Woman's Work(s): The Poetry of Louise Labé

In 1555, printer Jean de Tournes of Lyon published a small volume of poetry titled, simply enough, EVVRES (WORKS). This innocuous label belied the book’s audacity, for the collection—a proto-feminist dedicatory epistle, a lengthy dialogue between Love and Folly, three elegies, and twenty-four sonnets—was the first of its kind in France: a volume of poetry written by a woman of common status and published under her own name, splashed brazenly across the frontispiece: LOUÏZE LABÉ LIONNOIZE.

How did the daughter and, later, wife of obscure Lyonnais ropemakers rise to become the premiere female poet of the French Renaissance? Few women in sixteenth-century France could read or write; far fewer could lay claim to the classical education requisite for the writing of verse. The fortunate minority with access to private tutors or convent formation belonged overwhelmingly to the noble class. Louise Labé could claim no such privilege, yet somehow she mastered not only written French, but Italian and Latin. So thoroughly did Labé assimilate the works of the ancients and those of her male peers that she transformed their tropes and techniques into a new poetic discourse, one that posited woman as the subject, rather than the object, of desire. A daring literary triumph—and one for which Louise would pay dearly for the rest of her life, with the coin of her reputation.

Labé’s direct affront to the ideals of feminine modesty and reticence made censure inevitable. In the eyes of her contemporaries, a female author was little better than a prostitute. Both put their private selves on public display, one hawking her words, the other her body. Unlike female authors of the noble class, Labé had no powerful man to vouch for her purity, and she eschewed the protection a pseudonym or posthumous publication might afford. Her participation in Lyon’s male literary circles birthed rumors of improper behavior that publication of the EVVRES appeared to validate. Vilified and disparaged as a courtesan by the general public, Labé nevertheless enjoyed the friendship and respect of her male colleagues, who praised her verse and learning in the two dozen poems of the “Hommage à Louise Labé” that rounds out the EVVRES. Now regarded as a leading figure of French poetry, Labé achieved the objective her dedicatory epistle announced: to show men how wrong they’d been to deprive women of the honor and benefit the pursuit of knowledge provided. “[L]ift[ing her head] above the spindle,” Louise Labé dared to claim a public voice for herself and for all women brave enough to speak.

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This post first appeared on the blog of P.K. Adams, author of THE GREENEST BRANCH: A Novel of Germany's First Female Physician. P.K.'s blog features guest posts about lesser-known historical women in fiction (or fictional female characters who are not royalty). 

Operating a Renaissance Printing Press

Renaissance era printing presses required a team of skilled workers for operation. Each press was manned by two journeymen, aided by an apprentice. One journeyman would fit a forme of type set by the compositor into the press bed and ink the forme with sheepskin dabbers. A second journeyman would attach a sheet of damp paper to a frame that folded over the inked forme, slide the tray under the screw, and yank the bar to lower a heavy plate onto the paper, pressing it against the inked type. Once the puller raised the plate, the apprentice would remove the wet page and hang it to dry, allowing the journeymen to begin the process anew. A seasoned team could pull upwards of three thousand pages a day. An average sized printing shop had three presses in operation; a large enterprise, five to six.

Compositors, or typesetters, sat before staggered bins of type filling the formes for each press. As soon as the initial page was drawn from a new forme, a proofreader would read and correct it. Following the proofreader's marks, the compositors would remove and replace erroneous letters before the final draw. The duties of both compositor and proofreader demanded a thorough familiarity with classical languages and literatures. Noted scholars often served a "guest stint" as corrector at a printing house. The contribution of their expertise to the production of texts elevated the shop's reputation.

Much of my novel takes place in a printing shop in Lyon, a center of the French book trade. Jollande Carlet, a spirited young widow who dreams of publishing her own poems, proofreads at the Sign of the Fountain, the small but esteemed establishment owned by her godfather. When Gabriel Orland, a court poet commissioned by the queen to investigate the Fountain's rumored role in the distribution of banned books, arrives to assume Jollande's position, sparks fly. Good thing the paper's damp, because these two spar over far more than spelling.

Hans Holbein and The Dance of Death

For centuries, the short, gray days of November, heralds of winter, have prompted Christians to remember and honor their beloved dead and to reflect upon their own inevitable end. The Middle Ages embodied this heightened awareness in visual depictions of The Dance of Death (Danse macabre). In this vivid allegory, a personified Death summons individuals from all walks of life to join a chain of frolicking skeletons. Adorning churches and private chapels, such paintings reminded viewers that death spares no one and all, status notwithstanding, share the same ultimate fate.

St. Nicolas's Church, Tallin

The visual tradition of the Dance of Death continued well into the seventeenth century. In the early sixteenth, the German painter Hans Holbein modified the tradition in a way thought to reflect burgeoning Reformation theology. Instead of depicting Death's victims united in an unbroken chain after their passing, he fashioned a stunning series of sketches wherein Death snatches victims away in the midst of their normal daily activities. Pope, king, nobleman, merchant, old woman, priest, peddler, child: a grisly skeleton comes for each at the moment he or she least expects it. Death is as likely to arrive during the performance of sinful actions as charitable ones; good works provide no protection from its ravages.

Hans Lützelburger of Basel cut Holbein's sketches into wood blocks sometime between 1523 and 1526. The woodcuts soon appeared in proofs with German titles. It wasn't until 1538, however, when 

the drawings were published in book form by the Treschsel brothers in Lyon, France, that Holbein's vision reached a wider audience.

Les Simulachres & historiees faces de la mort, autant elegamment pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées (Images and Illustrated Facets of Death, as elegantly depicted as they are artfully conceived) features forty-one of Holbein's woodcuts. An illustrative Bible verse crowns each engraving; below the picture follows a short quatrain in French by the poet Gilles Corrozet. The book was intended to help Christians of both persuasions prepare for death by meditating on the vanity of status and possessions, which offered no protection from Death's violence.

Here are a few of Holbein's more striking engravings:

The King (Note the fleur-de-lys and the marked resemblance to François I)

The Young Child

The Physician

The Abbess

The Ploughman

The Drunkard

The Soldier

You can view the entirety of the Simulachres with their Bible verses and accompanying poems here. The work was published at least six times in French by 1562. Innumerable copies in various languages followed through the nineteenth century. The popularity of the work attests to Holbein's genius. By rendering the horror of sudden death visible and viscerally palpable, he reminds viewers to take not a single moment of life for granted. A valuable lesson, even today.

Memento mori. Death comes for all--don't let it catch you by surprise.

La Belle Cordière in Glass

Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon this beautiful stained glass portrait of Louise Labé, the Lyonnaise poet whose Oeuvres appeared in 1555! The panel was created by Lucien Bégule, a nineteenth century painter of stained glass who became one of Lyon's premier artists. Bégule specialized in both profane and religious windows; his glassworks on the heights of Saint-Just overlooking the city produced vitraux that decorate churches throughout France and appear in distant locations like Lausanne, Nagasaki, Cairo, and Rio de Janeiro.

Bégule's portrait of La Belle Cordière captures the Louise of Pierre Woeiriot's contemporary 1555 engraving.

The panel's design was inspired by Le Printemps, a window created in 1894 by Art nouveau designer Eugène Grasset.

Bégule met Grasset in Paris in 1885 and introduced him to the art of stained glass. The two men became close collaborators. Their representation of St. George killing the dragon won a silver medal at the 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris. The stunning Labé window, a beautiful tribute to one of Lyon's most well-known literary figures, won a gold medal at the 1900 Exposition universelle.

Bégule's window is on display in the Musée Gadagne, the history museum housed in a Renaissance edifice in the heart of Old Lyon. You can view more of Bégule's beautiful creations at this website devoted to his work.

I'm so entranced with the Belle Cordière window I've plastered it on my desktop! I wrote about Louise, the inspiration behind my first novel, here. I'm happy to have such a lovely representation of my literary heroine close at hand to inspire me.

Feuilleton on Fontainebleau

photo credit: Marilane Borges

This week, channel France 2 is running a feature serial about the château of Fontainebleau. Today's installment focuses on the private apartments of Napoleon, although it includes a beautiful segment shot in the galérie François Ier. Straightening the cord across a velvet-upholstered armchair whose wooden back boasts a carving of François's salamander emblem, the security guard reminds viewers that the chairs which line the gallery are authentic period pieces, quite valuable and fragile. The Fontainebleau segment begins at the 28:25 minute mark. Just before it, starting at 25:24, is a segment on the old city of Lyon and its Italianate architecture. Hmmm, the settings of my two novels, back to back on French television... is it a message from the gods? One can hope. :)

Here's the link to the video, in French. Enjoy!

Fête des Lumières Videos

Here are links to videos of the 2012 Fête des lumières in Lyon. The video of the Saint Jean cathedral is a must-see. Be sure to watch it full screen!

Cathédrale St. Jean

Place des Terreaux

Fête des Lumières montage

Saraband of the Magnificent Animals (parade)

Videos courtesy of LYFtv.com.

Lyon's Fête des Lumières: The Black Death Illuminated, by Liza Perrat

Lyon, France is a city dear to my heart, the setting of my first novel. Each December, Lyon stages a spectacular Festival of Lights that draws visitors from all over France and Europe. This year, the festival runs from December 6th-9th. Here to tell us about the festival and its history is historical fiction author Liza Perrat, who lives in a small town on the outskirts of Lyon and whose novel, SPIRIT OF LOST ANGELS, I will be reviewing at the end of the week.

The Black Death Illuminated

by Liza Perrat

"Protect us from famine, war and plague, Seigneur," cried the Lyonnaise people in 1628. Alas, their pleas came too late--the bubonic plague had already crossed the Rhône River, terrifying the inhabitants and killing half of them.

The desperate people prayed to the Virgin Mary to return good health to the city until miraculously, in 1643, the plague disappeared and the Lyonnaise people never doubted their divine protection. So, how did this episode of divine intervention become the largest modern-day international light festival?

Well, it all began on December 8, 1852, with the inauguration of a statue of the Virgin Mary, erected on Fourvière hill next to the site of the present-day Basilica. The Lyonnaise people showed their gratitude to Mary by lighting candles on their windowsills, the gesture proving more and more popular as the years passed.

Over a century later, in the 1980s, in conjunction with the advent of the lighting plan, the city of Lyon decided to transform the December 8 festival into the Fête des Lumières (light festival). On the eve of the winter solstice, in a magnificent urban ritual, the city's public places would be illuminated in a different way each year.

Residents, associations, cultural groups, humanitarian associations and the local government work with artists, musical and theatrical performers, photographers and lighting engineers to provide the colored symphony of light that bathes the city in today's celebration of light.

The festival, which attracts over four million visitors to Lyon, includes other light-based activities and lasts four days, with the main events occurring on the 8th. The focal points are generally the Fourvière Basilica, Saint Jean Cathedral, and the Place des Terreaux, where music, dancing, parades and food stalls transform the old district of Lyon into a place flooded with light, beauty and sound.

photo credit: mondoramas

I began attending the festival back in 2002. Crossing the Saône River, my first glimpse of the illuminations was the Fourvière Basilica, overlooking the city on Fourvière hill. Symbolic of the people's devotion to the Virgin Mary, the basilica was constructed between 1872 and 1884. Its oriental and neo-classic columns and columned porticos, blended with mediaeval-style machicolated towers, were lit in spectacularly fluorescent shades of green, blue and violet.

On Place des Terreaux, the ancient stones faded beneath a cinematic screen of stars and moons. Colored lights and shapes danced on the stages of renaissance architecture, and, as a bloodied revolutionary soldier crept across the starry sky, I lost all sense of dimension.

"December 8 has always been a show of thousands of people strolling together on a winter night in a city transformed simply by their presence," said one of the artistic directors. "This moving public is at the heart of the festival, just as it is at the heart of urbanity, each person being a vector of light within the nocturnal landscape."

Since its origin in the nineteenth century, December 8 has taken on an undeniably futuristic allure. But despite the magnificent illuminations, it seems that for the Lyonnaise people, the soul of the light festival remains within the beauty of thousands of tiny candle flames burning in unison along their windowsills. As people come from all over the world to share the rejoicing and emotion of these four breathtaking nights, the Lyonnaise people, lovers of tradition, continue, to pay homage to the Virgin Mary for banishing the Black Death from their midst.

For more information and stunning photos, please refer to the festival's official website.

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Liza grew up in Wollongong, Australia, where she worked as a general nurse and midwife for fifteen years. When she met her French husband on a Bangkok bus, she moved to France, where she has been living for twenty years. She works part-time as a French-English medical translator.

Since she completed a creative writing course ten years ago, several of her short stories have won awards, notably the Writers Bureau annual competition of 2004 and her stories have been published widely in anthologies and small press magazines. Her articles on French culture and tradition have been published in international magazines such as France Magazine and France Today.

She has completed four novels and one short-story collection, and is represented by Judith Murdoch of the Judith Murdoch Literary Agency.

SPIRIT OF LOST ANGELS, published  in May 2012 under the Triskele Books label, is the first in a historical series set against a backdrop of rural France. Her agent is currently trying to sell the second in the series, WOLFSANGEL, and Liza is working on the third story, ANGEL OF ROSES, set in the 14th century plague years of France.

For more information on Liza or her books, please refer to her website or blog.

France Today: "Light & Lively Lyon"

photo courtesy of arno

A charming article on the history and character of Lyon, the setting of my first novel.

Local Boy's New World Adventure

The ghost of Giovanni da Verrazzano is haunting me. This evening, while skimming Jean Etèvenaux's Les Grandes Heures de Lyon (20o5), I fell upon another mention of the new-to-me story of Verrazzano christening New York "La Nouvelle-Angoulême" (see my previous post). I gleaned an additional bit of information from Etèvenaux's brief version. It appears Giovanni was from a Florentine family that had established itself in Lyon, of all places; it was from Lyon that the explorer had sought François I's patronage in 1522. Who would have guessed?

I did a little Googling and found more details on Verrazzano's page at The Mariners' Museum. It claims that circumstantial evidence (the lack of any mention of Giovanni's birth in the records of the Florentine Verrazzanos and the marriage of a certain Giovanna to Allessandro di Bartolommeo da Verrazzano in 1480 at Lyon) points to Lyon as Giovanni's probable birthplace. More interesting still, with regard to the 1524 voyage, the article claims: 

With the accumulated knowledge and information gathered by Cabot and other explorers who went before him, Verrazzano made his plans and preparations for his own expedition. In 1523, letters were written concerning the efforts of a group of Florentine bankers and merchants, living in Lyons, to organize financial support for a voyage led by Verrazzano. Interested in finding a source for silk for the textile factories of Lyon, these backers were among the wealthiest and most influential families in France, and are among those linked by marriage to Verrazzano. The support of the king, Francois I, was also necessary for the venture, but there are no written records of a royal commission. It must have been given in some form however, because on returning from the first voyage, Verrazzano made his report directly to the king.

To think that this important voyage to the New World, which produced the first written descriptions of the landscape and the native peoples, was financed by the silk merchants of Lyon! (I think there's a story here, just waiting to be told...Book 3, perhaps?)

To honor its local adventurer, the city of Lyon named a square in the northern part of the city Place Giovanni da Verrazzano. The explorer is also one of the twenty-five famous Lyonnais featured on the seven-storey wall mural at the corner of the rue de la Martinère and quai de la Pècherie (more on Lyon's murals in a later post).

(Be sure to read the entire Verrazzano entry at The Mariners' Museum and explore the museum's fascinating website.)

Brains in a Bowl

A while back, the New York Times ran an interesting travel article on Lyon which contained some interesting factoids about the silk industry. It appears one of Lyon's gastronomical specialties is cervelle de canut, "silkworker's brain," a dish of fromage blanc studded with spices. Hmmm. I imagine it tastes better than it sounds. I'd gladly mosey over to Lyon to find out.                                                                                                                                                         

G is for Griffarins

The first press in Lyon printed pages in 1473, establishing an industry that by the mid-1500's was critical to the city's economy. Over sixty printing shops were in operation around 1550; many of them--including those of Sébastien Gryphe, Jean de Tournes, and Barthélemy Honorat--were famous throughout France and all of Europe for the quality of the scholarship and craftsmanship that went into their editions. As Natalie Zemon Davis explains in her essay "Strikes and Salvation at Lyon" (see reference below; the factual content of this post is drawn heavily from Davis), the printing industry employed over 600 men of all social classes, from the great merchant-publishers, to the independent publisher-printers, to master craftsmen and printers' journeymen. All of these men were doing something different from their fathers, in a trade that was relatively new and without traditions.

The journeymen were those men who worked for wages as press operators, typesetters (compositors) and proofreaders. They came from all over France and even foreign countries, often traveling a circuit that allowed them to gain experience by working for several months or years in different cities. Pressmen on the whole were a cocky lot, proud their skills--two-thirds of them could read and write--and convinced that they labored in a trade that held great value for Christian society. Though they might be laborers, they considered themselves far above the city's tanners and masons and dockhands.

Life in a printing shop was a communal one. Three to four men worked a press, in conjunction with a typesetter and proofreader. The master was required by law to provide meals which they all ate together. Unmarried workers usually shared living quarters and often spent their scant free time together, drinking at taverns and roaming the streets. But this new industry had no guild to provide a cultural and monetary support structure for its workers. To compensate for this, and to strengthen their position vis-à-vis the publishers and master printers, who, in their eyes, conspired to ruin and destroy them with long hours, meager wages and inadequate food, the printers' journeymen formed a secular brotherhood called the Company of Griffarins.

The Griffarins was a secretive society with its own initiation rites and ceremonies. The name derives from the old French term for "glutton," an insult the master printers often threw at them, modified to include the word "griffe," or "claw," in order to emphasize the group's economic power. Though they were among the highest paid workers in Lyon, the pressmen banded together to pressure the publishers and master printers for better working conditions and higher pay. They organized strikes, work stoppages, and demonstrations, beat up apprentices whom masters put on their jobs, and made life miserable for pressmen who refused to join the company. Since they were valuable to the publishers for their skills and successful in intimidating the competition, the Griffarins were usually able to force their superiors to meet their demands.

By and large, the pressmen at mid-century were strong supporters of the reformed faith rapidly spreading throughout the city. There were, however, publishers and pressmen who remained faithful Catholics; for reasons Natalie Davis enumerates and which I will relate in a later post, the Griffarins eventually shied away from the strictures and oversight of the Protestant Consistories and returned to the Catholic fold. In my novel, I strive to depict the close companionship between the pressmen at the Sign of the Fountain and their distrust of the new compositor who suddenly appears in their midst. The Fountain's pressmen have no complaints against the shop's master, a devout Catholic, but they are readily suspected of supporting heresy by the city guard.

(Natalie Zemon Davis, "Strikes and Salvation at Lyon," in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford UP 1975), 1-16.)

Lyon's Musée des tissus

One of modern Lyon's main attractions is the Musée des tissus et des arts décoratifs, a museum devoted to textiles and the decorative arts. Housed in a mansion dating from 1730, the museum traces the history of both oriental and occidental textiles. It houses four permanent collections: Coptic Textiles and Tapestries, Eastern Textiles (Persian, Byzantine and Ottoman), Far-Eastern Textiles, and Western Textiles. The website describes this last collection as "A panorama of the history of European textiles, from Spain, Italy, England, Germany, France and notably Lyon, through woven and printed fabrics, ecclesiastical ornaments, embroideries, costumes, laces and trimmings." I visited the museum back in 1990 and remember it as a fascinating place.

The website is a bit confusing to navigate at first. When you first enter the url, a peach colored page with few words in French appears; click on the underlined sentence in gold. This will take you to the home page, where you can choose between the English and French versions of the site. Once you choose English, click on "Collections of the Textile Museum." On that page, if you click on one of the labels at the top below the title, you can view samples from the collection. Unfortunately, most of the European fabric samples are from the 17th and 18th centuries, although there are some older tapestries. If you click on "Costumes," you can view some beautiful court dresses and coats from the second half of the 18th century (perfect for readers of Catherine Delors's Mistress of the Revolution).

Of particular interest to students of the Renaissance is an exhibit which runs from April 11 to September 7, 2008 titled "From the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent: Italian textiles from the Renaissance." Unfortunately, the English page hasn't been updated to include this exhibit. The French page describes it as "The first installment of a long series to come consecrated to Italian textiles from the Renaissance, from the end of the 16th century to the 1640's. From Lucca to Florence, from Venice to Genoa, the Italian silk industry supplied all of Europe with silk and gold velvets, with rich damasks and sumptuous lampas." There are concerts and other events associated with the show. If you happen to be in Lyon over the summer, it would definitely be worth a visit. And don't forget to tell me all about it when you get back!

Although it doesn't pertain to the sixteenth century, here is an interesting fact I gleaned from the website: In 1770, Charles Germain de St. Aubin wrote in his book The Art of the Embroiderer that women embroiderers were well-paid and that Lyons was the most important embroidery centre in France, with more than 6000 women embroiderers in 1778. Is there the kernel of a story here? Be sure to read the history of the silk industry in Lyons as the website outlines it (under "Lyon," click on the first sample box, the one that features text rather than fabric). Founded in the 16th century, the industry remained extremely important to Lyon's economy well into the 1850's.

MUSEE DES TISSUS ET DES ARTS DECORATIFS
34 rue de la Charité F-69002 Lyon
Tél. + 33 (0)4 78 38 42 00
Open every day except Mondays and holidays from 10 am to 5:30 pm.

Lyon in the Lap of Luxury (Fabric)

Sustained by the quarterly trade fairs that attracted merchants from all over Europe, the city of Lyon rose to prominence as one of the most important cloth markets in sixteenth-century Europe. Lyon served as the point of departure for domestic fabric exports, such as the prized woolen cloth originating in Languedoc, Poitou and Berry and the sturdy linen canvas produced in the Lyonnais region itself. More importantly, royal decree designated Lyon as the sole depository for all unwoven and woven silks entering the kingdom. Merchants transported raw silk grown in Spain, Italy and the Middle East from the port of Marseilles up the Rhône River to Lyon, where silk weavers, invited by François I in 1536 to settle in France exempt from tithes and taxes, transformed it into fabric. Other merchants imported finished luxury fabrics directly from Italy: taffetas and cloth of gold from Lucca, figured silks from Florence, ciselé velvets from Genoa. Taxed at a hefty 5%, these luxury imports contributed significantly to the economy of the city and of the kingdom as a whole.

Considering the flow of fabric through the city, it is not surprising to find textile producers and merchants heavily represented on Lyon's tax rolls. In 1545, there were 103 dyers, 51 weavers, and 100 drapers listed. One of these drapers could easily have been Thomas Guillaume, the father of Jollande Carlet, the main character of my novel The Measure of Silence. Thomas makes a tidy living selling serviceable domestic fabrics to the city's inhabitants from his shop at the sign of the Feathered Needle. He cautiously branches out into cloth production by marrying Jollande off to the son of a local felt manufacturer. But when Marsilio Rocini, an Italian cloth merchant, convinces Thomas to enter into a partnership with him, Thomas abandons his natural reserve. Beguiled by Marsilio's talk of instant riches, Thomas stakes all he has to purchase a shipment of luxury fabrics he is convinced will make his fortune. It is up to Jollande to save her father from looming financial disaster-- if she doesn't wind up unwittingly hastening it.

(Sources: Silk, by Jacques Anquetil; Grand commerce et vie urbaine au XVIe siècle, by Richard Gascon; Histoire de Lyon et du Lyonnais, by André Latreille)

Browsing for Books in the Sixteenth Century

If you were browsing through a bookshop in sixteenth century Lyon, what would you find? According to Louis Bourgeois in Quand la cour de France vivait à Lyon (Fayard 1980), book production in the city at mid-century fell into roughly these categories:

28% of books treated religious subjects;

12% were dedicated to science and the arts (medicine and philosophy being most the popular);

33% could be considered belles-lettres  (grammar, Latin and neo-Latin literature, French poetry and prose);

6% discussed history;

the remaining 21% were mostly texts of Roman, canon and French law.

Good thing Lyon was far from the beach--not a lot of light reading to choose from!

Lyon: City of Commerce and Culture

Located at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers, the city of Lyon was second only to Paris in commercial and cultural importance during the sixteenth century. The third largest city in the realm with a population of close to 60,000 in 1550 (Paris boasted 300,000 inhabitants, Rouen 75,000), Lyon was the home to three industries that linked France with the rest of Europe: banking, silk work, and printing. The city became a major point of entry for goods coming into France over the Alps from Italy; linked to the Mediterranean by the Rhône and to Flanders and Germany by overland trade routes, it became staging center for exports as well. Lyon was home to large populations of foreigners, primarily Italians and Germans, deeply involved in this international trade. The city hosted four trade fairs each year, at Epiphany, Easter, August, and All Saints', each of which attracted 5-6000 foreigners. These fairs helped establish one of banking's first credit systems, the lettres d'échange. Although Lyon had no university in the sixteenth century, the prevalence of the printing trade fostered a healthy intellectual life and led to the establishment of poetic circles and philosophical academies based on Italian models. Lyon was a vibrant and exciting place to be in the years leading up to the Wars of Religion.

This vibrancy and the interplay of commerce, culture and religion led me to choose Lyon as the setting for The Measure of Silence. In coming posts, I will examine each of these aspects in greater detail and share how each contributed to the development of the narrative.

(The drawing above dates from the 1800's but shows the high hills that dominate the city and its bustling river trade.)

La Bellel Rebelle

In 1555, Lyonnais publisher Jean de Tournes released a small volume of poetry titled, simply enough, OEUVRES (WORKS). The audacity of the author's byline, however, far eclipsed the book's innocuous title: LOUIZE LABE LIONNOIZE. This collection of one dialogue, three elegies and twenty-four sonnets, accompanied by twenty-four poetic "hommages" penned by other authors, was the first of its kind: a volume of poetry written by a middle-class woman and published under her own name during her lifetime. The book caused quite a stir in Lyon and changed the course of French letters forever.

A woman author, especially one from the working classes, was virtually unheard of at the time, for practical as well as moral reasons. Noblewomen composed poetry and collections of tales, but these wealthy women had the luxury of being educated by private tutors and the time to indulge their literary leanings. How did Louise Labé, daughter of a rope maker, attain her admirable command of Latin and classical literature? It is thought she attended a convent school after the death of her mother; even so, how had she convinced the sisters to teach her more than the rudiments of reading and writing, never mind allow her access to the works of the ancients? Somehow, Louise managed to educate herself and find the time to write as she fulfilled her pressing duties as the daughter of, and later wife of another, rope maker.

Receiving an education was one thing, publishing a book quite another. For a sixteenth-century woman, publishing was as scandalous an act as prostitution. The two activities were essentially the same: a female author put her private self on public display, selling her words instead of her body. Noblewomen who published could escape society's disapprobation by having a respected male vouch for their purity; no one argued when King François's sister, Marguerite de Navarre, published her poems, plays and tales. Likewise, some women authors protected themselves by concealing their identities; Marguerite de Briet published several works in the 1530's and '40's under the pseudonym Hélisenne de Crenne. A third way of validating a woman's voice was to publish her works posthumously, after her documented virtue could no longer fall into question. In 1545, the poet Maurice Scève helped publish the Rymes de Gentille et Vertueuse Dame, Pernette du Guillet soon after the death of his friend.

Louise Labé eschewed all of these protections when she published her poems in 1555. She did seek the blessing of a noble patron, but in typical iconoclastic fashion, chose a young noblewoman, fellow Lyonnaise Clémence de Bourges, rather than an established male. Louise published her poems boldly under her own name in her early thirties, while she was most definitely still alive. Unfortunately, she did pay for her audacity: for the rest of her life she was disparaged as a courtesan, especially since she seems to have carried on a long-term liaison with an Italian banker after the death of her husband. Though slandered and disdained by the general public, Louise was well respected in literary circles; she counted many well known male poets among her friends, men who praised her verse and learning. Her contribution to literary history cannot be ignored: she showed French women how to "lift their heads above the spindle" and claim their voices in the public place.

If you read French, François Rigolot published an excellent paperback edition of Louise's poetry in 1986 (Flammarion). An English translation by Annie Finch came out in 2005 (University of Chicago Press). Five of her translations can be found online here.

In a later post, I'll explain how I used Louise Labé as a model for my main character, Jollande Carlet, in The Measure of Silence.

The Answers You've All Been Waiting For

Congratulations to Rachel and Nadezhda, who tried their hand at the first Renaissance quiz. I'm hoping others of you read the questions and thought about the choices, even if you didn't make a formal response. Here are the correct answers:

1. B François I.

I've said plenty about him already!

2. D All of the above.

Marguerite d'Angoulême, François's only sibling, was an accomplished author who wrote L'Heptaméron and numerous works of poetry. After her first husband died, she married Henri d'Albret and became Queen of Navarre in 1527. She was very sympathetic to the new religious ideas of the time and welcomed reformers like Calvin and Farel to her court at Nérac. She had one daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, who gave birth to King Henri IV of France. (Marguerite de Navarre is not to be confused with the Reine Margot of Alexandre Dumas's novel. That Margot was François's granddaughter and married Henri IV in 1572.)

3. A Michelangelo

Although François did invite Michelangelo to France, the artist never accepted. Leonardo, however, lived in France for three years at the end of his life and died at an estate near the château d'Amboise in 1519. Andrea del Sarto worked in France for a year in 1518 before he absconded to Florence with money François had given him to buy artwork. Cellini worked in France for a period in the early 1540's, during which time he fashioned his famous saltcellar.

4. B Lyon

Lyon was the second largest city in France after Paris during the sixteenth century, boasting a population of nearly 60,000. At the crossroad of several routes to Italy, Lyon became a center of banking, silk working, and literature. The city hosted trade fairs several times a year that attracted merchants, bankers and peddlers from throughout Europe. My novel The Measure of Silence is set in Lyon.

5. A gargantuan

Rabelais named his main character Gargantua. This character was a giant whose name has persisted through the centuries in the adjectival form gargantuan.

Did you get many correct? Rachel got three right; Nadezhda all five. Bravo, ladies! Thanks so much for participating. We'll try another quiz again sometime.