Litanies of a Name

Magdalena Kowalska, “Litanies of a Name. The Holy Name of Jesus in the Sonnets of Anne de Marquets and Gabrielle de Coignard,” Journal of Academic Perspectives (2017) 2.

This paper analyses the sonnets of two sixteenth-century poets, Gabrielle de Coignard and Anne de Marquets. The main theme of their literary works is Christian devotion, for instance, the analyzed sonnets use the motif of the Holy Name of Jesus. In the interpretation, two models are evoked: the pattern of liturgical litanies (for some of them it was not established or was in private use, and it was not allowed for the public devotion) as well as the models of male’s sonnet composition (considering the poetry of Pierre de Ronsard or Joachim du Bellay), popular in this period, both using the analogous stylistic devices such as the anaphora and the repetition.

These models are artistically modified to achieve the aim of celebrating the Holy Name of Jesus, at the same time reducing the supplicatory overtone. The interpretation reveals that women do write in the name of the community, but the perspective of individual emotions aims to be crucial, and chiefly Coignard establishes a more intimate relation with the addressee. For Marquets the most appealing aspect of litany which she profits from is the intercession, which she uses as the strategy of respect and distance.