A Sixteenth-Century Modern? Ancients and Moderns in Loys Le Roy’s De la Vicissitude.

Loys Le Roy’s final work, De la Vicissitude ou variété des choses en l’univers (1575), has often been cited as one of the earliest Modern interventions in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. This article explores what might be Modern about this text via a close reading of its final chapter. It draws on Cave’s theory of pre-histories to situate Le Roy within the broader context of the Querelle as well as to offer a reading of Le Roy’s juxtaposition of ancient and modern culture that restores a sense of the particularity both of the work itself and of the immediate context of the work’s composition and publication. In investigating how Le Roy might be considered ‘Modern’, it explores his treatment of the themes of imitation, translation, growth and decay, and the development of new genres or kinds of writing, as informed by contemporary humanist debates, as well as by the context of the French civil wars. It is argued that Le Roy’s view of ancients and moderns is informed both by his understanding of history and by a dual conception of time, which lead him to invest cautiously in the idea of greater, or more perfect, cultural production in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]