Editing Maurice Scève

{{Short description|French poet}}
[[File:Maurice Scève.jpg|thumb|alt=A woodcutting of a bust of Maurice Scève|Maurice Scève]]

'''Maurice Scève''' ({{Circa|1501}} – {{Circa|1564}}) was a French [[poet]] active in [[Lyon]] during the [[French Renaissance|Renaissance]] period. He was the centre of the Lyonnese côterie that elaborated the theory of spiritual love, derived partly from [[Plato]] and partly from [[Petrarch]]. This spiritual love, which animated [[Antoine Héroet]]'s ''Parfaicte Amye'' (1543) as well, owed much to [[Marsilio Ficino]], the Florentine translator and commentator of Plato's works.

Scève's chief works are ''Délie, objet de plus haulte vertu'' (1544); five anatomical blazons; the elegy ''Arion'' (1536) and the eclogue ''La Saulsaye'' (1547); and ''Microcosme'' (1562), an encyclopaedic poem beginning with the fall of man. Scève's epigrams, which have seen renewed critical interest since the late 19th century, were seen as difficult even in Scève's own day, although Scève was praised by Du Bellay Bellay, Ronsard, Pontus de Tyard and Des Autels for raising French poetry to new, higher aesthetic standards.{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}}

==Life==

Scève is believed to have been born in 1501. His father was a Lyonnese lawyer and municipal officer who served as Lyon's ambassador to the court upon the accession of [[François I]] to the throne, giving the family a strong social standing in the city.<ref name='mulhauser'>{{Cite book|last=Mulhauser|first=Ruth|year=1977|title=Maurice Scève|url=https://archive.org/details/mauricesceve0424mulh|url-access=registration|isbn=0-8057-6264-7|lccn=76-28722|publisher=Twane Publishers|page=[https://archive.org/details/mauricesceve0424mulh/page/22 22]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13842.html|accessdate=28 April 2013|work=University of Pennsylvania Press|title=Emblems of Desire Selections from the "Délie" of Maurice Scève}}</ref>

The Lyonnese school, of which Scève was the leader, included his friend [[Claude de Taillemont]], [[Barthélemy Aneau]], the physician [[Pierre Tolet]]<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rancourt |first1=Guy |title=Mots d'art & Scénarios |url=https://ginette-villeneuve.forumactif.com/t4300-5-blasons-de-maurice-sceve |website=Ginette Villeneuve |access-date=11 March 2021 |language=fr}}</ref> and the women writers [[Jeanne Gaillarde]]—placed by [[Clément Marot]] on an equality with [[Christine de Pisan]]{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}}—[[Pernette du Guillet]], [[Louise Labé]], [[Clémence de Bourges]] and the poet's sisters, [[Claudine Scève|Claudine]] and [[Sybille Scève]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}}

==Work==
[[File:Houghton Typ 515.49.772 - Scève, title.jpg|thumb|''La magnifica et triumphale entrata del christianiss'', 1549]]
Scève's first acclaim as a poet came in 1535, when he sent a pair of [[Blason|''blasons'']] to [[Clément Marot|Marot]] in response to ''Le Blason du Beau Tétin''. ''Le Sourcil'' ("The Eyebrow") and ''La Larme'' ("The Tear") were submitted as a part of a contest organized by Marot while in exile in [[Ferrara]]; the former was judged the winner, gaining notoriety for Scève in both France and Italy. These two poems were published along with others from the contest in 1536. Three additional Scève ''blasons'' (''Le Front'', ''La Gorge'' and ''Le Soupir'') were published in the 1539 edition.<ref name='mulhauser' /><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/rmds/portfolio/gordon/emblem/blasons.html|work=Renaissance In Print, Gordon Collection, U.Va. Library|accessdate= 28 April 2013|title=Blasons et Contreblasons}}</ref>

''Délie'', Scève's most notable work, consists of 449 ''dizains'' (10-line epigrammes) preceded by a dedicatory ''huitain'' (8-line poem) to his mistress ("A sa Délie"). The title is sometimes understood to be an anagram for ''l'idée'' ("the idea"). ''Délie'' is the first French "canzoniere" or poetic collection modeled after Petrarch's immensely-popular ''[[Il Canzoniere|Canzoniere]]'', a series of love poems addressed to a Lady.{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}}

Scève was also responsible for the translation of a sentimental novel, ''Grimalte y Gradissa'' by [[Juan de Flores]], published as ''La Déplorable fin de Flamète'' in 1535, which was inspired by [[Giovanni Boccaccio]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/rmds/portfolio/gordon/literary/sceve/|work=Renaissance In Print, Gordon Collection, U.Va. Library|accessdate= 28 April 2013|title=Maurice Scève (1501-c.1560)}}</ref>

Scève was a well versed musician as well as a poet; he cared very much for the musical value of the words he used, in this and in his erudition he forms a link between the school of [[Clément Marot|Marot]] and the [[La Pléiade|Pléiade]].<ref name='appelbaum'>{{cite book|author=Stanley Appelbaum|title=Introduction to French Poetry|year=1991|url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontofr00appe|url-access=registration|location=Mineola, New York|publisher=Dover Publications, Inc. 1991|page=[https://archive.org/details/introductiontofr00appe/page/25 25]}}</ref>

==Selected works==

===English translation===
*''Emblems of Desire: Selections from the "Délie" of Maurice Scève'', [[Richard Sieburth]], Editor and Translator. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002) {{ISBN|0-8122-3694-7}}

==Further reading==

Important early literature on the poet includes [[Édouard Bourciez]], ''La Littérature polie et les mœurs de cour sous Henri II'' (Paris, 1886); [[Jacques Pernetti]], ''Recherches pour servir de l'histoire de Lyon'' (2 vols., Lyon, 1757), and especially [[F. Brunetière]], "''Un Précurseur de la Pléiade, Maurice Scève''," in his ''Etudes critiques'', vol. vi. (1899).

More recent scholarship includes [[V. Saunier]]'s two-volume Sorbonne dissertation on the poet (Paris, 1948), as well as three excellent critical editions by [[Eugène Parturier]] (Paris, 1916, reissued 2001 with an introduction and bibliography by C. Alduy), I.D McFarlane (Cambridge, 1966) and Gérard Defaux (Geneva, 2004). McFarlane's edition remains authoritative. Critical studies, with various approaches, by Dorothy Coleman, Jerry Nash, Nancy Frelick, Cynthia Skenazi, James Helgeson and Thomas Hunkeler are particularly useful; important articles on the poet have been written by François Rigolot, [[Enzo Giudici]], Edwin Duval, Terence Cave, Gérard Defaux, and [[Richard Sieburth]]'s "Introduction" to ''Emblems of Desire: Selections from the "Délie"'', a work which Sieburth translated and edited (see ''External links'' below for link to Sieburth's ''Introduction'' available on-line).

A complete annotated bibliography of all works by and on Scève since his lifetime has recently been published (Cécile Alduy, ''Maurice Scève'', Roma: Memini, 2006, 200pp.). It contains in particular all the critical literature, past and present, on Scève and his works.

==See also==
*[[Enzo Giudici]]
*[[Louise Labe]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Scève, Maurice|volume=24|page=309}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
*[http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/toc/13842_toc.html "Introduction" to ''Emblems of Desire: Selections from the "Délie" of Maurice Scève''] by Richard Sieburth, Editor and Translator
*[http://www.lib.virginia.edu/rmds/collections/gordon/literary/sceve/index.html Background and digital facsimile of a 1564 edition of Delie] At the University of Virginia's Gordon Collection

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sceve, Maurice}}
[[Category:1500s births]]
[[Category:1560s deaths]]
[[Category:Writers from Lyon]]
[[Category:French male poets]]
[[Category:16th-century French poets]]