Louise Labé

Louise Labé (1525 with Lyon - April 25th 1566 with Parcieux-in-Dombes) is a French poetess. Called “Beautiful Cordière”, it belongs to the poets in activity in Lyon during the Renaissance. Certain historians of the literature of the Rebirth question its existence.

Life and works

It was the woman of Perrin, rich commercial of cords, which had several houses with Lyon. It found in the fortune of her husband a means of satisfying his passion for the letters. In a time when the books were rare and invaluable, it had a library made up of the best works Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish and French.

It had roomy gardens close to the Bellecour place.

With Maurice Scève and Pernette of Guillet, Louise Labé belongs to the group says “Lyons school”, although these poets never constituted a school with the direction where the Pleiad was one. The reading of its works confirms that she collaborated with her contemporaries, in particular Olivier de Magny and Jacques Peletier of Mans, around the workshop of the printer Jean de Tournes.

She writes her poems at one time when the poetic production is intense. French poetry then gives itself theoretical bases with Of Bellay ( Défense and illustration of the French language , 1549) and is set up with Ronsard, Olivier de Magny, Pontus de Tyard, and others, according to the model of Pétrarque and old authors such as Catulle and Horace, or against them. At Louise Labé, one notices the influence of Ovide, which she knows well, which they are the Métamorphose S or elegiac works. In particular, its elegies appear influenced by the Héroïdes .

Its culture is also that of the Italian Rebirth. The Débat seems influenced partly by the recognition of the madness such as it appears in the Éloge of the Madness of Érasme; it récrit with its manner, like much of its contemporaries, one of the most famous sonnets of Pétrarque, that whose incipit is Solo E pensoso .

It vigorously gives an opinion against the way in which Jean de Meung completes work stopped of its predecessor Guillaume de Lorris, while passing of a mythical account and symbolic system with descriptions much more ground with ground, and even appreciably misogynists. It will be to no purpose: the Romance of the Rose will be a striking down success.

The work of Louise Labé, very thin in volume (662 worms), is composed of a Débat of Madness and Love , in which Jean of the Fountain found the subject of the one of its fables, three Élégie S and of twenty-four Sonnet S, which, very famous, sings following Sappho the passion of a woman.

Epigram with the praise of Louise Labé

; Estreines, with lady Louïze Labé

Louïze is gracious and so much beautiful so much,

Louïze with all is quite pleasing so much,

Louïze ha the eye of so sharp estincelle,

Louïze ha vis-a-vis the body so much being appropriate,

Of so beautiful port, if beautiful and if luisante,

Louïze ha voice which the Music acknowledges,

Louïze ha hand which such an amount of well with lute plays,

Louïze ha what in all one taken as well,

As I then as Louïze does not rent,

And if then to rent Louïze enough.

Epigram allotted to Clement Marot, in Euvres de Louïze Labé, Escriz of various Poëtes, with the louenge of Louïze Labé Lionnoize (1555)

Poetic imposture or not?

One knows only very few elements of his life. Those which one can read are sometimes the fruit of the imagination of criticisms starting from its writings: Louise Labé knight, Louise Labé lesbian, Louise Labé prostitute, etc Certains specialists in XVIe century are of agreement to affirm that Louise Labé is a fiction worked out by a group of poets around Maurice Scève. (the name of Louise Labbé would come from the nickname of a Lyons prostitute " Beautiful Louise") The work of the academic Mireille Huchon quoted in the bibliography develops this assumption.

Daniel Martin in a convincing way this assumption in its article “Louise is Labé refuted a paper creature? ”. Whereas Mr. Hucho N affirms that, in the portrait of Pierre Woeiriot , the presence of a small Jellyfish compares Louise Labé to the mythological creature (what does not go from oneself), one could not deduce from it that to describe it thus is “devaluing, undoubtedly”. “The myth of Jellyfish, prototype of female cruelty, is often used by the poets petrarquists since Pétrarque. does Ronsard seek to devalue Cassandre in sonnets 8 and 31 by the Amours ? ” " (p. 10) Daniel Martin disputes that the withdrawal of Jacques Peletier of the Escriz denounces a trickery. He points out (p. 27) which he “collaborated with Jean de Tournes: he was with the first cabins to be informed of such a bold project of mystification! How could it have been unaware of a trickery which one says to us in addition that everyone was informed? ” It points out moreover that, in its Opuscules , it publishes a text with the praise of Louis Labé. One will find in this article of other arguments (testimonys of Rubys and Paradin; the role of Maurice Scève)

Works

the collection of the works of Louise Labé was printed in Lyon by Jean de Tournes in 1555, in-12, and in 1556, in-16. The third edition is that of Lyon, 1762, small in-8, decorated of a Vie of Louise Labé, and of a portrait.
Works , Enzo Giudici (ED.), Geneva, Droz, 1981.
complete Works , François Rigolot (ED.), Paris, GF, 2004.
the Debate of Madness and Love , Eliane Viennot (ED.), in A. Evain, P. Gethner, H. Goldwyn (to dir.), '' Théâtre of women of the Old Mode '', vol. 1, '' XVIe century '', Saint-Etienne, Publications of the University, 2006 and punctuation modernized, format pocket.

Example of poem

I live, I die; I burn myself and drowns me;

I have hot extreme by enduring coldness:

The life is and too soft and too hard for me.

I have great troubles intermingled with joy.

All with a blow I laugh and I larmoie,

And in pleasure many objection torment I endure;

My good from goes away, and forever it lasts;

All in a blow I dry and I become green.

Thus Amour inconstamment carries out me;

And, when I think of having more pain,

Without thinking of it I am out of sorrow.

Then, when I believe my unquestionable joy being,

And being with the top of my desired hor,

He gives me in my first misfortune.

Sonnet VIII

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