The Early Modern Genre of Cabinet in the Heritage of French Erudites

Abstract

The Renaissance era gave birth to a new phenomenon in the European intellectual culture — the phenomenon of the cabinet of curiosities. Simultaneously, a new genre of the same name — the genre of cabinet — emerged in the Renaissance literature. Though not too popular, it assumed different forms under the pen of different authors. In France its usage was mostly connected with the erudite intellectual movement that had been formed during the reign of Francis I and flourished in the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. Interesting variants of the genre were provided by two prominent authors of the epoch — an Arras clergyman Guillaume Gazet (1554–1612) and the future French royal historiographer André Duchesne (1584–1640). Despite the difference between their social status and professions, both Gazet and Duchesne belonged to the French erudite movement. Having practically identical titles, “Cabinet of ladies” (“Cabinet des dames”), their works were published almost concurrently at the beginning of the seventeenth century and demonstrate two patterns of using the genre in the erudite intellectual circle. One of these patterns may be characterized as pure erudite, or antiquarian; the other — as ethical, or moralistic. The peculiar use of the genre of cabinet in the French intellectual circles enables to emphasize certain distinguishing features of the French erudite movement in general, as well as to outline the specific features of the intellectual life of the French society in the Early Modern epoch.