Akademik

(ca. 1524-1566)

   The pen name of the poet Louise Charly, born into a well-to-do family of rope-makers at Lyon and given a classical education unusual for any woman of her time. Her collected poems, published in 1555, include three elegies and 24 love sonnets written in the Petrarchan style, as well as a prefatory manifesto on the rights of women and a mythological prose dialogue, Débat de Folie et d'Amour / Disputation of Folly and Love, written in the manner of the Renaissance facetia. Her work shows familiarity with Catullus and Ovid. She places herself firmly in the tradition of Renaissance lyric and satire but provides ironic commentary on the conventional language of love devised by and for men.