The Sources of Les Amours de Jean Antoine de Baif (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905. Excerpt: ... III. AMOURS DE FRANCINE. The first edition of the Amours de Francine appeared in 1555, one volume in 8 entitled Quatre Livres de l'Amour de Francine par Jan Antoine de Baif, a Jaques de Cottier, Parisien, a Paris, chez Andre Wechel. The first and second books are entitled: Sonnets, the third and fourth: Chansons. The first edition varies in comparatively few instances from the edition of I573-I574 As Baif informs us in a number of poems, the first Amours were addressed to a fictitious mistress, but the poems addressed to Franchie were the expression of real love. Prosper Blanchemain has concluded from the line Rien que genne et tourment ton nom ne me promet (p. 980 and from a passage in the works of Guy de Tours, where the proper name Genne is assigned to Baif's mistress, that the object of his passion was a Mlle, de Gennes. His conjecture seems well established and has been accepted without question. The work now to be examined appeared three years later than the Amours de Meline. From various passages it seems probable that the poems were written in one year, probably during 1554. The form of the poems furnishes an indication as to the sources which he imitated. The Amours de Meline contains forty-three sonnets and thirty-one songs, the present cycle contains two hundred and forty-eight sonnets and thirty-nine songs. The sonnets of the former work were largely of Italian inspiration and the songs classical or modern Latin. If this is true of the present work the Italian poets have furnished a much larger proportion of the material of the Amours de Francine than in the case of Meline. As before, we shall look first for imitation of Petrarch. On page 99, we find a translation of Petrarch I, 101. Io cantarei d' amor si novamente, C...