Le poète amoureux pétrarquiste, un éthos en devenir

Abstract

This article focuses on ethos in the first French petrarquist canzonieri of the 16th century. It aims at explaining how these collections of poems show an evolving poetic voice. This idea relies on the hypothesis that the temporality of poetic exercice is at the base of ethos. The article begins with an overview of the reception of Petrarch in France, which leads to understanding what the ethical setting (involving elements of both ethics and ethos) shared by Petrarquist poets actually is. Through an analysis of the different levels of poetic utterance, it is shown how the collections of poems combine a discontinuous poetic framework with a continuous ethical framework. It is these underlying conditions that sustain an ethos built on the temporality of continuation and perseverance.

Keywords

• petrarquism
• French Renaissance poetry