Helisenne de Crenne: At the Crossroads of Renaissance Humanism and Feminism

Modern Language Review, The, Oct, 2002 by Adrian Armstrong

Helisenne de Crenne: At the Crossroads of Renaissance Humanism and Feminism. By DIANE S. WOOD. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2000. 186 pp. 30 [pounds sterling].

Helisenne de Crenne's varied and sophisticated output has attracted increasing attention from specialists, not least from editors, in recent years. However, newcomers to this substantial body of work have hitherto lacked a user-friendly introduction with genuine analytical depth. Diane S. Wood's concise and stimulating study neatly fills this gap, striking an elegant balance between contextual, thematic, and formal concerns. Wood seeks to do justice to Helisenne's whole corpus (rather than, as so often, solely the first part of the Angoysses douloureuses), to place it in its intellectual context, and to trace the increasing empowerment of the female persona across successive texts. The introduction sets out these priorities, arguing that an excessively biographical reading of the Angoysses overlooks both its 'literariness' and its rather tenuous relation to contemporary social realities. Here as elsewhere, the occasional sweeping comparison or contrast, with, for instance, Jane Austen (p. 18), suggests a target audience at least partly comprising students of comparative literature or women's writing. Chapter 1 identifies Helisenne's reading of literary and learned texts, and the initial reception of her work. More precise detail would have been welcome on the former topic, though the latter elicits some useful analysis, including a hint at the commercial agenda underlying Helisenne's praise of Paris and the Parisians. It would be interesting to compare this praise with the analogous strategies pursued by or on behalf of women writers in Lyon. In Chapter 2 Wood summarizes earlier scholars' findings regarding the historical identification of Helisenne with Marguerite Briet, and discusses her relations with her publisher Denis Janot. Various documents and historical studies are adduced to delineate contemporary expectations of women; none of this will be new to specialists, but the more lay sections of Wood's audience should find this material most useful. Chapter 3 traces the development of an authorial persona through Helisenne's corpus, reflecting on questions of genre and reality. Once more, there is much to encourage comparative study: the self-conscious implied author of the Epistres invectives calls to mind the strategies of Marot and Bouchet. Chapter 4 addresses Helisenne's involvement in the querelle des femmes, notable in her Songe, analysis of which effectively delineates the position of the two sexes with regard to reason. The fifth and final chapter examines humanistic aspects of her work, focusing especially on her use of Dido. In this connection, it is somewhat surprising that parallels are not adduced between Princess Monarque in the Angoysses and the Dido of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, both female rulers faced by a threatening suitor; indeed, it would be profitable to investigate the tension throughout Helisenne's works between the Virgilian and Boccaccian versions of Dido. The accessibility of Wood's study is enhanced by copious provision of quotations and accompanying translations, the latter drawn partly from published sources; there is the occasional mistranslation of the Songe, most glaryingly 'ne differai de sainte Ecripture parler' as 'it does not differ from speaking of Holy Scripture' (p. 108). Much like Helisenne, Wood successfully balances a popularizing concern with intellectual integrity; non-specialists and Renaissance scholars alike will profit from her endeavours.

ADRIAN ARMSTRONG UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER