PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

Deschamps also appeared in the text although Boaistuau devoted most of his attention
to contemporaries such as Polydore Virgil, Girolamo Cardano, Josse Clichtove,
Nicole de Haupas and Guillaume Paradin. The use of such a diverse range of material
demonstrates the representative character of Le Théâtre, which incorporated classical
models by means of the philosophical outlook of a sixteenth-century work.
Amongst contemporary treatises, Erasmus’s De contemptu mundi and Antonio De
Guevara’s Relox de Príncipes (1529) had a great influence on Boaistuau’s book in
terms of content and ideas. 525 The first was a moralising tract warning against the
dangers of material wealth while Guevara’s work, designed after Xenophon’s
Cyropaedia, narrated the life of Marcus Aurelius and embodied the humanist
preoccupation with antiquity. There are numerous examples throughout Boaistuau’s
text which reveal the influence of these works. For example, when he describes the
universal state of corruption and immorality, and when he contrasts the way in which
infants are fed by nurses or step-mothers as compared to animals that always raise
their own offspring themselves. 526 A third contemporary work from which Boaistuau
borrowed was the Florentine Giambattista Gelli’s Circe (1549) which was translated
into French in 1550. 527 It had a similar scope and theme to Le Théâtre (it created a
picture of human misery) and was written in the form of a dialogue, with a clear
rhetorical character. Armand de Gaetano has demonstrated the similarities between
the two works, and how Boaistuau’s work partially imitated certain passages,
525 Antonio de Guevara (c. 1480-1545) was a Spanish writer at the court of Ferdinand II and Isabella.
He was later appointed royal historiographer by Charles V, and then became Bishop of Guadix and
Mondonedo. His works were quite popular in the sixteenth century and were translated into many
languages. Beside the Relox de Príncipes, Boaistuau also used his Aviso de privados y doctrina de
cortesanos (1539) which focused on the life at court – see Le Théâtre du monde, p. 88.
526 Taken from Erasmus and De Guevara respectively – see Boaistuau, P. (ed. M. Simonin), Le Théâtre
du monde, p. 243, note 49, and p. 260, notes 148-149.
527 For more information on Circe, dedicated to Cosimo de Medici, see Gelli, G. (intro R. Adams),
Circe (Ithaca, 1963).
- 173 -