Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/286

 274 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. charming fashion, and in so doing throws fresh light on Marot and his work. It c ne nous apporte pas seulement la revelation d'une figure de femme vraiment exquise ; elle montre encore en Marot une ame infiniment delicate et nuancee.' Who does not remember the delicious little rondeau 4 Dedans Paris/ which breathes the spirit of the love and devotion Marot dedicated to Anne throughout his life, even after her marriage to M. de Bernay. Another essay deals with the earliest French translations of Plato, and with Platonism in France at the epoch of the Re- naissance. Another treats of what we may call feminism in the sixteenth century, and proves that it is no new invention of the twentieth. For in the sixteenth century c la femme tendait a jouer un role social de plus en plus grand; sa place n'etait plus seulement au foyer; elle n'avait plus pour unique mission de vaguer aux soins du menage ; elle visait a se rapprocher de rhomme ' ; and there follow the names of some thirty eminent women, among them Marguerite d'Angouleme, Jeanne d'Aragon, Victoria Colonna and Louise Labe. A great ' querelle des femmes ' was con- nefled with the publication of the third Book of Rabelais' Pantagruel. Fenelon is known as a pious archbishop, cheerful, amiable, a St. Francis de Sales, persecuted by the Jansenist prelates, regretfully condemned by a Pope who loved while he chastised him ; or, as a humani- tarian philosopher, as a viclim of despotism because he loved the people, detested abuses, and preached tolerance. But there is yet a third Fenelon, and it