Writing and Precarity in Sixteenth-Century France

Szabari, Antonia; Szabari, Antonia

Developing one of the most widely cited concepts in literary and cultural theory of the last several decades, Lauren Berlant (1957–2021) defines precarity as a life lived “at someone else’s hands,” when a person’s relation to the future becomes tenuous and involves no promise of security. Though Berlant’s work mainly addresses late capitalism, this panel will bring the concept to bear on sixteenth-century France: the old feudal order is breaking down; nascent capitalism is creating new social relations; the rise of Protestantism is challenging the theological and political order; the printing press is transforming cultural life; colonization of the so-called “New World” is putting European supremacy in perspective. Living at someone else’s hands is a common experience of writers living in the patronage system centered in aristocratic courts, as well as of those distributing their work through the commercially based new medium of print; the vast changes in economic life, alongside the violence of religious conflict, also leave the well-off in a state of uncertainty. In line with the 2023 MLA presidential theme of “Working Conditions,” the aim of this panel is to examine literary works that have long been viewed as foundational to the canon of modern French literature but that, when understood as emerging from precarious conditions, challenge the very notion of a national literature reflecting a shared set of values.

The three areas the presenters will address are imprisonment for religious dissent, the notion of sustainability as derived from encounters with the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, and the uncertainties of self-knowledge as the norms of social and cultural life rapidly transform. Anthony Radoiu, a PhD student, will examine the work of Clément Marot (1496–1544), often regarded as the first major poet of the French Renaissance, especially in light of his self-conscious appreciations of earlier poets as precursors drifting into the past. The court poet of King François I as well as a proponent of religious reform, Marot was imprisoned in 1526 for supposedly violating the Catholic requirement to fast during Lent. During his incarceration he wrote numerous poems, borrowing from medieval sources but substituting fact-based autobiography for their allegorical rendition of experience as leading to divine revelation. Radoiu will develop the idea of autobiography as the quest for domestic and financial security in the harshness of imprisonment and religious upheaval.

Pauline Goul, an early-career scholar, will then revisit the traditional understanding of “New World” travel narratives as depicting a place of natural abundance. Goul rather views the Americas as representing, for several writers, precarity and unsustainable appetite; she argues that these qualities stem from viewing indigenous persons as caring for their environment and the European aristocracy as wasteful. She will examine two authors, Jean de Léry (1536–1613), whose book on his long stay in Brazil is regarded as a forerunner of anthropology, and François Rabelais (1483?–1553), whose work is seen as exemplifying Renaissance satire of the old order and aspects of the new, who places some of his characters in a “New World” colonial setting. Goul will consider the ways that the ethics of care expressed in both texts, pointing to both sustainability and precarity, challenges the long-accepted conceptions of Renaissance France and its relationship to natural resources.

The third speaker is Alani Hicks-Bartlett, another early-career scholar, who will offer a fresh reading of one of the most canonical French authors, essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592). She underscores the parallels that Montaigne draws in the Essays between the fragility of his own body and the erosion of landscapes as he develops larger ideas on the instability of both animate and inanimate matter. He frequently compares his long, exploratory book to a body because of the mutability, complexity, and limitations they share. Hicks-Bartlett will show how Montaigne’s work elucidates the connection between corporeal vulnerability, the tenuousness of knowledge, and the blurring of barriers between author and reader, body and text. All three panelists will explore how writing, itself conducted precariously, underscores the precarity of life as social, political, religious, and cultural shifts take place in early modern France.

After each presenter speaks for seventeen minutes, the presider will open the session to questions from the audience.

519A Writing and Precarity in Sixteenth-Century France: Calls for Papers