Scratch the surface of literary production from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century in France, and a large number of the authors, translators, and editors turn out to be relatives of other authors, translators, and editors. Why was this? Why did some 200 families contain more than one literary producer and so exercise disproportionate influence over what people read in the period? The phenomenon ranged from poetry (the Marots, the Des Roches) to scholarship (the Scaligers), from history-writing (the Godefroys) to engineering (the Errards). It included not just fathers and sons bu ... More

Scratch the surface of literary production from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century in France, and a large number of the authors, translators, and editors turn out to be relatives of other authors, translators, and editors. Why was this? Why did some 200 families contain more than one literary producer and so exercise disproportionate influence over what people read in the period? The phenomenon ranged from poetry (the Marots, the Des Roches) to scholarship (the Scaligers), from history-writing (the Godefroys) to engineering (the Errards). It included not just fathers and sons but also mothers, daughters, siblings, uncles, cousins, grandchildren. One family, the Sainte-Marthes, took this so far that sixteen of its own became literary producers, rising to twenty-seven if one broadens the chronological parameters. The phenomenon was European rather than just French, as the Sidneys or the Tassos show. But it took distinctive forms in France, where it was often connected to royal office-holding, and where it eventually faltered only with the French Revolution. Literary production was for many families a way of representing, and so claiming, their own place in the world; a way, alongside others, of clutching at distinctiveness and social status; a way of generating sociocultural legacy within the family. Not that everything went to plan or that the plan was always precise. Family literature, as defined by this study, was orientated towards the future but was sometimes even rejected or parodied by descendants rather than imitated or venerated. Whether harmonious or disunited, families were central to the hierarchical social fabric out of which much literature and learning emerged. Restoring that centrality changes our understanding of the works produced.