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French Poetry

Monday, January 20, 2025 - 11:32

I love doing the podcast poetry episodes, but I need to catch up on blogging the sources I used!

Major category: 
Full citation: 

Stanton, Domna C. 1986. The Defiant Muse: French Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present. The Feminist Press ISBN 0-935312-52-8

I’ve mined this book for several of the poetry episodes on the podcast, but hadn’t gotten around to blogging it on its own. I’m closing that gap now.

The introduction reviews the history of feminist literary criticism and notes that it has tended to focus on prose. Multiple filters and gatekeeping mechanisms stand in the way of presenting non-Anglophone feminist poetry to a larger audience. Feminine stereotypes have pressured women poets into restrictive genres: domesticity, romance, religion, etc. This collection seeks out pets and poems that operate against this restriction. While the collection doesn’t have a specific interest in homoerotic poetry, in exploring the pressures of marriage and the constrictions of heterosexual romance, room for love between women emerges. And that is what my summary will be focusing on.

The introduction also includes a survey of French literary history and genres, highlighting the forces that made particular eras richer in poetry than others. The collection includes 57 poems, both in the original and in English translation. Perhaps three-quarters of them fall in the pre-1900 period that is within the scope of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. I’ll provide brief notes on the twelve poems in that scope that speak to romance or eroticism between women, although only a few could be considered homoerotic in a strict sense.

Marie de Romieu 16th century “Brief Discourse: The Woman’s Excellence Surpasses Man’s” – An extended poem in praise of excellent women, arguing that women are better than men. Not homoerotic but a woman admiring women.

Catherine des Roches 16th century “Agnodicia, or Ignorance Banished from the Presence of Women” – A story set in ancient times about a king who forbade education to women, and how women’s health suffered, as they were too modest to frequent a male doctor. Then a woman cross-dressed to study medicine and secretly disclosed her sex to the women so they would trust her. There is a somewhat non-erotic passage where the women admire her beauty and kissed her in gratitude. Their husbands, fooled by the disguise, accused the healer of compromising the women’s virtue. So she was forced to disclose her sex, and as able to convince them to allow women to be educated again.

Anne de Rohan 16th century “On a Lady Named Beloved” – This is one of them poems I’ve included in a podcast episode. It’s a love poem from one woman to another. Some of the phrases are allusive of Sappho’s “He seems as a god to me,” although it isn’t a direct translation of the poem. During Rohan’s lifetime Sappho’s poetry was being republished in the original Greek or in Latin translation, and Sappho’s reputation as a lover of women was firmly established.

Mademoiselle Certain (undated) “To the Queen of Sweden on her Contempt for Women’s Minds” – Why am I including a poem that snarkily comments on another woman’s misogyny? Because it seems highly likely that the “Queen of Sweden” referenced in it is Christina, who had romantic (and probably sexual) relationships with women. The poem comes from a collection published in 1665. Christina abdicated her throne in 1654 and lived in France from 1656-8 where she caused quite a stir with her gauche behavior.

Anne de la Vigne 17th century “The Ladies to Mademoiselle de Scudéry” – Scudéry was a salonnière and poet who sometimes used the pen name “Sapho.” This poem praises her under that name, saying that her work excels over that of men. Scudéry had “romantic friendships” with women, though I don’t believe there is any evidence for erotic relationships. This poem is imbued with themes of sisterhood and praise of women.

The next three poems show the social connections between female poets, in how they are cross-dedicated: Sainctonge to C***, C*** to Simiane, Simane to an unknown dedicatee. All through show varying flavors of affection and desire.

Louise-Geneviève de Sainctonge 17th c “Letter to Madame la Marquise de C***” – A poetic thank you note for a gift. The author asserts that men are unworthy of the giver’s attentions and urges her (as a widow) to disdain re-marriage. It closes saying that the lady has complete power over the writer’s soul.

Madame de C*** (undated) “Letter to Madame la Marquise de S[iminae], on Sending Her Tobacco” – The letter describes the sensual delights of the gift of tobacco and says that as repayment all she asks is that she be told of the recipient’s pleasures and amusements.

Pauline de Simiane 17th c “Madrigal” – I’ve used this poem in the podcast. It is a short lament that the dedicatee “kisses me like a sister” when she’s rather be kissed like a lover (using the mythic figures of Diane and Endymion to create this message).

The last several poems I’ll mention come from right around the turn of the 20th century, but as the authors were definitely active in the late 19th, I’m not going to quibble over specific publication dates. Given the era they were written in, these are much more overt in their homoeroticism.

Renée Vivien late 19th-early 20th c multiple poems – A sensual poem to her female lover. A poem of sisterhood and violent rejection of men.  A poem about Sappho.

Natalie Clifford Barney late 19th-20th c multiple poems – A poem celebrating a lover’s body. A poem about making love as poetry.

Lucie Delarue-Mardrus late 19th-20th c “If You Come” – A poem about greeting and making love to a female lover.

Place: 
historical