French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Hobart, La Peste à la Renaissance. L’imaginaire d’un fléau dans la littérature au XVIe s. (préf. F. Lestringant)
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Brenton Hobart
La Peste à la Renaissance. L’imaginaire d’un fléau dans la littérature au XVIe siècle
foreword by Frank Lestringant
Paris, Classiques Garnier, coll. Géographies du monde, 2020
EAN : 9782406089964
1015 p. — 48.00 €
French Renaissance authors such as Clément Marot, François Rabelais, and Montaigne perpetuated and transformed a corpus of plague imagery, blending imitation with invention while frequently portraying themselves as survivors of epidemics. The plague thus emerged as a codified literary genre.
The sixteenth century in France witnessed profound shifts in intellectual and literary culture, as humanist writers engaged with classical antiquity while confronting recurrent public health crises. Frank Lestringant provides a preface to the study, contextualising the broader imaginative landscape of the period. Readers interested in Renaissance literature and the cultural history of early modern epidemics may find this study relevant, as it examines works by writers such as Clément Marot, François Rabelais, and Montaigne where the plague emerged as a codified literary genre.