Widely studied from the “natural” perspective of a generational tabula rasa, the formalist shift in poetic technique known as the abolition of the coupe feminine, which occurred around 1515, is a thorny issue much more complicated than it would first appear. This formal silence, imposed upon the caesura by young poets (Marot) and older ones (Lemaire) alike, caused a sensation once wielded as a misogynist spearhead against a more insidiously authoritarian linguistic normalization. Beyond the false debate around modernity that re-enacts an older one, and beyond the debate, conducted in misogynist terms, that incongruously literalizes a highly technical issue, the last flickers of “epic” and “lyrical” coupes would seem also to need to conceal the dissidence of phonological, regional specificity against the centralist francisation of the “poetic thing,” under the influence of a new unanimity at the Court of Valois that discretely—and unusually—opposes order to reactionary rebellion.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Moucaud, D., (2025), "Un silence assourdissant à la césure : les guerres larvées de l’e caduc entre oedipiens, misogynes et glottophobes", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

  Copy Citation | Export metadata as... | JSON | CSV | RO-Crate | BibTex | EndNote

1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Moucaud, David. "Un silence assourdissant à la césure : les guerres larvées de l’e caduc entre oedipiens, misogynes et glottophobes." Renaissance and Reformation 42 (1): 2019. 17-40. DOI: 10.7202/1064517ar. 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/.