Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2004. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to theFaculty of Arts, Department of History, University of Glasgow, 2004. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Thesis--Columbia University. / Published also without thesis statement. Bibliography: p. 180-184.

Le présent travail contribue à la connaissance du théâtre joué dans les collèges parisiens au seizième siècle par l'édition, la traduction et l'analyse de deux tragédies latines issues du collège de Navarre. Ces œuvres, demeurées manuscrites, presque contemporaines l'une de l'autre, ont pour caractéristique commune de s inspirer de l'histoire profane française. Le Destin contraire des Français en Vermandois et la chute affligeante du très vaillant duc d'Estouteville et comte d'Enghien (Paris, 1557, Bibl. nat. ms fonds latin 8136) est due à un professeur d'origine rouennaise, Abel Souris, et déplore la tragique chute de Jean de Bourbon, récente victime de la bataille de Saint-Quentin. Chilpéric (Paris, [1558], bibl.mun. Chaumont ms 213 (3-I-5 k)) résulte du travail de Jean Rose, élève chaumontais d'une quinzaine d'années, lecteur des Histoires des Francs de Paul Émile et de Robert Gaguin. Elle met en scène la cruauté du roi mérovingien et son meurtre perpétré à l'instigation de son épouse adultère Frédégonde. L'étude des sources littéraires des deux pièces atteste une parfaite connaissance de Sénèque, bien sûr, mais aussi des dramaturges néo-latins contemporains que sont Buchanan, Muret et Roillet. Une attention particulière a complémentairement été consacrée à la restitution du cadre scolaire (recherches sur l'établissement, ses résidents et sa bibliothèque d'humanités en 1557-1558) ainsi qu'aux témoignages immédiats de la pratique théâtrale au collège de Navarre (représentations de 1533 et 1572). La biographie des auteurs qui ont poursuivi des carrières d'ecclésiastique et de magistrat a également été précisément reconstituée par recours aux archives / This work contributes to knowledge of theatrical performances in Parisian colleges in the sixteenth century through the editing, translation and analysis of two Latin tragedies written by students at the College of Navarre. The manuscript plays were almost contemporary and were both inspired by French secular history. The Dire Fate of the French in the Vermandois Region and the Distressing Fall of the Most Valiant Duke of Estouteville and Count of Enghien (Paris, 1557, Bibl. nat. ms fonds latin 8136) was written by a teacher from Rouen, Abel Souris, and laments the tragic fall of Jean de Bourbon, recently killed in the battle of Saint-Quentin. Chilperic (Paris, [1558], bibl. mun. Chaumont ms 213 (3-I-5 k)) was the work of Jean Rose, a fifteen-years-old student from Chaumont, who was familiar with Paolo¡Emili s and Robert Gaguin s History of the Franks. It stages the cruelty of the Merovingian king and his murder instigated by his adulterous wife Fredegund. A study of the literary sources of both plays reveals a sound knowledge of Seneca, of course, but also of the work of contemporary neo-Latin dramatists, Buchanan, Muret and Roillet. Special attention has been paid to the scholastic context (research into the college, its students and its library of the humanities in 1557-1558) and to accounts of theatrical activity at the College of Navarre (performances in 1533 and 1572). The authors later lives one became an ecclesiastic and the other a magistrate have been carefully reconstructed through archival research

In his Defence of Poetry (c. 1580), Philip Sidney argues that poetry—a category in which he includes all imaginative fiction—aims at the education of its readers. Archepollycyes studies the attempts of a loose group of sixteenth-century writers around Sidney to write fiction that lives up to this aim, in order to understand the methods they developed to educate readers and the relationship between this education and the politics of the monarchical state. Sidnean fiction demands long study on the part of its readers because it aims to transform their mental habits and create new internal resources for right action. The works of fiction I study here—Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Gorboduc, George Buchanan’s Baptistes, Sidney’s Arcadia, Mary Sidney Herbert’s Antonius and A Discourse of Life and Death, and Fulke Greville’s Mustapha—were products of their authors’ experiments with genre, narrative, translation, and style as tools to achieve this aim. Through the reading experience these works invite, readers exercise their judgment in the interpretation of fictional examples and reflect explicitly on the mental habits of generalization and application that inform decisions about how to act in new circumstances. Readers also come to see these habits of judgment as shared with others and experience the act of reading as participation in both real and imagined interpretive communities. I argue that these interpretive communities are best understood as loose political institutions, networks of organization and affiliation whose members could think and act together through common habits of judgment and the mutual resolution that results from recognizing this commonality. I adopt the term “archepollycyes” from Gabriel Harvey in order to describe the role of such institutions in monarchical politics. Harvey coins the term to describe the foundational forms of political knowledge, action, and organization, in contrast to the day-to-day work of government and the business of political rule. “Archepollycyes” hold a political community together in spite of changes in its ruler or government; understanding and creating such institutions was thus a means of responding to the escalating crises of succession, absolutism, and civil war that confronted early modern monarchies. By reading and writing fiction, I argue, Sidney and a broader network of writers aimed to act at a distance from contemporary political conflicts by founding “archepollycyes,” loose institutions capable of acting independent of the monarchical state and outside of existing structures of government, but on behalf of the long-term stability of a political community. In this way, I offer a new way of thinking about fiction and political institution in relation to the contested emergence of the modern sovereign state.