Mars and his Pistol. Contemporary Novelty and Epic Tradition in Early Modern France

这个子项目研究了16世纪和17世纪的法语和拉丁语史诗文本语料库。所有这些文本都采用了古典史诗传统的既定惯例，同时处理了高度当代的问题：每个文本都将最多一百年，有时只有几个月的实际历史事件文本化(Aktualitätsepik)。除其他外，主要文本语料库包括：塞巴斯蒂安·加尼耶(1593/94)和让·勒布朗(1604)写的关于亨利四世的一系列史诗《亨利四世》(1593/94)和让·勒布朗(1604)，特别是；《卢泰蒂亚斯》(1617年)，老保卢斯·托马斯的另一部主要关注亨利四世掌权和1590年法国历史的作品；亚历山大·德·蓬泰梅里的历史兼编年史风格的史诗《蒙特利玛城》(1591)；皮埃尔·博顿的史诗《法兰西大片》(约1594)，对16世纪末法国内战肆虐的政治局势的批判性概要；亚伯拉罕·雷米乌斯关于1620年至1622年间的历史形势的《博尔博尼亚》(1623年)；小保卢斯·托马斯关于17世纪20年代拉罗谢尔斗争的《鲁佩莱》(1630)。此外，分析了大约1500年的史诗文本--关于路易十二在意大利北部的运动--一方面是史诗的表现形式，另一方面是与史诗模式明显相似的16世纪历史学之间的比较。该项目的目标是通过考察Aktualitätsepik与当代实用史学和有关历史写作的历史理论的趋同和分歧，更准确地勾勒出Aktualitätsepik的一般概况。这样做的目的是为史诗的主题和在其直接的时间背景下的文本化方法建立一个更明确的定义。更重要的是，解开个人史诗中新旧复杂的纠葛，阐明了史诗作为一种体裁的历史概念，这种体裁决定了这些文本-文本故意从史诗传统的宝库中选择和延续某些元素，同时拒绝和丢弃其他元素。在多大程度上，历史原始文本的所有混合性对当代史诗体裁理论中正在发生的史诗概念化的变化做出了贡献？这种变化的速度、特征、划时代的偶然性和潜在的方向性是这一背景下的重要因素。对该项目至关重要的是史诗公式和所述史诗所描述的历史情况之间的相互制约问题：史诗文本中对时事的引用影响和修改了文学潜力的具体形式和现有的一般选择；反过来，它也改变了对实际历史事件的看法。

The sub¬project examines a corpus of epic texts in French and Latin from the 16th and 17th centuries. All of these texts employ the established conventions of the classical epic tradition, while simultaneously dealing with highly contemporary issues: each of them textualizes actual historical events which date back a hundred years at most, and sometimes only a few months (Aktualitätsepik). The corpus of primary texts includes, among others: the Henriades, a series of epics on Henri IV authored by Sebastien Garnier (1593/94) and Jean Le Blanc (1604), inter alios; the Lutetias (1617) by Paulus Thomas the Elder, another work whose main concern lies with Henri IV’s rise to power and French history from 1584 to 1590; the historical-cum-chronicle-style epic La Cité du Montélimar (1591) by Alexandre de Pontaymeri; the epic fragment La France divisée (c. 1594) by Pierre Boton, a critical synopsis of the political situation in late 16th-century France ravaged by civil war; the Borbonias (1623) by Abraham Remmius on the historical situation in the years between 1620 and 1622; and the Rupellais (1630) by Paulus Thomas the Younger on the struggle for La Rochelle in the 1620s. Further to this, epic texts from around 1500 – about, among other things, the campaigns of Louis XII in northern Italy – are analysed with a view to a comparison between epic forms of representation on the one hand, and 16th-century historiography with its evident affinity to the epic mode on the other hand. The project’s goal is to outline the generic profile of Aktualitätsepik with greater precision by examining the genre’s convergences and divergences with the contemporary discourse of practical historiography and historical theories concerning the writing of history. In so doing, the objective is to establish a clearer definition of the epic’s subject matter and methods of textualisation within its immediate temporal context. What is more, unravelling the complex entanglements of ‚old‘ and ‚new‘ in the individual epics elucidates the historical conceptions of the epic as a genre that inform these texts – texts, which deliberately select and perpetuate certain elements from the reservoir of epic tradition, while rejecting and discarding others. In how far do the historical primary texts in all their hybridity contribute to change within the conceptualisation of the epic that is taking place in contemporary theorisations of the genre? Speed, characteristics, epochal-discursive contingency and potential directionality of this change are important factors in this context. Of crucial importance to the project is the issue of reciprocal conditioning between the epic formularium and the historical situation depicted in the epics in question: the referencing of current events in epic texts influences and modifies the concrete form of literary potentialities and the generic options available; conversely, it also alters the perspective on actual historical events.