The Poetry of Place: Lyric, Landscape, and Ideology in Renaissance France
© 2010
The sixteenth century in France was marked by religious warfare and shifting political and physical landscapes. Between 1549 and 1584, however, the Pléiade poets, including Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim Du Bellay, Rémy Belleau, and Antoine de Baïf, produced some of the most abiding and irenic depictions of rural French landscapes ever written. In The Poetry of Place, Louisa Mackenzie reveals and analyzes the cultural history of French paysage through her study of lyric poetry and its connections with landscape painting, cartography, and land use history.
In the face of destructive environmental change, lyric poets in Renaissance France often wrote about idealized physical spaces, reclaiming the altered landscape to counteract the violence and loss of the period and creating in the process what Mackenzie, following David Harvey, terms 'spaces of hope.' This unique alliance of French Renaissance studies with cultural geography and eco-criticism demonstrates that sixteenth-century poetry created a powerful sense of place which continues to inform national and regional sentiment today.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 304 pages
- Dimensions: 6.4in x 1.0in x 9.4in
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Reviews
‘Louise Mackenzie has written a thoughtful and innovative book that locates at its centre the study of Lyric poetry and its engagement with place. It will appeal to all scholars interested in French Renaissance poetry and its many contexts.’
Margaret M. McGowan
Renaissance Quarterly; vol64:04:2011
‘A thought provoking contribution to our understanding of both the literature and history of early modern France… Mackenzie’s excellent book offers a sophisticated model for reading poetry in the light of social status, the socioeconomic conditions for the production of verse, political context, and poetry’s internal cultural logics.’
Paul Cohen
Renaissance and Reformation – Spring 2012
‘Mackenzie’s brilliant treatment of lyric and place in Renaissance France raises unsettling questions about poetry’s contemporary relevance…The book is a model for work shaped by history and theory and, at the same time committed to using them for our own ends.’
Tim Conley
Modern Language Review, vol 74:03:2013 -
Author Information
Louisa Mackenzie is an assistant professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Washington. -
Table of contents
Introduction
- Place and Poetry: An Overview
- The Poet and the Mapmaker: Lyric and Cartographic Images of France
- The Poet, the Nation, and the Region: Constructing Anjou and France
- The Poet and the Painter: Problems of Representation
- The Poet and the Environment: Naturalizing Conservative Nostalgia
- The Poet and the Bower: Escaping History
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Prizes
Modern Language Association Aldo & Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French & Francophone Literary Studies - Commended in 2012 -
Subjects and Courses