Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
237
R
Rabelais, François (ca. 1494–1553) comic
novelist
During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the
new ideas and intellectual attitudes of the
RENAIS-
SANCE were pouring out of Italy and sweeping
through Europe. The spread of knowledge fostered
a new humanist scholarship, which was changing
the way people think.
HUMANISM caused a shift
away from the focus of religious ways of thinking
and, aided by the rediscovery of the knowledge of
ancient Greece and Rome, turned scholars toward
an in-depth study of human beings. The recent in-
vention of the printing press allowed writers to
produce works more quickly and in greater num-
bers than ever before. One of the most profound
thinkers of this stimulating period was the French
writer François Rabelais.
Little is known of Rabelais’s public life, and
even less of his private life. Studies have revealed
that his father was a lawyer in Chinon in the Loire
valley and that he influenced his son’s study of law.
Rabelais, however, found that the law was not a
profession that suited him; he decided instead to
join the Franciscan monastery of Le Puy Saint-
Martin in Fontenay-le-Comte in 1510. He re-
mained there, gaining a solid education, until
1524. Evidence suggests that during this time he
began translating Greek philosopher Lucian’s
works into Latin, but the translation is no longer
extant. Because the Franciscans frowned upon
Greek philosophy, Rabelais moved to the Benedic-
tine monastery Saint-Pierre-de-Maillezais some
time around 1523 or 1524.
Through his studies with the Benedictines, Ra-
belais became well versed in Greek and Latin and
received a broad education in law, philosophy, and
the classics. He abandoned his holy orders, how-
ever, to pursue a secular life. In the early 1530s, he
studied medicine at the University of Montpellier,
where he translated the works of Hippocrates and
Galen from the original Greek and Latin. After
completing his medical education, he began a ca-
reer as a doctor and published several medical
works no longer extant. By this time, he had come
under the influence of the great humanist scholar
Desiderius
ERASMUS, who inspired Rabelais and
perhaps turned his thoughts toward a literary life.
In 1532 Rabelais produced his first book, Pan-
tagruel, which he wrote under the fictitious name
of Alcofribas Nasier. The character Pantagruel was
known in popular French culture as a small devil;
in Rabelais’s work, he is transformed into a giant
who, in later books, becomes the symbol of wis-
dom, a foil for the character Panurge, who is fool-
ish and self-absorbed, and who also appears in
Rabelais’s later work Tiers livre. Pantagruel is a
comic story about a giant who spreads thirst. It was
an immediate success, despite being criticized by at
least one professor at the Sorbonne, the leading
university of France.
After a trip to Rome, Rabelais produced his sec-
ond book, Gargantua, in 1534. The character Gar-
gantua is the father of Pantagruel, and their stories
are similar in the telling of their lives, as children,
warriors, and heroes. Gargantua was also a comic
story but differed from Pantagruel in that Ra-
belais’s use of language as a means to express his
views on some of the controversial issues then
shaking Europe became more imaginative and in-
ventive. His comic tale, set within an ideal society
(based loosely on Thomas MORE’s Utopia), includes
a battle in which Rabelais satirizes the evil emperor
(often alluded to by critics as Charles V). The char-
acters in Gargantua include those from Arthurian
legends, and the story operates on multiple lev-
els—contemporary, as well as classical and biblical.
Rabelais’s works include numerous digressions
and stilting transitions from one scene to another.
These digressions, and Rabelais’s narrative style as
a whole, are meant to disconcert readers at critical
points in the stories. Thus, what scholars and other
readers have come to value in Gargantua and other
of Rabelais’s writings is his ability to invent with
unparalleled language and sensibility a comic crit-
icism of historical and social events and issues of
his day. For this reason, it is important to read Ra-
belais’s works not as “modern” novels, but as bur-
lesque portrayals of the 16th-century way of life,
and not as formal philosophical criticisms of social
vice, but as comic stories of human nature.
After publishing Pantagruel and Gargantua, Ra-
belais wandered through France, Italy, and Ger-
many, spending time in the late 1530s and early
1540s teaching and practicing medicine. His opin-
ions on religious and political matters caused him
trouble with the authorities of various states, and
he only narrowly avoided persecution.
In 1546 he published Tiers livre, which means
“The Third Book.” It was completely unlike his two
earlier works. The plot concerns the question of
whether a man named Panurge should get mar-
ried, but the story line is exceedingly thin. Through
the events that happen to Panurge, Rabelais ex-
presses his views not only of marriage, but also of
war, money, and politics. However, because of Ra-
belais’s subtle and ironic style, his views can be in-
terpreted in many different ways, providing much
fodder for current scholarship. Tiers livre was con-
demned by the Sorbonne and other authorities,
who considered the work heretical. As a result, Ra-
belais fled France and moved to the German city of
Metz. In 1552 he published The Fourth Book,
which was also condemned by the Sorbonne.
Some years after Rabelais’s death, The Fifth
Book was published. Although this work was cred-
ited to Rabelais, many historians question whether
he actually wrote it.
Rabelais was one of the major literary figures of
the 16th century, when such writers as Thomas More
and Erasmus were producing brilliant work. He in-
fluenced such writers as MONTAIGNE, Hugo, and
Flaubert. In a time of political uncertainty, increased
by the Protestant Reformation, Rabelais stood as a
literary giant, using wit and comedy in an attempt
to express reasonable views in an unreasonable age.
English Versions of Works by
François Rabelais
Complete Works of François Rabelais. Translated by
Donald M. Frame. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1999.
Five Books of The Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of
Gargantua and His Son Pantagruel. Whitefish,
Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Gargantua and Pantagruel. Herts, U.K.: Wordsworth
Editions, 2001.
Works about François Rabelais
Berry, Alice F. Charm of Catastrophe: A Study of Ra-
belais’s Quart Livre. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2001.
Carron, Jean-Claude. François Rabelais: Critical As-
sessments. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1995.
238 Rabelais, François
Frame, Donald M. François Rabelais: A Study. New
York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977.
Plattard, Jean. Life of François Rabelais. Translated by
L. D. Roache. London: Taylor and Francis, 1968.
Rabinal Achi (700s) Maya play
The Rabinal Achi is the only pre-Columbian Maya
play known today. The residents of Rabinal, a small
town in Guatemala, still perform it as they have for
centuries. The play, originally written in the Maya
language of K’iche (Quiche), became available out-
side Guatemala when Charles-Étienne Brasseur, a
19th-century French scholar also known as “l’abbe
Bourbourg,” published a French translation. He
obtained the play from a resident of Rabinal,
Bartolo Sis.
Dennis Tedlock recently translated the play into
English from the original K’iche. He notes that it
is a representation of both Maya history and cul-
ture and that elements in the play have roots in
pre-Columbian court dramas. Tedlock compares
the style of the play to Japanese NOH theatre.
The Rabinal Achi includes musical accompani-
ment and the actors perform stylized dances that
reveal the relationships of characters to one an-
other, but they do not speak while dancing. Actors
wear masks specific to each character. The dialogue
is a series of speeches in which characters fre-
quently repeat and respond to another character’s
dialogue.
In the opening scenes, Cawek of the Forest Peo-
ple and the Man of Rabinal challenge each other.
The Man of Rabinal takes Cawek captive, and a
long exchange occurs between the two in which
they describe the conflict between them. Eventu-
ally, Cawek appears before Lord Five Thunder, and
there is a debate about Cawek’s wrongdoing. Fi-
nally, the play ends with Cawek’s ritual execution,
represented by a dance sequence, during which
Cawek urges his executioners to “do your duty.” He
ends with a prayer for them that echoes other
prayers in the drama: “May Sky and Earth be with
you too / little Eagle, little Jaguar.”
The Rabinal Achi has inspired other artists. The
contemporary playwright Luis Valdez told the San
Diego Union Tribune that he translated the play
from Spanish to help him create dialogue in a re-
cent multimedia work. The play’s influence rests
upon its action and plot; combination of dance, di-
alogue, and music; and its representation of
Guatemalan history.
An English Version of the Rabinal Achi
Tedlock, Dennis, trans. Rabinal Achi: A Mayan Drama
of War and Sacrifice. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003.
Racine, Jean (1639–1699) playwright
For most of the 17th century, France was ruled by
the powerful, ambitious and energetic King Louis
XIV. Under his rule, France would not only be-
come the most powerful nation in Europe, but
would also develop into the intellectual and cul-
tural center of the world, superseding both
England and Italy. Among the great achievements
of this golden age of French culture was an amaz-
ing flourishing of literature, and one of the most
important French writers during the reign of Louis
XIV was Jean Racine.
Racine was born on December 20 in La Ferté-
Milon in Aisne to a middle-class family. Both of his
parents died within a few years of his birth, and he
was raised by his paternal grandmother. During
his youth, he received an outstanding education
from members of a religious group known as the
Jansenists. The Jansenists were ostensibly loyal to
the Roman Catholic Church but held unorthodox
views about how the church should be reformed.
As a result, they were regarded by the authorities
with a great deal of suspicion.
Under the tutelage of Jansenist teachers, Racine
gained extensive knowledge about classical litera-
ture, as well as a generally broad-based education.
His teachers thought he would make an excellent
lawyer and sent him to study law at a university in
Paris. The city was not only the political capital of
Racine, Jean 239
France, but also the center of French culture and
literature. Once he arrived, Racine became utterly
enchanted with Paris and resolved to make his
mark on society. He worked to curry favor with
high French officials, including some who had
been persecuting the Jansenists.
Eventually, Racine decided that the best way of
becoming famous in Parisian society would be to
become a playwright. This would damage his rela-
tionship with the Jansenists, to whom the theater
was abhorrent, but by then Racine was focused en-
tirely on his own social progress. He sought out
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin MOLIÈRE, who was not only
the leading writer of French theater, but also con-
troller of one of France’s most important theatrical
production companies.
Molière agreed to produce Racine’s play La
Thébaïde, (The Story of Thebes), which was based
upon the rivalry among Oedipus’s sons. It appeared
on the Paris stage in 1664 and was a considerable
success, running for 17 consecutive nights. A year
later, Molière’s company produced Racine’s second
play, Alexandre le Grand (Alexander the Great),
which was a heroic portrayal of King Louis XIV as
a victorious conqueror. The play was an even
greater success than La Thébaïde and confirmed
Racine’s place in the world of the French theater.
Racine then double-crossed Molière, both pro-
fessionally and personally. Without Molière’s
knowledge, Racine arranged for a rival theater com-
pany, the Hotel de Bourgogne, to produce a second
showing of Alexandre le Grand. This production was
presented at the court of Louis XIV and was a strik-
ing success. On a personal level, Racine had an affair
with the leading actress from Molière’s troupe,
Thérèse Du Parc, and he persuaded her to leave
Molière’s employ and join him. As in his relation-
ship with the Jansenists, these actions demonstrate
Racine’s willingness to forgo honor in the pursuit
of professional and social success.
With his work now being produced by the
Hôtel de Bourgogne, Racine continued to write
plays. In 1667, his third play, Andromaque, was per-
formed both in the court of Louis XIV and to the
general public. This dramatic tale of tragic love was
a huge success, ensuring Racine’s place among the
greatest of contemporary French playwrights.
Racine, whose energy for writing and work was
enormous, produced several plays in the years that
followed. Les Plaideurs, his only comedy, which
satirizes the legal profession, was produced in
1668, to great acclaim. The TRAGEDY Brittannicus,
which was produced in 1669, did not fare as well,
although the members of the king’s court still ap-
preciated it. Bérénice was produced in 1671, Ba-
jazet in 1672, Mithridate in 1673, and Iphigénie in
1674. All of these plays were successful. Racine was
elected to the ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE in 1672, which
was a great honor.
The themes Racine dealt with in his writings
were not overly complex but were intensely human
and thus had broad appeal. The ideas of unre-
quited love, sibling rivalry, sadness at the loss of
loved ones, and the ruthless impartiality of fate
were all subjects to which Racine’s audiences could
easily relate. He developed characters that were
recognizably human, rather than the idealistic he-
roes that featured so prominently in others’ plays.
Racine was appointed royal historiographer to
King Louis XIV in 1677, one of the greatest hon-
ors the monarch could bestow upon a writer. In
the same year, Racine produced his ultimate mas-
terpiece, Phèdre. A few years later, the Hôtel de
Bourgogne merged with another theater company
to create the Comédie-Française, the greatest of all
French theater companies. Phèdre was selected as
the company’s inaugural performance.
For the next several years, Racine devoted his
energies to his duties as royal historiographer and
dealt with difficult issues in his personal life. He
married Catherine de Romanet, who, strangely,
was said to have never read a word of Racine’s
writings during her lifetime. In addition, he was
involved in a vicious scandal when he was accused
of poisoning his mistress, Marquise Du Parc, but
no formal charges were ever brought against him.
Toward the end of his life, Racine produced two
religious plays. Esther premiered in 1689, and
240 Racine, Jean
Athalie in 1691. Both plays were performed by the
female students at the school of Saint-Cyr. Some of
his historical works were also published during
this time, but they were little more than royalist
propaganda designed to ingratiate him with King
Louis XIV. Racine died of cancer on April 21, and
was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne du Mont
in Paris.
Critical Analysis
Of all the many plays Racine produced, none has
greater fame or reputation than his masterpiece,
Phèdre. It is upon this play that Racine’s own fame
as a tragic playwright chiefly rests.
In writing the story of Phèdre, Racine was fol-
lowing in the footsteps of the Greek tragedian Eu-
ripides, who composed the story in his play
Hippolytus. In subsequent ages, other writers re-
turned to the story and continually adapted it, but
Racine’s effort has become the most famous.
The plot of Phèdre is recognizably classical in
origin. Phèdre is the wife of Thésée, the strong and
heroic king of Athens. However, she has a secret,
burning passion for her stepson, Hippolyte. Thus,
the stage is set for tragic love. After Phèdre is in-
correctly told that her husband is dead, she de-
clares her love for Hippolyte. He does not return
her affection, because he loves another, named
Aricie; thus, Phèdre ’s emotional anguish is futile.
King Thésée, who is very much alive, returns to
Athens and is given a false report of what has hap-
pened. Told by the queen’s treacherous confidant,
Oenone, that Hippolyte has seduced his wife, he
executes his own son. When informed of these
events, Phèdre holds herself responsible for Hip-
polyte’s death and commits suicide.
Phèdre contains many classical themes of
drama. Unreciprocated love leads to despair; the
father and the son regard each other with jealousy
and suspicion; and trust in a confidant is betrayed.
These are not only aspects of life that most people
can easily relate to, but also classical examples of
tragic fate; thus, it is not surprising that Racine’s
portrayal of human nature—in all its virtue and
vice—made him greatly popular with French au-
diences and monarchs alike.
Racine was perhaps the greatest French drama-
tist of his age. Although he engaged in fierce and
bitter competition with Molière and Pierre
CORNEILLE, he both influenced and was influenced
by them. During the century after Racine’s death,
the style and content of the great French play-
wright VOLTAIRE would be heavily affected by
Racine’s work, although Voltaire often criticized
Racine for the similarity of his characters. Despite
his personal shortcomings, Racine stands as a shin-
ing example of the literature of one of the golden
ages of European culture.
English Versions of Works by Jean Racine
Bajazet. Translated by Alan Hollinghurst. New York:
Random House, 1992.
Berenice. St. Paul, Minn.: Consortium Book Sales,
1991.
Racine: Mithridate. Edited by Gustave Rudler. Lon-
don: Bristol Classic Press, 1979.
Three Plays of Racine: Andromache, Brittanicus, Phae-
dra. Translated by George Dillon. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1961.
Works about Jean Racine
Caldicott, Edric E., and Derval Conroy, eds. Racine:
The Power and the Pleasure. Dublin: University
College of Dublin Press, 2001.
Goodkin, Richard E. Birth Marks: The Tragedy of Pri-
mogeniture in Pierre Corneille, Thomas Corneille,
and Jean Racine. Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 2000.
Hawcroft, Michael. Word as Action: Racine, Rhetoric,
and Theatrical Language. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1992.
Knapp, Bettina L. Jean Racine: Mythos and Renewal in
Modern Theater. Tuscaloosa: University of Al-
abama Press, 1971.
Lemaitre, Jules. Jean Racine. Murrieta, Calif.: Classic
Books, 2001.
Tobin, Ronald W. Jean Racine Revisited. New York:
Twayne, 1999.
Racine, Jean 241
Radishchev, Aleksander Nikolayevich
(1749–1802) political polemicist
Aleksander Radishchev was born into a wealthy
Russian family. His obvious intelligence earned
him the opportunity to study at Leipzig University
at the state’s expense; after five years there, he re-
turned to Russia and entered government service.
Radishchev resigned from service upon his mar-
riage in 1775, but he soon found the income from
his 300 serfs to be inadequate. In 1777 he assumed
a post in the College of Commerce, where he spent
the next 13 years rising through the ranks.
Radishchev’s minor publications include
“Diary of a Week” (1770s), a sentimental chroni-
cle of seven days spent apart from friends, and a
historical translation and a biography in which he
condemns absolutism and injustice.
His most significant work, however, is A Journey
from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790), a travelogue
modeled on Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey.
Radishchev’s Journey became famous not for its
stilted, archaic prose (which Nikolai
KARAMZIN’s
fluid style would soon supersede), but for its con-
tent. Within the Journey, Radishchev denounces
the many evils he sees in society, especially serf-
dom. The work also includes an
ALLEGORY in which
a self-satisfied ruler suddenly sees that his “glitter-
ing garments” are “stained with blood and
drenched with tears.” R. P. Thaler notes that
Radishchev “condemned equally the sovereign’s
despotism, the gentry’s tyranny, and the peasants’
violence. He did not want a revolution. ...He
wanted reforms.”
CATHERINE THE GREAT saw the Journey as a crim-
inal attack on authority. She deduced that the
anonymous author was Radishchev and had him
arrested and sentenced to death, a sentence she
eventually commuted to ten years’ exile in Siberia.
Educated Russians, meanwhile, read illicit copies
of the book, and Catherine’s son Paul pardoned
Radishchev in 1796. In 1801 Radishchev com-
pleted a poem (including praise of Catherine)
about the 18th century. He also joined a commis-
sion studying legal reform. After the commission’s
chair threatened him with another exile, he com-
mitted suicide.
See also
TRAVEL NARRATIVE
.
An English Version of a Work by Aleksander
Nikolayevich Radishchev
A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Translated
by Leo Wiener and edited by R. P. Thaler. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Works about Aleksander Nikolayevich
Radishchev
Clardy, Jesse. The Philosophical Ideas of Aleksander
Radishchev. New York: Astra Books, 1964.
Lang, David Marshall. The First Russian Radical: Alek-
sander Radishchev, 1749–1802. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1977.
McConnell, Alan. A Russian Philosophe: Aleksander
Radishchev, 1749–1802. Westport, Conn.: Hyper-
ion Press, 1981.
rationalism
During the 18th century, an intellectual move-
ment known as the ENLIGHTENMENT swept across
Europe. For several generations, it dominated the
literary, artistic, musical, and philosophical
worlds of much of Europe, as well as the Euro-
pean colonies in the New World. The idea that
formed the basis of the Enlightenment was called
rationalism.
In the 18th century, French writers and thinkers
known as philosophes applied the scientific
method, developed the century before, to philo-
sophical, religious, and social questions. They be-
lieved that all questions about life must be
approached rationally and that truth must be dis-
covered through reason.
The most famous of these writers was unques-
tionably
VOLTAIRE, whose works represent perhaps
the clearest statement of Enlightenment ideals.
Other important philosophes included
MON-
TESQUIEU, Denis DIDEROT, Jean d’ALEMBERT, and
Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU.
242 Radishchev, Aleksander Nikolayevich
Rationalist thinkers were skeptical of ideas that
had been accepted in Europe for centuries. Many
questioned the absolute right of monarchs to rule
their countries, while others discarded traditional
religion to become deists or atheists. Because their
religious and political opinions challenged estab-
lished authority, rationalists were often persecuted
for their beliefs.
During the Enlightenment, rationalism led to
the production of several important works. The
novel Candide, Voltaire’s most famous work, ex-
plores the nature of good and evil, and the ques-
tion of fate versus free will. The
ENCYCLOPEDIA, a
joint effort by both Diderot and d’Alembert, rep-
resents an effort on the part of the philosophes to
systematize all human knowledge using the princi-
ples of rationalism.
During the 19th century, rationalism, and the
Enlightenment as a whole, was superseded by the
emergence of romanticism, and the cultural focus
of Europe shifted from France to England and
Germany. The influence of rationalism on world
literatures and cultures, however, continues to the
present day.
Works of Rationalism
Descartes, René, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Ra-
tionalists: Five Basic Works on Rationalism. New
York: Doubleday, 1989.
Diderot, Denis. Thoughts on the Interpretation of Na-
ture and Other Philosophical Works. Translated by
Lorna Sandler and David Adams. Manchester,
U.K.: Clinamen Press, 2000.
Works about Rationalism
Cottingham, John. Rationalism. Bristol, U.K.:
Thoemmes Press, 1998.
Hartpole-Lecky, William E. History of the Rise and
Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. La
Vergne, Tenn.: University Press of the Pacific,
2001.
Parkinson, G. H. R. The Renaissance and 17th-Cen-
tury Rationalism. Routledge History of Philoso-
phy Series, vol. 4. London: Routledge, 2003.
Rej, Mikkolaj (1505–1569) poet, fiction
writer, translator
Mikkolaj Rej was a Polish country squire. He re-
ceived no formal education, but his literary talent,
humanistic views, and patriotic sentiment helped
him become one of the central figures of the Polish
Renaissance.
Rej is traditionally called the Father of Polish
national literature. He wrote all his works in Pol-
ish, although at the time it was traditional to write
in Latin, and he wrote his philosophical works in
the form of dialogue. His main works include A
Short Conversation between Three Persons: Pan,
Voit, and Pleban (1543); a didactic poem aimed at
explaining and instructing, titled A Real Account
of the Life of a Respectable Person (1558); and a pro-
saic version of David’s Psalms (1545).
Rej was especially popular for his secular satiri-
cal works, such as The Zoo (1562) and Trifles
(1562). His short witty epigrams were known and
widely quoted. A distinguishing feature of Rej’s
satirical writing is his vast use of colloquial lan-
guage, which was a novelty for the literature of the
corresponding epoch. The persistent use of dialec-
tal language was deliberate: It was a tool to awaken
Polish national identity, to introduce folk language
into the official sphere of literature and education.
Mikkolaj Rej is a distinguished humanist, whose
input into the development of Polish literature and
culture is hard to overestimate. Sadly, English
translations of his works are not currently in print.
Renaissance (1300s–1500s)
The term Renaissance, a French word meaning “re-
birth,” describes a period of time in Western Eu-
rope marked by significant changes in politics, art,
and scholarship. Though the term may refer to any
period characterized by artistic vitality or ad-
vanced thought, it traditionally refers to the 14th-,
15th-, and 16th-century cultures of Italy, France,
Spain, England, Germany, and the Low Countries.
The “rebirth” of the Renaissance departed from
the modes of thought that had dominated the
Renaissance 243
Middle Ages in Europe. The decline of feudalism,
the increase in trade and commerce, and the
growth of cities all changed the fabric of society.
The bubonic plague, or Black Death, swept
through Europe several times, killing up to one-
third of the population. The Protestant Reforma-
tion led by Martin LUTHER and John CALVIN
splintered the Catholic Church. Scholars and
artists of the 14th century felt they lived in a world
being reborn from the ignorance, darkness, and
superstition of the medieval period. Political, so-
cial, and scientific changes followed, but the great-
est achievements of the Renaissance were in
literature and the arts.
Italy during the 1300s witnessed the beginning
of two movements that characterized the Renais-
sance. The first was a renewed interest in the liter-
ature of ancient Greece and Rome, a movement
known as CLASSICISM, largely begun by the scholar
and poet PETRARCH. The second was the influence
of HUMANISM, which began as a reform of the tra-
ditional humanistic education in rhetoric and
evolved into a mode of thought focused on the
human instead of on God. Scholars and artists
gathering in Florence under the patronage of the
powerful Medici family, which included Lorenzo
de’ MEDICI, reflected this interest in their art, most
famously in the work of MICHELANGELO. Popes and
monarchs began collecting their own personal li-
braries, and universities flourished.
In addition, authors wrote less frequently in Latin
and more frequently in the vernacular or native lan-
guages, while Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of
moveable type around 1440 made printing possible.
These changes made education, scholarship, and lit-
erature more widely available than ever before. Some
landmark authors of the Italian Renaissance were
Giovanni
BOCCACCIO, Pietro BEMBO, Baldessare CAS-
TIGLIONE, Niccolò MACHIAVELLI, and Ludovico AR-
IOSTO. LEONARDO DA VINCI—painter, architect,
engineer, and musician—exemplified the Renais-
sance ideal of the “universal man” who was highly-
educated, accomplished in the arts as well as the
sciences, and unfailingly pleasant in all company.
From Italy, the values of the Renaissance spread
to France, where they were best modeled in the po-
etry of Pierre de
RONSARD, the fiction of François
RABELAIS, and the essays of Michel de MONTAIGNE.
In Germany, Desiderius ERASMUS was the most
renowned Renaissance scholar, famed for his re-
finement of humanistic ideals and his influence on
many other thinkers and poets, particularly the
English Sir Thomas MORE, whose Utopia (1516),
which described the values of a perfect society, was
modeled after Plato’s Republic. English arts and lit-
erature in the Renaissance flourished in the poetry
of Philip SIDNEY and Edmund Spenser, but the
highest achievement was in drama, in the works of
William SHAKESPEARE, Christopher MARLOWE,Ben
JONSON, and their contemporaries.
In Spain, the most celebrated authors of the Re-
naissance were LOPE DE VEGA, who wrote hundreds
of plays, and Miguel de CERVANTES, whose Don
Quixote (1605) is still considered by many to be the
greatest modern novel. Spanish explorers led the
Europe of the Renaissance in world exploration,
stretching the boundaries of the known world. In
addition, developments in science significantly
changed established doctrines. In 1543 COPERNICUS
dared to suggest that the Earth orbited the Sun,
and around 1600 Galileo GALILEI began his experi-
ments in physics.
Though a span of time marked by war, plague,
and resistance to new ideas, the Renaissance in Eu-
rope profoundly and irrevocably changed the so-
cial structure. The renewed interest in the human
form and the human mind, the advances in knowl-
edge, the spread of learning, and the zeal for dis-
covery that took place during the Renaissance led
to the
ENLIGHTENMENT and still underlie European
and European-influenced cultures to this day.
English Versions of Works from the
Renaissance
Bocaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Translated by
Mark Musa. New York: Signet, 2002.
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by To-
bias Smollett. London: Modern Library, 2004.
244 Renaissance
Erasmus, Desiderius. The Praise of Folly and Other
Writings. Edited by Robert M. Adams. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1989.
Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays. Trans-
lated by M. A. Screech. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works. Edited
by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Works about the Renaissance
Grendler, Paul, et al., eds. Renaissance Encyclopedia for
Students. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003.
Manchester, William. A World Lit Only by Fire.
Boston: Back Bay Books, 1993.
Rabb, Theodore. Renaissance Lives: Portraits of an Age.
New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Tuchman, Barbara W. A Distant Mirror. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987.
Richardson, Samuel (1689–1761) novelist
Samuel Richardson was born in Mackworth, Der-
byshire, to Samuel Richardson, a joiner or wood-
worker, and his wife, Elizabeth. Richardson
attended Merchant Taylor’s school for some years
and at age 17 became apprenticed to a printer.
When his apprenticeship ended in 1715, he be-
came a compositor for a printer in London. Six
years later he set up his own printing shop and
married Martha Wilde, daughter of the man under
whom he had apprenticed. Richardson initially
printed political material and in 1733 became the
House of Commons’ official printer.
Richardson’s first complete work, The Appren-
tice’s Vade Mecum (Young Man’s Pocket Companion,
1733), was written for apprentices. In 1739 he was
commissioned to write a collection of letters for
rural readers to copy for their own use. Eventually
published as Familiar Letters (1741), it inspired
Richardson’s better-known work, Pamela (1740),
an epistolary
NOVEL (a novel written in letters)
about a virtuous servant girl fending off the ad-
vances of Mr. B, her master. Richardson packaged
the work as nonfiction, but its success forced him
to admit the disguise. While Pamela drew the ad-
miration of the masses, one of its detractors was
Henry Fielding, who parodied the work in
Shamela (1741).
Richardson published a sequel, commonly re-
ferred to as Pamela II, following the heroine’s fate
after she marries Mr. B. In another novel, Clarissa
(1748), Richardson retained the epistolary struc-
ture; the focus on a young, virtuous woman; and
the sentimentality of his Pamela novels. He altered
the formula, making the heroine an heiress, rewrit-
ing romance as tragedy, and increasing the novel’s
length and number of letter-writers. Richardson
continued to revise Clarissa throughout his life.
Even more successful than Pamela, Clarissa
sparked a fashion for sentimental and epistolary
novels, including
GOETHE’s The Sorrows of Young
Werther and ROUSSEAU’s Julie. Richardson also
completed The History of Sir Charles Grandison
(1753–54), an epistolary novel about a man torn
between two women.
Richardson’s novels have provided fruitful
ground for critics. Marxist critic Terry Eagleton
claims: “These novels are an agent, rather than a
mere account, of the English bourgeoisie’s attempt
to wrest a degree of ideological hegemony from the
aristocracy in the decades which follow the political
settlement of 1688.” And critic Ira Konigsberg
writes:“Richardson analyzed more deeply the char-
acters of the novel and displayed in them a larger
number of mental and emotional states. He was
able to accomplish this in large part by his skillful
writing of letters in which the fictitious correspon-
dent explicitly recreates his or her inward being.”
Elizabeth Brophy has commented on his first
novel’s psychological vividness: “By ‘writing to the
moment’ he enabled readers to follow the inward
struggles of Pamela, to participate in her uncer-
tainties, and to undergo her trials.”
Recent critical debates about Clarissa concern
the heroine’s degree of power. Michael Suarez con-
tends that Clarissa’s power is her ability to refuse:
“Clarissa’s ‘No’ is an attempt to assert her own au-
tonomy, to secure her right to a will of her own”;
Richardson, Samuel 245
and Donnalee Frega regards Clarissa’s self-im-
posed starvation as a form of power.
The title character of Richardson’s Sir Charles
Grandison is an idealized man: “In his aspect there
is something great and noble, that shews him to
be of rank. Were kings to be chosen for beauty and
majesty of person, Sir Charles Grandison would
have few competitors.” Richardson explains:
The Example of a Man acting uniformly well
thro’ a Variety of trying Scenes, because all his
Actions are regulated by one steady Principle:
A Man of Religion and Virtue; of Liveliness
and Spirit; accomplished and agreeable; happy
in himself, and a Blessing to others.
Critic Jocelyn Harris holds that “Grandison as
an individual work is often an advance on Clarissa.
The variety, the gaiety smoothly integrated with
seriousness, the deft handling of a large group of
characters...such matters frequently outclass any-
thing that Richardson had done before.”
Finally, in The Rise of the Novel, Ian Watt remarks:
Richardson’s deep imaginative commitment
to all the problems of the new sexual ideology
and his personal devotion to the exploration of
the private and subjective aspects of human ex-
perience produced a novel where the relation-
ship between the protagonists embodies a
universe of moral and social conflicts of a scale
and complexity beyond anything in previous
fiction.
Other Works by Samuel Richardson
The Clarissa Project. Edited by Florian Stuber. New
York: AMS Press, 1990.
Selected Letters. Edited by John Carroll. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1964.
Works about Samuel Richardson
Blewett, David, ed. Passion and Virtue: Essays on the
Novels of Samuel Richardson. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2001.
Eaves, T. C. Duncan, and Ben D. Kimpel. Samuel
Richardson: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971.
Warner, William Beatty. Reading Clarissa: The Strug-
gles of Interpretation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1979.
Riebeeck, Jan van (1618–1677) diarist
Jan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck was born in
Culemborg in the Netherlands. At age 20, he joined
the mighty Dutch East India Company as an assis-
tant surgeon and was posted to Batavia (modern
Jakarta, Indonesia). In 1645 the company gave the
ambitious Riebeeck command of a trading station
in present-day Vietnam. He was soon dismissed
from this post for engaging in his own trading ven-
tures, a practice strictly discouraged by the East
India Company.
Riebeeck remained in their black books until
1652, when the company ordered him to establish a
station to provision the company’s ships at the
Cape of Good Hope, midway on their long jour-
ney around Africa to the East Indies. Riebeeck ar-
rived at the site of modern-day Cape Town in April
of that year. He landed with 100 men and built a
fort and infirmary as well as a primitive port. Food
shortages bedeviled the settlement, however, and in
1655 Riebeeck advocated sending “free burghers”
from Holland to work their own farms (as opposed
to slaves or indentured servants). He thus paved the
way for the settlement of South Africa and the ori-
gins of the Boer people, descendants of the first set-
tlers who began arriving in 1657. Under his
leadership, the colonists fought a bloody war with
the nearby Hottentot people in 1659–60.
Riebeeck had long believed his talents were
being wasted, and in 1662 he was delighted to be
appointed governor of Malacca in the East Indies.
Three years later, he became secretary to the Coun-
cil of India, one of the most prestigious offices in
the company’s Asian empire. He died in Batavia,
and occupies a hallowed place in Boer memory, the
“Father of South Africa” after whom many streets,
towns, and landmarks are named. His voluminous
246 Riebeeck, Jan van