LABE, LOUISE

LABE, Louise: translation

One of the finest lyric poets of the French Renaissance, Louise Labe was famous for her passionate love sonnets. Labes was raised in the French city of Lyons, a vibrant hub of artistic, commercial, and publishing activity that was influenced by Italian Renaissance ideas before most other cities, including Paris. Labes's father, Pierre Charly (called Labes), was a prosperous ropemaker; her mother, Etiennette, was his second wife. Labe's father gave her an excellent education; she knew Latin and Italian and probably Spanish and Greek also. In one poem, Labes refers to her skill at horsemanship and arms, as well as nee­dlework, and she may even have participated in a tournament held for Henri II. Around 1543 Labes was married to Ennemond Perrin, a ropemaker at least twenty years her senior.A volume of her works was printed in 1555, containing twenty-four sonnets (one in Italian), three elegies, and a prose dialogue,Le debat de Folie et d'Amour(Debate Between Folly and Love). It is dedicated to Clemence de Bourges, daughter of a Lyonnese nobleman; the dedicatory letter defends women's education and rejects their alleged inferiority. Labe died several years after her husband in 1566.

Although readers still speculate, the identity of the beloved addressed in Labes's sonnets remains unknown. Her poems depart from tradition because they are spoken by an overtly passionate female lover who desires a more mutual love than convention usually provided. She knew or met many celebrated poets of her day, including those of the Pleiade—Joachim Du Bellay,* Pierre de Ron­sard,* and Pontus de Tyard—and Lyonnese poets Pernette Du Guillet* and Oliver de Magny, and had a sort of literary salon at her home. Some critics suggest that Magny is Labe's beloved, as he wrote several poems praising her, used lines from her second sonnet in one of his, and wrote an ode satirizing her husband. Labes drew criticism from some for her renown, public role, and pas­sionate poetry. A scurrilous poem calling Labes "la belle cordiere" (the beautiful ropemaker) and accusing her of sleeping with numerous men circulated in 1557. In a letter, John Calvin* called her a common whore, but modern scholars discount these charges, viewing them as hostile reactions to a talented, uncon­ventional woman.

A. Jones, The Currency ofEros, 1990.

L. Labes, Louise Labe's Complete Works, ed. E. Farrell, 1986.