“The Work of Contempt in the Literary Field: the Case of Sixteenth Century Calvinist Poets”

Abstract

In the century in which neo-Platonic theories impose the predominance of poetry over any other form of discourse, the contempt aimed at poetry in general or against certain poets in particular coexist with the celebration of letters. The corpus of the sixteenth century Calvinist poetry is often interpreted in the light of religious ideals (Véronique Ferrer, Julien Gœury, Christophe Bourgeois) or the theme of uanitas characteristic of baroque literature (Terence Cave, Michel Jeanneret, Michèle Clément). In this article, I present the contempt of letters, or more specifically of the profane verses, as a constituent element of Calvinist poetic identity through a study of three significant moments: the publication of the first meta-discursive texts by John Calvin and Theodore Beza in the mid-sixteenth century, the so-called “Quarrel of Discourses” in 1562-1563, and finally the publication of several important individual and collective volumes of Calvinist poetry in the 1570s and 1580s.