Orden 1995

Sexual Discourse in the Parisian Chanson: A Libidinous Aviary
Author(s): Kate van Orden

Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 1-
41
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological
Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3128849
Accessed: 17-09-2018 04:18 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
American Musicological Society, University of California Press are collaborating with

JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological
Society
This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 17 Sep 2018 04:18:37 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Sexual Discourse in the Parisian
Chanson: A Libidinous Aviary*
BY KATE VAN ORDEN
TN 1571, there appeared from the Parisian presses of Jean Ruelle a

I small book in the form of a recueil de poesie entitled La Description
philosophale, de la nature & condition des oyseaux, & de l'inclination &
proprifti d'iceux. The book was a pocket encyclopedia of birds,
including for each entry a miniature engraving, prose information on
habitat, mating rituals, nesting habits, physiology, edibility, and so
forth, and two poems, the first descriptive and the second a poetic
moral. Its melange of myth, facts gained through observation, dietary
recommendations based on elemental science, poetry, and moraliza-
tion of natural philosophy typifies the breadth of mid-century scien-
tific inquiries. Of the sparrow, for example, we learn that it is one of
the most lustful birds in the world owing to its great heat, and for this
reason-here is the moral-it represents a lewd and carnal man who
hides in his house, immersed in libidinous behavior. We are also
warned that the sparrow's inclination to sing provokes "the desire of
lust" in those who consume its flesh.
In the most general sense, La Description philosophale is the product
of a sixteenth-century vogue for cataloguing flora and fauna, especially
the monstrous and exotic. Its text is so limited and its engravings so
generic in their tiny one-by-one-inch format that the book's actual
descriptive capabilities are reduced to almost nothing, however.
Rather than listing birds in an encyclopedic style, La Description
philosophale is finally much more concerned with the philosophical
cataloguing of human morality through images of birds. The poetic
morals in La Description philosophale that liken various species of birds
to the denizens of French society convey each bird's natural attributes
as human characteristics (see Table I). The songbirds, as a class, are
used to comment on the vices and virtues surrounding sexual behav-
*An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Fifty-ninth Annual Meeting
of the American Musicological Society, Montreal, November 1993. I would like to
thank Martha Feldman, Gary Tomlinson, Bonnie Blackburn, and Philippe Desan for
their numerous helpful comments on previous drafts of it.
2 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
TABLE I
Summary of the Moralizing Poems for Songbirds in La Description philosophale
Bird Type of Person It Represents

Torterelle (turtledove) a chaste and virtuous woman
Passereau (sparrow) a lewd and carnal man
Columbe (dove) a loyal wife
Coquu (cuckoo) a vile man who seduces the wife of his neighbor
Rossignol (nightingale) a noble man who praises God with all his courag
Palumbe (woodpigeon) a faithful wife
Hirondelle (swallow) a flighty and inconstant woman
Cigalle (cicada) a man that speaks well of neighbors, singing prai
God
Perroquet (parrot) a gracious suitor who charms the ladies
Merops (meropidan) a faithful child
Gay (jay) a man who is furious when he does not get his w
Huppe (hoopoe) an iniquitous woman, avaricious and full of desir
ior, portraying women as either faithful or inconstant. The wh

and trollops of society are represented not by songbirds, but by
duck, quail, and partridge for their closeness to the earth, to dirt in
most physical sense. Birds like the parrot, sparrow, and cuckoo depi
masculine sexual errancy, while the songs of the cicada and nightin
are said to express religious faith. The fidelity of men, we might n
is not registered within the marital bond that women are mean
honor, but is owed to God. In sum, the moralizing poems serve
field guide to French society, turning each bird into the icon
moral state and eliding the encyclopedic tradition with another tren
in which the French became obsessed with ordering their mem
according to social class against the measure of noble behavior.
The sixteenth century witnessed an unsettling social mobility
France that seems to have been balanced by a rigidification of s
hierarchies in the seventeenth century. New sumptuary laws a
increasingly fine legal definitions of noble status were only the ini
outward consequences of this classifying process.' Such class co
sciousness also produced a whole literature outlining the kinds
behavior that would lead to true nobility of character, a body of te
to which we shall return at the end of this essay.2 La Descript
' See especially Michel de Montaigne, "Des loix somptuaires" in the Essais,
Pierre Villey (Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), 1:268-
2 For an overview of these traitis de la noblesse, see James J. Supple, Arms V
Letters: The Military and Literary Ideals in the "Essais" ofMontaigne (Oxford: Claren
1984).
A LIBIDINOUS AVIARY 3
philosophale evinces a crucial intersecti

particularly sexual-conduct and bird life
If the sparrow's song led inexorably to se
effect of human song? How did the cha
of nature's song as sounded by birds-exp
moral dicta? The question inspires a revisit
repertory. Why did composers turn again
birds? Was the intention a pursuit of er
songbirds recur with impressive frequency
symbolizing song's sexual power. In t
chansons printed in Paris set texts featu
The importance of birds as a chansone
of sexuality can be partially explained b
organizing modes of erotic expression in
poetry. Early sixteenth-century poetic con
their opposing treatments of eroticis
distinction between a high style of lyric u
aims of courtly love and a lower, vulga
been called-that accommodated sexually
3Bird imagery in music has a venerable history

here, most proximately in Clement Janequin's mu
Chant des oyseaux," "Le Chant du rossignol," an
printed in the Verger de musique (Paris: Le Roy &
Richard d'A. Jensen traces the musical imitation of b
discussing the transcription of birdsong in musica
hensive list of these imitative songs. See his "Birds
in the Music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissan
50-65. Birds as songsters are also recurrent images
A. P. de Mirimonde, "Les Concerts parodiques chez
beaux-arts 64 (1964): 253-84. The theme of "conc
from musical scores, is one used in illuminating fou
quite popular as a subject for oil paintings in the s
of Jan Breugel the Younger and his students Jan F
4 Several previous studies have proposed typol
chanson that are text-based. Scholars working with
have regularly described their repertories in ter
much like the one I adopt. Such studies include mo
A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo
Nazionale Centrale MS Banco Rari 229, vol. 7 of M
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Pre
Perkins and Howard Garey, eds., The Mellon Cha
Yale University Press, 1979), 2:63-79; and Lawren
fleur des chansons a troys, vol. 3 of Masters and Monu
Broude Trust, 1984), pt. 2, 24-27. Bernstein's typol
in Marcel Franqon, ed., Ponmes de transition (XVe-X
Lille (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, and P
however, explains what he sees as the schizophrenic
first part of this essay, I focus on the means by which bird songs
conveyed their erotic messages through the idioms of the courtly style
and its carnivalesque reversal. In the second part, we will see that
Pierre de Ronsard's transformation of avian topoi forges a more fully
sexual lyricism that moves within the conventions traditionally sepa-
rating love and sex at the same time that it exceeds those boundaries
and seeks to efface them.
Courtly and Carnivalesque Birds
Representing the singing courtier who languishes from unrequited

love and his sexual organ in turn, birds were special signifiers linking
song and sex in unique sets of references that played both sides of the
courtly-carnivalesque bifurcation. These complex associations polar-
ized the body itself along a vertical axis; speech, the spiritual aspects of
love, and lyric creation were situated in the upper bodily stratum while
sexuality, the physicality of love, and procreation were confined to the
lower bodily stratum.5 In this paradigm, the proscriptions against sex
terms of societal upheaval and transition-thus the tide of the collection). For a
similar bipartite typology of an Italian repertory, see William F. Prizer, "Games of
Venus: Secular Vocal Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento," The
Journal of Musicology 9 (i99I): 3-56. Leeman Perkins, in his recent article "Toward a
Typology of the 'Renaissance' Chanson," The Journal ofMusicology 6 (1988): 421-47,
distinguishes three categories of texts in the mid-century chanson-courtly, rural,
urban-but tends to deal with them in his essay in the traditional bifurcation of
courtly and popular (pp. 426-32).
The idea of courtly love has been under considerable attack in scholarly literature
during the past few decades, resulting in some provocative studies, both pro and con.
I adopt the stance that whatever the roots of the term itself, the concept had powerful
currency in the late sixteenth-century chanson repertory. As Peter Dronke sagely
remarked in Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric (Oxford: Clarendon,
1965), the idea of courtly love "is a garden in which roots can seldom be disentangled,
and in which it is far more important to watch the growth of the flowers" (p. 56). The
most important scholarly literature speaking against the use of the term includes
D. W. Robertson, "The Concept of Courtly Love as an Impediment to the
Understanding of Medieval Texts," in The Meaning of Courtly Love, ed. F. X. Newman
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1968), i-18, and reprinted in his Essays
in Medieval Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); and E. T.
Donaldson, "The Myth of Courtly Love," in Speaking of Chaucer (London: Athlone
Press, 1970), 154-63. The debate is summarized in Roger Boase, The Origin and
Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1977).
5 Our current critical ways of thinking about carnivalesque rhetoric are indebted
to Mikhail Bakhtin's seminal study Rabelais and His World, trans. Hel6ne Iswolsky
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). Bakhtin's thesis was that the gro-
tesque figures and wild exaggeration in Rabelais that gave rise to Gargantua and
Pantagruel provided a mirror reversal of authority, whether represented by the
TABLE 2
Texts Featuring Birds Used in Polyphonic Chan
Poet/Textual
Incipit Sourcea Composer(s)
Arreste un peu mon coeur Desportes Costeley
Au bois, au bois Madame Moulu
Bel Aubepin verdissant Ronsard Janequin, Millot
Bon jour mon coeur Ronsard Castro, Lassus, Monte
Ce que mon coeur pense Mouton
Comme l'aigle fond Ronsard Cl reau
Comme la torterelle - Ou t'attend ta Castro, Lassus, Monte
maitresse
Dedans ce bois ny a beste Regnard
Dieu te gard, bergere Nicolas, De Bussi
En ce beau moys Costeley
En escoutant le chant Recueil tout soulas Certon
En revenant du bois Jardin du plaisance Richafort
Herbes & fleurs Costeley, Hauville
He que voulez vous dire Ronsard Boni, Millot
Il est bon enfant Nicolas
Il estjour dict l'Alouette Certon
Ilfait bon aymer l'oysillon Chans. 1538 Penet(?)
J'ay l'allouette qui volette Millot
Je m'en vois au vert bois Nicolas
Je suis desheritie Cad6ac, Le Jeune
Je vy ma Nymphe Ronsard Bertrand
Je veux chanter Ronsard Bertrand
Le Rossignol plaisante Fleur de poe'sie Castro, Lassus,
Le Blanc, Millot
Le Rossignol sauvage Sommaire Millot
Ma petite columbelle Ronsard Caietain, Clereau
Mais qui pourroit estre celuy Lassus
Mignarde colombelle Anacreon (trans. Renvoisy
Renvoisy)
Mipgnonne levez vous Ronsard Boni, Maletty
Oeil qui mes pleurs Ronsard Bertrand
O ma belle maitresse Ronsard Boni, Castro, Millot
Petite Nymphe folastre Ronsard Caietan, Regnard
Quand ce beau printemps Ronsard La Grotte, Le Roy
Que dis tu, que fais tu Ronsard Boni, Entraigues,
Gardane, Lassus
Que n'est elle aupres de moy Fleur de poe'sie Certon
Rossignol, mon mignon Ronsard Boni, Le Jeune,
Maletty
Si Dieu vouloit - Pleust i' Dieu Certon
Sur la rousie Fleur de poesie Millot, Roussel
Unjour l'amant et l'amye Certon, Lassus
Un jour m'en alloys seulette Sommaire Grouzy,
aSources of anonymous texts: Jardin du plaisance: LeJardin de plaisance etfleur de r
imprimd (Paris: V6rard, ca. 1502); Chans. I538: Les Chansons nouvellement
anciennes Impressions (1538); Fleur de poisie: La Fleur de poe'iefranfoyse recuei
Lotrain, 1543); Recueil tout soulas: Recueil de tout soulas et plaisir pour rejouir
amoureux comme pistres, rondeaux, ballades, 6pigrammes, etc., etc. nouvellement
Bonfons, 1552); Sommaire: Sommaire de tous les recueils des chansons, tant amo
musicales (Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1579).
so fimdamental to northern French formulations of l'amour courtois

resulted in a language of unrequited love that handles erotic discourse
in one of two ways. First, courtly love lyrics employ a series of conceits
that accommodate the treatment of sexuality through double-entendre:
the poet's love-death is understood simultaneously as the result of
mortal languishing and sexual climax.6 The second mode of erotic
discourse allows for explicit depiction of sexual acts in carnivalesque
language, engaging popular characters such as libidinous shepherds
and shepherdesses or amorous birds in its stories of bucolic sexual
encounter.
One of the oldest and most persistent images in t

chanson repertory is that of the caged nightingale.7 "
gale," we learn from La Description philosophale, "does not
held encaged and one can only feed it with great difficulty
free." The poet, whose heart is bound by love, similarl
with passion; the song of the imprisoned bird gives
courtier's plaint. In the chanson "O ma belle maitresse," wit
Ronsard, the caged nightingale is a gift from the lover to
church, the academy, or the monarchy. Many of these images of abas

Bakhtin, could be tied to traditions of popular-festive merriment s
markets and fairs, and the informal popular celebrations (like carn
along with religious feasts: St. John's Day and Corpus Christi to name
carnival came a subversion of the status quo: it was a period during wh
of fidelity were temporarily suspended, a time to crown fools as king
these royal travesties with thrashings.
All-important among the many dichotomies that Bakhtin describ
sition between high and low. Heaven and hell, holy and profane, court
are all oppositions built on the high/low vertical axis along whic
debasement takes place. The body itself is divided into strata of high
the functions of the upper body are dominated by thought and speec
the "material bodily lower stratum," as Bakhtin calls it, are gove
materiality of physical existence: defecation, copulation, pregnancy, an
Rabelais's amazingly fecund idealization of the bodily lower stratum,
is linked to generative forces and fertility (pp. 173-76). For him, mor
itself allowed for carnivalesque reversal: the nose was linked to t
assumptions that they were related in size (pp. 86-87), and the ass w
"second face."
6 The conceits of the illness of love/desire to which the mistress holds the cure and
the love-death constitute the most prevalent courtly themes in the late sixteenth-
century chanson repertory. For a more general discussion of courtly love at this time,
see Boase, Origin and Meaning, 5-53, who describes the characteristics of courtly love
as seen by various writers from the sixteenth century on. See also the important study
by D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1962).
7 In a reversal of this common theme, "Le Rossignol plaisant et gracieux"
contrasts the freedom of the uncaged bird with the lover's heart held hostage by the
snares of sadness.
By sounding the poet's grief in her

nightingale transforms the verse emanati
pure music, and acts as an agent of des
Allez donc Roussignol, en sa chambr
Mon dueil a son oreille avec vostre ra
Et s'il vous est possible 6mouvez le co
De ma dame a pitie, puis vous en rev
The nightingale's song holds the promis

heart to greater tenderness for her su
passions. The nightingale has a privileg
the mistress, in which it serves as the
private chambers is a reminder of her
many other chansons, the nightingale als
and a messenger to the beloved. One o
texts of the sixteenth century, "Je su
nightingale in the reverse role of the mis
Rossignol du bois joly,
Sans plus faire demeur&e,
Va t'en dire a mon amy,
Que pour luy suis tourment6e. (11.
Likewise, in the Anacreontic verse "Mig

sold her dove to the "pobte gaillard" An
deliver a sonnet to his mistress.
The nightingale, or rossignol, was easi
songbirds featured in the chanson rep
including the turtledove, dove, sparr
cuckoo, woodpigeon, chaffinch, and lin
columbelle, passereau, allouette, hirondelle,
and lynote). The popularity of the nigh
arose not only from the beauty of
notoriety-according to the natural h
only bird who sang the entire night
8 "Go therefore Nightingale, in her bedroom, &

your warbling, And if it is possible for you to rous
return [from there]."
9 "Je m'en vois au vert bois" and "Herbes & fl
messengers.
" "Beautiful nightingale of the woods, Without remaining any longer, Go to tell
my lover, That for him I am tormented."
" Pierre Belon, L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux, avec leurs descriptions; & naifs
portraicts retirez du naturel: escrite en sept livres, par Pierre Belon du Mans (Paris: Cavellat,
1555), 335-
symbolized the lover's restless heart, as its nocturnal song conjured

notions of amorous serenades.
The nightingale's ancient mythical origin is recounted in the sixth
book of Ovid's Metamorphoses with the story of Philomela, for which
it was named. I paraphrase the myth as recounted in Belon's impres-
sive seven-volume compendium on bird life, Nature des oyseaux:
Tereus, the king of Thrace, upon first meeting his sister-in-law

Philomela, became quite amorous, but concealed his love. In the end, to
obtain his desire he raped her, cutting out her tongue to prevent her from
telling her sister, Procne. Procne discovered the crime nevertheless, and
the two sisters together killed the son of Tereus, that he should be made
to eat his son for dinner. At the meal, Philomela hid herself behind a
curtain and when Tereus asked for his son, she threw the still bloody head
at his face. Tereus was so frightened that he took his sword to kill the two
sisters, but by the will of the gods, Tereus was changed into a hoopoe,
Procne was changed into a swallow, and Philomela was changed into a
nightingale, that she would lament incessantly, decrying the injury
against her with her languorous song."
." "Ceux qui le nommerent Phylomela, emprunterent le nom d'une fable anci-
enne, qui dit que Pandion Roy d'Athenes eut deux filles, l'une Progn6, I'autre
Phlyomela. Progn6 estoit mariee ' Tereus Roy de Thrace. Icelle ayant demeur6 avec
luy l'espace de cinq ans, luy vint vouloir de voir sa soeur qui estoit en Athenes:
parquoy pria Tereus vouloir qu'il l'envoyast querir: mais il y voulut aller luy mesme.
Et s'estants embarquez passerent la mer. Estant Tereus arriv6 li, des-ce qu'il eut veue
Phylomela, en devint amoureux: toutesfois celant son amour, en fin obtint son desir,
il la viola. Iceluy voyant qu'elle en estoit moult courroucee, luy coupa la langue, de
peur qu'elle ne le signifiast a sa soeur: joinct qu'il la tenoit enfermee. Alors Phylomela
se va aviser de tirer a l'eguille sur la toile, le tort que Tereus luy avoit fait, & l'envoya
a sa soeur: laquelle pour venger l'injure, fit venir Phylomela, & tuerent Itis fils de
Tereus, pour luy en faire manger a disner. Phylomela se tenoit cachee derriere une
tapisserie jusques a ce que Tereus demanda ou estoit Itis. Alors Phylomela, que en
tenoit la teste encore sanglante, la rua au visage de Tereus: lequel s'estant effray6 de
ce qui en estoit advenu, tira son espee pour les tuer toutes deux. Mais par le vouloir
des dieux Tereus fut converty en Hupe, Progn6 fut convertie en Hirondelle, dont est
que les poetes escrivent que l'Hirondel le pleure la mort d'Itis: & Phylomela fut
convertie en Rossignol, affin que se lamentant incessamment, elle enseignast l'injure
du meffait avec son chant langoreux. II semble que Martial veuille parler de luy, quand
il dit, Sic vbi multisona feruet sacer Atide lucus" (ibid., 355-56). Belon's final quote is
drawn from Martial's epigrams, I, 53. In a general way, Nature des oyseaux relies
heavily on Aristotle's Historia animalium and Pliny's Historia naturalis, gleaning names
and descriptions of some birds from the ancients, as well as mining sources such as
Ovid for myths relating to birds. Although Belon's version of Ovid's myth is fairly
faithful, there are some differences. For example, in Ovid, the sisters actually serve
Itys, dismembered and cooked, at the banquet, and Tereus eats him. Also, in Ovid's
tale it is Procne who becomes a nightingale and Philomela a swallow. In this detail
Ovid follows Sophocles. In Vergil, however, Philomela is the nightingale, and so in
most Roman writers thereafter and in Western tradition. I thank Leofranc A.
In this gruesome tale, the crime of se

murder it spawns are punished with the
characters into birds. Philomela's metam
brutally imposed upon her by making her
nightingale. But in her avian form, Phil
Procne-reminds the reader that one c
speechlessness. In the end, although n
defilement robs her of her higher powers
a perpetual state of inarticulate lamentat
While birds in chanson texts typically
utterance, they also often mirrored the
aspect of their multiple associations evid
ophale discussed above. The turtledove, f
symbol of fidelity in courtly chansons: it w
if its mate died, and to sing only if in lov
excessive passion song could inspire. Lik
faithful to his mistress, the turtledove pre
rather than take another mate. Belon repo
that the turtledove "is said to be chaste and not to search for
companionship when its mate has died."'3 In the hands of Ronsard,
the turtledove's traditional plaint is enhanced by allusions to classical
mythology.
T. Un cruel oyselleur par glueuse cautelle

L'a prise, & l'a tu6e: & nuit & jour je chante
Son trespas dans ces bois, nommant la mort m6chante
Qu'elle ne m'a tu6e aveques ma fidelle.
R. Voudrois-tu bien mourir aveques ta compaigne?
T. Oui, car aussi bien je languis de douleur,
Et toujours le regret de sa mort m'acompaigne. (11. 5-11)'4
Here, Orpheus's lament upon losing Eurydice resonates below the

surface of the text, linking the lyricism of the turtledove's courtly
lament with the founder of lyric poetry himself and underscoring the
image of birds as nature's lyric poets.
Holford-Strevens for bringing this discrepancy to my attention and for his helpful
explanation of this myth's various traditions.
13 Belon, Nature des oyseaux, 3 10.
'4 "Turtledove: A cruel bird-catcher by sticky guile Took her and killed her: and
night and day I sing Her death in these woods, calling death evil That it did not kill
me with my love. Ronsard: Would you really want to die with your companion?
Turtledove: Yes, for I languish just as well from grief And the regret of her death
always accompanies me."
IO JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
As noted above, birds played an important role in carnivalesqu

chanson verse alongside their place as a staple theme of court
lyric poetry. One way in which these ribald and sexually mor
explicit chansons were distanced from the courtly style was throug
the careful choice of subjects: the carnivalesque world was popu-
lated not by courtiers and their ladies, but by errant nuns,
shepherds, shepherdesses, and libidinous birds.'5 Expressions o
carnal desire deemed intolerable within the courtly sphere were
permissible in this libidinous underworld where fantasies with n
place in the pristine "high" style might be played out among bird
and paysans for the amusement of courtiers. This is not to deny th
truly popular origins of some of these chansons; it is rather
recognize that even "popular" chansons appropriated or groomed
for the courtly sphere must be viewed as part of the court
dialectic in which references to physical desire may take only ver
specific forms. As circulated in popularesque idioms, the fiction o
upper-class decorum operates under the assumption that inter
course was for birds, servants, and errant clergy. In their reversal of
courtly tenets, such chansons seem both to reinscribe the nobilit
of sexual abstinence and to question it at the same time.
Birds were central carnivalesque subjects. The members of thi
feathered society made it possible to play out the low physicality
sexual stories through a particularly graphic set of associations, f
in chansons birds were often featured as referents for male and
female genitalia. In the anonymous text of "Dieu te gard, bergere,
a hunter asks the shepherdess he meets, "Haven't you seen my wi
bird?"'6
Ne l'as-tu point veu, mon oyseau sauvage?

Depuis le matin, il est au rivage,
's Bakhtin's characterization of carnivalesque popular-festive merriment in Rabe-

lais and His World informs my typology of eroticism: chansons that can be considered
"carnivalesque" act to reverse or overturn the tenets of courtly love. In their
downward movements, these chansons often focus on the genitalia, sexual intercourse,
and the transgression of vows of celibacy, chastity, and fidelity. Through recourse to
licentiousness, carnivalesque chansons undermine the authority of unrequited love
that governs the idioms of courtly lyric.
'6This chanson plays off of the "Robin and Marion" story familiar to musicolo-
gists from Adam de la Halle's "Jeux de Robin et Marion" in which the sexual subtext
turns around a knight-errant's falcon.
A LIBIDINOUS AVIARY I I
Mon oyseau sauvage, mon jo

Qui prent la becasse, connin
Oiseau has long been a word

there any doubt that this pa
certainly the image of the "o
saison" would make the sym
read to mean rabbit, was also
the diminutive form of a no
common usage is attested by t
the vagina:
Petit mouflard, petit con rebondy,
Petit connin plus que levrier hardy'8
Thus the story told in "Dieu te gard, bergere" is one in which the
hunter's falcon is lost chasing rabbits, just as the hunter plans to "lose"
his own sexual member in the shepherdess. Birds most commonly
represent male desire in the chanson repertory through such stock
associations.
In a softening of oiseau's phallic implications, birds often portra

popularesque suitors in a more general sense. Both "Il est bon enfant
and "Ce que mon coeur pense" are cast in the feminine voice and
speak of a singing bird in the garden as a metaphor for a visiting lover
"Ce que mon coeur pense," extending this metaphor, comments o
the transitory nature of love by referring to the flightiness of birds.
Elsewhere in chansons, women are also associated with bird life.
Whereas the bird often represented the masculine sexual member, its
nest, not surprisingly, referred to female genitalia. "Au bois, au bo
madame," a rondeau set by Moulu, features this image of a nest while
encouraging the lady to whom the song is addressed to come into the
woods with the singer.
Au bois, au bois ma dame,
Au joli bois m'en vois.
En celui bois ma dame
Sqav6s vous qu'il y a,
'7 "Haven't you seen my wild bird? Since the morning, he is at the river, My wild
bird, my pretty falcon, don, don, Who catches the woodcock, rabbits in season, don,
don."
s8 "Little fat-cheeked one, little rounded vagina, Little rabbit rather than a bold
greyhound" (Pontes du XVIe sidcle, ed. Albert-Marie Schmidt [Paris: Gallimard, 1953],
337).
Un nid, un nid ma dame

Un nid d'oyseaux y a.
Au joli bois m'en vois.
En celui nid ma dame
Sqav6s vous qu'il y a,
Trois vifz, trois vifz ma dame
Trois vifz oyseaux y a.
Aujoli bois m'en vois.'9
The speaker only gradually reveals what fills the nest in the woods,
pausing to repeat the refrain that ushers the lady into the forest. In a
titillating play of visual metaphor the moment of revelation is equated
with the act of sexual penetration, as she visualizes the nest full of birds
and becomes the bird-filled nest herself. The linking of penetrating
sight and the awakening of desire is pervasive in chansons, where the
moment of first attraction is typically expressed in ocular images."2
"Au bois, au bois, madame" transforms that courtly metaphor,
figuring sight in terms of carnal knowledge and in this way perhaps
drawing on an ancient, classical tradition."2
Finally, in the carnivalesque chansons of the early sixteenth
century, birds are occasionally depicted in the act of making love. A
particularly graphic chanson in this regard, "Sur la rous6e," seems to
have held an endless fascination for its audience: the text appears in at
least four recueils de podsie, 2 in musical settings printed by Attaingnant,
and in two settings printed by Le Roy & Ballard, including one in the
seminal 15 572 Mellange de chansons.
'9 "To the woods, to the woods my lady, To the beautiful woods I am going. In this woods
my lady Do you know what there is, A nest, a nest my lady, There is a nest of birds.
To the woods, to the woods my lady, To the beautiful woods I am going. In this nest my lady
Do you know what there is, Three lively, three lively my lady There are three lively
birds. To the woods, to the woods my lady, To the beautiful woods I am going."
2o See, most importantly, the first four sonnets in Ronsard's Les Amours, ed. Henri
Weber and Catherine Weber (Paris: Classiques Gamier, i993), 4-6, all of which were
set as chansons and all of which liken the moment of first love to darts thrown from
the mistress's eyes that pierce the lover's heart. Likewise, see the character "Doux
Regard" in the Roman de la rose (11. 906-30), who also throws penetrating ocular
"arrows.7"
2" For an excellent exploration of the Diana myth and the operation of visual-
sexual metaphors, particularly in Petrarch's verse, see Nancy Vickers, "Diana
Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme," in Writing and Sexual Diference,
ed. Elizabeth Abel (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 95-109.
22 Fleur de poesie franCoyse (Paris: Alain Lotrain, 1543), Ricr ation et passe-temps des
tristes (Paris: L'Huillier, 1573), Le Courtizan amoureux (Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1582),
Le Trisor desjoyeuses inventions (Paris: vefve Jean Bonfons, n.d. [i 568-741).
Sur la rous e m'y faut aller la matine

Pour le Rossignol escouter soubz la r
Tenant sa dame soubz les bras,
En luy demandant par esbas une aco
Et puis la renverser en bas,
Comme amoureux font par esbas,
Sur la rous6e.
Et puis la renverser en bas,
Comme amoureux font par esbas,
Sur la rousee.23
The refrain of this song-"sur la rous e"-

implications all its own, for the image o
invariably linked to stories of pastoral escap
songs setting Pierre de Ronsard's verse, the
in just such a bucolic setting, where sexuali
turn. In this respect Ronsard's bird so
carnivalesque lyrics like "Sur la rous6e
idioms as they question the artificiality of
of nature's power.
Birds, Cosmic Harmony, and Ronsardian Erot
As the above examples illustrate, birds

with libidinous behavior, but in the mid
continued recovery and dispersion of cla
sciences, the common vision of birds as h
be explained in light of a new rationalis
descriptions were couched in the fami
elements and humors fundamental to sch
the four elements (earth, water, air, and fi
a system for the interpretation of diseas
created. Taking Girolamo Cardano's De
23 "Over the dew I must go in the morning, To li

arbor, Holding his lady under the arms, Asking an
then to throw her down beneath him, Like lovers d
then to throw her down beneath him, Like lovers do fo
24 As in "La rousee de mois de may, M'a gast6 ma
levay, En un jardin m'en entray, Dittes vous que je s
of May, Has spoiled my green skirt, One morning I
You say that I am crazy"). This song shares with "
of morning dew but also the idea of entering a gar
Roman de la rose.
contemporary French translation entitled De la subtiliti),25 we see that

the elements of fire and water were considered to be the principal
ingredients of man.'6
L'homme donques est tres chaud & humide naturellement, pource il est
de mauvaises moeurs, par la chaleur il devient cruel, fraudulent, incon-
stant, & plein d'ire: par l'humidite il est mal, effemin6, impatient de
labeur, & amateur des delices: par les deux, sqavoir est, par chaleur &
humidit6, il est gourmand & libidineux.7
Here, heat and moisture function together to define the qualities

leading to sexual activity in a subtly gendered characterization. Heat
seems to give rise to the male-oriented Martial traits of wrath and
cruelty while Venusian feminine traits such as weakness and the love
of sensual pleasures are attributed to moisture. As the passage
continues, Cardano embroiders his text with further examples of the
elements' effects, and as he reaffirms the libidinous aspect of their
properties, we find that these are elements shared by birds. Small
wonder, then, that in this chapter "On the nature and temperament of
man," birds form a frequent source of comparison, notably in the
discussion of male sexuality:
Pourtant l'homme entre tous animaux terrestres est le plus prepat6 "
Venus, pource qu'il est tres chaud & humide: il est toutesfois surmont6
25 Les Livres de Hierosme Cardanus medecin milannois intitulez de la subtiliti & subtiles
inventions, ensemble les causes occultes & raisons d'icelles traduits de latin en frangois par
Richard le Blanc (Paris: Abel I'Angelier, 1584). A Latin edition of De subtilitate (Basel,
1560) was owned by Ronsard; see Paul Laumonier, "Sur la bibliotheque de Ronsard,"
Revue du seiziome sikcle 14 (1927): 324-25. Ronsard's copy of the book is preserved in
the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, with the shelf number Res. R. 2775-
26 Cardano presents a perfect example of how the Aristotelian tradition was
gradually eroded through critique brought to bear on it by newer natural philosophies
such as hermeticism and Paracelsianism based on the recovery of classical texts, or by
philosophies based on individual scientific observation. Cardano was a mathematician,
alchemist, and doctor. While these excerpts from De la subtiliti might seem to align
his work with a scholastic, Aristotelian tradition, elsewhere, for example, he ques-
tioned fire's place as one of the elements. Cardano might thus best be thought of as
working within a newer philosophical framework that elides the old and the new. For
an excellent overview of the schools of French natural philosophy at midcentury, see
Allen G. Debus, The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific
Traditions in Early Modern France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 1-16.
27 "Man is therefore naturally very hot and moist, because of this he is of poor
morals; from the heat he becomes cruel, fraudulent, unfaithful and full of wrath, from
the moisture he is sickly, effeminate, incapable of hard work and a lover of delights:
from the two, it is known, by heat and moisture, he is a glutton and libidinous"
(Cardano, De la subtiliti, fol. 314v).
des oyseaux, pourtant qu'ils ne jectent g

proportion du corps, & pource qu'ils ont les
De la subtiliti illustrates one way in which th

likened to those of humans in sixteenth-centu
were men likened to birds? That birds were
man, the animal most driven by nature to sex
bird talk to double as sexual slang in the hum
books circulated, reinventing the old phallic c
This network of associations between men and birds served to
situate fragments of the discourse on human sexuality in sites osten-
sibly committed to cataloguing bird life. Pierre Belon's Nature des
oyseaux functions in part as an explication of human reproduction
through the comparison of human behavior to that of the birds it seeks
to catalogue."9 Belon explains that the contemplation of questions
such as how great trees sprout from tiny seeds, or how a small amount
of material issuing from the entrails of an animal could engender a
large mass of flesh, or how a small egg might give birth to a great bird
are all worthy of attention from thoughtful men.30 So Nature des
oyseaux becomes the ground for a lengthy and wandering discussion of
human sexuality ranging from the description of menstrual fluid as a
sort of barren semen to the use of eunuchs as lovers to the queens of
Egypt. The facing plates reproduced in the following pages make
amply evident the continuities Belon proposes to draw between the
human body and that of birds (Fig. I).32
Belon's illustration of the parallel skeletal structures of birds and
humans reveals what he considers fundamental affinities, resemblances
that serve to map avian qualities onto human beings in one-to-one
correspondences. Physical likenesses are spun into the fabric of natural
and moral philosophy such that the instincts of birds are invested with
ethical import. Indeed, both Belon and Cardano depict Nature as a
benevolent overseer in a system of moral anthropomorphism common to
Renaissance natural philosophers, endowing birds with human charac-
teristics both physical and moral. For this reason, Belon's self-conscious
2s "Yet man among all earthly animals is the most drawn to Venus, because he is
very hot and moist: he is however surpassed by birds, even though they give out little
semen for the proportion of the body, and because they have the testicles inside the
body" (ibid.).
29 Belon cites Aristotle as the justification and legitimization of his expose of
human reproduction in chapters 3 and 4.
30 Ibid.,I3.
3~ Ibid., 41-42.
DES OYSEAVX, PAR P. BELON.

La comparaifon du fifdit portraid des os humains monfirecoms
bien cefltuy cy qui eftd'vn oyfeau,en eftprochaim
Portraid dcs os del'oyfeau.
AB
L t
O D
P
V-
-F-
H
V-?
BB
CC
AIA_ DD) ~P
.d4 Lei oyfnx.a donents
lebec rchaN. ifofesan:

lS a4faineqe'llont r iblepmo0mins
j merta en pieces cc FfeLesdeuxos
d~*i4,tuxfixtreb edosdparderrier.
de)shanhs fortongs9, cauil Ia
dota i si r.St. acmnes werebm a dMfobosdesclnes .
M Dexpallerns lonoss & efroif'vEn es cbhaf- G Sixofjeletsaecopion.
Rm ca7". HI Lroidellkduoel.
2. 1os9qdon nomm 14 Lunette Fourchlette I Les f neaes de teall Ippiffewv ~usfa
lfesworeowenjacn arte animal, hors mism u qsil foitrbon.
tfean. k Donewrermi a A ,ii;ado"
Figure i. Comparison of a bird's skeleton with that of a human from Belon's Nature
des oyseaux
LIVRE I. DE LA NATVRE
Portraid de I'amas des os humains,mis en compa

de l'anatomie de ceux des oyfeaux, faifant que
lettres d'icellefe raporteront a cefte cy,pour
faire apparoiftre combien l'affinite cif
grande des vns aux autres.
k c
V .
AA
Figure i. (continued)
introduction of sexuality betrays his awareness of this moral side of the

discourse. The writtenness of printed language becomes the focus of
attention as Belon sets out to commit to paper what is typically
unspeakable: "By putting such things in writing, and wanting that chaste
persons do not feel offended by the reading of them, we will make it so
that they will not find these things in words which are inappropriate to
the honesty of our language."32 In fact Belon concludes that, although
the knowledge of nature's secrets is both pleasing and reputedly honneste,
anyone who should utter ("pronounceroit") these secrets would be found
deshonneste. In an unusual reversal, Belon's belabored reasoning concludes
that printing this sexual material defuses the charged nature of oral
discourse. With this disclaimer he opens the door on sexual reproduction.
The discourse on human sexuality hidden within Belon's book
reinforces the popular image of birds as sexually charged, and illustrates
the ways in which sexual discourses had no fixed space in contemporary
society. Scattered in fragments across the field of writing, from Belon's
Nature des oyseaux to the chanson repertory, the discourse was itself
"comme l'oiseau sur la branche"-unsettled, agitated, displaced. The
opening of the chanson "Rossignol mon mignon" depicts, in just this
errant state, the songbird "who goes alone from branch to branch, flying
at his will, singing." Likewise, the text of"Oeil, qui mes pleurs" likens the
poet's desire for his mistress to the flight of a restless bird.33 The songbird
serves as a metaphor for sexual discourse itself: with few conventional
literary forums, it was rarely set to the page.
In Ronsard's fecund idealization of the bocage (literally, "forest
clearing"), birds are the principal denizens of nature, ruled by natural
sensibilities. While the language in which Ronsard describes his ideal
countryside is often drawn from the literary traditions of the early
sixteenth-century chanson repertory, it is enlivened by a greater
richness of detail, movement, and intention. Ever springtime, the
vegetation is described with active verbs; the air is full of amorous bird
songs and the rustle of avian lovemaking:
Je mourois de plaisir oyant les dous langages
Des hupes, & coqus, & des ramiers rouhars
32 Ibid., 14-
33 Thomas M. Greene, in his seminal study of imitation in Renaissance poetry,
reads Ronsard's metaphors of errancy as part of the discourse on imitation, drawing
an interesting connection between sexual infidelity and an anti-Ciceronian poetics of
imitation that uses multiple models. See The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in
Renaissance Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), I97-2 13.
Sur le haut d'un fouteau bec en bec

fretillars.34
Ronsard's birds illustrate how thoroughly Nature, as depicted in the

bocage, is steeped in passion. In "Je mourois de plaisir" their sweet
songs promise the love-death of sexual fulfillment. Giselle Mathieu-
Castellani, in Les Themes amoureux dans la podsie franfaise (1570o- 6oo),
calls Ronsardian nature "shining in its springtime like the youth of the
world, entirely occupied with love. The sea makes love with the wind,
the flowers offer themselves to the caresses of the sun, and the rose
suffers the erotic violence of the rain, which crushes it under its ardent
kisses."35 She concludes that for Ronsard, "desire itself finds its
justification in cosmic forces."36 Thus the bocage emerges as the site of
a truly natural-and therefore divine-state, a space far from the
artificial moral constraints of court and civilization.37
The rise of a philosophy of natural love that accommodates desire
represents a true turning point in the understanding of human
sexuality, folding man's anthropomorphic projection of sexual desire
onto birds back upon itself and making birds into models of natural
morality. Lyric poetry and song, having traditionally provided the
forum for the expression of love, in this way became the locus of a new
ideology based on the naturalization of the human sciences that
34 Ronsard, "Je mourois de plaisir," Les Amours, 207, 11. 5-7. A translation of the
full text illustrates the points made above: "I could die of pleasure seeing in these
groves The trees clasped by scattered ivy, And the wild vine wandering in a thousand
places Among the hawthorns blooming near the wild roses. I could die of pleasure
hearing the sweet tongues Of hoopoes, & cuckoos, & of woodpigeons cooing In the
top of a stand of beech trees, restlessly beak in beak, And of the turtledoves, too,
seeing the marriages. I could die of pleasure seeing in these lovely months The roe
deer venture outside the woods in the early morning, And to see the lark flit in the sky.
I could die of pleasure, whereas I die of worries, Never seeing the eyes of the one
whom I wish Alone, one hour in my arms in this very grove."
3s Gisele Mathieu-Castellani, Les Thcmes amoureux dans la poisie franfaise (1570-
I6oo) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1975), 169; my translation.
36 Ibid.
37 Ronsard's chanson "Bon jour mon cueur" establishes the countryside as the
site of his "doulce vie," and in a literal sense nature represents "the good life" far
from the court at which he was forced "aller suivre le Roy, mandiant je ne sqay
quoy que le vulgaire appelle une largesse" (11. I3-i5). Also see Ronsard, "La Vie
loin de la cour," Les Amours, 187, and Nouvelle Continuation (1556), sonnet 18. For
a study of the general trend toward idealizations of the French countryside at this
time, see Jacqueline Boucher, "Vrai ou faux amour de la campagne a la cour des
derniers Valois?" in Essais sur la campagne a* la renaissance: Mythes et realitis (Paris:
Socidtd Frangaise des Seizidmistes, 1991), 57-72. Ronsard's most important
statement on the moral quality of life at court is to be found in his Discours des
miseres de ce temps (I560).
worked to efface the conventions separating love from desire

from low, the courtly from the carnivalesque. Ronsardian p
imbued the bucolic imagery of the carnivalesque chanson
sophisticated natural philosophy that expanded avian sexual
phors to include a conception of cosmic forces underlyin
primitive desire of birds. In this dual system of celestial and terr
sciences combined, birds resonate with nature's true voice, m
audible the harmonies of heavenly bodies and the planetary a
they form with earth in a song that is natural through and thro
Belon, in his chapter on bird songs, says:
Parquoy l'homme curieux de sqavoir l'harmonie tant des corps ce

qui vivants, ne doit prendre moindre estimation d'iceux, les oyan
divers tons de leurs siflets, que de l'accord des corps celes
concurrences d'iceux avec les substances terrestres.38
The planetary forces exerted on the earth through conjunctio

other heavenly gyrations are intoned in the multiple pitches o
songs. Indeed, as Belon continues, it becomes clear that the
birds in this Neoplatonic view of nature is that of a celestial i
ment:
Car qui vouldra prendre garde aux oyseaux, & les ou'ir attentive
recevra un parfait sentiment de la douceur de leurs chansons gratieu
non moins armonieuses que le ronflement des nerfs d'animaux en
sur divers instruments de musique, ou d'un vent entonne bien d
ment es dulcines d'iviere.39
Birds are likened to human instruments made from the bones or

and "nerves" (gut) of animals, so that we are led to understan
birds, likewise, are plucked or "inspired" (in the literal sense of b
blown into) by heavenly forces to produce their music.
Such philosophies of bird song were not restricted to the circ
the Plkiade. Several of the anonymous chanson texts in the reper
take up notions of the ravishing effects of the nightingale's
38 "For this reason the man who is curious to understand the harmony of
and living bodies should not undervalue them (bird songs), hearing them t
variety of tones in their whistles that accord with the celestial bodies an
conjunctions with terrestrial substances" (Belon, Nature des oyseaux, 49)-
39 "For he who would take heed of birds and listen to them attentively will r
a perfect understanding of the sweetness of their gracious songs, no less ha
than the vibration of animal nerves heard on various musical instruments, or of
delicately intoned on ivory dulcians" (ibid.).
within the context of bucolic sex

seulette," for example, a shepher
song of the wild nightingale in t
with sleepiness. In her charmed
knight-errant.4o Likewise, the
scholars, Clement Janequin's "
informing the listeners that the
the marvels of bird song. The re
in music, capturing their ravishi
reenact their enchanting effect
beau moys," a girl and her lover
song of two amorous nightingale
"perfectly matched in sweet C
setting of this text for five voice
words, the significance of wh
chromatic genus, which was co
Despite the pervasiveness of Neop
inclined to attribute the text of
Pleiade and, more particularly, to
poesie et de musique.43 The textu
even though it is not fully man
Neoplatonic theories of erotic rav
chromaticism.44 Employed in
40 One wonders if Millot's unusual c

might be related to the text's use of th
4' For a modern edition of this song
chanson parisienne au XVIe si'cle (Mon
42 On the licentiousness of the chrom
& Ballard's I572 Mellange de chanson
Laumonier, 18 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1
moderate use of chromaticism in this p
of the chromatic genus as he conc
chromatischer Chanson," Die Musikfor
what he believes is a chanson by Costel
specific hexachords.
43 "En ce beau moys" was published
Costeley (1570). The print opens with tw
one from Remy Belleau, another Aca
reprinted by Henri Expert in Guillaume
renaissance franfaise (Paris: Leduc, 18
Costeley's participation in it, see France
Century (i947; reprint, London and N
44Ronsard's preface to Le Roy & Ballar
the chromatic genus was banished from
lasciviousness. See Ronsard, Oeuvres com
lovers' song as "Parfait l'accord en douce Cromatique" heightens t

implication that the nightingale's song will lead to sexual aband
Such an implication recalls the myth of Philomela, for whom t
nightingale is named, seeming to turn her into a willing object
ravissement, or to merge the offender and the lamenting victim in on
Belon's Nature des oyseaux is particularly relevant to our und
standing of the place of birds in the erotic verse of the Pl6iade poet
Belon relates how in 1551 Jean Dorat, Ronsard, and others stud
bird song;4s indeed, the proliferation of songbirds in Ronsard's v
alone suggests that bird-watching and -listening must have bee
popular pastime at court.46 In this regard we should remember t
for the Pl6iade and for French humanists in general, the study
natural philosophy formed an important part of a series of ency
pedic projects characterized perhaps most profoundly by the exp
ments seeking the union of poetry and music first voiced by t
philosopher Pontus de Tyard and subsequently taken up by Baf
Acadimie and the later Palace Academy.47 In his Solitaire second
45 In book 4, chapter 26 of Nature des oyseaux, Belon recalls that in 155 1 he

"une trouppe des plus doctes, & excellents poetes de ce temps" assembled at
country home of Jean Brinon at M6dan-Villaines along the Seine for several days
pastoral amusement enjoying the exotic wildlife kept there, after which they wr
"sonnets, odes, & epigrammes Grecs, Latins, & Frangoys" (p. 222). Only
individuals are specifically mentioned by Belon: Jean Dorat and Nicolas Den
though there is good reason to suppose that Ronsard (then a young poet) was amo
the gathering. Dorat was the older humanist around whose teaching the Pleiade
formed-at that time they still called themselves "la Brigade." Additionally, Den
and Ronsard were good friends in these years and both shared a common pat
Brinon. It would seem that Estienne Pasquier had also become interested in bird s
which he introduced into his poetry: a letter to "Maistre Etienne Taberot d
Accords" includes a poem based on the song of the nightingale. See Estie
Pasquier, Les Oeuvres d'Estienne Pasquier (Amsterdam: La Compagnie des Libr
Associez, 1723), vol. 2, letter 12. For a more comprehensive discussion of Belo
relationship with PlCiade poets, see HClene Nais, Les Animaux dans la poisie franC
de la renaissance (Paris: Didier, I96I), I48-6o.
46 For an account of menageries at the French court in the mid-sixteenth centu
see Nais, Les Animaux, 142-48.
47 Regarding the education of the Plkiade, we can suppose that the instruct
Ronsard and Baif received under Dorat in the I540s undoubtedly included t
medieval philosophical and scientific tradition, as well as Neoplatonic thought
this see Yates, The French Academies, 14-15. If what we know of Ronsard's librar
any indication, the sciences occupied his interests in one form or another for mo
his adult life. Ronsard owned, for example, De subilitate by Cardano, Aurelii Cor.
de re medica libri octo. - Q. Sereni medicinale Poema - Rhemnii Po&na de Pon
mensuris. Cum adnotationibus et correctionibus R. Constantini by Aulus Cornelius Ce
(Lyon, 1566), Theriaca et Alexipharmaca by Nicander (Cologne, 1530), and Geo
Agricola's De re metallica (Basel, 1546). The most complete study of Ronsard's libr
remains Paul Laumonier, "Sur la bibliotheque de Ronsard."
discours de la musique (i555), Tyard main

"image of the whole Encyclopedia," encom
natural philosophy in all their forms.48 P
intense preoccupation of musical humanist
ber" and "measure"-although it has no
thoroughly-emerges in Tyard's encyclope
section between the cosmic sciences and m
the musician's role in Plato's republic.49
The Nature des oyseaux resonates with th
precisely through Belon's choice of the vern
his work at odds with the Aristotelian schol
theless acknowledged through numerous quo
animalium-a text lauded for its observationa
scientists as well, giving it an ambivalent stat
Because it is written in French, Belon's co
ornithographic nomenclature serves to enr
much the same way as Ronsard's frequent ne
vernacular appropriates the birds in Nature d
cal, exotic, and common alike-for French. Ro
related appropriation, filled his verse with fl
France as part of his "translation" of clas
idiomatically French lyrics.5'
While this late sixteenth-century intere
monly understood as an occupation of the
the Pl6iade, and various French academies,
widespread manifestations as well. La Descrip
of its small format, poetic quatrains, and an
ubiquitous recueils de poesie that collecte
anonymous lyric poetry for popular consum
seems to have been addressed to a publ
aristocratic, and if the continuing interest i
tion (six editions were printed between 1
48 Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire second, ed. Cathy M

71. In her classic study The French Academies, France
such as Baff's "have a right to be regarded as, in one
academies-links between the long mediaeval labou
speculations of Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the
ment of the organised scientific academy under roya
49 Yates, The French Academies, 95-104-
5so See Allen Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissa
Cambridge University Press, 1978), 8.
5' Henri Weber remarks upon this predilection in t
of Ronsard's Les Amours, 634-
large audience.5' Belon's Nature des oyseaux, too, was peddled to a

larger and presumably more popular market in a streamlined edition
entitled Portraits d'oyseaux ... observez par P. Belon . . . , le tout enrichy
de quatrains, pour plus facile cognoissance des oyseaux (I557).53 The
Portraits d'oyseaux was a commercial venture on the part of the
publisher, Cavellat, who cut most of the text from Belon's expansive
seven-volume Nature des oyseaux and turned the emphasis to the
beautiful engravings instead.54 To this picture book-probably sold
with hand-colored illustrations-was added poetry: decasyllabic qua-
trains encapsulating what must have seemed like the most relevant bits
of information on each bird.55 Finally, in an appeal to the Italian
market, the Portraits d'oyseaux adds the Italian name of each bird to the
list of Greek, Latin, and French ones from Nature des oyseaux. In its
popularizing combination of pictures and poetry, Portraits d'oyseaux
might be considered the model for La Description philosophale. Their
editorial history describes the disseminating of elitist discourses to
lower, larger social strata.
Current philosophies of human sexuality had always been in-
scribed in the chanson repertory. One song in particular, "Quand ce
beau printemps je voy," transmitted the Ronsardian philosophy of
Nature to a vast public. Ronsard, leading his mistress to the bocage,
points to the doves making love there.
52 These collections vary-sometimes significantly-in content, but are funda-

mentally related texts: La Description philosophale . . des oyseaux (Lyon: Benoist Rigaud,
1561); La Description philosophale . . . des oyseaux (Paris: Jean Ruelle, I571); De la
propriiti et nature d'aucuns oyseaux (Paris: vefve Jean Bonfons, n.d. [1568-741); La
Description philosopbale ... des oyseaux (Paris: Nicolas Bonfons, 158 i); De la propriiti et
nature d'aucuns oyseaux (Paris: Nicolas Bonfons, 1584); La Propriiti et nature des oyseaux
(Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1584). The Ruelle edition I cite at the opening of this article
is one that introduces prose descriptions along with the poetic morals and in this way
is more closely related to the encyclopedic tradition represented by Belon's Nature des
oyseaux.
s3 Portraits d'oyseaux, animaux, serpens, herbes, arbres, hommes etfemmes, d'Arabie &
Egypte, observez par P. Belon . . . , le tout enrichy de quatrains, pour plus facile cognoissance
des oyseaux (Paris: Cavellat, 1557). The complexion of La Description philosopbale-
engravings of birds and poetic quatrains-is strikingly similar to that of Belon's
Portraits, although a comparison of the poetry does not show any direct borrowing of
textual material.
54 For a comparative description of the Nature des oyseaux and the Portraits
d'oyseaux, see Nais, Les Animaux, 154-60.
55 On hand-coloring of the Portraits d'oyseaux, see Amdde Boinet and Charles
Leon, "Notices sur une reluire execute pour Diane de Poitiers," Revue des bibliotbhques
21 (1911): 114-16.
... Ha! maitresse, mon souci,

Viens ici,
Viens contempler la verdure!
Les fleurs de mon amiti6
Ont pitie,
Et seule tu n'en as cure.
Au moins, leve un peu tes yeux
Gracieux,
Et vois ces deux colombelles,
Qui font naturellement
Doucement
L'amour du bec et des ailes.
Et nous, sous ombre d'honneur,
Le bonheur
Trahissons par une crainte;
Les oiseaux sont plus heureux,
Amoureux,
Qui font l'amour sans contrainte.
Toutefois ne perdons pas
Nos bats
Pour ces lois tant rigoureuses;
Mais, si tu m'en crois, vivons
Et suivons
Les colombes amoureuses.
Pour effacer mon 6moi
Baise-moi,
Rebaise-moi, ma D6esse;
Ne laissons passer en vain
Si soudain
Les ans de notre jeunesse. (11. IO9-38)56
With unrestrained sexuality, Ronsard's doves convey an association

that permeates the chanson repertory, reminding us of the natural
pleasures sexualized love brings.57 Innocent of courtly constraints
56 i.. .. Ha! mistress, my charge, come here, Come contemplate the greenery! The
flowers pity my love, And only you take no heed of it. At least, lift your gracious eyes
a little, And see these two doves, Who make love naturally, sweetly, of beak and of
wings. And we, under the shadow of honor, Betray happiness for fear; The birds are
happier, amorous, Who make love without constraint. However let us not miss our
frolics For such rigorous rules; But, if you believe in me, let us live and follow The
amorous doves. To wipe away my agitation, kiss me, Kiss me again my Goddess; Let
not the years of our youth pass so quickly in vain."
57 This favored theme in Ronsard's critique of the "rules" of courteous behavior
is leveled in chansons like "He que voulez vous dire." "See the sparrows who make
love, see the doves, look at the woodpigeon, see the turtledove," the poet complains
to his unyielding mistress (11. 2-4); "a little shepherdess sings of her love and the
shepherd responds," but the courtly mistress is silent (11. 11-14). In "He que voulez
vous dire," as in "Bon jour mon cueur," the opposition between court and countryside
TABLE 3
"Quand ce beau printemps" Melody and Its Circulation in Recueils de poisie,

1570-80
1569 Four-voice setting of the text--possibly a harmonization of a preexistent

p?opular melody-by Nicolas de la Grotte in Chansons de P. de Ronsard, Ph.
esportes, et autres, mises en musique par N. de la Grotte, vallet de chambre, et
organiste ordinaire de Monsieur frere du Roy (Paris: Le Roy & Ballard, 1569;
reprints 1570, 1572, I573, I575, 1580).
1571 Lute intabulation by Adrian Le Roy of the polyphonic N. de la Grotte
setting in Livre d'airs de cour miz sur le luth, par Adrian Le Roy (Paris: Le
Roy & Ballard, 1571).
1576 Monophonic melody similar to the superius of the N. de la Grotte setting
printed in Jean Chardavoine's Le Recueil des plus belles et excellentes chansons
en forme de voix de ville, also employed, slightly altered, to set another text
in the collection, "Que ne m'a la mort tout droit."
1579 Melody suggested with the formula "chanson nouvelle sur le chant de
'Quand ce beau printemps' " in the Sommaire de tous les recueils (Lyon:
Rigaud, 1579) for the text "Que ne m'a la mort tout droit."
1579 Melody suggested with the formula "Autre, sur le chant 'Quand ce beau
Printemps je voy' " in Ample recueil des chansons (Lyon: Rigaud, 1579) for
the text "Madame ta grand beaut6."
1580 Melody suggested with the formula "chanson sur le chant de 'Quand ce
beau Printemps' " in Le Plaisant Jardin des belles chansons (Lyon, I580) for
the texts "Chantons louange et honneur," "Or sus tous gaillards
Frangois," and "Que ne m a la mort tout droit."
that traditionally served to separate love and sex, their healthy

libido is governed by a natural law emanating from cosmic forces.
Beak in beak, in a flurry of wings, they act as messengers of a new
eroticism.
The first print to include a musical setting of "Quand ce beau
printemps je voy" was Nicolas de la Grotte's Chansons de P. de Ronsard
(1569). Jean Chardavoine subsequently reprinted the monophonic
melody forming the superius of La Grotte's chanson in his Recueil des
plus belles et excellentes chansons of 1576, calling it a voix de ville.58ss
Chardavoine's designation would seem to indicate that La Grotte's
polyphonic chanson was the harmonization of a monophonic version
of "Quand ce beau printemps je voy" that was part of an oral
is used to distinguish and comment on unnatural (chaste) and natural (sexually active)
behavior. Sometimes birds themselves take up the tune of Ronsard's philosophy,
coaching amorous couples in the games of love: in the anonymous text of "Un jour
l'amant & l'amie," two lovers involved in "les jeux d'amour" beneath the green cover
of a bush are encouraged from on high by songbirds.
58 On Chardavoine's print, see Andre Verchaly, "Le Recueil authentique des
chansons de Jehan Chardavoine (1576)," Revue de musicologie 49 (1963): 203-I9; and
Claude Frissard, "A propos d'un recueil de 'Chansons' de Jehan Chardavoine," Revue
de musicologie 27 (1948): 58-75; facs. ed., Geneva: Minkoff, 1980.
repertory, for in his preface to the print,

repertory he collects there as one based o
"tant d'autres chansons que l'on dance et
ment par les villes."59 Whether or not C
melody represents a preexistent version o
Grotte, it seems to have been quite p
printemps" traveled as a monophonic chan
traffic of anonymous chanson texts containe
tune widely suggested as a timbre in numero
the early prints transmitting the chanson, g
its popularity, which only peaked in the
davoine already seems to use the "Quand c
as a timbre in his Recueil of 1576, emp
anonymous text in his collection that is
loping rhyme scheme, "Que ne m'a la mor
"Quand ce beau printemps je voy" was, w
ful in its polyphonic setting by Nicolas
reprinted five times in the decade 1570-80
tion for solo voice and lute by the printer h
Roy's Livre d'airs de cour miz sur le luth is no
print to use the term air de cour; he desc
simple type of song previously known as voi
again that the La Grotte chansons may in
monophonic tunes for singing strophic ver
"Quand ce beau printemps je voy," for ex
for intabulation as a solo lute song: its
homorhythmic texture, declaiming the t
melody in the superius (Ex. i). The tonal
superius-bassus duet with the tenor harm
sixth below; this proto-monodic style of sup
59 On the voix de ville genre and its basis in the danc

"Voix de ville: Between Humanist Ideals and Musical
The Scholar's View. A Medley of Problems and Solutions
Merritt, ed. Laurence Berman (Cambridge: Harvard
see Jean-Pierre Ouvrard, "Populaire ou savante: La Ch
vers 1550 et le modele italien de la Poesia per mu
anniversaire du Centre de Musique Ancienne Geneve,
Populaire de Musique, 1988), 77-89.
6o "Timbre" is here taken to mean a standard melo
This process of contrafactum defines the voix de ville
6 Le Roy's dedication is reprinted in A. Mairy, Ch
franfais du XVle sikcle (Paris: Droz, 1934), xxv-xxvi
voice and lute are transcribed in the same volume,
REC. DES CHANSONS
Vand cc beau printemps ic voy, Ve ne ' Ia mort tout droit,
I'apperfoy, R'aicunir la terre & 'on- Prins d'vn trair,Rauifant de moyla vie,
de,Et me emble qu e e iour, Et lamour, Sans me faire langoir, Et gemir, A-
Comme enfans naifent an monde. pres ma loyalle amie.
Figure 2. "Quand ce beau printemps je voy" and "Que ne m'a la mort tout droit,"
monophonic chansons from Chardavoine's Recueil des plus belles et excellentes chansons
bass accompaniment allows for an easy transition to Le Roy's accom-

panied lute song. Perhaps the simplicity of this superius-oriented
polyphonic style-signaled by Le Roy himself in the advertissement to
the print-helps explain the subsequent independence of the mono-
phonic melody. Or, conversely, perhaps it confirms that La Grotte
was working with a preexistent, orally transmitted air (a supposition
that is supported by the variants among the versions given in Figure i
and Example i, and the internal musical repetition characteristic of
improvisatory formulae evident in all three versions). Either way, the
print history of La Grotte's chansons provides a remarkable example
of polyphonic chansons that shed their music, circulating first as
monophonic melodies and finally as airs or timbres in the repertory of
recueils de poesie (see Table 4).
The fact that "Quand ce beau printemps je voy" was well known
in a monophonic version transmitted by Chardavoine points to a
popular success among a wide audience: this tune had enough
currency to be used in recueils de poesie as the timbre for contrafacta
texts with no need to include the music, so that, as Chardavoine
advertises in his preface, "everyone can sing [it] wherever they might
find themselves, with the voice as easily as with instruments." The
popularity that "Quand ce beau printemps je voy" enjoyed in recueils
de poisie we may wish to attribute to the wider public addressed by the
recueils, a public not circumscribed by advanced musical literacy and
that extended beyond the courtly and aristocratic one that we have
come to associate with the polyphonic repertory. This is not meant to
Example I
"Quand ce beau printemps je voy," four-voice chans
"La Fleur des musiciens de P. de Ronsard," ed. Hen
1932), 6o-6i
Superius M
Quand ce beau prin - tems je voy J'a - per -
Altus ___ __
Tenor _,____M
Bassus P -+0
Quand ce beau prin tems je voy J'a - per
qoy Ra
.oy Ra -- jeu
jeu -
- nir
nir la
la terre
terre et
et l'on
l'on -
- de,
de,
qoy Ra - jeu - nir la terre et l'on - de,
qoy Ra - jeu - nir la terre et l'on - de,
Et me sem - ble que le jour Et 'A -
mour Comme jeu nir la terresent au mon - de
mour Comme en - fans na
mour Comme en - fans nais sent au mon I de
mour Comme en - fans nais - sent au mon - - de.
TABLE 4
Concordances with Nicolas de la Grotte's Chansons de Ronsard, Desportes (1569)
Chardavoine
La Grotte's Chansons Le Roy's Airs (monopbonic Sommaire
(chansons ~a 4) (lute intab.) tunes) (text only)
Ah! Dieu, que c'est une estrange
(Desportes) X X
Autant qu'on voit aux Cieu
(Ronsard) X X
Demandes tu, douce enn
(Ronsard) X xa X
Douce maistresse touche
(Ronsard) X x X
Je suis amour le grand ma
(Ronsard) X X X
L 'Amour se bande les yeux X
Lasje n'eussejamais pense
(Ronsard) X X
Las que nous sommes mis
(Desportes) X x
La Terre nagu~res glace
(Desportes) X x
Le Ciel qui fut large donneur
(Sillac) X x X
Mais voyez, mon cher
(Ronsard) X x X
Ma maistresse est toute ange
(Ronsard) X X
Or voy je bien qu'ilfaut v
(Baif) X X X
Quand ce beau printem
(Ronsard) X X X
Quandj'estoys libre (Ronsard) X x X
Quand le gril chante au son du
grin-goulin X X X
Sources: Chansons de P. de Ronsard, Ph. De
de cbambre, et organiste ordinaire d
reprints 1570, 1572, I573, 1575, I580
(Paris, Le Roy & Ballard, 1571); Le R
Chardavoine (Paris: Micard, 1576); So
aThe smaller "x" indicates that the
concordance.
insist that "Quand ce beau printemps je voy" achieved a popular status

in the sense that artisans whistled the tune at work, but rather to
provoke a rethinking of its audience-those who sang this song-and
its public-those to whom its publishers addressed their volumes.62 It
6' In making this distinction between audience and public, I follow the terminol-
ogy of Timothy J. Clark, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French
Republic, 1848-1851 (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973), I2; and
A LIBIDINOUS AVIARY 3I
invites speculation on the general place of chanson w
cultural context defined by one of the more mobile soc
sprang from bourgeois wealth.
This particular audience, typically referred to as n
was characterized by an ideology of labor that distingu
and moral stance from the traditional courtly embrace
in an environment where attitudes of nobility help
position, the value newly placed on work clashed w
deeply ingrained in the lifestyle of the aristocracy. Lon
aristocratic pastime, music making was now viewed w
by these "new nobles" who questioned its moral val
sought to place it in their revised formulations of nobl
The defining proclivities of this class contributed to
sexual discourse in which the chanson had become en
tension between morality and eroticism can be locat
different modes of inquiry: the first considers how chan
addressed to members of this class, and the seco
reception history of the chanson within it. These m
excavate meaning from the publisher's side, from
prints were directed to specific publics, and from the a
where the chanson was received. In the first case, we sh
Roy & Ballard seem to have expressly catered to th
nouveaux nobles in the Livre d'airs de cour miz sur le lut
the reception of the chanson among the nouveaux noble
contemporary treatises on noble behavior, suggests
sexual depravity organized their attitudes toward cha
Oisivet6 and the Nouveaux Nobles
In the late sixteenth century, the social order in France was

suffering a shift in fiscal power away from the increasingly impover-
ished old aristocracy to a class of nouveaux nobles to whom the
monarchy sold noble titles.63 These new nobles, with wealth acquired
Natalie Zemon Davis, "Printing and the People," in Society and Culture in Early
Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 192-93-
63 Some of the best general studies of the social and financial position of this new
nobiliary class include George Huppert, Les Bourgeois Gentilshommes (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Davis Bitton, The French Nobility in
Crisis, 156o-164o (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969); Jean-Richard Bloch,
L 'Anoblissement en France au temps de Francois Ier (Paris: F. Alcan, 1934); John Hearsey
McMillan Soloman, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1975); Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France
through bourgeois commercial heritage, were likewise busy recon-

ceiving the notion of nobility to orient it more in terms of the style
and quality of life, and less in terms of the aristocratic pedigree that
they lacked. Meanwhile, many aristocrats came to be not only
financially disempowered (there are stories of such gentlemen being
forced to work in the shops of artisans),64 but the target of social
derision on the part of the new nobility, which valued the humanistic
educational program of France's colleges above a traditional education
in the military arts.65 In short, the social hierarchy in France in the
second half of the sixteenth century was overturned by money itself as
the monarchy came to pay its war debt to bourgeois, merchants, and
bankers through the selling of noble offices, thereby inciting the social
ascent of the recently monied.66
Nobility had always been defined largely in terms of retirement
from commercial activity. In fact, noble titles were originally granted
only to those families who could document having "lived nobly" (that
is, refrained from commerce) for three generations.6' Thus noble life
involved a certain amount of free time. Michel de Montaigne, one of
the class of nouveaux nobles, professed to have retreated to the library
in his tower for days of contemplation. Although Montaigne does not
seem to have been an amateur musician himself, the place of music as
an important part of the cultivation of nobility is clear both in the
in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1986); and James Supple, Arms Versus Letters: The Military and Literary Ideals in the
"Essais" of Montaigne.
64 Philippe Desan, Les Commerces de Montaigne: Le Discours 6conomique des Essais
(Paris: Nizet, 1992), 39.
65s The educational program of Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramee) probably best
describes the type of "useful" humanistic education that was geared to the members
of a mercantile class who were determined to get value for their money "invested" in
their sons' education. On Ramus, see Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From
Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-
Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 161-200. Also see
James J. Supple, "The Failure of Humanist Education: David de Fleurance-Rivault,
Anthoine Mathe de Laval, and Nicolas Faret," in Humanism in Crisis: The Decline of
the French Renaissance, ed. Philippe Desan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
199'), 35-53-
66 On the monarchy's fiscal crisis and the sale of lettres d'anoblissement, see
Jacqueline Boucher, La Cour de Henri III (Rennes: ]ditions Ouest-France, 1986),
146-50.
67 Etienne Dravasa, "'Vivre noblement': Recherches sur la derogeance de no-
blesse du XIVe au XVIe siecles," in Revue juridique et iconomique du Sud-Ouest, serie
juridique, 16 (1965): 135-94, and 17 (1966): 23-129. See also Desan, Les Commerces de
Montaigne, 21-45-
Essais and in contemporary treatises on nobi

the musical arts to a growing public is fu
number of practical musical treatises on the
an instrument, most of which use chansons
for the musical beginner.69 In addition, re
davoine's print of monophonic chansons b
and dance tunes were clearly aimed at this
Roy's print of airs de cour seems specifically
aspiring nobles, for its title transforms the
voix de ville into something more courtly
music's idiomatic simplicity to attract the am
conclude that in the social discourse of th
chanson had a role to play.70
The picture we fashion of noble life, th
which the function of music is quite sim
scenario in which the homes of nouveaux no
68 Michel de Montaigne, Essais 1:26. See also Rabe

thanks to Professor Leeman Perkins for point
Montaigne's own "musical education" related in the in
"De peur d'arracher trop brusquement Michel au so
eveiller en musique; et il eut toujours au service de l'e
cet effet."
69 The French music treatises of the 1570s listed in Ake Davidsson, Bibliographie
der musiktheoretischen Drucke des i6. Jahrhunderts (Baden-Baden: Verlag Heitz GmbH,
1962), include Corneille de Montfort Blockland, Instruction de musique (Lyons: Jean de
Tournes, 1573), which contains twenty-two four-voice chansons used as examples and
twelve monophonic chansons; Pierre Julien, Le Vrai Chemin pour apprendre ai chanter
toute sorte de musique (Lyons, 1570); Anonymous, La Main harmonique, ou les principes
de musique antique et moderne, et les propriftis que la moderne refoit de sept planettes (Paris:
Nicolas du Chemin, i571), of which there is no known exemplar; Adrien Le Roy,
Insruction de partir toute musique des huit divers tons, en tablature de luth (Paris, 1557,
1576), which intabulates eleven chansons by Lassus, one by Arcadelt, and three for
which no composer is identifed; Michel de Menehou, Nouvelle Instruction contenant en
brief les priceptes, ou fondements de musique tant pleine que figurie (Paris: Nicolas du
Chemin, 1558, i571), which uses polyphonic examples without texts or incipits and
prints a chanson in choirbook format at the end, "Le Souvenir de madame jolie."
70 Jeanice Brooks offers an excellent example of just such a nouveau noble who
cultivated music as part of his new lifestyle, in her article "Jean de Castro, the Pense
Partbooks and Musical Culture in Sixteenth-Century Lyons," Early Music History i i
(1992): 91-149. These beautiful partbooks were commissioned by Justinien Pense, a
member of one of the most important Lyonnais merchant families engaged in the
textile trade with Antwerp. The chansons they collect include settings by Castro of
Pense's own texts, evidence that he was an avid connoisseur of the chanson. See
especially Brooks's archival research that illustrates how Pense styled himself as noble
by using the business's profits to buy land at the Seigneurie de Ste-Croix, giving
himself the title "noble Justinien Pense, gentilhomme ordinaire de la maison du roi
et seigneur de Sainte-Croix" (p. 129).
reflections of the court of the Valois. But this does not account for all
the meanings surrounding the pastime of music making: what is clear
in Montaigne and demonstrable in the chanson repertory is that the
nouveaux nobles harbored an ambivalence toward leisure. Tied to their
bourgeois roots, they espoused an ideology of labor that ultimately
replaced the older, more courtly ideology based upon idleness and
pleasure.7' In the meantime, the problem of how the virtuous might
pass the time with "honest" activities-neither laborious nor too
pleasurable-remained to be resolved.
This ambivalence toward leisure is manifest in Montaigne's essay
"De l'oisivet6," in which he recounts the dangers of oisivet6, or
idleness-paradoxically the very same leisure that he sought as he
withdrew to his tower. This essay continually uses reproductive
images to illustrate idleness's evils: idle land, though fertile, will
produce wild and useless plants, and idle women conceive "masses and
pieces of unformed flesh" unless impregnated with the male seed.72
The obvious subtext of Montaigne's essay "De l'oisivet6" is that
idleness generates disorder, monstrosities. And further, that this
degenerate behavior is linked to reproductive and sexual acts.
In chansons of the I570s, the connection of idleness with the
wanton sexuality of young ladies (damoiselles) is quite clear. One
example among many is Ronsard's "Mignonne leves-vous," part of a
whole subgenre of "levez-vous" chansons popular at the time.
Mignonne, lev6s-vous, vous estes paresseuse,

Ja la gaye alouette au ciel a fredonne6,
Et ja le rossignol frisquement jargonne,
Dessus l'espine assis, sa complainte amoureuse.
7' Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne, ed. Philippe Desan, trans. Dawn Eng (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 199 1), xiv. Desan gives as one example of
this "mercantilist and exchange" ideology the common attitude at the time that the
French language was impoverished, but could be enriched "through the slow and
laborious accumulation of new words and expressions within the lexicon." Thus the
accumulation of linguistic capital helps form the basis of intellectual wealth. This
thesis underpins Desan's Les Commerces de Montaigne as well as his most recent
monograph, L'Imaginaire iconomique de la Renaissance (Paris: Jditions InterUniversi-
taires, 1993). A musical parallel, Antoine de Bertrand's project to enrich the
contemporary musical lexicon through the use of the chromatic and enharmonic
genera, is similarly cast in terms of "travaille," "dilligence," "un laborieux & long
estude," and so on in the preface to his Premier Livre des amours of 1576.
72 Montaigne, Essais 1:8, 33-34-
Ian, je vous punirai du pech6 de paresse,

Je vois baiser cent fois vostre oeil, vostre
Afin de vous aprendre a vous lever matin
In this song, the poet's mignonne is punish

by sexual titillation. Indeed, her laziness
adventure. Montaigne argues that oisiveti b
ness and aimlessness. Like the "oiseau sur
"loses itself: for, as they say, it is not in o
In the sixteenth century, the word damoise
woman of "petite noblesse": above a wom
yet below the most noble dames. In the w
intersection of these ideas: the class of the
oisiveti in its feminine adjectival form (oise
of oiseau (oiselle). On what level could wo
likened to birds? The damoiselle was in a st
aspiring to nobility on an upward-bound
yet fixed to one man, she was "comm
unsettled, looking for a mate. In anothe
noble behavior with the negative quality of
meanings of oyseaux, La Description philoso
ingale is the most noble of all the little bird
lazy (oyseaux): "C'est le plus noble de tou
oyseaux de son naturel: car il chante ince
dormir."75 Perhaps, then, it is not mere lex
of unrestrained sexuality represented by
ness of oisiveti, and the associations with pe
word damoiselle.76 Like Ronsard's mignonne
woman fallen prey to the oisiveti of h
licentiousness.
73 "Little one, get up, you are lazy, Already the gay
the nightingale gracefully sings Its amorous plain
will punish you for the sin of laziness, I'm going
hundred times To finally teach you to get up in th
74 Montaigne, Essais 1:8, 33-
75 La Description philosophale, fol. 16v.
7' The word damoiselle was derived from the Latin
not connect it to oiseau or oisiveti. Nevertheless, si
have been very conscious of the way in which "oise
word. I offer but two examples. In the scenes on
Cinquiesme Livre ... Pantagruel, chaps. 1-6), Rabela
form of the word-"dame-oiselle"-to mean "bird-l
plays on the adjectival "oiselle" in damoiselle in
paresseuses, d'escrire a leurs amys."
We do not usually stress this median class of gentry as consumers

of a repertory typically taken to be courtly, but there is evidence that
it had become a significant public for the chanson. Not only did the
nouveaux nobles possess the money to purchase chanson prints, but the
changing complexion of the chansons printed by Le Roy & Ballard
during the latter third of the sixteenth century reflects their new
concerns. This is readily apparent in the simpler musical style
advertised by Adrian Le Roy in the preface to the Livre d'airs de cour
miz sur le luth, and in the new generic label he introduces there. His
renaming of the voix de ville describes a different origin for these tunes,
relocating them from the city (voix de ville) to the court (air de cour),
conferring nobility upon these common melodies.
The new nobility sought to create an aristocratic heritage for itself,
professing a nostalgic yearning for a courtly past in which it never
participated. Surrounding themselves with noble accoutrements and
fictionalizing their heritage perforce, the nouveaux nobles were re-
sponding to the cloying proximity of their too-recent commercial
backgrounds. They worked to distance themselves from their bour-
geois roots, hardening the class lines through legal means, treatises on
nobility, and sumptuary laws: the profusion of literature and laws
codifying "la vie noble" only belies the fragility of contemporary
distinctions between nobleman and bourgeois. Adrian Le Roy, the
driving force behind the firm of Le Roy & Ballard, held the legal
status of "bourgeois de Paris" and apparently owed his success in part
to his willingness to accommodate the tastes of this growing class of
consumers.77 The suppression of the designation voix de ville in Le
Roy's Livre d'airs de cour miz sur le luth is significant in that the epithet
"ville" bore an extremely derogatory connotation when applied to
questions of noblity. As Estienne Pasquier explains, since the owner-
ship of a fief had so long defined the class of old aristocratic nobility,
a country residence contributed greatly to noble status.78 Unlanded
gentry with noble aspiration-those who "lived softly in the cities, in
delight and leisure"-were called "villains" by the landed nobility to
distinguish them from "true" gentlemen. "Gentil-homme de ville"
was an appellation of ridicule and mockery, as Pasquier reminds his
readers. Le Roy's airs de cour repackages the accessible voix de ville with
a title that would appeal to-rather than offend-a public of nouveaux
nobles.
77 Franqois Lesure and Genevieve Thibault, Bibliographie des iditions d'Adrian Le

Roy et Robert Ballard (i55I-I598) (Paris: Soci6t6 Franqaise de Musicologie, i955), I2.
78 Pasquier, Les Oeuvres d'Estienne Pasquier I:I35-
The moral certitude of the gentry, and

surfaces in texts engaging the sexual discour
repertory. Their critiques of chanson e
repressive reaction to the pervasive langu
veyed in songs like "Quand ce beau printem
if they sought to cultivate the moral-b
courtly unrequited love while attempting
valesque sexual underworld that is part and p
to the newer, Ronsardian formulation, it is
beneficent Neoplatonic effects of music sa
of Plato's citizens without risking musical ra
recall that Plato's own ambivalence toward
him to be very discriminating in his musi
this respect, the skepticism of the nouveaux
distinguishes their attitude toward chanson
moral doubt with the overall suspicion, ing
of idle courtly pleasures.
Michel Foucault, in The History of Sexualit
repression at this time with the empowerme
part of this repressiveness, he proposes, it h
subjugate [sexuality] at the level of languag
tion in speech, expunge it from the th
extinguish the words that rendered it to
watchful of repressive regimes, Foucau
propriety as the means by which speech cam
same time, argues Foucault, this repressiv
doxically in the incitement to discourse: "a
one sees a veritable discursive explosion
so-called discursive formations that Fouca
79 See especially The Republic, trans. Richard Ste

York and London: W. W. Norton, 1985), 102-3-
So Michel Foucault, "The Repressive Hypothesis:
in The History of Sexuality, vol. i, An Introduction, t
Vintage Books, 1990), 17-35. Many scholars have w
repressiveness at this time in connection with the
Among the works that I found particularly useful are
in Early Modern France: The Marriage Pact," in Con
Western World, 15oo to the Present, ed. Marilyn J. Box
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 53-
under Capitalism: The Renaissance Lady," in Sex, C
Indiana University Press, 1978), 150-77; and Natal
Top," in Society and Culture, 24-5 .
81 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1 7.
82 Ibid.
sexuality, formations that established elaborate mechanisms to pro-

duce truths about sex through circumscribed fields of meanings,
obscure language, and specific constructs of causal relations.83
The chanson repertory might be seen as one site for the discourse
on an increasingly illicit sexuality that proliferated as these repressive
tendencies grew. 4 The poetic anonymity of transmitted texts tended
to distance their erotic nature from the poets who produced them,
both as the texts were set as chansons and as they circulated in the
always anonymous sphere of the recueil de podsie. The most obscene
recueils sometimes suppressed even the publisher's name, the height of
anonymity; even Ronsard felt constrained to publish his carnivalesque
Les Foldstries anonymously.85 The tiny physical format of chanson
prints and recueils de poesie also seemed to contribute to their free and
anonymous circulation. When they were bound for preservation, they
tended to be grouped together in a milange or inserted amongst works
of other genres and thereby hidden.86
The licentiousness of the chanson repertory was hardly a secret,
however. It caused some consternation among writers on nobility who
recommended music as an appropriate pastime for those aspiring to
noble lifestyles. Traditionally situated among the classical liberal arts,
music was invariably indicated as a necessary part of the humanistic
education that contributed so greatly to noble affect. Yet many authors
felt obliged to signal to their public the dangers of chanson despite the
83 Ibid., 67-73-
84 In two related articles, Michel Simonin tries to reconstruct what might have
constituted a late sixteenth-century French ars erotica using chanson texts, confes-
sional manuals, and medicinals that recommend the reading of erotic literature as
therapy for certain disorders. See his "Eros aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles, les limites du
savoir," in Eros in Francia nel Seicento (Bari: Adriatica, 1987), 11-29; and "Lassus et
I'erotisme a la Renaissance," in Les Utopies brisies ou l'Europe au temps de Roland de
Lassus, I550-16oo (Saintes, 1989), 35-51. Klaus W. Hempfer, in his article "Die
Pluralisierung des erotischen Diskurses in der europiischen Lyrik des 16. und 17.
Jahrhunderts (Ariost, Ronsard, Shakespeare, Opitz)," Germanisch-romanische Monats-
schrift 69 (1988): 251-64, examines the proliferation and pluralization of erotic
discourses in lyric poetry as one defined by and situated between intertextuality and
referential systems.
ss The following recueils-all dirty "marriage manuals"-include the most graphic
late sixteenth-century verse I have yet encountered. Although they lack dates, they are
probably from the 158os and-based on their style and format-were likely published
by Loys Cost&: Discourse joyeux pour advertir la nouvelle maride de ce qu'elle doit faire la
premiere nuict, Discoursjoyeux de la patience desfemmes, Les Tenebres de marriage, and Le
Plaisant Boutehors de oysivete.
86 The Newberry Library's copy of the Fleur de po*sie franaoyse (in contemporary
binding) is bound between two philosophical tracts, to cite just one example. Musical
prints, owing to their unusual formats, tended to be bound by genre, but not
necessarily by composer.
legitimacy of the vernacular among the

friend and admirer of Montaigne, Antoin
with the volubility of music's meanings i
Desseins de professions nobles.87 Having cou
music, Laval then qualifies his advice, oscill
and prescription. Referring to music as "th
"it is so suspect to me that I do not dare
poetry to young people who want to emplo
professions useful to the service of the p
Montaignesque reversal, Laval proceeds, in t
music among "the most elevated and sublim
honorable Arts."88 But the rhetoric aga
here he must be talking about chanson for
jeu de Luth, de Musique & de vers") se
vilification of the lyric arts as Sirens draw
of music's sensual and deadly potential, for
having a face like a woman, who sing very
end of their music's sensuality is death."'9 H
Sirens embody the damoiselle's allure in
though Laval acknowledges that the lyric ar
he is quick to identify the risky moral decl
ravissement entails:
Mais le chatoiiillement & le transport y est

garde a se roydir contre ces Ministres de volu
un homme & l'emportent tout entier, croupir
de l'oysiviet6.90
Despite his colloquial language, Laval's wa

tive potential of chanson is cast in term
Neoplatonism. Yet what is, for the courtly
87 Antoine Mathe de Laval, Desseins de profession

l'Angelier, 1605). On Laval's friendship with Mon
d'alliance de Montaigne, Mademoiselle de Gournay (P
88 "Ceste Circe m'est si suspecte que je n'ose en co
la Poesie h la jeunesse qui veut s'employer i quelqu'u
le public" (ibid., fol. 5r).
89 Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire premier, ed. Silvio
"Les Sirenes sont petits oiseaux, ayans la face comm
melodieusement: mais l'unique fin de la volupt6 de l
90 "But the tickling & the transport there is so grea
care to harden himself against these ministers of
truss up a man & carry him off whole, to stagnate his
(fol. 5v).
transport of the listener begun by the incursion of the fureur poFtique

becomes, in Laval's world view, a somewhat diabolic ravishing of the
victim's soul.
The ambivalence that Laval evinces toward the chanson is em-
blematic of an author's struggle to accommodate an older, aristocratic
art form that arose from a society espousing an ideology of leisure to
a newer, bourgeois conception of noble life with a vastly different
ideological heritage. The nouveau noble ideology of labor strikes an
uneasy balance with the chanson: at the same time authors like Laval
suggest the cultivation of music as part of a humanistic education, and
publishers like Adrian Le Roy are supplying amateurs with "chansons
... beaucoup plus legieres," the moral value of song is deeply suspect.
Ostensibly, chanson singing was a means by which to pass leisure
time without falling into idleness. Such titles as Recueil de tout soulas et
plaisir pour re~souir et passer temps, La Ricriation et passetemps des tristes,
or L'Amoureux passetemps make their intentions clear.9' While chan-
sons and recueils de poisie were thus seen as an honest occupation to
avert the sexual abandon that might arise during idle hours, musical
pastimes could dangerously invite lascivious behavior through the new
eroticism encoded in popular texts like "Quand ce beau printemps je
voy," through carnivalesque imagery, and through the sensual "tick-
ling and transport" of the music itself. Couched in terms of the
songbird, the ideological strands shot through the chanson draw
together in a topos that is at once courtly, popular, sexual, and
musical.
The University of Chicago
ABSTRACT
Chanson texts featuring birds form a unique nexus of voices in the sexual
discourse pervading the Parisian repertory of the late sixteenth century. The
eroticism of these chansons is often expressed according to the older poetic
conventions of unrequited courtly love and its carnivalesque abasement
focusing on the lower body, or by a synthesis of the two characterized by the
poetry of Pierre de Ronsard. Ronsard's sensual lyricism tended to employ
avian imagery in support of a naturalized philosophy of love encouraging
sexuality. Birds, considered to have a libido surpassing that of humans,
became a favored theme, and composers set many of these Ronsardian texts.
In the second part of this essay, I contextualize the reception of the erotic
Nevertheless, the prefatory poem of La R"cr ation, "Aux Dames," warns:

"Beware of touching this book (my ladies), it speaks of love."
chanson among France's upper classes, relating it

aristocracy and the noble aspirations of the bour
or bourgeois that ennobled themselves with the p
had the fiscal power to acquire music and see
sexual repression that Foucault saw as emblem
itself-a repression that spawned a whole literatur
chanson formed a rich locus of this contempo
comportment, and the moral effects of music.

Orden 1995

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Orden 1995

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Sexual Discourse in the Parisian Chanson: A Libidinous Aviary

Author(s): Kate van Orden

American Musicological Society, University of California Press are collaborating with

BY KATE VAN ORDEN

TN 1571, there appeared from the Parisian presses of Jean Ruelle a

Summary of the Moralizing Poems for Songbirds in La Description philosophale

Bird Type of Person It Represents

ior, portraying women as either faithful or inconstant. The wh

philosophale evinces a crucial intersecti

3Bird imagery in music has a venerable history

Courtly and Carnivalesque Birds

Representing the singing courtier who languishes from unrequited

Texts Featuring Birds Used in Polyphonic Chan

so fimdamental to northern French formulations of l'amour courtois

One of the oldest and most persistent images in t

church, the academy, or the monarchy. Many of these images of abas

By sounding the poet's grief in her

The nightingale's song holds the promis

Likewise, in the Anacreontic verse "Mig

8 "Go therefore Nightingale, in her bedroom, &

symbolized the lover's restless heart, as its nocturnal song conjured

Tereus, the king of Thrace, upon first meeting his sister-in-law

In this gruesome tale, the crime of se

T. Un cruel oyselleur par glueuse cautelle

Here, Orpheus's lament upon losing Eurydice resonates below the

As noted above, birds played an important role in carnivalesqu

Ne l'as-tu point veu, mon oyseau sauvage?

's Bakhtin's characterization of carnivalesque popular-festive merriment in Rabe-

Mon oyseau sauvage, mon jo

Oiseau has long been a word

In a softening of oiseau's phallic implications, birds often portra

Un nid, un nid ma dame

Sur la rous e m'y faut aller la matine

The refrain of this song-"sur la rous e"-

Birds, Cosmic Harmony, and Ronsardian Erot

As the above examples illustrate, birds

23 "Over the dew I must go in the morning, To li

contemporary French translation entitled De la subtiliti),25 we see that

Here, heat and moisture function together to define the qualities

des oyseaux, pourtant qu'ils ne jectent g

De la subtiliti illustrates one way in which th

DES OYSEAVX, PAR P. BELON.

Portraid dcs os del'oyfeau.

.d4 Lei oyfnx.a donents

lebec rchaN. ifofesan:

Portraid de I'amas des os humains,mis en compa

introduction of sexuality betrays his awareness of this moral side of the

Sur le haut d'un fouteau bec en bec

Ronsard's birds illustrate how thoroughly Nature, as depicted in the

worked to efface the conventions separating love from desire

Parquoy l'homme curieux de sqavoir l'harmonie tant des corps ce

The planetary forces exerted on the earth through conjunctio

Birds are likened to human instruments made from the bones or

within the context of bucolic sex

40 One wonders if Millot's unusual c

lovers' song as "Parfait l'accord en douce Cromatique" heightens t

45 In book 4, chapter 26 of Nature des oyseaux, Belon recalls that in 155 1 he

discours de la musique (i555), Tyard main

48 Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire second, ed. Cathy M

large audience.5' Belon's Nature des oyseaux, too, was peddled to a

52 These collections vary-sometimes significantly-in content, but are funda-

... Ha! maitresse, mon souci,

With unrestrained sexuality, Ronsard's doves convey an association

"Quand ce beau printemps" Melody and Its Circulation in Recueils de poisie,