"Pis que morte": les lettres de Marguerite d'Angoulême à Guillaume Briçonnet, laboratoire de l'écriture du Dialogue en forme de vision nocturne (automne 1524)

Abstract:

Before she became Queen of Navarre in 1527, Marguerite d’Angoulême, Sister of King Francis I, and Guillaume Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, wrote more than one hundred and twenty letters to each other between 1521 and 1524. Several scholars have already shown how Marguerite drew inspiration from the letters of Briçonnet. This article reveals how much Marguerite’s own letters to the bishop nourished her first important poem, the famous Dialogue en forme de vision nocturne, written after the death of her niece Charlotte de France in 1524. After a necessary clarification on the date of composition of this funeral text, the article shows that the letters written by Marguerite guide her in the appropriation of Briçonnet’s theological teachings before they are shaped in the poem. Because Marguerite’s letters constitute a spiritual exercise on the path of poetic writing, they enable the reader of the Dialogue to decode the meanings of the paradoxical expression “pis que morte”, which is to be understood quite differently between the very beginning of the poem and its final line: the spiritual significance of the whole Dialogue is thus revalued.