This thesis is an examination of the printing industry in Paris between 1570 and 1590. These years represent a relatively under-researched period in the history of Parisian print. This period is of importance because of an event in 1572 – the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and an event in 1588 – the Day of the Barricades and the subsequent exit from Paris of Henry III. This thesis concerns itself with the two years prior to 1572 and two years after 1588 in order to provide context, but the two supporting frames of this investigation are those important events. This thesis attempts to assess what effect those events had upon the printing industry in the foremost print centre of both France and Western Europe. With the religious situation in Paris quietened was there any concrete change in the 1570s and 1580s regarding the types of books printed in Paris? Was there any attempt to exploit this religious stability by pursuing the ‘retreating’ Protestant confession, or did the majority of printers turn away from confessional arguments and polemical literature? What were the markets for Paris books: were they predominantly local or international? The method by which these questions have been addressed is with a bibliometric analysis of the output of the Paris print shops. This statistical approach allows one to address the entire corpus of a city’s output and allows both broad surveys of the data in terms of categorisation of print, but also narrower studies of individual printers and their output. As such this approach allows the printing industry of Paris to be surveyed and analysed in a way that would otherwise be impossible. This statistical approach also allows the books to be seen as an economic item of industrial production instead of purely a culture item of artistic creation. This approach enhances rather than reduces the significance of a book’s cultural importance as it allows the researcher to fully appreciate the achievement and investment of both finance and time that was necessary for the completion of a well printed book.

Tableau d’honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2009-2010 / À la mort d'Henri II, en 1559, les sujets protestants de France se sont trouvés sous l'autorité hésitante de rois en bas âge, entourés de conseillers influents à la légitimité contestable. Aux injonctions ambivalentes d'obéissance politique de Calvin, les apologues du prince de Condé, à la tête du mouvement réformé français, ont alors substitué une rhétorique de ferme allégeance aux coutumes constitutionnelles du royaume et au jeune roi. Interdite par Calvin, la violence politique des réformés était soudainement placée sous le signe de l'honneur nobiliaire. Or, à partir de la seconde guerre (1567-1568) la justification de la violence des réformés prendra aussi appui sur une conception contractualiste de l'État monarchique qui appelait au rétablissement des institutions intermédiaires dans leurs anciennes fonctions limitatives du pouvoir royal. Malgré une certaine parenté conceptuelle, cette évolution ne peut cependant être parfaitement assimilée à la théorisation dite «monarchomaque» de la résistance au roi devenu tyran, parvenue à maturité après le massacre de la Saint-Barthélémy (1572).

This thesis examines the increasing sophistication of sixteenth-century French literary engagement with Virgil's Aeneid. It argues that successive forms of engagement with the Aeneid should be viewed as a single process that gradually adopts increasingly complex literary strategies. It does this through a series of four different forms of literary engagement with the Aeneid: translation, continuation, rejection and reconciliation. The increasing sophistication of these forms reflects the writers' desire to interact with the original Aeneid as political epic and Roman foundation narrative, and with the political, religious and literary contexts of early modern France. The first chapter compares the methods of and motivations behind all of the sixteenth-century translations of the Aeneid into French; it thus demonstrates shifts in successive translators' interpretations of Virgil's work, and of its application to sixteenth-century France. The next three chapters each analyse adaptation of Virgil's poem in a major French literary work. Firstly, Ronsard's Franciade is analysed as an example of French foundation epic that simultaneously draws upon and rejects Virgil's narrative. Ronsard's poem is read in the light of Mapheo Vegio's “Thirteenth Book” of the Aeneid, or Supplementum, which continues Virgil's narrative and carries it over into a Christian context. Next, Agrippa d'Aubigné's response to Virgilian epic in Les Tragiques is shown to have been mediated by Lucan's Pharsalia and its anti- epic and anti-imperialist interpretation of the Aeneid. D'Aubigné's inversion of Virgil is highlighted through comparison of attitudes to death and resurrection in Les Tragiques, the Aeneid and Vegio's Antoniad. Finally, Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas' combination, in La Sepmaine and La Seconde Sepmaine of the hexameral structure of Genesis with Virgil's narrative of reconciliation after civil war is shown to represent the most sophisticated understanding of and most complex interaction with the Aeneid in sixteenth-century France.

Between Defence and Resistance: Destinies of Eighteenth-Century Protestant Communities in Eastern Bohemia and Haut-Languedoc Abstract Based on archive research and literature the thesis compares the religious life of illegal Protestant communities in the 18th century Eastern Bohemia and Haut-Languedoc. From macroanalytical perspective it assesses the strategies of protestant minorities used to resist the disciplining efforts of the absolutist state. The confessional homogeneity, economic background and social stratification of Protestants in Eastern Bohemia and Haut-Languedoc differed. Yet, the contrasting comparison opens up the way to analyse the divergent resistance strategies. Further, the thesis examines the existence and nature of attempts to simplify the religious doctrine and to modify the liturgy undertaken by the lay and ordained priests and the worshippers. The structure combines the thematic and chronological approach, while keeping a broad perspective that encompasses also the economic and cultural context. First tree chapters outline and conceptualize the problem of prohibited Protestantism in both regions during the 17th and most of the 18th centuries. While in Languedoc the Presbyterian-synodic structure was revived (albeit illegally), in Eastern Bohemia and in whole Bohemia and Moravia...