Maurice Scève ( – ) was a French

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

active in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

during the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

period. He was the centre of the Lyonnese côterie that elaborated the theory of spiritual love, derived partly from

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

and partly from

Petrarch Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's redis ...

. This spiritual love, which animated Antoine Héroet's ''Parfaicte Amye'' (1543) as well, owed much to

Marsilio Ficino Marsilio Ficino (; Latin name: ; 19 October 1433 – 1 October 1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neo ...

, the Florentine translator and commentator of Plato's works. Scève's chief works are ''Délie, objet de plus haulte vertu'' (1544); five anatomical blazons; the elegy ''Arion'' (1536) and the eclogue ''La Saulsaye'' (1547); and ''Microcosme'' (1562), an encyclopaedic poem beginning with the fall of man. Scève's epigrams, which have seen renewed critical interest since the late 19th century, were seen as difficult even in Scève's own day, although Scève was praised by Du Bellay Bellay, Ronsard, Pontus de Tyard and Des Autels for raising French poetry to new, higher aesthetic standards.

Life

Scève is believed to have been born in 1501. His father was a Lyonnese lawyer and municipal officer who served as Lyon's ambassador to the court upon the accession of François I to the throne, giving the family a strong social standing in the city. The Lyonnese school, of which Scève was the leader, included his friend Claude de Taillemont, Barthélemy Aneau, the physician Pierre Tolet and the women writers Jeanne Gaillarde—placed by

Clément Marot Clément Marot (23 November 1496 – 12 September 1544) was a French Renaissance poet. He was influenced by the writers of the late 15th century and paved the way for the Pléiade, and is undoubtedly the most important poet at the court of Fr ...

on an equality with Christine de Pisan— Pernette du Guillet, Louise Labé, Clémence de Bourges and the poet's sisters, Claudine and Sybille Scève.

Work

Scève's first acclaim as a poet came in 1535, when he sent a pair of ''blasons'' to Marot in response to ''Le Blason du Beau Tétin''. ''Le Sourcil'' ("The Eyebrow") and ''La Larme'' ("The Tear") were submitted as a part of a contest organized by Marot while in exile in

Ferrara Ferrara (; ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, capital of the province of Ferrara. it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main ...

; the former was judged the winner, gaining notoriety for Scève in both France and Italy. These two poems were published along with others from the contest in 1536. Three additional Scève ''blasons'' (''Le Front'', ''La Gorge'' and ''Le Soupir'') were published in the 1539 edition. ''Délie'', Scève's most notable work, consists of 449 ''dizains'' (10-line epigrammes) preceded by a dedicatory ''huitain'' (8-line poem) to his mistress ("A sa Délie"). The title is sometimes understood to be an anagram for ''l'idée'' ("the idea"). ''Délie'' is the first French "canzoniere" or poetic collection modeled after Petrarch's immensely-popular '' Canzoniere'', a series of love poems addressed to a Lady. Scève was also responsible for the translation of a sentimental novel, ''Grimalte y Gradissa'' by Juan de Flores, published as ''La Déplorable fin de Flamète'' in 1535, which was inspired by

Giovanni Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio ( , ; ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian people, Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so ...

. Scève was a well versed musician as well as a poet; he cared very much for the musical value of the words he used, in this and in his erudition he forms a link between the school of Marot and the Pléiade.

Selected works

English translation

*''Emblems of Desire: Selections from the "Délie" of Maurice Scève'', Richard Sieburth, Editor and Translator. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)

, "''Un Précurseur de la Pléiade, Maurice Scève''," in his ''Etudes critiques'', vol. vi. (1899). More recent scholarship includes V. Saunier's two-volume Sorbonne dissertation on the poet (Paris, 1948), as well as three excellent critical editions by Eugène Parturier (Paris, 1916, reissued 2001 with an introduction and bibliography by C. Alduy), I.D McFarlane (Cambridge, 1966) and Gérard Defaux (Geneva, 2004). McFarlane's edition remains authoritative. Critical studies, with various approaches, by Dorothy Coleman, Jerry Nash, Nancy Frelick, Cynthia Skenazi, James Helgeson and Thomas Hunkeler are particularly useful; important articles on the poet have been written by François Rigolot, Enzo Giudici, Edwin Duval, Terence Cave, Gérard Defaux, and Richard Sieburth's "Introduction" to ''Emblems of Desire: Selections from the "Délie"'', a work which Sieburth translated and edited (see ''External links'' below for link to Sieburth's ''Introduction'' available on-line). A complete annotated bibliography of all works by and on Scève since his lifetime has recently been published (Cécile Alduy, ''Maurice Scève'', Roma: Memini, 2006, 200pp.). It contains in particular all the critical literature, past and present, on Scève and his works.

References

External links

"Introduction" to ''Emblems of Desire: Selections from the "Délie" of Maurice Scève''
by Richard Sieburth, Editor and Translator

At the University of Virginia's Gordon Collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Sceve, Maurice 1500s births 1560s deaths Writers from Lyon French male poets 16th-century French poets