Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature

Writing from History examines a central feature of early modern European culture: the representation of exemplary figures from antiquity as models of action. Drawing on the literature and historiography the Renaissance, as well as on recent discussions in literary theory and philosophy, Timothy Hampton explores the ways in which the Renaissance self is constituted through a dialogue with history. Through nuanced readings of major works in French, Italian, Spanish, and English, he sheds new light on the Renaissance appropriation of ancient history and offers a suggestive analysis of the relationship between interpretation and political community.

A cornerstone of humanist ideology and pedagogy, the exemplary figure embodied the authority of history while providing readers a model for political and moral action. Hampton redefines the humanist concern with imitating the past as a problem of politics and elucidates the relationship between the literary representation of exemplarity and the political and ideological struggles of the late Renaissance. He demonstrates that the major authors of the period, from Erasmus and Machiavelli to Shakespeare, Montaigne, Tasso and Cervantes, display a profound anxiety about the meaning and function of exemplary figures -- and hence about the value of history itself as a guide for life. Through discussions of epic, tragedy, the essay, and the novel, Hampton traces the changing function of exemplarity for aristocratic ideology, reflecting on its role in the evolution of literary genres, in the representation of the body, and in the figuration of the self. From the collapse of humanist traditions of exemplarity in the late Renaissance, Hampton argues, new techniques emerge for defining the relationship between literature and the political world and for representing the self in history and society--techniques that map out the very terrain of modernity.

Timothy Hampton is Professor of French and holds the Bernie H. Williams Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature, Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France, and Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe, all from Cornell.