ABSTRACT
The image of Narcissus evokes a whole nexus of allusions in early modern poetry and art. Among other things, it alludes to vanity and the dangers of philautia or self-love. Maurice Sceve's Delie, object de plus haulte vertu was first published in Lyons in 1544 "Chez Sulpice Sabon, Pour Antoine Constantin." It is important to remember that the specular scene in Ovid's Metamorphoses is staged by the goddess Nemesis to punish Narcissus for having spurned so many admirers. As Brenkman explains, what happens to Narcissus is a kind of "imaginary capture." Narcissus functions as a more general paradigm for the beholder of a work of art, for there is a narcissistic quality in the ancient rhetorical formulation of response to realist works of art, that, in Jas Elsner's words, is predicated on the beholder's 'assimilating the image into the framework of his own subjective consciousness.'.
