to be feared, as an image that is

shaped by cultural histories and memories. When we encounter the bear, we

already have an impression of the risks of the encounter, as an impression

that is felt on the surface of the skin. This knowledge is bodily, certainly:

the child might not need time to think before she runs for it. But the

364 The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts called the use of French for legal acts, notarized contracts and official legislation in 1539 under the reign of Francis I of France in order to avoid linguistic confusion. In 1549, the poet Joachim du Bellay publishes the Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française, calling for the use of French as an artistic language that could compete with Greek, Latin, and Italian. 365 Ann Cvetkovich, “Public Feelings,” SAQ: South Atlantic Quarterly 106:3 (Summer 2007): 459-68.

209 ‘immediacy’ of the reaction is not itself a sign of a lack of mediation. It is

not that the bear is fearsome, ‘on its own’, as it were. It is fearsome to

someone or somebody. So fear is not in the child, let alone in the bear, but

is a matter of how child and bear come into contact. This contact is shaped

by past histories of contact, unavailable in the present, which allow the bear

to be apprehended as fearsome.366

Apprehension comes from the contact of competing epistemological frameworks, the one of institutionalized knowledge and the one of direct experience. It is the layered history of this epistemological conflict, embodied in 16th century literary selves, that I wish to explore going forward.

366 Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion., 7.

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