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Louise Labé and Semiramis: A Feminist Reading
- Women in French Studies
- Women in French Association
- Volume 5, Winter 1997
- pp. 107-122
- 10.1353/wfs.1997.0004
- Article
- Additional Information
The example of Semiramis in Louise Labé's first elegy reverses misogynistic trends current throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance by emphasizing Semiramis' earlier reputation as a great warrior and builder and re-contextualizing her reputation for incest andsexual excess. Thus a poem ostensibly about the power of love, in a literary genre conventionally participating in the subordination or silencing of women, celebrates the power of poetry to transform history, giving women a place in the center.