The Image of a Fountain in the Selected Lyrics of Pernette du Guillét and Maurice Scève

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the image of a fountain – or a spring – in the lyrics of the poets of the Lyon School Pernette du Guillet and Maurice Scève. A clear spring as a symbol of love became widely known thanks to “The Romance of the Rose”, a French allegorical poem of the 13th century. The article provides a comparative analysis of selected lyrics by Pernette du Guillet and Maurice Scève, mostly from poetry collections “Rymes” and “Délie”. The purpose of the study is to compare the artistic motifs and imagery built by the poets around a fountain, which is a significant topos of courtly poetry. For this purpose, detailed comparative analysis of the lyrics of Maurice Scève, the head of the Lyon School of Poets, and Pernette du Guillet, his student, is carried with the help of poems with the image of a fountain. The novelty of the study is attributed to the fact that the lyrics of Pernette du Guillet with its problems and interpretation are practically unexplored in Russian literary studies. “Délie” by Scève is analyzed and interpreted in the dissertation of V.P. Avdonin dated 2013. The lyrics of Lyon poets' and the comparison of the concepts of love philosophy are topical themes in Russian literary studies. A fountain has several guises in the studied poems. The first is the healing from the fire of pernicious passion that can be found in its waters. While the water does save the lyrical heroine of Pernetta from the flames (as can be seen in the elegy plot), Scève pictures inextinguishable flames (continuing to burn even in water). They both – in their own way based on their gender roles – touch upon the motif of a naked lady bathing, which traces back to the myth of Actaeon. The fountain water is a soul mirror and a vessel of divine wisdom, it is an intermediary between a lover and a loved one.