Louise Labe Lyonnaise ou la Renaissance au feminin

Renaissance Quarterly, Autumn, 1999 by Colette H. Winn

Francois Rigolot. (Etudes et Essais sur la Renaissance, 15.) Paris: Editions Champion, 1997. x 344 pp. n.p. ISBN: 2-85203-695-9.

"Mulier sum, et poeta," the opening lines of the book translated as "I am a woman, and a poet" or "I am a poet, and a woman," illustrate Francois Rigolot's lucid, ingenious, and playful approach while summarizing the central point of his book. How in early modern France could a woman (the daughter and wife of a ropemaker) be also a poet, have her works published in her lifetime (especially when she wrote of her passionate love), in Lyons, the "capitale culturelle des Gaules," by one of the most famous printers of the time? While providing one more testimony to the difficulties early modern women writers faced, the book highlights the extraordinary destiny of Louise Labe. The "Labe phenomenon," as Rigolot calls it to underscore the very special circumstances behind this woman poet's extraordinary success, can be explained, according to Rigolot, by the intellectual and cultural climate of Lyons in the 1550s. Its printing industry was flourishing and just a few years before the 1555 publication of the Euvres, several works by women - Pernette du Guillet's Rymes (1545), Marguerite de Navarre's Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses (1547) - had appeared from the press of the illustrious Jean de Tournes. All of these factors are interpreted as evidence that Lyons was ready to acclaim its new Sappho. Rigolot's Louise Labe is an extremely perceptive woman. She has a clear understanding of the intellectual concerns and expectations of her day and knows just how to turn chance in her favor.

After acknowledging the central role the city of Lyons plays in the conception, presentation, and publication of the Euvres, Rigolot goes on to trace the conditions and circumstances that facilitated Louise Labe's entry into the publishing world. The next six chapters reveal how, in search of her own voice as a woman, a lover, and a poet, she invokes famous women figures such as Sappho and Laura and appropriates the myths most celebrated by classical and contemporary writers: Pallas-Athena, Arachne, Venus, Stultitia, and Orpheus.

Chapter 1 discusses the rediscovery of Sappho in Renaissance Lyons and the interest it stirred in the editing world. The year 1554, a year before the publication of the Euvres, was most important with the publication of Robortello's Pseudo-Longin, Muret's Catulle, and Estienne's Anacreon. It seems hardly a coincidence that Louise Labe chose that particular time to appropriate the voice of Sappho. Rigolot argues: "Retrouver la voix de Sappho, c'etait.., repondre avant tout a l'attente des milieux humanistes qu'un heureux concours de circonstances avaient alertes. Mieux, c'etait donner une illustration francaise a un style disparu que le traite du Pseudo-Longin autorisait a ressusciter" (66). Chapter 2 explores the Louise/Laure relation and Labe's debts to Petrarch and Erasmus, and also some interesting points by comparing her treatment of caritas with those of Erasmus and Rabelais. Chapter 3 examines in light of the Debat, and the intertext of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the use she makes of various myths and how she finally rejects Pallas Athena in favor of Arachne. Chapter 4 discusses how she legitimates the voice of Venus by reviving the mythical past of her city and its colline de Fourviere (=Forum Veneris) once consecrated to the cult of Venus. After a brief review of the polyvalence of the term folly, its usage in various fields, and its meanings for major literary figures, chapter 5 focuses on the innovative voice of Louise Labe's Stultitia. There follows a discussion of her sympathetic treatment of Semiramis as opposed to those of Boccaccio and Christine de Pisan (Rabelais's could be mentioned as well, cf. Tiers Livre, xxxiv). Finally, chapter 6 examines her revision of Ovid's and Virgil's orphic myth and her impersonation of Orpheus.

The book's strengths are many. It insists on the importance of context and sets Labe's Euvres more firmly than before in the complex Lyonnaise landscape. It offers creative, thought-provoking arguments, as well as new insights into the work by reading the Euvres and the Escriz de divers poetes together as an intertextual whole. It contains a number of close, nuanced, inspired analyses (that can also be painfully meandrous at times) with attention to details of language and style. Of particular interest are the analyses of the relation between the "agrammaticalites" (e.g. the use of the masculine form of amour in the Sonnets; the problematic use of the pronouns in the Debat) and the emerging authorial voice.

In sum, Francois Rigolot's meticulously and admirably detailed study helps us understand what was at stake for the early modern woman who assumed the male role of writer, and therefore appreciate the rarity of Louise Labe's achievement. Granted, Louise Labe was no ordinary woman, but one wonders at times if she were as cultivated as Rigolot makes her to be (is it his own erudition that shows through his reading of the Euvres - another example of impersonation?). And indeed if she had been, would she have needed so much support from her male friends to get her work published? What I find most fascinating about the book is the great overview it gives of Lyonnaise humanism, with abundant references to and brief studies of important works by eminent humanists (e.g. Claude de Taillemont's Champs faez, Pontus de Tyard's Erreurs amoureuses, etc.). It also captures beautifully the sense of pride that was developing in the "capitale culturelle des Gaules." I especially value the discussion of poems celebrating Lyons by Clement Marot, Maurice Sceve, Symphorien Champier, and Jean Lemaire. This book substantially enriches our knowledge of the period.