The semantics of a name in Madame Jeanne Flore’s Comptes amoureux (ca 1542)

Abstract

The article analyses the semantics of the name of the narrator and addressee of Contes amoureux, a French collection of adaptations from Italian narrative sources published under the pseudonym Jeanne Flore. This collection is an example of “editorial writing” — a collaborative effort by several authors commissioned by a printer or bookseller. The paradoxical double name, Madame Egine Minerve, combines the virgin goddess of wisdom and one of the nymphs kidnapped by Jupiter, as described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and its medieval adaptations. The second part of the name refers to Marguerite de Navarre, who was renowned for her virtue, while the first part allows her to be portrayed in the text as Cupid’s servant. An analysis of French translations of the Decameron reveals an unexpected connection between the name Egine and a personage in one of Boccaccio’s novellas included in the collection. It can be assumed that the narrator of Boccaccio’s novella responds ironically to Madame Minerve, describing her transition to the power of Cupid (under threat of hellish torment). This literary game, based on the clash between the Christian value system present in The Decameron and the mythological (poetic) and pseudo-courtly system underlying Les Comptes amoureux, clarifies one of the mysteries of the collection and sheds light on some of its structural elements.