De la forme littéraire comme arme politique: L’effet-recueil dans la version française de la Detectio de George Buchanan

Histoire de Marie Royne d'Escosse… constitutes the final outcome of a complex publishing history. This collection of texts, published in 1572, contains the only translation into French of George Buchanan’s Detectio, an unrelenting character assassination purporting to narrate the crimes of the deposed queen of Scots. The text of the Detectio features in a number of publications in Latin and in translations into English and Scots published between 1568 and 1571, gradually augmented with a variety of documents, including the famous Casket letters, from which the publishers attempt to derive a more or less convincing case for the prosecution. This article aims to show that the embedding of the Detectio within the collection operates a shift in the reception of the text itself, from political writing into literature, which is particularly brought to the fore in the French translation because of the specific literary context of its publication.