Shield and Field:Virgilan Spaces as/and Early Modern Identities

Shield and Field:
Virgilan Spaces as/and Early Modern Identities

A proposed volume edited by
Isabelle Fernbach, Ph.D. (Montana State University) and
Phillip John Usher, Ph.D. (Barnard College, Columbia University)


The canonical texts of Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil) have been read and recuperated in both religious and secular contexts, in periods of peace as well as during military or political conflict. Each reader or group of readers has generally found or created their own Virgil and anchored his texts to the creation of new identities.

Sixteenth century French authors seem to have paid particular attention to the Virgilian text in terms of spatiality. This aspect of Virgil's legacy can be figured in a first instance in terms of a medieval interpretative tool, the rota Virgilii or wheel of Virgil, which posits an alignment between three genres (pastoral, georgic and epic), three spaces (countryside, field, and nation), corresponding figures associated with these spaces (shepherd, farmer and soldier), and what Curtius calls the life of the states. What, then, of alignment between Virgilian genres and spaces in the frequent re-interpretations, adaptations, translations, and imitations of Virgil in sixteenth century France? How, for example, does Early Modern French literature textualize the (Virgilian) space of farming? Or the (Virgilian) spaces of bucolic idealization? Or the (Virgilian) epic space of France-as-kingdom?

From a variety of vantage points and scales (from the micro issues of a textual and ekphrastic nature to macro questions such as national cartography), the present study will bring together a series of articles that relate the Virgilian genres and spaces to the genres and spaces (inherited, imitated, or ‘new') negotiated by writers of sixteenth-century France (here defined as approximately 1492-1615) to account for the figurations of communautarian and cultural or national identities in Early Modern France.

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to) the following:

-In Dialogue with Virgil: François Habert, Clément Marot, Michel de Montaigne, Pierre de Ronsard, etc.
-Virgil in Print: page space and Frenchness
-Pastoral and Georgic as an expression of regional identity
-Epic as royal/political project
-Narratives of national origin related to foreign or local spaces
-Virgil's Translators: (inter alia) Octavien de Saint-Gelais, Guillaume Michel de Tours, Clément Marot, Joachim du Bellay, Louis des Masures, Théodore de Bèze, Pierre Tredehan, etc.
-Reception, Imitation, and Reconfiguration of Virgil
-French national identity as tied to agricultural practices
-Discourses on Frenchness as related to French geography
-Farming and manual labor as related to specific industries and locales
-French reception or imitation of Jacopo Sannazzaro's Eclogae Piscatoriae
-French appropriations of Augustus, Aenas (or other Virgilian heroes) as exempla

Modalities:

The editors are actively seeking chapter proposals for previously unpublished research.
Please send a one-two page proposal, detailing your proposed contribution and its relevance to the book's overall theme and theories. Email to both: pu2116@columbia.edu and isabelle.fernbach@gmail.com by November 15, 2007. Paper submissions should be mailed to: Prof. Phillip John Usher, French Department, Barnard College (Columbia University), 3009 Broadway, New York NY 10027 or faxed to Prof. Usher's attention at (212) 854-7491 (please also email to let us know to expect the fax). Proposals may be in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Unless otherwise agreed with the editors, all final papers must be submitted in English. Selection will be made with a keen eye towards the volume's cohesion. Once the editors have selected proposals, a publisher will be secured and a deadline for chapter submission and final publication will be announced.