Nicole Estienne

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Nicole Estienne (1573)

Nicole Estienne , married Liébault (* around 1542; † between 1584 and 1596), was a French poet.

Life

Nicole Estienne came from an influential family of printers and publishers in the 16th century. She was the eldest daughter of the anatomist Charles Estienne and his wife Geneviève de Berly. In 1560 she was initially engaged to the playwright and poet Jacques Grévin . Grévin dedicated his sonnet series L'Olympe to her , to which she responded with a few poems. Later, the pseudonym "Olympe" invented by Grévin was often applied to Nicole Estienne. However, the connection did not last, and in 1561 Estienne instead married the physician and author Jean Liébault (around 1535–1596), who was the dean of the medical faculty in Paris and who published, among other things, on women's diseases.

Estienne's work is mainly concerned with the role of women in society. In response to the poem Stances du mariage (1573) by Philippe Desportes , in which he depicts marriage as a burden for men, Estienne defended the negatively portrayed (married) women in her work Stanzes du mariage .

In her main work Les Misères de la Femme mariée (around 1587, 35 six-line stanzas in Alexandrian meter ), she also describes marriage as a potentially positive institution, but lists the problems that arise in reality. In it, she criticizes the marriage of women, which was common in her time, without taking their opinion into account, problems caused by too great an age difference or the lack of education of husbands who forbid their wives from education, ignorance of the achievements of women and violence in marriage. It is unclear whether the work has autobiographical content. Against this, among other things, speaks that she was familiar with the humanistic tradition, in which an author illuminates two opposing sides of a topic. Other well-known works by Estienne are poems that appeared as a foreword in the collections of other poets such as François Béroalde de Verville .

Nicole Estienne's death date is unknown. It lies between 1584, when the biographer La Croix du Maine included her in his compendium, and July 1596, when she died before her husband. In some cases, it is believed that she was still alive in 1588, since she contributed an introductory sonnet to a collection of poems by Baptiste Badere that was published that year.

She was largely forgotten at first until Jacques Lavaud counted her among the most talented poets of her time in his Revue du seizième siècle in 1931 . Estienne and her role in the marriage debate is under increasing scrutiny again.

Works (selection)

  • Le mépris d'amour. (lost)
  • L'Apologie ou Defense pour les femmes contre ceux qui les méprisent. (lost)
  • Punch you mariage. around 1573.
  • Les Misères de la Femme mariée, où se peuvent voir les peines et tourmens qu'elle reçoit durant sa vie. Pierre Menier, Paris around 1587.
  • Un quatrain limit. In: François Béroalde de Verville: Les Apprehensions Spirituelles, Poemes et autres Oeuvres Philosophiques, avec Les Recherches de la pierre philosophale. Timothee Joüan, Paris 1584.
  • Un sun liminaire. In: Baptiste Badere: Devotes meditations chrestiennes, sur la Mort et Passion de nostre Seigneur Jésus Christ. Guyon Giffard, Paris 1588.

literature

  • Cathy Yandell: Estienne, Nicole. In: Diana Maury Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin (Eds.): Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2007, ISBN 978-1-85109-772-2 , pp. 133-134.
  • Anne Larsen: Nicole Estienne (Madame Libault). In: Katharina M. Wilson (Ed.): An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers. Volume 1, Garland Publishing, New York 1991, ISBN 0-8240-8547-7 , pp. 389-390.
  • Estienne, Nicole. In: Eva Martin Sartori: The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature. Greenwood Press, Westport 1999, ISBN 978-0-313-29651-2 .
  • Régine Reynolds-Cornell: Les Misères de la femme mariée: Another Look at Nicole Liébault and a Few Questions About the Woes of the Married Woman. In: Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance. T. 64, No. 1, 2002, pp. 37-54.
  • Jacques Lavaud: Quelques poésies oubliées de N. Estienne. In: Revue du seizième siècle. 18, 1931, pp. 341-351.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Anne Larsen: Nicole Estienne (Madame Libault). In: An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers. Volume 1, Garland Publishing, New York 1991, p. 390.
  2. ^ A b Cathy Yandell: Estienne, Nicole. In: Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2007, p. 134.
personal data
SURNAME Estienne, Nicole
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Liébault, Madame; Liébaut, Madame; Liébaut, Olympe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: 1542
DATE OF DEATH between 1584 and 1596