Nadine Kuperty-Tsur

The Renaissance saw an increasing number of authors using a variety of literary genres to express new political visions. What set these authors apart was that they were associated with positions of power, as chancellors, parliamentarians and above all secretaries of state ministers. Their writings became evidence of an emerging political thought. At the crossroads of praxis and theory, the authors, as political “insiders,” criticized the political system, while suggesting improvements or even reforms based on an ethics newly acquired from Humanism. In France, the arrival of the Valois dynasty with François I, the fragility of power under each of Catherine de Medici's sons, and thirty years of religious wars had led to the need for arbitration. The new generation of state administrators had been trained in the best law schools of Europe. They were supporters of the humanist movement and held the belief that the state’s interests could no longer be determined by the personal ambitions of a handful of families or even a dynasty whose policies were the subject of severe criticism. The reserach study proposes to systematically analyze French Renaissance political writing, focusing on discourses, pamphlets, treatises and memoirs as the dominant forms of writing expressing political ideas. It should provide a comprehensive understanding of both the nature and contents of the political thought in the Renaissance, showing that it relied upon people’s growing ability to conceive of the world through abstract notions and that the new political thought deriving from this ability can express itself in various genres using different modes – ranging from serious political treatises to satirical pamphlets.