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A Proposed Identification for Maurice Scève's Délie
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
When Maurice Scève wrote his Délie, obiect de plus haulte vertu, he did not allow his creative powers unlimited scope. Many of the dizains are imitations or else direct translations of Italian models. All of the poetic conventions of Scève's era are to be met with in the book. Addressing erotic verse to an actual or invented mistress called Delia was itself a convention, for that matter, at least as old as Tibullus. But in spite of this, there are abundant indications that some of the poems recount an authentic love experienced by Scève. Indeed, the reader is told as much when in one instance the poet remarks that he has chosen the name Délie in order not to disclose a real woman. In telling us that this is the ‘surnom’ by which his lady is to be called, the poet takes care to assert in addition that it is a ‘surnom louable’ (LIX).
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1957
References
1 Paper presented at the Modern Language Association's annual meeting, December 29, 1956.
2 Saulnier, Verdun L., ‘La Cléricature de Maurice Scève’, BHR, xii (1950), 18.Google Scholar
3 Brunot, Ferdinand, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900, II (Paris, 1927), 275.Google Scholar
4 Yates, Frances A., The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1947), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar
5 It would have been quite possible, of course, for Scève to have met Anne d'Heilly on one of these later visits, rather than in 1524, 1525, or 1526. The chief reason for not believing that this was the case is that the poet would no longer have been in what he termed the ‘April’ of his youth.
6 de Stoutz, Francis Decrue, La Cour de France et la société au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1888), p. 190.Google Scholar