Thomas E. Mussio 340 SARA STURM-MADDOX RONSARD, PETRARCH, AND THE AMOURS Gainesville, FL.: University of Florida Press, 1999. 209 pp. Anyone familiar with Sara Sturm-Maddox's two previous books on Petrarch's Canzoniere will not be surprised by the strongly thematic approach that characterizes this book. The frequent use of citations based on themes from the Canzoniere gives the impression that the author is drawing upon a catalogue of themes and copious notes garnered from a close reading of the poems. Indeed, Sturm-Maddox established her expertise on Petrarch's Canzoniere in Petrarch's Metamorphoses (1985) and Petrarch's Laurels (1992). While many specialists of French literature have addressed the question of Petrarch's influence on Ronsard, few American Petrarchists have ventured into this area. This well-researched, ambitious book, attentive to the wealth of criticism on both Petrarch and Ronsard, succeeds in providing a broad view of the main phases of Ronsard's poetic career and a close view of his imaginative genius through careful readings against the Petrarchan text. The main theme of this book is Ronsard's strong identification, throughout his long and varied career, with the protagonist of Petrarch's Canzoniere and his story. Sturm-Maddox makes the distinction between the imitative practices of other Petrarchisti poets, who drew topoi, turns of phrase, and themes from the Canzoniere and Ronsard's brilliant discernment and use of the narrative embedded in Petrarch's work; Ronsard's references to Petrarch's language to a large extent reflect his vivid interest in the story of innamoramento and devotedness depicted in the Canzoniere. After the introduction in which she traces Ronsard's early career at court, his shifting poetic values, and his bold ambition to fashion himself into a successful poet, Sturm-Maddox analyzes, in three separate chapters, Ronsard's three major collections of love lyrics that span his lengthy poetic career, in terms of Ronsard's "poetic impersonation" of Petrarch. Ronsard's engagement with Petrarch is more than just a matter of stylistics; in fact, the Canzoniere is shown to be the constant foil for Ronsard's formulation of his identity as poet in love. A fifth chapter, styled as an afterward, points again to how Ronsard continually revised his collections in order to indicate a story, largely shaped by the story of Petrarch's Canzoniere. Sturm-Maddox aims not "to estimate the weight" of "textual borrowing" of Ronsard from Petrarch, but to explore its significance in
Ronsard, Petrarch, and the Amours 341 a new way. Sturm-Maddox promises a new evaluation of Ronsard's differences through more expansive recognition of their more subtle, often unnoticed points of contact. The main critical strategy here is not necessarily to contradict conclusions drawn by the many other critics who have addressed the topic of Ronsard's relation to Petrarch; rather, the new Petrarchan echoes that Sturm-Maddox discloses may make these conclusions more meaningful. Paradoxically, Ronsard's genius and originality are put into relief when one notices how closely he reads/identifies with Petrarch, for in this context, his departures from Petrarch have heightened significance. Throughout the book, Sturm- Maddox contests the general critical agreement that Ronsard's concreteness, cynicism toward love, and brashness marks an outright rejection of the Petrarchan model. Instead, she insists, these motifs are found precisely in the Canzoniere, though in poems only secondarily alluded to by Ronsard and therefore, often not treated by the critics. In Chapter 1, "Lyric Self-Fashioning," Sturm-Maddox writes that after the cool reception of his Odes, Ronsard turned to follow the models of Du Bellay and Tyard's love lyrics. Thus, despite Ronsard's earlier scorn for courtly, Petrarchan poetry, and his espousal of a different poetics in the publication of the Odes, he quickly adapts himself to the poetic milieu. Throughout this early period, one sees Ronsard's penchant for seeing himself in mythical terms, as a mythically heroic character. This, notes Sturm-Maddox, is Ronsard's "characteristic strategy of self-representation", his penchant for "impersonation" (p. 14). The choice of Petrarch as his model not only reflects Ronsard's ambition, but also determines the path of his future poetic career. Chapter 2, "Les Amours", begins with a reference to Ronsard's first poem in his first book of Amours, (which celebrates Cassandra), which begins with an explicit reference to the beginning of one of Petrarch's most well-known poems, thus suggesting a close connection between the collections. Though other collections used Petrarch's 248 as proemi for their collections, Ronsard's use is "more complex" (p. 38), for it relates to another poem in Petrarch's Rime, the Canzonier's own proemio. Despite the apparent differences between the two proemi - Ronsard's poem lacks the sense of shame and reflection found in Petrarch's - both are invitations to the reader, and both stress the subject rather than the object. Hence, while it appears that Ronsard contrasts with Petrarch and the "lines of tension and opposition... established" (p. 40), Sturm-Maddox warns: "The reader will find nonetheless that those lines may be repeatedly redrawn and the relation
Thomas E. Mussio 342 repeatedly reconfigured"(p. 40). The analysis then moves to Amours 64, a poem that sounds very much like a second proemio, and one that has Petrarchan overtones. It blends the elements of chastity and intimacy found in tension in Petrarch. Even though Ronsard composes this vision of the loving subject from fragments of various poems of Petrarch, the effect is of a more complete imitation - an imitation of the character of the lover and his voice: "He appropriates Petrarch's voice and at the same time appropriates the 'story' of the Rime as it were from within" (p. 42). Sturm-Maddox emphasizes repeatedly Ronsard's complex reformulation of Petrarch's poetry in order to comment on the story of the Canzoniere. Sturm-Maddox cautiously contends that Ronsard's lyrics can be read as story in the same way the Rime can. Even thought the lyrics lack a "clear narrative structure" (p. 45), Sturm-Maddox holds that Ronsard's first collection distinguishes itself at once from that of his contemporaries in its close adherence to those elements of Petrarch's sequence that help to define a story" (p. 45). The chapter compares the two poets' treatment of the landscape, the speaker's relation to it, and beloved's effect on it. While most critics point generally at the difference between Petrarch and Ronsard for the latter's more concrete and specific descriptions of the landscape, Sturm-Maddox adroitly points out that in Ronsard's treatment of these themes one finds abundant word echoes from Petrarch which show the French poet's engagement with Petrarch's treatment of the landscape's relation to poet and his beloved. One notes similar themes: the retreat of the desperate lover into Nature; Amor's pursuit of the lover even in such a retreat; the poet's projection of the beloved's image onto nature; the portrait of the pensive beloved alone in nature; the renewing power of the beloved on nature. These parallels lead to Sturm-Maddox's conclusion about the different types of passivity expressed by the narrators of the two poets. She agrees with Thomas Greene's idea that Ronsard's retreat has a more willed quality, as if the poet could, if he wanted, escape the amorous situation in which he finds himself. This discussion leads to a consideration of the opposite movement found in the two collections: the poet's active, restless pursuit of his lady. Again, Sturm-Maddox provides convincing verbal parallels that show Ronsard's specific use of Petrarch. In this discussion one finds Sturm-Maddox's typical argumentative move: she cites the critical opinion based on comparison of two poems that defines a basic "imaginative distance" (p. 60) between the two poets, only to show that another of Petrarch's poems, overlooked by the critics, closes this gap.
Ronsard, Petrarch, and the Amours 343 The violence in Ronsard's version of the Acteon myth (A 113) seems, at first sight, to be at odds with the parallel representation in Petrarch's poem (R 50), but Sturm-Maddox shows that this only appears so to the reader not familiar with Petrarch's version of the myth in a different poem (R 23). The consideration of the Acteon myth leads to the general question of Ronsard's use of mythological material. Sturm-Maddox sees myth as a good test for the evaluation of Ronsard in relation to Petrarch, for critics have described Ronsard's two main influences, myth and Petrarch, "as relatively free of mutual influence or contamination" (p. 61). In general, critics do not mention Petrarch as an intermediary in Ronsards use of myth, yet Sturm-Maddox finds evidence of such a function for Petrarch, particularly in a theme vital to Ronsard's poetry, metamorphosis. For Ronsard, metamorphosis is seen as "liberation from a sterile situation" (p. 68). Sturm-Maddox cites Rime 41 in which the poet imagines himself turned into a flea in order to come close to his lady as evidence of Ronsard's use of metamorphosis as a means of imaginative fulfillment of desire. This appears "flagrantly to subvert the decorum of the Petrarchan tradition" (p. 69). Ronsard appears less chaste than Petrarch. Yet, Sturm-Maddox points out, Petrarch had imagined a similar fulfillment when in Rime 20 and Rime 22 he expresses a desire for an unending night with Laura. Continuing in the same vein, Sturm-Maddox cites Ronsard's Amours 20, in which the poet imagines a metamorphosis in order to possess his lady, as a poem that critics view as a purposeful departure from the Petrarchan code. Yet the main Petrarchan source of the poem (R 23) has in its commiato strong overtones of "amorous conquest", despite the passivity expressed in the rest of the poem. The next chapter focuses on Ronsard's "Le Sonets pour Helene". In general, the critical consensus around the "Helene" sonnets is that there is a decisively anti-petrarchan feel to them. In these poems, Ronsard takes on the character of the inconstant lover, who views with scepticism the Petrarchan claim to have loved fruitlessly one woman for so many years. In Amours 3 he attacks Petrarch's claim of chastity. This stance was consistent with the anti-petrarchan sentiment in 1554, but by the 1570s Petrarchism was back in fashion, and Ronsard's 1578 edition clearly asserts Ronsard's return to Petrarchism. This return was motivated in part by Ronsard's desire to compete with a new star Petrarchist at court, Desportes. Sturm-Maddox writes that Ronsard wanted to "combat Desportes on his own terrain" (p. 90), and at the same time, show his divergence from Petrarchism. Yet this divergence
Thomas E. Mussio 344 is defined by Ronsard "increasingly rich exploration of the Petrarchan vein" and his interest in the story told in the Canzoniere. The basic difference between these Amours and the Canzoniere to which Sturm-Maddox seems to point centers around the idea of will; Ronsard casts his love of Helene as willed and reciprocal, while Petrarch's love was fated and one-sided. The other side of the question of "will" is the difference between Petrarch and Ronsard on their task of writing. Ronsard claims to choose to celebrate Helene, unlike Petrarch who claims that he is forced by destiny to write of Laura. Yet Sturm-Maddox finds contradictions in Ronsard's stance. For example, she cites Amours I, 8 in which Amor commands the poet to write, as in Petrarch's Rime 93. Again, in Amours II, 39 Helene is portrayed as taking the initiative, bestowing upon the poet the duty of honoring her. This chapter continues in this vein, concentrating on the theme of will by examining both poets' treatment of several sub-themes: the retreat into fantasy and the attitude toward advancing old age. One of the major differences noted by Sturm-Maddox is that, though weary from loving an absent Laura for so long, Petrarch never really renounces her, while Ronsard seems in control of his will to love and to stop loving. Sturm-Maddox cites II, 53 as proof. Yet, the critic holds, this anti- Petrarchism is only meaningful after a close examination of the parallels embedded in the respective collections of lyrics: "'difference' again often brought into focus through similarity" (p. 126). In Chapter 4, Sturm-Maddox argues that Ronsard's portrait of the Marie in "Sur la mort de Marie", a series of poems appended to the 1578 edition of the Amours, depends largely on Petrarch's presentation of Laura both "in morte" and "in vita". The theme of death gave Ronsard the opportunity "to enter once again into rivalry with the Italian master" (p. 129). Sturm-Maddox goes against the critical opinion of Ronsard's only general engagement with Petrarch, contending that about half of Petrarch's "in morte" poems are verbally recalled in the collection. She challenges the assumption that "their resemblances with Petrarch remain quite superficial" (p. 131). Ronsard is shown as adopting many elements of the story of Petrarch and Laura to cast that of poet and Marie. Through a series of observations that draw the poems on Marie's death to Petrarch's Canzoniere, Sturm- Maddox shows how Ronsard makes his "'vie sentimentale' as that of Petrarch himself ' (p. 143). It is not possible to summarize in this limited space Sturm- Maddox's complex movement between the subtleties of Petrarch's Canzoniere and the various layers and revisions in Ronsard's oeuvre.
Ronsard, Petrarch, and the Amours 345 This book will surely challenge and stimulate anyone interested in Petrarch, the reception of Petrarch, and the lyric tradition generally. Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut THOMAS E. MUSSIO