ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that valet-poet Clement Marot savors the sociability of group violence even as he embraces civility, figuring himself as an agent in Francois's expansion of the state, and as a self-appointed corrector eager to police manners and punish robin presumption. Without suggesting that the relationship between friendship and civil correction is by any means exclusive to France, Frances early and strong expansion of the state provides a good backdrop for studying how the two phenomena can enable one another. Writing at the French court primarily in the 1520's and 1530's, Marot entertained relations of particular proximity with king Francois I, with Francois's sister, Marguerite de Navarre, and with a royal Valois cousin living in Italy, Rene de France. The chapter suggests that one allows friendship and the civilizing process to sit in a complex relationship with each other, without attempting a linear narrative of modernity's rise and friendships decline.
