Amphion Orator

This reappraisal of Malherbe’s achievement shows how the royal odes, published between 1600 and 1627, constitute a unified sequence whose ambition is to forge a new national community in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion. Crucial to Malherbe’s poetic and ideological project is the ancient commonplace of the ship of state, which the odes repurpose to create a national myth with the structure of a quest. These poems appropriate epic’s traditional function of forging a national identity but use the tools of oratory rather than narrative, replacing the plot of fiction with metaphor and example.
By examining the royal odes’ noteworthy style, their purpose and goals, their modes of argumentation, emotional force, and their conception of audience, this historically grounded reading reclaims the patriotic voice of a poet reduced to a technician by generations of literary critics.







Inhalt:
Preface
Introduction
Part I. Praising the Great Soul
Chapter 1. Literary Patronage
Chapter 2. The Evolution of Noble Identity
Chapter 3. The Search for Royal Eloquence
Part II. The Sequence of Royal Odes
Chapter 4. The Return of Astraea
Chapter 5. The Trials of the King
Chapter 6. Triumph and Death
Chapter 7. The Goddess of War and Peace
Chapter 8. The Prophecy Fulfilled
Conclusion
Bibliography



Autor:inneninformation:
Michael Taormina is an Associate Professor of French
Michael Taormina is an Associate Professor of French Literature, Culture and Language in the Romance Languages Department at Hunter College, CUNY. His research explores the intersection of eloquence, patronage, and noble identity in French lyric poetry of the early seventeenth century, and he has published articles on the work of Théophile de Viau, Saint-Amant, and Vincent Voiture. He is also a translator of French theatre and philosophy. He holds a Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University.