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La distance pastorale.
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François de Bellefwest's La Pyrénée: The First French Pastoral Novel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
La Pyrénée (1571) stands out in the very considerable corpus of writings of François de Belleforest. The work was long thought to be a translation, or at best an adaptation, of Sannazaro's Arcadia (1502-1504). While Jules Marsan in his study of the pastorale dramatique published at the beginning of this century suggested that Belleforest might have been familiar with Montemayor's Diana (1550), no one has yet undertaken a study of La Pyrénée. Unlike Vauquelin de la Fresnaye's Foresteries (1555) or Remy Belleau's Bergeries (1565), both of which employ prose passages as a mere framework for the inclusion of poems, Belleforest's La Pyrénée is the first work in prose in French literature to which the term ‘pastoral novel’ might accurately be applied.
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References
1 François de Belleforest (1530-1583) was a Gascon author who undertook many translations and produced a number of original works. Among the latter was the Histoire des neufrois Charles de France (1568) which earned him the title ‘historiographe de France.’ The main details of his life can be found in Picot, Emile, Les Français italianisants au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1907)Google Scholar; Hook, Frank, The French Bandello (Columbia, Missouri, 1948)Google Scholar, and the Nouvelle Biographie généale (Paris, 1885). Guillaume Colletet's Vies des poètes gascons (Paris, 1886: rpt. Geneva, 1970), provides a more personal view.
2 Shortly after the publication of La Pyrénée, Belleforest's friend DuVerdier introduced a lengthy selection (Book Two, pp. 132-150, the debate between Drion, the ‘adversary of women,’ and the shepherds and shepherdesses) in his Bibliothèque Françoise (ed. Rigoley de Juvigny [Paris, 1772] III, 607) with the following comment: ‘Oeuvre de fort belles inventions, & faite à l'instar de l'Arcadie de Sannazar, avec une grande grace et fort beau langage.’ Colletet notes: ‘Ceux qui ont de la vénération pour la gentille Arcadie de mon Sannazar [he translated Sannazaro's De Partu Virginis] peuvent avoir une legitime affection pour ceste agreable et divertissante Pyrénée’ (Guillaume Colletet, Vies des poètes gascons, pp. 61-62).
3 Marsan, Jules, La Pastorale dramatique en France à la fin du XVIe et au Commencement du XVIIe Siècle (Paris, 1905), p. 164 Google Scholar.
4 Colletet, Guillaume, Discours du Poème Bucolique où il est traité de l'Eglogue, de l'ldylle et de la Bergerie (1657; rpt. Geneva, 1970), p. 47 Google Scholar.
5 Belleforest, François de, La Pyrénée (Paris, 1571)Google Scholar. All extant editions list La Pastorale amoureuse (1568) on the title page, but only La Pyrénée is to be found in these volumes. This is undoubtedly the reason why some have thought that La Pyrénée and La Pastorale amoureuse are merely different titles for the same work. Saulnier in the Dictionnaire des lettres gives the title as La Pastorale amoureuse (ou Pyrénée), and gives the date 1570. A. Adam in his history of seventeenth-century literature gives the date of 1572. I have found no evidence of printing for those years.
6 That the precise geographical descriptions were considered to be one of the attractions of the work is indicated by the fact that the title page lists it as containing ‘descriptions de paisages,’ right after ‘divers accidens amoureux.’ This attachment to his native province is attested to by descriptions and references to it in a number of Belleforest's other literary endeavors. The early Chant pastoral (1559), modelled on Ronsard's first eclogue, begins:
Au pied beau et fecond des haut mons Pyrénées,
Aux landes tout autour de ce mont ordonnées
Où paissent à foison un millier de trouppeaux.
7 Belleforest, François de, La Cosmographie universelle de tout le monde, autheur en partie Munster mais beaucoup plus augmentie, ornee et enrichie par F. de B.. (Paris, 1575), pp. 367–372 Google Scholar. For a more extended treatment of Belleforest's efforts to ‘illustrer’ his province see LeStrade, J., ‘La Gascoigne d'après François de Belleforest,’ La Revue de Gascogne, 13 (1913), 7.Google Scholar
8 His translation of the Greek prose romance of Achilles Tatius, Les amours de Clitophon et de Leucippe (1568), is from a Latin translation.
9 See note three. Du Verdier's ‘faite à l'instar de l'Arcadie’ was repeated in subsequent bibliographical references to La Pyrénée.
10 From the introduction on, Belleforest insists upon this light-hearted quality: ‘je vous offre un present gaillard’ (sig. ã4); the term gaillard recurs throughout the work, like a leitmotif, almost fifty times. In contrast, triste is used over fifty times in the Diana, ledo twice and feliz once.
11 The most recent study of the complex bibliography substantiating this popularity is to be found in Donald Stone's ‘Belleforest's Bandello: A Bibliographical Study,’ Bibliothique d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 34 (1972), 489-499.
12 The Diana contains cancion, antiguo cantar, sestina, terza rima, ottava rima and villancico. La Pyrénée includes chansons, the lay, plainte, couplet, madrigale, villancico and villanesque. Because of a childhood spent in the region of the Pyrénées, in close proximity to Spain, it may be assumed that Belleforest learned Spanish at an early age. He published a half dozen or so Spanish works in French, mainly devotional manuals. The first French translation of the Diana, by Nicole Colin, was published in 1578.
13 Bourciez states that the Amadis tales were the major influence on sixteenth-century French society until well into the end of the century (Edouard Bourciez, Les Moeurs polies et la littérature de cour sous Henri II [Paris, 1886: rpt. Geneva, 1967]). Similar testimony is to be found in Pasquier and LaNoue. Henri IV's preference for these tales has been documented.
14 Honoré d'Urfé, l'Astrée (Paris, 1628) I, sig. H4.
15 First published in 1574, Belleforest brought out a translation in 1579; his translation of L. Guicciardini's Hore de recreatione appeared in the same year as the Pyrenee. Some influence of the latter work is not implausible.
16 ‘La plupart des gentilhommes avaient fait l'apprentissage des armes et de la vie en Italie; ils en avaient rapporté, avec des goûts épicuriens, une inclination à la base débauche ou aux farces les plus épaisses’ ( Romier, Lucien, Le Royaume de Catherine de Médicis, 2 vols. [Paris, 1925], 1, 41 Google Scholar).
17 The privilège of La Pyrénée (Nov. 1570) comes just a few months after the signing of the Peace, so this may well have been one of the factors determining its publication. In the dedication to the second tome of his Histoires Tragiques Belleforest explains the nine year delay between the first and second volumes thus: ‘Les miseres esquelles la calamité de ce temps nous avait reduits avaient alenti la gaillardise des bons esprits, lesquels voyans tout tourne sens dessus dessous, s'estaient presque du tout retirez des estudes.’
18 L'Astrée, sig. ã5. Both d'Urfé and Belleforest were brought up outside of Paris, in the distant provinces, and possessed a feeling for the countryside that exceeded that of the pastoral conventions.
19 Alice Hulubei expresses this in strong terms in her masterly study, L'Eglogue en France au XVIe siècle: Epoque des Valois 1515-1589 (Paris, 1938). She says that the court of Henri III was ‘rajeunie par les favoris du roi, blasée par une trop mûre Renaissance, irritée par les troubles, [elle] s'abandonne sans réserve ou contrôle à ses instincts, à ses passions, à ses vices’ (p. 644). In his recent study of the French reading public of this period, Henri Martin notes a decided change following the years 1570-72.
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