Heather, Noel

Noel Heather originally taught Renaissance French in the University of Wales after receiving his doctorate. He now lecturer in the English Department of Royal Holloway, University of London, where he specializes in computing applications to literary and l

Du Bartas, French Huguenot Poet, and His Humourous Ambivalence

1998 0-7734-8257-1
This book represents a radically new reading of Du Bartas’ Semaines, marking a significant change in our understanding of work by perhaps the most popular non-theological writer of the Renaissance world. The humourous aspect of Du Bartas’ work is conveyed in particular by a broad range of numerological and symmetrical patterns. Though playful in form and style, these patterns highlight a gentle insistence by a moderate Huguenot on the Logos as the one intermediary between higher and lower things. Du Bartas makes playful use of the chain of being not only addressing the fragmentation of the medieval worldview, but also portraying individual links of the chain as powerful poetic symbols of the Christian intermediary.