Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T22:11:42.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Gendering of the Lute in Sixteenth-Century French Love Poetry*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Carla Zecher
Carla Zecher*
Affiliation:
The Newberry Library
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Blame not my lute for he must sound Of this or that as liketh me.

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Lute-poems came into vogue in France in the 1540s and 1550s. Because of the lute's shape, it could be gendered either as masculine or feminine; male and female poets therefore made use of lute imagery in different ways. Their references to the lute are informed by the gendered culture surrounding the instrument in this period and by the etiquette and technicalities of lute playing. Even more than painters and engravers, poets could invest the lute with human qualities, conflating it with bodies and body parts. It could thus be adapted to serve a variety of amorous scenarios.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2000 , pp. 769 - 791
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This article is a revision of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America held in Vancouver in April 1997. I am grateful to Jeanice Brooks, Robert Cottrell, Colin Eisler, and Claire Fontijn for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

References

Allem, Maurice, ed. 1965. Anthologie poétique francaise: XVIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris.Google Scholar
Arcadelt, Jacobus. 1965-1971. Opera Omnia. Ed. Seay, Albert. 10 vols. Rome.Google Scholar
Aubespine, Madeleine de l', Dame de Villeroy. 1926. Les Chansons de Callianthe file de Ronsard. Ed. Sorg, Roger. Paris.Google Scholar
Austern, Linda Phyllis. 2000. “Musical Treatments for Lovesickness: The Early Modern Heritage.” In Music as Medicine: A History of Music Therapies from Antiquity. Ed. Horden, Peregrine, 213-48. Manchester.Google Scholar
Baker, Deborah Lesko. 1996. The Subject of Desire: Petrarchan Poetics and the Female Voice in Louise Labi. West Lafayette.Google Scholar
Baker, Deborah Lesko. 1964. Les Divers rapportz. Ed. Pegg, M. A.. Geneva.Google Scholar
Beaulieu, Eustorg de. 1544. Les Divers rapportz. Contenantz… .. Paris.Google Scholar
The Burwell Lute Tutor. 1974. Leeds.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Nan Cooke. 1954. Rabelais and Music. Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Cornell, Robert D. 1992. “Pernette du Guillet and the Logic of Aggressivity.“ In Writing the Renaissance: Essays on Sixteenth-Century French Literature in Honor of Floyd Gray, ed. Raymond C. La Charite\ 93–113. Lexington.Google Scholar
Craig-McFeely, Julia. 1994. “Women Lutenists in England 1530-1630.“ Unpublished essay. Lexington.Google Scholar
Craig-McFeely, Julia. forthcoming (2001). “The Signifying Serpent: Seduction by Cultural Stereotype in Seventeenth-Century England.” In Music, Sensation and Sensuality, ed. Austern, Linda Phyllis. New York.Google Scholar
Dart, Thurston. 1958. “Miss Mary Burwell's Instruction Book for the Lute.“ The Galpin Society Journal 11: 3–62.Google Scholar
DellaNeva, JoAnn. 1988. “Mutare/Mutatus: Pernette Du Guillet's Actaeon Myth and the Silencing of the Poetic Voice.“ In Women in French Literature, ed. Guggenheim, Michel, 47–55. Saratoga, CA.Google Scholar
Discours nonplus mélancoliques que divers de choses mesmement qui appartiennent à notre France, et à la fin la manière de bien et justement entoucher les lues et les guiternes. 1556. Poitiers.Google Scholar
Dobbins, Frank. 1992. Music in Renaissance Lyons. Oxford.Google Scholar
Du Bellay, Joachim. 1908-1931. Œuvres poetiques. 6 vols. Ed. Chamard, Henri. Paris.Google Scholar
Du Guillet, Pernette. 1968. Rymes. Ed. Graham, Victor E.. Geneva.Google Scholar
Du Verdier, Antoine, and Francois Crude“ de La Croix Du Maine. 1772-1773. Les bibliothèques françaises de La Croix du Maine et Du Verdier. 6 vols. Paris.Google Scholar
Elegy and Lambus with the Anacreontea. 1961. 2 vols. Ed. Edmonds, J. M.. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Haar, James. 1983. “The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione's View of the Science and Art of Music.” In Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Hanning, Robert W. and Rosand, David, 165-89. New Haven.Google Scholar
Heartz, Daniel. 1972. “Mary Magdalen, Lutenist.” Journal of The Lute Society of America 5: 52–67.Google Scholar
Hollander, John. 1961. The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500-1700. Princeton.Google Scholar
Jones, Sterling Scott. 1995. The Lira da Braccio. Bloomington.Google Scholar
Labé, Louise. 1981. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Giudici, Enzo. Geneva.Google Scholar
Labé, Louise. 1986. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Rigolot, François. Paris.Google Scholar
La Tayssonière, Guillaume de. 1555. Les Amoureuses ocupations. Lyons.Google Scholar
Lavaud, Jacques. 1936. Philippe Desportes (1546-1606): Un poète de cour au temps des derniers Valois. Paris.Google Scholar
Leppert, Richard. 1993. The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Mirimonde, Albert P. de. 1974. Sainte- Cicile: Metamorphoses d'un theme musical. Geneva.Google Scholar
Morlaye, Guillaume. 1980. Œuvres pour le luth. Ed. Renault, Michel. Paris.Google Scholar
Pouchard, Line Catherine. 1995. “Louise Labi in Dialogue with her Lute: Silence Constructs a Poetic Subject.“ History of European Ideas 20(4-6): 715-22.Google Scholar
Ronsard, Pierre de. 1914-1975. Œuvres completes. 20 vols. Ed. Laumonier, Paul, Silver, Isidore, and Lebegue, Raymond. Paris.Google Scholar
Saint-Gelais, Mellin de. 1993-1995. Œuvres poitiques francaises. 2 vols. Ed. Stone, Donald, Jr. Paris.Google Scholar
Sceve, Maurice. 1966. Dilie. Ed. Mc-Farlane, I. D.. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Slim, H. Colin. 1980. “Mary Magdalene, Musician and Dancer.” Early Music 8 (4): 460-73.Google Scholar
Slim, H. Colin. 1976. The Prodigal Son at the Whores': Music, Art, and Drama. Irvine.Google Scholar
Tyard, Pontus de. 1967. Les Erreurs amoureuses. Ed. McClelland, John A.. Geneva.Google Scholar
Tyard, Pontus de. 1980. Solitaire second, ou prose de la musique. Ed. Yandell, Cathy M.. Geneva.Google Scholar
Vaccaro, Jean-Michel. 1981. La Musique de luth en France au XVI siècle. Paris.Google Scholar
Vivonne, Héliette de. 1932. Poésies de Héliette de Vivonne, attribuées à tort à Madeleine de TAubespine sous le titre 'Chansons de Callianthe'. Ed. Frédéric Lachèvre. Paris.Google Scholar
Wells, Robin Headlam. 1994. Elizabethan Mythologies: Studies in Poetry, Drama and Music. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wilson-Chevalier, Kathleen. 1996. “Sebastien Brant: The Key to Understanding Luca Penni's Justice and the Seven Deadly Sins.” Art Bulletin 78 (2): 236-63.Google Scholar
Winternitz, Emanuel. 1966. Musical Instruments of the Western World. New York.Google Scholar
Wyatt, Sir Thomas. 1981. The Complete Poems. Ed. Rebholz, R. A.. New Haven.Google Scholar
Zerner, Henri, ed. 1979. The Illustrated Bartsch. Vols. 32-33: Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century: School of Eontainebleau. New York.Google Scholar