Hélisenne de Crenne
Encyclopedia
Hélisenne de Crenne was the pseudonym of Marguerite Briet (c. 1510, Abbeville
- after 1552), a French
novelist, epistolary writer and translator during the Renaissance
.
works. She married Philippe Fournel, sieur de Crenne, but they separated financially.
Her three original works are:
She was also responsible for the first (partial) French prose translation of Virgil
's Aeneid
:
In 1551, her works were "corrected" by the French translator Claude Colet, who eliminated many of her Italian and Latin borrow words. Her collected works were last published in 1560.
Largely forgotten at the end of the 16th century, Hélisenne de Crenne was rediscovered at the end of the 19th century by the French literary scholars Gustave Reynier (who wrote about her novel in his Le Roman sentimental avant l'Astrée (1908)) and Verdun-Léon Saulnier. Since the 1980s, her works have gained increased attention by literary scholars and have been translated into the English language
because of her status as a female writer and novelist.
Although the overall tone and the title of the work make this a cautionary tale on the folly of love, Hélisenne puts numerous praises of love (heavily endebted to Renaissance Neoplatonism
) in the mouth of certain characters. The amorous and pathetic sections of the novel are heavily endepted to Boccaccio
's Lady Fiammeta and its psychologically insightful portrayal of a woman spurned. Other influences include Libro del Peregrino by Giacomo (ou Jacopo) Caviceo (which tells of a dream in which the ghost of Peregrin gives the story of his tragic loves) and Les Illustrations de Gaule by Jean Lemaire de Belges
. The novel features extensive polite and rhetorically sophisticated dialogues and frequent exempla
("copia
") taken from classical antiquity and (occasionally) from medieval novels, the Bible and the fathers of the church. The story takes place in and around the Mediterranean, and although the customs and jousts appear to be of the 16th century, oaths, prayers and divine visitations are mostly classically inspired (the section with the hermit and the scene of the lovers' death are among the few with extensive Christian examples) and churches are referred to as "temples".
The first book is the story of Hélisenne, a married (at the age of 11) noble woman who falls in love with a young non-noble youth she catches sight of from her house. Amid scenes of doubt, passion, and fear, and with letters exchanged and meetings in public places, the female narrator tries to escape her husband's watchful and jealous eye, but at the end of the book the husband locks her up in a country residence (the château of Cabasus) and Hélisenne decides to write and circulate her story in the hope it will come into the hands of her lover.
Books two is told from the point of view of the young lover Guenelic (as imagined by Hélisenne) who teams up with a young noble named Quezinstra to search the world for Hélisenne. They arrive in a foreign court, Guenelic is knighted, and the two friends battle other knights in jousts and Quezinstra is crowned victor. After other travels, they arrive on an island ruled by a beautiful queen, and when the island is attacked, Guenelic and Quezinstra help defend it; Guenelic (who is mistaken for his friend) is captured and about to be executed, but the noble brother of the attacker convinces him to spare Guenelic's life and to settle the battle with a man-to-man combat; Quezinstra is chosen to represent the queen and he wins this fight and the war is ended. The friends then enroll in the service of a foreign prince who is trying to subjugate a rebellious city; Quezinstra once again plays a privotal role in the successful battle and he counsels the prince to use clemency with the town.
Book three (still from Guenelic's perspective) has the two friends come first to Genoa
, and from there to a desert island where they talk with a saintly hermit. From there they come to the region where Hélisenne is locked up under the control of her husband's sister. After letters exchanged and a conversation by a window at night between the lovers, Guenelic and Quezinstra help Hélisenne to escape. Unfortunately, the husband's sister sends her men to intercept them, and Guenelic and his friend are forced to leave Hélisenne in the woods while they fight their assailants. Victorious, they return to find Hélisenne at the point of death; she repents her actions, prays to God and asks Guenelic to think of his own salvation and then swoons. In his sorrow, Guenelic too prays and dies.
The epilogue is told by Quezinstra who recounts the death of the two lovers. He is then visited by Mercury who reveals to him the manuscript written by Hélisenne which tells of all of their adventures. Mercury takes Quezinstra with him to Hades and the lovers are judged by Minos and are permitted entry to the Elysian Fields; at a banquet of the gods, Jupiter orders the publishing of the manuscript in Paris. The novel ends with Quezinstra building a tomb for the lovers and urging the reader to abandon transitory things for permanent things.
Abbeville
Abbeville is a commune in the Somme department in Picardie in northern France.-Location:Abbeville is located on the Somme River, from its modern mouth in the English Channel, and northwest of Amiens...
- after 1552), a French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
novelist, epistolary writer and translator during the Renaissance
French Renaissance literature
For more information on historical developments in this period see: Renaissance, History of France, and Early Modern France.For information on French art and music of the period, see French Renaissance....
.
Life
Marguerite Briet was a noblewoman from Abbeville, but wrote in Paris in the 1530s and 1540s. She was well educated, learning enough Latin to be able to translate VirgilVirgil's
Virgil's can refer to:*Virgil's Root Beer, an American root beer*St Virgil's College, an Australian school*Anything relating to the Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Virgil*Virgil's tomb...
works. She married Philippe Fournel, sieur de Crenne, but they separated financially.
Works
Her identity was established in 1917 by the French literary scholar L. Loviot. Although there is no proof that Marguerite Briet is the author of the entirety of the works signed "Hélisenne de Crenne", few critics doubt the attribution. A character named "Hélisenne" is present in her three books.Her three original works are:
- Les Angoisses douloureuses qui procèdent d'amours ("The Torments of Love") (1538)
- Les Epistres familières et invectives ("Personal and Invective Letters") (1539)
- Le Songe ("The Dream") (1540)
She was also responsible for the first (partial) French prose translation of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
:
- Les Quatre premiers livres des Eneydes du treselegant poete Virgile, traduictz de Latin en prose Françoyse (1542)
In 1551, her works were "corrected" by the French translator Claude Colet, who eliminated many of her Italian and Latin borrow words. Her collected works were last published in 1560.
Largely forgotten at the end of the 16th century, Hélisenne de Crenne was rediscovered at the end of the 19th century by the French literary scholars Gustave Reynier (who wrote about her novel in his Le Roman sentimental avant l'Astrée (1908)) and Verdun-Léon Saulnier. Since the 1980s, her works have gained increased attention by literary scholars and have been translated into the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
because of her status as a female writer and novelist.
Les Angoisses douloureuses
Hélisenne de Crenne's novel is a unique blending of sentimental and chivalric elements (at the end of the novel, Athena—who sees the work in terms of battles and combats—and Venus—who sees the work in terms of love—fight over the book), humanist scholarship, orality and eloquence. The work is divided in three books and an epilogue all told in the first person, and the first person narrations and the justifications given for the existence of the book are unique in French literature of the period. Furthermore, the three sections of the novel are extremely different in tone and genre: the first book is sentimental (and judgements made by the female narrator about her lover Guenelic in the first book are modified by his actions in the second part), the second chivalric; the final epilogue shows both the influence of Hélisenne's translation of the Aeneid and her interest in "dream" tales.Although the overall tone and the title of the work make this a cautionary tale on the folly of love, Hélisenne puts numerous praises of love (heavily endebted to Renaissance Neoplatonism
Platonism in the Renaissance
Platonism underwent a revival in the Renaissance, as part of a general revival of interest in Classical antiquity. Interest in Platonism was especially strong in Florence under the Medici....
) in the mouth of certain characters. The amorous and pathetic sections of the novel are heavily endepted to Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
's Lady Fiammeta and its psychologically insightful portrayal of a woman spurned. Other influences include Libro del Peregrino by Giacomo (ou Jacopo) Caviceo (which tells of a dream in which the ghost of Peregrin gives the story of his tragic loves) and Les Illustrations de Gaule by Jean Lemaire de Belges
Jean Lemaire de Belges
Jean Lemaire de Belges was a Walloon poet and historian who lived primarily in France.He was born in Hainaut , the godson and possibly a nephew of Jean Molinet, and spent some time with him at Valenciennes, where the elder writer held a kind of academy of poetry. Lemaire in his first poems calls...
. The novel features extensive polite and rhetorically sophisticated dialogues and frequent exempla
Exemplum
An exemplum is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.-Exemplary literature:...
("copia
Copia
Copia may refer to:* Copia , the ancient city also called Thurii* Copia , an ancient city in Boeotia.* copia, a Latin word for "abundance", especially used in rhetoric...
") taken from classical antiquity and (occasionally) from medieval novels, the Bible and the fathers of the church. The story takes place in and around the Mediterranean, and although the customs and jousts appear to be of the 16th century, oaths, prayers and divine visitations are mostly classically inspired (the section with the hermit and the scene of the lovers' death are among the few with extensive Christian examples) and churches are referred to as "temples".
The first book is the story of Hélisenne, a married (at the age of 11) noble woman who falls in love with a young non-noble youth she catches sight of from her house. Amid scenes of doubt, passion, and fear, and with letters exchanged and meetings in public places, the female narrator tries to escape her husband's watchful and jealous eye, but at the end of the book the husband locks her up in a country residence (the château of Cabasus) and Hélisenne decides to write and circulate her story in the hope it will come into the hands of her lover.
Books two is told from the point of view of the young lover Guenelic (as imagined by Hélisenne) who teams up with a young noble named Quezinstra to search the world for Hélisenne. They arrive in a foreign court, Guenelic is knighted, and the two friends battle other knights in jousts and Quezinstra is crowned victor. After other travels, they arrive on an island ruled by a beautiful queen, and when the island is attacked, Guenelic and Quezinstra help defend it; Guenelic (who is mistaken for his friend) is captured and about to be executed, but the noble brother of the attacker convinces him to spare Guenelic's life and to settle the battle with a man-to-man combat; Quezinstra is chosen to represent the queen and he wins this fight and the war is ended. The friends then enroll in the service of a foreign prince who is trying to subjugate a rebellious city; Quezinstra once again plays a privotal role in the successful battle and he counsels the prince to use clemency with the town.
Book three (still from Guenelic's perspective) has the two friends come first to Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
, and from there to a desert island where they talk with a saintly hermit. From there they come to the region where Hélisenne is locked up under the control of her husband's sister. After letters exchanged and a conversation by a window at night between the lovers, Guenelic and Quezinstra help Hélisenne to escape. Unfortunately, the husband's sister sends her men to intercept them, and Guenelic and his friend are forced to leave Hélisenne in the woods while they fight their assailants. Victorious, they return to find Hélisenne at the point of death; she repents her actions, prays to God and asks Guenelic to think of his own salvation and then swoons. In his sorrow, Guenelic too prays and dies.
The epilogue is told by Quezinstra who recounts the death of the two lovers. He is then visited by Mercury who reveals to him the manuscript written by Hélisenne which tells of all of their adventures. Mercury takes Quezinstra with him to Hades and the lovers are judged by Minos and are permitted entry to the Elysian Fields; at a banquet of the gods, Jupiter orders the publishing of the manuscript in Paris. The novel ends with Quezinstra building a tomb for the lovers and urging the reader to abandon transitory things for permanent things.