Madeleine de l'Aubespine, dame de Villeroy (1546 – 1596) was a French aristocrat, lady in waiting to
Catherine de Medicis
Catherine de' Medici ( it, Caterina de' Medici, ; french: Catherine de Médicis, ; 13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589) was an Republic of Florence, Florentine noblewoman born into the House of Medici, Medici family. She was Queen of France fr ...
, poet, and literary patron. She was one of the only female poets praised by "the prince of poets,"
Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard (; 11 September 1524 – 27 December 1585) was a French poet or, as his own generation in France called him, a "prince of poets".
Early life
Pierre de Ronsard was born at the Manoir de la Possonnière, in the village of C ...
and she was one of the earliest female erotic poets.
Family
Madeleine de L'Aubespine was born in
Villeroy,
Burgundy
Burgundy (; french: link=no, Bourgogne ) is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The c ...
, the daughter of
Claude de l'Aubespine, baron de Châteauneuf and Jeanne Bochetel. The high-ranking
l'Aubespine
The L'Aubespine family was a French family descended from Claude de l'Aubespine, a lawyer of Orléans and bailiff of the abbey of Saint Euverte in the beginning of the 16th century. His progeny gained distinction in offices connected with the law. ...
family had served in ministerial duties for the French court for two centuries until the onset of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
. At the age of 16, l'Aubespine married
Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy an already well-established, well-traveled minister of the king who would, over the course of his life, serve as secretary of state under four French kings from both the
House of Valois and the
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon (, also ; ) is a European dynasty of French origin, a branch of the Capetian dynasty, the royal House of France. Bourbon kings first ruled France and Navarre in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Spanis ...
.
L'Aubespine and Villeroy were survived by a single son, Charles, who would become the governor of Lyon and in 1619, made a marquis by Louis XIII.
Literary Influence
L'Aubespine's literary influence was three-fold: she was a patron of the elite literary circles of 16th century France, a translator of works into the French vernacular, and a well-known poet whose work is still being discovered today.
Patronage
Despite the political and religious turmoil created by the
Protestant Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
, l'Aubespine and her husband enjoyed immense wealth and took part in the French initiative to create new national literature in the vernacular. Both she and her husband wrote their own poetry and took part in the patronage of some of the greatest Renaissance French writers including
Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard (; 11 September 1524 – 27 December 1585) was a French poet or, as his own generation in France called him, a "prince of poets".
Early life
Pierre de Ronsard was born at the Manoir de la Possonnière, in the village of C ...
,
Philippe Desportes
Philippe Desportes or Desports (1546 – 5 October 1606) was a French poet.Jean Balsamo. Philippe Desports (1546-1606) Volume 62 of Actes et colloques. Editor, Contributor, Jean Balsamo. Publisher, Klincksieck, 2000
Biography
Philippe Desp ...
,
Agrippa d'Aubigné, and other lesser known writers.
Philippe Desportes was even reported to have been one of l'Aubespine's lovers.
Not including her own salon, L'Aubespine is reported to have been active in three elite literary circles: in the court of
Marguerite de Valois,
Claude Catherine de Clermont
Claude Catherine de Clermont- Tonnerre de Vivonne (1543 – 18 February 1603), lady of Dampierre, countess and duchess of Retz, was a French courtier, writer and salon host.
Life
Family and private life
Claude Catherine de Clermont was born ...
's ''salon vert'', and
Henry III's ''
Académie du Palais
An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy ...
''. Through her work within the elite literary salon and the influence afforded her as patron, l'Aubespine was able to guide French literary culture. Poems were composed both for l'Aubespine as the patron, and to praise her talents. In a dialogue held in sonnets, Ronsard praises l'Aubespine and predicts that she will surpass the most learned French men.
In addition to her work as a patron of artists, l'Aubespine also bought a vast amount of books; at the time of her death, l'Aubespine's library was inventoried, and found to contain over three thousand volumes many of which were richly illustrated and personalized. Susan Groag Bell, a women's history scholar, suggests that early women book owners were significant contributors to their community's culture, because these women's books would often be circulated internationally depending on dowries and trade. Additionally, many elite women's personalized editions of books influenced Christian and social iconography.
Translation
Among l'Aubespine's many literary contributions, she also translated famous works into the vernacular. It has only been through recent research that her translations –praised by many of her contemporaries—have been attributed to her. She translated the first two cantos of
Ludovico Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto (; 8 September 1474 – 6 July 1533) was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic ''Orlando Furioso'' (1516). The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's ''Orlando Innamorato'', describes the ...
's ''
Orlando furioso
''Orlando furioso'' (; ''The Frenzy of Orlando'', more loosely ''Raging Roland'') is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was no ...
'' and four epistles from
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
's ''
Heroides
The ''Heroides'' (''The Heroines''), or ''Epistulae Heroidum'' (''Letters of Heroines''), is a collection of fifteen epistolary
Epistolary means "in the form of a letter or letters", and may refer to:
* Epistolary ( la, epistolarium), a Christi ...
'' from Italian and Latin respectively to French.
Poetry
Scholar, Ann Rosalind Jones writes that the women poets of the renaissance "wrote within but against the traditions that surrounded them." L'Aubespine is an exemplar of this tension of being both within and outside of the genre.
In correspondence with Ronsard, l'Aubespine calls herself the Phaeton to his French Apollo—an audacious son to a noble father—and he replies back in continuation of the mythic metaphor with:
If, flying, you fall, too willing to believe me,
At least you will have earned this glory for your tomb
That a woman surpassed the most learned French men.
This piece is exceptional, as there is little documentation of Ronsard praising women for their writing, however in this exchange through the
Phaeton and
Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
metaphor, he refers to L'Aubespine as his successor. Because of her high position and her husband's income, there was not a pressing need for L'Aubespine to publish, and thus most of her work remained and circulated in manuscript form. According to scholar, Anna Kłosowska, there are only two major sources for l'Aubespine's lyric poems: a
florilegium from 1718 and a posthumous volume of l'Aubespines complete works, which was lost in 1904 in a fire, though a detailed description of the volume survived.
Robert Sorg first published a portion of L'Aubespine's work in 1926.
L'Aubespine is not just uncommon in the support she receives from her literary counterparts, but her poetic work as a woman is also exceptional. Anna Kłosowska, writes that, "While many of l'Aubespine's
Petrarchist and pious sonnets are typical for her time, in some love poems she goes blatantly against the stereotype of female modesty."
Veronica Franco
Veronica Franco (1546–1591) was an Italian poet and courtesan in 16th-century Venice. She is known for her notable clientele, feminist advocacy, literary contributions, and philanthropy. Her humanist education and cultural contributions influe ...
, a famous Italian courtesan and fellow woman poet of the Renaissance, also demonstrated this disregard for strict adhesion to normative gender roles of the period through her love poetry. Like both l'Aubespine and Franco, many 16th century women poets wrote Petrarchan sonnets, but a particular problem that these women faced was in defining an object of desire that was necessary for the traditional form and themes, because in Petrarchan sonnets, the theme demonstrates a longing for a distant lover. For male poets, the lover would be female, and the poetry would be a courtly display of longing; however, women poets were put into a bind as they adapted their gender to the male-centered form. One of l'Aubespine's most well-circulated erotic poems, "Riddle," is exemplary of one of these atypical sonnets. In it, the lyric subject euphemistically describes playing a lute:
As the sweetest diversion that I could ever choose,
Frequently, after dinner, for fear of getting bored,
I take his neck in hand, I touch him, and I stroke,
Till he's in such a state as to give me delight.
I fall upon my bed and, without letting go,
I grasp him in my arms, I press him to my breast,
And moving hard and fast, all ravished with pleasure,
Amidst a thousand delights I fulfill my desire.
If he sometimes unfortunately happens to slacken,
I erect him with my hand, and right away I strive
To enjoy the delight of such a tender stroking.
Thus my beloved, so long as I pull on his sinew,
Contents and pleases me. Then away from me, softly,
Tired and not sated, I finally withdraw him.
As Kłosowska describes, this sonnet participates in the tradition of courtly erotic joke making in which erotic meaning lies under the thin pretense of non-erotic solution; however, l'Aubespine's appropriation of the genre complicates the traditional gender standards of the time, because her sonnet is woman-centered and outlines mutual sexual gratification.
In this way, l'Aubespine adapts the traditional form to her needs, and influences the French literary world. Through several analyses of this piece, Kłosowska has deemed this poem the "most openly lesbian love poem written by a woman in sixteenth-century France."
Further, Kłosowska explains how l'Aubespine's woman-centered, mutual satisfaction focused piece is a challenge to the erotic form of the 16th century.
At the time l'Aubespine was reciting this work in salons and having it published in manuscripts, women's virtuosity and chastity were defining factors in their social standing, so the poet's focus on women's pleasure and sexual agency is rare for the period. The discovery and subsequent analysis of l'Aubespine's literary work has opened new avenues for the discussion of early modern gender and sexual roles and renaissance women's poetry.
Notes
References
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External links
"Madeleine de l'Aubespine" by Graziella Postolache in ''Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England'' edited by Diana Maury Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole LevinSome of Madeleine de l'Aubespine's poetry in ''French Women Poets of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen'' selected and translated by Norman Shapiro ''Les Grandes Classiques''
Attr. to Madeleine de l'Aubespine, 1546–1596; written by Héliette de Vivonne, 1560–1625, translator J. Friedman
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Aubespine, Madeline de
1546 births
1596 deaths
French women poets
16th-century French poets
16th-century French women writers
French ladies-in-waiting
French patrons of literature
16th-century French translators
Daughters of barons
Household of Catherine de' Medici