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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The look, an epigrammatic and anthological vector in the Selecta epigrammata graeca latine versa of Janus Cornarius

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In 1529, a German physician, Janus Cornarius, published an anthology of epigrams entitled Selecta epigrammata graeca latine versa. A polymathic scholar, a committed philologist and an independent humanist, the author offers a compilation of Greek epigrams translated into Latin, drawing on several hypotexts.The theme of the gazing, present in many epigrams, allows to highlight the main characteristics of the epigrammatic genre as well as of the anthological form and reveals itself as a precious asset of the festivitas as much as of the transmission of the eruditio. Three types of viewpoints are constantly present in the work : the characters’ one as well the reader’s and the author’s. This diversity undeniably reinforces the effect of bigarrure inherent to the genre and the form of the work, but its effects are in fact multiple. The setting in scene of these glances serves indeed the brevitas since it quickly activates the narrative dynamics. But it also contributes, in a large part, to the pictorial dimension since it is vector of hypotyposes. Finally, it plays a major role in the deployment of the comic tone. For all these reasons, it is indissociable from the spirit of festivitas which animates the work. In that, the compilation of epigrams could be, to a certain extent, associated with nugae. However, if the plurality of the staged views serves the festive dimension of the work, it also fully participates in the construction of the eruditio. Indeed, thanks to it, Cornarius opposes to the reductive perceptions, plural points of view, vectors of knowledge. In so doing, he defends a conception of knowledge that no longer depends on a single viewpoint and establishes plurality as the major pivot of knowledge. By deconstructing the very notion of auctoritas, he encourages the reader both to exercise his or her own critical judgment and to participate in the linguistic tournament orchestrated in the anthology. He thus presents a knowledge in movement and a culture is perpetually perfectible. Thanks to the staging of different views, the epigrammatic genre and the epigrammatic form seal festivitas and eruditio in a fusional way. This compilation of epigrams can thus be qualified as seriae nugae.