George Hoffmann | University of Michigan (original) (raw)

Books by George Hoffmann

Global Montaigne. Hommage à Philippe Desan (University of Chicago) 25 juin 2021 : 17h-19h : Visio... more Global Montaigne. Hommage à Philippe Desan (University of Chicago)
25 juin 2021 : 17h-19h : Visioconférence

Conférence invitée de Philippe Desan : « Montaigne : objet d’étude global »
Avec la participation de Amy Graves (University of Buffalo), Véronique Ferrer (Université Paris-Nanterre), George Hoffmann (University of Michigan).

La rencontre aura lieu le 25 juin de 17 h à 19 h sur la plateforme WebEx.

Lien : https://univlyon3.webex.com/univlyon3/j.php?MTID=m40fcef9f0eac6553c28d1e2ab21c6146

Remontrances de l’Ancien Régime: Textes et commentaires (XVIè-XVIIIè siècles). Ed. Ullrich Langer and Paul-Alexis Mellet, 2020

Itineraries in French Renaissance Literature, co-edited with Jeff Persels and Kendall Tart

The case of one “serial convert,” Hugues Sureau du Rosier, provides the focus for this study of s... more The case of one “serial convert,” Hugues Sureau du Rosier, provides the focus for this study of shifting confessional identities. Du Rosier, a Catholic-turned-Protestant who became a Protestant-turned-Catholic before returning once again to the reformed faith, illustrates the phenomenon of “serial conversion” that exposes stress lines in the early modern period’s efforts to consolidate stable confessional identities. Du Rosier himself, however, managed to reconcile his apostasy through identifying with the figure of Peter, both a lapsed apostle who denied Christ and the stable “rock” upon whom the Church erected itself. Peter’s succession in fact constituted the primary justification for du Rosier’s lingering attraction to Catholicism. Inventive reading practices of the Bible like this one reveal how sola scriptura could diversify the kinds of stories early moderns told about themselves. The providential micro-history du Rosier constructed for himself participates in a broader Reformation tension between conflicting claims of succession and substitution, that is, on the one hand, a claim of continuity with apostolic doctrine, and, on the other, a claim of rupture with the medieval traditions embodied in the Roman Church. The continuity that the Reformation asserted depended upon identificational reading practices such as those du Rosier practiced.

and Community in Sixteenth-Century France, ed. Cathy Yandell and David LaGuardia, 2015

Abstract Satires’ vitriolic nature made them poor tools of propaganda. Rather than as instruments... more Abstract
Satires’ vitriolic nature made them poor tools of propaganda. Rather than as instruments of persuasion, they often read as anxious to foreground their own inflated diffusion, power to provoke, and coherence through retrospective serialization that suggested a fictional continuity. If part publicity stunt, however, these satires also cannily exploited and extended the reformed theological concept of “communication” by which the traditional corporeal understanding of the social body, figured in Communion, was replaced with spiritual connection to Jesus and, ultimately, to fellow worshipers. Satires’ emphasis on foreignness and distance from one’s neighbors in particular facilitated a kind of “stranger sociability” with fellow reformed readers they did not know. This theological origin suggests that the modern public sphere began with the communication of the Mass before it transformed into mass communication.

“Atheism” retains an uncomfortable, parochial quality that suggests less a condition of conscienc... more “Atheism” retains an uncomfortable, parochial quality that suggests less a condition of conscience than a sort of special-interest group. “Secularist” and then “agnostic” arose as more acceptable options in the nineteenth century, and, today, thirty percent of those who deny God's existence still refuse to identify themselves as atheists. According to a recent Pew survey, barely three percent of the American population confess to being either atheists or more acceptable agnostics. The term's failure to establish itself reflects its historical status as a parochial category within religious discourse: sixteenth-century “atheism” was distinctly not a forerunner of liberal freethinking, neither practically nor even theoretically. Instead, it served the cause of confessional partisanship as a means by which to characterize and reshape not unbelief, but belief.

In spite of Montaigne’s dismissal of his schooling as a “failure,” significant features of his th... more In spite of Montaigne’s dismissal of his schooling as a “failure,” significant features of his thought can be traced to his humanist education. Not only did he acquire literacy in French at school, he picked up a comic outlook from the plays of Terence in which he acted. Further, George Buchanan exposed the young Montaigne to reformation ideas. Later, Marc-Antoine Muret’s Julius Caesar would school Montaigne in displaying confidence in face of fortune’s vicissitudes, an attitude that he would incorporate into the “heroic” skepticism of the Essays. More generally, he adopted images, language, and postures from the stage as a way of understanding the life as a comédie humaine. Montaigne, however, preferred to award a determining influence for his adult character to the infancy he spent in a rural village.

Since Alan Bray first taught us to look at early modern friendship with new eyes, Montaigne’s “Of... more Since Alan Bray first taught us to look at early modern friendship with new eyes, Montaigne’s “Of friendship” has acquired a sort of canonical status. The essay now figures as an exemplary witness of pre-modern European masculine culture. I question how well Montaigne practiced the friendship of which he could speak so movingly. This essay sheds new light on the practical ends such idealistic friendships in fact fulfilled in the early modern France of Montaigne's time, uses which may go some way toward explaining their popularity. This essay also ponders how Montaigne transformed perfect friendship’s practical, if hidden, function into a claim for absolute exclusivity that breaks with the openness one generally finds in the rest of the Essays and must ultimately lead one to qualify the popular impression of its author’s affability.

Secular and religious thinking, both, have tended to privilege acting on principle over respondin... more Secular and religious thinking, both, have tended to privilege acting on principle over responding to circumstances. This has allowed proponents for the separation of Church and State to argue that one can surrender matters of outward conduct in public to the State without compromising one’s “inner” beliefs. Yet, this secular conception of belief, isolated from broader social commitments, can also lead to radical expressions of faith. It is worth questioning, then, whether secularism’s configuration of belief as a free-floating mental state does not, in the long run, prove more dangerous than did culture-bound religious differences. Anti-humanism need to look beyond the secular-religious configuration of belief to embrace conceptions of the good based on practice.

Drafts by George Hoffmann

Global Montaigne: Mélanges Desan. Ed. Amy Graves and Jean Balsamo

The first of three projected parts on Montaigne's religious politics, this essay presents the tex... more The first of three projected parts on Montaigne's religious politics, this essay presents the text of the profession of faith Montaigne made in 1562. I analyze this profession with respect to theological issues in the 1540s, religious conflict in the 1560s, and Montaigne's place in the political landscape of Bordeaux's Parlement.

Papers by George Hoffmann

Oxford Scholarship Online

Satires’ vitriolic nature made them poor tools of propaganda. Rather than as instruments of persu... more Satires’ vitriolic nature made them poor tools of propaganda. Rather than as instruments of persuasion, they often read as anxious to foreground their own inflated diffusion, power to provoke, and coherence through retrospective serialization that suggested a fictional continuity. If part publicity stunt, however, these satires also cannily exploited and extended the reformed theological concept of “communication” by which the traditional corporeal understanding of the social body, figured in Communion, was replaced with spiritual connection to Jesus and, ultimately, to fellow worshipers. Satires’ emphasis on foreignness and distance from one’s neighbors in particular facilitated a kind of “stranger sociability” with fellow reformed readers they did not know. This theological origin suggests that the modern public sphere began with the communication of the Mass before it transformed into mass communication.

Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France, 2016

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017

Reformation satire grew out of the humanist reinvigoration of classical models but abandoned thei... more Reformation satire grew out of the humanist reinvigoration of classical models but abandoned their convivial tone when reformers targeted Roman Eucharistic worship. Insofar as the Eucharist symbolized the social body, attacks against it could only be understood by readers as attacks against themselves. Iconoclasm drove reformers to this measure because the doctrine of “real presence” authorized reformers’ (disputed) charges of Roman idolatry. Efforts to mock the consequences of this doctrine pushed satires to vulgar and scatological extremes. The result proved an inimical posture which invalidated these works’ purported claims to persuade readers, making them instead serve as rites of passage by which reformers assumed an antagonistic role with respect to moderate French Gallicans.

Littérature, 2004

Hoffmann George. Olivier Guerrier, Quand «les poètes feignent » : «fantasie » et fiction dans les... more Hoffmann George. Olivier Guerrier, Quand «les poètes feignent » : «fantasie » et fiction dans les Essais de Montaigne, Paris, Champion, 2002, coll. «Études montaignistes » n° 40. In: Littératures 51,2004. Mérimée. pp. 192-193

Oxford Scholarship Online

As the conflict deepened in France, reformers found themselves forced to adopt a more clandestine... more As the conflict deepened in France, reformers found themselves forced to adopt a more clandestine posture. Satires consequently grew more obscure as they increasingly served as an in-joke for a beset coterie. So, although outlandish satire did continue, it retreated from public dispute and acquired a tragic undertone of martyrdom. The fondness for allusions to the Odyssey betrays French reformers’ conflicted feelings over their exilic aspirations figured in references to Exodus. Satire remained one of the ways in which they could indulge nostalgia for their unreformed past, even as they demarcated themselves from it. The uneasy conjunction of Odyssey and Exodus combines into the unlikely figure of the reformer as “pilgrim,” a spiritual traveler who might one day return home.

Oxford Scholarship Online

Geographic foreignness (more often imagined than not) could also transform into temporal alienati... more Geographic foreignness (more often imagined than not) could also transform into temporal alienation to the degree that reformers’ ideal of resuscitating the primitive Church of apostolic times implied they belonged to another time. Temporal estrangement frequently figured itself as “incredulousness” at the mores of contemporary France. Though at times seeming skeptical in spirit, this incredulity proved one of “holy horror.” Thus, the Reformation’s sense of historical detachment did not lead to modern disenchantment. Although the religious conflicts could drive away some French sympathizers (Rabelais proves particularly instructive in this regard), Reformation attacks on credulity aimed at the traditional understanding of religion as an exchange of debts and did not harbor hidden secular impulses.

La rencontre aura lieu le 25 juin de 17 h à 19 h sur la plateforme WebEx.

Lien : https://univlyon3.webex.com/univlyon3/j.php?MTID=m40fcef9f0eac6553c28d1e2ab21c6146

Remontrances de l’Ancien Régime: Textes et commentaires (XVIè-XVIIIè siècles). Ed. Ullrich Langer and Paul-Alexis Mellet, 2020

Itineraries in French Renaissance Literature, co-edited with Jeff Persels and Kendall Tart

and Community in Sixteenth-Century France, ed. Cathy Yandell and David LaGuardia, 2015

Global Montaigne: Mélanges Desan. Ed. Amy Graves and Jean Balsamo

Oxford Scholarship Online

Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France, 2016

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017

Littérature, 2004

Oxford Scholarship Online

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, 2021

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017

French reformers shared language, culture, and tradition with their unreformed neighbors. To dist... more French reformers shared language, culture, and tradition with their unreformed neighbors. To distinguish themselves, they began by caricaturing Roman rites as foreign: imported from Italy, they proved arcane, superstitious, and pagan. In an era of overlapping jurisdictions when “foreign” did not possess the clear cut it does today, reformers fashioned a stark sense of “outsider” culture through reworking the terms of barbarian, savage, stranger, and exotic. The fantastic voyage device coordinated all these elements, but it also worked to make the reformer ultimately a stranger in a strange land. Reformers’ own sense of themselves as foreigners in France deepened their investment in the Pauline imperative to be “in the world but not of it,” thus creating a lushly imaginative experience of spiritual alienation.

Renaissance Quarterly, 2020

specifically to tracts they wrote in 1587-88, as part of the Spanish (and English Catholic) strat... more specifically to tracts they wrote in 1587-88, as part of the Spanish (and English Catholic) strategy to demonize Elizabeth to justify the invasion of England (100). These fearsome images appear repeatedly in the next six essays, five of which discuss some aspect of early modern Spanish literature. Alejandro García-Reidy, for example, describes how the dramatist Lope de Vega depicted Elizabeth as a deceitful, hypersexualized tyrant in several of his works; Jesús-David Jerez-Gómez says much the same about the popular ballads and satirical poetry produced in Spain in these years, including by Luis de Góngora. A number of works composed after Elizabeth's death, however, are more ambivalent, perhaps because the political winds had shifted at the Spanish royal court. Alexander Samson shows that Cervantes, in "The Spanish-English Lady" (1613), actually elided religious differences while portraying Elizabeth as a "tolerant and benign figure" (298). Similarly, Adrián Izquierdo (writing about political biographies) and Esther Fernández (discussing Spanish theater) describe works that condemned Elizabeth but also humanized her, depicting a woman caught between her political duties and her personal passions. The most noteworthy essay in this collection, "In Search of Elizabeth I," by Claudia Mesa Higuera, raises more questions than it answers. Mesa Higuera examines the surprisingly few known visual images of Elizabeth produced in Spanish Habsburg territories, including engravings and medals. The most striking image she discusses is the one that appears on the volume's cover, a woodcarving of the Duke of Alba spearing a hydra with three heads, one of which clearly represents Elizabeth. It should be noted that this artifact, like most of those mentioned in this essay, was actually crafted in the Low Countries. Apparently, there are practically no surviving visual images of Elizabeth produced in early modern Spain, and Mesa Higuera offers no explanation why. Hopefully future research will solve this intriguing riddle.