Poétesses: Muses and Mistresses, Revolutionaries, Scribblers, Bluestockings, et al.

This massive anthology, which provides both originals and translations of more than 600 poems, is the realization of an enormous and well-executed project: first identifying the corpus of poetry now available by French women from the Middle Ages onward; then evaluating the poets' accomplishments and appeal, making selections, and gathering basic biographic information; and finally translating and annotating the selections. Norman Shapiro, who is a professor of romance languages at Wesleyan University, is responsible for numerous earlier translations of French poets and dramatists (La Fontaine and other fabulists, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Feydeau, Louisiana Creole authors). His skill and conscientiousness with regard to both form and content are remarkable. His stellar work in this volume, which includes a translator's preface as well as a selected (but extensive) bibliography, is complemented by a three-part index and contributions by others. Rosanna Warren has written the foreword; the introductions to chronological divisions are the work of Roberta Krueger, Catherine Lafarge, and Catherine Perry.

Fifty-six poets, many unknown even to those familiar with French literature, are represented—from Marie de France, in the late twelfth century, to Liliane Wouters (born in 1930) and Albertine Sarrazin (1937–67), who spent much of her short life in reform schools and jail. Some names are utterly obscure; others are known in various connections. Marguerite de Navarre, who wrote tales collected in L'Heptaméron, was the sister of François i; Jeanne d'Albret, Marguerite's daughter, became the mother of Henri iv; Pernette du Guillet was the muse of Lyonnais poet Maurice Scève; Madeleine de Scudéry, an important novelist and salon hostess, devised the celebrated "Carte de tendre" (map of love); Fanny de Beauharnais was connected to the future empress Joséphine; Delphine Gay de Girardin, who met the literati in her mother's salon, was involved with the poet Vigny, and then married the director of an important newspaper and had her own salon; Louise Colet was Flaubert's mistress and had other literary liaisons; Louise Michel was a revolutionary exiled to New Caledonia; Natalie Clifford Barney and Renée Vivien led notoriously unconventional lives; Cécile Sauvage became the mother of the composer Olivier Messiaen; Louise de Vilmorin, briefly the fiancée of Saint-Exupéry, had lengthy affairs with André Malraux. Some otherwise well-known women authors, notably George Sand, do not appear here because they published little or no verse.

All the selections are complete. The translator follows scrupulously the original form—syllable count, stanza, and rhyme pattern (nearly all the poems are rhymed, even in the twentieth century, when free verse was widely adopted by men). He finds English equivalents for puns and other witticisms, often reproduces sound echoes (he has a fine ear), and, with great skill, honors other features of the originals; his rare liberties are explained in notes. He is obliged, however, to use extra lines: French is more concise than English, and he has chosen to lengthen his versions rather than to sacrifice meaning.

Projects such as this, based on sexual, ethnic, racial, or religious categories, are taken for granted now, and not just on practical grounds; groups, however they may be defined, are assumed to have distinct characteristics, setting them apart from others, and thus should have avenues of expression reserved for them. These groups may be narrowly construed, approaching atomization; that does not apply, of course, to the category of women. In the present instance one may make a historical case for selection on the basis of gender. The treatment of women authors that characterized certain nineteenth-century French criticism is so out-of-date as to be risible. To the poet Lamartine, Germaine de Staël (a novelist) had sacrificed her femininity and become an "orator"; George Sand was labeled, pejoratively, une écriveuse (woman scribbler). Gustave Lanson, the most methodical literary historian of his period, dismissed Christine de Pizan (1364?–1430?), now held in high regard by...