I. Description and Goals

We’ll study the works of Louise Labé and her contemporaries, including the poets of the “Ecole Lyonnaise” and the “Pléïade” as well as the philosophopical and poetic influences, namely Neoplatonism and Petrarchism that informed the French renaissance.  Louise Labé and her works occupy a unique moment in literary history.  Writing in the Renaissance, Labé witnessed a movement of a both of rupture and continuity  in which  writers attempted to forge a modern discourse, exploring the possibilities of the vernacular and of print culture movement yet grounded in the continuation of a long-standing male voiced poetics and thematics. This self-conscious modernity, which does not lack  for parallels with our own age,  must unwillingly find a place for the voice of the Other. 

Yet Labé was conscious of her role as Other and exploited it by making herself the object of the male-voiced poem.  Thus her Oeuvres, first published in 1555, allow her to perform both the role of subject and object within a controlled textual corpus.  We’ll exmine the interplay of subject and object in Labé’s works and how she manipulates conventions to create a unique and unexpected voice.

Finally we’ll examine the myths that developed about Labé, both during her lifetime and later both in the works of literary historians and Labé as fictional character. 

III.  Texts

Louise Labé – Oeuvres complètes (ed. Rigolot)
Plus other selections to be distributed in class.

IV.  Resources

Gateway to class web resources:  http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~lavoicy/labe/belle.htm

IV. Grading

20%      Analyse de texte
40%      Participation & Presentations
40%      Paper