Gabrielle de Coignard's Sonnets spirituels Writing Passion within and against the Petrarchan Tradition
This article will focus on the ways in which Gabrielle de Coignard's Sonnets spirituels cultivated in purposefully sought domestic isolation, reveals conflictual aspirations nourished by the pursuit of an untainted devotional path that nevertheless cannot escape the assimilation of the earthly passion fraught discourse of the Petrarchan tradition. Beginning with an analysis of the two opening sonnets, I will examine how despite her apparent disavowal of the worldly obsessions of practitioners of this dominant tradition in order to define herself as a singularly and purely Christian poet, her writing places many of their conventions, allusions, and rhetoric at the centre of her own poetic itinerary. I will then move on to study how these opening signals of Coignard's inscription of her devotional trajectory both against and within the male and female Petrarchan tradition are affirmed at multiple moments in the progression of her collection. Cet article approfondira les facons dont les Sonnets spirituels de Gabrielle de Coignard, composes dans le cadre d'une solitude domestique voulue, font preuve de fortes aspirations conflictuelles nourries par la poursuite d'un chemin devotionnel qui n'arrive neanmoins pas a s'echapper de l'assimilation du discours des passions terrestres dans la tradition petrarquiste. A partir d'une analyse des deux premiers sonnets, j'examinerai comment malgre son refus apparent de ces obsessions chez Petrarque et ses imitateurs/imitatrices francais, un refus vise a se definir en tant que poetesse purement chretienne l'ecriture de Coignard incorpore maints elements de la rhetorique petrarquiste au centre de son propre itineraire poetique. J'etudierai, par la suite, comment ces signes inauguraux de l'inscription de sa trajectoire spirituelle a l'interieur et a l'encontre du discours petrarquiste sont affirmes a de multiples moments dans la progression de son recueil.