French Literature Reviews - 2026
X. Bonnier, Mes silentes clameurs. Metaphor and Amorous Discourse in Maurice Scève's Délie
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Xavier Bonnier, "Mes silentes clameurs". Metaphor and Amorous Discourse in Maurice Scève's Délie
Paris: Honoré Champion, coll. "Bibliothèque littéraire de la renaissance", 2011.
640 p.
Price 120EUR.
EAN 9782745321237.
Publisher's overview:
The legendary obscurity of Maurice Scève's Délie (1544) has generated a rich yet highly fragmented body of critical literature, often defying overly global approaches. This study therefore examines the very writing of the poetry collection and its use of metaphor, which serves as the cornerstone of the poet's universe of representation. These initially baffling quantitative findings, followed by the comprehensive analogical system with its constants and idiosyncrasies, become fully meaningful when viewed in light of Renaissance love poetry conventions and sources, revealing the dialectical role of metaphor: to reclaim an identity through sheer identification, and to divert expression in order to flourish within inscription.
Xavier Bonnier, a former student of the E.N.S. de Fontenay - Saint-Cloud and agrégé in modern literature, is a senior lecturer at the University of Rouen. His research focuses on Renaissance poetry and the transmission of analogical motifs from Antiquity to the classical era.
Maurice Scève's Délie stands as a collection within sixteenth-century French lyric poetry, long debated for its style and complex imagery. Within Renaissance literary culture, love poetry frequently engaged with humanist traditions, Petrarchan models, and Neoplatonic conceptions of desire, creating an intricate web of representation. Scholars have approached this text through various critical lenses, seeking to decode its network of symbols and understand its place within the broader evolution of poetic form during the early modern period.
Xavier Bonnier's study examines the role of metaphor within Délie, analyzing quantitative findings and analogical systems to explore the collection's poetic mechanics. By situating these elements against the backdrop of Renaissance conventions and sources, the work addresses the dialectical function of metaphor in shaping amorous discourse. Readers interested in sixteenth-century poetry, the history of metaphor, and Renaissance literary aesthetics may find this volume relevant to their research.