"Gendered Books: Parisian and Lyonnais Editions of Pernette du Guillet"
Leah Chang, The George Washington University
When the Parisian printer Jeanne de Marnef published the Rithmes et Poésies de gentile et vertueuse Dame D. Pernette du Guillet in 1546, she may have hoped to profit from another printer’s success: the Lyonnais printer, Jean de Tournes, had published his edition of Pernette du Guillet just the previous year. And yet, Marnef did not simply reprint Tournes’s edition: she artfully borrowed from his imprint, culling some texts and adding others to create an entirely new volume in which Pernette du Guillet plays a crucial, but not monolithic role. The editions by Tournes and Marnef represent early French experimentation in crafting books by, for, and about women for specific civic and bourgeois audiences. My paper will explore how these books reflect competitions between both printers and Parisian and Lyonnais audiences, and how concepts of gender difference – among authors, narrative voices, printers, and readers – function within these textual and civic tensions.
