Maurice Scève’s
Saulsaye. Eglogue de la vie solitaireis a 750-line decasyllabic pastoral poem written in dialogue form. It stages two shepherds, Philerme (“lover of solitude”) and Antire (“the contradictor”), who argue over the benefits and dangers of rural solitude and of urban life in the outskirts of sixteenth-century Lyon. The eclogue was published anonymously in Lyon in 1547 by Jean de Tournes, but its last page allows to identify its author as it bears Scève’s devise “Souffrir non souffrir” [suffer not suffer], previously used in his
Délie(1544). The text is accompanied by two woodcuts most likely produced by Bernard Salomon, a famous illustrator and Jean de Tournes’s long-standing collaborator. The first woodcut placed on the first page below the title…
1434 words
Citation: Lyulekina, Elizaveta. "Saulsaye, Eglogue de la vie solitaire". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 March 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38837, accessed 22 November 2024.]
