“Souffrir non souffrir” [Suffer not Suffer] is the enigmatic, antithetical motto with which Maurice Scève both opens and closes his Délie, object de plus haulte vertu (1544), the volume of lyrical verse upon which his literary fame is founded. Claiming the widely-held distinction as the first poet to produce a Petrarchan canzoniere in the French tradition, Scève employs this evocative, paradoxical insignia to illustrate the bipolar tension experienced by the desiring poetic subject and, in so doing, follows the lead of the superlative Tuscan sonneteer, whose unrequited love for Laura was cultivated in verse to similar contradictory effects. Like

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First published 13 October 2009

Citation: Hudson, Robert J.. "Maurice Scève". The Literary Encyclopedia. 13 October 2009.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12445, accessed 21 November 2009.]