LOUISE LABE, A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE. (FRENCH TEXT)

Louise Labe, Maurice Sceve and Pernette du Guillet comprised a distinctive trio of poets active in 16th Century Lyons. The focus of this study is Labe's works, whose output consists of one prose work, three elegies and 24 sonnets.;In her witty prose fable Le Debat de Folie et d'Amour she takes the Renaissance style of her characters from Greek mythology but uses traditional medieval literary dialogue and allegory. Although attracted by the French literary tradition from the Middle Ages of courtly love, her ideas were strongly influenced by two Renaissance Italian literary currents: Platonism and Petrarchism. Combining the archaic French and the modern Italian ideas, and using the fresh forms of sonnet and elegy, her collective writings represent a very touching treatise on love.;Louse Labe adopted the then-contemporary literary device of imitation while demonstrating within that device the strength of her own voice. She also indulged in the Renaissance taste for glory and, through her characterization of "Folie," she created what amounts to a hymn in honor of the free expression of the irrational and creative emotions of man.;In an age when man's existence was questioned and redefined, she also considered the status of women. Louise Labe was an educated, emancipated feminist moved by a concern to influence women to better themselves through intellectual endeavors and thus progress towards equality with men.;Louise Labe not only wrote in "French Florence," as Lyons was then known, but was born and educated there at a time when it was an important economic, cultural and artistic center close to Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance.;This study examines how her intensely personal and original works explore issues which still concern us today and link, through her ideas and poetic form, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.