Aubespine, Madeleine de L’ (1546-1596)

Dame de Villeroy, French poet, and author of moral discourse

Madeleine de L’Aubespine was the daughter of Secretary of State Claude de L’Aubespine and the wife of Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy, who later became secretary of state under the reign of Charles IX and Henry III. Well-known in the aristocratic circles, she became a “lady-of-honor” to Catherine de Medi-cis. Worldly minded, bright, and erudite (as her translation of Ovid’s Heroides attests), Madeleine de L’Aubespine soon began to receive the most famous poets and prominent figures of her time at her residence in Con-flans-l’Archeveque, near Paris, and in her hotel near the Louvre. Among her celebrated guests were Remy Belleau, who dedicated one of his “precious stones” to her; Ronsard, who regarded her as his “spiritual daughter”; and Philippe Desportes, who celebrated her in numerous love poems under the name of Rosette, Callianthe, and Cleonice. Madeleine de L’Aubespine’s poems remained handwritten until 1926—1927, when they were published for the first time and subsequently raised questions about their authorship.

The talent of Madeleine de L’Aubespine does not lack originality or imagination. In her poetry may be found images of a square moon, fish that fly, and dry water that create a universe of the absurd that confuses and fascinates, thereby foreshadowing the poetry ofTheophile de Viau. On the other hand, some poems announce the elegies of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, while others reveal a philosophical approach in her writing, as they are addressed to a God whose leniency perplexes her. Nonetheless, the poetry of Madeleine de L’Aubespine does not resemble the sober discourse assembled in the Cabinet des saines affections, which recent studies have attributed to her. The volume was published five times between 1584 and 1600 in Paris (the first three editions appeared anonymously from Abel L’Angelier, a well-known printer specializing in humanist writings) and was also translated into both German and Italian in 1623.Themat-ically related to Montaigne’s Essais, the Saines affections also draw on classical sources such as Seneca, Plutarch, Cicero, and Epictitus.

The author of Saines affections firmly believes in the effectiveness of philosophy as the only way to reach spiritual happiness. Philosophical thought is molded into a meditation on man’s condition and destiny, leading to a practical morality, which places at the forefront the exercise of reason and the practice of virtue. As another way to praise human reason and its immense benefits, Madeleine de L’Aubespine develops a program to control passion, which is responsible for vanity, ambition, envy, sadness, and ingratitude. Like Plutarch, she believes that passions are not necessarily bad, but they must be restrained, and like Cicero, she proposes the conciliation of virtue with happiness. Like Montaigne, she condemns social ethics and vices and places self-knowledge at the center of her thinking. However, unlike the author of the Essais, she never becomes the object of her own discourse, preferring a generic “we” to a personal “I.” Indicative of the feminine writer are the variegated style, an affinity for definitions and “recipes for the soul,” as well as the renouncement of self. Madeleine de L’Aubespine applied her talent to both poetry and discourse, the latter a favorite humanist genre that began to flourish along with moral reflections between 1580 and 1625.

Graziella Postolache

See also Education, Humanism, and Women; Literary Culture and Women.

Bibliography

Primary Works

L’Aubespine Madeleine de. Cabinet des saines affections. Edited by Colette H. Winn. Paris: Champion, 2001.

L’Aubespine Madeleine de. Cabinet des saines affections. Derniere edition, nentee de XII. Discours et quelques Stances sur le mesme sujet. Par Madame de Rivery. Paris: Antoine du Breuil, 1595.

L’Aubespine Madeleine de. Des saines affections. Paris: Abel L’Angelier, 1584 or 1594.

L’Aubespine Madeleine de. Les chansons de Cal-lianthe. Edited by Roger Sorg. Paris: L. Pichon, 1926.

Secondary Works

Balsamo, Jean. “Abel L’Angelier et ses dames: les Dames des Roches, Madeleine de l’Auspepine, Marie le Gendre, Marie de Gournay.” In Des femmes & des livres, France et Espagnes XIVe— XVIIe siecle. Edited by Dominique de Cour-celles and Carmen Val Julian, 117—136. Paris: Ecole des Chartes, 1999.

Louviot, Louis.“Cabinet des Saines affections

(1595).’’ In Revue des Livres Anciens, vol. II. Edited by Fontemoing et Cie, 274—282. Paris: 1917.

Sorg, Roger. “Une fille de Ronsard, la bergere Rosette.” Revue des Deux Mondes 13 (1923): 128-144.