Seductive Topographies: The Languages of Landscape in La Puce de Madame des-Roches

Two of the most interesting discourses to in the sixteenth century were topographical description and the anatomical blason. These traditions appear to have little in common: one accompanied the development of cartographical techniques, the other was a literary fashion sparked by a contest among poets. They converge, however, in an anthology recording a salon game that Estienne Pasquier and Catherine Des Roches initiated during the 1579 Grands Jours de Poitiers. (1) The humanist lawyer Pasquier's now famous encounter with Des Roches--their playful banter about a flea he claims to have seen on her breast--provides the pretext for the genesis of the collaborative volume of poetry that came out of the gatherings that Catherine and her mother Madeleine Des Roches hosted in their home. (2) Poems by Pasquier and Des Roches set the tone for an extended series of exchanges on the subject of this insect: more than a dozen participants composed mock encomia on the flea. La Puce de Madame des-Roches presents the activities of a provincial salon at an important moment in Poitiers's history. It celebrates Catherine's body as a site of exploration and the city as a political and literary center. (3) Many of the poems in the collection bear witness to the context of its creation, the 1579 Grands Jours de Poitiers. (4) The poets of La Puce link the Dames Des Roches to Poitiers. The rhetoric of description and possession of the land complements the representations of individual parts of the female body. The salon visitors link Catherine Des Roches to Poitiers by linking the imagined details of her body to a mythologized vision of the city. Their poems create two corresponding imaginary topographies--a politicized "topography" of the female body of Catherine Des Roches and a feminized topography of the city of Poitiers. A consideration of the connection between landscape and sexuality in La Puce reveals the intricate associations between the language of topography and the language of the body. These two seemingly unrelated traditions intersect in several examples that merit close examination. (5) The jocular atmosphere that inspired the literary contest of La Puce is apparent in the collected poems. The printed volume reconstructs the authors' relationships to one another: they address each other, translate and imitate their peers, and respond to each other's poems. The salon is a site of mutual congratulation and display of both learning and a sense of humor, and the anthology captures its spirit. The poets' references to each other, in the form of inscriptions of each other's names, illustrate this erudite playfulness. Pasquier and Madeleine Des Roches, for example, each construct a poem around a list of some of the book's contributors, transforming the proper names with elaborate anagrams and puns. (6) References to the Dames Des Roches--not surprisingly, the most widespread of the inscriptions--play on the rich associations of the women's name, which literally means "of the rocks." (7) The authors refer to the physical features of Poitiers as well as to familiar mythological places and figures associated with rocks. Their poetic vision of Poitiers and their praise of the Dames Des Roches certainly display the poets' inventiveness and erudition, but they also call attention to the people and place that inspired them. The topography of Poitiers was prominent in the local popular imagination during the Renaissance. The elevated site of the city is itself closely surrounded by hills on three sides, offering an unusual setting that inspired authors of history and literature. Several historians of the 1569 Protestant siege on Poitiers provide detailed descriptions of the city's topography. Notably, they survey the advantages and disadvantages, for both defending and attacking armies, of the various elevations. (8) In particular, the steep slopes on the right bank of the Clain opposite the city protected the Protestant troops led by Gaspard de Coligny. …