"L'homme innocent à honte n'est tenu.": La Définition de vrai amour par dizains by Marguerite de Navarre, the Problem of Nudity and the "Libertins spirituels"

Abstract:

In the Définition de vrai amour par dizains, Marguerite de Navarre explores the nature of love. This cycle of twenty-six poems has received little attention from scholars, as for a long time the poems were only available in a fragmentary edition. It is only since Richard Cooper’s 2007 edition that there is a basic text with which researchers can work. Nevertheless, the poems raise questions, for the writing style is sometimes so hermetic that the texts appear incomprehensible. According to our hypothesis, three factors are responsible for this. Firstly, the structure, which presents a dialogue between a lady and her lover, but which leaves the distribution of roles unclear, so that the reader often does not know which of the two interlocutors is speaking. Secondly, the nature of love itself, which is differentiated in the dialogue between eros and agape, but terminologically is always expressed by the word amour, so that the reader is often left confused. Thirdly, the writing style is particularly condensed and plays with ambiguities. Our thesis is that the poems are intentionally ambiguous in order to confuse the readers and show them the limits of their own intellect. Only “amitié naifve” allows the lover at the end of the dialogue to understand that the divine love of agape is true love; similarly, it is only at the end of the cycle that the reader realizes that religious themes are central to the poems. This paper analyses this technique of confusion as a “poetics of naivety.”