Carpe Corpus. Time and Gender in Early Modern France

Modern Language Review, The, Oct, 2001 by Valerie Worth-Stylianou

Carpe Corpus. Time and Gender in Early Modern France. By CATHY YANDELL. Newark and London: University of Delaware Press and Associated University Presses. 2000. 281 pp. 35 [pounds sterling].

While there have recently been various studies of the relationship between space and gender, Cathy Yandell breaks new ground in considering that between time and gender in Early Modern France. Her chapter headings suggest that she will limit herself to a small number of poets of the French Renaissance, one male (Ronsard) and five female (Du Guillet, Labe, Nicole Estienne, de Marquets and Catherine des Roches). However, the study proves more wide-ranging. For example, the opening chapter surveys French and Italian prose and poetry to assess the temporal preoccupations of the Renaissance. Yandell's essential argument is that early-modern women do perceive the passage of time differently from their male peers. In order to establish conventional male attitudes, she takes Ronsard as a key example in Chapter 2. This is a questionable strategy. Certainly his work is replete with temporal motifs (Yandell focuses on the 'carpe diem' and 'exegi monumentum' traditions), but the scale and complexity of Ronsard's work make him atypical. Still, Yandell is safe in concluding that Ronsard's (and men's) lyric poetry is rooted in images of youth, and projects a pronounced fear of ageing. The Lyonnais women poets are shown to have quite different priorities. For Yandell, Du Guillet passes over the theme of poetic immortality to concentrate upon the repeated and evolving pursuit of reciprocal, idealized 'amytie', while Labe adopts a radically transgressive stance in questioning how a woman (both as writer and as persona of the poems) should use her time profitably. The contrast of the poetry of Nicole Estienne and of Anne de Marquets in Chapter 4 is both novel and effective. It is based on the perception that both spend their time in a socially sanctioned enclosure, marriage or a convent. However, whereas de Marquets celebrates the religious experience of plenitude in the present moment, Estienne is seen to deliver a practical attack on the martyrdom to which wives are subject. (But should we read Estienne's verses at face value? What if she were indulging in parody and ludic play with commonplaces of the Querelle des Femmes?) Finally, Catherine des Roches represents the humanist woman writer, who has chosen celibacy, and can reject the terrors of time, advocating instead the value for women of time as a positive resource. Yandell's chosen women poets tell only part of the story of ageing: motherhood is mentioned very briefly, the actual experience of old age not at all. On both of these themes, prose memoirs might usefully have supplemented her sources, and the absence of Marguerite de Navarre leaves a sizeable gap. However, Yandell's conclusion does generously invite other scholars to pursue the theme of gender and time, and given the richness of this book, it is a call likely to be heeded.

VALERIE WORTH-STYLIANOU OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY