What is it about?
The article examines how the Renaissance poet Maurice Scève shaped his poetry collection Délie (1544) by referring to both spoken and written forms. The poems imitate lament as if performed aloud to move the beloved to pity, yet they also underline their existence as written and printed texts. This tension between orality and writing shows how Renaissance poetry negotiated proximity and distance in the age of print.
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Why is it important?
The article shows that Scève’s Délie is not only a collection of Petrarchist love poems but also a reflection on the new media landscape of the Renaissance. By analyzing how oral and written forms interact in his work, the article demonstrates how early modern lyrical text responded to the cultural shift brought by print. This approach highlights the lyrical text as a medium that actively shaped practices of communication and readership in early modern Europe.
Perspectives
Writing this article gave me the chance to return to one of the earliest French Petrarchist collections and to look at it through the lens of media history. I enjoyed exploring how Scève’s Délie combines the topical language of lament with the medium of print. I hope readers will find that this double perspective opens up new ways of thinking about communication and sociability.
Christoph Groß
Ruhr-Universitat Bochum
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Vom Klagen der Stimme und dem Schweigen der Schrift, POETICA, December 2022, Brill Deutschland GmbH,
DOI: 10.30965/25890530-05301009.
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