HISTOIRE DES OEUVRES ET THÉORIE POÉTIQUE DE NICOLAS DENISOT

Even though he has generally been regarded as a minor figure, Nicolas Denisot (Le Mans, 1515 – Paris, 1559), poet, painter, preceptor and, presumably, secret agent, met an outstanding popularity at the beginning of the 1550s and played, in those years, a crucial role in Parisian literary circles. This thesis aims at retracing the evolution of his career and the network of his acquaintances, as well as at establishing the value of his contribution to the renewal of poetry in the French Renaissance. Chapter one focuses on Denisot's biography in a chronological order and takes into account both his journeys, from Le Mans to Paris and then to England and Calais, and his relationships with the literati of his time. The following chapters are devoted to the three major fields which make up the main part of his literary production : his poems on the Nativity (noëls and cantiques) ; Neo-latin poetry, as it is represented by Royal 12 A VII Manuscript (British Library) ; and collective and multilingual tombeaux. All works are explored considering the features of their specific literary genre, with a special focus on the cultural context in which they were created. The final chapter deals with the problem of ancient and modern attributions, among which is the most controversial one : that of the novel L'Amant resuscité de la mort d'amour, whose unknown author, Théodose Valentinian, has often been identified with Nicolas Denisot.