Maurice Scève
born c. 1501, Lyon, France
died 1560/64?, Lyon
French poet who was considered great
in his own day, then long neglected.
Reinstated by 20th-century critics and
poets, chiefly for his poem cycle,
Délie, Scève has often been described as
the leader of the Lyonese school of
writers (including Pernette du Guillet
and Louise Labé), although there is no
evidence of an organized school. Lyon,
on the trade route between northern and
southern Europe, was a centre of
humanism, and Scève first achieved fame
in 1533 by his “discovery” of the tomb
of Petrarch’s Laura at Avignon and again
in 1536 with his Blason du sourcil
(“Description of an Eyebrow”), adjudged
the best entry in a poetic competition
held at Ferrara. This poem was later
published in the anthology Les Blasons
du corps féminin (“Descriptions of the
Feminine Body”), often reprinted between
1537 and 1550.
Scève’s Délie, objet de plus haute
vertu (1544; “Délie, Object of Highest
Virtue”) is a poetic cycle of 449 highly
organized decasyllabic 10-line stanzas
(dizains), rich in imagery and Platonic
and Petrarchan in theme and style.
“Délie” (an anagram of “L’Idée,” “The
Idea”), long thought to be an imaginary
ideal, may have been Pernette du
Guillet, whose death seems to have
partly inspired Scève’s Saulsaye,
églogue de la vie solitaire (1547;
“Willow Row, an Eclogue on the Solitary
Life”), written in retirement in the
country.
