La “sampogna” e la “musette”. Sannazaro e Jean Lemaire

Printed in Paris in early 1504, Le Temple d’Honneur et de Vertus by Jean Lemaire de Belges is one of the most representative examples of the bucolic genre in Renaissance France. Besides its ancient and modern sources, its textual filigree reveals a close reading of Iacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia, both in a series of key passages of the Temple and especially in the humanist atmosphere shared by the two texts. Adapted to different cultural contexts, this dimension marks the birth of a new classicism among the Moderns, distancing both authors from more recent traditions: in Sannazaro’s case, the fifteenth-century vernacular bucolic of Arzocchi and Benivieni; in Lemaire’s work, the world of pastourelles and bergeries.