Catherine d'Amboise
She wrote both verse and novels, including Book of the Prudent and Imprudent [Livre des Prudents et Imprudents] (1509) and Fainting Lady's Complaint against Fortune [La complainte de la dame pasemée contre Fortune] (1525), as well as royal song [chant royal], which is the only extant poem of its genre.
[1] Catherine was one of a select group of aristocratic French female authors who have gained considerable attention in recent years.
In Fainting Lady's Complaint against Fortune, she expressed how she lost both of her parents, her first husband and only child, her uncle Georges, who had died in 1510, and her brothers.
[3] In Fainting Lady, her writing style is autobiographical – the protagonist's name is Catherine – and she laments the misfortune that has deprived her of her parents, her first husband and her only child, her uncle Georges, who died in 1510, and her brothers.
[1] Her lyric verse evokes both profane and religious traditions, calls upon marial and nuptial mysticism, allegorical dialogue, and epistolary poetry.
[1] Catherine's prose works show a deep knowledge of biblical, mythological and historical sources, acquired most likely through compilations (although possibly through direct French translations).
Taking the form of a richly dressed celestial-being, Prudence arrives, announcing her prayers have been answered, and she will always be helped because of her dedication to Lady Patience.
Finally, she praises Prudence and demonstrates her allegiance by offering her heart, her understanding, and her first piece of writing – Book of Prudent and Imprudent.
[1] The novel is part of the querelle des femmes tradition, a genre favored by late medieval and early renaissance humanists – especially for literary debate about the intelligence and capabilities of women.
Also, she then proceeds to explain that women are thought of as ignorant because society will not allow them to learn: "And therefore I most humbly and insistently beseech the listeners of this volume that in their benevolent graciousness they would excuse me, and also my tender mind, which for lack of knowledge and understanding cannot write down terms of rhetoric.
This is the work of a woman, and that gives peremptory reasons for making excuses, greater than for a man, who has the freedom to go here and there to universities and places of study where he may comprehend all sciences by solicitude, which is not the case of the female sex.
She mourned the fall of the house of Amboise – when Charles II and his son died, leaving her the inheritance, it also represented the beginning of the downfall of the clan.
Charles II had been one of the leaders of the French armies in Italy, and his son, who had played a leading role in political and cultural life in France, had also been deceased.
[3] Reason, as well as a host of allegorical figures, show Catherine and her friend, Dame Raison, about the benefits of suffering in this world.
