Conclusions

The Marot family is a high-profile example of poetic craft enabling spectacular social ascent, and doing so across two generations. Such cases were rare, given the sheer fragility of such poetry-propelled ascent. Even in this case it did not benefit all family members equally—women less than men—and petered out despite a faint attempt to continue it in the third generation. The fragility was that of the two principal factors in the ascent: craft itself, which, as artisans had long known, could be even more difficult to transmit to the next generation than wealth; and royal-household employment, which was fraught with intrinsic uncertainties. The kind of patrimony produced within the Marot family was more narrowly based, as well as more fragile, than that of the many families that held high royal offices and aspired to multigenerational, dynastic continuity.