Keywords

Introduction

Marie was the daughter of Adolphe de Clèves and Marie de Bourgogne and, in 1440, at the age of fourteen, Marie became Charles d’Orléans’s third wife after his return to France from England, where he had spent 25 years in captivity following the Battle of Agincourt. Marie and Charles had three children: King Louis XII of France, Marie d’Orléans, and Anne d’Orléans.

Poetic Activity

Marie’s two known rondeaux both appear in a poetic album of her husband, Charles d’Orléans. Neither poem would have been read on its own; rather, each rondeau represents one piece of a larger poetic conversation between Charles, Marie, and friends and visitors to Blois. Each participant incorporated the same incipit or refrain and explored the themes these suggested.

In or around 1455, Charles, Count of Nevers initiated a series of rondeaux with the incipit “En la forest de longue actente” (in the forest of long waiting), recycling the phrase from a ballad first penned by Charles d’Orléans himself. The Count’s poem focuses on an uncertain wait for love, consoling a friend named Fredet (who offers his own poetic response after Marie’s) (Pinkernell 2002). Marie’s rondeau highlights the emotions of a female speaker, who enters the forest and embarks on a path from which she cannot remove her heart. She is tormented by Fortune, while Hope renders everyone around her content.

Another series was initiated in or around 1456 by Jean, Duke of Lorraine and Calabria entitled “L’abit le moine ne fait pas” (the habit does not make the monk). His poem addresses the conflict between appearances and underlying feelings – a suggestive theme in the context of such performative poetic exchanges. Marie again turns a more sympathetic eye to women’s experiences, and the necessity of balancing one’s private feelings and an appropriate public face. Her speaker smiles outwardly, but suffers inwardly, and she is obliged to keep dancing even as her heart grieves. The rondeau concludes with a favorite motif of Marie’s, tears, as her speaker withdraws to weep.

Religious and Secular Interests

Marie was also an avid reader and collector of beautiful books. She owned many religious texts, such as the Golden Legend and a Vies des Pères, as well as secular texts, including a few Arthurian romances, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a volume of Alain Chartier’s poetry (which also served as a signature book), at least two of Christine de Pizan’s works, Louis de Beauvau’s French translation of Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, and a personal copy of her husband’s poetic album (which contains additional poems not included in his manuscript).

Marie was pious and especially devoted to the cult of Saint Anthony and Saint Catherine (Corti 2016). She made charitable donations of books and money to the Dominicans of Orléans and the Franciscans of Blois and was a benefactor of the University of Caen. Her later life appears to have been fairly quiet and secluded. After Charles’s death in 1465, Marie remarried and spent her final years at Chauny, where she died in 1487.

Summary

While widely remembered as wife of Charles d’Orléans and mother of Louis XII, Marie de Clèves’s known poems speak to her unique presence within the vivid literary ambiance of mid-fifteenth century Blois. Her two rondeaux attest to her skill and pronounced interest in women’s affect and subjectivity (Müller 2001).

Cross-References