Renaissance and Baroque, the golden age
The Loudun-born humanist Jean Salmon Macrin (1490-1557), valet de chambre to François I, was considered by his contemporaries to be the greatest Latin poet of all time. He frequented Guillaume Budé, Erasmus and the famous printer-librarian Josse Bade, and allied himself with powerful patrons such as Joachim Du Bellay, who would later adopt his ideas. Although he often devoted himself to love poetry, of which his wife was the muse, Macrin owed his fame to his religious works. Loudun, an important stronghold of Poitevin printing from the 17th century onwards, saw the birth of another acclaimed poet, the emblematic Scévenole de Sainte-Marthe (1536-1623), who was also mayor and later treasurer of France for the Poitiers region. Heir to a line of erudite aristocrats, the shrewd politician and close associate of Catherine de Médicis tried his hand at the poetic genres in vogue. In 1580 and 1584, he penned the childcare treatise Poedotrophia, which left Pierre de Ronsard speechless. At the same time, the Protestant Agrippa d'Aubigné (1552-1630) demonstrated an unwavering commitment, albeit punctuated by outbursts and disagreements, to Henri de Navarre. An uncompromising warlord, an enemy of the French court, a formidable orator and a fierce opponent of the Edict of Poitiers (1577), he perceived Henri IV's abjuration (1593) as a betrayal. He was also a trustee of the Reformed Church of Poitou. In Poitou, where he had an attachment, the Château de Mursay, his resting place in Echiré (in ruins since the 1920s and open to the public all year round), to which he moved to write - among other masterpieces - Les Tragiques (1616), an epic and satirical poem dedicated to the Wars of Religion.
Poitiers, an avant-garde feminist island
Les Dames des Roches, founded in 1570 by mother-daughter duo Madeleine Neveu and Catherine Fradonnet, was the most avant-garde provincial literary circle of the period - the magistrates sent to Poitou to restore order after the sack and siege of Poitiers (1562 and 1569) held their salons there. Admired, listened to and imbued with influence, the two women of letters shone far beyond their home port: they wrote and published Latin translations, poems, prosaic dialogues and plays, mixing erudite works with melancholy reflections inspired by their condition. Their Missives de Mesdames des Roches was the first women's epistolary work to be published in France. In 1577, as the court of Henri III and Catherine de Médicis made a stopover in Poitiers, the illustrious duo composed a number of works in honor of the royal procession. One of their most important works, a feminist before its time, is the sonnet A ma quenouille, a portrait of a woman torn between her domestic obligations and the activities of her mind... The salon of the Dames des Roches disappeared with them, swept away by the plague in 1587.
Literary personalities of the 20th century
In 1920, the Deux-Sévriens were proud of their brand-new Prix Goncourt winner: Ernest Pérochon (1885-1942), a former schoolteacher turned writer who won awards for his first novel, Nêne (Plon, 1914). As you prepare for your Poitou getaway, take a look at this view of the Petite Eglise, a dissident religious phenomenon that spread between the Vendée and Deux-Sèvres from 1801 onwards, today concentrated in the region of Courlay, Ernest Pérochon's native village, where you'll visit the Tour Nivelle, a school-museum dedicated to him. The streets and other public institutions of Ernest Pérochon abound in Deux-Sèvres: in Niort, take a moment to stroll through the prestigious Villa Pérochon, a center for contemporary photographic art with national interest status. Department 79, a Goncourt incubator? In 2015, Niort-born Mathias Enard (b. 1972) won the Goncourt for his novel Boussole, a monologue of love across Europe and the Orient. The award-winning author is renowned for his skilfully constructed literary works and boundless erudition. He is also a translator of Arabic and Persian.
He was born in Poitiers, and shortly after passing his baccalaureat, went to study under Jean Hyppolite (whom he succeeded at the Collège de France in 1969) at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, where a dazzling career awaited him: the immense and sulphurous Michel Foucault (1926-1984), who shook up philosophy by introducing new subjects for reflection: madness, prison and sexuality. He is buried in the Vendeuvre-du-Poitou cemetery (Hervé Guibert evokes his death and burial in a short story entitled Les Secrets d'un homme). It will be possible to take part in some of the cultural events dedicated to him in the Vienne region, including the Rencontres Michel Foucault, organized at the TAP in Poitiers since 2011 (mid-November), and the events proposed by the association Le Jardin de Michel Foucault in Vendeuvre-du-Poitou, particularly during European Heritage Day. Montmorillon-born novelist Régine Deforges (1935-2014) planted an episode from her celebrated trilogy La Bicyclette bleue, which became a saga that concluded in 2007. In it, she evokes an episode from the Second World War, the exodus of thousands of French refugees to the South, in which Léa and Camille take part, fleeing Paris and forced to stop in Montmorillon. Eager to reconcile the rural and literary worlds, Régine Desforges created the Cité de l'Ecrit de Montmorillon in 1990. In the pretty medieval quarter of Le Brouard, book professionals (booksellers, publishers...) and craftsmen (calligraphers, bookbinders, potters...) are brought together. The site is open all year round. Lovers of literature, however, are invited to visit in June, for the Rencontres de Montmorillon - Littérature et territoires. There's also an interesting Typewriter and Calculator Museum.
