Louise Labé’s Sonnet XVIII is far from subtle in its forceful representation of sexual intimacy. After François Rigolot and Ann Rosalind Jones, Deborah Lesko Baker suggests a new reading of this most famous poem, and attempts to demonstrate how Louise Labé employs and ironizes the Petrarchan poetic tradition. Sonnet XVIII becomes thus a concerted dialogue with Petrarch’s Canzoniere.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Baker, D. L., (2025), "Re-reading the folie: Louise Labé's Sonnet XVIII and the Renaissance Love Heritage", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Baker, Deborah Lesko. "Re-reading the folie: Louise Labé's Sonnet XVIII and the Renaissance Love Heritage." Renaissance and Reformation 29 (1): 2010. 5-14. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v29i1.11393. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.