Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 03-04-08
Madeleine Neveu des Roches (c.
1520-1587)
Catherine Fradonnet des Roches (1542-1587)
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"A PERFECT FRIENDSHIP WILL NEVER DESTROY LIBERTY."
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Madeleine Neveu, born into a bourgeois family in Poitiers, received a humanist education. When she was about 19, she was married to a lawyer active in city politics, Andre Fradonnet; the couple had three children, of whom only one, Catherine, survived infancy. In 1547, Fradonnet died; three years later Madeleine married another lawyer, Francois Eboissard, who was one of the bourgeois elected to municipal government (the name "Des Roches" came from a piece of property the family acquired). Madeleine continued her own studies and supervised her daughter's education. Both would come to be praised by contemporaries for their knowledge of Latin and their mastery of classical history and mythology.
Poitiers in the 1560s was embroiled in the religious wars: churches were sacked in 1562; throughout the decade battles between Catholics and Protestants took place within the city. A 1569 siege destroyed some Des Roches property (which would involve the family in lawsuits for almost 20 years). Poitiers already had an active cultural life, but the importance of the city's location at the edge of Protestant territory attracted the attention of Paris. By the late 1560s Parisian judges and lawyers were coming to the provincial city to administer sessions of the Parlement of Paris, and the Des Roches' home became a gathering place for both the visiting jurists and the literati of Poitiers.
In the early 1570s the poetry of both mother and daughter began to be circulated, first in Poitiers and later in Paris. In 1577 the king and much of the royal court spent three month in Poitiers; it may have been this contact that led Madeleine and Catherine to have their first collection, Les Oeuvres de Mes-dames des Roches de Poetiers, Mere et Fille, published in Paris the following year. Madeleine's contributions were all in verse; Catherine's included prose dialogues as well. In the following year, a second edition appeared, augmented with additional works.
In 1578, but before the publication of Les Oeuvres, Eboissard had died. From this point, the writing of mother and daughter became a source of income: they accepted commissions to write occasional poems, and they worked to see that their books sold well. This goal was surely helped in 1582, when a Parisian publisher issued La Puce de Madame des-Roches, presenting the results of a poetry contest held at the Des Roches' home in 1579, at which a group of Paris lawyers working in Poitiers presented mock-heroic poems on a flea they had seen on Catherine, as well as Catherine's contributions to the contest.
The next collection of the mother and daughter, Les Secondes Oeuvres, was published in Poitiers in 1583: Madeleine's poetry was followed by Catherine's prose and poetry and a translation from Latin. In 1586 a collection of their letters, Les Missives, was published in Paris; it also included a translation and other poems. In the following year, both Madeleine and Catherine died, apparently of the plague, perhaps on the same day.
There is no complete English translation of the writings of the "Dames de Roches," but a substantial selection is available, which reveals the independent thought of two women humanists.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. In a collection of excerpts from the 1987 anthology, Women
Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, passages
from both Madeleine and Catherine: at #1 the last ten lines
of Madeleine's opening "Epistre a ma fille," from Les
Oeuvres; and at #24 a substantial excerpt from Catherine's
"Dialogue d'Iris et Pasithee," one of two dialogues
in Les Secondes Oeuvres on the education of women. The
translations are by Anne R. Larsen.
2. For Madeleine in French:
(a) Links to two sonnets: "Pleurant amerement mon douloureux servage," and "Las! ou est maintenant ta jeune bonne grace." At the top of each page, you can link to the original spelling.
(b) Go to "Madeleine" for another sonnet, "O de mon bien futur le frele fondement!"
3. For Catherine in French:
(a) Links to nine poems: seven sonnets and two chansons. Again, you can link to the originals.
(b) Three poems; the first, titled "Antithese du somme et de la mort," and the third, "Quand je suis de vous absente," are not given above.
(c) A sonnet, "Ouvrez-moi, sincero, de vos pensers la porte."
(d) In the original spelling, one of the responses to other poets given in Les Secondes Oeuvres, "Ausonie, Calabre, & la Mantoue encor."
4. Early editions:
(a) With an introduction by Kendall Tarte, links to two: the 1582 La Puce de Madame des-Roches (Catherine's poem, "La Puce," begins on page 20); and the 1583 Les secondes oeuvres.
(b) Here you can download PDF files of two: the second edition (1579) of Les oeuvres de Mesdames Des Roches, de Poitiers, mere et fille; and a 1585 edition of Les secondes oeuvres.
5. Essays:
(a) Click on "Traduction" for the English of a 2004 essay on the "Dames des Roches" by Larsen, followed by a list of editions of their writing; at the bottom, under "Jugements," are the views of some of their contemporaries.
(b) In "Women of the French Renaissance in Search of Literary Community" (1993), Kirk D. Read discusses three "female communities"; one of these are the Des Roches, whom Read sees as using their relationship to define their position and to legitimize their writing.
(c) Jones, Ann Rosalind Jones' 1995 essay. "Contentious Readings: Urban Humanism and Gender Difference in La Puce de Madame Des-Roches (1582)," describes the origin and contents of La Puce and shows how Catherine responds to and takes control of the interaction between herself and the male poets; quoted passages are givne in the original and in Jones' translation.
(d) In "Seductive Topographies: The Languages of Landscape in La Puce de Madame des-Roches," (2004), Tarte discusses not Catherine's contributions to La Puce, but rather the way in which the male contributors to the volume treat her female body as representative of the city of Poitiers.
(e) About half-way down the page you can download a PDF file of a 2002 essay by Todd P. Olson, "La Femme a la Puce et la Puce a l'Oreille: Catherine Des Roches and the Poetics of Sexual Resistance in Sixteenth-Century French Poetry," which discusses Catherine's poem, "La Puce," as well as the poem of Estienne Pasquier (which, with Catherine's poem, initiated the 1582 collection); Olson sees the two poems as illustrating the power of the central state and the resistance of provincial Poitiers.
(f) A brief English-language review by Keith Cameron of Larsen's 1998 edition of Les Secondes Oeuvres.
6. Other reviews (for excerpts from the translation, see under "In print"; for information on the other books' treatment of the Des Roches, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Sara Beam, on Larsen's 2006 translation, From Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les Dames des Roches. And elsewhere, another review of the book, this by Diana Dominguez.
(b) Patricia Phillippy on Janet Levarie Smarr's 2005 study, Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women.
(c) Two-thirds of the way down the page (under the heading "Women, Time, and Gender..."), Larsen on Cathy M. Yandell's 2000 study, Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France.
(d) Timothy Hampton on the 1993 essay collection The Dialogue in Early Modern France, 1547-1630: Art and Argument.
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[Anne R. Larsen, the editor of the complete works of the Des Roches, has translated a selection of each of their three volumes; it appears to represent about one-half of the original works (none of Catherine's translations are included). For the poetry and the open prose letters the original is given on the facing pages. Larsen's introduction tells what is known of the women's lives and discusses the works' major themes; the notes and the bibliography are detailed. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
From mother and daughter: poems, dialogues, and letters of
les dames Des Roches / Madeleine and Catherine des Roches; edited
and translated by Anne R. Larsen (The other voice in early modern
Europe). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. (xxx, 319
p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ1609.D49 A6 2006; ISBN: 0226723372, 0226723380
Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-37) and index
Madeleine des Roches
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"...a mighty intellect that we are able to turn into an
active force."
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[From the 1578 Les Oeuvres, Ode #1. Given the views on marriage expressed here by the mother, it is perhaps no surprise that the daughter never married:]
Our parents have laudable customs
To deprive us of the use of our reason:
They lock us up at home
And hand us the spindle instead of the pen.
Conforming our steps to our destiny,
They promise us liberty and pleasure:
But we reap continuous displeasure,
When we lose our dowry the the laws of Marriage....
In the happy moments of my yesteryear,
I bore my wings close by my side:
But is losing my youthful freedom,
My feathered pen was clipped before I flew.
I so long to spend time with my books
And, sighing, cast my sorrows onto paper.
But some distracting trouble always diverts me,
Claiming that I must follow a wife's vocation. [ll.
25-32, 63-68; pp. 53-55]
[The use of the intellect is a woman's saving grace; the poem ends:]
Ladies, let us live as the amaranth
That does not lose its beautiful flower in winter:
The mind imbued with a divine sap,
Through labor makes its strength shine brightly.
To help us bear the misfortunes of life,
God imparts to us a mighty intellect
That we are able to turn into an active force
In spite of death, fortune, and envy. [ll.
73-80; p. 55]
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"Her contentment depends on her spirit."
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[But in Sonnet #4, from the 1583 Les Secondes Oeuvres, Madeleine offers a milder view:]
I think that happiness depends solely on us,
Madame, and that we can all forge our own destiny:
The fool, too indiscreet, renders his troublesome,
The wise guides it with a steadier hand.
The proof is made clear by the actions of all
In the worldly theater of familiar fables,
All humans, enclosed beneath the Moon's heaven,
Weaves together good and evil, pleasure and pain.
A woman happy enough without being married,
Is also happy in finding herself bound
To Hymen's holy laws, And if love overtakes her
With the happy flame of a chaste marriage,
She's still happy in her widowhood,
Because her contentment depends on her spirit. [pp.143-45]
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"The divine Ariosto... uses this term."
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[Although Madeleine knew the classics well, she was among those who supported the use of vernacular forms in poetry. From letters #4 & 6 of the 1586 Les Missives, to a scholar who had questioned her word choices, apparently without having been asked by Madeleine for a critique. In the earlier letter, after complimenting the reader on his noble mind:]
...I thank you with all my heart, and I gladly receive your critique. But I beseech you not to force my conscience over the word caterve because I am persistent and proud. I know that my ill-fashioned verses are female by nature, and refuse art which is male.
[When her correspondent then questioned her use of another word, another letter refers him to Lodovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso:]
I am not so presumptuous as to think I never err, nor do I hold myself in such low esteem as to think I always make mistakes; and if I have erred with proterve, the divine Ariosto, who doesn't like too much Latin in his vernacular, uses this term to embellish one of the lines of his first canto. [p.253]
Catherine des Roches
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"...through your verse, will give life to my renown."
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[In the "Sonets de Sincero a Charite et Charite a Sincero" of Les Oeuvres, Catherine creates a series of sonnets between a Petrarchan lover, Sincero, and a rather unconventional woman, Charite. In the eleventh of his twelve sonnets, Sincero is made to reverse the usual pattern by which the male lover promises to make his beloved immortal through his verse:]
I feel my good fortune when I see myself esteemed
In your learned writings, and I am well aware. Madame,
That you can weave an excellent web
Which, through your verse, will give life to my renown.
Alcestis won back her husband's life
By offering to die in his place, but you desire
To redeem my life through a better fate.
For without dying, chaste, learned, and beautiful,
You spin out for us both life immortal,
Which will vanquish the the ravages of time and death. [ll.5-14;
p.95]
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" I refuse to be loved halfway."
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[In the ninth of her thirteen sonnets, Charite reveals what she does and does not want in a lover:]
If I find in you some imperfection,
If I find in you some fickle thought,
If I find in you cowardly arrogance
That scorns the course of your passion;
If I find in you any conceit,
That plague of hearts subservient to love,
If I see you've changed your behavior and your speech,
You'll soon see me losing all affection for you.
If you're faithful to me, I'll be faithful to you,
If you want a change, well then I'm quite content,
Find another love, I'll find one too.
Seek out a chaster, amiable, and lovely mistress,
And I'll look for a wise, witty and faithful suitor:
For I refuse to be loved halfway. [p.103]
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"I have tried to fashion a perfect lover."
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[At least some of the Sincero and Charite sonnet sequence had circulated in manuscript for a few years before their publication in 1578 (the poet Pierre de Ronsard had read and praised them, probably in 1575). When Catherine wrote her introductory "Epistre a sa mere" for Les Oeuvres, she responds to possible (or real?) criticism of the sequence's subject:]
Perhaps my readers will say that I should not have written about love, that if I am in love I must not say so, and if I am not, I should not pretend to be. To this I'll answer that I am neither in love nor pretend to be. For in Sincero I write what I have thought, not what I have actually seen, since I know him only through my imagination. But just as it has happened that certain great writers have represented a perfect king, a perfect orator, or a perfect courtier, so I have tried to fashion a perfect lover....
...[S]incero wishes only to please his lady, who I have fashioned to conform to him as much as possible. In this way I have imitated our great God who, after he had created father Adam, gave him a wife resembling him. [p.85]
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"A Woman loving a girl...."
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[From Les Secondes Oeuvres, one of a series of responses to poems which others had addressed to her. Here she speaks to a woman:]
Since it pleases you to praise me,
I need no other Poet,
And I wish no greater happiness
Than to call myself yours.
I do not wish to see
A Petrarch sing my glory,
Since within your memory
It pleases you to hold me dear.
One finds many Men
In love with a sweet flame,
But a Woman loving a girl,
No other can pride herself on that. [p.149]
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"Your virgin's bold resolve preferred to change you...."
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[In the last quarter of 1579, the jurists from the Parlement of Paris were working at Poitiers. Some of those visiting the Des Roches took part in a salon competition, writing poems on a flea that had been seen on Catherine's breast. These were collected and published in Paris in 1582 as La Puce de Madame des-Roches. The men's poems treated the flea as male, free to travel around Catherine's body. In her poem, "La Puce" (given first in the published edition, but apparently written in response to a poem by the Parisian Estienne Pasquier), Catherine turned the flea into a mythological figure, a nymph who changed her shape to avoid a pursuing god, Pan:]
Flea, when you were a chaste young Maiden,
Noble, wise, sweet, and beautiful,...
Pan, seeing your perfections,
Felt the fire of affection
And wished to marry you.
But then your virgin's bold resolve
Preferred to change you
Into a flea, so as to escape from him,
And so that losing all hope
He would have to break off his pursuit. [ll.
69-70, 74-82; p.177]
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"If they remain single... or if they do marry...."
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[One of the prose works in Les Secondes Oeuvres is "Dialogue de Placide et Severe" between two fathers of daughters, Placide and Severe, discussing women's education. The misogynist Severe thinks it a waste or worse, while the humanist Placide tries to show him its value (their daughters are Iris and Pasithee, part of whose dialogue you can see online). Here, after Severe is half convinced of the rightness of Placide's argument, he quotes his wife on the subject:]
Severe: ...[S]he has told me in the past, speaking of learned Girls: "What use is it for a Woman to understand literature and Music? I didn't learn any of this and I'm just as wise as any other woman. I don't want my Daughter to know more that I do. And besides, what good will it do her? Will she get married any sooner?"
[Wisely, Placide does not comment on Severe's wife but only on her argument:]
Placide: Truly, if one judges all that is good to be useful, Girls will be able to benefit from taking part in such praiseworthy activities. After all, we mustn't believe that that virtuous Girls will want to use their grace and beauty to develop any amorous liaisons with which to enslave Men....
All of their attractive qualities are intended not to win them a Husband, but rather to enable them, if they remain single, to behave honorably, or if they do marry, to live in peace with their husbands. [p.226]
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"I don't want a suitor, nor do I need a companion or master."
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[Although the criticism of marriage was a convention of humanist letters, a letter from the 1586 Les Missives "to an unwelcome suitor" may perhaps suggest one reason that Catherine never married:]
...[S]ince you wish my Letter to mirror my thoughts, I will convey them as clearly as I can.
So you should know, Monsieur, that I would not consider my self free if I were to cause servitude in another. And just as I like being free, so do I appreciate freedom in the people I hold dear. So I don't want a suitor, nor do I need a companion or master. It will be quite sufficient for me if virtue deigns to rule my life, good fortune attend me, and learning and writing serve me to express what is in my soul, where I've found affectionate regards to send you, if it pleases you to receive them. [p.269]
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[This anthology includes Larsen's translation of "Bergerie"
one of Catherine's poems from Les Seconde Oeuvres that
is not included in her selection above. Larsen's notes point
out Catherine's familiarity with earlier pastoral works. (See the book's
table of contents online.):]
Writings by pre-revolutionary French women: From Marie de France
to Elizabeth Vigee-Le Brun / Anne R. Larsen and Colette H. Winn,
editors (Garland reference library of the humanities; v. 2111.
Women writers of the world; v. 2.)
New York: Garland Pub., 2000. (xxiii, 592 p.: ill., facsims.)
LC#: PQ1113 .W75 2000; ISBN: 0815331908
Includes bibliographical references and index
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"Let us sing of liberty."
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[In the pastoral "Bergerie," two shepherdesses accompany a shepherd, Violier, in his search for his beloved, Amaranthe. One of the two, Roseline, thinks the search foolish and praises liberty; the other, Pensee, takes a more moderate view:]
Roseline: Pensee, my dearest love,
While Amaranthe
Holds Violier transfixed
In a thought that enchants him,
Let us sing of liberty,
For the liberty of Women
Casts the most beautiful glow
That can light up their soul.
Pensee: Roseline, human beings
Are not all the same.
While one is delighted in being caught by love,
Another wants to live alone.
But a perfect friendship
Will never destroy liberty:
Heaven is bound by love
When Earth it favors. [p.162]
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[One chapter, "Dialogue & Drama," of Janet Levarie Smarr's study of Italian and French writers between 1450 and 1600 includes a discussion of the dialogues by Catherine that were published in Les Oeuvres. The book's first chapter explains Smarr's conception of "dialogue," and the last looks at the relationship among the writers discussed. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Smarr, Janet Levarie. Joining the conversation: dialogues
by Renaissance women. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
c2005. (312 p.)
LC#: PN1551 .S55 2005; ISBN: 0472114352
Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-303) and index
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[Cathy M Yandell's study contains the chapter, "Le temps retrouve: Exemplarity and the Temporal Body in Catherine des Roches," which discusses Catherine's use of historical and mythological characters, as well as her treatment of the effect of time on the body and on love. (See the book's table of contents online.)]
Yandell, Cathy M. Carpe corpus: time and gender in early modern
France. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated
University Presses, c2000. (281 p.)
LC#: PQ418 .Y36 2000; ISBN: 0874137047
Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-267) and index
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[An earlier article by Yandell's article discusses the purpose and effect of Catherine's participation in the creation of La Puce de Madame des-Roches. (Halfway down the page, see the volume's table of contents online.):]
Yandell, Cathy. Of lice and women: Rhetoric and gender in
La Puce de Madame Des Roche. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, 20:1 (Spring, 1990) 123-135.
LC#: CB351 .J78; ISSN: 0047-2573
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[This collection has two useful essays: (1) Larsen's "Catherine des Roches, the Pastoral, and Salon Poetics" discusses Catherine's use of the pastoral mode for her reflections on society. (2) Tilde Sankovitch's "The Body and Its Figures: Textual Strategies in the Writings of the Dames des Roches" looks at the connection between the relationship of mother and daughter and their public self-presentation. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Women writers in pre-revolutionary France: strategies of emancipation
/ edited by Colette H.Winn , Donna Kuizenga (Garland reference
library of the humanities; v. 1990. Women writers of the world;
v. 2). New York: Garland Pub., 1997. ( xxx, 454 p.).
LC#: PQ149 .W64 1997; ISBN: 0815323670 (alk. paper)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 415-441) and index
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[Sankovitch's essay in this collection "Catherine des Roches' La Ravissement de Proserpine: A Humanist/ Feminist Translation" analyses Catherine's translation (as yet unavailable in English) of Claudian's "Rape of Proserpine." (Another essay, Cathy Yandell's "Carpe Diem, Poetic Immortality, and the Gendered Ideology of Time," appears in a revised form in Yandall's 2000 study, above.):]
Renaissance women writers: French texts, American contexts
/ edited with an introduction by Anne R. Larsen and Colette H.
Winn. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, c1994. (242 p.:
ill.).
LC#: PQ239 .R46 1994; ISBN: 0814324738 (alk. paper)
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[This collection includes Ann Rosalind Jones' essay, "The
Muse of Indirection: Feminist Ventriloquism in the Dialogues
of Catherine des Roches," which discusses the six dialogues
of Les Oeuvres and the two of Les Secondes Oeuvres.
Jones illustrates Catherine's various uses and adaptations
of the dialogue genre. All quoted passages are given in the original
and in Jones' translation:]
The dialogue in early modern France, 1547-1630: art and argument
/ edited, with a prologue, by Colette H. Winn. Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, c1993. (xii, 308 p.)
LC#: PQ239 .D5 1993; ISBN: 0813207770
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[Jones' earlier study of Renaissance women poets discusses
Catherine des Roches, among others. In her discussion, Jones
translates (and gives the originals of) several short poems and
parts of longer poems from Les Oeuvres and Les Secondes
Oeuvres:]
Jones, Ann Rosalind. The currency of Eros: women's love lyric
in Europe, 1540-1620 (Women of letters). Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, c1990. (xi, 242 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN1181 .J66 1990; ISBN: 0253331498
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Updated 03-04-08