SOURCE: Wood, Diane S. “Dido as Paradigm of the Tragic Heroine in the Works of Hélisenne de Crenne.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 18 (1992): 125-36.

[In the following essay, Wood contends that de Crenne's works offer a singular vision about the destructiveness of love that take inspiration from the story of Dido in the Aeneid.]

The popularity of the tragic story of Dido during the French Renaissance is reflected not only in many translations and in the theater, but also in popular fiction by Hélisenne de Crenne who utilizes the figure of Dido as inspiration for her female characters.¹ In her writings Dido symbolizes an example of great feminine virtue as well as a warning of love's potential for destructiveness. Dido, the unfortunate victim of love in the Aeneid, serves De Crenne as a paradigm for the woman who tragically loses herself to amor. Always a didactic author, De Crenne's four prose works offer examples of love's excesses and the perils of sensuality. Regardless of the genre she utilizes—the sentimental novel, the epistolary, the allegorical dream and the epic—she presents facets of the disastrous effects of passion. Writing of love's dangers in an epoch permeated by classical literature, she recreates in her sixteenth-century heroine the emotional turmoil of the Carthaginian Queen and goes beyond her model to find in Christian Neoplatonism a resolution to the difficulties caused by passion.

De Crenne's novel Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d'amours (1538) presents the terrible consequences of love on the lives of her protagonists. Les Epistres familieres et inuectiues (1539) complements and retells in letter form the plot of the novel and defends Hélisenne as a woman author. Le Songe (1540) uses the allegorical dream tradition to abstract the conflict between Sensuality and Reason portrayed fictionally in the first two works. Her Eneydes (1541) translates into prose the story of the Carthaginian Queen, making accessible to the non-Latinist Vergil's tale of love and betrayal. Read together, De Crenne's corpus offers a unity of vision about love's destructiveness which can be traced by examining her complex presentation of the Dido story.

For De Crenne, Dido personifies an inherent dualism of character demonstrating both heroic virtues in the face of great obstacles and abandonment of these same virtues because of love, the embodiment of the cruel tension between chastity and carnality. De Crenne finds a paradigm of love's negative power in the striking contrast between Dido's courage before the arrival of the Trojan refugees and her subsequent character disintegration. She underscores Dido's dual nature by emphasizing her positive and negative qualities as two distinct exempla for the reader, thereby distinguishing between her virtuous conduct which is to be emulated and her tragic weakness which is to be avoided.

De Crenne catalogues Dido's positive qualities as a model for emulation in her eighth epistre familiere. She underscores Dido's constancy in her devotion to her dead husband as a paradigm for a young woman who is resisting parental pressure to marry. This mention of Dido affords the letter writer an opportunity to display her erudition to her correspondent in a sort of compendium of classical literature. She explains the Queen's names at length, including the supposed Phoenician etymology of the appellation “Dido”; [tu] t'efforceras d'estre semblable à celle à qui la magnanime constance, fut occasion de changer son nom primitif, qui estoit Helisa: Mais subsequentement appellé fut Dido, qui en langaige Phenicien est interpreté cõme Virago, excerceant oeuvres viriles …” (D4v-D5v).² The author's emphasis on the name Helisa and the manly nature of the Carthaginian Queen casts light on her conception of Dido. In De Crenne's view, Dido accomplishes “oeuvres viriles” by building Carthage. She is a successful monarch, ruling in her own right, and furnishes an example of wise leadership by a woman.³ Hélisenne intends for her correspondent to emulate the virago by being steadfast like Dido and thus her advice elaborates at length on the theme of constancy despite adversity:

Certainemẽt c'estoit celle que l'aduerse fortune ne pouoit aulcunement superer: Car à l'heure que icelle instable la vouloit totalement prosterner en permettant la mort immaturé de sõ fidele mary, Ceste Dido fist grande demonstrance de sa vertu … par elle fut construicte & edifiée la noble cité de Carthage: laquelle fut tresfameuse & renomée. O que selon le iugement d'ung chascun elle fut digne d'estre extollee, puis que sa supreme vertu en telle extremité la rendit cõstante.

(D4v-D5v)

In this letter virtue, activity, and constancy are inextricably linked. De Crenne presents Dido's strength and courage for emulation by the sixteenth-century women facing difficult circumstances. Dido is seen as exceptional in the force of her virtue, and according to the letter writer she offers a strong model for women of any era:

toutesfois vertu foemenine y a bien peu resisté, qui doibt seruir d'exemples, tant aux modernes qu'a la posterité future, croyant indubitablement que les vertus desquelles ont été decorez noz predecesseurs en leurs sucesseurs, se peuuent bien retrouver.

(D5v-D6r)

By following her example of steadfastness, De Crenne's correspondent may likewise show “la reluisence de sa magnanimité” (D5r). By writing, an activity traditionally considered to be “masculine,” De Crenne herself acts as a virago and provokes charges of unseemly behavior on the part of a woman. Her five Epistres inuectiues serve as her defense for the unfeminine act of becoming a published and successful author (Larsen 240).

In her narratives De Crenne merges the life of her main character with that of other tragic heroines who suffered from love (Debaisieux 30). Virtuous like Dido before meeting Aeneas, Hélisenne abandons reason for passion once she falls in love. Following the pattern of the Carthaginian Queen, she fails to restrain her actions once she is in love. She describes the intensity of her emotion using the metaphor of green wood which, once ignited, burns with great heat:

tout ainsi que le bois vert à peine recoipt la flambe & ardeur du feu: mais apres qu'il l'a receue, la tiẽt & conserue plus longuement, rendãt plus vehemente chaleur. Pareillemẽt m'est il aduenu qui au precedent pressée, tentée & stimulée, auec assidues poursuytes ne fuz vaincue: Mais finablement estãt surprinse, trop plus que nul aultre amour feruẽte & fidelle: ie obserueray ce que manifestemẽt ie demonstre.

(E3r)

The image of green wood clarifies the newness of the love experience to the letter writer who previously had been insensitive to the pain caused by love to her correspondents. The intense heat of the green wood conveys the psychological change caused by amor, the same transformation experienced by Dido who is literally consumed by fire.

Hélisenne, the first person narrator and character in the Angoysses, is overcome by passion like Dido and the writer of De Crenne's Epistres. In this novel Dido's presence includes not only a positive reference to constancy but also a negative one referring to her obsessive passion. De Crenne uses negative exempla frequently throughout the prose account. The narrator claims to be telling her own story as an example to other women to avoid the dangers of love: “O trescheres dames, quand je considere qu'en voyant comme j'ay été surprise, vous pourrez eviter les dangereulx laqs d'amours, en y resistant du commencement, sans continuer en amoureuses pensées” (3). The narrator consistently maintains this didactic tone throughout the novel. She tells her sad story and relives her misfortune in order to help other women to avoid similar mistakes.⁴ Dido, with her virtuous beginnings and subsequent fall, reinforces this pattern and offers both positive and negative qualities to the reader.

De Crenne's novel presents Dido in a negative light in her familiar role of tragic victim who succumbs to love's power. The Queen is recalled, along with Helen, as a woman who was not constant: “Et si la royne de Carthage eusse perseveré d'estres constante, elle eust avec louenge perpetuelle de son amy Sicheus l'umbre suyvie” (43). De Crenne continues, explaining how stories such as Dido's (and Helen's) serve as an example of conduct to be avoided:

Telles hystoires doibvent estre suffisantes pour nous garder de succumber en semblables delictz, et, pour ung petit appetit, n'estre si faciles d'escouter les polides, elegantes & suaves parolles de vous aultres jouvenceaulx, lesquelles ne sont sinon ung laq deceptif pour circunvenir & decepvoir celles qui sont trop faciles au dommageable croire, lequel vice a esté cause de adulterer plusieurs dames fameuses.

(43-4)

The narrator explains that Hélisenne's apparent refusal of her beloved's appeal constitutes part of her amorous strategy. The heroine is cognizant of the fact that giving in too quickly may lead her to be valued less by him. She will be a better “prize” if she appears to be difficult to conquer: “Et me sembla qu'il ne seroit bon d'acquiescer promptement à sa requeste par ce que les choses qui facilement sont obtenues sont peu appreciées, mais celles que en grandz fatigues on acquiert sont estimées cheres & precieuses” (42). By following Dido's example the protagonist prolongs her inevitable admission that she is passionately in love, but it is only the admission that is delayed. Hélisenne has long since given in to the force of her sensual passion. Despite her cautious tactics, she never intends to follow the path of constancy and resistance suggested by her Carthaginian model. Dido serves as an inspiration for a tactical maneuver rather than a curb to Hélisenne's newly awakened sensual urges.⁵

In the Angoysses, Penelope, Oenone, and Lucretia serve as models of marital fidelity (68-9). Unlike Dido, they never succumb to temptation. Penelope faithfully waits ten years for Odysseus's return. Both the nymph Oenone, who is betrayed by Paris, and the Roman matron Lucretia, who is raped by Tarquin, kill themselves to avoid further dishonor. Despite the allusion to these unambiguous cases of fidelity, Part One of the novel ends with the narrator wishing the reader (among other qualities) “la constance de Dido” (143). This reference to Dido as a model of constancy comes as a surprise after the negative reference to Dido forgetting Sicheus and the praise of Penelope, Oenone, and Lucretia, unless one appreciates the extent to which De Crenne creates a duality in the nature of Dido as exemplum. The Dido as a model of constancy is the virago who is in full command of her faculties, and not the victim of love.

In De Crenne' novel Vergil's infelix Dido represents a case of extreme suffering in a narrative where emotional pain caused by love is the main theme and the title, Les Angoysses douloureuses, emphasizes this distress. De Crenne's narrator tells the readers that she suffers more than Portia, Cornelia, Laodamie, and Dido combined: “jamais Porcia pour Brutus, ne Cornelia pour Pompée, ne Laodamie pour Prothesilaus, ne la magnanime royne carthagienne pour Eneas, toutes ensemble, tant de dueil ne souffrirent que moy, paovre defortunée je sentz” (132). This hyperbolic statement equates Hélisenne with the beleaguered ladies of antiquity, making her a member of their tortured sorority (Debaisieux 30-1). The incorporation of Christian Neoplatonism into the Angoysses resolves the tension created by the hyperbolic anguish of the main characters without offending contemporary morality. While Portia, Cornelia, Laodamie, and Dido commit suicide, Hélisenne preserves her virtue and chastity with a religious conversion at her death. She and her beloved suffer and die from love while, at the same time, they remain chaste and platonically faithful to each other. For this fidelity, despite a long and cruel separation, they are judged worthy to join the panoply of exemplary lovers in the pagan underworld. The epilogue of the novel presents the heroine and hero's souls as they are welcomed to the Elysian Fields, a passage modeled after Aeneid VI.⁶ A marginal note in De Crenne's Eneydes explains the virtues of those who merit this honor: “Les Champs Elisées, est le seiour des ames qui par les iugementz de Minos, Radamanthus, & Eacus sont bonnes, pures & synceres” (P6r).⁷ Although they are not named specifically, these “splendides & claires ames” (408) of the Elysian Fields which Hélisenne and Guénélic join presumably include the company of all tragic literary figures in whose company Hélisenne and her beloved now belong. This is her own conception of an afterlife modeled after the medieval courtly garden and the pagan resting place for heroes (Wood “Descents” 74-6).

De Crenne recounts the story of Dido and Aeneas in her translation of Aeneid I-IV, Les Eneydes. This prose translation cannot be considered a totally faithful rendering but is, rather, a highly personalized transposition of the story (Scollen-Jimack 198-9). The translation limits itself to the tragic love story contained in the first four books of the epic probably since her readers, the same readers of her novel, were not interested in Aeneas's mission to found Rome. Likewise, departing from Virgil's emphasis, Dido is the central figure to De Crenne's readers, not Aeneas. He is reduced to being the object of Dido's obsession. The full significance of the Trojan's mission is omitted and there is no noble explanation of his betrayal. Through her abridged translation, Hélisenne presents to her readers the paradigm from classical literature of a woman destroyed by love without the Christian redemption found by the main characters of the Angoysses.

The question of the marriage of Dido and Aeneas is central to the interpretation of the betrayal in the epic. In Aeneid IV Juno, the goddess of marriage, plans and presides over the cave episode signifying their legitimate union. Vergil comments on Dido's feelings, indicating that Aeneas did not necessarily feel the same: “coniugium vocat; hoc praetexit nomine culpam” (172 “she calls it marriage and with that name veils her sin”). In the passage leading up to the cave scene, De Crenne's translation emphasizes the concept of marriage by adding such terms as “matrimonial alliance” (01r), “nuptiale coniunction” (03r), “alliance coniugale” (04r), “mariage legitime” (04r). The translation faithfully renders Vergil's comment and explains that Dido “called it marriage” to escape public criticism: “Toutes fois pour se conseruer d'estre de la chose commise increpée, ce faict mariage elle appelle, couurant de ce nom sa griefue coulpe” (05v). Whereas Virgil's Dido believes that she is wedded to the Trojan, Aeneas excuses abandoning her on the grounds that there was no formal ceremony binding them: “nec coniugis umquam / praetendi taedas aut haec in fodera veni” (338-9 “I never held out the bridegroom's torch nor entered such a compact”). De Crenne's version reinforces the argument by stating Aeneas's lack of intent to marry Dido and the absence of a marriage contract: “Car de nous deux ne fut la conionction faicte, pour proposition que i'eusse d'auec toy cõme mary & espoux demourer. Iamais ne vins au doulx & fertile pays de Carthage pour cõtract de mariage pourchasser” (P5r & Perkell 208-10). Since the readers of De Crenne's translation stop at Aeneas's departure at the end of Book IV and the readers do not witness his founding of Rome, the Trojan appears only as a betrayer of love in this version and not as a heroic figure. His pietas and noble mission are forgotten as he takes a secondary role to the Carthaginian Queen who is at the center of De Crenne's rendering.

Dido's last speech bears the marks of De Crenne's highly accented emphasis on the suffering caused by love (Lorian 31-3). Exclamations abound. At the mention of Fortune, “Vixi, et quem dederat cursum Fortuna peregi” (653 “I have lived, I have finished the course that Fortune gave”), De Crenne adds an additional page to Dido's lament, similar to the long complaintes of the Angoysses (Wood “Literary” 41-5). She launches into a series of exclamations: “O caducque & faulse humaine esperance, O aueuglée & instable Fortune. … O cruelle & inicque Fortune. … O deceptiue [Fortune]” (R4r). In De Crenne's rendering, Dido blames Fortune for her ills, accusing Fortune of knowing the precise way of bringing about her downfall through her concupiscence. De Crenne uses the metaphor of warfare to describe the assault on the Queen: “Ha ha fausse Fortune tu iugeois bien par coniecture que la concupiscence, qui continuellement contre la raison insiste, m'infereroit telle guerre, que finablement me feroit submerger en la mer periculeuse de delectable volupté” (R4r). Dido accepts the blame for her fall from virtue, couching it in vocabulary reminiscent of the metaphor of green wood in the Epistres:

Ce qui a esté tresfacile, d'autant que du principe de telle bataille ay esté trouué desgarnye des auirons de vertu: lesquelz au precedent me faisoient ma viduité & chaste pudicité conseruer. Las si ie les eusse aupres de moy retenu, ilz eussent esté aptes à me iecter & liberer de tous perilz, en me conduisant apres longue resistance au porte de suaue & doulce tranquilité. Or ne fault il doncques que sur la fragilité humaine ie m'excuse: puis que tout ce mal me succede, pour non auoir auec prudence vertueusement à l'appetit sensuel resisté.

(R4v)

De Crenne's allegorical imagery of losing the “auirons de vertu” and her inability to reach the “porte de suaue & doulce tranquilité” convey Dido's regret at not overcoming her passion. In Virgil's time as well as De Crenne's conventional morality saw Dido as deserving punishment for her adultery and thereby serving as a warning of the dire consequences of carnality (duBois 22). Dido's paradigm serves to underscore this theme since resisting sensual impulses is a major concern throughout De Crenne's writings, a pervasiveness which creates intratextual cohesiveness. The Eneydes demonstrates as did the Angoysses and the Epistres, the “self-annihilation” resulting from Dido's “absolute emotion” (duBois 16). By contrast, De Crenne's Songe shows the triumph of Reason over Sensuality and thereby provides a model of virtuous conduct for the reader without the tragic overtones of destructive carnality in her other narratives.

The figure of Dido is ever present in Hélisenne de Crenne's prose as the virtuous widow and the wise ruler as well as in its tragic aspect of love's victim. Her novel rewrites the hopeless ending of the tragic situation by going beyond the paradigm offered by Dido. Through declamatory passages, De Crenne transforms Dido into a sentimental heroine, akin to her own main character. Vergil's infelix Dido merges with De Crenne's conception of the destructive power of love. Dido, once the virago, becomes the tormented and betrayed victim of love. Aeneas leaves her bereft of comfort whereas the hero of the Angoysses follows his beloved even into death. Hélisenne finds a platonic sublimation of her passion which affords her a way to rise above her sensual nature towards God. The Carthaginian Queen kills herself in despair; Hélisenne, through tempering her passion, is eternally reunited with her beloved, a positive rewriting of the Dido paradigm.

Notes

1. Schoolboys translated Dido's story as did Saint Gelais (1509), De Crenne (1541), Des Masures (1547-60), and Du Bellay (1552 & 60). The dramatic pathos of her situation formed the basis of one of France's first tragic plays, Jodelle's Didon sacrifiant (c. 1560). Research for this article began during an NEH Summer Seminar with François Rigolot at Princeton University. Additional support came from an NEH Travel to Collections Grant, Texas State Organized Research Funds, and a Faculty Development Leave from Texas Tech University.

2. De Crenne borrows this dual description of Dido from Christine de Pisan's Le Livre de la cité des dames (768 & 775).

3. A “princesse monarque” in Part Two of the Angoysses holds a similar position of responsibility. The parallel between her and Dido is reinforced in a comparison between the two (284). Like Dido, this princess is a wise ruler. De Crenne supports the idea of female rule, “a world upside down” to the Romans (du Bois 22).

4. Boccacio's Fiammetta, a model for the Angoysses, likewise uses negative exempla.

5. Waldenstein considers Hélisenne's moralizing as conforming to literary taste and believes her real message is “hidden below the surface of superficial declarations” (77). She observes that Hélisenne would have given in to her sensual impulses in Part One of the novel if she had had the opportunity (75).

6. Debaisieux notes that Hélisenne's very name predestines her for the “champs ‘Hélisiens’” (33).

7. In the translation Dido tells Aeneas that she will be going to the Champs Elysées. Vergil, however, places her in the Lugentes Campi (VI 440-476).

Works Cited

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———. “Literary Devices and Rhetorical Techniques in the Works of Hélisenne de Crenne.” Diss. U of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975.

———. “Virgilian Descents to the Underworld in Sixteenth-Century French Literature.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 5 (1979): 70-83.

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