Whereas much scholarship on the history of the novel focuses on its relationship to large narrative forms such as epic or romance, this chapter argues that the novella tradition plays a central role in the development of the novelistic world. We show how intercalated novellas, translated or adapted from Italian or Spanish, inflect the emergence of the French novelistic canon, functioning as sites at which cultural difference is explored and managed. Material from the novella tradition helps shape and define the notions of national character and identity, as well as the role of a national language, in the emerging French canon. The chapter moves from the history of translation and editing, through a discussion of Scarron and Mme de Lafayette, to a study of the politics of genre.

In 1546, virtually at the mid-point of the sixteenth century in europe, françois rabelais published his Tiers Livre, or Third Book, in which he depicts the foolish and willful character Panurge seeking advice as to whether he should marry. after an initial discussion with his friends regarding several fine points of conjugal life and a momentary flirtation with dicing, Panurge, on the advice of the giant Pantagruel, sets out on a series of consultations that will eventually bring him into contact with a whole series of authorities, from philosophers and judges to witches and poets. Yet his first move is to seek advice from the writings of a long-dead author. that author is virgil. Panurge starts his quest by engaging in the time-honored practice of the sortes virgilianae, the technique of opening virgil's works at random as a way of gaining guidance – something like the renaissance version of the fortune cookie. and, to be sure, each passage he draws, from the Eclogues and the Aeneid, has an obvious resonance with his situation. Unfortunately, he is too perplexed to interpret them in any way that would lead him to decisive action – and so his search continues.

It is not by accident that the greatest fiction writer of the French Renaissance should place virgil at the beginning of a great quest for identity and certainty. for the latin Middle ages virgil was, of course, the great poet of empire.

The development of French poetry and criticism in the sixteenth century cannot be understood without reference to the growth and transformation of two great urban centres, Lyons and Paris. Although there was much exchange between the cities, with figures headquartered in Paris active in Lyons and vice versa, these cities offer contrasting images of the relationship between criticism and its social and institutional milieu. Indeed, the mere presence of Lyons as a cultural centre rivalling Paris is one of the features that sets the Renaissance apart from other moments in French cultural history, for it complicates the relationship of centre and margin, capital and province, that has tended to dominate French cultural life since the early seventeenth century. Lyons was the port of entry through which the Renaissance came to France. Not only did its location, virtually on the Italian border, make it the point of exchange for all contact with the peninsula to the south, but Lyons underwent a rapid process of transformation during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that made it a city of international importance. From the early 1400s Lyons had been famous for its commercial fairs. These events, which attracted merchants from all over Europe, were initially held twice a year for six days. Then, by decree of Charles VII in 1444, a third fair was added, and all of them were extended to twenty days each. The crown's aim in promoting Lyons was to establish the city as the mercantile crossroads of Europe, thereby turning her rival and neighbour Geneva into a backwater.