Madeleine de l’Aubespine

Madeleine de l'Aubespine (1546 Villeroy, Burgundy – 1596) was a French aristocrat, lady in waiting to Catherine de Medicis, poet, and literary patron. She was one of the only female poets praised by "the prince of poets," Pierre de Ronsard and she was one of the earliest female erotic poets.

Madeleine de L'Aubespine was daughter of Claude de l'Aubespine, baron de Châteauneuf and Jeanne Bochetel. The high-ranking l'Aubespine family had served in ministerial duties for the French court for two centuries until the onset of the French Revolution. At the age of 16, l'Aubespine married Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy an already well-established, well-traveled minister of the king who would, over the course of his life, serve as secretary of state under four French kings from both the House of Valois and the House of Bourbon. L'Aubespine and Villeroy were survived by a single son, Charles, who would become the governor of Lyon and in 1619, made a marquis by Louis XIII.

L'Aubespine's literary influence was three-fold: she was a patron of the elite literary circles of 16th century France, a translator of works into the French vernacular, and a well-known poet whose work is still being discovered today.

Despite the political and religious turmoil created by the Protestant Reformation, l'Aubespine and her husband enjoyed immense wealth and took part in the French initiative to create new national literature in the vernacular. Both she and her husband wrote their own poetry and took part in the patronage of some of the greatest Renaissance French writers including Pierre de Ronsard, Philippe Desportes, Agrippa d'Aubigné, and other lesser known writers. Philippe Desportes was even reported to have been one of l'Aubespine's lovers.

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