Louise Labé Lyonnaise

The portrait of Louise Labé that emerges in this study is altogether more complex than the one handed down by tradition. Encouraged by her peers in the Lyon school of humanist poetry to restore Sappho’s voice and to provide one for Petrarch’s Laura, La Belle Cordière (“The Beautiful Ropemaker”), as she was known, straddles ancient tradition and the creation of a new ideal.

• By (author) François Rigolot