Musical Expression in Louise Labé's Twelfth Sonnet

Abstract

Louise Labe builds her collection of sonnets on a the precarious foundation of desire. Desire compels the voice to speak initially, while the act of speaking reveals a space where difference emerges between desire and voice. In Labe's twelfth sonnet, the representation of the artist's desire to create produces a representation of the artist's inability to control her instrument. At the same time, the representation of desire reveals the desire for representation. I argue that in this sonnet Labe weaves this tapestry of desire around a central metaphor of musica ficta, an artistic practice which calls upon the artist to fill in the gaps of an incomplete tonal system. Musica ficta allows the performer artistic license to interpret outside of the text of the music. It also demands an expert understanding of the tonal system used. In Labe's poem, musica ficta becomes a metaphor for the difficulties of artistic production especially for the woman writer using a female voice within a textual tradition generally qualified as male. Labe uses the concept of musica ficta to represent in a more authentic way the equivocal position of the woman poet within traditions of poetic language.