The Poetics of Comedy in Jacques Peletier Du Mans’s Art poëtique (1555)

Abstract

This article looks at Jacques Peletier du Mans’s (1555) rhetorical and poetic treatise, Art poëtique, with a focus on his theory on comedy. It draws comparisons with Peletier’s 1541 literary treatise, which was the first translation into French of Horace’s Ars Poetica. In his 1555 treatise, Peletier developed Horace’s position on comedy into his own original theory, moulding the classical model to fit within a contemporary context and setting out the ways in which comedy most benefits early modern writers and readers. To create his theory on comedy — which was widely read in France throughout the sixteenth century — Peletier also took inspiration from other classical writers and from Italian theoreticians. Ultimately, this article helps to determine the rhetorical and theoretical position of comedy in France in the mid-sixteenth century, in relation to its classical and Italian counterparts. It also deepens and broadens our understanding of Peletier’s literary theory. Despite being one of the most prominent French literary treatises of the period, Peletier’s approach to comedy has been overlooked in scholarship, and many of his models have not been identified.