Renowned translator Norman R. Shapiro here presents fresh English versions of poems by three of Western literature’s most gifted and prolific poets—the French Renaissance writers Clément Marot, Joachim Du Bellay, and Pierre de Ronsard. Writing in the rhymed and metered verse typical of the original French poems (which appear on facing pages), Shapiro skillfully adheres to their messages but avoids slavishly literal translations, instead offering creative and spirited equivalents. Hope Glidden’s accessible introduction, along with the notes she and Shapiro provide on specific poems, will increase readers’ enjoyment and illuminate the historical and linguistic issues relating to this wealth of more than 150 lyric poems. “A marvelous micro-anthology of sixteenth-century French letters. Representing the pinnacle of French Renaissance verse, the poems singled out here are sensitively interpreted in rhymed English versions. . . . There is a pleasant and inspiring craftsmanship in these interpretations.”—Virginia Quarterly Review

This book presents an interpretation of Maurice Scève’s lyric sequence Délie, object de plus haulte vertu (Lyon, 1544) in literary relation to the Vita nuova, Commedia, and other works of Dante Alighieri. Dante’s subtle influence on Scève is elucidated in depth for the first time, augmenting the allusions in Délie to the Canzoniere of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). Scève’s sequence of dense, epigrammatic dizains is considered to be an early example, prior to the Pléiade poets, of French Renaissance imitation of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry, in a time when imitatio was an established literary practice, signifying the poet’s participation in a tradition. While the Canzoniere is an important source for Scève’s Délie, both works are part of a poetic lineage that includes Occitan troubadours, Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, and Dante. The book situates Dante as a relevant predecessor and source for Scève, and examines anew the Petrarchan label for Délie. Compelling poetic affinities emerge between Dante and Scève that do not correlate with Petrarch.

The Art of Meditation and the French Renaissance Love Lyric examines the poetics of meditation in the French love lyric at the height of the Lyonnais Renaissance as illustrated by one of the country's most prominent writers. Maurice Scève's Délie is the first French sequence of poems devoted to a single woman in the manner of Petrarch's Rime. It is also the first Renaissance work to use emblems in a sustained work on love. At their core, most amatory lyrics involve a triple relation among lover, beloved, and the meaning of love. Whether the poet-lover is a man or woman, poetic discourse generally takes the form of an interior monologue frequently intermingled with direct and indirect address to the beloved. Though the dominant quality of this lyric is personal introspection, Michael Giordano finds Délie to be consistent with traditions of Christian meditation. He argues that the amatory lyric served as a vehicle for contests of value and paradigm change not only because it was conditioned both by sacred and profane sources, but also because it occurred at a time of religious upheaval and scientific revolution.

In this collection of rhymed, metrical translations of selected poems by three of France's and Western literature's most gifted and prolific poets, Norman R. Shapiro presents English versions of works by Clement Marot (1496-1544), considered by some to be the last of the medieval poets; Joachim Du Bellay (1525-1560); and Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). The original French poems - more than 150 in all - and their new English translations appear on facing pages. Some of the poems are very well known, while others will be a new pleasure for many readers. In these faithful translations of the poetry of the three most highly acclaimed French Renaissance poets, Shapiro maintains the rhyme and metre of the original works. He adheres to the message of each poem yet avoids a slavishly literal translation to offer creative and spirited equivalents. For students and general readers of this volume, Hope Gildden's introduction, along with notes she and Shapiro provide on the specific poems, seek to enhance appreciation and illuminate historical and linguistic issues relating to these lyric poems.

Moving from a definition of the lyric to the innovations introduced by Petrarch's poetic language, this study goes on to propose a new reading of several French poets (Charles d'Orléans, Ronsard, and Du Bellay), and a re-evaluation of Montaigne's understanding of the most striking poetry and its relation to his own prose. Instead of relying on conventional notions of Renaissance subjectivity, it locates recurring features of this poetic language that express a turn to the singular and that herald lyric poetry's modern emphasis on the utterly particular. By combining close textual analysis with more modern ethical concerns this study establishes clear distinctions between what poets do and what rhetoric and poetics say they do. It shows how the tradition of rhetorical commentary is insufficient in accounting for this startling effectiveness of lyric poetry, manifest in Petrarch's Rime Sparse and the collections of the best poets writing after him.

The ingenuity, charm, and grace with which Shapiro's English versions capture the originals' wit and flavor are impressive. He is faithful but not rigidly so. I have read these translations with amusement, admiration, emotion, and pleasure. --Anne Lake Prescott.

Jennifer H. Oliver explores the extent to which depictions of the ship in sixteenth century France are freighted with political, religious, and poetic symbolism. She examines the ways in which the ship and the body are made analogous in Renaissance shipwreck writing.

The study of literature still tends to be nation-based, even when direct evidence contradicts longstanding notions of an autonomous literary canon. In a time when current events make inevitable the acceptance of a global perspective, the essays in this volume suggest a corrective to such scholarly limitations: the contributors offer alternatives to received notions of 'influence' and the more or less linear transmission of translatio studii, demonstrating that they no longer provide adequate explanations for the interactions among the various literary canons of the Renaissance. Offering texts on a variety of aspects of the Anglo-French Renaissance instead of concentrating on one set of borrowings or phenomena, this collection points to new configurations of the relationships among national literatures. Contributors address specific borrowings, rewritings, and appropriations of French writing by English authors, in fields ranging from lyric poetry to epic poetry to drama to political treatise. The bibliography presents a comprehensive list of publications on French connections in the English Renaissance from 1902 to the present day.

Including contributions by historians of early modern European art, architecture, and literature, this book examines the transformative force of the vernacular over time and different regions, as well as the way the concept of the vernacular itself changes in the period.

Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion demonstrates that literature and polemic interacted constantly in sixteenth-century France, constructing ideological frameworks that defined the various groups to which individuals belonged and through which they defined their identities. Contributions explore both literary texts (prose, poetry, and theater) and more intentionally polemical texts that fall outside of the traditional literary genres. Engaging the continuous casting and recasting of opposing worldviews, this collection of essays examines literature's use of polemic and polemic's use of literature as seminal intellectual developments stemming from the religious and social turmoil that characterized this period in France.