Selected Poems and Translations by Madeleine de l'Aubespine, Anna Klosowska

Abstract

I I24 Reviews extensive bibliography of secondary works and concludes with a 26-page checklist of writings by French nuns between I500 and I789. This is the firstresource of itskind and will undoubtedly open up new and interesting avenues of enquiry. Each contri bution also has a full, ifnecessarily brief, bibliography. Despite themany and varied contexts of the convent experience in earlymodern France, common themes can be drawn out from these studies: female agency,mysticism, literary representation, gen der and power, social and religious control. Overall, thevolume makes an important and admirable contribution to the field, more than fulfilling itsaim of setting a stage on which futurediscoveries will be played out. UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL POLLIE BROMILOW Selected Poems and Translations. By MADELEINE DE L'AUBESPINE. Ed. and trans. by ANNA KLOSOWSKA. Chicago and London: University ofChicago Press. 2007. XXX+ I36 pp. $20. ISBN 978-o-226-14I94-7. Madeleine de l'Aubespine, dame de Villeroy (I546-1596), has been known as a late sixteenth-century salonierewith a few poems published in anthologies. The incom plete I926 edition, Les Chansons de Calianthe,fille deRonsard, does not do her poetry justice. Anna Klosowska's edition and translation brings together all l'Aubespine's known poetry (including works newly discovered byKlosowska), with selections from her translations of parts ofOvid's Heroides and Ariosto's Orlando furioso. This is a welcome addition to thevaluable 'OtherVoice' series from theUniversity ofChicago Press, definitely an 'othervoice' worth attending to. L'Aubespine's surviving ceuvre isnot vast: seventeen sonnets; one of a set of three villanellas by Desportes, l'Aubespine, and d'Aubigne; a song; a comic dialogue; and threeepigrammes. As theeditor acknowledges, much of l'Aubespine's writing consists of conventional neo-Petrarchan love poetry and penitential verse. Klosowska high lights some remarkable exceptions. The sonnet 'Vous qui scavez que c'est, mieux que moy, de l'amour'/'You who know better than Iwhat it is to love' (pp. 50-5 I), addressed to amale rival for the love of awoman, makes l'Aubespine 'theearliest French author of a lesbian poem' (p. i). L'Aubespine's riddle sonnet 'Pour leplus doulx esbat . . .'/ 'As the sweetest diversion. . .' (pp. 56-57) is surprisingly erotic-is she playing her lute or playing with her lover? In an exchange of sonnets with Ronsard, l'Aubespine constructs a heroic,masculine 'mythof theauthor' (p. 2); she isPhaeton toRonsard's Apollo (pp. 56-59). In a fragment discovered by Klosowska, Ronsard declares: 'Au moings vous acquerez pour tombe ceste gloire I Q'une femme a vaincu lesplus doctes franvois'/'At least you will have earned this glory foryour tomb I That awoman sur passed the most learned French men' (pp. 58-59). The three-way exchange ofpastoral villanellas is delightful, and the 'Dialogue of the doublet and the vest', awitty play on thevanitas theme, involves us in thematerial culture of the time; the doublet and thevest, once robes,may yet become lining forbreeches, and the reader cannot avoid a similar fate: 'Comme vous, nous avons este, I Et vous seres comme nous sommes'/ 'What you are,we have been, alas, I and you will become what we are' (pp. 74-75). Klosowska's translations are faithfuland as elegant as theoriginals allow. She echoes the rhythmof the verses (mainly alexandrines) but wisely does not attempt rhymes. The facing-page arrangement of the French originals of l'Aubespine's poems and Klosowska's English translations isvaluable. L'Aubespine's translations intoFrench fromOvid and Ariosto are not retranslated into English here. It would, however, have been useful if l'Aubespine's translations had also been printed on facing pages with the original Latin and Italian texts.A comparison suggests that l'Aubespine's translations/adaptations merit further study. Klosowska's introduction contextual izes and analyses l'Aubespine's work intelligently,but issometimes difficult to follow. MLR, I03.4, 2oo8 II25 One would have welcomed a systematic account of the various manuscript sources consulted, as well as amore focused discussion of how l'Aubespine's poems relate to salon culture. YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO JANE COUCHMAN L'Analogie et le probable: pensee et ecriture chez Denis Diderot. By ANNE BEATE MAURSETH. (SVEC 2007:09) Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. 2007. viii...