Louise Labé was one of the most brilliant and sensuous women poets of all time. She published a sequence of sonnets and three elegies, a prose Débat de Folie et d&146;Amour in 1555. Her sonnets are still admired for their intense description of physical passion, witty intellectual images and skillful use of Petrarchan conventions, notably the antitheses of love, delight and pain.

Born in Lyon 1524, Louise Labé was a contemporary of Rabelais (1494-1553) and Ronsard (1524-85) and lived through the flowering of Lyons literature at a time when protestants were being burned at the stake and Calvin was actively converting Geneva to the reformed religion. She married a rope merchant called Ennemond Perrin, is thought to hav

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First published 16 September 2004

Citation: Bromilow, Pollie. "Louise Labé". The Literary Encyclopedia. 16 September 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5832, accessed 9 February 2010.]