by Steven Moore
In many ways, Barclay’s novel resembles a picaresque, though this is by accident, not by design, for even though the first two Spanish picaresques had been translated into French by his time, there’s no evidence Barclay knew them. Like the protagonist of Lazarillo of Tormes, Euphormio tells his story from a later, more comfortable vantage point, explaining how he was cheated, misled, and exploited by various people until he wised up, educated himself, and eventually found a patron in King Tessaranactus of Scolimorrhodia (i.e., King James I of Great Britain). Although the reader commiserates with Euphormio’s misfortunes, we can’t help but notice his self-aggrandizing habit of comparing his setbacks with the loftiest tragedies of classical mythology, his self-pitying conviction that the gods are out to get him, and his pedantic habit of showing off his new-minted education with hundreds of erudite references culled from the works of Pliny, Plutarch, Livy, Athenaeus, and others. Like the protagonist of Alemán’s Guzman of Alfarache, Euphormio seems to be putting on an act rather than making a true confession, and is a little too obsequious in his sucking up to King Tessaranactus. (Part 1 of the novel begins with an unctuous dedicatory epistle to James I, from whom Barclay hoped to win a court appointment.) And as in the best picaresques, Euphormio grows up as his novel progresses: in part 1 he blames others for his problems, but in part 2 he begins blaming himself for allowing those problems to happen. Aesthetically, the novel grows up too; part 1 rambles, whereas part 2 is much better focused.
Euphormio’s Satyricon is a prime example of Menippean satire, which Barclay’s translator David Fleming defines as “a fictional mixture of prose and verse characterized by heterogeneity, lightness of tone, erudition, and the excoriation of vice” (xvi). Barclay’s tone is a little darker than Petronius’s, and certainly more chaste—no homosexuality or “ritual buttocking-thumping” here, just a guilty act of adultery and a young Puritaness with eyes that “tingled with a slightly melancholy sauciness” (2.31)—but otherwise the novel offers a variety of diversions. The text is peppered with poems by Euphormio and others, learned wordplay, occult stories, a précis of an allegorical play dramatizing the revolt of the Netherlands against the Spanish, and—best of all—a fable about criticism: in book 2, a young artist displays his allegorical portrait of a modest lady in a purple mantle, flanked on one side by some who adore her and on the other by some who disdain her. A would-be critic delivers a lengthy argument claiming the woman represents the study of jurisprudence (which the Jesuits disdained); then Euphormio steps up and insists the woman represents the arts and sciences, especially literature, meaning “a lively description of the affections of one’s own age” (2.23), such as Barclay is writing. After Euphormio concludes his critique “with tremendous flourish,” the young artist smiles and says the lady represents a large wine cask, appealing to drinkers but not to teetotalers. “Everyone burst out in laughter” (2.24).
Like the young man’s painting, young Barclay’s novel can be read in many ways: as a satirical, transhistorical allegory of current events; as a bildungsroman; an attempt to adapt Petronius’s method to modern literature; and/or a flexing of Barclay’s literary muscles, showing off what he had learned during his education under the Jesuits and biting the hand that fed him that knowledge. (Some first novelists write about what they know, others about what they’ve read.) It’s a portrait of the artist as a young man, and a summary of what he had learned about the world by his mid-twenties, especially regarding religion:
I considered it all at great remove—both what I had just seen in the household of Catharinus [a Puritan] and what I had once known among the Acignians [Jesuits], as well as whatever I had learned from the priests of various religions. I was filled with bitter pain, for I realized that the contentiousness of mortal men commits as many abuses in divine ceremonies as in human conflicts. People are driven to great lengths by vain zeal and cruel curses, and yet they blame one another for their lack of charity. The learned are propelled by ambition and the powerful by factiousness; as for the weak, they merely follow authority, either that of a doctrine or that of the more powerful forces [. . . :] an education impressed on them by their parents, or by the attitude of their race, or by some enthusiasm without rational basis[.] How few are led by the decision of a mature mind! And yet we battle one another in these hatreds; you can easily see that everyone thinks himself wise. O proud mortality! O merciless ingenuity of superstition! (2.31)
Set in the classical era, written at the beginning of the 17th century, Euphormio’s Satyricon unfortunately describes our world as accurately as Barclay’s own.
Translator Fleming claims that, “With the single exception of Don Quijote, there can be little doubt that John Barclay’s Euphormionis Lusinini Satyricon was the most important work of prose fiction published in Europe in the first decade of the seventeenth century” (ix). A champion of d’Urfé’s Astrea would object, but it’s true that 40 or so editions of the Latin original appeared between 1605 and 1773, along with French, Dutch, and German translations, some Latin continuations, and a few imitations (Misoponeri Satyricon [1617] and François Guyet’s Gaeomemphionis Cantaliensis Satyricon [1628]). Yet even more popular, and even more widely translated, was Barclay’s other novel, Argenis (1621). This time his literary model was Heliodorus’s Ethiopian Story, the same ancient Greek novel that inspired Cervantes’ last romance.145 Formally, Barclay’s novel is simpler—it unfolds in a linear fashion, with only a few flashbacks, unlike the Greek’s more convoluted fiction—but thematically it is more complicated because Barclay intended it to work on three levels simultaneously.
Primarily, it’s a faux Greek romance (though twice the length of the originals) detailing the travails of a noble couple named Poliarchus, prince of a kingdom in Gaul, and Argenis, daughter of King Meleander of Sicily and heir to his throne. They are secretly engaged, but the sterling Argenis attracts three other suitors: a Sicilian rebel named Lycogenes, eager to overthrow the king to get his hands on the princess; a prince wandering incognito named Archombrotus, who visits Sicily, falls in love with Argenis, and helps suppress Lycogenes’ rebellion; and a prince of Sardinia named Radirobanes, who also helps defeat Lycogenes in the hope of marrying Argenis. But she has eyes only for Poliarchus, who won her heart after disguising himself as a girl to join her entourage, then foiled an attempt on the king’s life: beating off a gang of assassins while still dressed as a girl, he is mistaken for the goddess Pallas by the grateful but befuddled king, who appoints his daughter Argenis as “her” priestess, much to the couple’s private delight. The elaborate plot also involves Poliarchus’s backstory in Gaul (kidnapped as a youth) and some adventures in nearby Mauritania—ruled by a queen who later turns out to be Archombrotus’s mother—where a thrilling battle occurs featuring maddened elephants and a fight to the death between Poliarchus and Radirobanes. As in most Greek romances, there are shipwrecks and pirates, disguises and betrayals, and coincidences and surprising revelations at the end that resolve the rivalry between Poliarchus and Archombrotus. The novel begins with the latter saving Poliarchus’s life, the middle concerns their rivalry, and the conclusion reconciles them; Argenis is more about them than about the rather colorless princess, as bland as her generic name. (“Argenis” is a near anagram for regina, which can mean “princess” as well as “queen.”) Unlike Euphormio’s Satyricon, Barclay pays closer attention to the historical setting (the 1st century ce, per one datable reference), avoiding anachronisms and successfully demonstrating the enduring appeal of the Grecian formula for romantic-adventure fiction.
Secondarily, Argenis is a political treatise that uses the Greek novel as a delivery system for the author’s promonarchy views. Barclay the romance novelist claims that Argenis “was the cause of all these troubles” in the novel;146 but Barclay the diplomat and courtier clearly places the blame on weak King Meleander. His vacillating indecision leads him to attempt a reconciliation with Lycogenes rather than crush him, and virtually all of the other conflicts in the novel can be b
lamed on his lack of leadership. This is clear enough even at the romance level of the novel, but Barclay underscores (even belabors) the point by inserting a couple of dozen discourses on governance and other matters throughout the novel. (In this regard, he melds the Greek novel with Menippean satire because of the latter’s capacity for such digressions, and for poetry: there are dozens of poems in the novel as well, celebrating certain events and commenting on others like a Greek chorus.) Barclay believed in a strong, almost dictatorial monarchy, and while his views will have little appeal to modern readers, they were vital issues in his day and broadened the appeal of his novel beyond female readers (the primary consumers of romances) to male readers, especially those in high places who previously wouldn’t have been caught dead reading a novel.
Barclay felt he was creating a new genre, the political romance. In his dedicatory epistle, he refers to “this new genre of fiction, not perhaps hitherto seen among Latin writers,” and metafictionally stakes his claim for originality within the novel via a character named Nicopompos, a member of Meleander’s court. Early on, frustrated by both the rebels and the king’s unwillingness to put them down, Nicopompus vows to oppose them not with a sword but a “sharp stylus,” and use it “to fight against the offenders and take revenge on them” (2.14). Knowing that children take their bitter medicine only if sweetened, Nicopompus says he will deliver his bitter criticism in the form of an exciting story; asked by his friends to elaborate on “this neat invention,” he replies:
I will compile some stately fable in manner of a history. In it will I fold up strange events and mingle together arms, marriages, bloodshed, mirth, with many and various successes. The readers will be delighted with the vanities there shown incident to mortal men. And I shall have them more willing to read me when they shall not find me severe or giving precepts. I will feed their minds with diverse contemplations and, as it were, with a map of places. . . . I know the disposition of our countrymen: because I seem to tell them tales, I shall have them all. They will love my book above any stage-play or spectacle on the theatre. So first bringing them in love by a potion, I will after put in some wholesome herbs. (2.14)
Unfazed by Nicopompus’s condescension, one of his friends is “much taken with this new kind of writing” and predicts: “Such a book would wear out many ages and make its author glorious to all posterity, besides the infinite profit in laying open and confounding the frauds and practices of the wicked and arming honesty against them” (2.14). Nicopompus calls “for paper and even then began his most useful and delightful story”; this passage occurs about a third of the way into the book, and thereafter the reader is occasionally reminded that s/he is reading a novel by a character in a novel, a “neat invention” indeed and reminiscent of the metafictional quality of Don Quixote.
The third level on which Argenis weaves its silvery web, and the one least relevant to modern readers, is that of allegory. Political junkies of the 1620s were quick to see coded references to Henry III of France (= Sicily), Elizabeth I of England (= Mauritania), John Calvin and his Huguenots (= Usincula and his Hyperephanii), the future Pope Urban VIII (= Ibburranes), and to other minor characters and scandals of the time. What is admirable is not the accuracy of these allegorical figures, for historians now question how closely Barclay intended his characters to match their historical counterparts, but the invisibility of the allegory. In the more blatantly allegorical Euphormio’s Satyricon, the reader can’t help but suspect its characters and situations are allegorical, and the efficacy of Barclay’s satire is dependent upon knowing the referents. But in Argenis, the plot and characters are so organically united that the reader not only doesn’t suspect Barclay is writing a roman à clef about European politics between circa 1580 and 1620, but doesn’t much care. We’re struck instead by the universality of Barclay’s informed observations about realpolitik, whether in the 1st century, the 17th, or the 21st. With a little ingenuity, one could find contemporary counterparts to his Greek/Renaissance political animals, reminding us that, mutatis mutandis, it’s always been politics as usual.
In addition to being among the most popular novels of the 17th century, Euphormio’s Satyricon and Argenis were two of the most influential. By retooling the ancient novel as a vehicle for modern political commentary, Barclay created a “new kind of writing” that inspired novelists throughout Europe. Spain’s Baltasar Gracián acknowledges in the introduction to The Master Critic that Barclay’s Satyricon was one of his models. (Isla read it, but he mocks Barclay’s Latin in Friar Gerund.) In France, where Argenis was especially popular (in translation as well as in Latin: the original was published in Paris), it was the major inspiration for the roman héroïque: enormous romantic-adventure novels usually set in ancient times but reflecting current events. In Germany, the confluence of Barclay’s Argenis (translated by Martin Opitz in 1626) and the French roman héroïque led to the baroque novels by Buchholtz, Lohenstein, and others noted earlier in this chapter. Argenis provided the pattern used by English novelists who wanted to allegorically dramatize their Civil War, replicated in a half dozen “political romances” published in the 1650s and ’60s. It must be admitted that no one reads any of these novels anymore, except for scholars; for their first readers, it must have been a thrilling novelty to read about current kings and politicians wearing togas, swearing by the classical gods, and fighting elephants in Africa, but it’s understandable that the novelty would be lost on later readers, leaving only costumed characters acting out rather predictable adventures. Nonetheless, Barclay’s two novels formed a crucial link between ancient and modern fiction, and demonstrated how an innovative writer could make those ancient novels novel again.
While Barclay looked back to the ancient Roman and Greek novel for models, other Latinists looked no farther than to More’s Utopia.147 Startled by reports from around the globe of the discovery of new lands with alternative societies, many intellectuals adapted More’s novel format—essentially a fictional travelogue with minimal characterization, usually limited to a native explaining the sights and customs to an outsider—in order to dramatize their own social theories, to indulge in wishful thinking, and/or to express fears about ongoing trends in their own society. The German scholar Kaspar Stiblin (1526–62) published a utopian fiction in 1555 entitled Commentariolus de Eudaemonensium Republica (Treatise on the Republic of Happiness), and his countryman Jakob Bidermann (1578–1639), a Jesuit priest and playwright, wrote one simply called Utopia between 1602 and 1604, though not published until 1630.148 Maybe he was waiting to think up a more original title.
The first 17th-century Latin utopia deemed worthy of English translation—as early as 1609 and as recently as 1981—is Another World and Yet the Same (Mundus alter et idem, 1605) by an English clergyman named Joseph Hall (1574–1656). It has a promising start: the narrator, an Englishman named Mercurius Britannicus, is discussing the advantages of travel with a Dutchman named Drogius and a Frenchman named Peter Beroaldus—evidently based on the eccentric novelist François Béroalde de Verville, who I mentioned in my previous volume (343). If you’re going to travel, Beroaldus argues, go long: forget about your neighbors in Europe—what of the Terra Australis Incognita at the bottom of the world, which no one has explored yet? Extolling multicultural awareness and a palpable sense of adventure, he talks his friends into voyaging there. Drogius is detained at Delft, and Beroaldus gets off in France, but they encourage the Englishman to push on: “and after two years, having left behind the Fortunate Isles, the coast of Africa, the land of the Monomotapensi [southern Africa], and the Cape of Good Hope, I greeted the Black Cape of Crapulia.”149
But instead of dramatizing how Britannicus came to know these crapulous people (i.e., gluttons and drunkards), he begins describing their society and customs in detail as though he were a seasoned tour-guide. He moves on to nearby Viraginia, or New Gynia, populated by women (most of whom came from around the world to escape unjust husbands), and criticizes them for being uppity, voc
al, and vain. He is especially disgusted by the women of the region of Aphrodysia, who devote all their time to seducing neighboring men. Here’s the future bishop of Norwich on their skimpy clothing and heavy makeup: “All strolled about with an exposed face and breasts. The rest is covered, but with a material of the most extreme lightness and the most splendid colors. Yet their naked parts appear so obviously painted with white lead, according to the customs of the Moscovites, that you would swear you saw a mask, a statue, or a plastered wall, not a human skin” (2.5). He then describes Moronia, the most populous country he visits; located beneath the South Pole, it is a nation of idiots committing every kind of stupidity. Finally he reports on Lavernia, a lawless land of crime and fraud. Barely interacting with anyone, and noting only that he once founded a school of soothsayers in Lavernia, Britannicus concludes his visit: “These men, these customs, and these cities I gazed upon, was astonished by, and laughed at; and after 30 years, weakened by so much labor of traveling, I returned to my homeland” (4.7).
In this short novel Hall merely exaggerates and satirizes the common abuses of his time, with little imagination but with a heavy cargo of erudition plundered from classical sources, travelers’s tales, and theological speculations, conveyed with a ponderous wit that would be appreciated only by his fellow Latin scholars. (One convoluted gag concludes, “The Critics will understand” [1.5], aware that no one else would.) Another World and Yet the Same demonstrates another reason why some writers turned to Neo-Latin: to share a kind of extended in-joke that would be lost on anyone without a classical education. It’s a learned curiosity, but little more.