Rymes : 1545

In August, 1545, one year following the publication of Délie¸ the printer Jean de Tournes published the Rymes de gentile et vertueuse dame D. Pernette Du Guillet Lyonnoise (Rhymes by the kind and virtuous lady D. Pernette Du Guillet from Lyon). This tiny posthumous work was put together with care by Antoine du Moullin, who collected, in order to please “her mournful husband”, some of her “loose papers” which were destined to be “read with great admiration by all.” Do they delineate a virtuous model, as the paratexts taken as a whole would seem to proclaim? The Rymes offer above all the chance to employ a gentle voice and reread the codes of love poetry, cultivating varietas among the delicate and lively pieces which this present edition proposes to rediscover. In the Rymes, she who is commonly identified as Délie engages in a redefinition of literary and love relationship, and does not hesitate to retort...Je dy, combien que n'aye le sçavoir,Ne les vertus, que ton R, m'advoue,Qu'errer je fais tout homme, qui me loue.