Excerpt - Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance

22 Editor’s Introduction
stability implied by the Neoplatonic goal of a perfect union in love, or
by any one-dimensional account of the poet’s persona.
Poem 6 also revolves around the poet’s identity and voice. As
Saulnier points out, most nineteenth-and early twentieth-century
anthologies include this epigram in their limited selection of Du
Guillet’s poetry as an example of the modest voice of the young poet,
student of Scève, largely because of the tone of its opening lines: 52
With this dizain I show myself clearly
Not knowing how to honor all your virtues
Beyond the will—a weak excuse, merely:
Par ce dizain clerement je m’accuse
De ne sçavoir tes vertus honnorer,
Fors du vouloir, qui est bien maigre excuse: (6:1–3)
Even in this humbling comparison, however, the poet distinguishes
herself from the lover, insisting on the differences that separate her from
his eloquence. Her use of the humility topos allows her simultaneously
to proclaim her inadequacies and to suggest quite the opposite. The
voice of the young woman explains that she could give him the praise
that is his due if she had his power, which comes through learning:
Lend me, then, your eloquent learning to
Praise you, in just the same way you praise me.
Preste moy donc ton eloquent sçavoir
Pour te louer ainsi, que tu me loues. (6:9–10)
Although he infuses her with his knowledge, no poet can sing the
admiration of another without an identity and a voice strong enough
to offer that praise. Furthermore, these verses call attention to the
female poet’s need of her beloved’s learning in order to speak within
a male mode of lyric discourse. 53
He represents the essence of the
patriarchal conventions that dominated literary production in France
and Italy during the Renaissance. A woman wishing to enter into this
52. “Etude,” 111.
53. For further discussion of poem 6, see the section on dialogue and imitation below.