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SEDUCTIVE TOPOGRAPHIES: THE LANGUAGES OF LANDSCAPE IN LA PUCE DE MADAME DES-ROCHES
Romanic Review, May 2004 by Tarte, Kendall
4. Throughout the work, the titles of various poems announce their authors' participation in the Parisian delegation; the mention "Advocat en Parlement," for example, follows the name of several of the men, including Pasquier. A thirty-page section added to the end of the published volume contains poems concerning the Grands Jours specifically: "Divers poemes tant svr les Grans lovrs tenvs a Poitiers ... qve svr autres sviets faits aux mesmes Grans lours." The full title of the volume also draws attention to the specific historical time and place: La Pvce de Madame des-Roches Qvi est un recveil de divers poëmes Grecs, Latins & François, Composez par plvsievrs doctes personnages avx Grans lours tenus à Poitiers l'An M.D.LXXIX.
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5. Patricia Parker explores similar associations in her analysis of the juxtapositions and intersections of the rhetorical tradition of the blason, the discourse of the discovery and possession of America, and the eighteenth-century English representation of landscape and prospect ("Rhetorics of Property: Exploration, Inventory, Blazon," in Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property [New York: Methuen, 1987], 126-54). On the link between landscape and gender, see also Eouise H. Westling, The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape, Gender, and American fiction (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), especially Chapter Two, "European Tradition and Figuration of a New World" (23-38). More generally, J. Hillis Miller's considerations of the issues surrounding topography include several modern authors and Plato; see his Topographies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). For a fascinating and very different study in cartography and literature and a survey of the current bibliography, see Tom Conley, especially "Putting French Studies on the Map," Diacritics 28.3 (1998): 23-39. Considering "spatialities of discourse" in several Ronsard poems, he aims "to see how cartographical 'styles' can be productively correlated to literary forms" (25). see also The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
6. Estienne Pasquier, "Voev," 40^sup v^ and Madeleine Des Roches, "Aux poetes chantepuce," 44^sup v^-45^sup v^. In La Puce, Madeleine's poem was attributed to Catherine; the women rectified this error in Les secondes oeuvres (1583), which included corrected versions of their contributions to the flea anthology. The inscription of proper names was a common poetic convention in the sixteenth century. see François Rigolot, Poétique et onomastique: L'exemple de la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1977).
7. The women's surname refers to landholdings ("les Roches") owned by Madeleine.
8. see, for example, H. Lancelot-Voisin, sieur de La Popelinière, La vraye et entiere histoire de ces derniers troubles (Cologne: Birckman, 1571.), 213; François de la Noue, Discours politiques et militaires (1587; ed. F. E. Sutcliffe, Geneva: Droz, 1967), 756-57; and François Le Poulchre, Les sept livres des honnestes loisirs (Paris: Marc Orry, 1587), 162^sup r^-163^sup r^.
