SOURCE: Nash, Jerry C. “The Rhetoric of Scorn in Hélisenne de Crenne.” French Literature Series 19 (1992): 1-9.

In the following essay, Nash argues that de Crenne angrily but effectively attacked male domination and marginalization of women in her writings—in a restrained manner in her novel but bluntly and with clear scorn in her letters.

As a Renaissance female writer, Hélisenne de Crenne was deeply and extensively involved in the “querelle des femmes,” the heated debate in the early sixteenth century on the nature and status of woman. This is the subject that virtually every study of her writings over the past decade and even beyond has pursued to one extent or another. She is shown, and justifiably so, to be one of the Renaissance's chief defenders and proponents of women's rights and women's art.¹ There is, to be sure, another querelle that Hélisenne was also...