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SEDUCTIVE TOPOGRAPHIES: THE LANGUAGES OF LANDSCAPE IN LA PUCE DE MADAME DES-ROCHES
Romanic Review, May 2004 by Tarte, Kendall
38. "Apollon en Puce," 51^sup v^.
39. Ibid.
40. See note 27 above.
41. "Apollon en Puce," 52^sup r^.
42. "A Ia pvce," 49^sup v^. Sonnet XLI from Ronsard's Amours (1553) compares the female body to a garden and calls the breast "petit mont jumelet;" the poet also expresses the desire to be a flea (OEuvres complètes, 5: 109-10).
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43. See The Sixteenth-Century Blason Poétique, Alison Saunders's comprehensive study of the sources and development of the anatomical blasons, which includes a discussion of the development of the definitions of the word blason (Berne: Peter Lang, 1981). She places the poems in La Puce among the later hymne-blasons of the Pléiade poets and their successors. D. B. Wilson's Descriptive Poetry in France from blason to baroque also contains a basic introduction to the blason (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1967). The poems in La Puce are not presented explicitly as blasons. In a letter to Antoine Loisel written soon after its publication, Pasquier does call the first section of the anthology "les blasons faits sur la Pulce," but this use of blason is general, meaning praise or criticism (Lettres familières, ed. D. Thickett [Geneva: Droz, 1974], 102).
44. "La pvce de E. Pasqvier Advocat en Parlement," 3^sup r^. For comparisons of this poem to Catherine Des Roches's own "Puce" poem, see Jones ("Contentious Readings," 122-23), Olson ("Poetics of Sexual Resistance," 333-37), and Yandell ("Of Lice and Women," 126-33).
45. "La pvce de E. Pasqvier," 3^sup r^-3^sup v^; 4^sup r^.
46. Ibid., 4^sup v^. The first two lines of this citation imitate Ronsard's "Folastrie VI:" "Que pleust à dieu que je peusse / Pour un soir devenir puce" (OEuvres complètes, 5: 40). The poet imagines himself in the arms of the "pucelle" who is the mother of the young boy whom the poem addresses. Sonnet XLI from the 1553 Amours also expresses the desire to be a flea; see note 42 above. Both Ronsard and Joachim Du Bellay use the expression "douce rapine" (Ronsard, OEuvres complètes, 1: 255; Du Bellay, L'Olive, Sonnet XCIV, ed. E. Caldarini [Geneva: Droz, 1974], 146; Du Bellay, "Sonnetz de l'honneste amovr" (Sonnet VI), oeuvres complètes, ed. Henri Chamard, 6 vols. [Paris: E. Comély, 1908-31], 1: 143).
47. "La Pvce d'Odet de Tovrnebv Advocat en la Cour de Parlement," 31V-35^sup v^. See above for a discussion of the opening stanzas.
48. Ibid., 32^sup v^, emphasis added.
49. Ibid., 32^sup v^-33^sup r^.
50. Similarly, Ronsard's "Elegie à Janet, peintre du roy" creates a potential fictional situation that the poem realizes. The poet, who asks the artist to create a painting, describes individual parts of the woman who is the object of the painting and the object of his poem (OEuvres completes, 6:152). Wilson suggests that this poem owes as much to medieval descriptive techniques as to the blasons marotiques (Descriptive Poetry in France, 58).
51. Turnèbe's word choice recalls an earlier anatomical blason, Clément Marot's "Beau tetin," which calls the breast a "petite boule d'Ivoire / Au milieu duquel est assise / Une Freze ou une Cerise" (Poètes du XVI^sup e^ siècle, ed. A.-M. Schmidt [Paris: Gallimard, 1953], 331-32). See also sonnet CLX from Ronsard's 1552 Amours (OEuvres complètes, 4: 152-53).
