1910 Reviews

Vianey, J., Le Petrarquisme en France au XVIe Siecle (Book Review)

Phelps, Ruth Shepard

It is forbidden to the Gallic savant to be uninteresting even when most erudite. This work, accordingly, which is occupied with the technical task of establishing the parallel between French and Italian Petrarchism, and determining the precise limits of French indebtedness, becomes a thoroughly readable chapter in the history of French literature. M. Vianey has no patriotic bias, and allows the fact to transpire on every page that if we look to ideas, then the French poets of the sixteenth century can make little or no ciaim to originality. From Marot, who fell in love with Serafino dell' Aquila at Ferrara, to Desportes, whose livres de chevet were the Rime of Pamphilo Sasso and of Tebaldeo, one and all were on the alert to catch the latest breath of literary fashion that might blow northward across the Alps. Out of the 115 sonnets of l'Olive, for example, barely 40 are not imitations; and that only 100 out of 430 sonnets of Desportes should be direct translations, comes to seem to M. Vianey very moderate.