Wednesday 13th June - Mara van der Lugt (Corpus Christi) and Helena Taylor (St Anne's)

JOINT SESSION
17.00-18.30
Massey Room, Balliol College

Mara van der Lugt (Corpus Christi College)
Of faux savants and faux Philosophes: quarrels and morals in Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) 

Abstract

Even a cursory glance at the history of the production of Pierre Bayle’s famous Dictionnaire Historique et Critique will show that the vital years of its initial genesis (1689-1696) ran parallel to the hottest years of controversy between Bayle and his friend-turned-enemy Pierre Jurieu: 1690-1697. This was only partly a coincidence: for although the idea of a dictionary was born independently of the Jurieu-debate, the work itself was deeply influenced by the years of conflict during which it was created, and each of the editions still bears the imprint of these years. Most importantly, before the polemic with Jurieu Bayle had emphasised the irenic side of the Republic of Letters in his scholarly journal Nouvelles de la République des Lettres: in the Dictionnaire he reframed the ideal of this Republic in a way that stressed its polemical side while attempting to install an ethics of scholarly debate.

This paper will argue that the polemic with Jurieu, which strongly informed Bayle’s thought on the Republic of Letters and on scholarly ‘warfare’, is a crucial context for the elaboration of the Dictionnaire, and therefore essential for understanding some of its central themes. It will trace the way in which Bayle throughout the Dictionnaire is attempting to construct an ethics for the Republic of Letters through reconstructing its practice in the lives of ancient and modern scholars and philosophers: building morals on the basis of quarrels. Finally, it will examine how this ethical-polemical undertone introduced several tensions into the project of the dictionary that would remain unresolved; and how the ghost of Jurieu came back to haunt the author of the Dictionnaire.

Mara van der Lugt studied Philosophy at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and as part of the Erasmus Research Master in Early Modern Intellectual History spent 6 months in Oxford to write an extended thesis on the Irish philosopher John Toland's views on religion. Based in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, she is now in the 2nd year of a DPhil in History on the 17th-century French philosopher Pierre Bayle, focusing especially on how to interpret his ‘Dictionnaire Historique et Critique’. She is supervised by Professor Laurence Brockliss (History) and Dr Kate Tunstall (Modern Languages).

Helena Taylor (St Anne's College)
Narratives of the disgraced poet: Ovid, Exile and the Court of Louis XIV

Frontispiece, C. Dassoucy, L’Ovide en belle humeur 

(Paris: Pépingué, 1653) 2nd éd. 

Abstract‘Je fus surpris de me voir si défiguré’ remarks the character, Ovide, in Guéret’s Le Parnasse Réformé (Paris: Jolly, 1669, p25) He is reacting to a burlesque translation of his work, the frontispiece of which is depicted here. This image provides a useful methodological tool: is this a picture of Ovid dressed as a seventeenth-century man, or is it a seventeenth-century man dressed as Ovid? Is this figure looking at a portrait of Ovid or is he looking at his own reflection? In this paper, I want to survey the different ‘défigurements’ of Ovid’s character—the different representations of Ovid’s life—in the second half of the seventeenth century. This was a period of noticeable interest in his poetry. Employing the argument that there was a relationship in the early modern period between how a writer’s life was constructed and the interpretation of their work, I will consider how Ovid is fashioned in the Vies that accompany his translations to suit the aesthetic purposes of his translator. Moving away from this model, I will also consider what Ovid is being used to discuss beyond the contemporary aesthetic, by surveying the representations of his life in versions that are not attached to his poetry—novels and biographical dictionaries. This paper will offer an overview of my thesis, interrogating some of the problems identified in telling Ovid’s story, and examining what these problems might allow early modern writers to discuss.

Helena is in the second year of her DPhil in French at St Anne’s College. Her thesis, provisionally entitled ‘Lives of Ovid in French Writing: 1666-1713’ looks at the representations and uses of Ovid in late seventeenth/early eighteenth-century French writing. She did her BA in Latin and French and her MA in French literature at Worcester College.