Poetry
Scholar, Ann Rosalind Jones writes that the women poets of the renaissance "wrote within but against the traditions that surrounded them." L'Aubespine is an exemplar of this tension of being both within and outside of the genre.
In correspondence with Ronsard, l'Aubespine calls herself the Phaeton to his French Apollo—an audacious son to a noble father—and he replies back in continuation of the mythic metaphor with:
If, flying, you fall, too willing to believe me,
At least you will have earned this glory for your tomb
That a woman surpassed the most learned French men.
This piece is exceptional, as there is little documentation of Ronsard praising women for their writing, however in this exchange through the Phaeton and Apollo metaphor, he refers to L'Aubespine as his successor. Because of her high position and her husband's income, there was not a pressing need for L'Aubespine to publish, and thus most of her work remained and circulated in manuscript form. According to scholar, Anna Kłosowska, there are only two major sources for l'Aubespine's lyric poems: a florilegium from 1718 and a posthumous volume of l'Aubespines complete works, which was lost in 1904 in a fire, though a detailed description of the volume survived. Robert Sorg first published a portion of L'Aubespine's work in 1926.
L'Aubespine is not just uncommon in the support she receives from her literary counterparts, but her poetic work as a woman is also exceptional. Anna Kłosowska, writes that, "While many of l'Aubespine's Petrarchist and pious sonnets are typical for her time, in some love poems she goes blatantly against the stereotype of female modesty."Veronica Franco, a famous Italian courtesan and fellow woman poet of the Renaissance, also demonstrated this disregard for strict adhesion to normative gender roles of the period through her love poetry. Like both l'Aubespine and Franco, many 16th century women poets wrote Petrarchan sonnets, but a particular problem that these women faced was in defining an object of desire that was necessary for the traditional form and themes, because in Petrarchan sonnets, the theme demonstrates a longing for a distant lover. For male poets, the lover would be female, and the poetry would be a courtly display of longing; however, women poets were put into a bind as they adapted their gender to the male-centered form. One of l'Aubespine's most well-circulated erotic poems, "Riddle," is exemplary of one of these atypical sonnets. In it, the lyric subject euphemistically describes playing a lute:
As the sweetest diversion that I could ever choose,
Frequently, after dinner, for fear of getting bored,
I take his neck in hand, I touch him, and I stroke,
Till he's in such a state as to give me delight.
I fall upon my bed and, without letting go,
I grasp him in my arms, I press him to my breast,
And moving hard and fast, all ravished with pleasure,
Amidst a thousand delights I fulfill my desire.
If he sometimes unfortunately happens to slacken,
I erect him with my hand, and right away I strive
To enjoy the delight of such a tender stroking.
Thus my beloved, so long as I pull on his sinew,
Contents and pleases me. Then away from me, softly,
Tired and not sated, I finally withdraw him.
As Kłosowska describes, this sonnet participates in the tradition of courtly erotic joke making in which erotic meaning lies under the thin pretense of non-erotic solution; however, l'Aubespine's appropriation of the genre complicates the traditional gender standards of the time, because her sonnet is woman-centered and outlines mutual sexual gratification. In this way, l'Aubespine adapts the traditional form to her needs, and influences the French literary world. Through several analyses of this piece, Kłosowska has deemed this poem the "most openly lesbian love poem written by a woman in sixteenth-century France." Further, Kłosowska explains how l'Aubespine's woman-centered, mutual satisfaction focused piece is a challenge to the erotic form of the 16th century. At the time l'Aubespine was reciting this work in salons and having it published in manuscripts, women's virtuosity and chastity were defining factors in their social standing, so the poet's focus on women's pleasure and sexual agency is rare for the period. The discovery and subsequent analysis of l'Aubespine's literary work has opened new avenues for the discussion of early modern gender and sexual roles and renaissance women's poetry.
