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From Mother and Daughter

Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les Dames des Roches

Edited and Translated by Anne R. Larsen

From Mother and Daughter

Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les Dames des Roches

Edited and Translated by Anne R. Larsen
Among the best-known and most prolific French women writers of the sixteenth century, Madeleine (1520–87) and Catherine (1542–87) des Roches were celebrated not only for their uncommonly strong mother-daughter bond but also for their bold assertion of poetic authority for women in the realm of belles lettres. The Dames des Roches excelled in a variety of genres, including poetry, Latin and Italian translations, correspondence, prose dialogues, pastoral drama, and tragicomedy; collected in From Mother and Daughter are selections from their celebrated oeuvre, suffused with an engaging and enduring feminist consciousness.
 
Madeleine and Catherine spent their entire lives in civil war–torn Poitiers, where a siege of the city, vandalism, and desecration of churches fueled their political and religious commentary. Members of an elite literary circle that would inspire salon culture during the next century, the Dames des Roches addressed the issues of the day, including the ravages of religious civil wars, the weak monarchy, education for women, marriage and the family, violence against women, and the status of women intellectuals. Through their collaborative engagement in shared public discourse, both mother and daughter were models of moral, political, and literary agency.

288 pages | 1 halftone | 6 x 9 | © 2006

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe

History: European History

Literature and Literary Criticism: Romance Languages

Reviews

"Larsen’s admirable volume makes the des Roches accessible to a wider audience, and will prove an indispensable aid to undergraduate teachers."

Katherine MacDonald | MLR

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Series Editors’ Introduction
Volume Editor’s Introduction
Volume Editor’s Bibliography
Note on Translation
I. Selected Poems of Madeleine des Roches from Les Euvres (1579)
II. Selected Poems of Catherine des Roches from Les Euvres (1579)
III. Selected Poems of Madeleine des Roches and Catherine des Roches from Les Secondes Euvres (1583)
IV. Selected Letters of Madeleine des Roches and Catherine des Roches from Les Missives (1586)
Notes
Series Editors’ Bibliography
Index

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