Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T21:21:49.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Music as Erotic Magic in a Renaissance Romance*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jeanice Brooks
Jeanice Brooks*
Affiliation:
University Of Southampton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines the musical writings of the occult philosopher Jacques Gohory, particularly his musical additions to his version of book 11 of the serial romance Amadis de Gaule. Although music and romance were often treated by contemporaries as, at best, trivial occupations for leisure hours, Gohory saw both as potential triggers for beneficial self-transformation: music and romance fully participate in the therapeutic and spiritual goals that motivate his more overtly philosophical and medical works. His use of romance as a vehicle for occult philosophy was an important means of disseminating concepts of music as natural magic beyond intellectual circles into the wider milieu of the French court, where occult understandings of music gained substantial currency by 1600.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , Winter 2007 , pp. 1207 - 1256
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the British Academy for funding toward this research. I thank Leofranc Holford-Strevens and John Griffiths for help with Latin and Spanish translations. Thanks also to Rosanna Gorris-Camos and Virginia Krause for advice and references; and to Penelope Gouk, Marian Rothstein, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Richard Freedman, Linda Austern, and an anonymous reader, for comments on early drafts.

References

Agrippa, Cornelius. De occulta philosophia libri tres. Ed. V. Perrone Compagni. Leiden, 1992.Google Scholar
Alchimie et philosophie à la Renaissance. Ed. Jean-Claude Margolin and Sylvain Matton. Paris, 1993.Google Scholar
Les Amadis en France au XVIe siècle. Ed. Robert Aulotte. Paris, 2000.Google Scholar
L’Ariosto, la musica, i musicisti. Ed. Maria Antonella Balsano. Florence, 1981.Google Scholar
Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio. Chrysopoeiae libri tres. Venice, 1515.Google Scholar
Linda Phyllis, Austern. “‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie’: Music and the Idea of the Feminine in Early Modern England.” Music & Letters 74 (1993) : 343 – 54Google Scholar
Austern, Linda Phyllis. “‘No Women Are Indeed’: The Boy Actor as Vocal Seductress in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century English Drama.” In Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture, ed. Dunn, Leslie C. and Jones, Nancy A., 83–102. Cambridge, 1994.Google Scholar
Linda Phyllis, Austern. “‘For, Love's a Good Musician’: Performance, Audition, and Erotic Disorders in Early Modern Europe.” The Musical Quarterly 82 (1998) : 614 – 53Google Scholar
Austern, Linda Phyllis. “Musical Treatments for Lovesickness: The Early Modern Heritage.” In Music as Medicine (2000a), 213–45.10.4324/9781315090894-10CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austern, Linda Phyllis. “‘No Pill's Gonna Cure My Ill’: Gender, Erotic Melancholy and Traditions of Musical Healing in the Modern West.” In Musical Healing in Cultural Contexts, ed. Gouk, Penelope, 113–36. Aldershot, 2000b.10.4324/9781315090719-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balmas, Enea. Saggi e studi sul rinascimento francese. Padua, 1982.Google Scholar
Richmond, Barbour. “‘When I Acted Young Antinous’: Boy Actors and the Erotics of Jonsonian Theater.” Publications of the Modern Language Association 110 (1995) : 1006 – 22 Google Scholar
Baudry, Hervé. Contribution à l’étude du paracelsisme en France au XVIe siècle (1560–1580): De la naissance du mouvement aux années de maturité: “Le Demosterion” de Roch le Baillif (1578). Paris, 2005.Google Scholar
Bembo, Pietro. Les Azolains. Trans. Jean Martin. Paris, 1545.Google Scholar
Bowen, Willis Herbert. “Jacques Gohory (1520–1576).” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1935.Google Scholar
Willis Herbert, Bowen. “The Earliest Treatise on Tobacco: Jacques Gohory's ‘Instruction sur l’herbe Petum.’” Isis 28 (1938) : 349 – 63Google Scholar
Noel L, Brann. “Alchemy and Melancholy in Medieval and Renaissance Thought: A Query into the Mystical Basis of their Relationship.” Ambix 32 (1985) : 127 – 48Google Scholar
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de. Oeuvres. Ed. Lalanne, Ludovic . 11 vols. Paris, 1864–82.Google Scholar
Brockliss, Laurence, and Colin Jones. The Medical World of Early Modern France. Oxford, 1997.Google Scholar
Jeanice, Brooks. “Ronsard, the Lyric Sonnet, and the Late Sixteenth-Century Chanson.” Early Music History 13 (1994) : 65 – 84 Google Scholar
Brooks, Jeanice. “La comtesse de Retz et l’air de cour des années 1570.” In Le concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance, ed. Vaccaro, Jean-Michel , 299–315. Paris, 1995.Google Scholar
Brooks, Jeanice. Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France. Chicago, 2000.Google Scholar
Brooks, Jeanice. “Chivalric Romance, Courtly Love and Courtly Song: Female Vocality and Feminine Desire in the World of Amadis de Gaule.” In Musical Voices of Early Modern Women: Many-Headed Melodies, ed. LaMay, Thomasin, 63–96. Aldershot, 2005.Google Scholar
Cazaux, Christelle. La musique à la cour de François I. Paris, 2002.Google Scholar
Chappuys, Claude. Poé sies intimes. Ed. Aline Mary Best. Geneva, 1967.Google Scholar
Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du songe de Poliphile. Trans. Jean Martin. Paris, 1546. Reprint. Le songe de Poliphile. Ed. Gilles Polizzi. Paris, 1994.Google Scholar
Costeley, Guillaume. Musique. Paris, 1570.Google Scholar
Couliano, Ioan P. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. Trans. Margaret Cook. Chicago, 1987.Google Scholar
Debus, Allen G. The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France. Cambridge, 1991.Google Scholar
Edmund H, Dickerman, Walker, Anita M. “The Choice of Hercules: Henry IV as Hero.” The Historical Journal 39 (1996) : 315 – 37Google Scholar
Du Laurens, André. Discours de la conservation de la veue, des maladies melancoliques, des catarrhes, et de la vieillesse. Paris, 1597.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marsilio. Opera omnia. Basel, 1576. A facsimile edition with an introduction by Paul Oskar Kristeller and preface by Mario Sancipriano. 4 vols. Turin, 1959.Google Scholar
Freedman, Richard. The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso: Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France. Rochester, 2000.Google Scholar
Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York, 1992.Google Scholar
Gentilcore, David. “Ritualized Illness and Music Therapy: Views of Tarantism in the Kingdom of Naples.” In Music as Medicine (2000), 255–72.10.4324/9781315090894-11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gohory, Jacques. Le dixiesme livre d’Amadis de Gaule. Paris, 1552.Google Scholar
Gohory, Jacques. L’onziesme livre d’Amadis de Gaule. Paris, 1554.Google Scholar
Gohory, Jacques. Theophrasti Paracelsi Philosophiae et Medicinae utriusque universae, Compendium. Paris, [1567?].Google Scholar
Gohory, Jacques. Le trezieme livre d’Amadis de Gaule. Paris, 1571.Google Scholar
Gohory, Jacques. Instruction sur l’herbe petum ditte en France l’herbe de la Royne ou Medicée. Paris, 1572.Google Scholar
Gohory, Jacques. Preface to Le quatorzieme livre d’Amadis de Gaule, by Tiron, Antoine . Paris, 1574.Google Scholar
Gorris, Rosanna. “‘Du sens mystique des romans antiques’: il paratesto degli Amadigi di Jacques Gohory.” In Il romanzo nella Francia del Rinascimento: dall’eredità medievale all’Astrea. Atti del convegno internazionale de studi, Gargnano, Palazzo Feltrinelli, 7–9 ottobre 1993, 61–83. Fasano, 1996.Google Scholar
Gorris, Rosanna. “Pour une lecture stéganographique des Amadis de Jacques Gohory.” In Les Amadis en France au XVIe siècle, ed. Aulotte, Robert, 127–56. Paris, 2000.Google Scholar
Gorris-Camos, Rosanna. “Diane de Guindaye, Pentasilée et les autres, ou les Diane de Jacques Gohory.” In Le mythe de Diane en France au XVIe siècle: Actes du colloque du 29–31 mai 2001, ed. Jean-Raymond Fanlo and Marie-Dominique Legrand, 291–332. Niort, 2002.10.3406/albin.2002.942CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gouk, Penelope. Music, Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-Century England. New Haven, 1999.Google Scholar
Gouk, Penelope. “Music, Melancholy, and Medical Spirits in Early Modern Thought.” In Music as Medicine (2000), 173–94.10.4324/9781315090894-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gouk, Penelope. “Harmony, Health and Healing: Music's Role in Early Modern Paracelsian Thought.” In The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine and Science, 1500–2000: Essays for Charles Webster, ed. Pelling, Margaret and Mandelbrote, Scott, 23–42. Aldershot, 2005.Google Scholar
Haar, James. “Arie per cantar stanze ariostesche.” In L’Ariosto, la musica, i musicisti (1981), 31–46.Google Scholar
Haar, James, and Maria Antonella Balsano. “L’Ariosto in musica.” In L’Ariosto, la musica, i musicisti (1981), 47–88.Google Scholar
Don, Harràn. “Guido Casoni on Love as Music, a Theme ‘for all Ages and Studies.’” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2001) : 883 – 913 Google Scholar
Herberay des Essarts, Nicholas. Le huitiesme livre d’Amadis de Gaule. Paris, 1548.Google Scholar
Herberay des Essarts, Nicholas. Le quatriesme livre d’Amadis de Gaule. Paris, 1543. Reprint, Amadis de Gaule: Livre IV. Ed. Luce Guillerm. Paris, 2005.Google Scholar
Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Allen G. Debus and Ingrid Merkel. Washington, 1988.Google Scholar
Suzanne, Higgott, Biron, Isabelle. “Marguerite de France as Minerva: A Sixteenth-Century Limoges Painted Enamel by Jean de Court in the Wallace Collection.” Apollo 159, no. 504 (2004) : 21 – 30 Google Scholar
Horden, Peregrine. “Commentary on Part III, with a Note on Paracelsus.” In Music as Medicine (2000), 147–53.10.4324/9781315090894-19CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Charles, ed. Le Roy & Ballard's 1572 Mellange de Chansons. University Park, 1982.Google Scholar
Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago, 1998.10.7208/chicago/9780226401232.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jung, Marc René. Hercule dans la littérature française du XVIe siècle. Geneva, 1996.Google Scholar
Didier, Kahn. “Le paracelsisme de Jacques Gohory.” Aries 19 (1995) : 81 – 130 Google Scholar
Krause, Virginia. Idle Pursuits: Literature and Oisiveté in the French Renaissance. Newark, DE, 2003.Google Scholar
La Laurencie, Lionel de, Adrienne Mairy, and Geneviève Thibault, eds. Chansons au luth et airs de cour français du XVIe siècle. 1934. Reprint, 1976.Google Scholar
La Noue, François de. Discours politiques et militaires. Ed. F. E. Sutcliffe. Geneva, 1967.Google Scholar
Lassus., Orlande de Mellange d’Orlande de Lassus, contenant plusieurs chansons. Paris, 1570.Google Scholar
Lassus, Orlande de. Secundus liber modulorum, quinis vocibus. Paris, 1571.Google Scholar
Lassus, Orlande de. Tertius liber modulorum, quinis vocibus. Paris, 1573a.Google Scholar
Lassus, Orlande de. Moduli sex septem et duodecim vocum. Paris, 1573b.Google Scholar
Le Cocq, Jonathan. “French Lute Song, 1529–1643.” 2 vols. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997.Google Scholar
[Leone Ebreo], Léon Hébreu . Dialogues d’Amour. Trans. Pontus de Tyard. 1551. Ed. Tristan Dagron and Saverio Ansaldi. Paris, 2006.Google Scholar
Le Roy, Adrian. Les instructions pour le luth. Ed. Jean Jacquot, Pierre-Yves Sordes, and Jean-Michel Vaccaro. 2 vols. Paris, 1977.Google Scholar
Lesure, François, and Geneviève Thibault. Bibliographie des éditions d’Adrian Le Roy et Robert Ballard (1551–1598). Paris, 1955.Google Scholar
Malherbe, François de. Oeuvres. Ed. Ludovic Lalanne. 5 vols. Paris, 1862–69.Google Scholar
Matton, Sylvain. “Marsile Ficin et l’alchimie: sa position, son influence.” In Alchimie et philosophie (1993), 123–92.Google Scholar
McGowan, Margaret M. Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard. Berkeley, 1985.Google Scholar
Medicine at the Courts of Europe, 1500–1837. Ed. Vivian Nutton. London, 1990.Google Scholar
Moran, Bruce T. The Alchemical World of the German Court: Occult Philosophy and Chemical Medicine in the Circle of Moritz of Hessen (1572–1632). Stuttgart, 1991.Google Scholar
Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity. Ed. Peregrine Horden. Aldershot, 2000.Google Scholar
Nauert, Charles G. Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought. Urbana, 1965.Google Scholar
O’Connor, John J. Amadis de Gaule and its Influence on Elizabethan Literature. New Brunswick, 1970.Google Scholar
Ornsby-Lennon, Hugh. “Rosicrucian Linguistics: Twilight of a Renaissance Tradition.” In Hermeticism and the Renaissance (1988), 311–41.Google Scholar
Jean-Pierre, Ouvrard. “Le sonnet ronsardien en musique: du Supplément de 1552 à 1580.” Revue de musicologie 74 (1988) : 149 – 64Google Scholar
Palisca, Claude V. Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought. New Haven, 1985.Google Scholar
Palmer, Richard. “Pharmacy in the Republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century.” In The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Wear, Andrew, French, R. K., and Lonie, Iain M., 100–17. Cambridge, 1985.Google Scholar
Perry, T. Anthony. Erotic Spirituality: The Integrative Tradition from Leone Ebreo to John Donne. Tuscaloosa, 1980.Google Scholar
Pesic, Peter. “Earthly Music and Cosmic Harmony: Johannes Kepler's Interest in Practical Music, Especially Orlando di Lasso.” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 11 (2005): http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/v11/no1/pesic.html (accessed December 18, 2006).Google Scholar
Polizzi, Gilles. “La fabrique de l’énigme: lectures ‘alchimiques’ du Poliphile chez Gohory et Béroalde de Verville.” In Alchimie et philosophie (1993), 265–88.Google Scholar
Ronsard, Pierre de. Preface to Livre de meslanges. Paris, 1560.Google Scholar
Ronsard, Pierre de. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin. 2 vols. Paris, 1993.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Marian. Reading in the Renaissance: Amadis de Gaule and the Lessons of Memory. Newark, DE, 1999.Google Scholar
Marian, Rothstein. “Mutations of the Androgyne: Its Functions in Early Modern French Literature.” Sixteenth-Century Journal 34 (2003) : 409 – 37Google Scholar
Winfried, Schleiner. “Le feu caché: Homosocial Bonds between Women in a Renaissance Romance.” Renaissance Quarterly 45, no. 2 (1992) : 293 – 311 Google Scholar
Winfried, Schleiner. “Male Cross-Dressing and Transvestism in Renaissance Romances.” Sixteenth-Century Journal 19 (1988) : 605 – 19Google Scholar
Winfried, Schleiner. “Laughter and Challenges to the Other in the French Amadis de Gaule.” Sixteenth-Century Journal 32 (2001) : 91 – 107 Google Scholar
Silva, Feliciano de. Florisel de Niquea (tercera parte). Ed. Javier Martìn Lalanda. Alcalá de Henares, 1999.Google Scholar
Michel, Simonin. “La disgrâce d’Amadis.” Studi Francesi 28 (1994) : 1 – 35 Google Scholar
Pamela H, Smith. “Alchemy as a Language of Mediation at the Habsburg Court.” Isis 85 (1994) : 1 – 25 Google Scholar
Tomlinson, Gary. Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others. Chicago, 1993.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, Hugh. “The Court Physician and Paracelsianism.” In Medicine at the Courts of Europe (1990), 79–94.Google Scholar
Tyard, Pontus de. Le solitaire premier. Ed. Silvio F. Baridon. Geneva, 1950.Google Scholar
Tyard, Pontus de. Solitaire second. Ed. Cathy M. Yandell. Geneva, 1980.Google Scholar
Vaganay, Hugues. Amadis en français: Essai de bibliographie. 1906. Reprint, Geneva, 1970.Google Scholar
Van Orden, Kate. “An Erotic Metaphysics of Hearing in Early Modern France.” Musical Quarterly 82 (1998): 678–91.10.1093/mq/82.3_and_4.678CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verchaly, André, ed. Airs de cour pour voix et luth, 1603–1643. Paris, 1961.Google Scholar
Voss, Angela. “Marsilio Ficino, the Second Orpheus.” In Music as Medicine (2000), 155–72.Google Scholar
Walker, Daniel P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella. London. 1958.Google Scholar
Webster, Charles. From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science. Cambridge, 1982.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century. 1947. Reprint, London, 1988.Google Scholar
David, Yearsley. “Alchemy and Counterpoint in an Age of Reason.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 51 (1998) : 201 – 43Google Scholar