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In a study of Pierre de Ronsard and Pontus de Tyard, Cathy Yandell considers why a male author might adopt a female poetic voice by seeking to answer the question, "To what extent are these created females typical of contemporaneous women?" (66). She explores Ronsard's and Tyard's poems by "examining the extent to which Ronsard and Tyard succeed in creating convincing female narrators" (67). Yandell thus prepares an engaging yet precarious venture into social inquiry. Who is a convincing female narrator? What are our expectations of an "authientic" female voice? Moreover, do any sixteenth-century poets-male or female-succeed in representing their speakers as contemporary women? Do they even attempt to fashion such poetic personae? In order to define what constitutes a convincing female narrator, Yandell departs from the familiar definition of écriture féminine. She adopts instead one of the six criteria stipulated by Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani in her definition of récriture du fém inin-the quality of reciprocity-and adds that the author must be a woman and acknowledge her status as female.1
According to this final criterion, Ronsard and Tyard would seem to be excluded a priori from récriture du féminin, but thiis theoretical impasse is resolved by substituting the sex of the poetic persona for that of the author:
Only two of the categories, 2) reciprocity and 7) an acknowledgment of the author's status as female, apply emphatically to these poems. . . . Both Ronsard's and Tyard's speakers acknowledge their status as female within the poems. (Yandell 67, my emphasis)
Yandell thien examines in greater detail the requirement of reciprocity, illustrating how both Ronsard and Tyard succeed initially in maintaining a "feminine" rhetoric of shared passion with the beloved. She proceeds to argue, however, that the authiors' displays of classical erudition ultimately undermine convincing lyric transvestism. When the male poets hide behind Latin sources, rather than fashioning voices that reflect those of contemporary women, thiey reveal the true thieme of thieir works - poetic competition between male authiors.
Yandell's observation that Ronsard and Tyard are primarily interested in exhibilitng thieir poetic prowess is astute. However, I am reluctant to exclude women writers from participation in thiis literary phenomenon. Evocations and resonances of classical topoi abound in the works of Renaissance women poets. Female authiors also frequently...