French Women and the Early Modern Canon: Recent Conferences, Editions, Monographs, and Translations

Renaissance Quarterly, Winter, 2000 by Anne R. Larsen

Unlike most early modern French women whose works are still in need of being edited and translated, Marguerite de Navarre's writings have benefited from both. Four of her works have been translated -- The Heptameron in 1984 (P. Chilton), The Prisons in 1989 (H. Dale), seven of her secular plays in 1992 (R. Reynolds-Cornell), and The Mirror of the Sinful Soul in 2000 (M. Gregg). The Coach (written ca. 1541) and The Triumph of the Lamb (ca. 1540, first published in 1547) are strongly contrasted poetic works: the first deals with the human heart's inability to attain perfect love as set forth by neoplatonism and courtly love; the second is an affirmative statement of belief in and celebration of the ascension of Christ whose new law of love triumphs over the Old Testament law. In The Coach, the queen's speaker is present throughout and her personality guides the action; The Triumph of the Lamb, on the other hand, is universal in scope as it contemplates humanity under God. Enlightening introductions by Hilda Da le for The Coach and Simone de Reyff for The Triumph make these short works accessible to undergraduate students.

Three previous published translations of Louise Labes Debate of Folly and Love lead one to query: why another one at this time? Deborah Lesko Baker in her foreword and translator Anne-Marie Bourbon note that translations become outmoded and need revision, particularly if they contain errors in the translation itself or if the notes are unhelpful. Translations need to be updated to incorporate new scholarship and new critical editions that continue to improve our understanding of the original text. Bourbon's dual-language format for both Labs's dedicatory epistle to Clemence de Bourges and Debate achieves a laudable balance between faithfulness to the original French and current idiomatic English. Bourbon has modernized the punctuation and included paragraph divisions but has retained as much as possible Labes vocabulary and imagery. The introduction does a good job of situating the text in its social, historical, and rhetorical contexts.

What findings will the current recovery and reassessment of French women's writings bring in this new century? Literary historian Susan Broom-hall lists close to 150 works written by eighty-five French women in the sixteenth century These writings include entire works published by women, printed manuscript works, and works to which women contributed -- this last category incorporates poetry in collectively authored texts, and marginal writings such as prefaces and editorial forewords that are contributions to works written by another author. Clearly, the ongoing recovery of these writings will entail further study of the socio-historic and economic aspects of women's production, women's participation in the polemical and political debates of the century, the impact of print and manuscript circulation, female court and urban patronage, the subjects and genres women chose -- letters, spiritual meditations, pamphlets, prefaces, songes -- still too often relegated to the "non-literary." The recent conferences, e ditions, monographs, and translations are an invigorating portent of developments to come.