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SEDUCTIVE TOPOGRAPHIES: THE LANGUAGES OF LANDSCAPE IN LA PUCE DE MADAME DES-ROCHES
Romanic Review, May 2004 by Tarte, Kendall
28. John Hale gives an overview of cartography and chorography in the Renaissance (The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance [New York: Atheneum, 1994], 15-38). See also Conley, The Self-Made Map.
29. The explanation of the distinction between geography and chorography originated with the second-century astronomer and geographer Ptolemy (Geographia, Book 1, Chapter 1). See Frank Lestringant, "Chorographic et paysage à la Renaissance" in Le Paysage à la Renaissance, ed. Yves Giraud (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1988), 8-26. Marie-Dominique Legrand analyzes landscape techniques in several sixteenth-century poets ("De l'émergence du sujet et de l'essor du paysage à la Renaissance" in Les Enjeux du paysage, ed. Michel Collot [Brussels: OUSIA, 1997], 112-38).
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30. "Marches dans la ville," L'Invention du quotidien 1. Arts de faire, ed. Luce Giard ([1980] Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 140, for this and subsequent quotes. Certeau points out that although Medieval and Renaissance painters represented the city from this bird's-eye perspective, they imagined rather than experienced this totalizing vision, for no one yet had the means to view the city from such a place. Likewise, the puce poets' survey of Catherine's body will be imaginary; see below.
31. Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, 30-31.
32. Several poems addressed to Louise Labé represent the city space of Lyon. The anonymous "A Louïze Labé, Lionnoese," for example, recounts the poet's visit to Lyon; Labé is the city's central attraction. The poem follows his trip through Lyon as he searches for fame, which he ultimately attains by praising Labé-her knowledge and speech, not her beauty-in the two final stanzas of the poem. He travels from the rivers to the merchant district, contemplates the architecture, the printers' shops, and the Lyonnaise women-and, finally, Labé herself. See Louise Labé, OEuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1986), 234-35.
33. Parker discusses the metaphor of the prospect, which she notes is a "discursive counterpart to the visual prospect of dominion," and its link to the blazon tradition in England (Literary Fat Ladies, 150).
34. "Apollon en Puce," 50^sup v^-52^sup r^. The book identifies this poem's author only as "P.D.S." The author of the preceding poem is the Poitevin Pierre de Soulfour (identified as "P.D. Soulfour. P."), who likely composed this poem as well.
35. Ibid., 51^sup r^.
36. Cotgrave's entries for vol and voler indicate their double meaning. Vol means both "a flight, or flying" and "a robbing, stripping by the high-way side;" voler, "to flye," can also be translated "to rob, rifle, strip, despoyle of all" (Randle Cotgrave, Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues [London, 1611; reprint, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1950], n. pag., s.v. vol).
37. The expression "de plein vol" is equivalent to the current phrase "à toute allure." Among the definitions of vol, Cotgrave includes "a quicke running, speedie passage, hastie course" (Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, n. pag., s.v. vol). The word "vol" appears three additional times in the poem's remaining nine quatrains.
