Amphion Orator

This new approach to Malherbe's odes interweaves political, cultural, rhetorical, and literary history to show how they constitute a unified sequence whose ambition is to forge a new national community in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion, dislodging Malherbe from his moribund critical reception as a grammarian and technician and recovering the brilliance of a poetic genius whose political mythmaking stems from an impassioned patriotism.

Michael Taormina is an Associate Professor of French Michael Taormina is an Associate Professor of French Literature, Culture and Language in the Romance Languages Department at Hunter College, CUNY. His research explores the intersection of eloquence, patronage, and noble identity in French lyric poetry of the early seventeenth century, and he has published articles on the work of Théophile de Viau, Saint-Amant, and Vincent Voiture. He is also a translator of French theatre and philosophy. He holds a Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University.