In the early 1520s, a ship of remarkable proportion was built in Le Havre, commissioned by François I in response, in part, to the size, success, and renown of Henry VIII’s Mary Rose. The story of the Grande Françoise, reported locally as the largest vessel ever witnessed, demonstrates the rich cultural and political symbolism (intentional or otherwise) of the ship in the sixteenth century, and the significance of its potential failure, destruction, and recuperation. This Introduction moves from the example of the Grande Françoise, including its swiftly traceable literary reception, to survey the classical, biblical, and medieval traditions that inform the writing of shipwreck in the sixteenth century, before turning to previous critical study of shipwreck, with particular focus on Hans Blumenberg’s essay Shipwreck with Spectator. The Direful Spectacle is in some senses a response to Blumenberg, offering a ‘close-up’ on French culture of the sixteenth century, and a challenge to his separation of the aesthetic from the moral or ethical in shipwreck texts. Situating this new study in relation to previous scholarship, the Introduction then proceeds to set out its distinctive themes and arguments, before concluding with an outline of the structure and summaries of the contents and argument of each chapter.
