SOURCE: “Ronsard's Erotic Diptych: Le ravissement de Cephale and Le defloration de Lede,” in French Studies, Vol. XLVII, No. 4, October, 1993, pp. 385-403.

In the following essay, Ford studies two odes by Ronsard that present erotic, mythological stories and draws allegorical and thematic parallels between both works.

Throughout his poetic career, Ronsard seemed fascinated by the relationship between poetry and the visual arts. While art theorists at that time borrowed their vocabulary and approach to painting from the world of rhetoric, Ronsard often modelled his own literary technique on the mannerist works of art which proliferated under the Valois kings. Two early odes, “Le Ravissement de Cephale” (L. II. 133-47) and “La Defloration de Lede” (L. II. 67-79) offer an interesting example of a poetic diptych, worthy in its complexity of the frescoes at the palace of Fontainebleau.¹ First published in 1550 in the Quatre Premiers Livres des Odes, they...