SEDUCTIVE TOPOGRAPHIES: THE LANGUAGES OF LANDSCAPE IN LA PUCE DE MADAME DES-ROCHES

Tarte, Kendall

Two of the most interesting discourses to emerge in the sixteenth century were topographical description and the anatomical blason. These traditions appear to have little in common: one accompanied the development of cartographical techniques, the other was a literary fashion sparked by a contest among poets. They converge, however, in an anthology recording a salon game that Estienne Pasquier and Catherine Des Roches initiated during the 1579 Grands Jours de Poitiers.1 The humanist lawyer Pasquier's now famous encounter with Des Roches-their playful banter about a flea he claims to have seen on her breast-provides the pretext for the genesis of the collaborative volume of poetry that came out of the gatherings that Catherine and her mother Madeleine Des Roches hosted in their home.2 Poems by Pasquier and Des Roches set the tone for an extended series of exchanges on the subject of this insect: more than a dozen participants composed mock encomia on the flea. La Puce de Madame des-Roches presents the activities of a provincial salon at an important moment in Poitiers's history. It celebrates Catherine's body as a site of exploration and the city as a political and literary center.3

Many of the poems in the collection bear witness to the context of its creation, the 1579 Grands jours de Poitiers.4 The poets of La Puce link the Dames Des Roches to Poitiers. The rhetoric of description and possession of the land complements the representations of individual parts of the female body. The salon visitors link Catherine Des Roches to Poitiers by linking the imagined details of her body to a mythologized vision of the city. Their poems create two corresponding imaginary topographies-a politicized "topography" of the female body of Catherine Des Roches and a feminized topography of the city of Poitiers. A consideration of the connection between landscape and sexuality in La Puce reveals the intricate associations between the language of topography and the language of the body. These two seemingly unrelated traditions intersect in several examples that merit close examination.5

The jocular atmosphere that inspired the literary contest of La Puce is apparent in the collected poems. The printed volume reconstructs the authors' relationships to one another: they address each other, translate and imitate their peers, and respond to each other's poems. The salon is a site of mutual congratulation and display of both learning and a sense of humor, and the anthology captures its spirit. The poets' references to each other, in the form of inscriptions of each other's names, illustrate this erudite playfulness. Pasquier and Madeleine Des Roches, for example, each construct a poem around a list of some of the book's contributors, transforming the proper names with elaborate anagrams and puns.6 References to the Dames Des Roches-not surprisingly, the most widespread of the inscriptions-play on the rich associations of the women's name, which literally means "of the rocks."7 The authors refer to the physical features of Poitiers as well as to familiar mythological places and figures associated with rocks. Their poetic vision of Poitiers and their praise of the Dames Des Roches certainly display the poets' inventiveness and erudition, but they also call attention to the people and place that inspired them.

The topography of Poitiers was prominent in the local popular imagination during the Renaissance. The elevated site of the city is itself closely surrounded by hills on three sides, offering an unusual setting that inspired authors of history and literature. Several historians of the 1569 Protestant siege on Poitiers provide detailed descriptions of the city's topography. Notably, they survey the advantages and disadvantages, for both defending and attacking armies, of the various elevations.8 In particular, the steep slopes on the right bank of the Clain opposite the city protected the Protestant troops led by Gaspard de Coligny. This location became known as the "rocher de Coligny." In her sonnet "Poitiers à Messieurs des Grandz Jours," Madeleine Des Roches refers to these local peaks-"Rochers hautains"-among them the "Passe-lourdin," a "rocher" on a precipice that was notoriously difficult to reach.9 François Rabelais links the Passelourdin to the Pierre levée, a nearby dolmen, making both rocks famous. In Rabelais's fanciful story of the Pierre levee's origin, Pantagruel, studying in Poitiers, builds the dolmen by taking a large rock from the Passelourdin, thus providing a leisure activity for students, who climb onto the rock to engrave their names and to enjoy food and drink there.10

Mythological references in La Puce recall the real and fictional rocks of Poitiers. Among the most common figures mentioned are the Muses, whom the poets associate with the Des Roches. In the late sixteenth century, the identification of a female poet as one of the Muses recalls the ancient Greek poet Sappho, whose works had recently been rediscovered and who was commonly referred to as the "tenth Muse."11 Catherine Des Roches becomes the tenth Muse in La Puce. Pierre le Loyer identifies Catherine as "une chaste & diuine pucelle, / Qu'ont adopté dans le nombre de dix / Les soeurs du mont à la crouppe iumelle."12 François de la Couldray wonders why Pasquier says that Sappho surpasses all other women, since Catherine "[e]n sagesse, en grace, en beauté, / En vertus, en murs, en doctrine / Surpasse la troupe plus digne / Du mont des neuf soeurs frequanté."13 Pasquier calls Catherine "une vierge de renom, / Qui merite d'auoir place / Au haut sommet de Parnasse."14 In these examples, the references to Parnassus-"mont à la crouppe iumelle," "mont des neuf soeurs," "haut sommet"-concern the physical characteristics of the Muses' mountain home. In more detailed instances, the mythical setting of Mount Parnassus blends with the topography of Poitiers, and both Madeleine and Catherine definitively replace the Muses. The physical associations of the Des Roches' name provide a rich metaphor for the association of the women with Poitiers and with Parnassus. References to rocks blend the attributes of the two places with the two women, and the inscription of their name-"rochers," "Roche," "Roches"-calls attention to this conflation. For example, the opening stanzas of Odet de Turnèbe's "La Puce" claim the presence of the Muses in Poitiers. The poet cites as evidence the sight of two rocks rising toward the sky: "Ces deux ROCHES qui iusqu'aux Cieux / Eleuent leur chef sourcilleux / Qui comme deux astres flamboye."15 These rocks indicate both people and place: the bodies of the Dames Des Roches, who raise their heads-"leur chef"-towards the sky, and the rocks of the double mountain, Parnassus, whose peaks point upwards.16 Whereas this example employs typical poetic conventions-the inscription of names and the reference to mythology-it also hints at the topographical tradition in which the poems in La Puce participate. The poets model their mythologized visions of Poitiers on the city's topography.

François de la Couldray, for example, locates the Dames Des Roches in a landscape borrowed from classical antiquity. He depicts Mercury-identified as the "pasteur de Menale"17-in flight over the city of Poitiers:

Several mythological figures-Mercury, Icarus, and the Muses-mingle in this sonnet. Couldray draws on two episodes from classical texts; both center on a landscape seen from the point of view of a character in flight. After referring to these passages-the first from Virgil's Aeneid, the second from Ovid's Art of Love and Metamorphoses-he closes with a third landscape, a revision of a familiar mythological topography.

Couldray's depiction of Mercury, who traverses the sky before hovering over Poitiers, resembles the same god in Book 4 of the Aeneid: following Jupiter's order, Mercury flies to Libya to deliver a message to Aeneas.19 Couldray borrows several details from the Latin poet. He mentions the physical traits that Virgil elaborates-Mercury's characteristic caduceus and winged heels-and he adopts the same point of view for Mercury's flight. Virgil shows Mercury at first high in the sky, examining the peaks of the personified mountain Atlas; then, plunging to sea level, the god skims the surface of the water. Depicting Mercury moving through the sky, then descending to Poitiers, in the first quatrain Couldray condenses Virgil's version. In the second quatrain, the description of the usual circuit of the sun's rays mimics Mercury's flight in more detail, moving from low-"plus creuz des vallons"-to high-"[s]ur les hauts monts chenus"-to low again-"les noirs tourbillons / Des eaux."20 The poet identifies this black churning water with a second mythological figure, Icarus-"le sot fils de Dedale." The reference suggests a similar flight from high to low, but with a disastrous outcome: Ovid's cautionary tale tells how Icarus drowns after flying too close to the sun on the wings his father made.21 In both of Ovid's texts, Daedalus's warnings to fly neither too high nor too low foreshadow Icarus's descent from the sun to the sea; the pattern is similar to Mercury's.22 With references to both Virgil and Ovid, Couldray proposes two possible interpretations of Mercury's flight over Poitiers: the strength and deliberation of Virgil's Mercury contrast with the foolhardiness of Ovid's Icarus.

Couldray's brief mention of Icarus raises the possibility of danger. Both ancient and contemporary authors adopt the figure of Icarus as a negative model to be avoided. In the Icaromenippus, Lucian uses Icarus in order to illuminate favorable attributes of Menippus, who brags of his recent trip to Olympus on wings he constructed. His skeptical interlocutor reminds him of Daedalus and Icarus, but the drowned son provides a counterexample to Menippus's declared success in flight. In La Puce, two flea poems refer briefly to Icarus, comparing him to the insect. "La Pvce de Macefer" stresses the flea's limitations, which include the restricted heights-both physical and metaphorical-that it can reach. In the final stanza the poet notes that if the insect tries to overcome this shortcoming by borrowing wings, it may become another Icarus: "Ie crains que ... / Icare tu ne seconde."23 For Madeleine Des Roches, Icarus provides a pretext to honor the puce poets. In the opening quatrains of "Aux poètes chante-puce," the flea senses danger as it prepares for flight. The insect's recollection of the fate of Icarus prompts a request for the help of the puce poets.24 Des Roches praises these men, using the elaborate anagrams and wordplays common to the collection, and thus seals her flea's happy destiny. The puce poets' comparisons of the mythological character to the flea draw attention to the contrast between the drowning of Icarus and the relative success in flight of the fictional insect. However, the two figures do share a common fate: both are immortalized in the objects-the sea for Icarus, the book for the flea-that bear their name.

The object of Mercury's attention as he descends towards Poitiers merits consideration. Looking out over the landscape, his view is limited to a pair of objects, named first as two incomparable suns-"deux soleils, que le soleil n'egale." Couldray plays with the Petrarchan image of the sun, which suggests the beloved.25 The disorienting vision of two suns beneath Mercury startles, as if rising and falling had become confused and the sun had doubled. The subsequent reference to Icarus's fall implies danger. Opening the quatrain that refers to Icarus, these two suns recall him and his father Daedalus. The tercets, on the other hand, recall a positive aspect earlier in the Ovidian myth-Icarus's delight at the panorama below him26-and resolve the tension of the mysterious pair of suns. Couldray pays tribute to the Ovidian characters in his reference to another parent and child: Madeleine and Catherine Des Roches. In the first tercet, repeated allusions to the double object in the landscape-beginning with "deux beaux rochers"-make explicit the reference to the Des Roches and add a third mythological allusion, to the Muses on Parnassus. Like his fellow poets, Couldray blurs an imagined topography of Poitiers with that of Parnassus and locates the Des Roches in this Poitevin/Parnassian landscape. Mercury's realization-introduced by "Ha! Dit-il"-of the Muses' presence finalizes their transfer, hinted at in the first tercet. From now on-"desormais"-they perform their miracles over the Clain, the river that runs through Poitiers. The Renaissance myth of the immigration of the Muses to France-common to the Pléiade, for example-signals the glory of contemporary poets. Applying the doctrine of translatio studii, Couldray identifies the Dames Des Roches through a classical heritage that links them to an ancient site of inspiration.27 He thus marks the fruitful environment of the Poitiers Grands Jours: the Des Roches benefit from this inspiration in their compositions, but they also inspire others, namely, the puce poets.

Mercury's perspective of the city points to the borrowings from classical culture, recalling passages from Virgil and Ovid and connecting mythological and contemporary figures. It also reveals the influence of recent visual techniques, in representations of urban space such as the prospect, or townscape, and the map. Advances in mapmaking techniques as well as a new precision in the execution of townscapes and bird's-eye views contributed to the proliferation of local and regional maps and views in the late Renaissance.28 These images influenced written descriptions of the urban space, from the geographer's general overview of the world to the specific regional detail of the chorographer.29 Couldray's sonnet participates in both the written tradition of chorography and the visual tradition of the city view. The interest in detail belongs to the field of the chorographer, whose precise description of a limited space concentrates on its quality, rather than quantity. The poet highlights a single aspect of Poitiers's topography, the hills-or "rochers"-that distinguish the city. He compiles a list of expressions to designate this double object and devotes the sonnet's tercets to its description. The related visual tradition influences the perspective from which Mercury, and the reader, approach this place. As in a townscape, Couldray offers a sweeping-though selective and imaginary-overview of Poitiers. Like someone looking at the engraving of an urban prospect, Mercury has a complete, bird's-eye view of that city.

Michel de Certeau's discussion of walking in the city stresses the singularity of such a perspective. He points out the pleasure of reading the "text" of the city from an elevated distance. Comparing someone who looks at the city from above to Icarus, he notes that the elevation transforms this viewer into a "voyeur," who possesses the eye of a god, "un OEil solaire, un regard de dieu."30 Certeau's vocabulary emphasizes the idea of domination: he writes of "le plaisir de surplomber" New York City, to be raised up to "l'emprise de la ville." The desire to see the entire city from an elevation-and thus to dominate it-contrasts with the confinement of the body down below, where one is "enlacé par les rues," "possédé," like a fallen Icarus. These walkers-"marcheurs"-lack the complete knowledge of the city granted to "voyeurs." A similar appropriation of city space occurs in engravings of townscapes, which for the first time in the sixteenth century provided the detail necessary for citizens to locate specific features of their city. The results of these new techniques encouraged a sense of civic pride and allowed rulers to impress others with their vast possessions and wide-ranging authority.31 Just as a city dweller could find particular monuments in contemporary visual renderings, Couldray recognizes-and thus praises-important people, beginning with the Dames Des Roches.32

The pleasure of the view-of the city and the women-that Couldray accords Mercury characterizes other poems in La Puce. Specifically, several poems dedicated to the flea associate the topography of the land with features of the female body and thereby reveal a desire for domination.33 The poets transform the flea using myths of metamorphosis. Through various incarnations of the insect, they adopt roles that allow proximity to this female body. The fictional animal explores places that these men would not otherwise dare to mention in the conversations of polite salon society; it provides a pretext for their literary conquest of Catherine Des Roches's body.

In "Apollon en Puce," flattering comparisons of an elephant and a griffin with the flea precede a description of its current status, perched on the woman's breast:34

Toy tu as trop mieux regardé,

Puis franchi d'un braue courage,

De plain vol, & puis possedé

Le plus bel astre de nostre âge.

Volant droit tu sçeus te percher

Sur cette colline iumelle:

Où deuant toy se vint nicher

La Muse & la Grace auec elle.35

The rich vocabulary of this passage suggests several interpretations. Firstly, in the context of comparisons with real and mythical animals, a literal reading shows the flea in flight-"[vjolant droit." Searching for a star-"astre"-it lands on a double mountain peak-"colline iumelle"-where it is joined by a Muse and a personified Grace. secondly, a metaphorical reading draws on the multiple meanings of the words with the root vol-"vol," "[v]olant"-and aligns Catherine Des Roches with the "plus bel astre."36 The word's associations with robbery and despoliation complement the idea of flight. In this reading, the flea attacks the woman's body, landing on the "colline iumelle," her breast. The narration of the flea's possession of the female body includes additional vocabulary of attack that describes the insect's completed actions: "franchi d'un braue courage," "possedé." The repetition of the word "vol" in a different context-the adverbial expression "[d]e plain vol" describes the flea's movement-reinforces the idea of conquest.37

Finally, the "colline iumelle" and the presence of the Muse suggest a third, mythological interpretation that connects Parnassus to Catherine. After a comparison of the flea to Apollo in the opening quatrains, the final section of the poem declares that the god-who in mythology typically oversees the activities of the Muses-has disguised himself as a flea. Apollo has fled the noisy masses for an area whose topography recalls the Des Roches' name: "les rocs sourcilleux, / Et les costaux & la montagne."38 As in Couldray's sonnet, the god discovers that Poitiers has replaced Parnassus. The poet describes this realization:

A rock, described as foreign ("une autre Roche estrange") and Poitevin ("une Roche Poiteuine") replaces Parnassus. This wording, like Lemaire's reference to Lyon as "ung aultre Ilion," highlights the translatif) at work here.40 The associations of the word "[r]oche" identify the Muse's new residence with the poet Catherine Des Roches. The penultimate quatrain links the physical aspects of the mythologized city to the imaginary body of Catherine Des Roches: "Alors droit en Poitou tira; / Et se formant en une Puce, / Sur ce double yuoire vola, / Sur lequel à present se musse."41 With this "double ivory," typical blason imagery evokes the color and shape of Catherine's imagined breast. The image also refers back to the topographical transfer from the "double roche Parnasine" to Poitiers in the preceding quatrain. Again referring both to an imaginary view of Poitiers and Catherine's imagined breast, the poet thus links sexuality and topography.

The metaphor of a topography of the female breast-"double yuoire," "colline iumelle," "tertre jumeau"42-highlights the puce poets' ingenuity and erudition. Contemporary references to the two Des Roches women, the hilly Poitiers landscape, and the female breast blend with their mythical counterpart, Parnassus and the Muses. Whereas the poems considered thus far concentrate on this one part of the female anatomy, others open a panoramic view onto the entire body and present an inventory of the various parts of an imaginary Catherine Des Roches. The descriptive poetic tradition-beginning with medieval poetic lists praising the various parts of one female body and continuing with the sixteenth-century anatomical blasons that describe systematically individual body parts-is an important influence on certain puce poems.43 In these, the lustful flea travels the length of Des Roches's body. The poets pause along with the flea-or as incarnations of the flea itself-to praise each part of her anatomy. Pasquier, for example, whose "Pvce" initiated the contest and set the tone for the rest of the anthology, envies the drunken flea who jumps up and down the female body, "[d]u haut en bas, puis en haut."44 The poet catalogs the body parts as he follows the flea in this movement: "Tu volettes à taton / Sur l'un & l'autre teton: / Puis tout à coup te recelles / Sous l'abri de ses aiselles, / Or panchée sur son flanc / Humes à longs traits son sang;" "Car quand folle tu te ioues / Maintenant dessus ses ioues, / Puis par un nouueau dessein, / Tu furettes en son sein."45 Through the fiction of the flea, the poet imagines that he takes possession of the woman's body. Shifting from the second to the first person, Pasquier describes desired actions using verbs in the conditional: "Pleust or à Dieu que ie pusse / Seulement deuenir Puce: / Tantost ie prendrois mon vol / Tout au plus beau de ton col, / Ou d'une douce rapine / Ie succerois ta poitrine, / Ou lentement pas à pas / Ie me glisserais plus bas."46 The vocabulary of theft-"mon vol," "une douce rapine"-depicts the gentle attack he would wage on Catherine's body.

Other poems in La Puce follow Pasquier's model: they present lists in the style of anatomical blasons, depict a siege of the female body, or imagine the transformation of the poet into the flea. Odet de Turnèbe invents a fiction of exploration and conquest that itemizes and describes several body parts.47 He forms a fantasy link, through the character of the flea, between himself and the woman's body. Addressing the flea, the poet remarks on its good fortune to have such beautiful "lodgings," the woman's breasts, which he names three times: the insect has "la grace / De te loger en si beau lieu, / En ce sein le temple d'un Dieu, / Ce sein qui tous les seins surpasse."48 Turnèbe defines the breast as a place-"si beau lieu"-and depicts the flea as its explorer, susceptible to the dangers of such a mission. In the next three stanzas, the poet asks the flea a series of questions-each beginning with "As tu ... "?-that constitute a potential itinerary for discovery of the woman's body:

The poet interrogates the flea, revealing a narrative of exploration as well as a description in the style of an anatomical blason. Turnèbe inserts these lines within a longer section that describes the flea's movements through various locations on the female body. Unlike the adjacent stanzas, however, these three stanzas are composed of questions. They therefore comprise potential, rather than real, actions imagined by the poet. Through his rhetoric, Turnèbe proposes an exploration of different levels of reality. The typical narration of actions that the poet imagines-here, the flea's residence on the woman's body-comprises one level. Within the fiction of the poem, Turnèbe creates a second fictional layer, made up of actions evoked by questions that the poet asks the flea. Through this interrogation, he invents a possible tour of the woman's body. The imagined exploration of the body thus shifts into another level-the suggestion of an itinerary of movements and their possible consequences. In the world of the poem, this doubly imaginary exploration remains unrealized. However, the description of the flea's likely movements in the resulting stanzas represents a female body. The poem itself thus constitutes a portrait of this body.50

The structure of these lines praising the beloved's body reveals the dangers of conquest to the conqueror. Each question presents a part of the body and the specific damage it could cause; each body part thus shifts from object of admiration to source of danger. Through the imagination of the poet, the flea undertakes a daring and risky conquest of this body. It burrows between the woman's breasts, where it might burn, and it runs like liquid over them. Turnèbe again refers to the breasts three times, this time using three different expressions-"ses mamelles," "ses deux fraises iumelles," and "ses deux bouts aymez."51 The flea then hangs from the woman's hair; it approaches her eyes and kisses her cheek. The poet's interrogation uses active verbs to describe the possible activities of the flea-"[f]ureter," "te couler," "te pendre," "s'hazarder," "approch[er]," "baiser"-and the possible consequences-"te brusler," "reduire en cendre," "t'y prendre & estre enlacée," "[s]'empestre[r]," "sentir une viue ardeur," "[c]onsume[r]." The verbs "fureter" and "couler" introduce the theme of attack, which the following stanzas will develop.52 The description of the hazards to the flea plays on a series of Petrarchist images of fire and entrapment: the risks include being reduced to ashes by the woman's breasts, having one's heart consumed by the cruel flames of the women's cheek, and becoming ensnared in the lady's hair.53 The rhetoric of the dangers of conquest thus provides Turnèbe with a metaphoric structure on which to base his graphic explorations of the female body.

This blason, which has moved from the breast to the head and face, continues as the lovestruck animal searches for hidden places-"les lieux / Que cache la vierge honteuse, / Et qu'elle ne monstre à noz yeux." It drinks the blood of the beloved's arms, thighs, and stomach: "Tu as ce bon heur que de boire / Du sang de ces membres polis, / De ce ventre plus blanc que lis, / De ces cuisses & flancs d'yuoire."54 The discussion of the insect's pleasures-and the poet's envy-replaces the dangers to the flea. Whereas the preceding passage presents the potential dangers that the narrator's insistent questions to the flea expose, the stanzas that follow juxtapose the privileged flea and the jealous pcet: "Puce ie me pers quand ie pense / A tes plaisirs, à tes ébas, / Lors que doucement tu offense / Cette Nymphe or'haut ore bas."55 The violence of the flea's action-"offensefr]"-contrasts with its pleasure-"plaisirs," "ébas"-as it attacks the woman. Turnèbe recalls the descriptive catalog of body parts that the flea's imagined movements-"or'haut ore bas"-have uncovered; the following stanzas will expose the most intimate locations. A second attack again combines description of the flea's pleasure with vocabulary of conquest. The poet narrates a nighttime scene in which the fortunate insect gazes on the naked woman, then moves down her body:

Puce tu as cest auantage

Que l'homme ne scauroit auoir

De iouyr de ce beau corsage,

Et le regarder nu au soir:

Puis lors que plus elle sommeille

Estenduë dedans son lit,

Ea pinçotant un bien petit,

Tout doucement tu la reueille.

...

Tu tastes ces lis & ces rosés.

Puis te coulant d'un pas larron

Sur sa poitrine & sur ses cuisses,

Enyurée de ces délices,

Tu t'endors dedans son giron.56

The flea's contact with the woman's body and the resulting pleasures are sexual. The active vocabulary-"pincotfer]," "tastefr]," "coul[er]"-highlights tactile sensations. The flea reacts to the female body with sexual pleasure-"iouyr"-and its pinching suggests the male role during the sex act.57 Its actions culminate in a drunken, post-coital slumber in her lap. Turnèbe's description of sexual pleasure has violent overtones, which his word choice implies. The verbs "taste[r]" and "coulfer] d'un pas larron" describe the movements of the flea, on the offensive; its pleasure-"iouyr"-also implies domination.58 The vocabulary and structure of Turnèbe's "Pvce" thus invite a metaphorical reading of the female body that the poem describes as a place under attack.

In a sonnet addressed to Catherine Des Roches, Claude Binet directly combines the exploration and siege of a place with that of a body. He links the sexual and topographical aspects of the poem and draws an analogy between the female body and city space: both are lands to be conquered. In an allegory of the city of Poitiers under attack, Binet draws a selective map of the surrounding region. Employing the discourse of military conquest, he conflates the woman Catherine and the city of Poitiers and imagines a siege:

In this map based on rocks, Binet plays on the associations of Catherine Des Roches's name. He includes only two places; for both he can make clever references to rocks. The name of the port city to the southwest of Poitiers, La Rochelle, contains the sound "roche." Located just outside Poitiers, Lusignan housed the "Roc Melusin," the castle that according to popular legend was constructed by the medieval character Mélusine. The quatrains set up the comparison between the fused Des Roches-Poitiers and these two regional sites, depicting all three as resisters to outside forces. During earlier years of the Wars of Religion, the Protestant city of La Rochelle withstood a long and bloody Catholic siege, and the Duc de Montpensier's troops destroyed the castle of Lusignan after the Protestant army had occupied it. The religious conflicts in this difficult region also affected Poitiers, which most notably had resisted a Protestant siege by Gaspard de Coligny and his troops in 1569. In the sonnet, the personified Poitiers rock-"au pays Poiteuin / Vne autre Roche"-defies love, also personified: "Amour," "un Roy diuin." Whereas by 1579 La Rochelle was no longer in direct conflict with the Catholic king and Lusignan was in ruins, Binet's allegorical "Roche" remains defiant to Love.60

This "rock" becomes the site of a conquest-one that is both topographical and sexual-in the sonnet's tercets. Amour's success depends on the familiar transformation: his metamorphosis into a flea allows him to take on the twin tower of the fortress-"le fort de vostre tour iumelle." The line that describes the result of the flea's attempted siege invites multiple readings: "Mais il fut découuert par maints doctes esprits." In each case, the expression "maints doctes esprits"-a great many learned minds-designates the puce poets. Binet stresses that these men are authors. Besides being learned, they are "les enfans des Dieux": children of the Gods like the Muses, they are linked to these figures of inspiration and, thus, are poets. Their discovery-the referent of the pronoun "il"-is ambiguous, however: it may designate the fortress-"le fort"-or the spy disguised as a flea-"un espion." In one reading, "le fort de vostre tour iumelle" refers to the mother-daughter pair through an architectural metaphor of a double tower that recalls the topographical allusion to a double mountain. The poet thus congratulates himself and the other Grands Jours participants for having "discovered" these poets, the Dames Des Roches. Another reading draws on traditional representations of the city, which link the urban space-a fortified, walled city-to the female. Binet identifies the woman's body as architecture, blurring the line between this physical landmark and the breasts. Within this metaphor, violation of the city walls constitutes a violation of the city's chastity; a city under siege is therefore analogous to a woman who protects and defends her chastity.61 In Binet's fiction, this body-fortress belonging to an imaginary Catherine Des Roches was twice discovered: it was besieged by Amour in the poem, and uncovered and displayed in the blasons of the anthology. Binet plays with the associations of the word "maints," which means "many," but is also a homonym of "mains," meaning "hands." This wordplay suggests the physical aspect of the bodyfortress, as it is besieged by hands. In the anthology, the puce poets lay bare the female body and expose the topography of Poitiers; in this sonnet Binet depicts their uncovering of the Poitiers fortress that is both a walled city and a woman's body. In an alternate interpretation, Amour, disguised as the flea, poses the sole threat to this body. The poets discover the transformed spy-"un espion"-and prevent its attack of the body-fortress, Catherine Des Roches. The Grands Jours participants thus preserve Catherine's chastity through the fictions of their poems, including this one.

These two contrasting interpretations-in one the poets besiege Catherine's body, in the other they protect it-reflect the men's current functions as both salon poets and jurists. The poems in La Puce simultaneously display the fictional Catherine's body and insist on her chastity. The juxtaposition of attack and protection points to the contradictory nature of Renaissance discourse on women. In her own poems and at the salon, Catherine's acceptance depends on her defensive sexual attitude, and the male poets' fictional protection of her body contributes to her positive reputation. Their poems, however, more commonly reveal her body, using aggressive literary techniques that display the skill and wit necessary to such poetic contests. As jurists, these men also re lied on strategies of coercion. Their official role in the courts encompassed analogous responsibilities, restraint of criminals and conservation of justice. Binet thus illustrates the social and political realities of these poets and jurists. A political reading of the sonnet shows the influence of the court sessions. Binet links Poitiers to two Protestant strongholds, La Rochelle and Lusignan, stressing the unique status of the allegorized city. He contrasts a defiant Poitiers with two places that had, to varying degrees, succumbed to the Catholic majority. This opposition suggests that, although religious conflicts were not overtly at issue in the 1579 sessions,62 the city posed a possible threat to the goals of the Parisian delegation. Grands Jours, which the king convoked irregularly, provided a means to reassert royal authority in problematic areas. Poitou was just such a region.63 Although the city of Poitiers was historically allied with the Catholic king and had resisted Coligny's siege a decade earlier, the sympathies of its inhabitants were certainly less royalist than those of the king's appointed jurists, who were among the firmest supporters of national unity. The official decrees of the 1579 Grands Jours indicate the obstacles to centralization under the king. Most strikingly, these documents reveal a concern with restraint of bodies and possessions.64 In a literary parallel to the court sessions, certain poems in La Puce also reflect a desire for control. The dangerous exploration or attack of Catherine's imaginary body in the anthology echoes the decrees of these same men, authors of both judicial and poetic texts.

The occasion of the 1579 Grands Jours de Poitiers set in motion a descriptive contest that combined blason and topography. In La Puce, the topographical prospects, or views,65 include the female body as well as the city. The "languages of landscape" under consideration here include both the language of topography and the language of sexuality. These poems approach the female body and the city from one perspective, conflating the two. Furthermore, both the blason and the metaphor of prospect are associated with display and dominion.66 Just as Michel de Certeau posits the desire and pleasure in seeing the entire city and thus in dominating it, the puce poets expose to view and dominate another "topography," the female body. These fictions of exploration and siege draw on their identity as lawyers and judges in the king's service. The insistent rhetoric of the official decrees indicates the difficulty of ensuring that these judicial decisions be carried out; the outcome appears uncertain.67 On the other hand, the analogous result-the flea anthology itself-achieves success. As poets, these men create a role for themselves as explorers and attackers. Its display in these poems indicates their literary possession of a double place: Catherine's body and the city of Poitiers.

Wake Forest University

1. King Henri III sent a delegation of Parisian lawyers and judges for these special court sessions, designed to restore order and to alleviate the burden of courts overcrowded after long years of civil war. see Félix Pasquier, Grands Jours de Poitiers de 1454 à 1634 (Paris: Thorin, 1874), and the edict calling for the 1579 sessions, Lettres patentes dv Roy, povr l'institution & ouuerture des grands lours en la ville de Poictiers (Paris: Federic Morel, 1579).

2. Pasquier had not previously met the Des Roches but he knew their reputation; their first joint collection of works had been published in Paris the previous year, and their salon had been welcoming guests for nearly a decade. In a letter to his friend Pierre Pithou, he calls them "mes Dames des Roches, mere & fille, honneurs vrayement, & de la ville de Poitiers, & de nostre siecle" (Choix de lettres sur la Littérature, la L.angue et la Traduction, ed. Dorothy Thickett [Geneva: Droz, 1956], 13). Pasquier describes his first meeting with Catherine in detail in that letter, which the "Au Lecteur" of the anthology paraphrases: "Quelque personage assez cognu, se trouuant en la ville de Poitiers durant les grans lours de l'an 1579 auecq'vne dame d'honneur l'vne des plus doctes & sages que la France porte (comme ses escris peuuent tesmoigner) & belle en perfection ainsi comme il la gouuernoit aperceut vne Puce qui s'estoit venu camper au beau millieu de son sein" (La Puce de Madame des-Roches [Paris: Abel l'Angelier, 1582], aiii^sup r^).

3. Ann Rosalind Jones reads La Puce as the dramatization of an "urban microhistory" ("Contentious Readings: Urban Humanism and Gender Difference in La Puce de Madame Des-Roches (1582)," Renaissance Quarterly 48 [1995]: 111). She cites two earlier examples, both of women from Lyon, as evidence of the positive provincial climate for local writers: the printer Jean de Tournes's presentation of Louise Labé, and Antoine du Moulin's introduction to the works of Pernette du Guillet. It is thus no accident that the Des Roches' works insist on their identification to Poitiers, for it constitutes an advantage (113). Recent criticism on La Puce illuminates ancient and contemporary sources of the flea poems. For the importance of the book within the tradition of mock encomium, see Annette Tomarken, The Smile of Truth: The French Satirical Eulogy and its Antecedents (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 222-28, and "Flea Encomia and Other Mock Eulogies of Animals," Fifteenth-Century Studies 11 (1985): 137-48. Two readings of Catherine's "La Puce" stress the singularity of her poem, which deviates from the rhetorical traditions that inform other poems in the collection (Cathy Yandell, "Of Lice and Women: Rhetoric and Gender in 'La Puce de Madame des Roches,'" Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 [199O]: 123-35), and which reveals her role as a political actor who asserted authority through classical citation (Todd P. Oison, " 'La Femme à la Puce et la Puce à l'Oreille': Catherine Des Roches and the Poetics of Sexual Resistance in Sixteenth-Century French Poetry," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32 [2002]: 327-42).

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.

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^.

9. Les secondes oeuvres, ed. Anne R. Larsen, Geneva: Droz, 1998, 100.

10. Pantagruel, Chapitre 5.

11. On the rediscovery of Sappho in the Renaissance and the association of Louise Labé with her, see François Rigolot, Louise Labé Lyonnaise ou la Renaissance au féminin (Paris: Champion, 1997), 31-67.

12. "Response de P. le Loyer," 86^sup r^-86^sup v^.

13. "Imitation dv latin de Claude Binet a Estienne Pasqvier," 26^sup r^.

14. "Imitation dv latin de M. Brisson," 11^sup v^.

15. "La Pvce d'Odet de Tovrnebv Advocat en la Cour de Parlement," 31^sup v^.

16. Several of Du Bartas's "Sonnets des Neuf Muses Pyrénées" personify the mountains (The Works of Guillaume De Salluste Sieur Du Bartas, 3 vols., ed. U.T. Holmes, Jr., J.C. Lyons, and R.W. Linker [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1977], 3: 482-86).

17. This epithet refers to Mercury's Arcadian birthplace, Mount Mæanalus, and thus sets up the poem's mountainous landscape. see Paul Laumonier's edition of the works of Pierre de Ronsard, whose "Voeu à Mercure" (1571) refers to the god as "Maænalien Mercure" (OEvres complètes, ed. Laumonier, Raymond Lebègue, and Isidore Silver, 20 vols. [Paris: Hachette-Didier-Droz, 1914-67], 15: 366, line I and note 2). Barbara L. Welch analyzes Ronsard's use of Mercury in Ronsard's Mercury: The Arcane Muse (New York: Peter Lang, 1986).

18. "F. de la Covdraye a mes Dames Des Roches," 78^sup v^. This sonnet is from the second part of the anthology. These works are not "flea" poems, but they do focus on the Grands Jours and contemporary Poitiers. see note 4 above.

19. Aeneid 4.238-58.

20. In La Franciade, Ronsard also describes Mercury's flight but concentrates less on the panorama (OEuvres complètes, 16: 44-45, lines 305-28).

21. Art of Love 2.19-98; Metamorphoses 8.183-235. For a survey of the Icarus and Daedalus story, see Niall Rudd, "Daedalus and Icarus (i) From Rome to the end of the Middle Ages" and "Daedalus and Icarus (ii) From the Renaissance to the present day," in Ovid Renewed: Ovidian influences on literature and art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 21-53.

22. Art of Love 2.50-64 and 84-92; Metamorphoses 8.203-08 and 225-30.

23. "La Pvce de Macefer," 39".

24. "Aux poetes chante-puce," 44^sup v^.

25. See, for example, Petrarch, Canzoniere 9 (Sonnet "Quando 'l pianeta ehe distingue l'ore," 10).

26. Art of Love 2.75; Metamorphoses 8.224. Lucian attributes a similar pleasure to Menippus, who looks down at the earth-as if at a map-from the moon (Icaromenippus 11).

27. Similarly, in La concorde des deux langages Jean Lemaire de Belges compares Lyon to Troy by naming the French city "ung aultre Ilion." François Rigolot discusses this example and argues that the Rhétoriqueurs' appropriation of classical heritage results from their desire for glory (Poétique et onomastique, 48). For an introduction to the concept of translatio studii in antiquity and the Renaissance, see Marc Bizer, La Poésie au miroir: imitation et conscience de soi dans la poésie latine de la Pléiade (Paris: Champion, 1995), 13-59. On the Muses in the poetry of the Pléiade, see Guy Demerson, La Mythologie classique dans l'oeuvre lyrique de la Pléiade (Geneva: Droz, 1972).

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).

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.

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).

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).

52. Sixteenth-century definitions of fureter include the idea of aggressive searching: Huguet includes "fouiller" and "chercher comme le furet dans le terrier, donner la chasse à" along with more neutral definitions (Edmond Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle, 7 vols. [Paris: Didier, 1925-67], 4: 239). Couler can designate "glisser, se faufiler," as in the following example: "s'estant coulé dans le camp ennemi;" other definitions include "fuir" and "plonger, enfoncer" (Algirdas Julien Greimas and Teresa Mary Keane, Dictionnaire du moyen français [Paris: Larousse, 1992], 154).

53. These are central images in the anatomical love poetry of the Italian petrarchists. For example, Angelo Poliziano describes a woman's eyes, which hold the lover in flames: "Occhi cagion del fuoco in cui sempre ardo." For Nocturno the beloved's hair becomes a hangman's noose, made by Love, that traps the lover in its knots: "O chiome relucente piu ehe lo avoro / di ehe mi fece amor al collo un laccio" (quoted in Saunders, The Sixteenth-Century Blason Poétique, 92-93). Ronsard adopts both images in a sonnet from the 1552 Amours (OEuvres complètes, 4: 20-21, Sonnet XVII).

54. "La Pvce d'Odet de Tovrnebv," 33^sup r^.

55. Ibid., 33^sup r^-33^sup v^.

56. Ibid., 34^sup r^.

57. Taster implies attentive, exploratory touching; couler suggests close contact between two bodies.

58. As with couler, some sixteenth-century meanings of taster suggest search and attack: these include "toucher; frapper," and "fouiller." Another usage, "faire l'exploration (d'un territoire)," implies a less violent exploration, the discovery of a new world (Dictionnaire du moyen français, 617). For couler, see note 52 above. For jouir de-"[v]enir à bout de, maîtriser, dompter, dominer"-see Huguet (Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle, 4: 725). Michel de Certeau uses jouir to refer to the pleasure of seeing the city from an elevation. see my discussion of Certeau above.

59. "A Madame des Roches. Sonet," 31^sup r^.

60. In 1573 La Rochelle had capitulated to the king on advantageous terms, retaining its religious privileges. The statement that the city gives the appearance of-"se monstre"-loyalty may be wishful thinking rather than reality. At Catherine de Medicis's order, the troops of the Duc de Montpensier had destroyed Lusignan in 1574.

61. Gail Kern Paster discusses the convention of the personification of the city as a woman in her introduction to English Renaissance representations of the city. She notes that the association of the female with the urban originated in classical antiquity: "Because the city is walled for most of its history, it is early associated with the female principle.... As a fortified place subject to siege and assault, this personified city becomes associated with sexual possession" (The Idea of the City in the Age of Shakespeare [Athens, GA: Georgia Universtiy Press, 1985], 4).

62. The most recent series of religious wars had ended in 1577 with the Edit de Poitiers, which favored Catholics by restricting Protestants' earlier gains. Protestantism was, however, legally recognized; no trials during the 1579 Grands jours directly concerned the practice of religion. see Félix Pasquier, Grands Jours de Poitiers, 61-62.

63. The Lettres patentes du Roy for the 1579 sessions privilege obedience to the king above other reasons for the institution of these Grands Jours: the text condemns crimes "contre l'obéissance que nosdits subiects doiuent à nous & à lustice, contre le repos public, & à l'oppression du pauure peuple" (6). see also Félix Pasquier, Grands Jours de Poitiers, and J. H. Shennan, The Parlement of Paris (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 83.

64. One of the most commonly used phrases is "inhibitions et deffences." see, for example, the decree of September 19, which requires nobles to open their houses to the search for criminals; the punishment for harboring convicted criminals is the razing of their houses (Arrest de la court des Grandz lovrs séant en la Ville de Poictiers [Poitiers: Aymé Mesnier, 1579], A iiiir-A iiiiv).

65. É. Littré, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française, 4 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1873-75) 3: 1361-62. Littré defines "prospect" as the way of looking at an object: "manière de regarder un objet." Huguet gives the following définitions: "vue, situation, orientation" and "vue, aspect, perspective" (Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle, 6: 226).

66. Patricia Parker, Literary Fat Ladies, 126-54.

67. The king legally obliged local authorities to execute the sentences of the Parisian court; see Félix Pasquier (Grands Jours de Poitiers, 41-43).

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