Spotlight

The honour of a modern Amazon

PREVOST DE GONTIER, Jean (16th c.) Les Amours de la belle du Luc. Où est demonstrée la vengeance d'Amour, envers ceux qui mesdisent de l'honneur des dames. Dernière édition reveüe corrigée. Paris, Anthoine du Brueil, 1597. 16mo (137 x 78 mm), 82 ff (f.14 misnumb. 41). 19th c. red morocco by C. Smith, spine with raised bands, title gilt, edges gilt. Spine rubbed, dampstain on the first pastedown, somewhat toned throughout.

Very rare work in defence of la Belle du Luc by Prévost de Gontier, also known as the author of a rare account of a parricide that occurred in the Bordeaux region. The story was a notorious judicial case in late sixteenth-century France. The incident took place on 20 May 1593 in Marmande, in southwestern France, when a young woman known as la demoiselle du Luc stabbed a gentleman named L’Espinasse, whom she accused of having slandered her honour and defamed her reputation.

The case quickly became a cause célèbre, provoking a sustained and vigorous polemic in pamphlets, legal treatises, and literary works. Contemporary commentators debated whether her action should be understood as a legitimate defence of female honour or condemned as an illicit act of private justice. Her act of resistance, dagger in hand, against an overly insistent suitor transformed her, depending on the viewpoint, into either a modern Amazon or a dangerous criminal. She was variously celebrated or denounced by writers such as Alexandre de Pontaymery, Joseph de La Mothe, Béroalde de Verville, and Jean Prévost sieur de Gontier. Taken together, the number and diversity of these polemical responses constitute a valuable source for understanding the condition of women and the contested notion of female honour in sixteenth-century France.

The volume concludes with a sonnet by the bookseller Antoine du Breuil in praise of "la Belle". Despite the mention “dernière édition” on the title, this appears to be the earliest edition recorded.

Provenance: faded inscription on the title page, handwritten signature on the first flyleaf S. Jolleys (?) 1834.

References: USTC 75271; FVB 44702; Gay I, 144. Cioranescu, 17908, cites only the Paris edition of 1598. Frank Greiner, « Les amours violentes de la belle du Luc », in Revue des sciences humaines, 357, 2025, pp. 177-192.

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