[In the essay that follows, Ahmed argues that Marguerite de Navarre rewrote a secular French song as a spiritual quest for unity with God, a quest which is specifically feminine.]

O Mutation délectable (v. 40)

Chanson spirituelle XXX

Marguerite de Navarre's place in the well-known French polemic of the late 1540's between the proponents of the national chanson form and those of the ode borrowed from Antiquity is not an evident one. She is mentioned neither in Thomas Sebillet's definition of the chanson form in his Art poétique françoys (1548) nor in Joachim du Bellay's definition of the ode in his Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549).¹ Marguerite does nonetheless occupy a pivotal position in French literature of the 1540's between the songs of Mellin de Saint-Gelais and Clément Marot on the one side and the odes of Du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard on the other. Whereas literary theory of the mid-sixteenth century seems to exclude her, the history of poetic practice cannot but include a discussion of her religious songs, namely the Chansons spirituelles included in part in the Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses (1547) and in the Derniers oeuvres (ca. 1547-1548).² Her Chansons spirituelles not only add a different dimension to the problem of renovating the song form in the French Renaissance but also contribute a vital perspective on the regeneration of feminine poetic identity.

I would like to show how Marguerite regenerates another woman's poetic identity from the context of the profane to that of the spiritual through a rewriting of the popular fifteenth-century French chanson, Av'ous point veu la Perronnelle. Moreover, I will attempt to demonstrate how Marguerite, herself, comes to identify with the title woman's newly defined spiritual self.

CHANSON AS CONTRAFACTUM

Shortly after the publication of her spiritual songs, there had been some discussion regarding the classification of her religious songs either as chansons or as odes. In his 1550 funeral oration of Marguerite, Charles de St. Marthe called her chansons, Christian odes:

Quant est de nostre Marguerite combien qu'elle n'a estée aidée à l'estude de l'evangile, ne de l'industrie laborieuse des Philosophes, ne d'un tas de superstitieuses observations, toutefois elle a heureusement proffité à la piété du Christianisme que, si, toute contention sophistique mise à part et dépouillées les malvaises affections qui pervertissent le jugement de l'esprit, on vient à lire Le Mirouer de l'ame pécheresse, le Triumph de l'Aigneau, les Comédies, les Odes, les Oraisons et aultres oeuvres par elle escripts en langue et poësie Françoise.³

Such a response towards her poetry indicates that her songs partake in a larger movement to regenerate the chanson form. Like odes, they have variant metrical patterns, but Marguerite does not “accord” them to the Greek and Roman lyres as it would be later stipulated in Du Bellay's Deffence.⁴

Georges Dottin, the editor of the critical text, characterizes her poems as sacred contrafacta of popular songs whose content was at times quite ribald. Dottin explains three techniques for writing a contrafactum: 1. by conserving the original text transforming only those profane expressions needed to generate a sacred text, 2. by changing the entire text except the rhymes, and 3. by altering the whole text save the metrical structure.⁵ In the sixteenth century, however, contrafactum is a polyvalent term; it not only signifies the making of an opposing copy, a definition which stems from Classical Latin,⁶ but it also comes to mean the making of a facing copy or an imitation.⁷ The term is a provocative one to apply to Marguerite's chansons, since Ronsard also states in his preface to the Quatre premiers livres des odes that his first odes were contrafacta, imitations, of Horatian odes.⁸ Unlike Ronsard in his 1550 Préface, Marguerite does not make any claims to emulate the popular songs from which she draws her material; her contrafacta do not accord with their source. Through a rewriting of the popular and the profane, Marguerite creates a new chanson, sacred in meaning but “unfaithful” to her model. Since Jean-Jacques Rousseau, musicologists have defined this sort of textual transformation as a form of parody:

A vocal composition in which the original text is replaced by a new one, particularly a secular text by a sacred one, or vice versa. … Numerous Protestant chorales employ pre-existant melodies for their new texts, and many of the melodies used for the Calvinist Psalter were borrowed from secular songs. … In the 17th- and 18th-centuries French usage, the transfer was called parodie. … J.-J. Rousseau in his Dictionnaire de musique (1768), under “Parodie,” made the remark that all the stanzas of a strophic song except the first are “parodies,” i.e. contrafacta.⁹

Marguerite transforms the songs from popular culture to create Christian “parodies.” In an oblique manner, Marguerite creates a “spiritual” accord through a discordant relation between her Chansons spirituelles and the chansons populaires.¹⁰

THE PERONELLE

Among her Chansons spirituelles, the thirty-fourth song, Avès poinct veuz la Peronelle, exemplifies Marguerite's ability to regenerate feminine poetic identity from the profane to the spiritual by means of a contrafactum. In the popular version, the Perronnelle—perronnelle meaning a talkative woman¹¹—is led from France disguised as a page; she discovers a fountain and decides never to return home, thus abandoning her family:

Av'ous point veu la Perronnelle
Que les gendarmes ont emmenée?
Ilz l'ont abillée comme ung paige:
C'est pour passer le Daulphiné.
Elle avoit troys mignons de fréres,
Qui la sont allez pourchasser.
Tant l'ont cherchée que l'ont trouvée
A la fontaine d'un vert pré.
“Et Dieu vous gard, la Perronnelle!
Vous en voulez point retourner?”
“Et nenny vraiment, mes beaulx fréres:
Jamèsen France n'entreray.
“Recommandez moy a mon pére
Et a ma mére s'il vous plaist.”(12)

Marguerite appropriates the transformation of place which occurs in the popular song to create a parallel transformation whereby the quest of the fountain in another land, the quest of the origin, becomes the Peronelle's quest of an harmonious accord with God as her divine source. Furthermore, she achieves this accord ironically at the loss of her own voice—that is, by denying her “popular” identity as a talkative woman. The movement in Marguerite's chanson therefore does not take place between two literal spots but from a literal to a figurative one. The denial of the Peronelle's popular identity leads to the affirmation of her spiritual self; her self-denial is an experience of her own “Nothingness” which leads eventually to her spiritual affirmation as her participation in the “All.”¹³

Marguerite's song immediately addresses the problem of the Peronelle's place and opens with a question regarding the whereabouts of the unhappy woman, “la malheureuse,” who desires nothing good:

Avès poinct veuz la malheureuse
Que tous ennuis viennent chercher,
Qui de nul bien n'est désireuse
Et ne veult de joye approcher?

(vv. 1-4)

In the context of the first stanza, “la malheureuse,” forms a predicative rhyme with “désireuse” such that her desire becomes one of sorrow and not for joy and thus forms an unexpected relationship; one would expect “désireuse” to have “heureuse” as its predicate. The portrayal of the Peronelle as the unhappy one signals at once that the two women are different in each story. Suffering becomes an inherent trait of the Peronelle who renounces all pleasure. Her place is neither in a field of joy, “en la plaine / De propre délectation” (vv. 5-6), nor in the “vert pré” of the popular version but rather on the mountain of tribulation, “en la montagne / De toutte tribulation.” Marguerite uses the words, “délectation” and “tribulation” to cast her heroine into a Biblical, indeed spiritual, context. By choosing tribulation over delectation, Marguerite emphasizes the Peronelle's quest for a place to express her sorrow. The Peronelle is in exile from the world of pleasure and belongs to a world where all earthly delights are negated. She is similar to Rutebeuf's Marie l'Egyptienne who also takes flight but into the desert. Furthermore, the negation of the self resonates throughout the opening of the song through Marguerite's use of the negations, “ne, nul, poinct.”

Marguerite describes the virtually inhuman aspect of the Peronelle's place of exile by stating that neither man nor woman would want to inhabit it: “Où [il] n'y a homme ny femme / Qui veuille ce lieu habiter” (vv. 9-10). Only the Peronelle who rejects matters of the flesh can occupy such a spiritual place: “Mais elle fuit tout ce qu'elle ayme / Pour en ce lieu sainct hériter” (vv. 11-12). She consciously refuses the world she “loves,” assumedly the world of carnal desire, in order to come into this holy place. These verses pose a problem regarding the nature of love in the song. Does she not enter into the saintly place with love as well? What seems certain in the context of the opening verses is the emphasis placed on her sorrow and pain as being necessary to inherit the saintly place. Her passion is presented in terms of human suffering. Moreover, by removing the quest for joy and the birds which signal both the return of spring and the renewal of love (vv. 13 et passim), Marguerite explicitly writes against the tradition of the chanson d'amour. The chant even assumes a macabre tone by verse twenty-one through the reversal of the imagery of singing birds:

Et en lieu de doulce musique
Sont reynes et chauves souris
Et à son pleur mélencolique
Prent plus de plaisir qu'en son ris.

(vv. 21-24)

Literally, the place, “en lieu,” of sweet music is occupied by bats and frogs, while the nightingale, starling, skylark, parrot, jay, and magpie (vv. 13-16) which constitute the ornithological topoi of lyric poetry are banished from the world. The dissonant replaces the consonant, and in the world of dissonances, the Peronelle finds pleasure. This is the second sign in the song where sorrow yields joy. Within this particular chanson spirituelle Marguerite unveils the transformative process of contrafactum whereby the negation of the world of profane love serves as a means to affirm the world of sacred love.

In a parallel fashion, the pastoral world is supplanted by a mountain which ironically assumes desert-like qualities and which suggests again that the Peronelle is an adapted version of Marie l'Egyptienne. There are neither cows, sheep, goats, flowers, nor fruit but only snakes, lizards, scorpions, and big toads; spring is forever banished and winter permanent (vv. 25-38). Not until verse thirty-nine does Marguerite state the expressly destructive nature of the place and note that everything tends to harm man: “Tout ce qui nuict à l'homme, / Dont elle n'a peur ni danger” (vv. 39-40). The Peronelle differentiates herself from the others, not just because her existence verges on the inhuman, but also because she has no fear of annihilation. The Peronelle's attitude towards death is remindful of Paul's in Philippians 1,23: “Desiderium habens dissolvi et esse cum Christo” (“I want to be gone and be with Christ”).¹⁴ Death will lead to the mystical union with God and Christ. Furthermore, Marguerite justifies the Peronelle's self-negating character in the following terms: “Joieusement elle l'endure, / Espérant la manne d'en hault” (vv. 43-44). Hope becomes her only source of existence predicated upon receipt of the manna from above, namely from God. The manna, being the spiritual food of the exiled Jews (Exodus 16), indicates to the reader that the Peronelle's earthly wanderings are too a form of exile and that she is hoping for spiritual deliverance. The negation of her terrestrial bonds is predicated upon the desire for a celestial union mediated by the receipt of the manna. Her spiritual identity therefore transcends her earthly consciousness.

Marguerite continues to describe in her song the new place where the Peronelle seeks to unite with God, and she does so in terms negating the very foundation of human civilization and particularly Renaissance humanism. She tells of the severence of all forms of communication:

Le plaisir du fol et du saige,
C'est de trouver à qui parler:
Mais il n'a en ce lieu sauvaige
A que se puisse declarer.

(vv. 49-52)

Des ouvraiges qui donnent joye
On n'en trouva tout un seul;
Il n'y croy ni fi[l] d'or, ny soye,
Ny couton pour faire ung linceul.
Il n'y a temple ny esglise
Paincture vive ny tableau,
Ny riens qui l'oeil charnel ravise
De contempler le bon et le beau.

(vv. 57-64)

Contrary to the popular belief that the Peronelle is a talkative woman, she has paradoxically no opportunity to speak here. Her popular definition of self becomes nonsensical in the wilderness. Although Marguerite emphasizes the absence of the pleasure of speaking, it is not just the pleasure which is removed but also the essence of her self-identity which resides in her voice. Due to the negation of all others, her ability to express herself reaches an impasse: “Mais il n'a en ce lieu sauvaige / A qui se puisse declarer” (vv. 51-52). Furthermore, the Peronelle cannot make any testimony of her exile because of the lack of materials (vv. 57-60). As contrafactum, Marguerite's chanson comes to represent a world of the “anti-text” or better still of the contra-textus¹⁵ for which there is no fabric to weave a “manteau fabuleux,” much less a shroud (v. 60) whereby she can transmit her story.¹⁶ Within the context of this one song, there are three transformations which the Peronelle's discourse clearly undergoes: the first step is the original popular version, the second is the denial of the popular love-song imagery in the opening of Marguerite's version, and the third is the Peronelle's inability to represent her world through oral or pictoral discourse. In the context of this song, however, the text, like the self, effaces itself to signify another reality and another self. Her song finally becomes one without a story; it becomes a compositio incomposita. What then does exist in the Peronelle's world where all is abstracted? Indeed, there are neither paintings nor places of worship (vv. 61-62) which can lure the literal eye, i.e. “l'oeil charnel.” For the moment, all seems to exist in the form of silence and nothingness.

The Peronelle's inability to represent her world becomes evermore explicit in the following verses:

Là ne cr[o]ist papier, encre ou plume
Pour escripre ce qu'elle veult,
Ny livre, livret ny volume
Toutesfois elle ne s'en deult.

(vv. 69-72)

The place is without writing, a topos without graphics—so to speak. In a sense, her self is untranslatable by the means of human artifice. The Peronelle's world does not allow for the creation of any text and in particular denies the very means of self-representation. The Peronelle wants to express herself, but she simply does not possess the wherewithal (vv. 69-70).¹⁷ Marguerite chooses to write about a woman who cannot write about herself, and in a sense, her song is to tell of a woman without a song of her own. Is this woman not Marguerite herself who borrows the song of another and who cannot speak about herself? Through the guise of another does she ironically speak about herself as someone who feels the same inadequacy of expression? Marguerite attempts to describe a world beyond human reason acceded to only by faith. Both in Marguerite's and the Peronelle's worlds, there are limitations placed not only upon the act of writing but also upon the act of writing about the self. As previously mentioned, the Peronelle's silence contradicts her popular definition as the expressive one, and this contradiction signals an altered state of identity but an identity which Marguerite paradoxically comes to share in a most circuitous manner.

The point where the Peronelle is without means to express herself leads to an immediate and direct relation with God. In fact, at the mid-point of the song, God, who is periphrastically called the “autruy vainc[u]eur” and who is the only other present in the text, causes a conversion to take place in the Peronelle's heart:

Chose [elle] ne void en cest terre
Qui plaise à son eu[i]l ny son c[u]eur;
Mais perdre veult en ceste guerre
Pour rendre au c[u]eur autruy vainc[u]eur.
Elle ne parle ny n'escoute:
Car ne se tay qui parle peu.

(vv. 76-82)

The heart discontent with everything on earth allows God to “conquer” it, and poetically the rhyme, “vainc[u]eur:c[u]eur,” mirrors the subsumption of the one by the other. The absence and indeed negation of any unity with the world forces the Peronelle's identity to become effaced by silence, since there is no one to talk with or listen to. In that silence, the self assumes spiritual significance and acquires knowledge of God.¹⁸

Once turned towards God, the Peronelle undergoes yet another metamorphosis and becomes rock-like. This transformation signals her complete self-negation:

Ainsy du roc en roc s'arappe,
Prenant repos à travailler,
Et ne luy chault qui tue ou frappe;
Rien ne la faict esmarveiller.

(vv. 85-89)

The explication of this transformation is complex and yet fundamental to the shared identity between the Peronelle and Marguerite herself. While the Peronelle's relationship with the human world attenuates, and her existence becomes less literal, her identity paradoxically assumes a literal meaning as a rock. In other words, as Marguerite transfers the Peronelle into a figurative setting, she restores the heroine to her literal or original meaning, to a rock, “un perron,” where peronelle is its feminine diminutive form. The Peronelle clings to a rock which replaces the fountain in the popular version, and her existence becomes consubstantial with it. With the transformation of the fountain into a rock, the rock functions as the renewed “source” of her poetic identity—an expressionless self. In a sense, she who is hardened by her environment becomes a rock, “un roc, une pierre.” Returned to her original state, she finds an accord with God which she consummates in silence. She furthermore becomes similar to Peter, the foundation of the church.¹⁹ As recorded in Matthew 16, 18, Christ names Peter as the rock where Peter stems from the Greek, petrós. The pun is just as valid in Latin, and the Vulgate carries it rather consciously: “Et ego dico tibi, quia tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam” (“So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church”). Continuing in this line of reasoning, she also uncovers the image of herself as the Bride through the image of the rock, since this particular rock is the corner-stone of the Church, the Bride of Christ.

Additionally, the Peronelle's transformation into a stone could be read as a permutation of Ovid's tale about Medusa at the end of Book Four of the Metamorphoses. Instead of one hideous woman turning others into stone, the Peronelle, herself, is transformed. Both Medusa and the Peronelle are unhappy women—the first, because Minerva turned her locks into snakes after finding her in the arms of Neptune and the second, because she rejects profane love. The first sought carnal pleasures, while the second shunned them. The first has hair of snakes, while the second lives among the snake, the lizard, scorpions, and big toads:

La serpente et vert lésarde,
Escorpions et gros crapaulx,
De ceste montaigne ont la garde
Pour faire aux passans mil[le] maulx.

(vv. 29-32)

Marguerite, therefore, emulates the image of Peter's rock and performs a contrafactum of Ovid's Medusa.

Through the Peronelle's metamorphosis, Marguerite establishes a fundamental rapport between herself and her heroine and between herself and Peter; for Marguerite can be defined as a precious stone, a pearl. Noting the prominent role of onomastics and poetics in the sixteenth century, this shared etymology is not at all fortuitous. There is a clear identification between Marguerite and the other two. The poetess seems not only to make a statement about the prowess of her own religious and poetic voice through the absence of the voice of the rock-like, indeed life-less, persona²⁰ of the Peronelle but also to create an image of herself as the Bride of Christ.

Once the Peronelle is converted to God and into a rock, there is one sign affirming her new spiritual identity:

Sa pensée seulle demeure
Avec elle en tout labeur.

(vv. 89-90)

Bereft of all modes of communication, the only sign of life is a thought which is definite, singular, and possessed by God.²¹ The paradoxical situation of her “life-less” existence becomes explicit in the language of the poetry itself. What was perceived as a conflict up to the midpoint between the Peronelle and the world of earthly love becomes the expression of spiritual love which is one of suffering: “Souvent en l'entreprenant pleure, / Et puis rid, aymant sa douleur” (vv. 91-92) and “Plaisante luy est la souffrance / Veu qu'en sa tribulation / Est son amy, et la souffrance / Dont elle a la fruition” (vv. 105-108). Through suffering God comes to her; from her pain generates joy. The love of God thus manifests itself in a place of apparent contradiction.

The Peronelle's knowledge of God is based not on reason but faith alone: “Par foy elle voy la face / De l'amy dont tout bien luy vient” (vv. 103-104). Faith is the agent of conversion, of the turning towards God and the turning away from matters of earthly import. Moreover, through the Peronelle's faith, she uncovers a fertile place: “Toutte la terre et sa verdure / Elle se trouve en luy par foy” (vv. 113-114). Her current surroundings in the wilderness are transformed by her faith. The earthly discord is the necessary source of her spiritual accord with God which yields her a place of joy: “En luy sa joye est accomplye, / Là elle se veult arrester” (vv. 119-120). With God, her exile has ended. God becomes the lover who merits all of her suffering in the wilderness:

En luy trouve telle armonie
Que d'hommes et d'oyseaulx fu[i]t les chants;
Du monde veult estre bannie
Pour estre avec luy seul aux champs.

(vv. 125-128)

Again, the spiritual song is overtly predicated upon the Peronelle's renunciation of topoi from profane love songs, especially that of lyrical birds (v. 126). Marguerite emphasizes the immutability of the bond with God; there is nothing which could send the Peronelle on further flight: “Et parmy les bestes cruelles / Elle vit sans point les fuyr” (vv. 133-134). Once united with God, everything partakes in her joy, and what may seem ugly, inhuman, and dangerous becomes the source of her spiritual beatitude. For Marguerite, the depiction of the Peronelle's miserable existence in the first half of the song becomes necessary as a condition for her conversion towards God and subsequent spiritual bliss. Again, the “Rien” returns to the “Tout.”

God's ability to transform suffering into pleasure is also the source of rebirth for the Peronelle who previously had fallen into a state of self-negation:

[Dieu] La desconfortée conforte
Et luy rend plaisans ses ennuys,
Voire et resucite la morte,
Tourne en très gloire jour et nuis.

(vv. 149-152)

For the first time in the song, the Peronelle who has become rock-like is said to be dead (v. 151) which completes the process of self-annihilation, but God who resuscitates her, indeed breathes into her, gives her a new life. Her flight which can be seen as a removal from terrestrial life, a sign of death, leads to a union with God which causes her regeneration and completes a cycle from life to death to resurrection. For Marguerite as an Evangelical poetess, the parallel with the death and resurrection of Christ is not fortutious. There is a noticeable resemblance with Romans 6,5: “Si enim complantati facti sumus similitudini mortis ejus, simul resurrectionis erimus” (“If in union with Christ we have imitated his death, we shall also imitate him in his resurrection”). Through the heroine's petrification, a semblence of death, she becomes one with God. Death is not feared but rather a welcomed sign of spiritual rebirth:

Or, puis doncques qu'il vit en elle
Elle ne peult craindre la mort,
Mais en luy la trouve si belle
Qu'elle l'atend comme ung seul port.

(vv. 157-160)

The lyric subject's passion for God in Marguerite's song is inextricably bound to its death, such that it represents the subject's own desire. The Peronelle considers death like a return home, to her only “home,” and the family abandoned at the moment of her exile both in the popular and spiritual versions is refound in God:

En luy retrouve père et mère
Enfans, cousins, parens, amis,
Parfaict amy, mary et frere,
Dont en soy seul sa c[u]eur a mis.

(vv. 109-112)

God assumes the role of all others to fill the Peronelle's world.

To complete the regenerative cycle, the “malheureuse” that the Peronelle was at the opening of the song becomes the much awaited “heureuse” (v. 161) and the “parfaicte amoureuse” (v. 163):

Or est la malheureuse heureuse,
Et son malheur faict très heureux,
Puisqu'elle [est] parfaicte amoureuse
De son trespas faict amoureux.

(vv. 161-164)

Once love shifts its definition from the carnal to the spiritual, the images of carnal love lose their profane value and can be used in the reformulated context.

Mediated by the persona of another woman whose name shares the same etymology, Marguerite simulates the death of the flesh and experiences the rebirth of the spirit and the charity of God. Paradoxically, Marguerite uncovers her Evangelical voice through the Peronelle who is deprived of any voice—much less any artifice by which to express herself. The Peronelle's sole form of expression is achieved through the imitation of Christ's death and resurrection. The voice of the popular Perronnelle is therefore silenced in order that she may be filled with the “voice” of God upon which her new identity depends. As a source of poetic identity, Marguerite reinterprets the popular song of the Perronnelle's exile from France as the Peronelle's quest for the unio mystica. In the end, Marguerite not only writes a contrafactum of this particular fifteenth-century song but of the lyrical topoi of profane love songs in general. In a certain way, even the love poet, Ovid, becomes a source of parody as Marguerite attempts to make a statement about the Peronelle's and her own spiritual identity as women.

Notes

1. See Paul Laumonier, Ronsard, poète lyrique (Paris: Hachette, 1909) pp. XIII-LI, for historical account of the debate. Laumonier explains how the development of the ode—Greek for song—by the members of the not yet formed Pléiade attempted to redefine and to eclipse the chanson form developed previously by members of the “Ecole marotique.” He, furthermore, discusses Du Bellay's and Ronsard's attempt to overshadow their predecessors, Saint-Gelais and Marot, through their polemical theoretical and prefatory discourses.

2. Cf. Georges Dottin, ed., Marguerite de Navarre, Chansons spirituelles (Geneva: Droz, 1971), pp. vii-ix for the problem of dating the Derniers oeuvres. All citations from the Chansons spirituelles refer to this edition.

3. Le Roux de Quincy and A. de Montaiglon, ed., Marguerite de Navarre, L'Heptaméron des Nouvelles, Vol. I (Paris: August Eudes, 1880) p. 79.

4. Du Bellay writes in his Deffence: “Chante moy ces odes incognues encor' de la Muse Francoyse, d'un luc, bien accordé au son de la lyre Greque et Romaine.” Joachim du Bellay, Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Didier, 1941) pp. 112-113. Claudia Kraus sees the metrical innovation of the Chansons spirituelles and the Pseaumes of Clément Marot as serving as important precursors for the development of the ode by the young members of the Brigade, although she contends that Marguerite's had no direct influence: “Die Chansons spirituelles Margaretes von Navarra konnten zwar schon aus rein zeitlichen Erwaegungen das Werk der ‘Pléiade’ nicht direckt beeinfflussen. Sie zeigen aber in aehnlichen Weise wie die Psalmen Marots, dass in den Jahren vor dem Erscheinen der Odenlyrik wichtige Voraussetzungen fuer das zustandekommen dieser Dichtung geschaffen werden.” Der religioese Lyrismus Margaretes von Navarra (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1981) p. 27.

5. Op. cit., pp. xiv-xvi.

6. Lewis and Short, The Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975) p. 457.

7. E. Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle, Vol. II (Paris: Didier, 1973) p. 397 et passim.

8. Ronsard writes in his preface: “J'allai voir les etrangers, et me rendi familier d'Horace, contrefaisant sa naive douceur.” Pierre de Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier, Vol. I (Paris: Didier, 1973) p. 44.

9. Willi Apel, ed., Harvard Dictionary of Music (Cambridge: Harvard, 1972) pp. 203-204. For the notion of song as parody, see Joann Dellaneva, Song and Counter-song: Sceve's Délie and Petrarch's Rime (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1983).

10. As Dottin mentions in his introduction, only fifteen popular melodies for the forty-seven Chansons spirituelles have been reconstituted.

11. Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, Vol. VI (Paris: Gallimard/Hachette, 1960) pp. 1739-40.

12. G. Paris, Chansons du XVe siècle (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1875) p. 41.

13. In his recent study of the influence of Medieval mysticism on Marguerite's religious poetry, Robert D. Cottrell explains the relationship between the “Rien” and the “Tout” in terms of the function of signs: “The text is a tool, an instrument that is used to fashion something else and then discarded. Composed of words, each of which contains a trace of the Tout-Verbe, the text is a sign that points not to itself or its own artifices but to reality, i.e. Christ. It aspires to its own annihilation just as words, striving to deny themselves, seek to be reabsorbed into silence. It tries to draw the reader from the literal meaning which Briçonnet (the Bishop of Meaux and Marguerite's religious counselor between 1521-24) calls Rien and to lead him to the spiritual meaning, which he calls Tout. Only if it overcomes its textuality and becomes a kind of blank page or mirror can the text reflect a reality that is other than itself.” The Grammar of Silence, A Reading of Marguerite de Navarre's Poetry (Washington, DC: Catholic University, 1986) p. 30.

14. All English translations from Alexander Jones, ed., The Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1968).

15. François Rigolot in Le Texte de la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1984) distinguishes between the Horatian notion of textus as a skillful conjoining, callida conjuncta, and the Quintilian concept of textum as an uncomposed or disorderly composition, compositio incomposita. Marguerite's song about the Peronelle defines itself as an incomplete, misshapen text, the opposite of textus. p. 265.

16. In the context of the sixteenth century, Cave talks about “The Fabulous Mantel” as an image of textual-making seen in such poems as Ronsard's Le Ravissement de Céphale where story-making becomes analogous to the weaving of a picture into a mantel. The absence of thread for weaving a shroud contributes to the Peronelle's persona as one who cannot create a text of her own. c.f. “Ronsard's Mythological Universe,” Ronsard, the Poet (London: Methuen, 1973) pp. 160-181.

17. Marguerite expresses a similar position in her first Chanson spirituelle about her untranslatable self:

    Mes larmes, mes soupirs, mes criz,
    Dont tant bien je sçay la pratique
    Sont mon parler et mes escritz,
    Car je n'ay autre rhétorique.

    (vv. 17-20)

    Also in the Prologue of her Miroir de l'âme pécheresse, she comments upon her inability to articulate herself:

    Si vous lisez ceste oeuvre toute entiere
    Arrestez vous, sans plus, à la matiere:
    En excusant la rhyme, et le languaige,
    Voyant que c'est d'une femme l'ouvraige
    Qui n'a en soy science, ne sçavoir,
    Fors un desir, que chascun puisse veoir
    Que fait le don de Dieu le createur,
    Quand il luy plaist justifier un cueur:
    Quel est le cueur d'un homme, quand à soy,
    Avant qu'il ait receu la don de foy
    Par lequel seul, l'homme à la cognoissance
    De la Bonté, Sapience, et Puissance.

    (vv. 1-12)

    Marguerite d'Angoulême, Reine de Navarre, Le Miroir de l'âme pécheresse, ed. J. L. Allaire (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1972) p. 99.

18. Cottrell explains, according to Augustine, that the silence in Marguerite's religious poetry signifies the speech of God: “Augustine defines a knowledge of God that transcends human speech; silence becomes God's supreme mode of expression. In that joyful state, the soul ‘hears’ His silence.” op. cit., p. 17.

19. In the fourteenth chanson, A la Clerre Fontenelle, Marguerite uncovers the presence of both Pierre and Marie l'Egyptienne:

    Voyez comme en ont usé
    Ceux qui sont vostre example:
    Paul, Pierre, et le bon Larron,
    Milles autres que nous lison:
    Publicain, Pecheur, Marion,
    Ne refuse en son temple,
    A la clere Fontenelle.
    Voyez qu'en luy a trouvé
    Marie Magdeleine,
    Et ce qu'en a esprouvé
    La povre Egyptienne.

    (vv. 18-28)

    Moreover, Littré posits an analogy between the names, Peronnelle and Pierre. op. cit., p. 1739.

20. For the notion of the persona, see François Rigolot, who writes in Le Texte de la Renaissance: “La théorie de la persona part de cette simple constatation: le sujet se constitue en objet en prétendant rester sujet. Toute représentation étant dédoublement de la conscience et constitution du sujet en objet, la persona peut se concevoir comme l'Autre au sens lacanien, qui permet au sujet de prendre conscience de lui-même.” loc. cit., pp. 74-75.

21. In her Oraison à nostre seigneur Jesus Christ, Marguerite's silence is used to signify the presence of the thought of God: “En cest foy ferme et seure me taiz, / Et pour penser le parler j'abandonne” (vv. 314-315). Marguerite d'Angoulême, op. cit., p. 98.