L’ombre de Caliste

• Main Author: Miriam Speyer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cercle linguistique du Centre et de l'Ouest - CerLICO 2018-11-01
• Series: Corela
• Subjects: variation; rime; syntax; sonnet; Malherbe; gallantry
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/corela/6838

Gallant poetry flourishes in 17th century France. These mostly short poems emanate essentially from the salons, places of upper class sociability. Many of the texts resemble each other and form a textual network, relying on the social network of writers. These are not professional authors, but amateurs who practice poetry as a pastime. One of most practiced genres during this period is the sonnet. This poetic form is defined by strict rules, and many contemporaries acknowledge its difficulty. How is it that the sonnet form is so abundantly produced? This article demonstrates that the abundance production is supported by the use, deliberate or not, of different, pre-established models, that seem to have been deduced from Malherbe’s famous “Sonnets à Caliste”. The use of such recurrent patterns thus reveal a stylistic community with François de Malherbe’s sonnet production.