Speaking of Love: The Love Dialogue in Italian and French Renaissance Literature

342 Pages·2017·1.713 MB·English

by  Reinier Leushuis

Speaking of Love
Medieval and Renaissance
Authors and Texts
Editor-in-Chief
Francis G. Gentry (Emeritus Professor of German, Penn State University)
Editorial Board
Teodolinda Barolini (Columbia University)
Cynthia Brown (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Marina Brownlee (Princeton University)
Keith Busby (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Craig Kallendorf (Texas A&M University)
Alastair Minnis (Yale University)
Brian Murdoch (Stirling University)
Jan Ziolkowski (Harvard University)
VOLUME 18
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mrat
Speaking of Love
The Love Dialogue in Italian
and French Renaissance Literature
By
Reinier Leushuis
LEIDEN | BOSTON
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/201700319
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0925-7683
isbn 978-90-04-34252-1 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-34371-9 (e-book)
Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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For Arzu, Emre, Eser, and Selin
My Beloved Interlocutors
∵

Contents
Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
1 Thought, Speech, and the Poetics of Love in Renaissance Dialogue
Theory 22
Introduction 22
Carlo Sigonio and Torquato Tasso: The Dialectical Turn 25
Sperone Speroni: Speech, Drama, and Love in Dialogue 37
2 The Mimesis of Love: Dialogue and Poetics in Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo
d’amore 53
3 The Infinite Practice of Amorous Speaking: Tullia d’Aragona and the
Venetian poligrafi 108
Introduction 108
Infinite Speaking in Amorous Dialogue: Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo
della infinità di amore 113
The Love Dialogue among Venetian literati-lovers: Betussi, Sansovino,
and Gottifredi 137
Amorous Speaking and the Return to the Ciceronian Model: Betussi
and Domenichi 161
4 Toward a French Love Dialogue: Philosophy and Literary Mimesis in
Translations and Emulations by Claude Gruget, Pontus de Tyard, and
Louis Le Caron 171
Introduction 171
Translating Speroni and Ebreo: From Paradox to Dialogical Labor of
Love 176
Dialogue between Amorous Philosophy and Amorous Poetry: Pontus
de Tyard’s Solitaire premier 184
Staging the Speaking Beloved Other: Louis Le Caron’s La Claire, ou de
la prudence de droit 201
viii contents
5 “À l’imitation . . . d’un Bembe j’ay un peu voulu fourvoyer de ma course
encommencée”. Innovation and Gender in French Love Dialogues:
Claude de Taillemont, Etienne Pasquier, Marguerite de Navarre, and
Louise Labé 220
Introduction 220
The Collective Speaking of Love: Adapting and Emulating Bembo’s Gli
Asolani in France: Claude de Taillemont and Étienne Pasquier 228
Toward a Female French Love Dialogue: Marguerite de Navarre’s
La Coche and Louise Labé’s Débat de Folie et d’Amour 247
Conclusion 282
Amor ordinem nescit: Montaigne’s Dialogue on Love in “Sur des vers
de Virgile” 282
Bibliography 309
Index 327