The Comparative Poetics of Homeric Literary Imitation from Antiquity to Renaissance France

Aphrodite's Charm

John Nassichuk (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

532 Seiten

2025
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-72086-2 (ISBN)

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Aphrodite’s famous ribbon known as the cestus, the irresistible love charm that she loaned to Hera in the Iliad, was, thanks to a fruitful early misreading, transformed by ancient, medieval, and Renaissance authors into a symbol of honorable feminine chastity: in Maurice Scève’s 1560 Microcosme, an epic rewriting of Genesis, Eve first appears before an astonished Adam wearing the virginal cestus as a symbolic guarantee of her sexual innocence. This book traces the history of this curious development from Homer to the end of the sixteenth century in France. Through analyses of both famous and little-known texts, it illustrates the complexity and fecund liberty of Homeric reception.

John Nassichuk, Ph.D. (1998), Queen’s University and Doctorat Nouveau Régime (2002), Université de Paris 7, is Professor of French and Neo-Latin Literature at the University of Western Ontario. He has published many articles on 15th- and 16th-century humanist authors in France and Italy.

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Introduction

1 Modern Critical Views of the Δίος ἀπατή

2 Control and Self-Control (Sophrosyne)

3 Homeric Reception

Part 1: The Cestus in Greek and Latin Literature from Homer to Claudian

1 Κεστός in Homer’s Narration of the Beguilement of Zeus

1 The Iliad. An Influential hapax legomenon (14.215)

2 Iliad 14.1–152: the Power of Zeus

3 Iliad 14.153–353: Aphrodite’s Garment in the Διὸς ἀπάτη

2 Parallels from Homer, Hesiod, and Apollonius

1 A Seduction Scene in the Hymn to Aphrodite

2 Athena’s Tasseled Aegis (Il. 5)

3 Leukothea’s Magical Veil (Od. 5.343–353)

4 Pandora, or, Hesiod’s Gift to Mankind (Op. 63–68)

5 Apollonius Rhodius Replaces the Ribbon with Eros (Arg. III, 25–166)

3 The κεστός in Greek Poets Other than Homer

1 Callimachus. Aetia, Fr. 43

2 Bion, Epitaph of Adonis, 58–60

3 Lucian: The Judgement of the Goddesses

4 Pseudo-Oppian, Cynegetica

5 Greek Epistolographers: from Alciphron to Aristaenetus

6 Nonnus, Dionysiaca

7 Colluthus, Raptus Helenae, 95–96

8 Greek Anthology

4 Ancients Interpreting Homer: Allegory, Cosmology, and Education

1 Plato’s Criticism (Republic 3.390)

2 Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

3 Heraclitus’ Allegories of Homer

4 Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic

5 Plutarch on How the Young Man Should Study Poetry

5 Cestus in Ancient Latin Sources from the Flavians to Claudian

1 Zona: a False Synonym in Catullus and Ovid

2 Cestus: a Homonym in Festus and Virgil

3 Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 6–7

4 Statius, Thebaid 2 and 5

5 Martial. Mortals Wear the Cestus

6 Petronius’ Satyricon, 126–131

7 Claudian’s Epithalamium de nuptiis Honorii Augusti

8 Conclusion

Part 2: Latin Receptions of the Cestus in the Later Middle Ages and Humanist Period

Introduction

6 Translations into Latin

1 Leonzio Pilato: a Pioneering Ad Verbum Translation

2 Lorenzo Valla: a Paraphrastic Quattrocento Prose Version

3 Andrea Divo’s Influential Ad Verbum Bestseller

4 Eobanus Hessus’ Verse Translation

5 Erasmus, Adagia 3.2.36

6 Sebastian Castellio’s Prose Translation

7 Giphanius’ Edition (1572), in Search of a Homeric Latin Vocabulary

7 Commentaries

1 Venus’ Cestus in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum gentilium

2 Lilio Gregorio Giraldi: a Philologist in Pursuit of Clarity and Meaning

3 Natale Conti: a Learned Compiler’s Literary Intuition

4 Guillaume Budé: an Essayist’s Figurative Use of the Cestus

5 Jean de Sponde: a Student’s Commentary of Homer

8 Poetry

1 Epithalamion

2 Epigram

3 Conclusion

Part 3: Homer’s κεστός in Renaissance France

Introduction

9 Jean Lemaire de Belges, Homeric Mythographer: the Ceston in Les Illustrations et Antiquitez des Gaules

10 From the Generation of 1530 to the Querelle des Amyes

Inventive Readings and Receptions of the Ceston in Jehan Du Pré, Michel d’Amboise and Bertrand de la Borderie

1 Jehan Du Pré’s Palais des Nobles Dames

2 Michel d’Amboise Describes Venus’ Charm

3 La Borderie and the Querelle des Amyes

11 The Ceston in the Poetic Idiom of François Habert

1 Habert Revisits the “Judgement of Paris” Scene

2 La nouvelle Vénus: a New Ethos at the Valois Court?

3 Habert, Inventive Poet, and Translator of Nicolas Brizard

12 At the Court of Henri II. The Ceston in the Language of the Pléiade

1 Mellin de Saint-Gelais and the “New Venus” Theme

2 Pontus de Tyard. Erreurs Amoureuses at the Dawn of the Pléiade Generation

3 Etienne Jodelle, the Gordian Knot, and Catullus 67

13 Pierre de Ronsard’s New Inventions of Venus’ Ribbon

1 A Richly Varied Groundwork

2 Narrative Inventions: La Franciade

3 Mythographic Encomium

14 Eva Prima Pandora, or, the Creation of Womankind: the “Ceste” as Woman’s First Garment

1 Pandora Wears the Cestus: Jean Olivier’s Latin Epic (1541)

2 Maurice Scève: Eve’s First Appearance (Microcosme)

15 Venus’ Ribbon as an Emblem of Civil Strife during the Religious Wars: Echoes of Catullus 67

1 Salmon Macrin’s Ode to His New Brother-in-Law (1531)

2 Claude Roillet: a Chorus in the Philanira and a New Echo of Catullus 67

3 Léger Duchesne’s Metaphor of Civic Violence and Disorder

4 Charles Godran’s Susanna: a Tragicomedy for Charles and Elisabeth of Austria

5 Tasso’s Aminta and Its Translator Pierre de Brach

16 Naturalizing Venus’ Ribbon in French: from Ceston to Demy-Ceint

1 A Composite Noun

2 Baïf’s Invention

3 Ronsard Corrects His Work

17 Translating the Cestus into French during the Sixteenth Century

1 Jehan Samxon’s “First French Homer”

2 Amadis Jamyn, Inheritor of the Pléiade’s Lexical Treasure

3 Antoine de Cotel’s French Version of Iliad 14

4 Tasso’s Epic and Its French Translators

18 Twilights of an Idol: Word and Image in the Wake of Renaissance Humanism and Philology

1 Baïf’s Mascarade de M. de Longueville: a Poem for the Festivity at Bayonne (1565)

2 François Du Tertre’s Epithalamion for Henri III and Louise de Lorraine

3 Amadis Jamyn: a Translator’s Poetic Memory

4 Rémy Belleau’s Allusive Poetic Memory

5 Desportes’ Tentative Use of Ceston and Malherbe’s Criticism

19 Cestus as Museum Piece: Metatextual Reference and “Precious” Memory

1 Gilles Ménage’s Oiseleur: the Cestus Returns

2 Boileau’s Art poétique and the Fiction of Homer’s Charm

3 Conclusion

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	09.04.2025
Reihe/Serie	Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts ; 29
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	90-04-72086-3 / 9004720863
ISBN-13	978-90-04-72086-2 / 9789004720862
Zustand	Neuware