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Jacques Amyot, Preceptor of Two Kings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
Relatively little is known about the actual influence of Jacques Amyot on Charles IX and Henry III, who were entrusted as young boys to his pedagogical care. Amyot's translation of the works of Plutarch was so popular that Montaigne called it a ‘breviaire’. It is hardly conceivable that his efforts as an educator should not have left a traceable imprint. In this paper I have attempted to trace this imprint. The question of whether or not Amyot's influence on the two last Valois is to be qualified as constructive will entail another question: ‘Was Amyot's pedagogy a success or a failure within the sphere of literature, the arts and “culture” in the restricted sense, or in the sphere of action, political and socio-economic?’ An attempt to answer these questions might open up an interesting late Renaissance vista into the relationship between ‘art for art's sake’ and ‘art as social significance’.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1957
References
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11 Yates' translation in Academies, pp. 37-38.
12 See n. 7.
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