Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Emblems of Desire: Selections from the Délie of Maurice Scève

Emblems of Desire: Selections from the Délie of Maurice Scève

Sieburth, Richard
Sieburth, Richard

Hardcover

Literary CriticismGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 0812236947
ISBN13: 9780812236941
Publisher: Univ Of Pennsylvania Pr
Published: Nov 6 2002
Pages: 232
Weight: 0.95
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.60
Language: English
Awards: Literary Award

This is the first large-scale English translation of Maurice Scève's poem cycle Délie, originally published in Lyons in 1544 and only rediscovered in the early twentieth century as one of the great forgotten masterpieces of French poetry. A contemporary of Sir Thomas Wyatt in England, Sceve occupies a crucial place in the history of French verse between the late medieval tradition of Marot and the more self-consciously Renaissance poetics of the Pléiade. Powerfully registering the early impact of Petrarch's Rime in France, Scève's canzoniere nonetheless establishes itself as a strongly independent and fiercely idiosyncratic series of 449 love poems addressed to the poet's mysterious object of desire, Delie. Often considered a sixteenth-century Mallarmé because of the radiant obscurity of his verse, Sceve emerges in these English translations as a poet whose passionate ironies can be compared to such English metaphysicals as Donne while at the same time evoking the oblique self-portraiture of John Ashbery.

Introduced and annotated by the prize-winning translator Richard Sieburth, this bilingual selection from Scève's Délie (which also includes the fifty emblems illustrating the original edition) will appeal not only to students of French literature and lovers of poetry but also to the broader audience of readers drawn to the visual and verbal universe of the Renaissance.

Honorable Mention, 2003 Weidenfeld Translation Prize

Honorable Mention, 2003 PEN Poetry Translation Award

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