Gabrielle de Coignard

Gabrielle de Coignard (1550-1586) was a French poet, born in Toulouse, France, to John de Coignard and Louise de Baulac.[1] She married a prominent statesman, Pierre de Manescal, in 1570, and was widowed three years later, with two young daughters, Jeanne and Catherine.[2] She turned to writing spiritual verse to help her spiritual and physical struggles.[3]

Eight years after her death (1594), her daughters decided to publish her poems under the title Œuvres chrestiennes.[4] The poems in this volume include 129 "spiritual sonnets," as well as other poems of varying length, including a long poem on the triumph of the deuterocanonical heroine Judith. Catholic spirituality is the focus of Coignard's work,[5] as it is in the work of her contemporary, Anne de Marquets, who wrote on many of the same subjects.

Notes

  1. ^ Antoinette Gimarert, "Gabrielle de Coignard," SIEFAR website
  2. ^ Berriot-Salvadore, 1990, 435.
  3. ^ Coignard, Gabrielle de: "Spiritual Sonnets" (Edited & Translated by Melanie E. Gregg). University of Chicago Press, 2003.
  4. ^ Ibid.
  5. ^ Ibid.

References

Berriot-Salvadore. Les femmes dans la société française de la Renaissance. Genève: Droz, 1990.
Coignard, Gabrielle de. Œuvres chrestiennes. Ed. Colette H. Winn. Genève: Droz, 1995.

External links

1. Gabrielle de Coignard article by Antoinette Gimaret on the SIEFAR website.