ABSTRACT
The first major work devoted to history of Anglo-French literary relations is Sidney Lee’s The French Renaissance in England. A hefty volume, not devoid of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, the book covers a vast number of fields: Anglo-French history, devotional literature, prose, poetry, and drama. Shakespeare and other contemporary dramatists had only been indebted to the influence of France for their “raw material,” “humble scaffolding” of their art. Anglo-French literary relations in the Renaissance did not function in a vacuum. One aspect which we have not been able to address so far is the cross-fertilization between French Renaissance culture and other European nations. Moreover, when working on French allusions for the database project, our contributors have repeatedly been aware of complex pan-European networks of allusions. Frenchness was synonymous with style, fashion and refinement, but on the other the French were depicted as fickle, deceptive, excessive, and inconstant, that is, ever-changing.
